Vox Popoli

Wheeler lauds the Spartans in a discussion of men, women and family:

The Spartans had a Noble culture designed around virtue and excellence and in being a Man. Very different from America—being a banavsos is what defines manhood in America.

And Renee rightly pins down the irony:

W. Lindsay Wheeler, are you aware of the fact that Spartans regularily practiced eugenic forms of infanticide? Were you aware that families only took care of their children until they were around 6, after which they were raised by the state? Were you aware that the women were also rigourously trained in athletics, such as javelin throwing? Oh yes, that sounds exactly like a “noble” society.

What Renee misses despite her correct disdain for what passed for Spartan family life, Wheeler is likewise correct to point to the distinguishing nobility of Spartan culture.

Sparta was the epitome of Greek aristocratic oligarchy, merely expressing a willingness to fight for Sparta on the part of a male not of the Spartiate class was enough to justify a death sentence. And yet, despite its cruelty and its extreme class delineations, Sparta also demonstrated how an aristocracy can be significantly superior to a democracy during the Peloponnesian War, not because it was the victor in that conflict, but because, ironically enough, Sparta reliably demonstrated that she represented the more humane culture.

Athens, too, practiced infanticide. And during the war, it was the democrats who were far more prone to commit mass murder than the oligarchs, as shown by the Athenian massacres at Scione, Melos, and the massacres at Corcyra supported by an Athenian fleet. Furthermore, it was not the oligarchic Spartans who were to blame for the massacre at Plataeus, but the democratic Thebans, who were taking vengeance for the Plataean murder of Theban hostages ten years before.

As late as 410, the total war democrats in Athens were refusing to grant the war-weary Spartans the peace they requested, a foolish decision in light of coming events. Six years later, in victory, noble Sparta showed far more magnanimity than democratic Athens ever had to its defeated foes, despite being urged to justly treat the Athenians as they had the Melians by Thebes and other Lacedaemonian allies. Moreover, a Spartan general could fail without being put on trial, as VDH notes in his new book, an Athenian general either died in battle, was put on trial and executed, or if he was lucky, merely exiled.

There are ugly aspects to aristocracy, to be sure. It too is often an enemy of freedom. But regardless, don’t be misled into thinking the history of democracy is anything but one of merciless and total war, an inevitable decline into imperialism and mass slaughter.

Fear of an ancient beaver:

The discovery of a furry, beaver-like animal that lived at the time of dinosaurs has overturned more than a century of scientific thinking about Jurassic mammals….For over a century, the stereotype of mammals living in that era has been of tiny, shrew-like creatures scurrying about in the underbrush trying to avoid the giant creatures that dominated the planet, Luo commented.

Now, a research team that included Luo has found that 164 million years ago, the newly discovered mammal with a flat, scaly tail like a beaver, vertebra like an otter and teeth like a seal was swimming in lakes and eating fish.

I’m just looking forward to the day when they find a human skeleton in the stomach of an Allosaurus or something. That will be some good humor, especially listening to the die-hard evolutionists explain how it’s a freak accident of geological layering or something.

I already have part of a short story written to that effect… somehow I doubt the editors at Asimov’s will be enthusiastic about publishing it.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are not paying attention to the continuing comedy that is Isiah Thomas: New York Knicks GM.

“Isiah just brought Stevie Franchise to the Knicks. Has Isiah reached the point where we can’t make fun of him anymore because it is too easy? I think he has joined “Brokeback Mountain,” two-man luge, Tori Spelling, Dr. Scholl’s Gellin’ commercials, and Tom Cruise in an elitely pathetic group. Should there be a hall of fame for such people?”

“There is no logical explanation for what he is doing. Is Stern just sitting in his office laughing his head off every time he sees a Knicks trade, or is he somehow involved with Isiah in a plot to destroy the game of basketball in New York City? MC Hammer, even in his prime, was more fiscally conservative than Isiah, yet he is currently unemployed. I demand a reality show involving Robert Downey Jr, Tom Sizemore, Kate Moss, and Gary Busey, among others, just to prove that no matter how many drugs you consume, you are still capable of outperforming Isiah as a GM.”

“Is it possible that what Isiah Thomas is doing to the Knicks right now is really some kind of sick revenge that goes back to his playing days with the Pistons?”

I haven’t watched an NBA basketball game in three or four years. About my only exposure to NBA basketball is from reading the Sports Guy’s column. But even I know that putting Steve Francis and Stephon Marbury in the same backcourt is asking for trouble of the most spectacular kind. I mean, Isiah was a point guard, presumably he knows that basketball is played with just one ball at a time.

