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1. Is the choice to be unhealthy covered in libertarianism?

Absolutely.

2. Are you, Vox Day, a victim of the Madison Ave thought police, accepting their invented standard of beauty? The brothers love a chunky gal.

As the WB knows very well, I happen to have a strong preference for slender blonde women. If Madison Avenue is to blame for this, so be it. I suffer the affliction with quiet dignity. Hold me, Ralph.

Haven’t most of history’s societal standards of beauty leaned toward the unlean side? Do you dismiss that fact solely on the grounds that to be “heavy” in societies of want symbolized wealth, and therefore the standard of beauty gravitated in that direction because those women were deemed better and healthier breeding partners, or were there other reasons? And do you then follow a logic path that says currently we embrace the thin, in shape look because we believe those women are better breeders? Are there any stats to support the notion that in-shape women fare better in the delivery room, or other factors more important to impregnability, sustainable pregnancies, and success of full term delivery without complications?

Unlean – when did you go PC? Yes, certainly. But what is Progress, if we do not aspire to new heights of beauty? I dismiss nothing, nor have I done any research on who makes a better breeder, though one presumes the classic child-bearing hips make things a little easier.



Besides the inflated public health cost associated with a heavier populace, what other arguments are there for people to be thin (assuming that they, in a libertarian model, are the best determiners of the right course to achieve their own happiness, and may have standards different from your own and even unfathomable to you) This is the first post on your blog in which I see a “personal choice” bias, so I point it out to you. Life expectancy does not equal happiness, thinness does not equal happiness. Freedom from disease might equal happiness on some level, but one could argue that taking on the risks of getting diabetes or heart disease is part of a valid utilitarian framework in which the utils generated in the early part of a life of excess more than make up for the pain and suffering (negative utils) suffered during the diseased end of that life.

I think there’s a strong utilitarian case to be made for chunking out, just as there is for smoking and drug use. I absolutely support the decision of every individual to get as fat, stoned and tar-lunged as they choose, however much it might offend my sense of aesthetics. Unlike many columnists, my personal distaste for something does not necessarily dictate my political views. I do find it bizarre, however, that smoking is singled out by the law while another, similarly unhealthy habit is not. Ideally, neither of them would be legally persecuted in any way.

Of course, I don’t understand why marijuana is illegal when beer is not either. I’d MUCH rather be surrounded by 200 people stoned out of their mind than 200 drunkards. And the same gateway arguments that apply to the herb apply just as well to alcohol. The one thing that does bother me is the kids who never get to make the choice and enter adulthood with the deck stacked against them, but I would never suggest impairing parental power and responsibility “for the children” for this or any other reason. After all, it’s quite possible that the government helped create this obesity explosion by pushing the whole low-fat thing in the first place, not to mention locking the kids up in public schools all day. That would be an interesting study – to see if homeschooled kids are healthier and better shape than their government-schooled counterparts as well as being ahead of them academically.

I have to add, this is all pretty rich coming from a sexist pornographer like the WB.

Among American 15-year-olds, 15 percent of girls and nearly 14 percent of boys were obese, and 31 percent of girls and 28 percent of boys were more modestly overweight, according to a study led by Inge Lissau, a researcher at the National Institute of Public Health in Copenhagen.

How is this possible? I thought the development of low-fat foods was supposed to mean that we could scarf tons of Doritos and Snack-wells and never gain an ounce! It’s really strange to me, as the one or two token fat kids in every high school class would barely qualify as overweight these days. I remember being bewildered when my little brother was admiring a few hefty little heifers walking past our soccer practice – they were probably sophmores and juniors in high school – and I asked him if they weren’t perhaps a little supersized to generate such interest on his part.

“Dude, they’ve all got junk in the trunk these days,” was his cheerful response. How can this be good for either the individuals involved or the society at large?

Of course, smokers should be shot on sight. For the good of everyone. Because smoking is bad for your health.

