Vox Popoli

Planned Parenthood should target “people of faith” to promote abortion rights and comprehensive sex education, the Episcopal Church’s first openly homosexual bishop told a gathering in the District yesterday.

“In this last election we see what the ultimate result of divorce from communities of faith will do to us,” New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson said during Planned Parenthood’s fifth annual prayer breakfast. “Our defense against religious people has to be a religious defense. … We must use people of faith to counter the faith-based arguments against us,” he said.

Is there any serious doubt that the god this male human worships is not the Creator God of the Bible, nor his Son? Many people failed to understand when I referred to homosexuality as an Apollonian death cult, but those who did have no trouble understanding why it is not at all surprising that Mrs. Robinson should come out in support of the abortionettes and their anti-social, anti-child movement.

Matt Yglesias simultaneously demonstrates his parochialism as well as his ignorance of global economics:

Speaking of which, fuck the small businessman. This is exactly the problem posed by obsessive focus on Paris Hilton. I might be an earnest, hardworking dude who works in the store. And somebody might die and give the store to me. The store may be worth millions and millions of dollars. If so, I ought to pay tax on it. Why? Because I’ve just inherited millions and millions of dollars, that’s why. That I’m earnest and hardworking, and that my riches came in the form of a valuable store rather than a heaping plate of gold matters not a whit. What about those sad folks forced to sell the family business? Don’t cry for them. Here you are, you inherit a store worth $X. You owe $Y in taxes, with Y being less than X. So you are “forced” to sell the store, and accept “only” $X-Y as your inheritance. Note that X is a figure in the millions, and Y a small proportion of X. This is a very good problem to have, abstracting away from the fact that someone you love has probably died and this is probably a bigger concern of yours that the tax bill. This is, in other words, a non-problem.

A non-problem as long as you are still living in the 19th century and assume those people running businesses worth millions and millions of dollars are obviously too stupid to move their business to Ireland or Switzerland where the inheritance tax ranges from less than half the US rate to zero.

No wonder the American left is in disarray if this guy is supposed to be one of their brighter, more functional bulbs.

Other than the obvious physical requirements. It seems to me that more and more young men are more boys than men, although I’m not sure exactly why I have that impression. Were men always afraid to speak their minds around women? I don’t actually know, although I’m under the impression that in the past they watched their language more than their thoughts.

It seems to me that the mark of a man isn’t that he’s necessarily a badass or a buttkicker, but that he does not submit to fear. I’m just thinking aloud here, not necessarily asserting anything, so what do you think?

The one thing I am sure of is that women like men better than whiny little he-bitches. This is a bit outside my area of expertise, but if I recall correctly, even Brad Pitt was supposed to be at his sexiest when he was in Fight Club. Ladies, do feel free to set me straight if I have that wrong.

Arsenal’s well-deserved 3-0 win over Blackburn Rovers in today’s FA Cup semi-final showed that the Gunners can play brilliant soccer even without Thierry Henry, but the game was also marred in the last minute by the cheapest shot I’ve seen in sports since Warren Sapp took out Chad Clifton.

Rob van Persie, the young Dutch international, had an incredible eight-minute game, scoring twice after coming on for Dennis Bergkamp in the 82nd minute to seal the win, but just as his second goal went in the net, Andy Tod, Blackburn’s captain, not only ran into him but simultaneously threw an elbow to the side of his neck. Van Persie was turning into the direction from which Tod was coming, so it was a vicious blow even by NHL standards.

Fortunately, the Arsenal striker was all right, but it was an ugly end to what was otherwise an entertaining game. One thing that I particularly liked was how after the final whistle blew and the Arsenal players were heading for the locker room, Dennis Bergkamp – who has long been my favorite player – stopped van Persie as he came off the field. (You have to keep in mind that van Persie was not only Bergkamp’s substitute today but is also considered his successor and this may be Bergkamp’s final year at Arsenal.)

Bergkamp turned the younger guy around – who was still bleeding at the mouth – and first pointed to the stands, then to the center of the field, and gave him a little push in the back. He was clearly saying something to the effect of “they’re cheering for you, kid,” Van Persie jogged out to the middle and acknowledged the roaring crowd, then, as he ran back to join the rest of the team, took his shirt off and hurled it into the stands.

An interesting juxtaposition of great sporting class and its total lack.

From the History Channel

At least in the early 1930s women were more likely to vote for the Nazis than for the Left, and on the Left the KPD appears to have been much less attractive to women than to men…. In July 1932 a higher proportion of women than men voted Nazi….

That’s a weird construction, given that 1933 was the last election and practically no one of either sex was voting for the National Socialists prior to 1930. And, as often happens with pop history, the writer fails to realize that the National Socialists were by almost every measure a left-wing party. Another article adds:

“Brustein responds that the Nazis did not emphasize their anti-Semitism during their rise in the 1920s and ’30s. “Anti-Semitism was there, but most parties played the anti-Semitic card,” he says. And how can anti-Semitism explain the fact that single women were more likely to join than married women?“

I don’t think it needs to. More likely, the appeal of the National Socialists was because its electoral program was very similar to the platform of the modern Democratic Party, which is obviously much more appealing to women than to men. I’d very much like to find the breakdown by gender of the 1932 and 1933 German elections, but I haven’t found it yet. If anyone does, please send it to me.

