Category: Uncategorized

The Dishonest Generation

To the extent that one can have an opinion on a generation, I have always felt negative about the baby boomers in a way that I simply don’t feel about any other generation. And it’s not due to my feelings about my parents either. I always thought their “never trust anyone over 30” slogan was remarkably stupid; even as a child it was clear to me that it is a philosophy with a time limit. In his article, The Technicality Generation, Larry Pressler offers an explanation for why doubts about the baby boomers, particularly the elite ones, tend to be well justified:

THE problems faced by Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s attorney general, over his depiction of his military service are indicative of a broader disease in our society. The issues of integrity in business and politics that plague us today — the way elites are no longer trusted — are rooted in the dishonesty that surrounded the Vietnam-era draft….

In private conversations with my classmates, I was told over and over that they didn’t want to serve in the military because it would hold up their careers. To the outside world, though, many would proclaim they weren’t going because they were opposed to the war and we should end all wars. Eventually they began to believe their “idealism” was superior to that of those who did serve. They said that it was courageous to resist the draft — something that would have been true if they had actually become conscientious objectors and gone to prison.

Too many in my generation did a deeply insidious thing. And they got away with it. Big time. Poorer people went to war. The men who didn’t were able to get their head start to power.

Now that flawed thinking has been carried forward.

Despite being raised to revere the Marine Corps and being an lifelong student of military history, I don’t fault those who were genuine conscientious objectors. They were right to resist the draft, right to refuse to serve in an illegitimate and undeclared war, and their willingness to go to jail rather than play the technicality game or serve as an armed slave of the state was more heroic than anything the civil rights leaders ever did in their manifest self-interest.

And yes, conservatives, the Vietnam War was not only unjust, it didn’t even rise to the level of an actual war. You will have to show me the declaration of war if you want to even try to defend it.

Clitorectomies for American girls

Wasn’t this sort of thing an old PJ O’Rourke joke?

In a controversial change to a longstanding policy concerning the practice of female circumcision in some African and Asian cultures, the American Academy of Pediatrics is suggesting that American doctors be given permission to perform a ceremonial pinprick or “nick” on girls from these cultures if it would keep their families from sending them overseas for the full circumcision.

The academy’s committee on bioethics, in a policy statement last week, said some pediatricians had suggested that current federal law, which “makes criminal any nonmedical procedure performed on the genitals” of a girl in the United States, has had the unintended consequence of driving some families to take their daughters to other countries to undergo mutilation.

“It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm,” the group said.

Shoot them full of poison and mutilate their genitals… albeit only in a symbolic manner. And that’s assuming they don’t get vaccuumed out of the womb in the first place. Needless to say, I’m not one of those National Greatness evangelicals who believes America is blessed. I merely wonder how long it is before the American Academy of Pediatrics signs off on the full mutilation.

The advocates of the Melting Pot never seem to recall that the contents of the pot depend completely upon what goes into it.

Molotov the Mensan

This should send the IQ-insecure anklebiters into a tailspin. Molotov Mitchell questions why Obama, the supposed academic super-genius from Harvard Law, is hiding his report cards, and in doing so he reveals the fact that I am not the only Mensa member writing for WND. Which, of course, raises some interesting questions about those who think more highly of sites that regularly feature drooling cretins like Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, and Kurtis Blow or whatever the guy’s name is.

And the SWAT slaughter continues

As, apparently, do the police lies:

An attorney for the family of a 7-year-old girl who was killed by a police officer’s bullet during a weekend raid at their home said Monday that he saw video of the raid that contradicts the police department’s version of what happened.

Attorney Geoffrey Fieger said he watched three or four minutes of video that showed police fired into the home after lobbing a flash grenade through the window. He said this contradicts the police department’s story, which was that the officer’s gun discharged during a struggle or collision inside the home with the girl’s grandmother.

You know it is getting bad when people start automatically assuming that the police version is false. I don’t know about you, but it never even crossed my mind that the “struggle with grandma” story could possibly be true.

Ban SWAT. They are conclusively proven to be more dangerous to American children than al Qaeda, the Taliban, Iran, and pit bulls combined.

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.