Category: Uncategorized

EU-imposed social change

This is what happens when a nation gives up its national sovereignty to authoritarians determined to destroy the social fabric:

David Cameron suffered a humiliating reverse last night when more than half his MPs rejected his 11th-hour appeals for support for same-sex marriage. On an extraordinary day in the Commons, 134 Tory MPs took advantage of a free vote to oppose the plans. Only 126 backed the legislation, with 35 abstaining.

But with the help of the majority of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs Mr Cameron saw the measure passed easily, by a margin of 400 to 175. The first gay marriages are likely to be conducted within 12 months.

Cameron is nothing but a water-carrier for the European Union.  Like the Republicans in the Senate, his role as a “conservative” is to conserve the changes that are imposed by the progressives, in this case, the dictates of the unelected European Commission.  As with the other member states of the EU, the UK is no longer a democracy, not even a quasi-democracy, but a pseudo-democracy that is nominally governed from London but is actually ruled by Brussels.

The gay marriage debate has very little to do with literal homogamy, as the paltry number of “married” gays in the various states where it is legal tends to demonstrate.  It is symbolic, a legal demonstration of the fact that what was once Christendom is now post-Christian, and a rejection of traditional Western civilization.  It’s not a step forward, but rather, a step back into ancient pagan darkness.  It is ironic that those who decry Islam as a return to the 7th century are actually complaining that the Muslims don’t go far enough; “progressives” want to take the world back more than two millennia.

I invite those who claim this act will “strengthen marriage” to consider the empirical data.  Name a nation where legally legitimizing gay “marriage” was followed by a statistically significant increase in the marriage rate.

Banning drones

It’s a positive and encouraging first step.  But every city and township in America must follow suit just in case Washington fails to come to its senses:

Charlottesville, Va., has become the first city in the United States to formally pass an anti-drone resolution. The resolution, passed Monday, “calls on the United States Congress
and the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia to adopt
legislation prohibiting information obtained from the domestic use of
drones from being introduced into a Federal or State court,” and
“pledges to abstain from similar uses with city-owned, leased, or
borrowed drones.”

I imagine that liberal and conservative Americans can find common ground in not wanting death-dealing, missile-equipped remote-controlled drones flying over their heads.  After all, it could be the likes of (George Bush/Barack Obama) with his evil (Republican/Democrat) on the trigger.

I don’t recall the right to fly drones everywhere being a power granted to the Federal government anywhere in the Constitution.  Not even in the emanations and penumbras.

Very important international news

Insightful investigative reporting on the part of The Guardian reveals that John “I am a rapist” Scalzi lied when he claimed that he was enjoying the attention of what he hitherto described as an adorable “mancrush”:

John Scalzi is the author of several books, including the Old Man’s War series and Redshirts, published in the States by Tor and the UK by Gollancz. He’s also the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Fed up of being constantly targeted on his website by one particular individual and his followers, Scalzi decided to take action, pledging US$5 every time “the Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit in question posts an entry on his site in which he uses my name (or one of his adorable nicknames for me)”.

Scalzi put a ceiling on his “troll tip jar” of US$1,000, figuring that gave his bête noir 200 opportunities to abuse him over the coming year, and said he’d give the cash to four charities: RAINN, America’s largest anti-sexual violence organization; Emily’s List, dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women to office; the Human Rights Campaign, which works for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equal Rights; and NAACP: America’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.

A novel enough way to tackle the trolls, for sure, but what happened next was somewhat astonishing: Scalzi’s friends, Twitter followers and readers asked if they could jump in with pledges too. Many of his friends are high-profile authors and industry types – Will Wheaton, the actor who played Wesley Crusher in TV’s Star Trek: The Next Generation, and a writer in his own right, was one of many who promised to match Scalzi’s US$1,000 pledge.

By the early hours of this morning, UK time, the pledges for Scalzi’s chosen charities had grown to US$50,000.

One of the triggers for the trolling of Scalzi seems to be a satirical blogpost he wrote in October last year attacking conservative politicians for their line on abortion control. It took the form of an open letter to them, in which he adopted the persona of a rapist….

However, the Guardian doesn’t seem to have gotten the story quite right.  The reporter appears to be under the impression that Mr. Scalzi did not enjoy the attention, when we were repeatedly informed, in writing, that he did.  When was it, the inquiring mind wants to know, that “the “McRapey” comments became too much”?  And why were we never informed?

The headline is certainly interesting: “Troll’s comments prompt author to pledge charity donation for every insult.”

John Scalzi’s name is an insult?  I suppose that’s true enough in light of his antics.  But just to set a few things straight.

