Author: VD

In attempted defense of chickenhawks

Ben Shapiro’s defenders are more than a little sensitive to his hypocrisy and shameless, well-documented cowardice:

Ben Shapiro ‏@benshapiro
Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level. His WSJ piece is written at a ninth-grade level.

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
And you went to law school instead of serving your country while calling for other Americans to go to war.

THE Chris Coon ‏@Coondawg68
these PC SJW Trumpkins are now yelling “Chickenhawk!!” “Bu$Hitler lied!!” FFS…

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Now? I observed that the coward @benshapiro was the Littlest Chickenhawk back in 2005

From my August 29, 2005 WND column, The Chickenhawk Clucks

 I – like 62 percent of the soldiers and veterans who frequent Vox Popoli and Blackfive – am in accord with the notion that “chickenhawk” is an appropriate label for a warmongering young columnist who urges others to make sacrifices he has no intention of making himself.

    Most of us realize that during wartime, sacrifices must be made … But taking such a stand requires common sense and the knowledge that we are in the midst of the great battle of our time.
    – Benjamin Shapiro, WorldNetDaily, July 28, 2005

I would be remiss if I did not note that many of these military men and women favored a different 11-letter word that also begins with “chicken.”

The genuine flaw in the use of the “chickenhawk” label is that in most cases it is being applied years, even decades, after the fact, and inherently attempts to equate two different historical situations. However, due to Mr. Shapiro’s precocious position in the national media, this common flaw does not apply. While his peers are dodging sniper bullets and IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr. Shapiro is bravely urging them to invade five more countries in the establishment of global empire from the safety of his Harvard dorm room.

    Did Iraq pose an immediate threat to our nation? Perhaps not. But toppling Saddam Hussein and democratizing Iraq prevent his future ascendance and end his material support for future threats globally. The same principle holds true for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and others: Pre-emption is the chief weapon of a global empire. No one said empire was easy, but it is right and good, both for Americans and for the world.
    – Benjamin Shapiro, WorldNetDaily, Aug. 11, 2005

The America Bar Association already boasts more than 896,000 lawyers, America has no desperate need for another one. The U.S. Army, on the other hand, is currently 8,000 men short of its 2005 recruiting goals. I am only one of many non-pacifist, non-leftist Americans who believe that Mr. Shapiro would do well to heed his own words of Aug. 26, 2004. “Now’s the time: Either put up, or shut the hell up.”

And before you ask, on January 18th, 1991, my friend Big Chilly and I went to the Roseville, Minnesota recruiting office and attempted to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. Our enlistments were not accepted, in fact, the recruiter ripped up the papers after reading them over and asking us a few questions, but he also shook our hands and thanked us for being willing to serve our country.

So we never served, but we were ready and willing to do so without being asked. And that is something that Ben Shapiro, for all his hectoring bluster about the pressing need for Americans to die in war, was clearly not willing to do.

As further evidence The Complete List of SJW is effective, several of Shapiro’s defenders are extremely intent on having him removed from it. But unless and until he recants his public statement about hunting down and disemploying racists, (and assuming no further evidence of his social justice sympathies is discovered) he quite clearly belongs on it.

Syria or Colorado

Whose elections are less legitimate? Paul Craig Roberts points out the irony of American politicians decrying a purported lack of democratic legitimacy in Syria.

Today (April 14) Syria held parliamentary elections at 7,000 polling stations, keeping the voting open an extra five hours to accommodate the massive turnout. All were allowed to vote, even displaced Syrians from the two provinces still terrorized by Washington and Israeli backed ISIS.

Washington is angry, because Syria held elections before Washington had time to purchase its slate of politicians and organize Washington-funded NGOs to take to the streets to protest and to claim that Assad had stolen the election.

Despite the massive voter turnout and extended hours for voting, the US State Department set the tone by declaring that the elections are not legitimate in Washington’s eyes and do not represent “the will of the Syrian people.”

Washington’s two-bit punk vassals in London and Paris chimed in with both claiming that the war conditions in Syria to which London and Paris have contributed mean that the idea of elections is “totally unrealistic.”

The New York Times lied, characteristically, that the elections, which seem to demonstrate nationwide solidarity against the Western-backed overthrow of the Syrian government, “highlight divisions and uncertainty.” The Washington Post added its lies and misrepresentations to the propagandistic reporting.

The Western governments are far out on a limb with their lies that the Syrian people prefer to be governed by the Washington supported terrorists who were overrunning their country and conducting with Western supplied weapons mass murder on the Syrian people until Russia put a stop to it. Now the Western liars are exposed yet again by election results, and so the liars must pretend that the election lacks validity.

