Author: VD

WND column

Tea Party Claims a Scalp

Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown’s surprise election was not an actual victory for the tea party. While it was an important symbolic triumph for the small-government movement, electing liberal Republicans is almost precisely the opposite of what is necessary for the tea party to see any positive legislative action toward its goals.

The defeat of veteran Utah Sen. Robert Bennett in the Republican primary is another matter entirely. Despite being an 88 percent party-line voter and possessing an 84 percent rating from the American Conservative Union and a 98 percent rating from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Bennett was soundly rejected by Utah Republicans. He was defeated by not one, but two candidates, which underlines the degree to which the primary voters have rejected not only the current administration’s approach to the financial crisis, but the Republican Party elite’s response as well.

Blogroll update

It has been suggested that it is time to clean up the blogroll. If you have a blog, or if you are aware of a dead link, please post the relevant information in the comments. Also, since I’m often asked what I’m reading, I’m maintaining a list that I can update whenever I remember to do so. I very much liked Brust’s downloadable Firefly novel and it would be nice to see Mal and crew continue to adventure through the ‘verse in print, since they won’t be doing so onscreen anymore.

Crackpot credentials

VDH considers the other European volcano.

Few wanted to listen when it was pointed out — well before the Greek meltdown — that on key questions of demography and immigration, the future of the European Union was bleak. The very idea that, in historical terms, socialism, agnosticism, pacifism, and hedonism were not only interrelated and synergistic, but also suicidal for civilization, was considered crackpot.

I seem to recall a certain cowardly atheist who thought I belonged in the category. I didn’t mind that characterization in the least because the reality is that most intelligent and independent thinkers are considered crackpots and lunatics by the unthinking masses, right up until the moment that they are proven correct.* And, of course, at that point, everyone who previously dismissed them immediately begins to pretend that what they had once characterized as “crackpot” was never anything out of the mainstream.

Today, the smarter progressives and equalitarians find themselves in a state of intellectual shock. The foundations of the erroneous beliefs for which they have so confidently thrown away centuries of history and tradition are crumbling before their eyes and they have literally nothing upon which they can fall back. The less intelligent ones, of course, have no idea that anything out of the ordinary has been happening in the diverse areas of economics, genetic science, and government pensions and so they continue to blithely advocate their empty progressive, equalitarian, big government ideas even as a world that has been built upon them teeters on the verge of complete collapse.

This most certainly does not mean that a freer, more traditional, more capitalistic world is in the making. The opposite is more likely true, at least in the intermediate term. But the truths of these matters will be known and the seeds of future freedom find fertile soil in which to grow.

* A relevant quote from Mises happened to pop up today: “Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. . . . The mark of the creative mind is that it defies a part of what it has learned or, at least, adds something new to it.”

A question for equalitarians

David Stove raises an interesting point:

In the past almost everyone, whether man or woman, learned or unlearned, believed the intellectual capacity of women to be inferior to that of men. Even now this is, I think, the belief of most people in most parts of the world. In this article my main object is simply to remind the reader of what the evidence is, and always was, for this old belief, and of how strong that evidence is.

An opposite belief has become widely current in the last few years, in societies like our own: the belief that the intellectual capacity of women is on the whole equal to that of men. If I could, I would discuss here the reasons for the sudden adoption by many people of this opinion. But I cannot, because I have not been able to find any reasons for it, as distinct from causes of it. The equality-theory (as I will call it) is not embraced on the grounds of any startling facts which have only lately come to light. It is not embraced on the grounds of some old familiar facts which have been misunderstood until lately. It is not embraced, as far as I can see, on any grounds at all, but from mere prejudice and passion. If you ask people, “What evidence is there for the equality-theory?”, you do not get an answer (though you are likely to get other things). Rather, the question is felt to be somehow improper, morally or intellectually, and is thought not to deserve any answer.

I do not know why it should be thought so. The question is a perfectly proper one morally and intellectually, and should not be hard to answer. That men and women have the same intellectual capacity is not, after all, a self-evident proposition, like (say) “7 + 5 = 12” nor is it something just obvious, like (say) the sun’s rising in the east. So if it is rational to believe it, there must be evidence for it: facts which lead to it by good reasoning. But where is that evidence to be found?