  1. I have never trolled or sock-puppeted Whatever.  I am not sure of the exact number, but excluding the 30 or so comments on the TIA Big Idea post, I believe I have posted fewer than 10 comments there since 2005.
  2. I have never encouraged anyone to visit Whatever, to leave comments there, or to troll there.  I have linked to various posts at Whatever; a look through the blog archives shows a grand total of 58 references since 2005.
  3. I do not wish to have what passes for John Scalzi’s stature in the science fiction field.  If I had any desire to write unoriginal and derivative takes on Heinlein, Dick, Piper, and Star Trek, I would do so.  As should be obvious from my 854-page epic fantasy novel, my sights are aimed elsewhere.
  4. Since when does “constantly targeted” mean “criticized 26 times in eight years?”  Of the 11,327 posts here on Vox Popoli, precisely 58 refer to John Scalzi in any way.  Of the 58 references, 32 of them are not even critical.
  5. It was really reprehensible of The Guardian to omit to report that in addition to raising $50,000 for the noble cause of not quoting, criticizing, or even mentioning John Scalzi, Mr. Scalzi also commissioned the painting of a dancing pink rabbit.

What can we conclude from all of this?  Sheldon Cooper was right.  McRapey isn’t the problem.  We have to fight the real enemy!  Ensign Wesley must die.die.die!  Now, to be fair to the Guardian, it is entirely possible that the reporter, David Barnett, attempted to ask me for a comment before writing his story, but was unable to reach me as I was much too busy laughing.

UPDATE: A sometime critic of mine who has challenged me to a debate with John Scalzi adds his thoughts on the increasingly hilarious matter:

As Helen Smith demonstrated, John Scalzi likes easy and ideologically safe (politically correct) targets. This rule applies on those rare occasions when he responds to criticism, as well. Scalzi realizes that the best way to smear an entire group is to cherry-pick its worst members, and then present them as the representative norm. I noted earlier how he cherry-picks anecdotal cases of aberrant male behavior to build the case that women require his advocacy against sexism. In a similar manner, Scalzi strategically chooses which critics he responds to.

He would not respond to Helen Smith, as this would place him in the difficult situation of having a woman expose his chicanery and call his bluff. Nor does he respond even to Vox Day—who swings back and forth between moderate positions and more extreme ones. But Vox Day frightens John Scalzi not because he is sometimes extreme, but because he is consistently articulate and often insightful. Scalzi does not want real dissent; he wants either sycophants, or babbling cardboard opponents whom he can casually demolish. The more likely a critic is to debunk his methods, the less likely John is to engage him or her in open debate.

That is inarguably true, but on the other hand, John does commission rabbit paintings and solicit the burning of other people’s money in lieu of debate, which is considerably more amusing than mere rational discourse.  I certainly have no complaints.  I’m simply enjoying the dancing rabbits.

UPDATE II:  This should be amusing.  I’ve already done two little interviews with publications in the USA and Canada doing stories on the affair.  Is there no end to the madness?  How is he so masterfully pulling the strings of the global media?

    Terminal velocity

    The Swedish bottle is in the equalitarian forefront and is rapidly plunging towards the floor:

    In Sweden, 16% of all newborns have mothers born in non-Western countries. Employment rate among immigrants: 54%. Sweden now has the second highest number of rapes in the world, after South Africa, which at 53.2 per 100,000 is six times higher than the United States. Statistics now suggest that 1 out of every 4 Swedish women will be raped. In 2003, Sweden’s rape statistics were higher than average at 9.24, but in 2005 they shot up to 36.8 and by 2008 were up to 53.2. 

    This indicates is what Ed Trimnell and those who identify themselves as conservatives while simultaneously subscribing to the equalitarian ideals of the French Revolution have failed to grasp.  Disequalitarian elitists do not believe that the genie of female suffrage is going to get stuffed back in the bottle in any modern quasi-democratic society.  My position is not conservative because there is nothing left to conserve.

    I describe feminism and equalitarianism as being unsustainable because they are ideologies that cannot be sustained for more than a short period of time once they become tangible policy measures.  Once equalitarianism attains a certain amount of influence in a civilized society, that society is doomed, although the collapse is not necessarily instantaneous and the particular form it takes will vary.  The speed with which the society collapses entirely depends upon the circumstances.  It only took 15 years for Germany to go from democratic suffrage to totalitarian rule, whereas it took 72 years for a different equalitarian ideology, communism, to run its course in the Soviet Union.

