Author: VD

Nancy froths: YOU WRITE AS A MAN WITH A HIGH ENOUGH INTELLIGENCE WHICH IS WHY I FIND IT SOOO LUDICRIOUS THAT YOU WOULD CONVINCE YOURSELF THATAMERICA IS BETTER OFF WITH THE DIM BULB PRESIDENT WE HAVE NOW! IF YOU ARE EVEN VAGUELY AWARE OF THE REAL POWER HOLDERS IN D.C. WHY ARE YOU NOT MENTIONING KARL ROVE,DICK CHENEY,RICHARD PERLE,PAUL WOLFOWITZ, TO NAME A FEW……..GET REAL!

Read the previous week’s article, Nancy. Alternatively, wait for next Monday’s. Not everyone who despises Wesley Clark and Howard Dean is enamored of George Bush. Furthermore, a 125 IQ is far above average; George Bush is more intelligent than JFK, to name one predecessor. He’s closer to Clinton and Gore than he is to the average American. Don’t mistake verbal agility with intelligence; the two often run in parallel, but they are not synonymous.

MM writes: I was skimming a group of links yesterday on one of my favorite news sites yesterday, and I happened across your article, in which you, basically, say that a high IQ leads to a clouded, disillusioned mindset. I thought that it was very interesting, considering the content of your article, that your blurb at the end of the piece mentions your membership to Mensa, an organization for those with IQs in the top 2% of the population. I would think that this invalidates your argument comepletely. I mean, considering that you juxtapose a high IQ with a distorted worldview, and you must have a rather high IQ to be a member of Mensa, doesn’t that imply that you have a twisted perspective as well? Forgive me if I’m misinterpreting something, but it seems like you’re being a bit hypocritical.

Far from being hypocritical, I am speaking from both direct personal experience as well as firsthand observation. First, Mensa is a floor, not a ceiling, and many Mensans do not fit the very high IQ profile I was describing. It would be absurd, however, to suggest that a strong tendency to think in the abstract is always tantamount to disillusionment, twisted perspective or a distorted worldview. It is a tendency, and as such can be successfully controlled, although Wesley Clark’s actions suggest that he has made no effort to do so. Or do you seriously wish to argue that the highly intelligent don’t think differently than those of average or subnormal intelligence?



Then there’s the fact that Mensa itself states that one of its goals is to create a society that is non-political, while your very article is written for WorldNetDaily, one of the most notorious extreme-right news sites around. Just so you know that I have a bit of a bias, I’m pretty liberal, but I’m not judging your article on the fact that you go off on the Democratic candadites, I’m rather dissatisfied with them this year too. I just thought you’d want to be aware of the irony of the fact that you not only disparage those with high IQs whilst belonging to Mensa, but also write for one of the most politically bent news organizations ever.

Mensa wishes the organization to be non-political, not to eradicate politics from society. And WND is far from being, as you say, “one of the most politically bent news organizations ever”. Our weekly commentators hail from a far broader range of the political spectrum than any major news organization, featuring left-liberal Democrats such as Bill Press, Ellen Ratner and Marilyn Polak to conventional Republicans like Pat Buchanan, David Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin, independents such as Joseph Farah and Libertarians such as Harry Browne, Ilana Mercer, and myself. WND also features a daily piece selected from the middle to extreme Left, which is far more than any left-liberal rag dares to do. (Okay, one of my pieces did appear in Pravda once, but I don’t think it’s left-wing anymore.) In any case, your statement is not only hopelessly incorrect, it borders on silly. Do you honestly believe the New York Times features a more balanced view than WND, devoid as it is of everything to the right of John Maynard Keynes with the exception of two moderate Republican editorialists?

I was not disparaging high intelligence, I was only warning of some of its inherent dangers. There has to be some reason that the intersection of intellectuals and government power tends to have a high body count, after all. I am suggesting a partial explanation.

