Author: VD

In loco parentis

Adrien Chen misses the point:

Don’t pick on 11 year-old girls. Seriously. No matter how dumb they seem—no matter how much they might seem to deserve it—they are, at the end of the day, 11 year-old girls.

They are, that much is true. But what Mr. Chen appears to have forgotten is that 11 year-old girls eventually become 21 year-old women. And if they’re not smacked around when they first start copping an attitude, talking trash to strangers about their superiority, and threatening those who fail to acknowledge it with lethal violence, they are probably going to get more than just their feelings hurt one day.

Boys usually learn not to talk too much trash at a young age because one of their peers will eventually punch them in the mouth. Girls who are permitted to do so never learn to stop, which eventually tends to lead to negative consequences in various forms. In cyberslapping around that ridiculous 11 year-old girl, /b/ was actually providing her and many other young girls with a useful object lesson, namely, DON’T BEHAVE LIKE THAT OR YOU WILL REGRET IT. It is ironic, to be sure, but they were acting as better parents to her than her own idiot pair by teaching her a very important lesson: Discipline yourself or a cruel and uncaring world will discipline you.

Anyhow, the whole episode was well worth it simply for bringing us the epic phrase “Consequences will never be the same!” July has certainly been a most excellent month for linguistic progress.

Suicide of the liberal society

In light of the recent Supreme Court decision on Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, Stanley Fish considers the question of whether religion should be given special status in a liberal society or not. And his correct conclusion is precisely why it is foolish for secularists to celebrate what is little more than a step towards secular self-destruction:

The dilemma is sharpened and even rendered poignant by the fact that liberalism very much wants to believe that it is being fair to religion, but what it calls fairness amounts to cutting religion down to liberal size…. What it goes to show is that the conflict between the liberal state, with its devotion to procedural rather than substantive norms, and religion, which is all substance from its doctrines to its procedures, is intractable. In his “Political Liberalism,” John Rawls asks how democracy’s aspiration for “a just and stable society of free and equal citizens” can be squared with the fact that some of those citizens hold beliefs that are exclusionary; how can they receive equal treatment if they deny it to others?

What the modern secularists tend to forget is that the reason religion was historically granted a special place in society is due to its incredible power, which only the historically illiterate secularist will ignore. The idea behind enshrining the freedom of religious expression into the Constitution was to avoid the sort of power struggles between Church and Church or Church and State that tended to tear society apart. But misconceived confidence in the idea of linear progress through science and technology to a sexy, science fiction secular utopia, in addition to the judicially-dictated transformation from freedom of religion to freedom from religion, is setting the stage for a return of the very problems that the earlier form of American liberal society was constructed to avoid. This is short-sighted, because the easily demonstrated fact of the matter is that religion is far hardier and far more difficult to destroy than liberal society. The logic is simple. If there is no longer room for religion in liberal society, then liberal society will eventually be destroyed like every other force that has tried to oppose religion… assuming it doesn’t collapse of its metastasizing contradictions first.

Disrespecting strong, independent women

No doubt this patriarchal oppressor got what he deserved for preventing a bold woman warrior from wreaking righteous female fury on a fellow patriarch. Would-be white knights should keep in mind that they are not only risking serious personal injury for a strange woman, but there’s a very good chance she won’t even be grateful.

“I just simply say, ‘Dude, that’s enough,’ [thinking] maybe he’ll back off,” Skripka said. “He got in my face. I didn’t flinch. I said, ‘Dude, back off,’ pardon my French but that’s the words I used. Then I finally said, ‘Dude, what’s your problem?’ The next thing I know is I’m waking up on a gurney. I was knocked out cold.”

In addition to the cuts and bruises, he also suffered a concussion….

“I suppose I got more engaged than I should have,” said Skripka, who was released from the hospital Monday afternoon. “I just wanted to do the right thing. If it was my sister or my friend getting assaulted, I’m going to do what I can. All he had to do was stop, all he had to do was stop assaulting her,” said Skripka, who has had his own brushes with the law, the most recent a burglary charge in 2008 from Dakota County. “Just walk away from the situation, cool off. I don’t know why he had to continue and then turn on somebody else.”

Yes, and all you had to do was mind your own business and walk away from a situation that didn’t concern you in any way. The guy didn’t just turn on somebody else, Skripa chose to interfere with him. Now, Skripa may have wanted to do the right thing, but he nevertheless did the wrong thing. Now I agree, if it was my sister or female friend getting assaulted, I’m going to do what I can too. I would do the same for my brother or male friend. But a random woman on the street who is just as likely to be the instigator of the violence as the victim is neither my sister nor my friend. And more importantly, doing what one can is not limited to posturing and verbal bravado.