I don’t know how long it will be before CNN offers me a television show – I’m not interested in one – but it’s only a matter of time. I said for years that the left-liberal media would get slaughtered if anyone ever put together an even moderately conservative channel; sure enough, it’s happening. Fox isn’t even particularly conservative and most of its hosts aren’t very bright, but they are at least likable and in sync with the American mainstream, unlike the talking heads of the ABCNNBCBS cartel. You can’t simultanously be a vanguard and a part of the mainstream, after all.

Instead of pulling their moussed heads out of their posteriors, though, the media executives seem to think that finger-pointing and calling their potential audiences stupid is the way to bring in more viewers. Right, that’ll probably work. CNN needs to go overboard to the right if it wants to seriously take on Fox, dabbling in Fox Light will never do. They probably won’t start to do this until Fox has three times their viewers and they’re desperate enough, though.

As for MSNBC, a distant third among cable news networks, slipped in most categories…. MSNBC is expected this week to announce a new prime-time show featuring Georgia native Deborah Norville as the host. More of what already isn’t working seldom turns things around. But she is cuter than either Pat Buchanan or Bill Press, so they have that going for them. I give MSNBC three more years before they go technology channel. One must give them credit for trying Alan Keyes and Michael Savage, but Keyes was never comfortable on camera and Howard Stern had already proved that radio shock jocks don’t make for decent television. And Jesse… please. The man can barely talk. It doesn’t really matter, as three minutes of cursory discussion and a quick move on to the next subject just doesn’t work for me. I’d rather watch ESPN or MTV anyhow.

So, the ratings massacre continues. Fox not only has a bigger viewership already, it’s growing faster too. At current rates of growth, Fox will double CNN in 2005 and triple them in 2006.

If I had to guess, I figure that 2006 is when CNN gives me a call. I really don’t like the medium, though. Never have, never will.

I got an email from a former member of my old band this weekend. He saw that there was a bit of a revival happening under a different name and wondered if I was involved. I wasn’t, (or so I thought), but I went to check out the web site for Basic Pleasure Model. I was surprised to see that the first single had the same name as one of the last songs I wrote for Psykosonik before dropping out of the group – only the lyrics, that’s all I ever wrote – but that’s cool, it’s a good name.

Holy cats! It’s exactly the same song, updated for the new millenium with a garage beat underneath the melody. It sounds great, and it looks like you can buy the CD single already, so definitely check it out. I’m quite pleased that they recorded it, as I’ve always considered it the prettiest song that Paul Sebastien and I ever wrote together. Here’s hoping for a future release of “Cosmic Trigger”, a technodance ode to Robert Anton Wilson that didn’t quite make the first CD.

Anyhow, there’s previews of five different mixes of the Sunyata single at the BPM web site in the music page. Love the new bass in the chorus of the Album Version. Good to see that Paul’s kept up the old tradition of having at least 50 completely different remixes for every single. I mean, you wouldn’t want leave any blank space on the CD now, would you? Man, I’d forgotten how much I love his voice. I’d also forgotten how the verses went:

Feast your eyes on beauty surrounding, step outside it and see

The central shining void, for that’s where you will be

You’ll never find the meaning hidden under it all

In every drop of rain, in every tear that’ll fall

The centuries they will fly, kingdoms they will fall

You’re just a link in a chain, just a crack in the wall

In a hundred years it will all be the same

Your life is little more than ephemeral flame

The words are a little melancholy, but there’s a spirit of timelessness to the music that I find quite beautiful.

UPDATE – Just talked via email with Paul. He’s very up for some lyrical collaboration like we used to do in the old days, which will be a lot of fun. Paul is too humble, though. I looked at his bio, and he forgot both our Minnesota Music Award for Best Dance Record – a small, but not insignificant award since Prince is from Minneapolis and releases something like twelve singles every year – as well as his four Billboard Top 40 Dance chartings.

Surprise surprise… the prosecutor in Dick Simkanin’s tax case went ahead and raised the usual objection, arguing that the tax code is not relevant to the case. I’m curious to know how those of you who believe that the federal income tax is not a fraud would explain how Mr. Simkanin could possibly be violating the law if the prosecutor is correct and the tax code is not relevant to his case, which revolves around his refusal to withhold from his employees’ paychecks. I expect that the jury, as is increasingly often the case, will smell a rat and exonerate him.

