Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: “one of the most substantive debates I’ve heard”

MC rather enjoyed the free trade debate:

This was fantastic.  Clearly one of the most substantive debates I’ve heard.  Both of you made your points well and it really gave the audience the ability to truly focus on the subject matter and the pertinent points of each argument.  I was impressed with Dr. Miller as he did not seem like your typical Academic, but really a guy that is interested in honest discussion (although naive).  Would love to hear more of these.

I am of the opinion that Free trade works well in theory, in a perfect world with honest players, but such a world does not exist this side of heaven.  I believe due to the fallen nature of man, protecting the nation-state is much more important than the benefits of open free trade, because of the eventual destruction of the culture and national identity.  I think the founders understood this much better than us, which is why they advocated tariffs and an American First mindset.

Great debate, I was very impressed, this is really good stuff.  More Please!

I’m glad everyone enjoyed it so much. I intend to keep doing this sort of thing and more at Brainstorm, and the more people that support Brainstorm by joining or simply showing up for the free events, the more high-quality guests like Dr. Miller and Dr. Hallpike will be interested in participating.

Speaking of the debate, some of you will recall that I felt the purely logical aspect of my critique of free trade could be improved and further refined. In that regard, a syllogism occurred to me that I believe  succeeds in succinctly and conclusively refuting Dr. Miller’s corruption argument for free trade.

  1. Dr. Mill argues that free trade is beneficial because it reduces corruption by removing power from the hands of elected politicians and transferring it to the board members and executives of multinational corporations, who are presumed to be less corruptible than politicians by virtue of being answerable to the Invisible Hand of the free market.
  2. But it is the board members and executives of multinational corporations who are the primary actors responsible for corrupting the politicians.
  3. And the causal factor of the process of corruption is, obviously, more intrinsically corrupt than the various parties being corrupted by it.
  4. Therefore, Dr. Miller is incorrect, the hypothetical ability of the Invisible Hand to rein in the corruption of the corporate interests is insufficient, and free trade will tend to increase corruption by transferring power from state politicians to multinational corporate interests.
  5. Therefore, free trade is not beneficial.

Mailvox: atheism and the motte-and-bailey analogy

BJ, an atheist, didn’t feel the topic that was debated in On the Existence of Gods was entirely fair.

As an atheist, I agree that Vox won the debate. His arguments were more
persuasive and coherent. Dominic was a good sport, but he was attacking a
castle with no cannons, no towers, no ram, not even a ladder. I don’t think it is a fair debate topic, though that is not Vox’s fault.
It’s what Myers originally claimed and what Dominic agreed to. But it’s
not a fair view on the subject.

This is the standard motte and
bailey for defending theism. You replace ‘proof of god’ with ‘doubt of
science’ and hope no one calls you on it (Dominic didn’t). Then you push
the atheist into admitting they can’t rule out the possibility of the
existence of something which may resemble a god or gods. Most people
consider that a win.

The problem I have with that is no priest
suggests the possibility of a god or gods, they talk about very specific
gods with very specific rules, demand very specific obedience, and ask
for very real money. None of them can prove their god is real but that
is the bailey position; when they are under attack they retreat to the
motte position, which is just “you can’t prove god(s) DON’T exist.”
Kinda weak basis for tithing 10% of my income.

On the one hand, this is an entirely reasonable point with which I agree entirely. In fact, I repeatedly point out, in both On the Existence of Gods and in The Irrational Atheist, that the argument for the existence of the supernatural, the arguement for the existence of Gods, and the argument for the existence of the Creator God as described in the Bible are three entirely different arguments.

One could further observe, with equal justice, that none of these three arguments suffice to establish the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth or the existence of the Holy Trinity as described in the Constantinian revision of the original Nicene Creed.

The problem, however, is that BJ reverses the motte-and-bailey analogy as it is actually observed in the ongoing atheism-Christianity debate. For example, even in the debate he criticizes, Dominic’s sallies were initially directed at all forms of supernaturalism before being knocked back by my response which observed that the supernatural is a set of which gods are merely a subset.

