Vox Popoli

Unsurprisingly, Camille Paglia is one of the few pro-choice individuals honest enough to admit to the ethically problematic nature of her left-wing ideology:

[T]he pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand….

I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman’s body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman’s entrance into society and citizenship.

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

This was my position before I became a Christian. I always believed abortion was murder, but then, murder is the way of the world. This is why the feminist position has to hide behind a whole host of specious reasons that aren’t capable of standing up to even the most cursory examination – there is, for example, no such thing as a right to one’s body or the government would not collect DNA evidence – and why Democrats consistently lose on this issue. Nearly every left-liberal blog I’ve read since Palin was nominated has blathered on about how her pro-life stance politically dooms her, despite the fact that she has 80 percent approval ratings in Alaska. Since her pro-life position is presumably well known to Alaskans, we can safely conclude that, as usual, these left-liberals have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

It is their guilty knowledge of their immorality when judged by traditional and historical standards that lies behind the drive of the Enlightenment 2.0 crowd to attempt creating a new and better moral system. I expect them to have no more success in this regard than their intellectual predecessors, the National Socialists and the Soviet Communists, had in attempting to create new and better humanities.

John Scalzi offers six reasons there are no serious critics of electronic games:

You actually have to be able to play the video games. Useful and valid criticism requires some academic knowledge of the field you want to criticize. But once you’ve got that, the input portion of criticism is generally pretty easy: With film, you (primarily) watch with your eyes. With music, you (primarily) listen with your ears. You’re done. Video games, however, require an additional skill, and that is to be able to play the game. Therein lies a problem: The hermeneutics of video games require a whole lot of button-mashing. How many critics are both able to get through a boss level and tell you what it means as a social construct? In the future, probably a lot. At the moment: Not so many.

I’d add seventh and eighth reasons: the reason you’ll never see any great game reviewers or critics is because once one establishes enough of a reputation, some developer or publisher is going to want to get you on their team. Perhaps that hypothetical critic will prefer to criticize, but few guys who love games would turn down the opportunity to make them even if the money weren’t considerably better. And few gamers – or even game developers these days – have the encyclopedic knowledge of games that most film critics possess of movies.

We are amused to be informed that John Hawkins just can’t resist the Palin-bait:

As RWN’s regular readers already know, I have been a harsh critic of John McCain for a long time and back in May, I wrote a post called, “Why I Will No Longer Support John McCain For President.” That post was widely linked and was probably why I was blackballed from the Republican National Convention. However, I’ve been wavering on my “non-vote” in the 2008 election for a while. That’s not because I’ve warmed up to McCain; it’s because of my concerns about Barack Obama.

Of course, it goes without saying that Obama is incredibly liberal, too inexperienced to be President, has terrible judgment (See Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers), and isn’t particularly bright for a senator (See his 57 states gaffe, among others). However, the real problem with Obama isn’t just that he’s incompetent, it’s that he’s an incompetent who seems to think he’s a genius. Never has a man so unaccomplished been so overly proud of his non-achievements…. it may have been Barack’s inability to do the job that had me rethinking my non-vote for McCain, but it has been the Left’s treatment of Sarah Palin that put me over the top.

And, of course, it is the MOSTEST IMPORTANTEST ELECTION EVAR! I only wonder if having a book entitled None of the Above will be enough to prevent Mr. Farah from repeating his dramatic quadrennial return to the fold. For those who might wonder if it’s possible that I would follow suit… the short answer is no, that’s not going to happen. I’ve never voted for a Republican presidential candidate before and I’m not about to start now.

Ace of Spades nails why normal people, even those who aren’t conservative and don’t have much use for conservatives, hate liberals:

Ultimately the liberals’ sin is their smugness. Not even so much because most people recoil from the assumption of superiority, both intellectual and moral, by those who have accomplished nothing exceptional in life except for reliably voting and “thinking” liberal, as if casting a vote the “correct” way slaps 30 points on to your IQs and counts for 100 hours of community service and child mentoring. No, the main problem with that smugness, that belief that you’re sooo very fucking clever, is that you’re actually not particularly clever at all, and the great gap between your personal estimation of your intelligence and the actual real-world measure of it is wide enough to stumble into and take a painful fall.

This is insightful and points to an idiosyncracy of American society that I touched upon tangentially in The Irrational Atheist. John Edwards talked of Two Americas, but there are actually Two American Liberalisms. One is highly educated, wealthier, and more intelligent than the norm, the other is distinctly uneducated, poor, and less intelligent. The latter group is also significantly larger than the former, by a factor that ranges somewhere between 4x to 20x depending upon where you place the limits on either side.

Here’s the relevant passage: “While Democrats are heavily favored by highly educated individuals… the party’s support from society’s least-educated individuals is not only every bit as strong, but is more electorally important. Voters with postgraduate schooling were only 25 percent more likely to vote for the Democratic Party presidential candidate in 2004 while those who did not complete high school were 90 percent more likely to identify themselves as Democrats. Since there are 75 percent more Americans who have never completed high school (16.4 percent of adults over twenty-five) than who possess an advanced degree (9.4 percent) this means that despite their reputation for being the party of the most highly educated, Democrats are nevertheless more than twice as likely to be someone who has dropped out of high school than to be an individual with a master’s degree.

