Tag: society

Mailvox: clinging to the myth

MS clings to the myth of equality between different human population groups:

I don’t need to base anything on race; the problem with many blacks in America is their culture. A lazy, irresponsible, INFERIOR culture compared to eurocentric “white” culture. If they adopted our culture tomorrow, most of their problems would disappear (IMO).

He’s completely wrong. Africans don’t adopt European culture for three reasons. First, because they can’t. Second, because they prefer their own culture. Third, because Europeans have increasingly abandoned it themselves. Europeans have been trying to force Africans to adopt European culture for more than 200 years. It’s not possible, and more to the point, it’s not their choice.

Think about it. What could be more racist, what could be more culturally imperialistic, than to insist that Africans must adopt European culture? This is even worse than Muslims imposing Sharia on everyone; Sharia at least permits the dhimmi to retain their religion and customs. Why should Asians not insist that Europeans adopt their culture? If we put it to a global vote, I’m quite confident the Han Chinese would win.

Africans have a perfect right to live the way they want to live. So do Europeans. This is why desegregation is not only doomed to failure, but is intrinsically immoral. It is also likely to destroy whichever culture has the longer time preferences.

Remember, there are no shortage of whites, especially overweight, unattractive white women, who genuinely prefer the African culture of living fast, consuming conspicuously, and dying young in a promiscuous, matriarchal society to the European culture of living conservatively and saving to build for the future in a sexually restricted patriarchal society. As with all things economic, these are questions of preferences and time-orientation, not morality or science.

History has conclusively demonstrated that there is only one way to successfully turn a short-term orientation people into a long-term one: kill off a sufficient percentage of those members of the population group with a short-term orientation before they bear or raise children. This process takes somewhere between 750 and 1,000 years and I suspect that Jared Diamond may have been onto something even though he didn’t understand the full significance of the European geography in this regard. My thought is that the near-continuous warfare between small and competing groups, in combination with their ongoing contact with advanced civilization, allowed the European nations to kill off enough of their short-term oriented troublemakers to collectively develop long-term time orientations.

Remember, the Roman legions didn’t permit their soldiers to marry until AFTER their 20-year term of service was complete.

Not only have Africans not had enough time to go through his process, given when they first encountered European civilization, but they have actually been collectively reverting thanks to the federal and international aid policies of the last 50 years. Neither geography nor law nor even religion are sufficient to convert short time preferences into long ones. Such ideas are mutu, magical thinking akin to the idea that murdering an albino will lead to success in business.

Permitting the barbarians to destroy civilization is not going to benefit either the savage or the civilized in the long-run. The fact that the majority of people in our society cannot grasp this simple fact is, in itself, an indication of the way in which our society has already been barbarized.

La Paglia on societal suicide

Camille Paglia is interviewed in The Wall Street Journal:

‘What you’re seeing is how a civilization commits suicide,” says
Camille Paglia.
This self-described “notorious Amazon feminist” isn’t telling
anyone to Lean In or asking Why Women Still Can’t Have It All. No, her
indictment may be as surprising as it is wide-ranging: The military is
out of fashion, Americans undervalue manual labor, schools neuter male
students, opinion makers deny the biological differences between men and
women, and sexiness is dead….

I ask if she really sees a connection between society’s attempts to paper over the biological distinction between men and women and the collapse of Western civilization. She starts by pointing to the diminished status of military service. “The entire elite class now, in finance, in politics and so on, none of them have military service—hardly anyone, there are a few. But there is no prestige attached to it anymore. That is a recipe for disaster,” she says. “These people don’t think in military ways, so there’s this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we’re just nice and benevolent to everyone they’ll be nice too. They literally don’t have any sense of evil or criminality.”

The results, she says, can be seen in everything from the dysfunction in Washington (where politicians “lack practical skills of analysis and construction”) to what women wear. “So many women don’t realize how vulnerable they are by what they’re doing on the street,” she says, referring to women who wear sexy clothes.

