Tag: society

Banning drones

It’s a positive and encouraging first step.  But every city and township in America must follow suit just in case Washington fails to come to its senses:

Charlottesville, Va., has become the first city in the United States to formally pass an anti-drone resolution. The resolution, passed Monday, “calls on the United States Congress
and the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia to adopt
legislation prohibiting information obtained from the domestic use of
drones from being introduced into a Federal or State court,” and
“pledges to abstain from similar uses with city-owned, leased, or
borrowed drones.”

I imagine that liberal and conservative Americans can find common ground in not wanting death-dealing, missile-equipped remote-controlled drones flying over their heads.  After all, it could be the likes of (George Bush/Barack Obama) with his evil (Republican/Democrat) on the trigger.

I don’t recall the right to fly drones everywhere being a power granted to the Federal government anywhere in the Constitution.  Not even in the emanations and penumbras.

Race-based contraception

This contraception scandal in Israel is rather timely news in light of the recent discussion concerning racism:

The director of the Ministry of Health in Israel, Roni Gamzo, has
issued a formal directive instructing that gynaecologists should not
inject women with the contraceptive Depo-Provera without their knowledge
or consent.

The directive, issued last week, comes after around 30 Ethiopian Jews
who had emigrated to Israel said they had been told that they would not
be allowed into the country without receiving the contraceptive drug.  Within Israel, Ethiopian Jews make up the majority of those given the
drug, according to a report published in 2010 by Isha le’Isha, a
women’s rights organization; 57 percent of women who had received the
drug in Israel are Ethiopian Jews, although they account for less than 2
percent of the overall population.

I found it to be particularly interesting in light of how American Jewish support for third world immigration is largely based on their parents’ and grandparents’ experience in America.  Perhaps the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is deeply concerned with all things even potentially racist, will find the time to look into who is responsible for this involuntary contraceptive program.

Digging out the Rabbit People

A few people have asked me what I mean by “Rabbit People”.  It is a term that derives from an outmoded, but still relevant concept from biology, r/K selection theory, which was coined by the famous biologist E.O. Wilson and refers to evolutionary pressures causing population groups to evolve in one of two different directions.  There are a lot of problems with this, both empirically and logically, but that’s beside the point.  A useful metaphor doesn’t depend on its literal truth, much less the current scientific popularity of the theory from which it derives.

The fact that it does not actually “rain cats and dogs” in either the scientific or the colloquial sense does not render the expression either inexplicable or useless, although one does tend to wonder how it was originally coined.

Anyhow, Wikipedia explains r-selection as follows: “In unstable or unpredictable environments, r-selection predominates as the ability to reproduce quickly is crucial. There is little advantage in adaptations that permit successful competition with other organisms, because the environment is likely to change again. Traits that are thought to be characteristic of r-selection include: high fecundity, small body size, early maturity onset, short generation time, and the ability to disperse offspring widely.  Organisms whose life history is subject to r-selection are often referred to as r-strategists or r-selected. Organisms who exhibit r-selected traits can range from bacteria and diatoms, to insects and weeds, to various semelparous cephalopods and mammals, particularly small rodents.”

Rabbits are one of the more commonly cited examples of an r-selected species and a number of people have taken r/K selection theory, traced out the logical consequences of it in modern societal terms and applied it to politics.

“Obviously, from avoiding conflict and competition, to single
parenting, to low-loyalty to in-group, this r-selected Reproductive
Strategy is the psychomotive origin of the Political Left, or as it is
known in America, Political Liberalism. It produces a model of human
which is cowardly, competition averse, promiscuous, supportive of single
parenting, supportive of earlier sexualization of young, and which has
no real embrace of loyalty, honor, decency, or any other pro-social
trait designed to foster group cohesion and functionality, or success in
group competition. Females will become manly, to provision and protect
their young, which they raise alone, while men become effete castrati,
designed for fleeing and fornication, and capable of little else of
meaning.  As we see in any society which begins to produce resources freely and
copiously, it will gradually begin to trend “r” as time goes on,
further highlighting this relationship of resource availability to
political psychology, and reproductive strategy.”

It doesn’t hold up perfectly and its scope is excessively broad as one would expect from any binary heuristic, and yet it is much more strongly supported by the empirical evidence than many familiar political tropes such as the idea of a causal relationship between poverty and crime or the fear that carry laws will result in increased firearms homicides, road rage-inspired gun fights, and blood running in the streets.

Now, my minor contribution to the concept came about when I was reading Aristotle’s Rhetoric last summer.  One part in particular caught my attention, namely, this paragraph towards the beginning:  “Rhetoric is useful because things that are true and things that are just have a natural tendency to prevail over
their opposites, so that if the decisions of judges are not what they ought to be, the defeat must be due to the
speakers themselves, and they must be blamed accordingly. Moreover, before some audiences not even the possession
of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge
implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.”

