Author: VD

The subjective unicorn

In which I both praise and criticize the esteemed publisher of Black Gate’s recent blog post concerning The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction and the balance of sex with regards to Black Gate contributors. First, I believe it is entirely admirable to investigate one’s motivations underlying one’s actions. Second, in a free society, a publisher is, and should be, free to publish whatever and whomever he wants. I take no exception to all-female anthologies, neither am I troubled by collections of stories that are entirely devoid of female contributors. Third, I entirely support John in his efforts to strike what he considers to be a reasonable balance between excellence in fiction and equitable sexual contributions primarily because it is clear that his modified approach has not caused the quality of the magazine to suffer. As an early subscriber, I think the magazine has grown consistently stronger under his direction.

Read the rest at the Black Gate

The danger of Wikipedia

The nice thing about Wikipedia is that you can always find a quote for every subject. The dangerous thing about it is that you can easily find yourself applying such quotes incorrectly when you clearly don’t know a damn thing about the subject:

The easy thing now might be to proclaim that debt is evil and ask everyone — consumers, the federal government, state governments — to get thrifty. The pithiest version of that strategy comes from Andrew W. Mellon, the Treasury secretary when the Depression began: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” Mellon said, according to his boss, President Herbert Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system.”

History, however, has a different verdict. If governments stop spending at the same time that consumers do, the economy can enter a vicious cycle, as it did in Hoover’s day.

The minor point that David Leonhardt omitted from his article is the small fact that Hoover didn’t listen to Mellon. Mellon’s strategy was never enacted. Hoover overrode the objections of his “liquidationist” Secretary of the Treasury and embarked upon a spending program that was increased faster, in percent of GDP, than anything that FDR subsequently did. The failure of Herbert Hoover was not a failure of austerity, it was the same failure of Keynesian interventionism that FDR repeated.

There are 112 comments from the educated readers of the New York Times following the article. Not a single one points out this fundamental error. So, it appears that the old adage about those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it is more than a little applicable to the present situation.

Captain Underoos makes two bad hires

Dean Baker, who is among those who foresaw the 2008 meltdown, notes that Romney’s economic advisers didn’t:

That’s right, the Washington Post told readers that the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination is relying on two economists, Greg Mankiw and Glenn Hubbard, who completely missed the $8 trillion housing bubble whose collapse wrecked the economy. Unfortunately the Post neglected to mention this fact to readers.

Since Romney is making his ability to manage the economy the centerpiece of his campaign it would have been worth noting that his two top economic advisers were unable to see the largest asset bubble in the history of the world. This might raise some questions about Mr. Romney’s competence.

It probably won’t, since there is practically no one in the media, still less the opinion pages, who knows the first thing about economics. But it certainly should.

The imitation of Man

Susan Walsh highlights a fundamental feminist deceit to which far too many women subscribe:

As you can see, there is considerable confusion about the concept of the feminine among contemporary young women, as well as decidedly different political philosophies….

I’m not qualified to give advice on how to be feminine. I’m guilty of having nurtured the feisty tomboy persona myself. That’s why I’m all ears when men describe what femininity is and why they value it. It’s clear they know it when they see it. In closing, I’ll share with you reader detinennui32′s first of 10 Commandments for Women:

1. Thou shalt cultivate a feminine demeanor and bearing. Thou shalt not try to be, look like, or act like a man. Thou shalt observe and obey this Commandment above all others.

First and foremost, it is important to understand that the vast majority of men are not attracted to men or male qualities. Around two percent of the male population is and those men are called “homosexuals”. Logic therefore dictates that cultivating an attitude and behaving in a manner that appeals to a very small minority of men who are not sexually interested in women will be counterproductive for the woman who wishes men to find her attractive.

One of the core components of feminism has been to provide social incentive for women to imitate male behavior. This is reflected in the increasingly androgynous female attire over the last fifty years as well as the increasingly masculine appearance of women who are held up as paragons of female achievement in the media. (Also, so few women genuinely look good in jeans that it’s really best to avoid them altogether.) Consider Madonna, who is one of the leading examples of female accomplishment, and yet was likened to “a piece of gristle” by her ex-husband, Guy Ritchie.

