Author: VD

Other than the obvious physical requirements. It seems to me that more and more young men are more boys than men, although I’m not sure exactly why I have that impression. Were men always afraid to speak their minds around women? I don’t actually know, although I’m under the impression that in the past they watched their language more than their thoughts.

It seems to me that the mark of a man isn’t that he’s necessarily a badass or a buttkicker, but that he does not submit to fear. I’m just thinking aloud here, not necessarily asserting anything, so what do you think?

The one thing I am sure of is that women like men better than whiny little he-bitches. This is a bit outside my area of expertise, but if I recall correctly, even Brad Pitt was supposed to be at his sexiest when he was in Fight Club. Ladies, do feel free to set me straight if I have that wrong.

Arsenal’s well-deserved 3-0 win over Blackburn Rovers in today’s FA Cup semi-final showed that the Gunners can play brilliant soccer even without Thierry Henry, but the game was also marred in the last minute by the cheapest shot I’ve seen in sports since Warren Sapp took out Chad Clifton.

Rob van Persie, the young Dutch international, had an incredible eight-minute game, scoring twice after coming on for Dennis Bergkamp in the 82nd minute to seal the win, but just as his second goal went in the net, Andy Tod, Blackburn’s captain, not only ran into him but simultaneously threw an elbow to the side of his neck. Van Persie was turning into the direction from which Tod was coming, so it was a vicious blow even by NHL standards.

Fortunately, the Arsenal striker was all right, but it was an ugly end to what was otherwise an entertaining game. One thing that I particularly liked was how after the final whistle blew and the Arsenal players were heading for the locker room, Dennis Bergkamp – who has long been my favorite player – stopped van Persie as he came off the field. (You have to keep in mind that van Persie was not only Bergkamp’s substitute today but is also considered his successor and this may be Bergkamp’s final year at Arsenal.)

Bergkamp turned the younger guy around – who was still bleeding at the mouth – and first pointed to the stands, then to the center of the field, and gave him a little push in the back. He was clearly saying something to the effect of “they’re cheering for you, kid,” Van Persie jogged out to the middle and acknowledged the roaring crowd, then, as he ran back to join the rest of the team, took his shirt off and hurled it into the stands.

An interesting juxtaposition of great sporting class and its total lack.

From the History Channel

At least in the early 1930s women were more likely to vote for the Nazis than for the Left, and on the Left the KPD appears to have been much less attractive to women than to men…. In July 1932 a higher proportion of women than men voted Nazi….

That’s a weird construction, given that 1933 was the last election and practically no one of either sex was voting for the National Socialists prior to 1930. And, as often happens with pop history, the writer fails to realize that the National Socialists were by almost every measure a left-wing party. Another article adds:

“Brustein responds that the Nazis did not emphasize their anti-Semitism during their rise in the 1920s and ’30s. “Anti-Semitism was there, but most parties played the anti-Semitic card,” he says. And how can anti-Semitism explain the fact that single women were more likely to join than married women?“

I don’t think it needs to. More likely, the appeal of the National Socialists was because its electoral program was very similar to the platform of the modern Democratic Party, which is obviously much more appealing to women than to men. I’d very much like to find the breakdown by gender of the 1932 and 1933 German elections, but I haven’t found it yet. If anyone does, please send it to me.

Finally, there is this: “Similarly there are many facts identifying females as accomplices of the National Socialistic regime, one of them being that one third of the women in Germany in fact did vote for Hitler and the NSDAP.” It’s not clear what that means since the National Socialists won 43.9 percent of the vote, so either a lot more men voted for the NSDAP in 1933 than in 1932, or the writer is speaking literally about the number of women voting, not the percentage of the voting electorate. I may have some hard totals on the election, so I’ll see if I can work out the percentages this would indicate later.

The title of this post is somewhat inaccurate, by the way, since the National Socialists always denied that they were Fascists but were admirably forthright about their socialism. Remember, the Communist Party was vehemently opposed to the Socialist Party too, that did not make either of them conservative capitalists.

UPDATE – I’m going to have to find the actual votes broken down by gender, because unless my math is wrong or the German electorate behaved very, very differently than the USA, (where 74 percent of the populace is eligible to vote and only 38.7 percent actually do) that last writer’s figure of one third – even reduced by the ineligible and eligible non-voters – would indicate that 8 million German women provided 76 percent of the National Socialist vote in 1933.

After cackling about how his hit rate went up due to my linking to his blog, Orca is whining that I didn’t link to him the next time. Whatever. At any rate, Minnesota’s favorite Nancy Hopkins wannabe came up with this amidst more obfuscatory posturing:

As for Vox’s comment, clearly he seems to be backing off a bit on the issue–as well he should.