I have to admit, this does make me curious. So, here’s a question for the equalitarian readers here. Why do you believe that the intellectual capacity of women is equal to that of men? What evidence has convinced you that this is, in fact, the case? Alternatively, if you happen believe that the intellectual capacity of women is superior to that of men, what evidence has caused you to conclude that men have an inferior intellectual capacity?

I have to admit, I have never, ever understood any aspect of equalitarianism, except of course as a rhetorical and ideological device or legal pretense. There are so many differences between two individuals of identical genetic inheritage that I marvel at the notion that there is even any possibility of material equality between two individuals or two groups of individuals. So, if you do genuinely believe in the intellectual equality of the sexes, here is your opportunity to educate me.

Now, it must be pointed out that a greater intellectual capacity is not necessarily a good thing, either for the individual or for the world around him. The world would have been a much better place had Lenin been born with an IQ of 85, for example. And there is copious evidence that financial success is more reliably achieved by those who do not possess the greatest cognitive capacity. But because it is considered a desirable thing, this tends to pollute the discourse with a whole host of emotional detritus. Nevertheless, the evidence is what it is, regardless of how you, me, or anyone else happens to feel about it.

Off the hook

No Dante quiz today. A little busy here. I’ll post it next Saturday. In the meantime, read Canto XXVIII and we’ll make it a three-canto quiz.

Puncturing the college bubble

Eventually the obvious percolates through to the mainstream:

The notion that a four-year degree is essential for real success is being challenged by a growing number of economists, policy analysts and academics. They say more Americans should consider other options such as technical training or two-year schools, which have been embraced in Europe for decades.

As evidence, experts cite rising student debt, stagnant graduation rates and a struggling job market flooded with overqualified degree-holders. They pose a fundamental question: Do too many students go to college?

In short, as I have been saying for years, yes. Education is a fine thing. Knowledge is wonderful. Most people aren’t actually interested in either. But what amused me most was this quote: “‘It’s sad to know she’s going to miss that mind-opening effect of an undergraduate degree,” Popkes said. “To discover new ideas, to become more worldly.'”

I don’t know how to break this gently to Mrs. Popkes. But there is nothing terribly mind-opening about learning how to do keg stands, provide adequate blow jobs, or do the walk of shame after getting banged silly by a drunken 20 year-old. And it is most certainly not worth an investment that is measured in tens of thousands of dollars. Frankly, her daughter could obtain all that vital knowledge for free in a single night at the right suburban house party.

Striking a chord

I’m not a big fan of politicians, to say the least. And even the best of them are usually capable of turning around and selling out both their principles and their constituencies. But, I have to admit, I kind of like what I’ve seen of this guy. Anyone who can summon up such instinctive and dismissive sarcasm in refusing to suffer journalistic fools will tend to strike a positive chord with me:

Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'

The Madness Season cometh

The harsh and unforgiving realities of history, economics, sociobiology, mathematics, and socionomics are all pointing firmly to the same conclusion:

The irony is that in the course of dismantling millennia of biologically-grounded cultural tradition and enacting their hypergamous sexual utopia, women have unwittingly made life more difficult for all but the most attractive of them. The result has been more cougars, more sluts, and more demand for DNA paternity testing. To prevent this edifice from crumbling under its own weight entirely, massive redistributive payments from men to women in the form of welfare, alimony, punitive child support (even from men who aren’t the biological fathers!), female- and child-friendly workplaces, legal injustice (women in general do not give a shit about justice), corporate-sponsored daycare, PC extortion, sexual harassment claims, and divorce theft have had to be ruthlessly administered and enforced by the thugs of the rapidly metastasizing elite-created police state. Remove these security and resource transfers and safety nets and you will see the feminist utopia crumble within one generation…. an alpha cock carousel that spins relentlessly until society crumbles under the weight of declining productive native population, rising orc horde populations, and wildings by all those fatherless bastard boys raised by empowered single moms.

It’s all so clear as day and yet our so-called smarties continue jabbering about comparative advantage, relationship complementarity, and immigration-fueled cheap chalupas. It’s funny until the pleasurecrats and statusticians have no gated communities left in which to escape.

And then it’s hilarious.