I don’t know if the story about Commandant Gray is true, but this one is. When I was in college, Big Chilly and I stopped by to visit with a certain Marine general of my acquaintance, accompanied by another friend. Big Chilly and my other friend were a little taken aback when, after being introduced, the general pointed to a North Korean colonel’s hat and said: “You know the difference between you and me? I killed the man who wore that hat.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen Big Chilly’s eyes so wide.

However, the general is nothing if not charismatic, and by the time we left his house two hours later, we were not only singing the Marine Corps anthem, but abandoning our respective plans for med school and starting a computer game development company while arguing vociferously about which branch of the Corps we were each going to pursue. Big Chilly wanted to take his perfect vision and go for a Harrier pilot, our other friend was intent on Force Recon, and I hoped to follow the lead of my grandfather into the 2NDMARDIV. This went on for about 90 minutes, until Big Chilly suddenly held up his hand and said: “wait a minute, I don’t want to join the Marine Corps!”

At which point the spell was broken and we went ahead with our lives, as previously planned. But if the USMC ever lacked for volunteers, all they need to do is put a recruiting station right outside the general’s driveway.

One Kiwi commenter reminded me of my Ozzie friend, Firestarter. I was exploring the Lombard interior with a pair of Australian couples in search of the mythical Zegna outlet, which gave me the opportunity to observe the species up close and personal. Firestarter was trying to figure out if an associate of his brother’s, who worked with the other guy’s wife, was the jerk he suspected him to be. The woman was reluctant to be forthcoming, which finally prompted her husband to burst out: “look, is he a wanker or is he a mate?”

But the women can hold their own. Both the guys were rhapsodizing all morning about a statue they’d seen the day before entitled Primavera, which, naturally, was a scantily-clad, barely pubescent, beautiful young girl. After listening to a long and monotonous duet on the aesthetic charms of youthful pulchritude, one of the women finally gestured to a young boy walking by and snapped: “You know, I’d really like to suck his d—!”

The other woman and I burst out laughing, while the two Ozzies looked suitably chastened for all of about five seconds, then cracked up themselves. Ozzies are great; they’re the only aliens I know who fully grok the fullness of American humor. And speaking of Firestarter, it’s been too long since we’ve talked. Give me a call, mate.

TBOGG comments: Unfortunately you make no case whatsoever, and so…no link for you. I do await your evidence of your “actual knowledge” of American military jargon.

Apparently someone’s not only ignorant of military nuance but also the fact that this blog is not where most people read me. No link to a blog? What, do I look like a blogwhore? As for actual knowledge, well, Joe Carter knows the evidence, but he won’t tell you. And neither will I, although this story might amuse you.

Some people just don’t understand a shot across the bow.

From NRO’s Corner: It strikes me that the Republican party is rapidly becoming the Democratic party of the first half of the 20th Century. Bush can be compared to Theodore Roosevelt – the first big government Republican, to FDR, and you yourself [Jonah Goldberg] compared him to LBJ. The Democratic Party today seems to be imploding while the GOP is rapidly recreating itself. I believe that in twenty years there will be a new conservative party, the Republicans will be the Old Democrats, and there will be no Democrats as we know them today. And I don’t mean a Patrick Buchanon-type conservative party.

Precisely. Now, if we can just get the Constitutionalists and the Libertarians to team up and adopt a Christian Libertarian position on abortion – using the unborn child’s unalienable right to life as a justification for secular libertarians while Christian conservatives will have to abandon their fondness for the War on Drugs – we can actually get things rolling. What the NRO reader describes is exactly what I’ve been envisioning myself.

The Republican Party is dead. Long live republicanism.

“But whether you call it marriage or not is up to the church or the synagogue or the mosque. And it’s up to the state legislatures. I think marriage is a term of art. It’s a term of usage. But the legal side of it is not: It’s not negotiable.”

Or, alternatively, a sacrament. Not to mention a very well-defined traditional institution. Any doubts now about Wesley Clark’s preference for his abstract vision of the future over history or objective reality?