When she has made this point in the past, Ms. Paglia—who dresses in androgynous jackets and slacks—has been told that she believes “women are at fault for their own victimization.” Nonsense, she says. “I believe that every person, male and female, needs to be in a protective mode at all times of alertness to potential danger. The world is full of potential attacks, potential disasters.” She calls it “street-smart feminism.”

Ms. Paglia argues that the softening of modern American society begins as early as kindergarten.

It’s easy to dismiss the likes of Karl Denninger and me. But when intelligent, successful, mainstream people as diverse as Camille Paglia, Marc Faber, and X are all observing almost exactly the same thing, and when arrogant world-healers such as Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and Paul Krugman are beginning to openly admit that their models don’t work and they don’t know what the hell is happening anymore, it may be time to start listening to the canaries who have been screaming their pretty little yellow heads off.

As for the triumph of feminism, let me be the first to point out that there are now a whole host of men who are “who would admit that he believes women are less capable”. We will not only admit it, we will openly proclaim it. And that host is growing literally every day as awareness of Game continues to spread throughout the male population.

Equality is dead. Multiculturalism is dead. Feminism is dying. And if we’re very, very lucky, civilization won’t be completely devastated in their catastrophic death throes over the next two decades.

So, the gay thing backfired

They’ll just have to cry raciss instead:

“Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson made headlines this week for his anti-gay sentiments in a GQ interview. Now another statement from the interview — this time about the black community during the pre-civil rights era — is stirring more controversy.

GQ’s Drew Magary sat down with the “Duck Dynasty” patriarch for a candid interview about his road to fame. The 67-year-old journeyed from substance abuse to devotion to God to small-screen celebrity, all in the backwoods of Louisiana. According to Robertson, growing up in those Louisiana backwoods in the pre-civil rights era was not bad for black people.

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person,” Robertson is quoted in GQ. “Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field…. They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

Presumably the next accusations will be:

  1. anti-semitism
  2. anti-science
  3. evolution denier
  4. not a true Christian

Oh, wait, they already tried number four, didn’t they. I think this episode is actually a potentially positive one for American society, as it is making two things abundantly clear. First, give them an inch and they will not only take a mile, but will insult you in the process. Second, there is absolutely no reasoning with these people. They are an implacable enemy and no quarter should be shown to them even when they wave the white flag and start talking about negotiating a settled peace.

As Churchill once said of the Hun, he is either at your feet or at your throat. We can’t leave them alone because they won’t leave us alone. We can’t tolerate them because they will not tolerate us. So, root them out of your lives, stop supporting them, stop enabling them, and stop funding their assault on your beliefs, your family, and your faith. There are no fences upon which moderates can safely sit in a cultural war.

One of the few voices of reason on the Left grasps this and laments the totalitarianism of her own side. Camille Paglia writes:

“To express yourself in a magazine in an interview — this is the
level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my
liberal colleagues in the Democratic Party and on college campuses have
supported and promoted over the last several decades,” Paglia said.
“This is the whole legacy of free speech 1960’s that have been lost by
my own party.

“I think that this intolerance by gay activists toward the full
spectrum of human beliefs is a sign of immaturity, juvenility,” Paglia
said. “This is not the mark of a true intellectual life. This is why
there is no cultural life now in the U.S. Why nothing is of interest
coming from the major media in terms of cultural criticism. Why the
graduates of the Ivy League with their A, A, A+ grades are complete
cultural illiterates, etc. is because they are not being educated in any
way to give respect to opposing view points.”

One cannot reason with totalitarians. One can only refuse to submit to them. And sooner or later, one must fight them.

UPDATE: The Robertson family stands fast:

“We are disappointed that Phil has been placed on hiatus for expressing
his faith, which is his constitutionally protected right.We have had a
successful working relationship with A&E but, as a family, we cannot
imagine the show going forward without our patriarch at the helm.  We
are in discussions with A&E to see what that means for the future of
Duck Dynasty.   Again, thank you for your continued support of our
family.”

