Tag: society

The cost of post-Christianity

It is foolish to expect logical consistency from government, much less the media. But note the intrinsic contradiction between what influential members of the British public still believe their government to be and what their government actually proclaims that it is:

Item One: The state-sponsored Equality and Human Rights Commission intervened [in the case of the Johns family being denied foster parent status on the grounds of their Christianity] and argued that it was the duty of the state to protect vulnerable children from becoming “infected” with Judeo-Christian values of sexual morality. The rest is history, and in a startling judgment, the High Court held last Monday that the United Kingdom is a secular state and that Christianity as part of the law is “mere rhetoric.”

Item Two: Prof Simms comes down on the side of the latter [the pro-Libyan intervention position], citing Palmerston: “Our duty – our vocation – is not to enslave, but to set free… we stand at the head of moral, social, and political civilisation… when we see people battling against difficulties and struggling against obstacles in the pursuit of their rights, we may be permitted… if occasion require, to lend them a helping hand.”

Lord Palmerston was twice the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the second time from June 1859 to October 1865. At that time, the United Kingdom was an unequivocally Christian monarchy and Christianity was an integral aspect of its moral, social, and political civilization. Now, according to the High Court, the United Kingdom is Christian in rhetorical name only despite the fact that neither the laws nor the unwritten English constitution have changed. So, the only conclusion is that the United Kingdom no longer stands at the head of moral, social, and political civilization, but has been reduced to following the lead of the totalitarian pagan rulers of Continental Europe.

Britain can’t intervene in Libya because it has neither the ability nor the moral justification for doing so. On what basis would they intervene anyhohw, the inability of Libyans to democratically select their government? That would be ludicrous, considering that the British people have been repeatedly denied the referendum on the sacrifice of their national sovereignty to the European Union that they have been repeatedly promised. Political freedom is a predominantly Christian phenomenon and there is no evidence that it can survive paganism, which naturally gravitates towards totalitarian rule.

Consider the warning of one of the counsels involved:

It is important for Americans to understand these developments, so they can learn from the British experience. The first lesson is the speed and success of the secular ideology in replacing Judeo-Christian freedoms. In 1997, the United Kingdom was a more stable country than the United States; an evolving state with a millennium of religious liberty. If someone had told me then that within little more than a decade, stable Christian households would be deemed unsuitable to foster children, or that Crosses would be banned, or that hate-speech laws would be used to crush the very ideas of dissent, I would not have believed it. I would have been labeled an alarmist if I had expressed views to that avail.

The second factor to recognize is that the terms liberal, diversity, and tolerance are descriptors for a political program which logic and law alone cannot explain. Thirdly, the secular movement is but a variant of the utopian ambitions that have inspired man from the beginning of time. However, the endgame of such programs is always the same

Paul Diamond is exactly correct. The endgame of secular utopianism is always the same. It ends in the gulag, the guillotine, and the gas chamber. But the key point to remember is that however it ends, it always ends, because the Gates of Hell cannot and will not prevail.

Responding to a bully

The same brief clip has been uploaded over and over on the Web: A scrawny bully sucker punches a larger chunkier boy multiple times, as other kids look on, some taunting. Then suddenly, with the speed and agility of an alligator, the victim responds, flipping the kid and bodyslamming him. “There’ll be reprisals from other kids in the school and he still has to go to school somewhere,” Casey’s father told the Daily Telegraph. “He’s not a violent kid, it’s the first time he’s lashed out and I don’t want him to be victimized over that.” Casey’s father added, “He’s always been taught never to hit. Apparently other people’s parents don’t teach their kids that.”

There are some lessons worth noting here. First, smaller people can be bullies too, if they believe they can get away with it. This includes girls and women. And such bullies will continue to provoke and attack as long as the larger victim indicates his unwillingness to defend himself. This is why it is important to react strongly enough to inflict real pain on a woman or child the first time they hit you, as it will teach them an important lesson about your unwillingness to accept physical attack without the risk of serious injury. If a man submits to the physical bullying until it reaches the point at which he snaps, he’s a lot more likely to do more damage than he intends. In this case, the little bully was fortunate that he didn’t get his leg broken or his skull cracked on the concrete, not that he wouldn’t have merited it if he had.

