Tag: society

Mailvox: leaving the Scouts behind

DC is standing up for the now-defunct moral code of the late Boy Scouts of America:

I’ve pulled my three sons out of Scouting and brought them over to a church that sponsors an Outpost for Royal Rangers. See…I want my sons to learn to be strong Christian men with morals, not rainbow loving losers that have no fear of the God of the Angel Armies.

Since I’ve clearly stated that I’m doing this, and why, so far I’ve been called intolerant, angry, stupid, and seriously, even Christians (?) that I go to church with don’t agree with me! I was stunned at that one. But today my friend sent me an email saying this:

“I don’t think u should use being a Christian as an excuse to judge gay people.  I thought Christians believed in not judging people. You said you don’t consider it as “judging” but that is exactly what it is. “

I think I was ready to hear all sorts of things from people, but was most surprised by the responses from those directly surrounding me.

You want to know how I feel now?

I am even MORE firm with what I feel is right. I will NOT allow the World to dictate what is right and wrong, period.

My biggest reason is that the kids need to see the clear, defined limit of where Christianity Meets The World. I’m refusing to be part of an organization that has taken a stance regarding homosexuality that is in conflict with my Christian beliefs.

First, removing your children from a corrupt organization is not “judging” anyone.  Discernment is not judgment.  Second, Christians believe that people will be judged, they simply don’t believe it is their responsibility to do the judging.  And one of the things God has judged people for in the past is tolerance of what He has deemed to be wicked.

I doubt your friend would say you should not use being a Christian as an excuse to judge a rapist or a murderer if you were keeping your children away from them.  She’s simply rationalizing her decision to arrogate the line between Christian morality and immorality, which is ridiculous since she doesn’t sound as if she’s even a Christian. Non-Christians have neither the ability nor the right to determine what is correct according to Christian precepts.

DC is absolutely doing the right thing by pulling her sons out of the now-corrupted scouting organization.  Every God-fearing Christian parent should do likewise.

Stampeding the herd

Sarah Hoyt contemplates the bovine thinking that led to the SFWA’s recent “storm in a B-cup”.  After all, it’s hard for the older members of the herd to keep up:

I got very – as opposed to a bit – worried in the eighties when women
started claiming that men talking them into sex was “rape.”  The
reasoning seemed to be that men had awesome talking skills and a mere
woman could not defend herself against all those double-slick words.

I thought “OMG, they’re going Victorian.”

Since then we’ve gone to lookism (the ugly girl’s attempt to take
attention from the pretty one) and to a man even looking at a woman too
long, or asking for a date being considered “harassment.”

In fact, any man NOTICING another person is female is now harassment
(witness the offense at “ladies” in Barry and Mike’s article.)

I feel for Barry and Mike.  I’m sure they were full supporters of the
initial feminism which only wanted to give women access but assumed
that evolution was not going to be reversed in a generation, and if
women wanted to work alongside men, they’d have to endure men being…
male.  And if they used a little of female wiles to get what they
wanted… well, that’s how humans are and they go two by two.  This was a
somewhat rational idea, and if it had stopped there…
It didn’t.

Their articles were salutes of the women who made it in (at that time) a very hostile male environment.

Barry and Mike had no idea that the herd had changed step and that
the mooing signals from the top had changed.  Cattle are very stupid
animals.  They identify their herd by a series of not very rational
signals.  Fall out of step, and you risk being mistaken for an intruder
and gored.  And people who didn’t realize there was herd behavior going
on, and who got to their positions by rational thought, are more than
likely to get that treatment.  I know, it’s happened to me.

And meanwhile the herd of tough grrrl Victorian maidens, “don’t call
me slut” but “I’ll sleep with guys I’m not even interested in, and I’ll
call myself slut,”  “asking me on a date is sexism” and “I can’t
understand where all the good men have gone”, “we’re just as good as
men”, “it’s rape if a man talks a woman into sex because men have
awesome men neurons we can’t compete with” goes on its merry way
changing directions as the leaders change rationals and demanding more
government intervention to handicap men more, because otherwise, how can
they compete with wonderful male superpowers?  They who are fragile
flowers who get peristaltic disturbances because someone mentions most
top scientists aren’t female?

The irony is the lesson being taught to younger men who have watched the Resnick-Malzberg debacle is that my way is the right way.  Kowtowing to the feminist cows only leads to being trampled, but standing up to them, challenging them, and contemptuously exposing them for the pathetic intellectual frauds they are will send them stampeding away, mooing in distress, every single time.

