Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: SJWs ruin everything

A reader writes about how convergence ruled his church:

The first time I corresponded with you was last year, in which I asked advice about a church which brought in a San Francisco 49er for one of their sermons. The entire point of the sermon was to lecture the congregation on how Colin Kaepernick was doing God’s work by kneeling for the anthem– not scriptural in the least. They followed a pattern of social justice convergence: firing pastors who were more scholarly in biblical works, hiring a woman to preach once a month, bringing in a more “diverse” congregation intentionally to replace the faithful. My wife and I walked out on the church and never returned. The advice you gave was to take charge of the spiritual matters of my family, as a man should, and on my end, as I’ve turned to Him, God has bestowed us with blessings beyond anything I could have imagined this year.

However, the converged church is not faring so well. They used to be one of the largest churches in the San Francisco Bay Area, and by all accounts they are failing hard. Attendance has dropped drastically. They’ve lost most of the actual “doers” on their staff to other churches. They’ve replaced most paid staff with volunteers who aren’t as competent. The church used to have its own coffee shop which it has now closed down because it no longer can sustain itself. In the space of one year since veering off into social justice, it has destroyed itself.

Social justice leads to complete ruin every time. Thought you might like an update.

I can’t say I’m surprised. The death knell is the female preachers. I don’t know why, exactly, but once a church reaches that point, you can rest assured that it isn’t coming back.

Mailvox: do not “correct” me

I so despise the sort of midwit who leaps upon every possible opportunity to “correct” someone in order to show off how smart he is, and in doing so, demonstrates his own ignorance. Add in a dash of smug passive-aggression if you want to maximize the annoyance factor. Here is a suggestion: if you think I’ve gotten something wrong, look it up. If the 14 years of this blog serve as a reliable guide, there is about a 98 percent chance you are wrong.

VD: We can only hope that he will treat them in much the same way Sulla treated his political opponents

valiance: The way *Marius* treated his political opponents, surely?

VD: No.

From Infogalactic: Sulla

At the end of 82 BC or the beginning of 81 BC, the Senate appointed Sulla dictator legibus faciendis et reipublicae constituendae causa (“dictator for the making of laws and for the settling of the constitution”). The “Assembly of the People” subsequently ratified the decision, with no limit set on his time in office. Sulla had total control of the city and republic of Rome, except for Hispania (which Marius’s general Quintus Sertorius had established as an independent state). This unusual appointment (used hitherto only in times of extreme danger to the city, such as during the Second Punic War, and then only for 6-month periods) represented an exception to Rome’s policy of not giving total power to a single individual. Sulla can be seen as setting the precedent for Julius Caesar’s dictatorship, and for the eventual end of the Republic under Augustus.

In total control of the city and its affairs, Sulla instituted a series of proscriptions (a program of executing those whom he perceived as enemies of the state). Plutarch states in his “Life” of Sulla (XXXI): “Sulla now began to make blood flow, and he filled the city with deaths without number or limit”, further alleging that many of the murdered victims had nothing to do with Sulla, though Sulla killed them to “please his adherents”.

“Sulla immediately proscribed eighty persons without communicating with any magistrate. As this caused a general murmur, he let one day pass, and then proscribed two hundred and twenty more, and again on the third day as many. In an harangue to the people, he said, with reference to these measures, that he had proscribed all he could think of, and as to those who now escaped his memory, he would proscribe them at some future time.” -Plutarch, Life of Sulla (XXXI)

The proscriptions are widely perceived as a response to similar killings which Marius and Cinna had implemented while they controlled the Republic during Sulla’s absence. Proscribing or outlawing every one of those whom he perceived to have acted against the best interests of the Republic while he was in the East, Sulla ordered some 1,500 nobles (i.e., senators and equites) executed, although it is estimated that as many as 9,000 people were killed. The purge went on for several months. Helping or sheltering a proscribed person was punishable by death, while killing a proscribed person was rewarded with two talents. Family members of the proscribed were not excluded from punishment, and slaves were not excluded from rewards. As a result, “husbands were butchered in the arms of their wives, sons in the arms of their mothers”. The majority of the proscribed had not been enemies of Sulla, but instead were killed for their property, which was confiscated and auctioned off. The proceeds from auctioned property more than made up for the cost of rewarding those who killed the proscribed, making Sulla even wealthier. Possibly to protect himself from future political retribution, Sulla had the sons and grandsons of the proscribed banned from running for political office, a restriction not removed for over 30 years.