And yet, we’ll probably have blowhards like Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes arguing that “the law must be followed”. Guys, that’s kind of the whole freaking point! Cretins.

What Has Government Done To Our Families by Allan Carlson at the Mises Institute is well worth checking out.

The fate of families and children in Sweden shows the truth of Ludwig von Mises’s observation that “no compromise” is possible between capitalism and socialism. Here I show how the welfare state’s growth can be viewed as the transfer of the “dependency” function from families to state employees. The process began in 19th-century Sweden, through the socialization of children’s economic time via school attendance, child labor, and state old-age pension laws. These changes, in turn, created incentives to have only a few, or no children. In the 1930s, social democrats Gunnar and Alva Myrdal used the resulting “depopulation crisis” to argue for the full socialization of child rearing. Their “family policy,” implemented over the next forty years, virtually destroyed the autonomous family in Sweden, substituting a “client society” where citizens are clients of public employees. While Sweden is now trying to break out of the welfare state trap, the old arguments for the socialization of children have come to the United States.

I’ve noticed that while only a few people are bold enough to argue for outright socialism, you can always find a lot of support for just one “reasonable” step, usually justified on the basis of helping one specific group of individuals. Then, when it fails horribly, more of the same medicine that caused the illness is prescribed. Never mind that the path has been trod before and the eventual outcome is certain.

SB asks: I do not understand how you, as aChristian, can oppose the philosophy of the neocons.The basic belief of the neocons is that Western values are not relative, but are absolute and true. There is a difference between right and wrong, and people can make value judgments and evaluate good and bad behavior.

I don’t have any problem with that aspect of neoconservativism, either as a Christian or as a libertarian. Of course, there’s more to neoconservativism than that; so far, you might be describing conservatives.

I would think a Christian would enthusiastically agree with this thesis. It’s true, the thesis leads to a possible corollary, that the government is able to take positive steps to ensure that the society is just and moral. It can outlaw abortion, slavery, drug abuse. Taken to its extreme, this philosophy would actually justify returning to having an established church and forced attendance at all services, as we had, for example, in Virginia right up to the revolutionary war. So I can well understand how, as a Libertarian you cannot agree with neoconservatism. But what about as a Christian? Don’t you believe that your religion is true? Don’t you believe that the state has a minimal role in creating a just society, based on your religious beliefs?

Of course I believe my religion is true. I do not, however, believe that government can or should play any role in attempting to formulate the religious beliefs of a people. Government has a corrupting effect on everything it touches – the Church of England and the history of the Papal States being two fine examples – and faith imposed by fiat is worthless. Furthermore, a government with the power to enforce what I, as a Christian, see as desirable, also has the power to enforce exactly the opposite. Temporal power corrupts Christians as surely as it corrupts non-Christians. Christianity needs no government help to thrive; indeed, history suggests that the opposite tends to be true.

In fact, neoconservativism even directly opposes a Christian worldview, as it seeks to build a worldly paradise. The notion that humans can even hope to bring about “An End to Evil”, as the new book by neoconservatives David Frum and Richard Perle is titled, is both absurd and profoundly non-Christian. I also see the desire of the neocons to construct a new global world order based on universal democracy helping to pave the way for what I, as a Christian, believe to be an inevitable and prophesied evil. (Responsibility for the NWO does not solely fall to the neocons, of course.) God, as I understand Him, is a lover of free will.

So, no, I don’t agree that the State has any role to play in creating a just society. This pursuit of Cosmic Justice, as Dr. Sowell calls it, leads inevitably to injustice of all kinds. Neoconservativism is far from the worst political philosophy alive today, but it holds little appeal for me either as a Christian or as a libertarian.

I’m still kind of at a loss as to why Mowbray went after General Zinni like that. (see CURRENT COLUMN on the left for details) He wasn’t that vicious about the State Department, even though they actually had it coming to them. I don’t think he seriously believes Zinni is a Jew-hater, so I suspect that he’s simply trying to defend the term “neocon”, which is coming into increasingly bad odor among leftists, conservatives and libertarians alike.