And you never know who is going to decide to test you for one reason or another. A boy once inexplicably elected to kick me in the balls because I relayed his mother’s request that he go upstairs for dinner. It didn’t hurt, but I reacted strongly in order to communicate to him that attacking an adult man without provocation was an insanely stupid thing to do. Some people just need to learn life’s lessons in a physical manner. Don’t hesitate to instruct them in a calm, but thorough manner.

Second, I have reluctantly been convinced that people, and perhaps more importantly, the police, are much more accepting of locks and throws utilized in self-defense than they are of punches and kicks, despite the fact that locks and throws are potentially more damaging and lethal. So, if a bully throws a punch, instead of just trying to block it, step forward, grab the wrist, then step back and turn with your other hand placed behind the puncher’s elbow. This will use his momentum to face-plant him on the ground if you’re in the open or smash his head into the wall if you have your back to one and it will happen before anyone realizes what is taking place. If you’re dealing with more than one opponent and need a fast incapacitation, pull the punching arm straight to lock it and smash your forearm through the elbow. Even if you don’t break the arm, the guy isn’t going to be throwing any punches with it for a minute or two.

Third, learn to finish. Don’t step back when your opponent is down but not incapacitated or submissive, kick him in the face or in the sides. Once is sufficient, any more will have people thinking you’re trying to kill the guy and leaping in to stop you.

And finally, refusing to teach your kid to fight, or worse, teaching him to not defend himself, doesn’t mean that he won’t have to do so. In fact, it actually makes it much more likely that he’ll be targeted by bullies. Bullies, of both the physical and psychological varieties, are much more often cowards than real fighters, so they seek soft targets. Make it clear that you are not a soft target and there is a very good chance that you’ll never have a bully or a predator attempt to bother you in any way.

The divorce domino

I often find myself thinking that it would really behoove the chattering class to consider getting out of the large coastal cities before making grand, sweeping conclusions about modern society. It often appears to escape the mid-witted would-be intellectuals there that as large and influential as those cities might be, they only represent a small portion of the American population.

On Thanksgiving 2008, Dana Adam Shapiro, a few years removed from his Oscar nomination for directing the documentary “Murderball,” visited his childhood home in Boston to find that a good friend of his was divorcing. The friend had been married for three years and, like Shapiro, was in his mid-30s. (Shapiro is now 37.) This was the fourth divorce that Shapiro heard about just that month. In fact, after absorbing the news, he sat down to make a list of all the couples he knew, under the age of 40, whose marriages had already broken up. He came up with 14 names.

I am older than Shapiro. I am married. If I make a list of all the couples that I know whose marriages broke up before the age of 40, I can come up with a grand total of three. (I’m assuming the writer meant “couples” rather than “names of individuals in broken couples” here.) I can stretch that to seven if I include couples that I don’t know very well. That represents less than 10 percent of the married couples under 44 that I know. Regardless of whether I look at the Shoreview Bible Study, which has only seen one divorce out of 15+ couples, or simply look at the marriages of our closest friends, where six couples out of six remain married, it seems absurd to present what is a potentially useful documentary on why married couples who break up do so as if the number of couples doing so is unbelievably high.

This is not to say that all of those marriages are equally happy, that any of them are immune to the possibility of breakup, or that there is nothing to be learned from looking at the fate of failed marriages. I cannot sit and view the relationships of others as a “smug married” not when both my parents and Spacebunny’s parents are divorced. But we can either learn from the negative examples of others or repeat them, and I am optimistic that Spacebunny and I are intelligent and observant enough to successfully manage the former. And since I wouldn’t conclude, from the basis of my personal experience, that divorce is very unusual and rare, so why would someone from the opposite end of the spectrum do so?