So, Republicans are in the fascinating position of arguing that Syria’s elections, which actually allow people to vote, are illegitimate and do not represent “the will of the people” because “war conditions”, whereas the Republican nomination in Colorado, where no one is even voting, is legitimate and does represent “the will of the people” despite the people having no voice because “rules”.

And people wonder why Americans support a quixotic outsider like Donald Trump. I vote for a blind and incontinent basset hound before I’d vote for any member of the Republican establishment, which now observably includes Ted Cruz. Of course, if I lived in Colorado, I wouldn’t be able to vote at all.

This isn’t that hard. Yes, we all know America is not a democracy. The point is that if you’re going to repeatedly go to war for democracy, then the first place you should do so is in the USA.

500 more votes

MidAmericaCon II reports more than 4,000 nominating votes for the 2016 Hugo Awards:

Over 4,000 nominating ballots were received for the 2016 Hugo Awards, nearly doubling the previous record of 2,122 ballots set last year by Sasquan, the 73rd Worldcon held in Spokane, WA.

I would assume that this bodes poorly for the Rabid Puppies, as it tends to indicate a stronger turnout by the No Awards than predicted by Chaos Horizon. His prediction assumed 3,620 nominating votes, about 500 short of what we will assume was 4,100 votes.

So, I have to conclude that expectations of a second-straight Puppy sweep are highly unlikely, although we will likely get a few nominations where there is an amount of crossover appeal. If the vote had come in around 3,000, I would have felt reasonably confident. Over 4,000 and I tend to doubt the 500-strong Rabid Puppy vote can compete effectively with what has become an increasingly uniform SF-SJW vote until EPH passes.

However, this still indicates a high probability of an entirely satisfactory result, as our primary goal was to break the Tor cabal’s stranglehold on the awards, not to dominate them in turn.

Mailvox: “one of the most substantive debates I’ve heard”

MC rather enjoyed the free trade debate:

This was fantastic.  Clearly one of the most substantive debates I’ve heard.  Both of you made your points well and it really gave the audience the ability to truly focus on the subject matter and the pertinent points of each argument.  I was impressed with Dr. Miller as he did not seem like your typical Academic, but really a guy that is interested in honest discussion (although naive).  Would love to hear more of these.

I am of the opinion that Free trade works well in theory, in a perfect world with honest players, but such a world does not exist this side of heaven.  I believe due to the fallen nature of man, protecting the nation-state is much more important than the benefits of open free trade, because of the eventual destruction of the culture and national identity.  I think the founders understood this much better than us, which is why they advocated tariffs and an American First mindset.

Great debate, I was very impressed, this is really good stuff.  More Please!

I’m glad everyone enjoyed it so much. I intend to keep doing this sort of thing and more at Brainstorm, and the more people that support Brainstorm by joining or simply showing up for the free events, the more high-quality guests like Dr. Miller and Dr. Hallpike will be interested in participating.

Speaking of the debate, some of you will recall that I felt the purely logical aspect of my critique of free trade could be improved and further refined. In that regard, a syllogism occurred to me that I believe  succeeds in succinctly and conclusively refuting Dr. Miller’s corruption argument for free trade.

  1. Dr. Mill argues that free trade is beneficial because it reduces corruption by removing power from the hands of elected politicians and transferring it to the board members and executives of multinational corporations, who are presumed to be less corruptible than politicians by virtue of being answerable to the Invisible Hand of the free market.
  2. But it is the board members and executives of multinational corporations who are the primary actors responsible for corrupting the politicians.
  3. And the causal factor of the process of corruption is, obviously, more intrinsically corrupt than the various parties being corrupted by it.
  4. Therefore, Dr. Miller is incorrect, the hypothetical ability of the Invisible Hand to rein in the corruption of the corporate interests is insufficient, and free trade will tend to increase corruption by transferring power from state politicians to multinational corporate interests.
  5. Therefore, free trade is not beneficial.

Funding suspended

Apparently Kickstarter is not completely converged:

Wave Goodbye to Cyberbullies and Trolls: SocialAutopsy.com

 Funding Suspended

Funding for this project was suspended by Kickstarter about 1 hour ago. 

It’s good to see Kickstarter, unlike Twitter, is willing to enforce its Terms Of Service against SJWs.

This is how the #GamerGate model works. Don’t wait for permission, don’t talk about your clever idea for X, Y, or Z, do something. Or, as they say, shut up and email.