Barry and Mike were full supporters of the initial feminism.  Most men of their age were. Having been steeped in it my entire life, I’m a full-fledged enemy of it.  And I’m very, very far from being alone in that regard.

The truth will out

Those lamenting the increased sound and fury of the gatekeepers of academia, media, and publishing as they attempt to kick out anyone and everyone who rejects the received dogma are failing to keep one very important thing in mind: No amount of credentials, social pressure, and financial carrots will suffice to prevent an honest man from understanding what he is seeing and experiencing:

If you take certain positions, you will be cast into outer darkness. Whether your statements are empirically accurate is irrelevant. Translation: truth doesn’t matter when ideology triumphs. White is black, day is night, there are no IQ differences among ethnic groups.

We are used to this sort of politically motivated mendacity in the university, where “diversity” has come to mean “conformity.” Murray merely states the obvious when he observes that “In academia, only the tenured can safely write on these topics. Assistant professors know that their chances of getting tenure will be close to zero if they publish politically incorrect findings on climate change, homosexuality, race differences, gender differences, or renewable energy. Their chances will not be much higher if they have published anything with a distinctly conservative perspective of any sort.”

That is bad enough. Here we have institutions, whose very raison d’être is the pursuit of truth, constrained to parrot politically-sanctioned untruth on a wide range of sensitive topics. Even worse is the metastasis of this freedom-and truth-blighting habit of mendacity. Increasingly, this sort of craven doublethink has oozed out of the academy and into the corridors of business, the media, and culture at large. Where will it end?

It will end when it always does; when reality squashes the lies with all the restraint and mercy of a semi running over a rabbit.  The most sincere diversity advocates suddenly lose their religion when vibrant thugs and rapists move in next door to them. The most heartfelt Keynesian feels seeds of doubt sprouting in his mind when the economy enters into a fourth year of declining employment despite trillions in stimulus.  And even the Vote Red/Vote Blue crowd is beginning to wonder how their votes can possibly make any difference at all as the first glimpses of the extent of the IRS and NSA scandals begin to take form.

The world is actively opposed to the Truth, so it should not be any surprise that its institutions are opposed to the truth as well as anyone bold enough to stand up for it.

Mailvox: A Boomer defends his generation

Mr. Pea sounds pretty pleased that the cookie jar is empty:

After reading some of the garbage here, it finally dawned on me… you
are mad because you can not and will not have what mommy and daddy had!
Never mind that it all had nothing to do with liberty and freedom! Never
mind it had nothing to do with virtue and righteousness! You’re pissed
off because that same cookie jar that you put your hand in… is empty!

You
would be perfectly happy to transplant what mommy and daddy had into
your generation… just as long as the cookie jar was just as full for
you as it was for them.

But that will never happen. Because all
this time you are lamenting the empty cookie jar… you thump your
chests in self-righteousness and claim virtue above and beyond mommy and
daddy.

Well, yes, to a certain extent.  We would very much like for Mommy and Daddy to not burn down the house with us and everyone else in it.  We’d very much like to have some seed corn to plant, but we don’t, because Greedy Mommy and Drunk Old Daddy ate it.

And we most certainly do claim virtue beyond the Boomers.  Not only are we aware that we’re starting with nothing and can’t count on any help from them, but we’re working hard to make sure that unlike them, we leave something for our children behind.  Of course, saying that a generation is more virtuous than the Boomers is the faintest of faint praise; every single generation in recorded history has been more virtuous.

But it isn’t true to say we’d be perfectly happy to be like mommy and daddy.  In fact, that is Generation X’s one true satisfaction.  Say what you will about we cynical, narrow-eyed Xers, but you can’t say we’re anything like you.  We don’t want to change the world, we’re just hoping to survive and perhaps build some sort of rude shelter from the rubble.