I realized that there is a very strong correlation between the people identified r-selected and the individuals that Aristotle described as being incapable of dialectic.  In other words, rhetoric is the language of the Rabbit People, just as their preferred form discourse is alternatively described as postmodern and sensitivity-driven.

Now, it is important to note that theory notwithstanding, the communication-based division is observably not a direct function of politics, ideology, sex, religion, or even intelligence, although there are clear patterns and relationships that can be observed in those regards.  Most people have at least a bit of rabbit in them, and although insufficient intelligence restricts many people to the rhetorical level, there are many highly intelligent people of both sexes who are capable of the dialectic who nevertheless shun it, or worse, utilize a perverted, rhetorical form of it.

In my next post on the subject, I’ll explain how the Rabbit People communicate, how one must communicate with them, and provide some examples of rabbitry both high and low.

They will not pay

Karl Denninger exhorts today’s youth and tomorrow’s debt-holders:

You have committed no crime.  You thus cannot be compelled to either slavery or involuntary servitude.  And until your 18th birthday, you cannot lawfully consent to servitude.  It is only upon your 18th birthday that you can consent.

So I say to you today, that it is your right to stand as American Citizens, irrespective of your age who have not yet consented, and say in a loud, clear voice:

I WILL NOT PAY

You should and indeed must say it to your parents.  You should and indeed must say it in your schools.  You should and indeed must pass this letter around to your friends and others in your class and those who you associate and hang out with.  And you must say this every day, in a louder and more-cohesive voice — today, tomorrow, the next day and every day thereafter, until we the “old geezers”, realize that you’re serious.

We, the “old geezers”, never had the right to try to force you to pay $180,000 of your money that you would earn tomorrow, an amount that has almost tripled in the last ten years and will triple again if you don’t put your foot down and demand it stop.

There is only one way to make sure it stops, and that is to make very clear to everyone the following:

YOU WILL NOT PAY

You must say it, and you must mean it.  You must convince all those around you, especially the adults around you, that you mean it. 

You must do it now, because if you don’t, or worse you take any act that confirms that you’re ok with that $180,000 in debt that was forced upon you then you will be forced to pay not only that but the hundreds of thousands more that will be added over the next decades. 

Of course, it doesn’t actually matter whether they warn their parents and grandparents or not.  They will not pay.  They will not pay because they will not be able to pay.

Preach it, brother Karl

Karl thunders from the metaphorical pulpit about the shameless hypocrisy of the anti-gun elite:

If you believe that you have a right to life because your creator
endowed you with that right, and that this right is unalienable and thus
cannot be taken from you (although it can certainly be disrespected!)
then it follows that you have not only the right but the responsibility to defend your life.  That is, you have the right and the responsibility to deter to the best of your ability any other person who would take your life from you.

You may choose to delegate this responsibility to others, as Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama have, but your right to life is not inferior to theirs. 
It is equal.  President Obama has no more right to live than you do. 
You are his equal from the standpoint of what your creator, and his
creator, endowed both of you with. So we have established that you
have the right to live, as does the President.  And if the President
has the right to defend his life with deadly force, and indeed the responsibility to do so, then, should it be necessary, so do you.

This
debate should end right there.  Up until all of these people in
political office disband their police forces, their Secret Service
details, throw down their own arms, armored cars, body armor and other
defensive means of interdicting assault they have nothing — not even a moral argument — behind them in their demand that you disarm and become an intentional victim — no matter who you are.

That is true.  That is truth.  As I said in my column last week, if you do not stand up for the right of the American to keep and bear arms, you are not an American.  You are not an adult.  If it weren’t for the genetics involved, you cannot even be considered Homo sapiens sapiens, because you are admittedly and consciously rejecting your God-given and unalienable rights as a human being.

Blame deinstitutionalization, not guns

Guns don’t kill people, crazy people who don’t want to get locked up kill people:

The gunman who slaughtered 20 children and six adults at a
Connecticut elementary school may have snapped because his mother was
planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility, according to a
lifelong resident of the area who was familiar with the killer’s family
and several of the victims’ families.

Adam Lanza, 20, targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown
after killing his mother early Friday because he believed she loved the
school “more than she loved him,” said Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up
not far from where the shooting took place. Flashman, a U.S. Marine, is
the son of a pastor at an area church where many of the victims’
families worship.

“From what I’ve been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the
court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed,”
Flashman told FoxNews.com. “Adam was apparently very upset about this.
He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he
was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him
off.”

Sometimes, it really is just the crazy.  And if you let the confirmed crazies run around free until they kill someone, you’re assured that eventually some of them are going to do it.

What is wrong with killing children?

One of the interesting things I’ve noticed about all the emotional posturing about the Connecticut public school shootings is that a fair share of it is being done by people who claim there is no God, no good, and no evil.  Some of those people also happen to be those who assert that the Earth has too many people.