Finally, there is this: “Similarly there are many facts identifying females as accomplices of the National Socialistic regime, one of them being that one third of the women in Germany in fact did vote for Hitler and the NSDAP.” It’s not clear what that means since the National Socialists won 43.9 percent of the vote, so either a lot more men voted for the NSDAP in 1933 than in 1932, or the writer is speaking literally about the number of women voting, not the percentage of the voting electorate. I may have some hard totals on the election, so I’ll see if I can work out the percentages this would indicate later.

The title of this post is somewhat inaccurate, by the way, since the National Socialists always denied that they were Fascists but were admirably forthright about their socialism. Remember, the Communist Party was vehemently opposed to the Socialist Party too, that did not make either of them conservative capitalists.

UPDATE – I’m going to have to find the actual votes broken down by gender, because unless my math is wrong or the German electorate behaved very, very differently than the USA, (where 74 percent of the populace is eligible to vote and only 38.7 percent actually do) that last writer’s figure of one third – even reduced by the ineligible and eligible non-voters – would indicate that 8 million German women provided 76 percent of the National Socialist vote in 1933.

After cackling about how his hit rate went up due to my linking to his blog, Orca is whining that I didn’t link to him the next time. Whatever. At any rate, Minnesota’s favorite Nancy Hopkins wannabe came up with this amidst more obfuscatory posturing:

As for Vox’s comment, clearly he seems to be backing off a bit on the issue–as well he should.

I’m not backing away from anything. Just ask Bartholomew, he seems to think I post on nothing else. And still, not a single critic has even come close to addressing my first question, (now clarified thanks to IF):

Did women’s suffrage enhance, degrade or make no difference to American liberties as laid out in the Bill of Rights?

There is no discussion to be had when my critics are afraid to even take a stand on the very simple question of whether suffrage has been a positive, a negative or an irrelevance. It must be one of the three, for there are no other possibilities. (Although “I don’t know” is a reasonable response.) Of course, hiding behind a meaningless fog of words in an attempt to avoid taking a position is the first defense of the intellectual coward.

Now, it is true that Orca’s arguments of a post hoc, propter hoc fallacy would seem to admit that American liberties have been degraded since women began voting, but this still falls short of answering the question.

So, which is it sport? Your ball. Positive, negative or irrelevant?

From New Scientist magazine:

In simulations with groups ranging from 4 to 256 invididuals, the team found that altruism could evolve. The benefits that cooperation conferred on a group outweighed its costs to individuals – but only in groups of less than about 10…. so how could cooperative behavior have evolved and spread in these groups?

The answer lies in the fact that strong reciprocity is not simply a matter of cooperation; it also requires punishment of those who fail to toe the line. When the team added punishment to their models, they found it made a huge difference…. This time, competition between groups led to the emergence of cooperation in groups of up to 50 individuals.

It’s interesting to note here how science is supporting the idea that altruistic cooperation is only naturally possible in family-sized units. These experiments also explain why the government is so comfortable using coercion to force the social “altruism” it desires. The article went on to explain how cooperation between even larger groups was possible if not only the “anti-social” were punished, but those who fail to punish the “anti-social” were punished as well.

This helps explain the vehemence with which the tax cheerleaders, secular supremacists, feminist groups and other collectivist, pro-government forces attack not only those who overtly oppose them, but also those who fail to adequately submit to their hive mentality.

From Sports Illustrated:

One odd fact has emerged from the controversy in Italy over a recent wave of soccer-related violence. Premier Silvio Berlusconi said on Wednesday that “drastic measures” may be necessary to curtail the unrest. That’s not the strange part; what is unusual is that Berlusconi is also the owner of soccer giant AC Milan.

That is news, considering that Berlusconi bought Milan in 1986, a mere NINETEEN YEARS AGO! And he was first elected Prime Minister in 1994.

I know sportswriters aren’t the brightest bulbs in the generally pallid giardino of journalism, but this combination of parochialism and ignorance is truly impressive. It’s one thing to not be up on the minutiae of curling coaches or the all-stars of Scottish telephone pole tossing, but Milan only happens to be one of the five biggest teams in the biggest sport in the world.

czja comments:

It is the ludicrous and ungodly conclusion Vox and you and others have come to in dealing with this reality that I take issue with…. Read your bible from cover to cover a couple of times and then we’ll talk.

Ungodly? Unbiblical?

“It is good for a man not to marry.”

“To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband.”

“But if the unbeliever leaves, let him do so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances;”

“Are you married? Do not seek a divorce. Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.”

Obviously, the notion that men must marry is demonstrably unbiblical. And there is clearly nothing wrong with a man taking defensive legal measures once the wife has pursued the unbiblical principle of refusing herself to her husband or violated the Biblical command not to separate from her husband.

A defense of the overtly unbiblical (the separating wife seeking a divorce) over that which the Bible says nothing (legal financial maneuvers put into play once a divorce-seeking woman’s intentions become clear) indicates use of the Bible to defend an emotional position rather than a Biblical position in its own right.

I note that the unusual measures proposed by Minnesota should not be confused with mine. There are many good reasons to invest offshore, not least the fact that foreign exchanges have significantly outperformed US markets since 2003, performance compounded by the weakening dollar. Indeed, a marriage in Italy, where the divorce laws are far stronger, might be a wise step worth considering for both men and women who value their marital commitment and contract.

As I stated in the original column, God’s concept of marriage is good. But would cZja and others argue that men must accept the harsh realities of civil marriage if it required men to amputate their left hand? Why, then, should they expect men to blithely submit to having their property rights violated at will? For the Biblically minded, it is perhaps worth recalling that those property rights are unalienably endowed by their Creator.