As I previously advised, you should never intervene in a violent domestic quarrel or even petty crime unless it is clear that potentially lethal violence is merited. A woman isn’t likely to be severely injured by getting pushed or slapped or punched, so you can’t justify stepping in unless and until there are obvious indications that the man actually intends to inflict serious and potentially fatal harm. As the foolish Mr. Skripka discovered, even men who get physical with women are usually holding quite a bit back; a man who is dumb enough to white knight in these situations is simply offering an already angry and violent man a target upon which he can fully unleash the force he is still partially controlling.

Basically, unless what you’re seeing definitely merits putting someone in the hospital or the morgue and would be considered justifiable in a court of law, let it pass. Based on the statistics, half the time the woman attacked first and deserves the beating anyhow.

Why I am not an economist

“The development of a profession of economists is an offshoot of interventionism. The professional economist is the specialist who is instrumental in designing various measures of government interference with business.”
– Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

In other words, if you want to understand what’s actually happening as opposed to learning the latest justifications for more government intervention, you would be wise to find yourself an informed amateur. It wasn’t as if Smith, Ricardo, or Marx had any professional credentials, after all. And consider, for example, that Bruce Bartlett is the first professional economist to finally reach the conclusion that I have been telling everyone for literally years: there is nothing that either the government or the central banks can do to “fix” the financial crisis or the economic contraction.

For the last three weeks, my Fiscal Times columns have been focusing on Fed policy. The main reason is that although I think there is scope for additional fiscal stimulus, there is simply no support in Congress for doing more than has been done. Like it or not, those favoring stimulus got one bite at the apple and they didn’t do enough….

That basically leaves two things that the Fed can do: buy longer term securities and buy very unconventional assets such foreign currency denominated bonds. The first it has already done some of without doing much to get money circulating. The second would put the Fed at war with the Treasury, which jealously guards its dominion over exchange rate policy. It will also raise holy hell with the “strong dollar” crowd and undoubtedly invite foreign retaliation. It’s even possible that China could effectively sterilize the intervention by soaking up all the dollars created by the Fed.

Thus it appears that there is virtually nothing that can be done to stimulate the economy. For various reasons—political, institutional and substantive—there is no prospect of either fiscal or monetary stimulus.

More importantly, it wouldn’t work anyhow! Bartlett, who is correct in discerning that there is no realistic political chance for more fiscal stimulus even though he is incorrect to think it could possibly help, calls for “new thinking” on stimulus. I’d be happier if they’d all just throw up their hands in despair, admit that they have no idea what they’re doing, and stop digging the damn hole deeper.

Talking out of both sides

Joe Lieberman on the Wikileaks document dump: “The disclosure of tens of thousands of classified documents on the Afghanistan war is profoundly irresponsible and harmful to our national security. The Obama administration is absolutely right to condemn these leaks. Most of these documents add nothing to the public understanding of the war in Afghanistan. The materials – which cover the period from 2004 to 2009 – reflect the reality, recognized by everyone, that the insurgency was gaining momentum during these years while our coalition was losing ground. That is precisely why President Obama carried out a policy review in late 2009 and subsequently ordered a surge of forces to Afghanistan as part of a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency strategy that is now under way under the command of General Petraeus.”

James Jay Carafano of NRO on the same: “For sure, the “Afghan Diary” will be used to trash the U.S.-led war effort, just as the Pentagon Papers were used to undermine the war in Vietnam. But we must remember that (1) selectively released documents lack context and don’t tell the whole story; and (2) these documents are about the past. Wars are won in the future. The U.S. has a new general and a new strategy and more forces. Past performance is no guarantee of future earnings. While the documents may be less useful for understanding where we go from here in Afghanistan, their release certainly speaks volumes about the timeless challenges faced by democracies trying to wage wars. That should be the real focus of public concern. It looks as if information that was released could well put lives at risk in the future.”

One Democrat + One Republican = One War Party. And note the incoherency of the message that they’re pushing with more unity than JournoList. The leaked documents don’t matter and add nothing to the understanding of the war because they are so ancient and from the past… but at the same time they harm national security and are putting lives at risk in the future! I’d be interested to hear a defense of the logic upon which that argument rests.

It’s interesting to see how the War Party, which is ostensibly fighting wars to bring freedom and democracy to the rest of the world, desperately wants to shut off the flow of relevant information to the free and democratic people who are theoretically supposed to be deciding if they wish to engage in war or not. It’s almost as if the War Party is really more dedicated to the “fighting wars” part of the equation than the “to bring freedom and democracy to the rest of the world” bit.

Where the money went

Even with permission from the relevant regulator, fraud is still fraud. This is why no government bailout should EVER be permitted:

Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public Friday night. Goldman Sachs disclosed the list of companies to the Senate Finance Committee after a threat of subpoena from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia.