Seriously, he may be the worst GM in any professional sport of all time. This is like the Michael Jordan era, except it’s off the court and represents the perfect Yin to the Yang of excellence. Don’t miss it!

PS – how great would it be if that last guy’s theory was correct!

PC also takes exception:

While are usually right on target and use logic to an extent I find amazing in most of your writing, I cannot agree with your analysis regarding air power and it’s use (2-20-06). In fact you remind me of the arguments used agains Gen. Billy Mitchell an advocate of air power who consistently proved his critics wrong. Do not confuse advanced analytical ability with pragmatical military assesments of who can be killed or destroyed by airpower!

First, our military is stretched thin, and the base closings and military cutbacks suggest something more sinister than what is being acknowledged, this is something you should examine more closely.

I have wondered if there is a desire to stretch the US military thin and exhaust it, especially considering the help provided to the Chinese military by some of those responsible for the aforementioned stretching.

Secondly, historically Arab and Persian armies have never been consistently viewed as sucessful against determined and well-armed western armies.

Never is too strong a word there. Arab armies conquered Spain, Suleiman I conquered Hungary in 1526 and very nearly took Vienna in 1529. And while the US military is certainly well-armed, I don’t think it can be described as “determined” given how casualty-shy it is. Certainly the American people are far from determined; most don’t consider that there is a war going on judging by the way they live.

Thirdly, your under-evaluation of airpower is selectively untrue. Your historical examples are one sided and do not support the facts. Goering could not bomb England into submission as Germany never had a operational “heavy” bomber.

That didn’t stop him from claiming he could. One might as easily say that the USAF can’t bomb Iran into submission because it lacks an operational [fill-in-the-blank]. It is entirely possible – I would say highly probable – that those who say that it can are making the same mistake Goering did.

Fourthly, North Vietnam lost three and a half million people primarily to bombing not counting seriously maimed and wounded. This hardly can be described as “not retarding their economic development”. Somebody BS’ed you!

It seems that you didn’t read the study, which looked at the economic development of those regions that were bombed compared to those which weren’t. It was surprising to find that there was no difference, except that in some cases, those areas that were bombed heavily were actually somewhat ahead of areas that were left unharmed. Since North Vietnam was not a consumer-driven economy, the loss of potential consumers clearly didn’t affect them too much… and of course, they weren’t exactly at the top of the development curve in the first place.

Fifthly, you are correct about German aircraft industry increasing throughout the war, primarily due to underground factories. Too bad there was no gas to fly them with, or experienced pilots to fly them! That was due to allied bombing. If you do not believe allied bombing in WWII was effective, interview a survivor of Dresden, if you can find one! Conversely, Japan’s aircraft industry was destroyed, along with it’s cities! Talk to the old bomber crews who could smell the burning human flesh at 20,000 feet above!

Dresden killed a lot of people, it didn’t make one bit of difference with regards to ending the war. Hitler shooting himself, on the other hand, did. As for the lack of gas, the complete naval blockade by the Royal Navy had rather more to do with that. The Allied Air Forces were tasked with destroying German military production – you can read the estimates of their ability to do so in AWPD-1 and AWPD-42 – and they completely failed in their objectives. While the air force did do an excellent job of establishing air supremacy, that was the fighter jocks shooting them down one-by-one, it was not the strategic bombing campaign.

I believe that a precision bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities would only be partially successful. Some are underground I believe. Others are hidden. This calls for “boots on the ground” (something most Americans may be against).

I agree. That’s pretty much my point, actually. I would add that “partially successful” is the best we could hope for, and that we’d be opening a can of worms in doing so.

However, Terhan Valley is particularly well suited to the use of a very large and dirty hydrogen warhead. Things are probably still on the table. Your assesments on this particular matter are shallow to say the least, regarding bombing capabilities. Your military knowledge is below par, compared to your brilliant analysis in other areas. When you rush, you get sloppy. I would say, slow down and talk to some good mainline military analysts before drawing intellectual conclusions on badly selected
paradiams. McNamara used to do that all the time in Vietnam! Generally, I really like your column.

What makes you think I haven’t? Of course, most of my sources are in the USMC and the US Navy, so it’s hardly surprising that I would look on the advocates of air power and their claims with a somewhat jaundiced eye. But, as I have repeatedly stated, the gap between air power claims and air power results is very, very big if you take the time to examine the pre-war claims and the measurable post-war results. Cherrypicking the past objectives and applying a little bait-and-switch in hindsight are only confusing to those unfamiliar with the pre-war claims.

MH runs away with his tail between his legs:

No mistake was made about intelligent design since I never attributed the view to you, but suggested it is a topic because of its current status in our culture. Furthermore, I made no claim about familiarity with your “work.”