There’s actually more Republicans with college degrees than Democrats; college grads voted for Bush 52-46 in 2004. Also, as a reader pointed out recently, it’s important to keep in mind that the most-educated group is only an approximation for the most-intelligent group. Since as been previously shown, those majoring in education are the very least intelligent of the college-educated – with an estimated average IQ of 91 – the large numbers of M.Ed.- and D. Ed.-holders who disproportionately lean Democrat further reduces the number of genuinely intelligent individuals in that most-educated 9.4 percent of the population. That factor probably isn’t enough to entirely make up for the 25-percent Democrat advantage, but does reduce it significantly.

So, the upshot is that there is a relatively small number of intelligent people and a much larger number of unintelligent people holding the same political views. This latter group has a very strong tendency to believe they are themselves intelligent because they share those views, when the truth is that they merely happen to be rooting for the same team. I don’t think even the average member of the more numerous group would assume that because a child with surplus chromosomes living in St. Paul supports the Vikings, he is as intelligent as a member of Mensa who also happens to be a lifelong Purple devotee. And yet, most Democrats seriously believe they are more intelligent than Republicans solely because they support the same political team as their intellectual superiors of the same stripe, even though it’s obvious that they are, as a matter of empirically established fact, markedly LESS intelligent than the supporters of the other side.

That’s the reality. Now, for the implications that Ace mentions. Think about how many people react poorly to my arrogant flaunting of my intelligence. Even some of those who are in ideological accord with me and find my reasoning to be remarkably astute loathe it. Those who tend to disagree with me hate it so much that they often find it outrageously provocative that I mention my Mensa membership in my WND bio, which I always find highly amusing since that ever-so-lofty threshhold is more than an SD below my tested IQ. It’s a gauntlet of contempt hurled in the face of the reader, so it’s no surprise that many should find it off-putting even though I reliably back it up.

Consider, then, the probable reaction of the normal individual to a similar attitude copped by someone with sub-standard intelligence, and then think about how unconvincing he would find any arguments presented by such an irritatingly clueless idiot. This is why the smugness and conceit of both Democratic politicians and grass-roots Democrats alike is so off-putting, not only to Republicans but also to independents and third-party people like me; it’s like being lectured about mathematics by someone who has never heard of algebra or geometry, but is inordinately proud of his ability to multiply two numbers and assumes that you’re still getting by with addition.

By way of example, I give you John Scalzi – a High Democrat of the First American Liberalism – attempting to lecture the hysterical Low Democrats of the Second American Liberalism about the basic realities of American politics at the most public level. While his analysis isn’t quite correct – Obama can’t and won’t argue on the real issues since he and McCain are practically identical on everything from nationalizing housing to immigration and adventures abroad – he’s entirely right to tell them to grow up and realize that Obama was never going to be wafted into the White House on the strength of his pure heart, his magical negritude and the adoration of the masses.

For another example, consider how the more scorn the Democrats pour on Sarah Palin, the more independents move towards McCain. If McCain can maintain a strong advantage among independents, the election is over.

The execrable Dooche takes the first rule and destroys it like Dirk Diggler hitting an underage hymen:

Any time I engage with one of my conservative friends or family members, or sometimes the conservative commenters on this website, it usually devolves into them screaming about WELFARE! and TAXES! and THE GOVERNMENT IS TAKING MY MONEY AND GIVING IT TO PEOPLE WHO DON’T WORK! And what they don’t understand is that this is not the issue at all. What I and many of my more liberal friends want is to HELP people, not give them a free ride, but also not to ignore those who would benefit from us tossing them a life jacket.

No, what Dooche and many of her more liberal friends want to do is HELP PEOPLE TO MONEY STOLEN FROM OTHER PEOPLE. There is nothing to discuss here, the facts are settled. Liberals don’t give money to those in need, they clamor for the government to take money from other people and give it to those in need. It is a proven empirical fact that conservatives in general and religious conservatives in particular give more money to those in need and spend more of their time helping those in need. There’s nothing keeping Dooche from helping out anyone who needs it, but of course, she won’t, because as a good liberal, she thinks that screeching about what she thinks other people should be forced to do is tantamount to actually helping them. It isn’t.

Thank you so very much, Rachel Lucas, for bringing my attention to this horrifying intellectual vaccuum… you’d think I would have learned my lesson the first time I made the mistake of reading one of Dooche’s extraordinarily clueless posts.

The Anchoress presents a dialogue about a desperate Democrat:

Don Clinton: Oh, get yourself a hankie, Candace, and stop bleedin’ all over my rug. The more you whine and cry the more that li’l Alaskan hootchi-goo is gonna laugh while she grinds the stiletto heel of those cute little size sevens straight through your pericardium and into your heart before you even know what’s happened!

The One: (falls to the floor in contrite supplication) Help me, Godfather, help me! What do I do? How do I get this mean girl to stop beating me up, and reclaim my glamor, my “it” factor? My minions in the press have been going after her with everything they have, and they’re getting booed! Next “I” might get booed, oh, what do I do –

Don Clinton: (leaps from his chair and smacks The One twice on the face, smack! smack!) You can be a man! Be a man!