    The average process appears to take about 50 years, which is the length of the time it took for the post-WWII European quasi-democracies to go from regaining their freedom from occupation to the loss of national sovereignty.  In the USA, the process has taken considerably more time due to its size and founding traditions that are intrinsically hostile to the equalitarian ideals, so hostile that large-scale immigration from nations more amenable to them was necessary to overcome them.  That is why I count from 1973, which is the year that the effect from women entering the workforce finally surpassed the number of old and teenage men leaving it, rather than 1919.

    To put into perspective how little the average individual understands what is happening, I asked a non-American who works for a high-profile international NGO how many Hispanics there were in the USA, given a total population of 310 million.  He guessed about one million and was shocked to learn that the correct answer was 52 million.  In like manner, most Americans can’t grasp that Sweden will no longer be anything remotely identifiable as Swedish civilization in fifty years, barring the sort of upheaval and chaos that often trails economic contraction.

    In other words, I don’t expect the genie to go back in the bottle, I anticipate the shattering of the bottle.  I am pointing out the process as it happens, in the hopes that in the future, others will be able to learn from the consequences of our massive ideological mistakes.

    It’s a bold strategy

    Let’s see if it pays off for him.  I’m left to reflect that it is just as well that Bane is dead.  This would have killed him.  There is no doubt in my mind that he would have died laughing on the spot.  The artist certainly did a magnificent job of capturing the essence.

    UPDATE: A Whatever rabbit likes the Gamma Rabbit almost as much as I do:  I kind of want to get this tattooed on me just to watch the gibbering howls of Alpha rage, which I would enjoy with a nice rum and coke.

    I kind of want him to do it too.  Better yet, I want John Scalzi to do it.  In fact, I will pledge ONE DOLLAR towards funding the cost of Mr. Scalzi getting the full-color Gamma Rabbit tattooed on his body.  Let’s see if he truly cares about diversity, gender equality, and the poor little gay black girls or not.  Is his commitment even skin-deep?

    Glenn 1, GOP 0

    Glenn Reynolds considers the “natural conservative” argument in light of Kaus’s zero-sum Game of President:

    “The race to control the Presidency is a zero-sum contest, like a football game. One party wins, and one loses. Both can’t win. Immigration amnesty (or gun control, or spending cuts) might help Democrats dominate national politics and lock up the presidency for generations to come (as some believe) or it might help Republicans by allowing them to increase their dismal share of the growing Latino vote. But both sides can’t be right. Even if they both think immigration amnesty will help them, one of them is wrong.”

    If the GOP thinks this is going to get them Latino votes, then the GOP is wrong.

    This really isn’t that hard.  There are two mainstream parties in Mexico.  One is Partido Revolucionario Institucional.  The other is Partido de la Revolución Democrática.  Both are members of the Socialist International.  Which means that the growing Latino vote in the United States is going to vote socialist.


    This is not rocket science.

    Mailvox: an erroneous summary

    Ed responds to my previous post on sexual inequality.  Unfortunately, he tries to leap past the specific issues raised and summarizes them incorrectly:

    Your
    arguments, gentlemen, all boil down to one essential realization: When
    you open up the gates of universal suffrage, the results become more
    unpredictable and difficult to manage.

    This is
    totally incorrect.  When the gates of universal suffrage are opened, the
    results become entirely predictable and deleterious.  This is both
    logically obvious and empirically demonstrable, since the consequences we are
    currently experiencing were correctly anticipated by a wide variety of
    men and women who opposed suffrage.

    [H]ere
    is a point I believe you overlook: We live in the twenty-first century.
    Women are taxpayers, voters, and fully integrated into our educational,
    corporate, and political institutions. A significant number of men
    (myself included) believe that they have the right to equal
    opportunities in our society. Even if it is possible to prove that women
    are marginally less (or more, a la Tom Peters) capable than men, an
    inexorable fact remains: Female participation in our society is firmly
    established; and barring some cataclysmic counterrevolution, it is here
    to stay.

    Considering that I’m on record as expecting
    the collapse of the USA in the 2033 timeframe, I don’t think I
    can be reasonably said to have overlooked the point.  I understand that female
    participation in our society is firmly established; that is precisely
    why I expect our society to collapse and shatter.  This will not be the first
    time this has happened, and human nature being what it is, I tend to
    doubt that it will be the last.

    Roissy’s observations on this score are reliably astute: “We are the front lines of a grand sociological experiment the fruits of which are just now beginning to ripen. There is no way to know the exact contours it will trace, because nothing of this precise nature on this gargantuan scale has befallen an entire civilization of our size, until now. But if past performance of similar civilizational devolutions is indicative of future returns, there is little cause for optimism. The omens are everywhere.”