I certainly believe that religion in the past was among the major causes of wars in Europe and some strife elsewhere and that is a well worn topic that I see no need to revisit. I don’t think religion plays a significant role, per se, in wars of the 20th or 21st century.

However, I don’t think I need to be “corrected” by you on any of my statements (you should try to read them a little more carefully before you respond) or what can be inferred from them. Furthermore, I prefer not to engage any further. I have plenty on my plate with my professional duties and especially with an upcoming philosophy conference.

Regardless of what he thinks, he obviously does need to be corrected. It’s a piss-poor teacher of logic that believes the following quotes are compatible:

1. your site has served of some use in providing more real life versions of fallacies to employ in my critical thinking courses

2. I made no claim about familiarity with your “work.”

And then, of course, there’s this probable contradiction:

1. I didn’t know your view on intelligent design. I suggested it because of the popularity among conservatives and especially among Southern Baptists, since the convention assumed an official fundamentalist position some years ago, our benighted president seems to endorse its teaching in our schools, and the recent legal battles over its status.

2. No mistake was made about intelligent design since I never attributed the view to you, but suggested it is a topic because of its current status in our culture.

Given that the context was to “argue” (the title of his initial emails to me), there is a very high probability that MH believed that because I am a Southern Baptist and and (he wrongly assumed) I am a conservative, I would be a defender of intelligent design. He most likely felt confident that this would be comfortable ground on which to engage; once it turned out that there was no disagreement there, he suddenly became unwilling to argue about other matters, even those on which he admits we disagree.

No wonder he’s teaching at community college. You see, MH, that’s actually what I do. It’s kind of like kicking you in the groin after knocking you down… but even an expert in logic should be able to see that the fact one was unfairly kicked in the groin doesn’t mean that one didn’t get decked in the first place.

Because everyone knows Sweden is imaginary:

A few months before Schyman bolted the Left party to form the Feminist Initiative, she had stirred up controversy by proposing a “man tax:” a tax leveled only on men, to help pay for the government’s extensive array of feminist-run shelters for battered women. Schyman’s “man tax” idea stirred outrage from more moderate commentators like Liza Marklund: “To declare that all men are guilty of all rapes, that all men are guilty of violence against women — that’s not just offensive and wrong; if the purpose is to get anywhere with this issue it’s just plain stupid.”

Marklund’s comments proved prophetic. Yet the man-bashing had to reach an unheard of pitch before the reaction finally began. So long as the “man tax” and business-board quotas were the issue, Schyman’s promise to “break down the patriarchal order of power” through FI (the Feminist Initiative) enjoyed wide support. Early polling showed that five percent of the public would “definitely” vote for FI, and an amazing 20-25 percent said they would at least consider supporting FI. Numbers like that could easily have brought business-board quotas, a man-tax, and many other feminist proposals into law.

Even during this early period of popular support, the Feminist Initiative floated some remarkably radical ideas. FI planned to change Sweden’s rape laws by requiring men to ask women permission for sex (something like the famous rules of sexual engagement at Antioch College). There was also a call for “comparable worth” legislation, to equalize pay between professions dominated by men (e.g., truck drivers) and women (e.g., phone operators).

The FI is the current poster child for why women should not be allowed to vote or hold office in any society which wishes to remain free. The only reason that the USA is significantly less culturally radicalized than Norway or Sweden is because there are relatively few women in office. The universal franchise is incompatible with freedom, as the victory of Hamas should serve to demonstrate, and the female vote is the most reliably anti-free one.

While the uninformed simply dismiss the Founding Fathers as irrational sexists, although even a brief perusal of their writings should suffice to demonstrate that their desire to avoid the “tyranny of the petticoat”, as John Adams called it, was neither irrational nor unfounded.

MH talks some smack… can he back it up?

I teach logic and I would politely suggest that you have no familiarity with the concept. However, your site has served of some use in providing more real life versions of fallacies to employ in my critical thinking courses.

Bring it on, teacher man. Choose the subject and we’ll see how your “logic” and “critical thinking” holds up. Make it an example for your class. I’ll be happy to post your arguments and critiques in their entirety.

Do you teach the concept about walking the walk as well? Or are you just an academic who teaches because he can’t do?

UPDATE: Hey, at least he’s not a chicken:

The claim that intelligent design is a scienfitic theory which should be taught as an alternate to evolutionary theory in the high school curriculum. State your view and give an argument and I will respond.

Though I was never a fan of George Bernard Shaw, the author of the “can’t do” remark that conservatives are so fond of invoking as a subtitute for argument, I will wager that one thing you cannot do is argue or refrain from the ad hominem comments which is all I found at your website.