Mailvox: back for more

It never ceases to amaze me how these idiots read a single paragraph I have written on a subject and then assume that it comprises the totality of my thoughts on the matter. Yesterday’s emailer, Donny, decides to come back for more

I see that you have published my email to you and John.  Well, that’s fine.  I wish I had clarified that my public service at a community college was in addition to my regular job (commodities trader) and those eleven years ended twenty years ago.  You and some of your commenters had fun with that.

To the matter at hand, John’s speech at Mencken asked:  “I’d like to see a good logical proof of the proposition that free trade requires free movement of peoples.”

Your November 9th post (which I discovered from a link in John’s December 1st posting) responded in two paragraphs.  In the first you write “free trade requires the free movement of peoples.”  No, it doesn’t, except in a pedantic “by definition” sense.  As commenter Austin Ballast said, “You still have blinders on VD. Free trade in goods does not require free trade in people, assuming people are not the goods.”

Without regard to minutia such as one commenter’s (SAK) concern for a foreign nation making the chips in our missiles, the big picture on trade is that it is beneficial to both parties trading.  That big picture remains even if we tighten against visa over-stayers, chain-migration and Rio Grande swimmers.

In your second paragraph you speak of “maximum efficiencies theoretically provided” and “maximum growth potential” but less than maximum is still mutually beneficial in the big picture sense.  I made these points in my email to John which I copied to you as a matter of courtesy, since the two of you are so deferential to each other.

In response to my email, you ask, “what two points is the clueless professor failing to take into account here?” as if simply asking makes your points.  Again, Austin Ballast, “VD, you treat this idea more as an axiom than something you have really proven. That is a basic flaw. It may seem obvious to you, but that does not make it true.”

Then you ask, “where is the evidence that free trade in goods without free trade in labor is even materially possible” which is facile.  I agree that visa over-stayers, chain-migration and Rio Grande swimmers are a challenge, but why does that prevent the trade of a container of computers for Africa in exchange for a sum of gold?

Your bullying manner may appeal to the members of your audience with a sadistic bent but I am not distracted from the fact that you have been twice unresponsive to the challenge John posed:  “I’d like to see a good logical proof of the proposition that free trade requires free movement of peoples.”

It’s not so much that I am sadistic as these stubborn ignoramuses tend to be masochistic. Donny isn’t distracted from the fact that I’m repeatedly unresponsive to demands to provide a good logical proof of the proposition that water is wet. Just as being wet is an attribute of water, the free movement of labor is an intrinsic attribute of free trade. What Donny complains is a “pedantic ‘by definition’ sense” is literally what free trade is. Every argument, every economic law, that supports the free trade in x also supports free trade in y. All of them. No exceptions.

Austin Ballast’s comment is particularly stupid. He is projecting the blinders he mentions, because his statement is simply irrelevant. He might as well have said “free trade in cars does not require free trade in computers.” But it does, for the obvious reason that if you are engaged in trading cars without restriction but restricting trade in computers, you are not engaged in free trade. You are simply doing what nearly all states have done for all of human history in restricting the trade in some goods while permitting it in others.

What Donny and some other advocates of “free trade in goods, but not capital, services, or labor” want is to be able to draw the line in a different place than other trade protectionists, but dishonestly avail themselves of the rhetoric of free trade and the ability to appeal emotionally to the language of freedom and liberty.

But as he has asked for an actual proof, I will provide him with a logically unassailable one, one with which he will quibble, but in vain. After all, what can be easier than to prove that water is wet?

  1. The sole justification for distinguishing in economic theory between domestic and foreign trade is to be found in the fact that in the case of the former there is free mobility of capital and labor, whereas this is not true with regards to the commerce between nations.
  2. The basis for restricting the free trade in goods between nations is an invisible judicial line that separates one nation from the other.
  3. The same logic and ethics apply to people who want to trade on both sides of the invisible judicial line known as a national border, which renders this basis for restricting the free trade in goods between nations both false and illegitimate.
  4. Because the basis for restricting the free trade in goods between nations is false and illegitimate, it cannot logically or ethically restrict that free trade in goods.
  5. This invisible judicial line that cannot logically or ethically restrict the free trade in goods between nations does not magically materialize when labor and capital cross it.
  6. Therefore, there is no legitimate justification for distinguishing between domestic and foreign trade in economic theory.
  7. Therefore, any logical, ethical, or theoretical argument for the free trade in goods encompasses the free trade in capital and labor as well.