So, I find myself wondering if they are knowingly striking false poses in order to hide their amoral inhumanity at a time when sensitivities are particularly acute or if they are merely intellectually incoherent.  The logical fact of the matter is that if there is no divine spark within us, if we are merely bits of stardust that happens to have congregated in one of many possible manners, then therre is nothing wrong or objectionable in rearranging the stardust a little.  What difference does it make to an atom if it now happens to be part of arrangement X instead of arrangement Y?  What difference does it make to the universe?

And if consciousness does not exist, if it is the illusion that some of the more imaginative neurophilosophers claim it to be, then how can anyone possibly object to the elimination of the nonexistent?  What tragedy can be found in the transformation from nothing to nothing?

And if there are too many people on the Earth, in the country, then is not the reduction of that excessive number to be celebrated?

And if it is good, moral, and legal to kill a child in a trans-natal abortion, how long after birth is such killing truly licit?  Would it make the deaths of the young public schoolchildren more palatable to describe them as 24th trimester post-natal abortions?

In an increasingly post-Christian pagan society, what is is wrong, precisely, with killing schoolchildren?

God hates strength and beauty?

This post by Bruce Charlton on the evils of weightlifting strikes me as not only perverse, but downright irrelevant in the way that only the True Churchian can manage:

One of the evil signs of the times is the increased prevalence of intensive weight-training. This is part of a narcissistic, self-regarding, self-advertizing and physiologically- and psychologically-deranging package of extreme exercise regimes, extreme diets, and extreme chemical intake (especially androgen and growth hormones, but other drugs as well – continually expanding).

While Charlton points to the drugs as a useful red herring, it is clear that his argument is actually directed against all weightlifting and intentional body improvement.  If he lifted regularly himself, he’d know that the difference between a smoothly sculpted quasi-swimmer’s physique and a bulked-up bull’s physique is mostly in the amount of weight one lifts, not the time spent in the weight room and/or pool.  It would be interesting to know if he similarly objects to swimming and jogging, which can take up even more time than lifting does.  And while it cannot be denied that vanity plays a part in the pastime, he’s missing the personal challenge aspect that is much more important.  It’s not vanity that causes the lifter to go for that one more rep when his muscles are burning as if they’re on fire and his energy is rapidly dropping to zero, it is the desire to master the weakness of the body.

More importantly, he is spurning the manifold benefits of the discipline involved, discipline that is so obviously lacking in modern society.  It is simply ludicrous that in a post-Christian West, where a ludicrous percentage of the population has lapsed completely into gluttony and sloth, waddling from one sugar distribution point to another like addicts seeking their next fix, Charlton’s criticism is focused on one of the only elements of the population successfully resisting this decline into mindless obesity.

Who is giving into the flesh, the man who is ruled by his desires or the man who mercilessly tames them?  Indeed, the routine Charlton describes is more akin to those regarded as the holiest of men throughout most of the Christian era, the ascetics who mortified their flesh.  I am not saying weightlifting is akin to holiness; its purpose is not the glorification of God, after all, but neither is it the “rooted, habitual sin” he claims it to be.

Possibly influenced by the Greek ideal, Paul writes the following in 1 Thessalonians 5:23: “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Chris.”   Because weightlifting strengthens and preserves the body, because it strengthens one’s ability to tame one’s bodily desires and temptations,  it is not only compatible with a Christian life, it is advisable.


Moreover, weightlifting provides more than strength and self-discipline.  I always appreciated the sign over the mirror in the free weight room at the Northwest Fitness Center in Fridley, which said something to this effect:

This place is for the weak, that they may become strong.  This place is for the strong, that they may become humble.

The iron knows no mercy.  The iron strips away pretensions.  The iron reveals character.  This is not the hallmark of evil. 

All that being said, I think Charlton’s position is born more from ignorance than fundamental wrongheadedness.  No man who is so sound on the weaseling and treacherous  mendacity of Rowan Williams can be totally misguided.

The need for “sexism” in literature

In which I address a common complaint concerning female roles in fantasy literature at Alpha Game:

The problem with what Wohl advocates is that by putting modern views
on sexual roles and intersexual relations into the minds, mouths, and
worse, structures of an imaginary historical society, it destroys the
very structural foundations that make the society historical and the dramatic storylines credible – in some cases, even possible.  It’s problem similar to the one faced by secular writers,
who wish to simultaneously eliminate religion from their fictional medieval societies,
and yet retain the dramatic conflict created by the divine right of
kings.  However, it is more severe because the sexual aspect touches upon the
most concrete basis of every society: its ability to sustain itself
through the propagation of its members.

The “sexism” of
which Wohl and many of his commenters complain isn’t cultural, it is
simply the logical consequences of biological and martial imperatives.

WND column

The Liberty Curve

Most people instinctively understand the truth underlying the concept of the Laffer Curve. It articulates the elasticity of taxable income, which is to say, it shows how the amount of taxable income tends to change in response to changes in the income tax rate.  This is because most people understand that they modify their behavior in response to positive and negative stimuli.