I’m not backing away from anything. Just ask Bartholomew, he seems to think I post on nothing else. And still, not a single critic has even come close to addressing my first question, (now clarified thanks to IF):

Did women’s suffrage enhance, degrade or make no difference to American liberties as laid out in the Bill of Rights?

There is no discussion to be had when my critics are afraid to even take a stand on the very simple question of whether suffrage has been a positive, a negative or an irrelevance. It must be one of the three, for there are no other possibilities. (Although “I don’t know” is a reasonable response.) Of course, hiding behind a meaningless fog of words in an attempt to avoid taking a position is the first defense of the intellectual coward.

Now, it is true that Orca’s arguments of a post hoc, propter hoc fallacy would seem to admit that American liberties have been degraded since women began voting, but this still falls short of answering the question.

So, which is it sport? Your ball. Positive, negative or irrelevant?

From New Scientist magazine:

In simulations with groups ranging from 4 to 256 invididuals, the team found that altruism could evolve. The benefits that cooperation conferred on a group outweighed its costs to individuals – but only in groups of less than about 10…. so how could cooperative behavior have evolved and spread in these groups?

The answer lies in the fact that strong reciprocity is not simply a matter of cooperation; it also requires punishment of those who fail to toe the line. When the team added punishment to their models, they found it made a huge difference…. This time, competition between groups led to the emergence of cooperation in groups of up to 50 individuals.

It’s interesting to note here how science is supporting the idea that altruistic cooperation is only naturally possible in family-sized units. These experiments also explain why the government is so comfortable using coercion to force the social “altruism” it desires. The article went on to explain how cooperation between even larger groups was possible if not only the “anti-social” were punished, but those who fail to punish the “anti-social” were punished as well.

This helps explain the vehemence with which the tax cheerleaders, secular supremacists, feminist groups and other collectivist, pro-government forces attack not only those who overtly oppose them, but also those who fail to adequately submit to their hive mentality.

From Sports Illustrated:

One odd fact has emerged from the controversy in Italy over a recent wave of soccer-related violence. Premier Silvio Berlusconi said on Wednesday that “drastic measures” may be necessary to curtail the unrest. That’s not the strange part; what is unusual is that Berlusconi is also the owner of soccer giant AC Milan.

That is news, considering that Berlusconi bought Milan in 1986, a mere NINETEEN YEARS AGO! And he was first elected Prime Minister in 1994.

I know sportswriters aren’t the brightest bulbs in the generally pallid giardino of journalism, but this combination of parochialism and ignorance is truly impressive. It’s one thing to not be up on the minutiae of curling coaches or the all-stars of Scottish telephone pole tossing, but Milan only happens to be one of the five biggest teams in the biggest sport in the world.

czja comments:

It is the ludicrous and ungodly conclusion Vox and you and others have come to in dealing with this reality that I take issue with…. Read your bible from cover to cover a couple of times and then we’ll talk.

Ungodly? Unbiblical?

“It is good for a man not to marry.”

“To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband.”

“But if the unbeliever leaves, let him do so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances;”

“Are you married? Do not seek a divorce. Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.”

Obviously, the notion that men must marry is demonstrably unbiblical. And there is clearly nothing wrong with a man taking defensive legal measures once the wife has pursued the unbiblical principle of refusing herself to her husband or violated the Biblical command not to separate from her husband.

A defense of the overtly unbiblical (the separating wife seeking a divorce) over that which the Bible says nothing (legal financial maneuvers put into play once a divorce-seeking woman’s intentions become clear) indicates use of the Bible to defend an emotional position rather than a Biblical position in its own right.

I note that the unusual measures proposed by Minnesota should not be confused with mine. There are many good reasons to invest offshore, not least the fact that foreign exchanges have significantly outperformed US markets since 2003, performance compounded by the weakening dollar. Indeed, a marriage in Italy, where the divorce laws are far stronger, might be a wise step worth considering for both men and women who value their marital commitment and contract.

As I stated in the original column, God’s concept of marriage is good. But would cZja and others argue that men must accept the harsh realities of civil marriage if it required men to amputate their left hand? Why, then, should they expect men to blithely submit to having their property rights violated at will? For the Biblically minded, it is perhaps worth recalling that those property rights are unalienably endowed by their Creator.

From the New York Times:

After years of telling athletes to drink as much liquid as possible to avoid dehydration, some doctors are now saying that drinking too much during intense exercise poses a far greater health risk….

Until recently, the condition was all but unheard of because endurance events like marathons and triathlons were populated almost entirely by fast athletes who did not have time to drink too much.

“Elite athletes are not drinking much, and they never have,” Dr. Noakes said.

I always ignored my coaches in college who encouraged me to “stay hydrated”. It never made much sense to me in the first place, being a sprinter, and drinking more than a few swallows of water made me feel like an overloaded boat wallowing through the waves. At an all-day meet when the sun was quite hot, they made us hydrate and I wound up throwing up in between the 200 and the 4×100.