Those who are sufficiently well-educated in economics will recognize the sources of at least three of those points as well as their impeccably free trade credentials. Unlike Donny and Austin, I do not attack strawmen of my own imagination, but rather, the actual arguments made by the strongest proponents.

What both of them failed to grasp is that simply mentioning the fact that there are beneficial aspects to free trade, limited or not, does not mean that free trade is net beneficial, even if it is limited only to goods or a given set of goods. I do not deny that free trade benefits certain parties, the point is that it also harms other parties whose costs are never factored into the equation. The point that I was making  when I referred to the maximum efficiencies provided is that the argument for economic efficiency to which free traders so often appeal – free trade is good for the economy – necessarily and intrinsically includes the free movement of labor and capital. If one is going to appeal to the good of the economy as a whole without considering the costs to various elements of the economy, then it is every bit as reasonable to argue for the free movement of labor combined with restricting the movement of goods as it is to argue the reverse.

Indeed, if we are to use GDP as our primary metric as so many free trade advocates do, one can make a considerably stronger case for free trade in labor combined with a restricted trade in goods than one can for the reverse.

Fair enough

Derb highlights a line of demarcation:

Since I have no clue what the Alt Right perspective is, I went for inspiration to someone who believes he does know. This is the blogger Vox Day, who last year published a 16-point Alt Right Manifesto. In my address to the Mencken Club I read off Vox Day’s points and passed comment on each one.

As a format for a talk, this has somewhat of cheating about it; but spirits were so high, nobody minded, and my talk went over well with the audience.

Not so much with Vox Day, who picked nits with my comments on his website a few days later. That’s okay, and all in good argumentative combat. I respect Vox Day as an ally in the Cultural Counterrevolution, as well as a writer of wit and courage. We disagree about many things, but our disagreements are cordial.

Our deepest disagreement is anyway just temperamental. In the language of We Are Doomed, Chapter 7: he’s a religionist, I’m a biologian. He thinks the universe cares about the human race, and even about individual persons; I see no evidence of either thing. He thinks we are a unique creation, kissed with magic; I think we’re smart chimps.

There’s no use arguing about this. The difference is, as I said, temperamental, most likely genetic. It shouldn’t stop us liking and respecting each other, and acknowledging that both personality types have a part to play in the Cultural Counterrevolution.

I could not agree more with the general sentiment. I like and respect Derb, who remains one of my favorite Dissident Right writers as well as the author of the only math book I have ever really enjoyed reading. I am no more troubled by the fact that we disagree on this, that, and the other thing than I am by the fact that my sexual preferences happen to differ considerably from my friend Milo’s.

That being said, contra Derb, I do think it can be useful to argue about these things, even when our opposing positions are intractable. I do see real value in intellectual opponents who can disagree vehemently and yet still get along on a personal level. My economic arguments have been honed by opponents like Nate and Dr. James Miller, as well as the guy who challenged me to review Henry Hazlitt’s arguments.

Not so much, however, by this next fellow. As is so often the case when someone thinks he has caught me out in a mistake, he has only demonstrated his inability to understand what I have written or the conclusions that naturally follow. For some reason, this gentlemen elected to CC me in his email to John Derbyshire, in which he claimed that I had inadvertently made the opposite of the case I was making without anyone even noticing. Except himself, of course.

One would think that would have been his first clue…Note that this is written by a community college professor, demonstrating once more that the self-professed intellectual elite is actually composed of midwits who overestimate their own capabilities and don’t understand their own subjects very well:

John,

Having embarrassed myself in our emails and at our single meeting (AmRen15) I had been resolved to communicate with you less, but you suffer fools gladly so I venture again with this.

I am not an “economic ignoramus” having taught micro- and macro- for eleven years (community college, adjunct faculty – more public service than income source) but I have long had the exact same question as the one you posed:  Why does free trade require free movement of peoples? I note from the Vox Day response that it does not, though he would be surprised by that reading.

He wrote two paragraphs.  In the first he wrote “by definition” and so creates a tautology:  Free trade requires that trade be free.  More specifically, an engineer who travels to install a piece of equipment and the returns home is not a migrant.  There is nothing about the importation of automobiles (or any other merchandise) that requires the importation of people.  Call it the difference between free trade and absolutely free trade.