Imagine that. Goldman should be closed down immediately and its executives investigated, and if necessary, prosecuted for fraud, theft, and any other crimes that apply here.

Abolish tenure

Academic tenure is one of the many factors that increasingly make American academia an intellectual joke and reduces the value of academic credentials. Fortunately, it is one of the more easily fixed ones. Just do the obvious and financially responsible thing and get rid of it.

If you were the C.E.O. of a company and the board of directors said: “We want this to be the best company of its kind in the world. Hire the best people you can find and pay them whatever is required.” Would you offer anybody a contract with these terms: lifetime employment, no possibility of dismissal, regardless of performance? If you did, your company would fail and you would be looking for a new job. Why should academia be any different from every other profession?

To those who say that the abolition of tenure will make faculty reluctant to be demanding with students or express controversial views, I respond that in almost 40 years of teaching, I have not known a single person who has been more willing to speak out after tenure than before. In fact, nothing represses the free expression of ideas more than the long and usually fruitless quest for tenure.

One of the main reasons that academics are so hopelessly dull these days is that they are heavily incentivized to pay homage to the present orthodoxy and risk joblessness and career-ending ostracism if they do not kowtow to the status quo. For example, it is utterly absurd that economics professors remain stubbornly and willfully ignorant of Austrian economic theory in favor of their outdated and inaccurate monetarist and Neo-Keynesian models that have left four generations of economics students bewildered at the way in which real world economic events refuse to conform to their educations.

It’s not exactly a secret that tenure does exactly the opposite of what it is supposed to do with regards to academic freedom. While it does protect the professoriat from interference on the part of those who pay their salaries, it actually subjects the individual academic to greater pressure from the academics who control the golden tenure grants.

There are two reasonable arguments for tenure. First is that it protects academic freedom, shielding professors with unpopular views from retribution. Supposedly, this increases intellectual diversity, promoting universities as a marketplace of ideas. Secondly, tenure is a fringe benefit that makes academia more attractive to the best scholars, in so doing reducing the salaries needed to lure them.

While tenure has undoubtedly protected some good people from losing their jobs, it actually may on balance reduce intellectual diversity. Many ideologically driven tenured professors use their job security to aggressively thwart efforts to increase alternative viewpoints being taught. Hence conservatives often feel that they are frozen out of good academic jobs simply because the tenured faculty dominating departments simply do not want alternative perspectives given academic prominence…. The fact is that tenured faculty members often use their power to stifle innovation and change.

WND column

Better Late than Never

Being one of the many columnists who initially supported the invasion of Iraq under the mistaken impression that Saddam Hussein had violated a ceasefire agreement with the United States (although I did argue that it should not be undertaken in the absence of a declaration of war), I am in no position to criticize Mr. Farah or anyone else for taking a long time to come around to the understanding that the military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq must come to an immediate end.

Only a very few commentators, such as Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo and WorldNetDaily’s own Pat Buchanan and Ilana Mercer, can truly say that they were opposed from the start to the expensive, unconstitutional and ultimately useless abuses of the American military that have been inflicted upon it by Republican and Democratic commanders in chief over the last nine years. And even fewer opinion writers are man enough to admit in public that their previously expressed opinions were incorrect. Farah, to his credit, is not afraid to do so.

“For the life of me, I cannot begin to understand our objectives in either Iraq or Afghanistan any more. … I admit I was a supporter of both of these campaigns. I was obviously wrong.”
– Joseph Farah, Where are protests of Obama’s wars?, July 22, 2010.

At the Black Gate

Requiem for a Writer

Many years ago, when I was in junior high, I read a science fiction novel that had what I still consider to be one of the greatest endings in science fiction literature. It was compelling enough that I didn’t learn until years later that I had read the last book in the original trilogy and what ultimately turned out to be the third in a series of five. That book was Giant’s Star and it offered what then appeared to me to be a unique and highly original concept of human origins. The author was James P. Hogan and the books of the Giants series are very well worth reading today as they hold up surprisingly well considering the changes in technology that have taken place between now and 1977.

Read the rest at the Black Gate.

Weekly Poll: Afghanistan and Iraq

In light of Mr. Farah’s recent conversion to the anti-war cause, I’m wondering how many readers here support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, how many oppose them, and how many, like Mr. Farah and me, have changed from supporting at least one of them to opposing them both at some point along the way. As for me, I never supported the Afghan war and began openly opposing the Iraqi war in 2004 when I learned that my support for it on the grounds of the broken ceasefire agreement was based on incorrect information; the agreement was between Iraq and the United Nations, not Iraq and the USA. Therefore I was forced to conclude that sans any declaration of war or casus belli, the Iraqi war and subsequent occupation was always wholly illegitimate as well as lacking in any national security interest.