Two more SJWs for the SJW list

Nick Mamatas endorses no-platforming of “fascists” while defending the continued inclusion of Communists and socialists:

1. No-platforming. This has become widely misunderstood as militant liberals have generalized a particular radical practice—the demand to keep fascists from having a public platform at events and within organizations. One can and should no-platform fascists for the simple reason that fascism is a totalizing and universally negating political philosophy—it cannot prosper without the destruction of all points of view via political violence. Even Stalinist and Maoist Communism, say all the horrifying and accurate things about it you can, is self-protective—that is, it can adapt to diplomatic needs, introduce or quash markets internally etc. There is still a core of “dialectic”—a philosophy based on change. (Thus China going from economic backwater to central driver of the world economic system in a generation while still putatively remaining “communist”.) Fascism is based on achieving a certain transhistorical perfection, which is impossible and inherently anti-rational, and thus it not only can broke no diplomacy/debate, it cannot even keep itself stable. It destroys everything, including ultimately itself (and takes plenty of people with it when it collapses). THAT is why it must be kept from growing.

Never mind that Fascism has been a defunct ideology for seventy years now. Or that it was eminently civilized in comparison with the murderous records of Stalinism and Maoism. This guy’s idea of fascism is “anything to the right of Bernie Sanders”.

Brian Keene takes it to a new level, as he not only endorses the no-platforming of “a person who has previously demonstrated a bias against others based on their race, religion”, he is tarring the entire HWA by association:

Today, the HWA released the following statement regarding their decision to allow an avowed white supremacist and fascist serve as a Bram Stoker Award Juror. Quote: “The HWA does not support discrimination of any kind, including discrimination based on political views. Not only is this form of discrimination specifically illegal in a number of U.S. states, HWA’s Board of Trustees also does not believe it’s in keeping with our principle of supporting and practicing freedom of expression. In specific regard to HWA’s Bram Stoker Award juries, the HWA will certainly act if/when a juror’s personal views have a provable impact/bias against a writer or his/her works.” End quote.

So, I’m speaking now to all current members of the HWA. If, after today, after learning that the HWA will allow this to continue– if, after today, after learning that the HWA will allow a person who has previously demonstrated a bias against others based on their race, religion, etc. to participate as a Bram Stoker Award Jury member — an award which will include candidates of various races and religions — IF AFTER TODAY, you intend on renewing your membership and paying membership fees when they come due again on January 1, 2017, or if you are paying to attend any of the organization’s Stoker Cons or awards banquet events in future years, then you are part of the problem.

These self-destructive SJWs don’t seem to understand that if there is no place for competing perspectives ruled beyond the pale in their world, then there can be no place for them should any of their many opponents take power. First they declare there is no place for us, next they no-platform us, then, when we build our own platforms, they whine and cry that we don’t talk to them, we don’t listen to them, and we show them neither mercy nor regard.

They create the very monsters they fear, and they create them ex nihilo.

So be it. Let them whine and cry and beg to no avail. There is no place for SJWs in any civilized society that wishes to survive and thrive.

Talking to the Devil

Or, as it happens, to the Supreme Dark Lord. This is the controversial interview that The Huffington Post found too hot to handle.

I have written on Political Correctness and the need for civil discourse.

For my next look at the culture wars, I talked to controversial alt-right figure Vox Day: game designer, science fiction author, and Amazon-bestselling political philosopher, who some claim to be an inspiration for Donald Trump’s No Apologies strategy.

He’s written about taking the vote away from women, blamed the lack of woman science fiction writers on poor science education in universities, been involved in #Gamergate and disrupted the venerable Hugo science fiction awards, among other things.

He’s been a regular target of feminists, social justice warriors and left-wing activists. For all that, it is hard to know how seriously he takes some of his positions and how much he is angling for a reaction. I asked Vox that we don’t get into personal attacks. Let’s pretend we’re at a Sunday picnic with nice people.

Vox, thanks for joining me. Can you tell us how you came to be a well-known opponent of the social justice left?

It was initially the result of ideological opposition within the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America to my nationally syndicated column, specifically one I wrote concerning an attack by Susan Estrich on Michael Kinsley.

You were called a misogynist, racist, anti-Semite. It got very heated.

It did. Before long, multiple writers at The Guardian were writing articles about what a terrible, awful, very bad person I am. Media outlets from NPR to the New Zealand Herald were joining in the fun. All that did was introduce me to new readers and turn my little blog into a juggernaut.

You say a lot of things that seem outrageous. To what extent are you winding people up?