To wit:  If Americans drink Mexican beer, it is because we import the beer.  The beer has cost components that are relevant to the manufacturer in Mexico but irrelevant to the gringo imbiber, such as direct materials, direct labor and overhead.  (I am a CPA too.)  The Budweiser employee in Saint Louis may see his hours cut back due to the good efforts of the Dos Equis employee south of the border, but no economist without an agenda would call that “importing labor.”

In the case of “absolutely free trade” where factors of production can cross borders as freely as merchandise, theoretical economics predicts “factor price equalization” and we would expect brewer employees both north and south of the border to be paid the same wage in equilibrium.  In his second paragraph, he writes of “maximum efficiencies” and “maximum growth potential” – very theoretical stuff.

But he gives the game away where he writes “any failure to restrict this travel will necessarily create inefficiencies” (though he of course meant “any travel restriction will necessarily create inefficiencies”) which concedes a key point:  Free trade in merchandise without free trade in all factors of production (e.g. labor) is still beneficial to both parties, even if not maximally.

Imagine a world where ethnocontinents are stable but comparative advantages differ.  Africa could send gold to North America in exchange for computers and both would benefit.  If there are no North American gold miners, we can live with that small inefficiency reflected in a slightly higher price of gold.  We could have all the gold be want simply by importing it.  And if the Africans use Dell computers to enslave and murder each other, that has no weight in calculating gains from trade.

Trump is wrong on trade; it is not a zero-sum game.  As I had preached for eleven years, “trade fosters peace” because both parties develop an interest in a friendly on-going relationship.  However, trade (excepting “absolutely free trade” comprehending factor mobility) does not demand emigration/immigration.  Indeed, a person relocating internationally is not an act of “trade.”  Build the wall, yes, but run railroads through it.

There is no game to be given away. I conceded absolutely nothing. Let’s look closely at this “key point”.

But he gives the game away where he writes “any failure to restrict this travel will necessarily create inefficiencies” (though he of course meant “any travel restriction will necessarily create inefficiencies”) which concedes a key point:  Free trade in merchandise without free trade in all factors of production (e.g. labor) is still beneficial to both parties, even if not maximally. 

Now, what two points is the clueless professor failing to take into account here? And beyond that, speaking of “very theoretical stuff”, where is the evidence that free trade in goods without free trade in labor is even materially possible in a world where inexpensive global travel is available to the average laborer? I observe that the free traders have it entirely backwards now, as their theory does not even begin to account for the fact that labor can now move more easily, more inexpensively, and more freely than goods can.

Mailvox: a series of false assumptions

Fake Crew objects to the socio-sexual hierarchy.

It never ceases to amaze how a patently pseudo-intellectual system—the sexual-social hierarchy—is used to explain the glaring mistakes for a man to marry a bi-racial, older, divorced woman, when their impending nuptials is of little or no personal consequence to the detractors. Men, Christian or otherwise, who create and perpetuate that structure make a series of subjective behavioral and personality appraisals as its foundational pieces. Any protestation about this label or refusal to act in the prescribed manner brings about a pejorative response. It may be “convenient” for men to articulate what they believe are definitive aspects of their fellow man’s conduct because they subscribe to this hierarchy, but what about those men who find definitive flaws in how those decisions were arrived? What happens when those men challenge the structure by arguing that the “unvarnished truth of the structure” is in reality a set of assumptions predicated on sophistry? Would God truly judge in this exact manner by calling Christian men betas, gammas, and situational alphas?

First, there is nothing “pseudo-intellectual” about the socio-sexual hierarchy. In fact, it is every bit as scientific as any other system of taxonomy which encompasses the description, identification, nomenclature, and classification of organisms. Second, the impending nuptuals between Harry and the Half-Blood Princess are not of no personal consequence to the detractors. Symbols matter, and the English monarchy is one of the most powerful symbols of Western civilization, so the conquest of the prince by the part-African girl is deeply symbolic of the invasion of the West by the Global South in general and Africa in particular. One need only read the coverage of the royal engagement by the pro-invasion press to observe as much. Consider its significance in light of how a much less significant act of anti-Western symbolism is being trumpeted:

Grammys shut out white men in album of the year category for the first time

From Frank Sinatra in the 1960s to Paul Simon in the 1970s to U2 in the 1980s, ’90s and early 2000s, one set of musicians has long had reason to feel secure in its privileged position at the Grammy Awards.

Well, roll over, white guys, and tell Beethoven the news.