The One: (pathetic) I don’t know how. I just… don’t know how.

Obama is melting down quickly, but he didn’t melt down quickly enough for the Clintonistas to attempt the revolution in Denver they were considering. Obama badly needs to shake things up before he tanks completely, but he doesn’t have the courage to face down his wife and do the only thing that might save his candidacy, which is replacing Biden with Hillary. (Seriously, who is he going to upset in the slightest by that move, the influential Delaware wing of the Democratic party? The Neil Kinnock fan club?) Even that probably won’t work now anyway, since what would have looked like an act of strength and magnanimity a few weeks ago would now be correctly seen as an act of supreme weakness and desperation. But if he goes down 20 with likely voters, he may as well give it a whirl.

As I wrote around the time of the final primaries, Obama was very foolish to grab for the brass ring instead of ascending to secular sainthood that was his for the taking by graciously gifting the nomination to Hillary and then condescending to accept the vice-presidency. That’s the sort of Olympian, above-the-fray role he was born to play, not straight-up street-fighting against a devious old aviator and an Alaskan she-barracuda. If he loses as badly in November as is beginning to look possible, he’s probably one-and-done on the national scene.

A reader writes to tell of his personal experience of the VP candidate:

I have been following your writing on and off for the last couple of years. I am a committed and politically well-educated Christian “libertarian.” I am from Wasilla, Alaska. I personally know Sarah Palin. [They are near neighbors.] I worked on her first campaign for Mayor of Wasilla. I also have a good libertarian friend whose wife is [a good friend of] Sarah.

Sarah is a smart and savvy individual. In person, she actually does not come across as a barracuda or a strictly annoyingly aggressive person when you talk to her. She is beyond that. She is more reserved and skilled socially, almost shy-seeming. The reason she is known as a barracuda is because she is surprisingly more of a strategist/winner than people ever give her credit for. She is very skilled politically, but not in the slick willy sort of way. In the 80% approval rating as Alaskan Governor sort of way because she is very real and honest.

She has a pretty good social conservative record. But, she has become a bit of a fiscal socialist once she got to state office. I have had several women bosses and I typically can’t stand women as my leaders. They are way too emotion-based and petty. Palin is a bit different, she seems like a good leader, that said, I don’t think that I can in good conscience vote for McCain.

This corresponds pretty closely to what I’ve gleaned of Gov. Palin in casual observation from afar. I think she’s smarter, more dispassionate, and much more strategic in her thinking than most observers realize. However, I also detect an extreme ambition and an ego that she probably tends to keep somewhat concealed from those around her; I don’t trust anyone, male or female, who pursues a career in television in their youth, as it tends to be indicative of both a severe character flaw and intellectual superficiality.

The fact that Palin was both a beauty queen contestant and sportscaster indicates an unusually high degree of narcissism. Those possessed of such a character are very unlikely to resist the temptations of power, to which I suspect her acquaintance is obliquely referring when he describes her fiscal socialism in office. In general, it’s fairly safe to conclude that the sort of individual who builds expensive sports complexes as a local politician will tend to engage in expensive nation-building and showy domestic spending programs when elected to national office. Unfortunately, conservative instincts and Christian faith seldom trump core character flaws in Washington.

Sarah Palin is still a marvelous choice by John McCain and may well be the factor that allows him to upset Barack Obama and claim the Cherry Blossom Throne. Palin is an admirable woman of political and evolutionary accomplishment, and it is certainly possible that she possesses the internal steel to resist the tests and temptations that will be placed before her. It wouldn’t shock me, however, if many of those who enthusiastically vote for McCain-Palin in 2008 eventually come to regret doing so once the fruits of victory are harvested.

Is apparently a Muslim after all:

“Let’s not play games. What I was suggesting — you’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith.”
– Barack Obama

I really wish Obama would debate George W. Bush. It would be just like the Lincoln-Douglas debates, only the exact opposite. Nice to see little Georgie Steph leaping in and helping him out, though.

And the man just keeps digging himself in deeper:

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it. Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress.”
– Barack Obama, 5 Sep 2008

The Bush administration socializes the housing market:

The US Government took control of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the stricken companies that underpin America’s mortgage market, yesterday and promised to inject up to £110 billion of taxpayers’ money to keep them afloat….

Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary and a key orchestrator of the rescue package, acknowledged that it was highly unusual for a government to intervene where publicly traded companies such as Freddie and Fannie were concerned. But he emphasised that the two struggling groups represented a special case because their survival was crucial to the health of the worst housing market since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

More on this in the next week. But count on one thing. This will make matters much worse in the long run. This is nothing more than the robbing the American taxpayer to protect the investments of the Chinese, the Russians, and the investment banks.

Isn’t it wonderful to have a Republican president! This really shows how 2008 is the mostest importantest election ever….

Pennington started slow but the Dolphins look less incompetent than last year, while Favre once again demonstrates that it’s better to be lucky than good.