Vox Popoli

Jay writes from the PRC:

I’m in China for a couple of weeks and the the place I’m working in has several sites blocked including your blog. I access them from a newsreader instead. However, yours seems to be showing only the post titles (with the link to your blogsite — which is blocked). Do you think you can do something with your feed settings so the whole post shows? I’ll appreciate it.

I’m a little leery of providing the full post texts since it seems to destroy the basic concept of having a blog community, but I suppose that those who enjoy the discourse will end up showing up to comment anyhow. Of course, I was once concerned about the potential problems that might be caused by permitting comments, which proved to be unfounded, so concerns about full feeds tend to strike me as being similar to the same pointless worries that cause writers to refuse to permit downloads of their books.

So, I’ll turn on the full feeds and we’ll see how it goes. That’s really the only way to make a determination anyhow; if it completely kills off the blog traffic, I can always switch it off when Jay gets back from China.

It seems Obama can’t count so well:

“It is wonderful to be back in Oregon,” Obama said. “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it.”

On the other hand, perhaps this North American Union thing is quite a bit further along than anyone had suspected.

There aren’t very many rules here. However, one of them is that if you are asked a direct question that is related to the subject at hand, then you must answer it. I do not permit the defensive and dishonest evasions that are so common in Internet discourse. If you refuse to either answer the question or admit that you cannot answer it, you will not be permitted to comment here and all of your subsequent comments will be deleted.

In general, if you are constitutionally incapable of admitting that you are wrong, then this is simply not the place for you. Go inflict yourself on one of the many thousands of other blogs that is more tolerant of mindless posturing. Everyone, including me, will inevitably be shown to be wrong at one point or another, and everyone is expected to be able to admit it when it happens. So, if you are one of those sad individuals who insists on clinging defensively to your mistakes no matter what, you may as well go away now, because I’m not going to permit anyone to subject the entire readership of this blog to stubborn self-delusions.

To give a recent example, an individual made a statement about how it was a fact that the members of a large group of people habitually made a very specific claim. I asked for ten examples, which should have been quite easy to provide if this was, in fact, the case. Others who have been asked for such things have readily come up with them; I am still reading through the evolutionary studies provided by a previous interlocutor. But in this case, rather than provide even a single specific example, the individual dissembled, retroactively modified the claim, and resolutely refused to provide anything except incompetent defenses of the general example he’d offered in his original post. This weaselly behavior is not acceptable here and will not be permitted.

In short, put up or you will be shut up.

John McCain really, really, really wants to make absolutely sure that he doesn’t somehow win by accident:

John McCain is going to be doing more of these themed tours of America, and one of them is going to be on energy and global climate change. It could get him into trouble with Republicans, of course, and with the base, who don’t think there is much climate change going on, but it is something that he’s very passionate about and he’s going to be talking about it.

On the one hand, we have the computer models of the global warming crowd. On the other, we have the temperature readings of the last ten years demonstrating that the global climate is actually cooling. I must have missed the memo. When did computer games become science?

Never forget that John McCain’s favorite pasttime is demonstrating to the media that he is not a conservative or a Republican. Obama may be proving to be a more difficult obstacle than Hillary expected, but McCain is clearly bending over backward to make sure that everyone understands that he’s not standing in her way. It kind of makes you wonder if someone told the Clinton camp that the Magic Negro was going to be in Burma last week.

The General provides his list of freedoms that have been gained in the United States since women’s suffrage:

Obtain Abortions
Marry anyone of any race
Live in the location of your choice
Attend the school of your choice
Sit in any seat on the Bus
Sit in any seat in a diner
Obtain entrance to State Bar Associations
Purchase alcohol
Have alcohol shipped to you
18 year old may vote
Be free of being prayed at by the state in classrooms
Burn a flag
Marry someone of the same sex
Form legally binding domestic partnerships between members of the same sex
Engage in Sodomy with no risk of legal penalty
Use Birth Control