The neocons in the press seem to be getting pretty jumpy. Michael Ledeen just about had an aneurysm going off on Ron Paul, who is the only member of Congress for whom I have any respect regardless of how poorly read he happens to be on Ledeen’s ouvre. And speaking poor reading comprehension, Ledeen himself ignored the very substantive points that Paul correctly made with regards to the failure of Republicanism.

If Ledeen’s strange overreaction is typical, the neocons are also kind of girly. “His attack… incitements to personal violence.” Eeek! It’s a slow week that I don’t get at least one direct threat of something unpleasant. BFD. Maybe if Ledeen and the other neocons hit the gym once in a while they wouldn’t wet themselves every time someone said something less than flattering about them. And perhapsJoel Mowbray wouldn’t feel the need to stand up for them either.

I mean, I’m from Minnesota. We have something like eight Jews in the state. Growing up there, I thought I was ethnic because I’m of English descent with dark brown hair. Since I have little interest in the media circles, I have no idea who is and who isn’t a Jew except for Jonah Goldberg and Rabbi Boteach. What I do know, however, is that I like very little of what I hear from the neocons, who seem to use conservative language to defend left-liberal actions and policies.

Just for the record, I like much of what Joel Mowbray and Michael Ledeen have to say. They’re not the bad guys.

I’ve argued for years that the average journalist is not only far less intelligent than he thinks, he is usually poorly educated as well. I’m acquainted with more than a few, and I’ve yet to meet one who could acquit himself well on anything but politics and current events. Their knowledge tends to extend primarily to subjects they’ve covered, and they have a strong inclination to assume that having heard of something is equivalent to knowing about it. Thus, I found this tidbit from Suzanne Fields’ column to be vastly amusing.

“…the Chutzpah Award for the year that just died must go to Polly Toynbee of London’s daily Guardian for an enlightened rationalization and demonization that boiled over like volcanic lava. Toynbee fell for the infamous Nigerian scam and had to find somebody to be mad at, and it couldn’t be herself. She received a letter purporting to be from a 14-year-old Nigerian girl who needed money to pay to complete her education. Toynbee was touched. She sent the child a check for 200 pounds ($356) and immediately felt warm and fuzzy for her act of charity.

Warm and fuzzy soon evaporated. A perfect copy of her signature was soon attached to a form asking her bank to transfer a thousand pounds ($1,783) to an account in a bank in Japan. A suspicious clerk at her bank stopped the transfer just in time. The Nigerian bank scam is familiar to millions, and many of the greedy and gullible have been taken in by the familiar gross e-mails that clog computer terminals with offers of breast enhancement, penis enlargement and videos promising pornographic pleasure.

Toynbee’s brush with financial disaster taught her a lesson that has eluded everyone else. She learned that the villain in the fraud is not a Nigerian scammer, but … George W. Bush. “We reap from the Third World what we sow,” she told her readers. “If some Nigerians learned lessons in capitalism from global oil companies that helped corrupt and despoil that land, it is hardly surprising they absorbed some of the Texan oil values that now rule the White House.”

Damon Runyon nailed the likes of Polly Toynbee: “Life is tough, and it’s really tough when you’re stupid.””

At least this answers Space Bunny’s question: what kind of idiot responds to this junk? Elite journalists, for one. For my favorite response to the scammers, check out this epic tale of scammers, Mighty Cthulhu and one evil-minded Lovecraft devotee, complete with color commentary.

Good first round, promising a more interesting second round than usual. Carolina’s defense has the ability to slow down the Rams offense, while Green Bay’s running game will hammer Philadelphia. I can’t see Indy staying with KC or Tennessee beating New England at home, though. It still looks like a St. Louis vs. New England Super Bowl, but if Carolina upsets St. Louis, I could see Green Bay getting there too.

I cannot stand ABC’s B-team, though. “You don’t think the Ravens want to win this game?” “You don’t think Steve McNair is tough?” “You don’t think [fill in the blank]?” Nobody thinks that and you know it. Someone buy the man a new expression, please. You don’t think we’re sick of it?