Now, since what is feminine is by definition the opposite of what is masculine, one can readily determine feminine traits by considering masculine ones. Confidence, courage, independence, ambition, strength, decisiveness, straightforwardness, simplicity, and self-reliance are all core masculine traits.

Therefore, it is incumbent upon the woman who wishes to be perceived as feminine to avoid exhibiting these traits. This doesn’t mean that a woman needs to be cowardly or weak, only that she should avoid projecting her manly fearlessness even in the unlikely case that it is genuine and not the customary false female bravada that crumbles the moment it is challenged. Of course, since even the most masculine woman is less masculine than the average man, the attempt to imitate these masculine traits tends to ring false, hence the inherent humor in young women who march about asserting how strong and independent they are as they visit their therapists on Daddy’s dime.

Get the feminine attitude right and the superficial aspects will eventually follow. Men are attracted to women who smile, who bat their eyelashes, who blush, who are supportive rather than challenging, who trouble to make themselves pretty, and above all, who appeal to their sense of play rather than their sense of work.

And finally, since it’s been reported that about a third of tomboys grow up to be lesbians, it should be apparent that imitating male behavioral patterns is likely to send unintended messages to men and women alike.

Black Democrat plays race card

And in other news, grass is still green, water is still wet, and Republicans are still going to cave under the media pressure:

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on Friday strongly suggested that members of Congress are making it difficult for President Obama to raise the debt ceiling because of his race.

That’s right, Sheila. They raciss! Everything is raciss! The sun rose this morning and it was raciss! The White Man don’t like it when it’s DARK outside. He raciss!

Here is a suggestion for Rep. Lee. In the event you do not wish people to believe you are genetically inclined to sub par intelligence, it might be useful to avoid publicly demonstrating a complete inability to identify the relationship between cause and effect.

The end of the public school

It is becoming increasingly difficult for parents with even a vestigial respect for traditional morality to sentence their children for 12 years of gay and feminist propaganda complemented by intellectual lobotomization:

Public schools in California will be required to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans starting Jan. 1 after Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday signed a controversial bill to add the topic to the social sciences curriculum. Textbooks now must include information on the role of LGBT Americans, as well as Americans with disabilities, though California’s budget crisis has delayed the purchasing of new books until at least 2015….

Gay rights advocates said they will be vigilant about making sure schools across California comply.

Again and again, the wicked are forced to learn the hard way that the fact that God is slow to anger does not mean that He can be safely mocked. I wouldn’t be surprised if those gay textbooks are never printed.

It’s certainly informative to know that in a time of educational crisis, when many California schoolchildren can’t read, write, or even speak English, they will be well-trained to serve as fodder for the California chickenhawks.

Ten years ago, I argued that the public school system should be outlawed, the school buildings dismantled, and the grounds sown with salt. I suspect that not a few of those who disagreed with me then are finally beginning to come around and realize that the purpose of public school is not education.

Libertarian #25

DBKP Reports has released its ratings of the top 50 most popular Libertarian websites on the Internet. Ratings are based on the sites’ 3-month average of Alexa worldwide traffic as ranked on July 13-14, 2011. The Libertarian list has expanded from the Top 40 to the Top 50 sites this rating.

The Libertarian 50′s top five most popular sites is led by Lew Rockwell, followed by Reason and Ludwig Von Mises Institute. The top five is rounded out by The Daily Paul and the Big Picture.

25 24 Vox Popoli 155294

Cackling while Rome drowns

Miss Coulter appears to be under the extraordinary impression that preemptive surrender is a brilliant political tactic:

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has checkmated the Democrats. He has proposed a bill that will allow Obama to raise the debt ceiling three times, up to $2.4 trillion, over the next 18 months, but only provided Obama proposes equivalent cuts in spending each time. Finally, the Democrats will be forced to pony up spending cuts – or default on the debt and crash the economy.

Contrary to some hysterical Republicans, McConnell’s bill does not forfeit any of Congress’ authority: The House and Senate will still have to decide whether to accept Obama’s proposed cuts when they write their appropriations bills.