For the first time in the ceremony’s six-decade history, a woman and people of color have squeezed the Recording Academy’s go-to demographic from among the principal artists in contention for album of the year, the flagship category in nominations announced Tuesday for the 60th Grammys….

It’s about time.

Third, there is no “prescribed manner” in which men must act. Fake Crew has it backwards. Men act as they act. We merely observe, describe, and label that behavior. Having done so, we can use our observations to provide the basis for a predictive model, which in this case has proven to be an astonishingly reliable guide to future human behavior.

Fourth, no one cares about the opinion of those men “who find definitive flaws in how those decisions were arrived” because those men have offered no competing system of analyzing and successfully anticipating human behavior. No one, to date, has even offered any serious criticism of the socio-sexual hierarchy nor has given anyone any reason to doubt the existence of the behaviors observed or the relevance of those behaviors to male socio-sexual status.

Fifth, nothing happens when the structure is challenged by being labeled “a set of assumptions predicated on sophistry” because the statement itself doesn’t even rise to the level of sophistry. The statement is obviously incorrect about the observations being assumptions, and is therefore also wrong about the basis of these non-existent assumptions.

Sixth, God’s judgment is irrelevant because God does not respect human status, just as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company does not respect high school status. But high school status exists and is deeply relevant to high school students nevertheless. The man who ignores the realities of the socio-sexual hierarchy, whether he believes it exists or not, is making life difficult for himself in much the same way that men who ignore the realities of traffic laws do.

Fake Crew is making the same mistake here that various elements of the Fake Right frequently make when they object to various aspects of the 16 Points. I am no more inventing these concepts than zoologists were inventing zebras, giraffes, and okapis when they first encountered them in Africa. I am merely describing the behavioral patterns I observe and labeling them. It no more matters what one happens to call “gamma” is called than whether one says “monkey”, “Affe”, or “scimmia”; it is only the behavioral pattern that is relevant. While one can quite reasonably argue that there should be more or fewer gradations, one cannot credibly argue that male social status does not exist, that male social status is entirely unrelated to human sexuality, or that there are not common behavioral indicators of an individual man’s social status that can be readily observed by others.

Anyone attempting to disprove the relevance of the socio-sexual hierarchy must deny all three of those statements. I certainly invite Fake Crew, or anyone else, to do so, and more importantly, to explain the logic supporting that denial. However, he has to stop using someone else’s name and create a new one for himself first.

Mailvox: God and morality: the connection

Groggy doesn’t understand why the question of morality and the question of the existence of God are intrinsically related:

I never really understood why the question of whether morality was objective was tightly coupled to the existence of God.

For example Sam Harris says morality is objective, and it can be discovered and solved through science alone in The Moral Landscape.

It seems that science deals with the objective, hence science would be a good tool for dealing with morality, if morality were purely objective.

If the 10 commandments just come down from God and are dictated to us, without us having any say, then isn’t that subjective morality, because then morality is just whatever God says it is?

I think J. Peterson would say that God speaking in the 10 commandments is not a literal truth but a deep psychological truth (evolved, even), built into the human mind which needs to come out through religious expression, and is more akin to ‘objective’ morality, I suppose.

For example if God had commanded in the 10 commandments – Thou Shalt Murder, would it be right or wrong? If morality is objective, then murder would always be wrong regardless of what the 10 commandments say.

I just never really understood why “morality is objective” was associated with Christianity and “there is no objective morality” was associated with Atheism. I don’t see the logical connection.

If somebody could explain it I would be very grateful.

The intrinsic connection is because if there is, in fact, a Universal Moral Standard, (or to use the more common term, Universal Law), then logic dictates that there must be a Universal Lawgiver. This is why atheists are driven to deny objective and/or universal morality, due to the implication that if it exists, a Creator God exists too.

The fact that Sam Harris says morality can be discovered and solved through science alone is in itself evidence that it cannot be, because Sam Harris is an inept philosopher and his argument is both illogical and incorrect. I addressed this four years ago, both on this blog and in the appendix of the book On the Existence of Gods.

Unfortunately, Harris appears to have adopted Richard Dawkins’ favorite device of presenting a bait-and-switch definition in lieu of a logically substantive argument. He repeatedly utilizes the following technique:

1) Admittedly, X is not Y.
2) But can’t we say that X could be considered Z?
3) And Z is Y.
4) Therefore, X can be Y.