Hmmmm.. perhaps we can find something that we actually disagree on. I have never claimed that intelligent design is a scientific theory, nor have I ever asserted that it should be taught in the high school curriculum. (I think MH is confusing me with some of my readers.) I am an evolutionism skeptic, I am not a supporter of intelligent design in or out of the curriculum.

How about the following: The American public school system is detrimental to human liberty. Since MH is a teacher, I assume he’d disagree with that.

I will, by the way, take that ad hominem bet. Did you see any in the discussion about the utility of air power yesterday?

If I remember correctly, the salutation of my initial email was “to whom it may concern” and was sent in response to a short piece which consisted in nothing but ad hominem abuse of liberals. Your response included an attack on people who teach, the cliché adopted from Shaw, which is offered with remarkable frequency from conservatives as if it is an argument. So, the ad hominem claim I made was well substantiated by what I encountered in the initial piece and your response.

I didn’t know your view on intelligent design. I suggested it because of the popularity among conservatives and especially among Southern Baptists, since the convention assumed an official fundamentalist position some years ago, our benighted president seems to endorse its teaching in our schools, and the recent legal battles over its status. I’m not particularly interested in the topic you suggested and I don’t think it is well focused enough for an actual thesis. I am also not a public school teacher but teach philosophy in a community college.

Suggest another topic and if I have time I will respond. I don’t normally devote much time to any political websites, irrespective of ideology, usually only visiting them and the occasional talk show to maintain a stock of recent examples of “real life” fallacies. Many critical thinking and informal logic texts draw from such sources as well as the more traditional letters to the editor. They are gold mines for a variety of informal fallacies which are taught in all such courses.

Given you describe yourselves as a “Christian libertarian” website, why not a topic on religion?

That’s fine… of course, there’s also five years worth of columns and three years worth of blog posts to choose from. “To whom it may concern” did seem a little strange, considering that there was only one individual involved. Obviously, you’re not quite as familiar with my work as you first made it seem. Regardless of the apparent soundness of your reasoning, it obviously led you to an incorrect conclusion…. [As for the subject] how about this: Islam excluded, religion is not among the major causes of war.

FD sends an email:

The morning show Good Morning America on ABC is doing a 2 day segment called “The Mommy Wars” debating whether or not moms are making a mistake by staying home and giving up their careers. Professor Linda Hirschman is being challenged for her article last year in a magazine touting moms leaving their careers are making a mistake. The only statistic provided is 54% of women polled with college and graduate degrees would rather stay at home with their children because they think it is better for the child. Hirschman thinks they are making a mistake because it is no better for the children and bad for the moms.

Hirschman says statistics show that stay at home moms are not giving their kids any advantage. – that the kids are well adjusted. They are taking comments from people on their message board.

Ah yes, the famous “statistics show”. What statistics, precisely? And how does one define this nebulous well-adjustedness of Ms Hirschmyn speaks so highly? Does she take into account the increased likelihood of divorce, which was once similarly touted as good for children? Does she take into account the greater number of days sick and illnesses enjoyed by the children abandoned to day care? And what about the fact that every educationist insists that the prime determinant of scholastic success in the public schools is parental involvement? Given the scholastic superiority of homeschooling over both public and private schools, it is obvious that a mother’s career condemns a child to second-class schooling, at best.

I suspect that Ms Hirschmyn is a typical abortionette for whom the personal is the scientific, who clings to her demonstrably errant beliefs in order to justify her own decisions.

UPDATE: The self-justifying moronics in the comments are hilarious: I have a career outside of the home. I find it to be very fulfilling. As soon as I pick up my daughter after work, it’s our family time. I feel like I’m able to be more energetic and fulfilled at home, because I do have something outside of the home during the day. Well, since the primary factor in a child’s development is obviously her mother’s self-fulfillment… what are the chances that she doesn’t one day hear the words “self-obsessed bitch” from her daughter?

I am so thankful that someone else realizes that both are possible. I am the mother of a 7 month old and I am both a full time mom and work full time. Translation: I’m a half-assed mom and a half-assed employee, but if I keep repeating the have-it-all mantra, I’ll be able to delude myself until my kid grows up and calls me on it.

I’m a mother of a 3-year-old daughter and a research scientist with a Ph.D. in psychology. I know that my continuing to work is the right decision for our family but I struggle with feelings of being judged as somehow *less* of a mom. Why should she struggle with them? She IS less of a mom. Turn it around… if she had her doctoral degree but was only helping out with someone else’s research for a few hours in the evening, would anyone see any controversy in considering her less of a research scientist than her counterparts who are working full-time?