This, conservatives, is why the embrace of the State always leads to disaster. Once you give the State the power to define something, you give the State the power to redefine it. Clark is saying here that there is no such thing as spiritual or sacramental marriage, only a legal, state-recognized contract. Notice the usual pattern:

1) The State recognizes an exogenous institution.

2) The State offers benefits to the exogenous institution.

3) The State, as an interested party, demands some influence over the now-endogenous institution.

4) The State takes a controlling interest in the endogenous institution.

5) The State eradicates the involvement of the party which now has no influence regarding its former institution.

You may wish to rethink that whole voucher business. You can no more have a little State control than you can be just a little pregnant.

Yes, WND got hacked. I imagine a lot of WNDers are a bit hacked off, but I’m merely amused. You see, not only was I a member of the Thieves Guild back in my Apple II days, but Big Chilly and I also insisted on publishing our games without any copy protection. I even offered to have my books released for free in PDB format, but my publisher isn’t quite convinced that solving the lack of exposure problem is far more important than losing a potential sale to someone who might otherwise buy the book.

Besides, I’m a friend of the Original Cyberpunk, so I can hardly get bent out of shape about a little computer mischief. Now, virus writers are another matter. I meet a virus author, I’ll pop him one in the face and cheerfully pay the fine/do the time. It would cost less and waste less time than I wasted on virus-related matters before switching to Linux.

Here’s a question. Why does the media continually get so excited about young female athletes? Michelle Wie is only the latest example. A young girl, 13 or 14, accomplishes a notable athletic feat, and is then predicted to dominate her state/sport for the next 20 years, which is what would happen if a young male were to accomplish the same. Of course, since a mature woman’s body is actually a handicap in most sports, her performance usually worsens as she gets older, until by the time she’s a junior or senior, she’s getting “upset” by yet another 8th or 9th grader.

I’ve seen this happen again and again in high school sports. A friend of mine was the state champion gymnast and a top 100 meter sprinter in 9th grade; by our senior year she was no longer competing in gymnastics and didn’t finish in the medals in the conference championship, let alone the regional meet. Her times actually slowed about half a second, while in that same period, my 100 meter time dropped by almost three seconds. In fact, if you follow high school sports at all, you’ll often see 8th and 9th grade girls winning state championships in track, cross country and tennis.

Golf, of course, is barely a sport, so it’s entirely possible that Miss Wie may dominate women’s golf and win more championships than Tiger Woods. But it’s hard not to forget how Martina Hingis’ career is over and done at an age when many great male champions had yet to win their first major. This doesn’t take anything away from Miss Wie’s accomplishments now, but it seems odd to completely ignore history and physiology in discussing the probable future.

From the Washington Times: President Bush last night proposed an ambitious package of domestic spending that will drive up discretionary expenditures far more rapidly than his recent predecessors. The State of the Union initiatives that he wants passed this year include more spending for the Department of Education, a new assistance fund to help manufacturers recover from their recession and funding for a major, long-term expansion of NASA’s space budget. Early projections indicate passage of Mr. Bush’s proposals will increase non-defense spending well beyond the 4 percent to 5 percent the administration has budgeted for the current fiscal year, nearly double the average annual increases of about 2.5 percent by President Clinton during his two terms.

Why are Republicans supporting this man? He’s a Clintonite Democrat in conservative clothing, except that even Clinton never dared anything like the Patriot Act. Just wait until the next Democrat gets into office and starts wielding the expanded central power that this Republican Congress and Administration have created. Then, I expect conservatives will start crying foul. The president rightly compared the Patriot Act to the drug war last night… how much more clear does he have to make his intentions to violate civil rights and American liberties before those who profess to care deeply about such things will disavow his actions? Yes, he’s a better Commander-in-Chief – did you really doubt that our military forces could beat Iraq and the Taliban?

Does being a Republican truly mean never have to say you’re sorry for reducing American freedom? Clinton would never have gotten a pass on this from conservatives. Bush shouldn’t either.