For example, in an attempt to get around Hume’s is/ought dichotomy, Harris readily admits that “good” in the sense of “morally correct” is not objectively definable and that what one individual perceives as good can differ substantially from that which another person declares to be “good.” So, he suggests the substitution of “well-being” for “good” because there are numerous measures of “well-being,” such as life expectancy, GDP per capita and daily caloric intake, that can be reduced to numbers and are therefore measurable. After all, everyone understands what it means to be in good health despite the fact that “health” is not perfectly defined in an objective and scientific manner. Right?

However, even if we set aside the obvious fact that the proposed measures of well-being are of dubious utility – life expectancy does not account for quality of life, GDP does not account for debt and more calories are not always desirable – the problem is that Harris simply ignores the way in which his case falls completely apart when it is answered in the negative. No, we cannot simply accept that “moral” can reasonably be considered “well-being” because it is not true to say that which is “of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong” is more than remotely synonymous with “that which fosters well-being in one or more human beings.”

A Creator God-defined morality can be described as arbitrary, but it cannot be described as subjective. If God had defined murder as good, then an act of murder would be good, in exactly the same way that if the NFL defines a pass that goes out of bounds incomplete, then the pass is incomplete even if the receiver clearly caught it. Groggy’s problem is that he is unconsciously assuming a deeper concept of good by which the objective standard itself is to be judged.

Morality is objective

Again and again, we see that the rationales and justifications offered by atheists for their disbelief simply don’t stand up to even cursory philosophical analysis. (This is not to say their disbelief is not genuine, merely that its cause is seldom rooted in the explanations provided.) While on the emotional side, atheism may be little more than social autism, on the intellectual side, it appears to be primarily a combination of historical and philosophical ignorance.

Consider the following exchange:

AB: some people, psychopaths especially have no capacity for moral reasoning and no moral agency.

VD: Of course they do, if you define morality correctly. The fact that psychopaths have no EMPATHY does not mean they have no moral agency, because morality does not depend upon empathy.

AB: I think understand what you are saying but I simply cannot grok the idea fully as I cannot see morality as objective.

This is little more than a failure to understand what morality is, because while the existence of God is nominally disputable, the objectivity of morality is not, and more importantly, cannot be disputed.

The definitions of morality refer us to the definition of moral, which is given a follows:

  1. of, relating to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong;
  2. expressing or conveying truths or counsel as to right conduct, as a speaker or a literary work.
  3. founded on the fundamental principles of right conduct rather than on legalities, enactment, or custom.
  4. capable of conforming to the rules of right conduct: a moral being.
  5. conforming to the rules of right conduct

Now, if “the fundamental principles of right conduct” are not mere legalities, enactment, or custom, then they must be objective, for the obvious reason that if the standard for right conduct is subjective, then no such standard exists, not being a fundamental principle. Morality not only is not subjective, it cannot be subjective, because a subjective fundamental principle is both an oxymoron and an actual contradiction in terms.

A psychopath has both a capacity for moral reasoning and moral agency because he is capable of conforming to the rules of right conduct even if he does not feel any empathy for others. He can even conform to the Golden Rule; even a psychopath knows how he prefers to be treated himself.

AB’s fundamental mistake is that he confuses the concept of a personal ethos with morality. But a personal ethos is an ersatz morality and is no more a system of universally applicable rules than a preference for calling pass plays over running plays or playing man-to-man defense instead of zone are official NFL rules.

Mailvox: atheists always bait-and-switch

Mr. Rational demonstrates why no one trusts atheists, including their fellow atheists:

You’re playing semantic games here by deliberately selecting a nonsensical phrase, Vox.  “The Significance of Human Existence” makes perfect sense, and yes, random events in human history are perfectly understandable in that context.

This is another example of your need to have a First Cause for everything.  It’s just a more advanced version of the animism of savages.  You can’t not see intent and agency in everything because it makes you insecure, and like the left’s search for racism in society what you need to find will be found… somehow.

E.O. Wilson is one of the greatest minds of our age, and you reduce yourself to paraphrasing his book title in a silly fashion.  Talk about ankle-biting.

This is simply embarrassing for Mr. Rational. It would appear that the sight of “one of the greatest minds of our age” being caught out has triggered him. Badly. That “silly fashion” of which he complains is the most generous interpretation of Wilson’s title possible; the alternative is that Wilson is every bit as dishonest as the Richard Dawkins and Sam Harrises of the world.