The fact that avoiding the nonexistent dangers of dehydration is actually killing people is just too ironic for words. And to think that we often let science define truth for us!

KS explains why he won’t remarry:

I found the timing of her divorce declaration to be interesting, to say the least. Six weeks before her graduation, and six weeks before she was supposed to get a job according to our long-standing agreement, she announced she wanted a divorce….

I cried myself to sleep every night for the next several months. I cried until I had no more tears left to cry, until there was simply no more sorrow and emotion left in me. My whole world, my children, the little people who I loved more than anything in the world and for whom I would lay down my own life, were gone. Vanished. They were gone not because I was dishonest or had an affair or intentionally abandoned them. They were gone simply because my ex-wife decided they should be.

Since my divorce I have had seven offers of marriage from six different women (one of them asked me twice), despite the fact that I have told each of these women up front that I would never be interested in marriage again. I have refused marriage not because I thought these women weren’t nice people, but because I simply don’t trust the courts to be fair or honest in the event of another divorce….

As I have had the chance to relate my story to friends and work associates over the years, I have frequently been asked the rhetorical question, usually by someone who has not experienced the horrors that I have experienced, “So, you’re against marriage because you had one bad experience?” My response is usually to ask how many experiences I am required to have in order to know that the institution is hostile to my interests and doesn’t meet my needs.

So I’m opposed to marriage not because of “one bad experience” or “one bad person”, as though my position is somehow childish or ill-considered. Quite to the contrary. I’m opposed to marriage because of extensive, ongoing experience with one bad system that I do not think will change in the foreseeable future…. Since the family courts did not honor either the written law during my divorce nor the oral contracts that were made during my marriage, I have no reason to believe that they would now honor written prenuptial agreements or private contracts, either. I simply don’t trust the family court system, and will not place myself under its jurisdiction again.

KS cuts to the heart of the matter. The reason men need to be far more careful about deciding to get married doesn’t have anything to do with their feelings for a specific woman or even women in general. It has to do with the wisdom of voluntarily sticking your head into a quasi-legal system that is designed to destroy men and their families.

There are a number of ways to protect yourself, of course. Overseas investments are not only wise from a financial point of view, but will almost surely reduce the risk of losing everything in a divorce. If the woman has no idea where the money is and knows that the minute she files, you’re off to the Cayman Islands, she’s probably going to think twice before cutting her financial throat. Even if you’re not rich, you can use an offshore account as a bargaining chip; after all, she doesn’t need to know that there’s only $500.00 in your Bahamian account until after she trades you custody of the kids for it.

This isn’t to say that you should behave in a Machiavellian manner from the first day of the honeymoon – although if you are diving in the Caymans, why not open an account there while you’re at it – but a divorce seldom comes out of nowhere. The time to begin defensive operations is when the signs start appearing, not when the papers get served.

And what are those signs? From the descriptions of divorces I’ve been receiving in the mail, they include:

1. total loss of interest in sex (this means 3x per year, not 3x per week)
2. weight gain
3. loss of interest in the children, their activities and appearances
4. scheduling frequent activities alone in the evening
5. laziness, especially a refusal to work part-time when it’s needed
6. disinclination to do simple household chores
7. noticeable increase in bitterness
8. spending majority of time with a toxic, man-hating friend

Gentlemen, given that you have nothing to lose but your house, bank accounts, children and credit rating, it just might behoove you to pay a little attention to this sort of thing should it crop up in your marriage.

CS writes in support of government executions:

You seem to play the relativist in that you are so disdainful of ALL government that you even descend to equating Communist regimes with the United States government. You also seem to lump in the the many “killings” by such regimes neglecting that they were not in any sense the execution of Biblically defined justice

You play to the lowest common demoninator when you use broad strokes to paint capital punishment by any and all types of government as “equal”. You also fail to neglect that Jesus Himself was a victim of capital punishment. In fact, He has been the only one who was truly innocent in that has ever been unjustly executed. Your wisdom my assured belief that liberals and libertarians kiss as the far Left meets the far Right.

Not only does CS embrace the assuredly asinine concept popular among left-wing academics that the ideological spectrum is circular – which makes the left-right lexicon irrelevant as well as allows these campus socialists of an international bent to wash their hands of responsibility for their nationalist kin – but he manages to trip over his own rhetoric in insisting that justice was served in every government execution.

This conflation of Original Sin with temporal justice is bizarre, but at least it is uncommon. What is rather more common, if equally wrong, is the idea that the states or the federal government are the least bit interested in justice. Does CS, or anyone, seriously believe that the same people who break their oaths to defend and uphold the Constitution – and the borders – can be relied on to provide justice?

I don’t think so.

Furthermore, I have never equated the US government with lethal socialist regimes; I have rather warned of a dangerous direction the USA increasingly appears to be headed.