     One,
    even if it is possible to demonstrate that a particular group (men,
    women, whites, blacks, Asians, etc.) is marginally more
    intelligent/aggressive/etc. as compared to its counterpart(s), such
    differences are statistically marginal, at best. Within my personal
    circle of acquaintances, there are plenty of Asians who are poor at
    math, and at least a dozen African-American engineers. The marginal
    characteristics of a particular group (if they are provable and
    demonstrable at all) do not enable you to make accurate predictions
    about an individual member of that group.

    Secondly, we
    live in a pluralistic society. Fairness demands that we accept the equal
    rights of all individuals (as opposed to the group rights advocated by
    the extreme right and the politically correct left); and practicality
    demands that we (I am speaking for conservatives here) construct a
    message of small government and individual liberty that is free of
    religious, ethnic, and gender biases.

    In practice, arguments about race and/or and sex-based innate abilities do little more than offend people.

    First, the inability to make accurate predictions about an individual member of that group are irrelevant since we’re not discussing the hypothetical disenfranchisement of individual voters, but rather the disenfranchisement of an entire class of voters.  And the marginal characteristics of a particular group most certainly allow one to make accurate predictions about their future collective behavior.

    Second, fairness is irrelevant.  This is the expected retreat to metaphysics I anticipated and it is not applicable to the practical argument in which we are presently engaged.  Nor does practicality demand a message free of biases, indeed, the entire written history of Man demonstrates precisely the opposite.  Nor could it, given that my argument is a practical and empirical one.

    Third, it is no concern of mine if people are offended or not.  The truth often offends people.  It is no surprise to me that women dislike the historical fact that their collective involvement in governance has historically led to the rapid loss of national sovereignty, to economic contraction, and other consequences generally deemed undesirable.  But history is as it is.  The facts are as they are.  Simply wishing things were otherwise is neither realistic nor a rational approach to the issue.

    No one who is capable of grasping the concept that permitting children to choose their meals is not always and necessarily in their long-term best interest should have trouble understanding that permitting an increased influence in governance to any particular group is not always and necessarily in the best interest of that group or anyone else.  Nor is it necessary for a society to collapse entirely before the positive or negative effects of a specific group’s increased involvement in government to be ascertained.

    A debate challenge is issued

    My recent opponent on the issue of sexual equality, Ed Trinmell, has presented a debate challenge, which I have accepted:

    Within eight hours of the debate challenge I issued to feuding bloggers John Scalzi and Vox Day, Vox responded positively in the comment threads of the original post.

    Half of the debating lineup is on board. But what about the other man?

    Within an hour of my debate challenge post, John Scalzi mysteriously posted an ad hominem attack against his opposition. Scalzi now states that he will make a charitable contribution at the end of 2013 in lieu of further acknowledgements of Vox Day, who has agreed to debate him in a neutral venue….

    Should John Scalzi agree to this debate for the benefit of Children International, I will volunteer to function as moderator. My ground rules will be as follows:

    • This will be a civil, professional, and dignified debate. I will not allow ad hominem attacks, profanity, or excessive sarcasm from either man.
    • This debate will be fair and ideologically balanced. The questions will be equally weighted so as to favor neither Vox Day nor John Scalzi.
    • Specifically, I will challenge Vox regarding his views of women in the political process (which I am on record as opposing). I will challenge John regarding the premises behind his now-infamous “straight white male” essay—which generated a lot of controversy on the Internet last summer.

    It’s certainly an intriguing challenge.  Can I present a credible and convincing case for opposing equality in the political process?  Does McRapey have anything to offer in support of his claims of racial, sexual, and orientational equality beyond false game analogies and repetitive ad hominem attacks?

    And then there is the question that all impartial parties will surely be asking: does John Scalzi possess the courage required to take the risk of having his spinal column metaphorically ripped from him in public?  My guess is that he does not.  He’s a rabbit.  He’s a gamma male.  His blog readership is smaller than mine.  His intellectual influence is miniscule in comparison with mine. He has no original ideas; he’s little more than a parrot.  I strongly suspect that he cannot credibly defend his assertions, which is why he merely repeats them over and over again.

    Just as PZ Myers disheartened his supporters by twice backing down, I assume that Scalzi will find a way to rationalize his inability to defend his views in public.  That lack of courage, that manifest lack of confidence in the strength of his positions, is one reason my influence will continue to grow in comparison with his, as was the case with regards to the Fowl Atheist, who is increasingly regarded as a joke even within the atheist community.  Dr. Myers tried the “I’m too important to waste my time on a crackpot” approach back in June 2008, when my readership was 38.5 percent of what it is now.  It may be worth noting that Mr. Scalzi’s fans appear to be woefully ignorant concerning the facts of the situation.  Consider this tweet directed to my attention earlier today:

    “just a thought, but “superintelligence” doesn’t need to mooch off real thought leaders ( @scalzi ) to get people to notice you.”