It is interesting to see how an intelligent observer who has chosen a very different path than I have, personally, professionally, and philosophically, has been noting precisely the same problems at work in the decline of the West. I pay far less attention to the whys and wherefores of the feminist utopia than others who recognize its destructive, dystopian nature, but my background in economics has given me the ability to see how just how fragile is the foundation that momentarily supports it. But the Dark Lord’s choice is to toast marshmallows as Rome burns whereas I prefer to plant seeds in the hope of an eventual rebirth of civilization. Now, nothing goes straight up or straight down; the pre-Greece optimism is a perfect example of Wave 2 optimism that we will see, again and again, amidst the long march to a bottom that will probably not take place for decades, or if we are unfortunate, centuries.

But even if global civilization collapses, pockets of civilization will survive. The Church will survive. God’s grand experiment will continue. That is why I have concluded that despair and nihilism, even the hedonistic nihilism of the sort that the Dark Lord expounds, is not the answer.

As predicted

The mainstream media has gradually moved from discussing a jobless recovery to the “Great Recession” and is now beginning to contemplate a Great Depression 2.0.  Robert Samuelson is among the first:

It is now conventional wisdom that the world has avoided a second Great Depression. Governments and the economists who advise them learned the lessons of the 1930s. When the gravity of the financial crisis became apparent in late 2008, the response was swift and aggressive. Central banks like the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank dropped interest rates and lent liberally to threatened financial institutions and rattled investors. The United States and many countries approved “stimulus” programs of tax cuts and additional spending. Panic was halted. A downward spiral of falling private spending and rising unemployment was reversed. The resulting economic slump was awful. But it was not another Great Depression. The worst has passed.

Or has it? Greece’s plight challenges this optimistic interpretation. It implies that celebration is premature and that the economic crisis has moved into a new phase: one dominated by the huge debt burdens of governments in advanced societies. Comparisons with the Great Depression remain relevant — and unsettling. Now, as then, we may be prisoners of deep and poorly understood changes to the world economic system.

As I explained in the book, the problem is debt combined with the fact that neither Keynesian nor Monetarist economics place much significance on it.  Even now, you will find some stubborn neo-Keynesians insisting that debt is good, that it cannot possibly be the root of the problem.  As Karl Denninger has repeatedly shown, their attempts to explain the situation demonstrate little more than their ignorance of simple mathematics as well as political economy.

The massive sovereign debts can never be repaid.  Nor can many of the private and corporate debts.  So, once the burden of servicing them becomes too great, they must be eliminated with either default or hyperinflation.  The frantic efforts of the various Western governments to shovel nearly $1 trillion into the maws of the desperate bankers is little more than an attempt to buy a little more time in the futile hope that the magical revival of Keynesian animal spirits will trump the inexorable mathematics.

Free association in academia

I was asked to provide my opinion about this situation.  And my opinion is that Marquette absolutely did the correct thing.

On Thursday, university officials announced that they withdrew an offer to Seattle University professor Jodi O’Brien to serve as the dean of Marquette’s College of Arts and Sciences. The university said in a statement that O’Brien “was not the person who could best fill this very important position”and that the school had made “oversights” in their search process. According to the Associated Press, O’Brien’s scholastic writings include sociological studies that detail lesbian sexual activity.
The professor expressed her disappointment to the AP in a recent email.

“At this time the only comment I can offer is to confirm that I was offered the position of Dean and I accepted it, but there was an intercession by the President before my appointment was announced officially,” O’Brien wrote. “I’m very disappointed. The College of A&S at Marquette is strong and vibrant and I was looking forward to working with the students and faculty there.”

Several faculty members and students protested the decision, claiming that O’brien’s sexual orientation was the reason the university decided to rescind the offer.

First, the university’s reason for rescinding its job offer to the woman is totally irrelevant.  The Constitutionally protected right to free association means that the university is free to employ or not employ anyone, for any reason.  While it’s true that this right has been massively and persistently violated for decades under the dishonest facade of “civil rights”, discrimination is, in fact, still practiced at every American university.  The only difference between the past and present is the targets of that discrimination.

Second, academia would not be in the dire straits in which it finds itself now, a ludicrous and increasingly irrelevant joke to the genuine intellectuals of the world, if more of the Christians who founded most of the world’s great universities had not fallen for the lie “academic freedom”.  “Academic freedom” is a transparent fraud; it is the university version of the dictator’s democratic mantra: one man, one vote, one time.