Boomer Suicide

Reading this Washington Post headline just makes this Generation Xer feel like bursting into song:
 Boomer suicide (Just do it)
Boomer suicide, (they blew it)Boomer suicide (we knew it)Boomer suicide (yeah, do it)  Age and arrogance don’t mix
Your generation’s so over
We’ll read your last statement from your credit cardLife was so easy but you made it so hard
Feel the power of revenge Your children parked you all alone
Your future’s dark and your bills are biggerPut the gun in your mouth and we’ll pull the damn trigger
 Boomer suicide (dumb fuckers)Boomer suicide (thumbsuckers)Boomer suicide (old bastards)Boomer suicide (die faster)  “Baby boomers are killing themselves at an alarming rate, raising question: Why?  He is part of an alarming trend among baby boomers, whose suicide rates shot up precipitously between 1999 and 2010.”  Why?  The journalist obviously is not an American of Generation X. The generation that has had to put up with the vagaries of the Baby Boomers for literally its entire existence knows very well why they are killing themselves at an unusually high rate. It is because Baby Boomers are disproportionately inclined to be narcissistic, selfish, short-sighted, superficial bastards who don’t give a damn about anything except themselves, and they are psychologically incapable of grasping the basic concepts of mortality or graceful old age.
““We’ve been a pretty youth-oriented generation,” said Bob Knight,
professor of gerontology and psychology at the University of Southern
California, who is also a baby boomer. “We haven’t idealized growing up
and getting mature in the same way that other cohorts have.”  Even
as they become grandparents and deal with normal signs of getting old,
such as hearing and vision losses, many boomers are reluctant to accept
the realities of aging, Knight said.”
  You don’t say…. The realization that 65 is not, in fact, the new 18, and they really and truly are not cool anymore, is simply proving too much for them to bear.

Now, I wouldn’t want anyone to think Generation X is actually inclined to celebrate these rampant Boomer suicides.  It doesn’t fill us with glee to know they are offing themselves en masse, merely a modicum of appreciation for the first positive and non-selfish consequences their generation’s actions have ever produced.  Say what you will about them, but at least they are saving us an amount of effort.

Generation X Aptitude Test

Khyron creates the GXAT:

1. Do you want to change the world?

A. Yes, and I’m proud to say we did it, man. We changed the world. Just look around you!

B.
Yes, absolutely, and I promise I will get back to doing that just as
soon as interest rates return to where they’re supposed to be.

C.
Omigod, omigod, changing the world and helping people is, like, totally
important to me! I worked in a soup kitchen once and it was so sad but
the poor people there had so much dignity!

D. That question is so stupid and absurd that there is obviously no reason to continue this pointless exercise.

If you answered D, you are Generation X.   Thus endeth the GXAT.

Preach, preacher, saith the choir

Why the Grasshopper Generation is the most hated generation:

Pity the baby boomers, blamed in their youth for every ill and excess of American society and now, in their dotage, for threatening to sink the economy and perhaps Western civilization itself.

The revival of The Great Gatsby serves as a reminder that continuing to blame boomers even in their old age was not a foregone conclusion. The young people of the 1920s were as controversial to their older contemporaries as their counterparts in the 1960s and 1970s. They were called flappers (less commonly “sheiks,” in the case of men), or Bright Young Things in England. The cartoons of John Held, Jr. have memorialized their hair styles, bobbed for women, slicked back for men — the Beatles cuts and Afros of their own time. But the gilded youth of that earlier age, having enjoyed bootleg liquor and cigarettes rather than stronger substances, were allowed to make a discreet transition to middle age and then little old lady and gentleman status without the medical clucking or cultural sneers of journalists. They vanished back into the multitude while the so-called Boomers seem destined to be hounded to death. Why?

I can think of a few reasons:

  1. They ruined American society.  Even the acts for which they can’t be held responsible, such as the 1965 Immigration Act, they resolutely supported.
  2. They are, to the extent that one can categorize an entire generation, short-sighted and selfish.  It is astonishing to compare the lack of interest my parents’ generation has in its grandchildren to the dedication that my grandparents’ generation showed to us. 
  3. They are obnoxious.  As PJ O’Rourke once pointed out, the Baby Boomers still clinging to their teenage music and styles would have been like his parents wearing zoot suits in their old age.
  4. They bankrupted the country and their families.  No generation was given larger inheritances by its parents’ generation.  And it is quite likely that most Boomers will leave nothing behind. 
  5. They were given wealth, peace, and power, and instead of being grateful for it, they scorned the traditions of their forefathers and squandered what they were given.

The ills of an entire generation cannot be placed at the feet of every single one of its members.  But neither can any individual member reasonably pretend the rightful anger that following generations will be directing at the Baby Boomers as a whole is unjustified.