Not at all. Everything I advocate has a solid basis in science, reason, and history. I find that it is mostly my tone of open contempt for my intellectual inferiors that tends to upset them.

As Mike Cernovich and Milo Yiannopoulos have repeatedly shown, the big SJW-converged sites can try to no-platform the Alt-Right, but all that accomplishes is to cause people to abandon those platforms and go in search of more compelling content and more interesting characters.

And sometimes, they even seek the truth.

Notes on the free trade debate

First, Dr. Miller has graciously provided the audio of our debate at Future Strategist, which, among other things, once more demonstrates the astuteness of my decision to avoid pursuing a career in radio or anything that involves speaking in public. It’s as if the more clearly I am able to think through these complicated issues, the harder I find verbally articulating the path through them. At this point, I have to expect that if I ever come to correctly grok the fullness of all the myriad pros and cons of free trade, my verbal explanations will be reduced to seemingly nonsensical word bursts.

move… you know… war… people… um, mask of credit!

Second, since I didn’t have any reason to fully cite a few of the more interesting quotes I’d found, (for, as Spacebunny observes, a very particular definition of interesting) I thought some of you might find reading them to be illuminating. Since Dr. Miller didn’t put much effort into distinguishing between free trade in goods and free trade in labor, there wasn’t any point in doing more than mentioning these statements in passing. But many free traders do attempt to make the distinction, which is why I believe they are worth noting.


Milton Friedman, “What is America” lecture at Stanford:

There is no doubt that free and open immigration is the right policy in a libertarian state, but in a welfare state it is a different story: the supply of immigrants will become infinite. Your proposal that someone only be able to come for employment is a good one but it would not solve the problem completely. The real hitch is in denying social benefits to the immigrants who are here. Look, for example, at the obvious, immediate, practical example of illegal Mexican immigration. Now, that Mexican immigration, over the border, is a good thing. It’s a good thing for the illegal immigrants. It’s a good thing for the United States. It’s a good thing for the citizens of the country. But, it’s only good so long as it’s illegal.

Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism, Chapter 8. Freedom of Movement

The natural conditions of production and, concomitantly, the productivity of labor are more favorable, and, as a consequence, wage rates are higher, in the United States than in vast areas of Europe. In the absence of immigration barriers, European workers would emigrate to the United States in great numbers to look for jobs. The American immigration laws make this exceptionally difficult. Thus, the wages of labor in the United States are kept above the height that they would reach if there were full freedom of migration, whereas in Europe they are depressed below this height. On the one hand, the American worker gains; on the other hand, the European worker loses.

However, it would be a mistake to consider the consequences of immigration barriers exclusively from the point of view of their immediate effect on wages. They go further. As a result of the relative oversupply of labor in areas with comparatively unfavorable conditions of production, and the relative shortage of labor in areas in which the conditions of production are comparatively favorable, production is further expanded in the former and more restricted in the latter than would be the case if there were full freedom of migration. Thus, the effects of restricting this freedom are just the same as those of a protective tariff. In one part of the world comparatively favorable opportunities for production are not utilized, while in another part of the world less favorable opportunities for production are being exploited. Looked at from the standpoint of humanity, the result is a lowering of the productivity of human labor, a reduction in the supply of goods at the disposal of mankind. Attempts to justify on economic grounds the policy of restricting immigration are therefore doomed from the outset. There cannot be the slightest doubt that migration barriers diminish the productivity of human labor. 

Gary North, “Tariffs as Welfare-State Economics”, Mises Institute

The ethics and economics of restricted trade surely apply to the person who wants to trade on the other side of the invisible line known as a national border. If the arguments for restricted trade apply to the American economy, then surely they apply to the other nation’s economy. Logic and ethics do not change just because we cross an invisible judicial line.… Any time a government sends out a man with a badge and a gun to restrict trade, this is an act of war. Nobody should favor a restriction on other people’s trade unless the results of that trade are comparable to the results of trade during wartime.

What I find interesting about these defenders of the free movement of people, or if you prefer, free trade in labor and services, is that although the greatest among them, Ludwig von Mises, clearly recognized the potential flaw in his pro-free trade position, he not only uncharacteristically chose to wave it away, but to the extent he considered it at all, he reached what is now obviously a completely wrong conclusion.

This issue is of the most momentous significance for the future of the world. Indeed, the fate of civilization depends on its satisfactory resolution. It is clear that no solution of the problem of immigration is possible if one adheres to the ideal of the interventionist state, which meddles in every field of human activity, or to that of the socialist state. Only the adoption of the liberal program could make the problem of immigration, which today seems insoluble, completely disappear. In an Australia governed according to liberal principles, what difficulties could arise from the fact that in some parts of the continent Japanese and in other parts Englishmen were in the majority?