Camille Paglia on the importance of men

La Paglia has little confidence in feminist civilization. Assuming, of course, that one can reasonably even call it that.

A peevish, grudging rancor against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism. Men’s faults, failings and foibles have been seized on and magnified into gruesome bills of indictment. Ideologue professors at our leading universities indoctrinate impressionable undergraduates with carelessly fact-free theories alleging that gender is an arbitrary, oppressive fiction with no basis in biology.

Is it any wonder that so many high-achieving young women, despite all the happy talk about their academic success, find themselves in the early stages of their careers in chronic uncertainty or anxiety about their prospects for an emotionally fulfilled private life? When an educated culture routinely denigrates masculinity and manhood, then women will be perpetually stuck with boys, who have no incentive to mature or to honor their commitments. And without strong men as models to either embrace or (for dissident lesbians) to resist, women will never attain a centered and profound sense of themselves as women….

After the next inevitable apocalypse, men will be desperately needed
again! Oh, sure, there will be the odd gun-toting Amazonian survivalist
gal, who can rustle game out of the bush and feed her flock, but most
women and children will be expecting men to scrounge for food and water
and to defend the home turf. Indeed, men are absolutely indispensable
right now, invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the
infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible.

TL;DR: viva la difference!

Mailvox: so the slope was slippery after all

MP is a little bit excited about the new court ruling that declared polygamy bans to be unconstitutional:

Having severed marriage from any cultural traditions and values over the last fifty years, I thought it would be at least five more years before the Feds took marriage to the next step: polygamy. Marry whoever and whatever you like. Marry as many as you want. 

As of now it is not “cheating” to fuck other women when you are already married.  You are merely looking for your next wife.  The courts will have to work out some of the kinks, such as not needing the permission of your existing wife to get married again.

After all, I can contract to buy a car from one car dealer and contract to buy another car from another car dealer without asking permission of the first car dealer, right? 

And since marriage is nothing more than a voluntary contract between two people, the wife should have no say-so in preventing me from getting Wife #2 … or #3, … or even #4!

What business is it of my old wife to oppress me and prevent me from marrying the (new) one you love?  After all, she has the right to control her body and abort my child, why should I not have the right to marry who I want?

And don’t you Evil Religious Freaks start quoting the Bible or the Koran. We got rid of the old oppressive Christian monogamous “’til death do us part” junk many, many years ago.

At this rate we will have pure marriage-by-contract within 10 years: “Marriage” will be divorced from those Evil Religious Freaks and we will be able to construct our marriage contracts however we see fit!

What a Brave New World we are entering!

Do you know, I can remember when all those homogamy advocates were assuring everyone that the only reason anyone opposed altering the equation Marriage = One Man + One Woman was bigotry and that there was no possible way that changing Woman to Man could lead to changing One to One or More.

“In a game-changer for the legal fight over same-sex marriage that gives credence to opponents’ “slippery slope” arguments, a federal judge has now ruled that the legal reasoning for same-sex marriage means that laws against polygamy are likewise unconstitutional.”

American society is rapidly slip-sliding away, to the extent that it can even be said to exist at all anymore. One may not be able to legislate morality, but it is becoming eminently clear that one can legislate civilization. And barbarism, for that matter. But we may be past the point where civilization can be legislated; it may have to be imposed.

He who shows up, wins

A Catholic priest mourns the corruption and decline of the Catholic family in reflecting how his parishioners have contracepted their parochial school out of existence:

A stranger came into the sacristy after Sunday Mass. In an incriminating huff he said, “I have been away from the area for fifteen years; where are the people? And now you are tearing down the school? I went there as a kid.”

I put my hands up to quiet him from further talking and I calmly said, “Let me ask you a question: How many kids did you have?” He said, “Two.” Then I said, “So did everyone else. When you only have two kids per family there is no growth.” His demeanor changed, and then he dropped his head and said, “And they aren’t even going to Mass anymore.”