    How, one wonders, can John Scalzi possibly be considered a “thought leader” of any kind?  He has no ideas of his own.  Even his fiction is openly derivative, whereas my original concepts have been cited in science journals, on Wikipedia, and provided scientists with hypotheses for which their subsequent experiments have found empirical evidence.  Furthermore, I have no need to mooch off anyone, least of all Mr. Scalzi, in order to get people to notice me.  Not only did he first come to my attention as a result of him and a number of other SFWA members reacting to one of my WND columns, but my blog readership first surpassed his in 2011.

    This failure to understand that there are two sides to the political spectrum is apparently a common misapprehension on the part of the left; some in the SF/F community have publicly complained about Black Gate giving me a platform despite the fact that nearly a quarter of its annual traffic in recent years has come from VP alone.

    Mailvox: errors of the equalitarians

    Boris rejects my proposed liberty metric:

    “So my question to Mr. Trimnell is if he accepts the number of laws and regulations in effect as a reasonable metric for measuring human liberty in this regard?”

    This is a terrible metric. The content of the law is far more important wrt liberty than the actual number of laws. It can hardly be argued that American society is less free today than in 1919.  In any case, a more complex society will always have more laws, so your metric is not well thought out at all.

    Boris’s objection is nonsensical on its face.  How can he reasonably compare the content of a single law to the total number of laws?  Alternatively, if by “the content of the law” he means “the cumulative content of all the laws”, how can he possibly ignore the fact that since all laws contain restrictions on human behavior, the larger the number of laws, the larger the number of restrictions on human behavior that they collectively contain?

    It is true that the cumulative content of restrictions imposed by all the laws is a better metric than the mere number of them, but the latter is much easier to calculate, harder to dispute, and is demonstrably a reasonable and effective metric even if not the ideal one.

    Furthermore, it can very easily be argued, indeed, it can very easily be proved, that American society is considerably less free today than in 1919.  I invite Boris to either attempt to prove that American society is considerably more as free today than in 1919 or retract his assertion.

    Finally, what is “a complex society”?  Wikipedia defines it as: “the extent of a division of labour in which members of society are more or less permanently specialized in particular activities and depend on others for goods and services, within a system regulated by custom and laws.”  Since a complex society features a regulated system by definition, it should be clear that the complex society’s inevitable tendency to have more laws not only fails to disprove the metric, but instead underlines its effectiveness.

    I also asked The Great Martini about his preference for democracy or limited democracy:

    “Question for you: what better expresses the will of the people, direct
    democracy or representative-limited democracy? And which do you favor?”

    Direct
    democracy would be preferable if a practical system could be devised to
    implement it. There’s the question of whether it would even be
    feasible to run a government by constantly consulting all the people
    every time a decision had to be made. If everyone were versed in
    everything and if everyone would actually agree to a process of constant
    polling it would no doubt be a very effective expression of the will of
    the people. The internet has made that more feasible, but still I
    think impractical.

    What does feasibility have to do with the more perfect expression of the will of the people?  Is direct democracy via the Internet truly LESS feasible or a less perfect expression than the system of limited representative democracy when it took weeks for information to travel from Washington DC to the various Congressional districts across the nation?  Is it even less perfect than the present system that involves gerrymandered representatives voting on giant bills consisting of thousands of pages that they have not even read?

    The point I am making here is that even the most die-hard equalitarian favors strict limits on democracy.  They might appeal to feasibility, practicality, voter ignorance, or any number of other factors, but at the end of the day, every single one I have ever encountered favors concrete limits for the electorate.  Therefore, this is a purely practical debate and the metaphysical arguments upon which the pro-suffrage equalitarian rhetoric is based are irrelevant and inapplicable.

    Congratulations Cris Carter!

    It’s two years overdue, but Cris Carter, the third-best WR of all time in my opinion, finally makes it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  It was a privilege to watch him play, and the Three Deep lineup of Carter, Moss, and Reed may have been the most dangerous receiver set in NFL history.  He may have been a possession receiver who only caught touchdowns, but the man was an artist on the sidelines.

    This is your Super Bowl thread.  My pick: Ravens.  The 49ers defense looks shaky, the 49ers kicker even shakier, and the quarterback is a runner and a rookie.  If you favor NFL conspiracy theory, Ray Lewis’s Last Ride is a far superior storyline than 5 Super Bowls, 5 wins for the 49ers.

    I wouldn’t mind seeing Randy Moss got a ring.  But doesn’t Moss finishing his career without one fit the NFL narrative a little better?