UPDATE II: Yes, I am aware that some women have to work. In fact, in 1950, 33.9 percent of women were already in the labor force; the feminist concept of “working women” refers solely to married middle-class white women, (and potential married, middle-class white women), who do not have to work in order to survive. This should be obvious, given that the entire discussion revolves around those who face a “choice” between children and career; one seldom refers to the career of a waitress, janitor or retail clerk.

Tony Blankley calls for a liberal-conservative totalitarian alliance:

Next week a vastly important book will be published: “Preemption, A Knife That Cuts Both Ways” by Alan Dershowitz. Yes, that Alan Dershowitz: the very liberal civil libertarian, anti-capital punishment Harvard Law School professor. And but for my lack of his legal scholarship, there is nary a sentence in the book that I — a very conservative editor of The Washington Times and former press secretary to Newt Gingrich — couldn’t have written.

The premise of his book is that in this age of terror, there is a potential need for such devices as profiling, preventive detention, anticipatory mass inoculation, prior restraint of dangerous speech, targeted extrajudicial executions of terrorists and preemptive military action, including full-scale preventive war.

It seems that Dershowitz’s central state worship liberalism trumps his former civil libertarianism. And to be “conservative” these days is, of course, to pray at the shrine of the central state as well. So, it seems the cloak is finally being removed from the so-called rival factions, who can be united publicly at last in one totalitarian anti-terror party.

Yes, Mr. Blankley, ten “possibly preventable terrorist attacks” are preferable to abandoning the rule of law and developing “new standards for a new age”. New standards? New age? Promising security in exchange for ruling power is the second-oldest con in the book.

Terrorist attacks cannot and will not destroy America. Only America or an external power with a superior military can destroy America. Mr. Blankley and Mr. Dershowitz represent an alliance designed to do precisely that. As Arnold Toynbee astutely noted, civilizations die from suicide, not murder.

I think Gibbon’s initial error lies in supposing that the ancient civilization of the Graeco-Roman world began to decline in the second century after Christ and that the age of the Antonines was that civilization’s highest point. I think it really began to decline in the fifth century before Christ. It died not by murder, but by suicide; and that act of suicide was committed before the fifth century B.C. was out.

Courtesy of The Elder:

Republicans know where to find one another, according to Stephen B. Venable, president of CELSIUS, an exclusive new dating service for educated, well-off Minnesota liberals. We were chatting in his office the other day when Venable ventured that conservatives are meeting each other “at work,” “in bars” or “in the parking lot at Vikings games.” But liberals, he said, unless they’re doing “social organizing,” could use a little more help getting together. Thus was born CELSIUS, an acronym for the Collective for Educated Liberal Singles Interested in Unearthing a Soul Mate, whose slogan, spotted on Venable’s business card, reads, “Improving lives by making extraordinary relationships possible.”

Only five minutes into our sit-down, we’d already comfortably griped about racism, sexism, and classism. Much nodding went on. Eventually, Venable and I moved onto the topic of our love lives. Both of us fancied ourselves to be reasonably good catches, and agreed that we felt “baffled” to find ourselves single after thirty. Venable loosened his necktie and unbuttoned his collar. He confided to me that back in his Berkeley Law School days, he had to beat the ladies off with a stick. But with those days behind him, he’s now focused on finding the two qualities he most desires in a mate: intelligence and kindness. He assumes both things are inherent in liberal women.

If this guy’s business acumen is as keen as his judgment of liberal women, I think we can safely conclude that there won’t be an IPO any time soon. A nastier bunch of crocodiles you will not meet this side of the Nile. But I suppose I can understand why so many liberals don’t believe in Hell; if Hillary Clinton is your dream girl, the concept is obviously redundant.

It’s particularly amusing how Mr. CELSIUS recognizes that liberals don’t meet at work, a tacit admission that liberal men are seldom gainfully employed outside of the law firm – government bureaucracy – non-profit organization – university quadrumvirate of social parasites. If you consider the women who work at such Aphrodite-forsaken places, only the law firms are host to the superficially attractive and those are predominantly confirmed evolutionary dead ends.

Liberal men might do better to take a page from their feminist sisters and work to change the dating culture to suit their needs. I’m sure a thirty-year campaign to convince women that passive-aggressive behavior is hot, whiny Gamma Male submissiveness is sexy and a willingness to hide behind women’s skirts is alluring will work wonders. I mean, changing the culture has worked so well for all those career women who are just beating off men with sticks as they desperately try to make it to their childless 40s without being saddled with a husband, a home and a family.