The cognitive dissonance of Saint Gay

Bret Easton Ellis isn’t overly impressed with the lavender media’s insistence on whitewashing the sexually abnormal In the Reign of the Gay Magical Elves:

Was I the only gay man of a certain demo who experienced a flicker of annoyance in the way the media treated Jason Collins as some kind of baby panda who needed to be honored and praised and consoled and—yes—infantilized by his coming out on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Within the tyrannical homophobia of the sports world, that any man would come out as gay (let alone a black man) is not only an LGBT triumph but also a triumph for pranksters everywhere who thrilled to the idea that what should be considered just another neutral fact that is nobody’s business was instead a shock heard around the world, one that added another jolt of transparency to an increasingly transparent planet. It was an undeniable moment and also extremely cool. Jason Collins is the future. But the subsequent fawning over Collins simply stating he is gay still seemed to me, as another gay man, like a new kind of victimization. (George Stephanopoulos interviewed him so tenderly, it was as if he was talking to a six-year-old boy.) In another five years hopefully this won’t matter, but for now we’re trapped in the times we live in. The reign of The Gay Man as Magical Elf, who whenever he comes out appears before us as some kind of saintly E.T. whose sole purpose is to be put in the position of reminding us only about Tolerance and Our Own Prejudices and To Feel Good About Ourselves and to be a symbol instead of just being a gay dude, is—lamentably—still in media play.

The Gay Man as Magical Elf has been such a tricky part of gay self-patronization in the media that you would by now expect the chill members of the LGBT community to respond with cool indifference. The Sweet and Sexually Unthreatening and Super-Successful Gay is supposed to be destined to transform The Hets into noble gay-loving protectors—as long as the gay in question isn’t messy or sexual or difficult. The straight and gay sanctimoniousness that says everyone gay needs to be canonized when coming out still makes some of us who are already out feel like we’re on the sidelines. I’m all for coming out on one’s own terms, but heralding it as the most important news story of the week feels to me, as a gay man, well, kind of alienating. We are apart because of what we supposedly represent because of… our… boring… sexuality—oh man, do we have to go through this again? And it’s all about the upbeat press release, the kind of smiling mask assuring us everything is awesome. God help the gay man who comes out and doesn’t want to represent, who doesn’t want to teach, who doesn’t feel like part of the homogenized gay culture and rejects it. Where’s the gay dude who makes crude jokes about other gays in the media (as straight dudes do of each other constantly) or express their hopelessness in seeing Modern Family being rewarded for its depiction of gays, a show where a heterosexual plays the most simpering ka-ween on TV and Wins. Emmys. For. It?

I find the Saint Gay thing offensive myself, less because it is a societally damaging attempt to normalize the sexually abnormal, disease-ridden, and not-so-secretly self-loathing, and more because it is an insult to the intelligence of even the intellectually subnormal.

I always find the charge of homophobia from the likes of McRapey to be amusing because I’m far more comfortable around gays than most men are, and not in that fake, perma-smiling, I’m-liberal-so-I-MUST-be-tolerant, politically correct way. I worked at Dayton’s when I was fifteen. I was signed to a gay record label making electronic dance music. I’ve been accustomed to gay men making puppy dog eyes at me as long as I can remember and it doesn’t bother me in the least. Sexual attraction is a compliment and a form of flattery, after all; that’s why women constantly seek it from men towards whom they do not reciprocate it in any way.

Rabbits like McRapey are simply incapable of understanding the difference between the personal and the political, between the micro and the macro. 

It is because I have known many gay men and I know the darker aspects of their psychological profiles and lifestyle that I have such contempt for the Saint Gay propaganda. Being homosexual is hard, not due to “Minority Stress” and other people making it hard, but because reality makes it hard.  Some find it ironic that a number of those who have made It Gets Better videos subsequently killed themselves, but that’s exactly what one would expect.  Gay Pride propaganda has killed far more young homosexuals than the largely mythical gay-bashing ever has; Pierre Tremblay presented a 2000 paper at San Diego State in which he noted: “Empirical data indicates that, to
the age of 16 or 17 years, the lifetime “suicide attempt” incidence for
HOM youth has risen about six-fold, from about 5 to 30 percent from the
1950s to the 1990s.”

Repeatedly beating the young over the head with the idea that something problematic is not only okay, but good, creates a fundamental cognitive dissonance between what they believe they are supposed to believe and what they actually believe.  The Saint Gay approach is nothing more than magical thinking; I’ve exchanged a number of emails with the man I call The Gayfather, the self-proclaimed architect of the Gay is Good theme, and he readily admits that there is nothing empirical, scientific, or even philosophical about his theme.  It’s simply a postulate.  Gay is Good, ergo Gay is Healthy, ergo Gay is Moral, ergo Gay is Normal.