First, I note that most of these “freedoms” are partial at best, and in some cases are incorrect. There is no such thing as a freedom “of being prayed at by the state in classrooms”, for example, and both Congress and various state legislatures passed laws banning flag burning during the suffrage era. But it’s not important, as these “freedoms” are far outweighed by previously enjoyed freedoms that have been lost since 1920. Here is a list of 10 major ones:

1. Freedom of speech. McCain-Feingold and various hate crime legislation, 2002.
2. Freedom of association. Civil Rights Act, 1964.
3. Right to bear arms. National Firearms Act, 1934.
4. Own gold. Presidential Executive Order 6102, 1933
5. Deposit money into bank of choice. Glass-Steagall Act, 1933.
6. Withdraw money from your bank in privacy. Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act, 1970.
7. Work for a wage of your determination. Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938.
8. Keep your own cash. Comprehensive Crime Control Act, 1984.
9. Use marijuana, cocaine, and heroine. Controlled Substances Act, 1970.
10. Right to property. Kelo vs City of New London, 2005.

I’ll be talking about TIA with Bob Dutko on his show today at 1 PM EST.

Rachel Lucas reads Mere Christianity and reassesses a few previous assumptions:

I’ll be perfectly honest: I’ve spent many, many years refusing to accept the idea that a truly rational, reasonable, smart adult could sincerely believe in any religion, including Christianity….. I’ve realized lately that part of my problem with the whole subject was that I was doing exactly what I so very much HATE for other people to do: projecting. I assumed the majority of you who are Christian were such because either someone told you to be or more to the point, because you didn’t know any better, simply because you had not bothered to do the research. Well, hello. My name is Rachl Lukis and guess what? I hadn’t bothered to do the research.

One line from Lewis’ book that actually made me laugh out loud (at myself) was that if people “cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them”. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve read the Bible a couple of times, but the thing is, I didn’t read it as a real grown-up. The last time I read it, I was actively looking for faults to prove that I was right. I wasn’t truly being objective and considering it in a historical or scholarly context.

It’s difficult to articulate on a blog why I’m even bothering trying to learn about Christianity now because as I’ve mentioned before, I hate being misunderstood. The truth is that I am not exactly seeking salvation or God or anything like that, and frankly if I were, I would not talk about it with virtual strangers at this stage of the game. At this moment, my biggest aim is simply trying to relieve myself of the terrifying feeling I’ve had for years that I live in a society full of and run by people who believe a theology I don’t believe in, and that therefore I am surrounded by crazy people. It’s a bit of cognitive dissonance that I simply couldn’t take anymore.

Is my dad a crazy person? Are 90% of the people who read my blog crazy people? Are most of my friends crazy people? If I think Christianity is crazy, then the only answer to those questions is YES. But it just never added up. I had to know how they could believe something that I do not think is real and somehow not be crazy. That’s why I started asking about it here and why I started reading books like the Lewis one. And I have to tell you that the mission has been accomplished. It’s not even remotely “crazy” to believe in Christianity, and Christians have perfectly sound reasons to believe what they do, even if I disagree with some of their conclusions.

This is an interesting post, because it is an honest admission of what far too many atheists obviously find themselves doing, whether they realize it or not. Most atheists haven’t actually reasoned anything through for themselves and because they’re operating on intellectual autopilot, they assume that everyone else must be too. This is why people like Kelly of the RRS, the three-chapter reviewers, and even a few of the New Atheists such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are so easily thrown off kilter by TIA and/or demolished in rational discourse; they simply have no idea of the depth of intellectual activity taking place on the other side and are therefore ill-prepared to defend their own positions.

Reliant upon superficial and inaccurate sound bites, the average atheist reliably reveals near-total ignorance of not only theology, but also history, philosophy, logic and even the dictionary. There are few things I find more amusing than hearing an atheist get started on the “evidence” line; I have yet to run into a single atheist who is not stopped dead in his tracks and forced to backpedal by the simple observation that scientific evidence is but a subset of the various forms of evidence known to Man. There are surely exceptions to this particular intellectual ineptitude – Richard Dawkins being one – but I’ve yet to meet one personally.