More importantly, there was never any retreat to the Christian bailey. It simply wasn’t the subject at hand; the purpose of the debate was to challenge the atheist claim to the motte claimed by PZ Myers. And as for Dominic supposedly failing to call me on the very rational and substantive grounds to doubt the legitimacy of science, particularly as it relates to science’s ability to address the subject of gods, that was an intelligent tactical move on his part, because I would have easily demolished any attempt to rely upon science in that manner.

As readers of this blog know, I don’t regard science as being even remotely reliable in its own right, I consider its domain to be limited, and there is considerable documentary, logical, and even scientific evidence to support that position. It is certainly an effective tool, when utilized properly, but it is not a plausible arbiter of reality.

In any event, those interested in the subject appear to find On the Existence of Gods to be a worthy addition to the historical discussion, as it is currently #2 in the Atheism category, sandwiched between a pair of books by Richard Dawkins. If you haven’t posted a review yet, I would encourage you to do so.

Mailvox: an epiphany

A reader has a realization:

A long time ago, there was a comfortable Establishment, which ran the roost via handshakes and insider back-scratching. The Right People got the right rewards, and all was good for the  Establishment

Then a bold, brash newbie shows up, and, despite pissing off the establishment by being exceptionally politically incorrect, becomes more and more successful until the Establishment decides that Steps Must Be Taken, and the Newbie must be destroyed. They’re destroying the accepted procedure, and they don’t care. . .

The question: Who am I talking about: The Puppies. . . .or Donald Trump ??

I’ve realized it’s the SAME STORY, and the ‪#‎NoTrumpers are just the PuppyKickers in a different venue.  How is gaming the convention rules any different from E Pluribus Hugo?

This is why the Puppinette referred to me as “the Donald Trump of science fiction”, which is, of course, a grand compliment indeed. But in both cases, we are the change that the establishment does not want to see.

Mailvox: you are in their sights

DD knew about SJWs, but he erroneously believed that they wouldn’t target him:

I’ve been a reader of Vox Popoli on and off for a few years now, but I was stupid because I didn’t think the SJW stuff was relevant to my life experience. Until it was:

The TL;DR version is that I volunteered hours and hours of my time at an indie horror site over the course of about 8 months, but once the SJW proprietor learned that I was a conservative, he kicked me off the staff and attempted to blacklist me in the indie horror community. Which is pretty much a non-threat, but he figures it’s a big deal.

The culture war is relevant. It really is everywhere, and there’re no more sidelines to sit on. You were right about all of it, and I’ve since purchased SJWs Always Lie to get the full story and learn the best tactics.

You must understand this: SJWs are out to get everyone who does not submit to their Narrative. EVERYONE. This includes you. The fact that they haven’t attacked you yet only means that you’re not currently on their radar.

But at least he’s learned his lesson. He’s right: “Your forbearance is weakness.”

Don’t be weak. Don’t be quiet. Don’t be an easy target. Make sure they know that if they come at you, even with the benefit of an amenable authority, they’re going to come away bloody even if they manage to win.

“We need alternatives”

Melampus the Seer sees the future:

We need alternative platforms. Deplatforming is the very basis of SJW institutional tactics, and it works. Let’s use it ourselves, on our own platforms.

A related question: why haven’t conservatives built their own platforms? I’ve worked for a number of startups. They were all hard left to the core. Why so few conservative entrepreneurs?

We do. And literally scores of VFM and Dread Ilk are in the process of making it happen. You will be called on to help in various ways soon. Be ready.

Why haven’t conservatives built their own platforms? Because conservatives are conservative. I could have built a search engine back when Yahoo was just getting started, but I could see why people would pay to play games. I couldn’t see how one could make money simply by collecting free traffic, and in fact, one can’t do so unless one can a) rely on an unending supply of free labor or b) find investors who are either 1) willing to lose it all in order to be ideologically supportive or 2) are only buying in long enough to flip the company to the public.

Guess what sort of people are happy to work for free, lose vast quantities of money to further their ideological goals, or work for predatory investment banks? Hint: they’re not conservatives.