But calling RGB 255,255,255 black doesn’t actually change the color on your screen, no matter how many people you convince to follow your example.  Such propaganda is not impotent, but neither is it capable of reshaping reality.

Coming out as homosexual should not be condemned nor should it be celebrated.  It should be considered more like a diagnosis of diabetes; something that isn’t fatal in its own right, something that may or may not be curable, and something that won’t necessarily prevent the individual from living a reasonably happy, normal life if managed properly.  Even if one doesn’t believe in the existence of sin or its wages, one should be able to grasp that the celebration of Saint Gay has been accompanied by a body count that considerably exceeds that of the dark days of the notorious closet and question its legitimacy on that basis.

Mailvox: the mind of the science fetishist

The following assertion by Towler is a beautiful example of the way science fetishists think.  They genuinely believe that unless something is stated in a published, peer-reviewed paper written by a real Scientist with a Degree, it not only didn’t happen, it cannot possibly have happened.

There is no reason to believe that a marriage arranged by a father of the bride will lead to more children.

Except, of course, the entire written record of human history, to say nothing of the readily observable fact of the currently extant societies, which exist by virtue of their ability to sustain themselves at replacement level birth rates that are higher than those now seen in the West.  No reason, no reason at all, except for that.

The mode of discourse demonstrated by Towler and others clearly did not escape Catan’s notice:

Note how the naysayers here are arguing their side. They require peer-reviewed scientific papers posted in Nature Magazine for anything opposing their points, but they require absolutely no proof for an assumption of equality between the daughters’ judgment and the father’s judgment. They simply assume that both have equal judgment without any proof whatsoever until proven otherwise.

This is why leftism is intellectually bankrupt. There is absolutely no a priori evidence that life and reality has any basis in equality or fairness, yet they require no proof whatsoever to assume it.

The ironic thing is that there is no shortage of scientific evidence which indicates the probability that the judgment of a reproductively fit, middle-aged male will be superior concerning nearly everything, let alone something as emotionally laden as mate selection, to that of a young female whose fitness is unknown.

Mailvox: that which cannot survive won’t

Who Nose asks a pertinent question:

“If you want to understand why women are not permitted serve in Church
leadership, and why human societies do not survive more than a few
generations of young women being permitted to choose their own spouses”

It begs the question: Who ought to choose their spouses?

The Church?
The Father?
The Mother?
The State?

The question is further begged: What kind of law would need to be passed to enforce the choosing of a spouse.

Finally,
another question is begged: What would you do with the 99% of women who
responded to the suggestion or the law with, “F*ck Off”?

  1. The Father, with the advice of the Mother.
  2. No law is necessary. Simply informing their daughter that a woman who is capable of choosing her own spouse is clearly also capable of paying for her own college education and supporting her own lifestyle decisions will suffice for most parents. If a woman is independent enough to insist on paying her own way in order to pursue a career, she’s probably not wife-and-mother material anyhow and would likely end up a reproductive dead end regardless the options she is afforded.  We can always hope that instead of children, such a woman will contribute some revolutionary Powerpoint slideshows to society, produce a cure for cancer, or introduce some truly ground-breaking HR policies that will change the world for the better.
  3. I would simply wish them the best of fortune in their future endeavors.  But the number won’t be anywhere nearly that high because women are, first and foremost, the practical sex.

Demographic patterns make it perfectly clear that societies where women are not only permitted, but encouraged, to make their own mating choices are not sustainable.  I find it deeply ironic that so many people who claim to firmly believe in evolution by natural selection demonstrate that they do not understand the basic concept of fitness as soon as the issue of societal demographics is raised.

One of two things will happen. The society will collapse or be overrun, or the government will pass laws to prevent the demographic collapse from taking place. There are no other alternatives; if Who Nose or anyone else should like to suggest one, I’m quite willing to add it to the list.  It should be kept in mind that a government which has the power to conscript men to die for the security of the nation quite clearly has the power to force women to marry and bear children for the same purpose.

Many would-be critics here don’t seem to understand the implications of my being a libertarian. I don’t believe that laws are the answer to undesirable human behavior, not because they are wrong or evil, but because they are ineffective. Customs and traditions are much more powerful; laws only tend to function if they are reasonably in line with them. Laws don’t shape society, they tend to follow it instead.