I never thought I would be asking that question, but since I had to close our parish school, I’ve grown bolder and I started to ask that question more often. When I came to my parish five years ago, the school was on its proverbial “last legs.” In its last two years we did everything we could to recruit more students, but eventually I had to face the fact that after 103 years of education the school was no longer viable.

In one of the pre-closure brain-storming sessions with teachers, I was asked what to do to get more students. I replied, “Well, I know what to do, but it takes seven years.” The older teachers laughed, but the others needed me to state the obvious to the oblivious, viz. we need more babies….

I have modestly preached against contraception and sterilization, but
for many of my parishioners it is too late. Most of them are done with
raising more children. They have had their two kids twenty, thirty,
forty years ago and some women don’t want to hear about the Culture of
Death. They decide to go to other parishes where the pastor doesn’t
prick their consciences.

I am reminded of a diocesan official in his talk to us young pro-life,
pro-family priests twenty years ago. He said, “Yes, you can preach
against abortion and contraception, but remember, you have to put a roof
over your churches.” Now, our diocese is closing and merging these same
parishes, but you know what—they all have good roofs.

Pastors, if the demographic winter or bomb seems someone else’s
problem, try this at your parish as I recently did at mine. I took the
last ten burials and printed out their obituaries. At Sts. Peter and
Paul Cemetery we had six men and four women with an average age of 80
years. With the ten, I counted the number of siblings for a total of 45
and divided by 10 which came to 4.5 children per family. Then I counted
the ten’s children and divided by ten. The next generation had 28 kids
which I divided by ten and came to 2.8 per family. I then moved on to
the third generation, the grandchildren. These ten deceased had 48
grandchildren from their 28 children. When dividing these numbers, I
came to a figure of 1.714 per family. The national average number of children per household is 1.91; while the replacement level is 2.1 children per family.

I don’t claim to have answers on how to turn around a dying parish or
diocese. In fact, I am more at a loss as to what to say than ever
before. To defend the Church’s teaching against contraception and
sterilization is like going back to ancient Rome and warning them about
the dangers of indoor lead plumbing. No matter what you would say their
only response back would come in various levels of volume, “But it’s
indoor plumbing!” In other words, no matter the real threat to one’s
physical health from contraception and sterilization, the immediate
perceived benefits outweigh the moral and physical downside.

I’m not anti-contraception myself, but I am against the short-sightedness of small families.The Jews have it right and three is the bare minimum that any Christian couple should have, assuming they can have children. I understand that it is sometimes hard to see past the cost and the challenges that come with raising children, but I don’t know a single family with children who regrets the youngest. And most of the families I know, regardless of size, speak a little wistfully about how it would have been nice to have just one more.

If we’re going to win the future, our children have to show up for it.

PJ O’Rourke on the Baby Boomers

Here is one Baby Boomer who appears to be willing to cop to being a member of the worst generation ever, but as is his generation’s wont, he ends up trying to spin the facts on his generation’s behalf:

We’ve reached the age of accountability. The world is our fault. We
are the generation that has an excuse for everything—one of our greatest
contributions to modern life—but the world is still our fault.

This
is every generation’s fate. It’s a matter of power and privilege and
demography. Whenever anything happens anywhere, somebody over 50 signs
the bill for it. And the baby boom, seated as we are at the head of
life’s table, is hearing Generation X, Generation Y and the Millennials
all saying, “Check, please!”

To address America’s baby boom is to
face big, broad problems. We number more than 75 million, and we’re not
only diverse but take a thorny pride in our every deviation from the
norm (even though we’re in therapy for it). We are all alike in that
each of us thinks we’re unusual.

Now, before Ryan launches in with his usual generational public defender routine, I readily admit that every member of a generation is not identical or even in step with the generational norm. But we are talking about a collective here! And more importantly, we are talking about a proudly self-identified collective here. So to bring up individuals in this context is not merely moot, it is a basic category error.

They claim they changed the world. We agree. We merely observe that they changed it for the worse.