Conservatives are much more likely to build up their businesses organically, often by bootstrapping themselves. They would rather be building up their business than running around trying to play the flim-flam game of “raising money”. And that’s now how any of the social media giants were constructed.

In the rare instance a conservative is involved in a project like this, he’s often pushed out by his former partners. One of the reasons Wikipedia has been going nowhere for years is because the guy with the actual vision, Larry Sanger, was pushed out by an SJW flim-flam artist, Jimmy Wales, who promptly surrounded himself with mediocrities who don’t know how to do anything but continue what they’ve been doing from the start while begging for money they don’t actually need to not do what they aren’t doing.

And finally, conservatives tend to be paralyzed by the fear that someone, somewhere, might make money from their efforts. For leftists and SJWs, donating publicly is a form of virtue-signaling. They love to give both time and money and will do so at the drop of a hat if they think doing so is going to generate social credit for them.

A conservative, on the other hand, doesn’t value that sort of social credit, and has historically been much happier giving to a charity that will buy Rolls Royces and hookers for its executives or a church that will use his money to house illegal aliens next door than to a prospective techno-magnate, because at least the former won’t make any profits off his donation.

This is beginning to change, of course, now that conservatives realize they have been totally outflanked and lost the techno-cultural high ground. How much it has changed, we will see in the next six months.

Mailvox: they boldly ran away

 A Canadian reader is amused by rabbits doing what rabbits do:

Over Family Day weekend someone torched the rainbow flag at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.  The response of the campus SJWs was to…cancel their own parade.

The Pride Collective at UBC cancelled a Wednesday parade as part of OUTweek celebrations in response to what it called “a suspected hate crime” on campus over the weekend.

A rainbow pride flag was found burned off the flagpole – located between Brock Hall and the old Student Union Building — where it was raised Friday to kick off OUTweek, an annual event aimed at celebrating gender and sexual diversity

The Pride Collective announced its discovery of the incident and plans to cancel the parade in a statement posted to Facebook late Tuesday.

“Needless to say this event has not made us feel safe on campus and affirms the continual need for more to be done in regards to support,” read the statement. “OUTweek 2016 is about creating safer spaces and we are incredibly disappointed that this has happened during our celebrations. This speaks to why we need OUTweek in the first place as well as to the history of terrorization of LGBTQ+ spaces on campuses – and how this plays into a larger culture of homophobia and transphobia.”

In a follow-up to the initial statement, the collective said it may consider holding the parade at a later date but added: “At this time we feel unsafe organizing and leading an event that has a high amount of external visibility.”

Whoever the magnificent bastard was, he got the SJWs to punch themselves while running away.  Ah rabbits.           

The best part is that there are better than even odds that the rainbow flag was torched by an SJW seeking to play the victim and drum up outrage.

Mailvox: a brief lesson in mainstream publishing

Dave doesn’t understand how publishing works:

Why didn’t those same gatekeepers that kept your books from being published disallow the contract offer from the start? How dysfunctional are these publishers that one entity signs you to a book contract but another doesn’t allow anything to be published. Did they sign you with the intention to convince you to write something that would be acceptable to the gatekeepers?

  1. Because they didn’t know about it.
  2. More dysfunctional than you would believe. 
  3. No.

It’s pretty simple. Editors have a good deal of leeway. The vice-presidents, vice-publishers, and marketing executives very seldom know much about the books that are being signed. They won’t have seen the book because it hasn’t been written yet, so all they know is what the editor, who is the internal champion of the author and the book, tells them.

The usual process was this:

  • Editor runs across one of my books or the blog.
  • Editor reads the book, reads a little of the blog, and contacts me.
  • At editor’s request, I come up with a book concept.
  • Editor likes concept, offers book deal.
  • Book deal proceeds, up to and including contract signing.
  • Female director of marketing is asked for input, googles me, throws hissy fit and insists that the project be canceled due to my being “too controversial”.

After this happened for the third time in a row, I stopped talking to mainstream publishers. When I am approached by an editor – which has mostly stopped now that they are all familiar with Castalia House – I just tell them that I am not interested in mainstream publication. For me, at any rate, it’s a complete waste of time, especially since the rising percentage of SJWs at the editorial level means that the number of left-wing gatekeepers is increasing.