I am not playing a semantic game. I am observing that there is ABSOLUTELY NO DEFINITION of the term “meaning” that allows E.O. Wilson to be considered simultaneously a) philosophically competent and  b) intellectually honest. As another commenter has already noted, Wilson’s book was not titled The Significance of Human Existence, but rather, The Meaning of Human Existence. A second bait-and-switch is not going to justify the first.

Also notice how the triggered little gamma male immediately leaps to making the philosophy personal. He cannot accept that “one of the greatest minds of our age” is either incorrect or lying, and that fact that I am the one who caught him out only makes his acceptance of that easily observably fact all the more difficult. Unlike both Wilson and Mr. Rational, I am perfectly willing to contemplate the possibility that there is neither intent nor agency in human existence, it is only that unlike them, I am sufficiently competent to understand and accept the logical consequences of that lack of meaning.

You’re too short for this ride, Mr. Rational. I will not again be rescuing your very stupid, very dishonest comments from the spam where they clearly belong, and will henceforth spam them. Since there is neither meaning nor significance in that decision, he really has no grounds for complaint. And even if he did, well, what could that possibly matter?

Groggy thinks I made a mistake.

Vox, carefully parsing the dictionary definitions above which you provided, “what actually is” is not a valid definition to extract.

what is intended to be, or actually is, expressed or indicated; signification; import

It does NOT say that meaning can be “what actually is”.

It says that meaning can be:

  1. what is intended to be expressed or indicated
  2. what actually is expressed or indicated
I actually share Groggy’s interpretation, but as I mentioned above, I felt that it was best to be generous and give Mr. Wilson’s defenders the maximum amount of rope with which to hang the man. Rather than being able to quibble over the parsing of the definition, his defenders are forced to either admit to his error, admit to his dishonesty, or commit their own intellectual sins.

Mailvox: midwit history

It’s no secret that I am not a fan of midwits. These responses to my previous post on Fake Americans and their Fake History may help explain why. They are the walking, talking examples of Dunning-Kruger in action. When I talk about them being relative retards, this is exactly the sort of thing I’m describing. Be sure to note how JM actually thinks he is correcting me.

According to your theory Britain, Canada (until two decades ago or so), Australia and New Zealand should be the best examples of freedom loving people in a land where the rule of law exists, where the government is not massive and social and economic freedoms are respected, in other words, Switzerland or close to it since their populations are by far MUCH MORE ANGLO than whatever you find in the U.S., less “tainted” by Germans, Italians, French and so on. I think we can all safely agree and that ALL the countries mentioned and less free and their populations endure more oppressive governments (female idiocy to the max, PC quasi-dictatorship, socialist policies, end to the right to bear arms, etc etc.). The worst part is that peoples of those countries CLAIMED FOR, ELECTED, AND ENACTED their governments actions with glee, only a tiny minority resisted or tried to do so. 

That’s ridiculous. The “British brethren” of the British Empire were obviously a different subset of Anglo stock than the American settlers. Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage is a necessary requirement of reliable community support for individual liberty and limited government, but it is not a sufficient one. Many Canadians are descended from British settlers who were loyal to the crown and were driven out. Australia is descended from criminal deportees; if you ever wondered why Sydney is a center of gay depravity, look up the crimes for which many of those criminals were deported.

As for the British themselves, they went through several hundred years of exporting and killing off their best and boldest. It should be no surprise that those who remain today are little more than island-dwelling dodo birds, blithely welcoming the newcomers who have already replaced them in their capital.

Anyone who thinks Switzerland is a bastion of individual liberty has never spent more than five minutes there. A friend of mine who worked in Zurich for five years collected various fines I would not have believed possible, including one for excess noise after 10 PM and another for turning on his fog lights when the amount of rain did not necessitate doing so. To put it his way, “imagine a homeowner’s association run by uptight German women.”

Whether you like it or not, your theory is full of holes and cannot explain why the peoples whose entrance you decry were allowed to enter en masse by the “virtuous protestant men of British stock” that inhabited the US back then, while the countries that should be shining examples of freedom due to their Protestant ethic (hahaha) and Anglo-saxon “pure” heritage sink ever so low. You don’t seem to realize that Irish and Italians were brought as low cost labor not out of a “duty bring white men of good character”. You don’t seem to realize that if anything, the mixture of European peoples in the U.S. might have slowed down the destruction of the liberties that many Americans take for granted etc.