Some Baby Boomers try to smugly point out that Generation X is also responsible because we have not fixed the problems they caused. They tend to ignore the fact that they are actively standing in the way of any and all attempts to do so. I was correct about the 2008 financial crisis and correct about the failure of the Federal Reserve and the Congress to successfully fix the situation. Did the Fed turn to me or any other GenX economist who correctly observed these things?

No, they appointed yet another Baby Boomer, one who will step up the intensity of the failed policies of the previous Baby Boomer. So what more can I, or any other member of Generation X, now do except point, laugh, and look forward to the day when we can shut off the generational parasite’s life-support machines.

Sinners in the New America’s eyes

VDH observes that those of us who do not subscribe to equalitarian dogma are deemed sinners by modern society:

The radically egalitarian ethos demands always the descent to the lowest common denominators of taste. A world without requisites is the fairest. To capture the most attention of the masses requires a Cyrus, Gaga, or West. Once classical canons of artistic, literary, or musical expression were torn down, and once those classically trained rebels who ripped them apart have passed on, we are left with the ruins of trying to shock what is perhaps beyond being shocked. What more could Miley Cyrus do — wear two foam fingers? Could Mr. West mount his girlfriend, and sing and dance while riding backwards?

In other words, once you have rebelled against hexameters, quarter notes, or realistic representation, and after you have rebelled against that rebellion with crucifixes in urine, obscenity-laced rap, and peek-a-boo nudity on stage, what are you left with? The 20th-century rebels who knew what they did not like have been replaced by the anti-rebels who don’t know that there was ever something against which to rebel. Again, we are left with the 21st-century of Lady Gaga giving birth to a blue sphere, Miley Cyrus probing body orifices with a foam oversized finger, and Kanye West humping on a motorcycle while reciting obscene nursery-rhyme ditties.

In a society where endorsing fairness and equality equates with success, no supposedly arbitrary canons can exclude much of anything. Who are you to say that song A is bad, or movie B is good, given your own class, race, and gender privileges that result in excluding someone or something? The less dialogue and the more explosions and nudity earn supposedly more ticket-buyers, at least until a new generation wishes to build something from the ashes.

There can be no truth in our culture, given that it discriminates and proves hurtful to too many.  The greatest sin in America is not to lie, but to embrace a hierarchy of any sort at all.

So be it. I blaspheme against the equalitarian worms thusly:

ALL MEN ARE NOT EQUAL. WOMEN ARE NOT MEN. MEN ARE NOT WOMEN. CHILDREN ARE NOT ADULTS. ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. REALITY EXISTS AND IT IS NOT SUBJECTIVE. MORALITY EXISTS AND IT IS NOT SUBJECTIVE. HOMOSEXUALITY IS AN ABNORMALITY. RACE IS SCIENCE. CIVILIZATION IS NOT A GIVEN.

And, of course, the capstone:

THERE IS NO EQUALITY. EQUALITY DOES NOT EXIST IN ANY REAL, MATERIAL, LEGAL, OR SPIRITUAL SENSE.

And in more pragmatic terms, VDH’s article tends to put Ann Barnhardt’s essay, We are the Gold, in a stark and brutal light, does it not? Morality matters, and the society that casts morality aside will have no choice but to suffer the consequences.

Twice as hard

The public persecution of Orson Scott Card is an indicator that it is time for the Right to, in Instapundit’s words, start punching back twice as hard.

A friend posted on Facebook about his interest in the new Ender’s Game film based on the classic novel by Orson Scott Card.  Another person chimed in with joy over a news story that Card would not profit personally based on the performance of the film.  Why would such a thing be an occasion for joy?  The answer is that Card (a Mormon) is a known opponent of same-sex marriage.

Card’s career of late has been affected by his view of marriage.  He lost prospective work writing for a Superman project when voices piped up in opposition to him.  Was it because of his poor writing?  No.  It was because of his politics.  These same people who villify Card and hope to destroy his career are surely the same persons who curse the “Red Scare” and “McCarthyism.”  What is the phenomenon in either case?  It is the attempt to prevent a person with a particular worldview from getting work or to prevent others from associating with that person.