And I suspect most authors who lean to the right are gradually going to come to reach the same conclusion that Mr. Cole and I have, especially as the bookstores continue to die off.

Mailvox: a woman’s take on female suffrage

It’s nice to see a woman actually reflect upon the issue rather than reacting emotionally to it. Ironically, only women who could most likely be trusted with the vote are able to do so. I’ve yet to run into a woman who is able to even try to defend female suffrage on any basis beyond a) personal feelings, b) “fairness”, and c) an appeal to the Unicorn of Equality.

I read “Mailvox: Stampeding the Sheep” with great interest.  The first time I ever heard someone suggest that women should not vote was my mother when I was a child.  I am 47 years old so it was some years ago.  The second time I heard this was from you.  I use to think my mom was just nuts, but her words left me wondering.  Here’s why:

  • Invincible:  I believed I could do everything a man could.  I graduated from the United States Air Force Academy, served as an intel and targeting officer for 7 years before realizing my true vocation was wife and mother.  Although my mom despised women in general, she hated the idea that I married (right after graduating) and started to have kids.  She was terrified I would be completely dependent on a man like she was.  Why is this important?  Simply because the feminists have ingrained in my generation a complete (and unreasonable) fear of male dominance.
  • Vote:  Why should women not vote?  I thought about this for years.  I consider myself more intelligent, more politically astute, and more educated/well-read than most men.  However, that does not outweigh one important limitation:  emotion.  This is what you brought up in your post.  Unlike men, women must be TAUGHT not to act on their emotions.  For us, this is an immediate response to whatever happens around us (perhaps this is one of the reasons we immediately bond with our babies so it’s not a bad thing if used correctly).  Men, on the other hand, hold back their emotions, but if they do not eventually act, they explode.  My experience tells me women explode immediately without thought and men explode later with thought.  Most women vote because of how they FEEL.  Bad move.  It has destroyed our societies and made us completely dependent on government.
  • Need: Women also have an innate need to be cared for, protected, and loved.  This is why the male European inaction regarding the Muslim invasion is so appalling.  The problem is the Baby Boomers are responsible for two generations (Gen X and the Millennials) that are incapable of doing anything (Yes, I blame the Baby Boomers, but I also blame the so called Greatest Generation who coddled, spoiled, and raised them).  Women just replaced their men with a colder, harsher, less faithful spouse, the government.  Unfortunately, while men are neutered, women think they are Black Widow.
  • Black Widow:  I really believed I could be as strong, as fast, and as fierce as any man.  I just had to work hard.  Why?  Because the feminists who indoctrinated me said so.  I’m ex military, dabbled in martial arts, love cross-fit, and keep a personal trainer.  No matter what I try to do physically, I CANNOT compete with a man (OK, I can compete with the young teenage boys).  The only thing that evens out this playing field is a gun (arm up feminists because men aren’t going to help you).  The feminists set their little darling daughters up for complete failure.  We could not compete in this way, but our mom’s insisted our self-worth must be measured against a man’s.  What did that mean?  ALL women are failures by this standard.  That reality hit me hard because it meant women are useless (this kind of supports the Muslim teachings doesn’t it?  Thanks, feminists.  No wonder you are silent with Islamic FGM)
  • Baby Making:  Yep.  This is what completes a woman.  It is not to say that some women cannot succeed in careers.  Many have exceptional skills and should pursue their God given talent.  However, the feminists told us making babies is for stupid women (you know, the surrogates they pay to have their babies for them).  That’s NOT true.  The first time I felt that I actually accomplished something, was the day I first held my daughter. 
  • Men:  My fear of only men having the vote was unfounded.  My man would NEVER vote against his family’s best interest.  Neither would any man I know.  There is a trade off, however.  Men, you need to man up and demand your rights.  That means putting women in their place which, according to my Catholic teaching, is above you. This is what distinguishes the Christian West from the rest of the world.  As life-bearers, women continue life, nurture it, and sustain it.  We pass on culture, tradition, and history.  This is why Islam cannot coincide with Christians:  they hate, despise, and denigrate women.  I believe the primary reason the Islamic world is such a hellhole is because the proper role of women was annihilated.  Well, the West has also harmed the proper role of women, just not to the same degree as Islam (Islam also has the benefit of more than 1000 years to make their brain damage permanent).  Men must reassert their proper place and women need to climb back onto their pedestal. 