This guy’s binary reasoning is so inept that he would similarly argue that my theory of NFL defense is full of holes and cannot explain how the Vikings were able to score on the Rams; obviously if the Vikings reached the end zone, then the Rams must have intended for them to do so.  And the idea that the addition of various peoples with no tradition of liberty or limited government somehow managed to slow down the destruction of now-vanished American liberties that their most illustrious members openly worked to destroy is simply too stupid to be mendacious.

Every generation has a faction arguing that relaxing the rules can’t possibly do any harm. The Founders were no exception; the fact that they were naive about immigration and failed to adequately protect their posterity from themselves does not change the fact that their original vision for the United States in no way approximated anything even remotely close to what we see today. The irony is that in JM’s arguing for American civic nationalism and the irrelevance of national origin, he is actually making a strong case for utterly ruthless ethnic cleansing, as evidently permitting even one otherwise unobjectionable exception is sufficient cause to give future civic nationalists grounds to destroy the nation.

Sertorius is similarly confused, but less obnoxious:

The Framers absolutely intended a British ethnostate, yet welcomed all white men of good character. Which was it? And since “intention” implies instrumentality, where exactly are the plans–even if they’re just jottings on a cocktail napkin–that will bring forth such a polity?

Both. First, they had a very different definition of “white” than we do today. Second, they only intended to allow enough whites of good character to permit them to fully assimilate through interbreeding. (Notice that they didn’t establish a reliable mechanism for policing “good character” either, therefore they must have intended to import criminals and Satanists, right?) Third, they had set up a structure in which the several States were supposed to be entirely sovereign. They felt that this arrangement would suffice to address any fundamental differences; what would it matter to Massachusetts or Virginia if Pennsylvania was adulterated by Germans? Of course, the Civil War proved them wrong only four-score-and-change years later.

The Founding Fathers didn’t intend a single British ethnostate, but rather, a number of distinct British ethnostates as well as a few mixed white ethnostates. If you recall, they were rather favorably influenced by the historical Greek city-states. This is exactly why citizens of the USA should be praying for a reasonably peaceful breakup and non-violent ethnic cleansing instead of desperately trying to preserve the unsalvageable.

The real problem the civic nationalists have with history is that it clearly spells out the horrors that are likely on the way for the West. They avert their eyes and offer silly, nonsensical arguments about the intentions of the Founders in order to dispel the fear that is quietly gnawing at their bellies. But it won’t work, and in any event, nothing they say, and nothing I write, is going to make any difference whatsoever. I have no doubt that back in 372 AD, there was a Roman living in the town of Marcianopolis who was looking on in disbelief as 200,000 desperate Visigoths were permitted to cross the Danube to protect them from the Huns. Because refugees.

What could he have done about that? What possible difference could his arguments and his opinion have made? I like to think that Roman was smart enough to leave Marcianopolis and go very far away before Fritigern rose up to pillage the Roman north and slaughter the Emperor Valens at Adrianople six years later.

Mailvox: this is how you do it

Yesterday, I responded to an email from this gentleman which indicated that he did not understand how rhetoric worked. My response was not particularly gentle. This was his reaction:

Your email and blog post were humbling and appreciated. I read both of your SJW books last weekend after hearing about them on Instapundit. Your message and stand for Christianity inspired me to check out your blog and eventually contact you.

Clearly I’m misunderstanding one of your fundamental lessons on communicating with the rabid left. Also, another mistake I made was to assume that SJW was how the left describes itself which lead me down the path of “better” rhetoric.

On the tangential topic of the impact your books are making, I was also inspired to contact [someone currently under SJW attack.] I sent him a note of support and the link to SJW Always Lie. He was very appreciative and I’m hopeful your book will help him save his job.

The main point of this email is to thank you for taking the time to respond and continue to teach, especially when your “students” frustrate you. Thanks. What you are doing is so important. I appreciate it.

Some of you have asked about the difference between Delta and Gamma. Well, you’ve seen Gamma responses; this is not what those look like. This is how a competent individual accepts authoritative criticism and correction.

“Oh, did I get it wrong? All right. Let me try it again. Thanks.”

Notice the complete lack of defensiveness, the total unwillingness to rationalize or justify or explain away his previous mistake, and the complete absence of bitterness or unease at being told he was incorrect. That’s the difference between a Delta confidence and Gamma butthurt.

This is why most men like and respect Deltas, regardless of their own social rank. Deltas don’t create drama or cause trouble when they are accurately criticized, they just correct course and carry on.