The Right has long sabotaged itself through its pride in playing fair and refusing to bar leftists from employment on the basis of their ideological allegiances. Where did that get them? Barred from the mainstream media and the universities. What did that accomplish? Nothing more than the complete loss of the intellectual high ground.

Now that it is in the ascendant in the decision-making positions at the publishers and the large technology companies, we are seeing the same process at work. The leftists at Tor Books aren’t dumb enough to drop Card while he’s still their best-selling author, but they are going to prevent the next Card from publishing there. In fact, they have done so for years, if not decades.

It is no use for the Right to primly disapprove and declare “that’s not sporting, old chap”. When one side clings to the Marquess of Queensbury rules while the other is making use of the full range of MMA options, the outcome is certain. The Left is increasingly confident, in part because its numbers have been swollen through immigration and forty years of public school indoctrination, in part because, rather like Hitler, they simply don’t believe the other side has the backbone to stand its ground.

But the Right still has the bigger numbers. Despite the Left’s loathing of him, it is Card who is Tor’s best-selling novelist, not their left-wing poster girl. Despite the fact that I am not published by any major publisher, I have the most-trafficked blog of any SF/F writer. By every objective measure, the Right remains more culturally powerful than the destructive parasites of the Left. But it is an impotent, mostely unused power.

So, it is time to use it. It is time for the sleeping dog to wake up and bite back. It is time to treat them the way they have been treating us for decades. Don’t hire them. Don’t publish them. Don’t support them. Express social disapproval of them. If you suspect them of left-wing sympathies, if you suspect them of equalitarianism and feminism and other intellectual diseases, inquire further and then drive them into social quarantine. Force them to rely upon their own kind rather than subsisting like vampires upon the human cattle they despise.

Don’t whine about how they won’t let you into the clubs and companies they invaded and occupied and made their own, create new ones, make them bigger and better, and then, (and this is the crucial part), DO NOT LET THEM IN. To “foxnews” should be a verb in every right-winger’s vocabulary; Fox News is the model that shows how easily the Right can dominate and destroy the Left on the Left’s own turf so long as the Right stops trying to appease and accommodate the Left.

Punching back is punching back twice as hard, because the Right has more muscle.

So stop priding yourself on your open mind and your tolerance. Stop thinking you are going to shame them, or inspire them, or convince them into following your lead. Their minds are closed and they see you as an evil enemy. Accept that and treat them accordingly. Support your own kind, give preference to your own kind, and stop paying tribute to the enemy.

As for their vilification, wear it with pride. Feed on it and grow strong. I would be embarrassed, I would be downright disgusted with myself, were the intellectual dwarfs of the Left to approve of me in any way, shape, or form. Persecution either breaks a faith or makes it stronger, and the more they try to increase the pressure, the stronger and harder and more confident they will make us.

A failure of parenting

On the part of the parents of the bullies and the bullied alike:

Brimming with outrage and incredulity, the sheriff said in a news conference on Tuesday that he was stunned by the older girl’s Saturday Facebook posting. But he reserved his harshest words for the girl’s parents for failing to monitor her behavior, after she had been questioned by the police, and for allowing her to keep her cellphone.

“I’m aggravated that the parents are not doing what parents should do: after she is questioned and involved in this, why does she even have a device?” Sheriff Judd said. “Parents, who instead of taking that device and smashing it into a thousand pieces in front of that child, say her account was hacked.”

The police said the dispute with Rebecca began over a boy. The older girl was upset that Rebecca had once dated her boyfriend, they said.

“She began to harass and ultimately torment Rebecca,” said the sheriff, describing the 14-year-old as a girl with a long history of bullying behavior.

The police said the older girl began to turn Rebecca’s friends against her, including her former best friend, the 12-year-old who was charged. She told anyone who tried to befriend Rebecca that they also would be bullied, the affidavit said.