I don’t think it’s crazy to be an atheist and I completely understand the appeal of atheism, especially for the young. What’s not to like about a behavioral carte blanche limited only by one’s desires, societal mores and the policeman around the corner? There is much that is compelling about the concept of Enlightenment 2.0 and the shiny secular science fiction society it promises the true believers. Unfortunately, I happen to find that progressive vision far less rationally credible than I do an ancient tribal anthology telling the story of a fallen creature who is congenitally incapable of lifting himself out of his own evil.

The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes the Title IX set:

If girls and young women ruptured their A.C.L.’s at just twice the rate of boys and young men, it would be notable. Three times the rate would be astounding. But some researchers believe that in sports that both sexes play, and with similar rules — soccer, basketball, volleyball — female athletes rupture their A.C.L.’s at rates as high as five times that of males.

Unless you’re an athlete or former athlete, you may not be aware how often and how badly women regularly get injured, even playing non-contact sports. It’s not that men don’t get injured too – my soccer team’s season resembles the Bataan Death March again this year – but then we’ve got 45-year old guys playing 90 minutes who refuse to stretch before the game and smoke during halftime. (And we don’t substitute until you’re injured or done for the game; it’s completely insane.) On my college track team, two of the male sprinters in our sprinter/jumper/hurdler group blew out their hamstrings, but that’s an expected risk. About a third of the women ended the season hurt, most of them for things that you wouldn’t have thought had anything to do with coming out of the blocks and running a short distance from point A to point B. Shin splints and stress fractures were the most common problem, if I recall correctly.

It is not only harmful, it is amazingly hypocritical to use federal law to actively push girls into competitive sports without either acknowledging or making them aware that they’ve got a much higher chance of being permanently injured. The fact that it is done more in the interest of a political fiction rather than the genuine sporting interests of the girls only makes it that much more reprehensible.

As one female researcher puts it: “If your job is to encourage inclusion of more women in sport, maybe you are not going to accentuate the negative. You don’t want to paint women in a negative light and tell a girl that if you play sports, your knees, by the time you are 30 or 35, may be in bad shape.”

Dr. Helen considers the propriety of the post-partum present:

If male, should husbands be giving gifts to their wives as payment for having kids or, if female, do you feel entitled to a “push present” from your husband, and if so, why?

This might surprise those who are convinced that I am one of the Internet’s leading woman-haters, but my feeling is that considering the burden of nine months of labor, the sleep-deprived Hell that is all too often the first three months of post-partum life, and the combination of self-loathing and despair that afflicts many women when contemplating the challenge of getting their bodies back into attractive shape again, it’s a nice gesture for a husband to recognize the sacrifice his wife has made and express his joy at becoming a father by giving her something shiny that will please her. On the other hand, it is obnoxious of a woman to expect such a gift, let alone demand one.

A baby gift doesn’t need to be anything massive; something shiny that relates to the child’s birthstone is a good place to start. And certainly, it’s not something that is owed to her, as a gift that is required is not a gift, but rather a demand. That being said, “push present” is a disgusting term and I’m pleased that “baby gift” is the only description I’ve ever heard used in my social circles.

As far as I’m concerned, giving the mother of your child a present to commemorate the event is rather like holding a door open for a woman. You don’t have to do it, but if you’ve got any class or style at all, then you’ll do it without even thinking about it.

Instapundit complains about the media coverage of Iraq:

The basic rule of press coverage is that if there’s fighting, we must be losing.

This is justifiable because it is true. The combat phase of the war ended nearly five years ago; there wasn’t much fighting taking place in Japan in 1950, after all. More importantly, fighting is a pretty strong indication that the “hearts and minds” strategy is not working. Ergo, we must be losing, as indeed we are. There’s not a lot of happy talk about Iraq democracy or comparisons to the post-WWII occupations, after all, but lots of sabre-rattling about Iran, and to a lesser extent, Syria.

This wasn’t exactly hard to predict; it’s precisely why I compared the conquest of Iraq to successfully invading Schleswig-Holstein in 1944 and announcing victory in Europe four years ago.