But we will finally get some proposed cuts to federal programs from Obama, and not more nonsense about theoretical savings from “investing” in our children’s future with additional spending on Pell grants and prenatal counseling.

McConnell’s deal cleanly takes the debt-ceiling issue off the Republicans’ back and puts it on the president’s back. Either the Democrats tell us what they’ll cut or they’ll have to admit: “We will never cut anything. Everything Ann Coulter says about us is true!”

McConnell’s “schooling” of Obama on the debt ceiling is an epic one and ranks with Chamberlain’s schooling of Hitler at Munich and King Guy’s schooling of Saladin at the Horns of Hattin. Ann has clearly been spending far too much time orbiting around the New York-Washington axis as she has clearly failed to recognize how Americans who are paying attention to the issue, particularly Tea Party Republicans, are going to view the raising of the debt ceiling, not once, not twice, but three times in advance, with about the same degree of favor as neocons would view the US Air Force giving three SLBM-equipped nuclear submarines to Iran.

The idea that anything negative is going to be blamed on the president by his de facto press agency is completely absurd. If recent articles are any indication, they’ll probably just keep blaming Bush and the people who get their news from the news will believe it. It is astonishing that a media star such as Coulter still doesn’t understand that it doesn’t matter what actually happens, because the narrative remains.

Coulter also demonstrates that she knows literally nothing about economics. A failure to raise the debt ceiling will not cause default but it will crash the economy. Spending cuts will also crash the economy. This is because the private economy has already crashed and all that is preventing this from being completely apparent to everyone is all the government spending, 43% of which is presently borrowed.

As I pointed out two years ago in RGD, this crash isn’t something that can be avoided. It was inevitable. It was eminently predictable and it was, in fact, predicted by numerous economic observers. Raising the debt ceiling will only make things worse by digging the hole yet deeper and allowing the extension of the extend-and-pretend strategy. But the strategy is not only logically absurd, we have 21 years of empirical evidence demonstrating that it hasn’t worked in Japan and are now approaching three years of showing that it hasn’t worked in Europe or the USA.

This is why the political considerations to which Coulter is appealing are not only incorrect – and they are incorrect as the public rejects a debt-ceiling increase by 58 to 36 percent, including 38 percent of Democrats – more importantly, they are irrelevant. The only responsible thing, the only relevant thing, that the House Republicans can do is to refuse to accept any deal that raises the debt ceiling for any reason. The economy will crash, this is certain, but the vital point is that until it does, absolutely none of the necessary restructuring can begin to take place.

Uprooting the intellectual cancer

Even Stanley Fish, the leading academic writer at the New York Times, admits that there is a solid case to be made for eliminating academic tenure:

Tenure, like academic freedom, depends on a certain picture of what goes on in college and university classrooms — high-level discussions tied to cutting edge research into intellectual problems. Tenure protects the freedom of instructors to engage in such research. But in many classrooms, dedicated to vocational or corporate or political goals, that’s not what’s going on, and the instructors who preside over those classrooms need neither academic freedom nor tenure. Only those engaged in the “search for ultimate truths” do.

But wait (I mimic the key moment in late-night infomercials), there’s more. So-called “advanced researchers,” who by this argument alone merit academic freedom and tenure, are churning out work with no connection to a real social need. Riley quotes approvingly the judgment of educational theorist Richard Vedder: “…most of the research done to earn tenure is darn near useless. On any rational cost-benefit analysis, the institution of tenure has led to the publication of hundreds of thousands of papers that are … read by a dozen people.”

So it turns out that the very people who, under traditional definitions and standards, would be protected by academic freedom and tenure, shouldn’t be in colleges and university classrooms in the first place because they are selfishly pursuing their own narrow interests and contributing little to the well-being of either students or society.

Given that the entire concept of classroom education is outdated, it is abundantly clear that there is no justification for tenure, especially since the vast majority of “research” being produced is entirely useless. A bankrupt nation will not benefit from forcing young people to go into lifetime debt servitude in order to finance upper middle-class lives for a small number of aging intellectuals who have historically done more harm than good.