I have so much more to say, but I am grateful if you read this.  Mr. Day, you are right and if more men stand up, women will be much happier.  Most of my generation don’t even know what happened because we never saw what the Baby Boomers had (their moms in their proper and much happier roles in the home).  I’ve seen both sides of this issue.  The feminists built a very dark place for their daughters.  Will we recognize what they did before it comes crashing down?  I doubt it.  Perhaps Islam will open women’s eyes to what they have and thank God everyday for Christianity.  If we want men to protect us, we cannot vote against them.  They alone must have this power.

The reality is that female suffrage can only be eliminated through despotism, most likely of the sort that comes about through societal collapse. The one possible non-catastrophic solution, which is probably already too late now that Obama and Mutti Merkel have combined to unleash a Muslim invasion of the West, is direct democracy.

And that is why I am an advocate of direct democracy with full female suffrage: it is both possible as well as an improvement on a system that is clearly incompatible with societal survival and Western civilization.

Mailvox: SJW attacks

This sort of thing is precisely why I have been advising everyone to a) get the hell of Facebook, b) utilize anonymous callsigns when commenting, c) create alternative social media accounts, and d) practice sound operational security. The cultural war on social media only going to get worse as the SJWs, and perhaps even the cuckservatives, get more and more frantic about the growing popularity of the Alt-Right, the Mil-Right, and the nationalist Left:

I have a business page on Facebook, which I have used for collecting reviews and event promotion. This morning the following post was present on it. I went through the group of this particular SJW attacker, and he posted a picture of himself to gloat. He mentions you, Roosh, and Milo by name and is apparently trying to attack all of their Twitter followers.

If the other VFM could find out who this guy is and put pressure back on him, it may dissuade his efforts. I can’t imagine I’m the only one this guy has gone after.

Needless to say, active and vigorous reprisals are in order. Get on it, VFM. See if you can beat the current record of 57 minutes to ID him.

SJWs always forget that the social media sword cuts both ways. One formerly mouthy gentleman stopped yapping the moment I sent him a link to the harassment reporting page of his organization, observed that he was very clearly in violation of several of the employee guidelines, and mentioned that if his attacks continued, I would be sending the archived links to his employer. He’s been very well-behaved since.

First, archive everything related to the attack at archive.today. Second, go through the links for all identifying information. Third, contact me and send me what you have; I will send it out to the VFM. Fourth, shut the hell up about slander, libel, suing, and the courts. You’re not going to do it in the USA because you won’t win, so stop posturing.  Fifth, learn the cyberstalking statutes in your state. Sixth, aim for antifragility.

Start nothing, finish everything.

Mailvox: a convention, converged

The lesson, as always, is this: don’t ever take McRapey’s advice:

Arisia is a mid-sized sf and fantasy convention in Boston which has been taken over by SJW’s despite some of us attempting to resist them. This year’s GOH was John Scalzi who triggered several changes to the code of conduct.

However, the con chair wasn’t satisfied was that. She insisted that every attendee sign a printed copy of the COC, even though it required 5 point type to fit on a single page. The con cobbled together new registration software and procedures to fulfill this requirement, but there were many problems with it. The registration line reached nearly 3 hours though its peak last year had been about 20 minutes.

Furthermore, faced with this fiasco, the con chair still was unwilling to back off the requirement to expedite registration.

Prediction: attendance at the conventions that have adopted Codes of Conduct that affect the experience in any way will gradually fall off. I know that in the Django project, the amount of emails and posts have already fallen off considerably, because everyone is, quite rightly, afraid that saying anything will make them a target of SJW attack.

This is why you don’t permit their entryists in the first place, and why you certainly don’t give into their demands. Convergence always eventually kills the converged organization unless it can latch onto a host that will financially sustain it.