The bullying leapt into the virtual world, Sheriff Judd said, and Rebecca began receiving sordid messages instructing her to “go kill yourself.” The police said Rebecca’s mother was reluctant to take her cellphone away because she did not want to alienate her daughter and wanted her to be able to communicate with her friends. Ms. Norman tried, she has said, to monitor Rebecca’s cellphone activity.

In December, the bullying grew so intense that Rebecca began cutting herself and was sent to a hospital by her mother to receive psychiatric care. Ultimately, her mother pulled her out of Crystal Lake Middle School. She home schooled her for a while and then enrolled her in a new school in August.

But the bullying did not stop.

Like the sheriff, a lot of people will be upset with the parents of the female bully. The sheriff was right, the mother shouldn’t have worried about preserving either her relationship with her daughter or her daughter’s ability to communicate – that was half the problem, as it happens.

But parents of children who are bullied also have to learn to stand up for their children where necessary. If any of my kids was being plagued in such an insidious manner, I’d not only warn the parents it had better stop, I’d speak to the bully and let them know in no uncertain terms that they had better pray to whatever deity or scientific process they believe in that nothing happened to my child, because neither they nor their family would survive the day it did. The one thing bullies always understand is hard targets; if your child is simply too soft to be one, then you have a responsibility to step into the incoming fire as a parent.

Of course everyone will throw a complete fit if you threaten consequences, especially the women. So what? The point isn’t your reputation among the wicked and the foolish, it is the protection of your children. And the best defense is a strong offense.

Society has become far too soft and tolerant of the wicked. On an old episode of QI the other night, Stephen Fry mentioned Dangerous Dan, a sheriff who cleaned up a town called Shakespeare. One of the men he hanged was executed for the crime of “being a damned nuisance”. If the sheriff in this case had been more like Dangerous Dan, the bullies would be the dead ones rather than their victim. That being said, I’m glad he had the stones to charge the girls with felony offenses. The bullies and the parents deserve to be put through years of legal hell; perhaps that will encourage parents to shut down such behavior on the part of their children in the future.

Ender got in trouble about two weeks ago after a huge younger kid – he’s six feet tall and weighs about 200 pounds – who has bullied his fellow students for years decided to start testing his ability to push the older kids around. Ender couldn’t manage to flip the kid or put him in a judo hold because he was too big and strong, so as the kid tried to force him down to the ground, he switched tactics and threw a pair of hard uppercuts that split the kid’s lip and bloodied his nose. That sent the kid reeling, at which point the adult team players broke them up.  Lesson: mixed martial arts training works. It’s always good to have multiple tools in the toolbox.

The problem is that the idiot first-year coach, who has no sons, no experience, and less sense, overreacted, suspended both boys for three games apiece for fighting, (which will almost surely cost the team all three games since they are two of the four starting defenders), and warned them that they’d be kicked off the team if they got into it again. When Ender asked SB and me what he should do if the kid is dumb enough to try it again, we told him to simply take care of business and let me sort it out with the club, to which we both belong. I’ve already written a letter asking the governing committee to specifically endorse the right of the players to defend themselves without consequence and spoken to two of my teammates who are on the committee. Both of them were incredulous that the coach would suspend someone who was simply defending himself.

Meanwhile, Ender is a hero to the entire younger half of the team, who have been victimized by this kid for nearly their entire school lives. And, perhaps more importantly, he knows his parents have his back no matter what happens.

On a weirdly related note, the Utah Supreme Court is about to decide if an employer has the right to fire an employee on the basis of the employee’s legal exercise of his right to self-defense.

Now, the federal district court in Ray v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (D. Utah Oct. 9, 2013) has just certified this question as to Utah state law to the Utah Supreme Court. The Utah Supreme Court may either issue an opinion answering the question, in which case the federal judge will follow it (since federal judges are supposed to follow state court decisions about state law), or the Utah Supreme Court may decline to do so, in which case the federal judge will decide the matter for himself, drawing inferences from more general Utah state cases. And if the state supreme court does answer the question, then the result should prove quite influential.

I think it is unwise to work or play anywhere you do not have the right to freely defend yourself against an attacker.