To continue from my observation in last night’s debate, this is a 20th century defense of an 18th century argument that sounds utterly insane in the face of 21st century realities. Consider the application of this argument to current events:

In a Sweden governed according to liberal principles, what difficulties could arise from the fact that in some parts of the country Syrians and in other parts Swedes were in the majority?

What difficulties indeed?  Anyhow, it has become increasingly apparent to me that the lack of concern about national sovereignty shown by free traders is akin to that demonstrated by libertarians, and reflects a fundamental conflation of the concept of “the nation” with the concept of “the state”. They simply don’t understand that their positions are logically self-refuting in addition to being empirically false.

UPDATE: The paper I mentioned, Trade Wars, Trade Negotiations and Applied Game Theory, by Glenn W. Harrison and E. E. Rutström, can be found here. 

Never far from controversy

Allum Bokhari publishes an article about The Complete List of SJW on Breitbart:

Sci-fi author, game designer, and provocateur Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) is never far from controversy. His latest project, a crowdsourced attempt to catalogue every social justice warrior (left-wing political activists known for their intolerant attitudes) in existence is no exception.

The project, called “SJWlist,” describes itself as a resource to “help SJW-converged organizations locate and identify Social Justice Warriors they wish to hire or otherwise support.” However, critics of Vox Day are calling it a blacklist. Even some opponents of SJWs have distanced themselves from the project.

The 200-strong list already features some of the most notorious names in the world of social justice activism. It includes Australian feminist Clementine Ford, known for getting a man fired over a Facebook comment; Melissa Click, known for her attempt to use physical force to expel a student journalist from a public demonstration; and Randi Lee Harper, known for inciting reputation-destroying internet mobs against her political and personal rivals.

Given SJWs’ penchant for destroying the lives and careers of their opponents, Vox Day’s defenders argue that tracking their activities is a relatively mild response. Day’s recent book, SJWs Always Lie, instructs opponents of the regressive left-wing activists to always “punch back twice as hard,” and defenders of Day argue that this is precisely what SJWlist is doing.

It’s a very fair and balanced article, presenting both the pros and cons, but it is clear from the comments that most people on the right support the list, some of them very enthusiastically. The counter-arguments have to date proven extremely weak and unconvincing; no one has any ideas at all how to stop the SJWs from running roughshod over people other than “be nice to them and hope they’ll stop”.

I can only conclude they haven’t read SJWAL yet, because that is absolutely terrible advice akin to the Swedish government telling Swedish women to tell a migrant intending to rape her “stop” in an authoritative manner. These moderates have no tactics, they have no strategy, they have nothing but wishful thinking to offer. Which is why I usually just ignore them and you should too.

And some have asked about the new SJW doxxing campaign called SocialAutopsy, which is now on Kickstarter. The SJWs behind it have already been added to the list, and if they follow through on their plans, their pages on the SJW List will perfectly reflect whatever tactics they use.

What the SJWs fail to realize is that they lost their ability to influence us once they managed to make us unhireable one way or another. No SJW-influenced organization will ever hire me for anything, and I realized that back in 2008. But having reached that realization, I also realized that I was now free of any employment-related constraints on my actions. As it turns out, there are far more people who are not SJWs and their numbers are growing every day as SJWs increasingly attack moderates and even leftists who fail to submit, or even keep up, with their dynamic Narrative.

The fact that SJWs fear being on the SJW List is an indication that not only are their intimidation tactics failing, they know they are failing. And that scares them, because SJWs Always Project and they fear others doing to them what they have been trying to do to others: discredit, disemploy, and destroy.

UPDATE: BC explains the problem with her position to Status 451 in the comments there.

Look, when the Germans started using poison gas in WWI, the British, French and other allied forces did not tsk tsk disapprovingly and show themselves to be the better people in order to convince the Germans through example to stop using such dastardly tactics. No, they used poison gas right back against the Germans, and did it even more effectively. Please note that this did not turn them into Germans.

The result? Everyone stopped using poison gas.

In the Culture Wars, holding oneself above the fray and showing that you are a better person has a consistent record of losing on nearly every issue for the past 60+ years. It doesn’t work. It is time for different tactics, to fight fire with fire, so to speak.

If you are not willing to fight the good fight, so be it. At least stop turning your guns on your erstwhile allies because… *gasp* …they are using effective tactics that work.