There is some reason to believe that Shapiro’s perception of marriage is a warped one caused by his choice of the wrong friends. As with obesity, divorce appears to be somewhat contagious. If those you consider your peers divorce over what is not infrequently either blatant narcissism or petty issues, it is much easier for you to justify doing so. Whereas on the other hand, if you see your peers sticking together in spite of him being a fundamental pain in the ass or her being an irritating bitch, divorce over lesser quotidian offenses is all but unthinkable.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to know that grass is just grass, wherever you go. Unless you’re married to a genuine psycho bitch, a frigid woman, or an unfaithful one, the woman you know is always better than the one you don’t.

It’s not hard to see the common thread in the three examples of failed marriages provided. “It’s all about me.” If your feelings for someone else are predominantly shaped by how they feel about you or what they provide for you, you probably shouldn’t get married. You’re not fit for it.

WND column

The New White Man’s Burden

Looking at population projections for Texas, demographer Steve Murdock concludes: “It’s basically over for Anglos.” Two of every three Texas children are now non-Anglo and the trend line will become even more pronounced in the future, said Murdock, former U.S. Census Bureau director and now director of the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas at Rice University.
– Texas Politics, Feb. 24, 2011

The harsh historical reality is that no human society ever survives. They come into being, they thrive, they decline and eventually they perish. If they were remarkable, perhaps they will leave indications of their past existence through literature and the arts, through place names and through their influence on subsequent ideas and modes of thought. But that does not bring them back to life; the modern Greece of IMF-inspired riots, burning banks and filthy streets is not the ancient Greece of the philosophers and the Athenian Empire.

Decrying anti-Anglicism

I found the following statement by the New York Times about the latest Charlie Sheen incident to be intriguing:

Why did the two parties decide now was the time to toss Mr. Sheen asunder? His vaguely anti-Semitic comments about the “Two and a Half Men” creator Chuck Lorre likely didn’t help (Mr. Sheen repeatedly called Mr. Lorre “Chaim Levine”; his given name is Charles Levine), but what probably pushed them over the edge was that Mr. Sheen became too much of a public relations burden.

I’ve noticed that when people are supportive or indifferent about something I have written, they invariably refer to me as Vox Day. On the other hand, when they are offended by it or opposed to it, they often elect to refer to my given name. But apparently, this is racism, so I shall be sure to call them on their anti-Anglic insensitivity in the future. It’s also interesting to see that Wikipedia features articles on Chuck Lorre and Charlie Sheen rather than Charles Levine and Carlos Estevez whereas the Wikipedia article devoted to me is not listed under Vox Day. I can only conclude that Wikipedia is rife with anti-Anglic racists.

Taxes and diversity

Newsflash: people don’t like them:

St. Louis is losing residents, according to U.S. Census figures released Thursday, and the population decline goes deeper than being another blow to the proud city’s image.
The drop will mean a financial loss that could cost the already cash-strapped Gateway City millions of dollars. Figures from the 2010 census were a bitter disappointment, as the city’s population dipped to 319,294. That’s down more than 29,000 – a staggering 8 percent – from 2000.

The social planners can show multiracial socializing on every commercial, television show, and music video they like, but that’s never going to overcome basic biological preferences. As times get harder, the need for tight-knit communities will spring to the fore and that’s when the forced vibrancy will start to turn increasingly ugly. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that the French were drowning Algerians in the Seine. And the people most responsible for the bloodshed won’t be those fighting it out, but those who consciously encouraged the creation of the multi-ethnic societies in full knowledge of the historical record.

Feminism is good for children

Assuming, that is, that you want them to be fat little bastards:

American researchers found that children in the sixth grade – aged 11 or 12 – whose mothers who were employed either full or part-time were six times more likely to be overweight…. According to the latest figures one in three children is now overweight by the time they leave primary school, aged 11. A fifth are classified as clinically obese, so fat that their health is at risk.

This isn’t surprising when you think aboout it. I’d noticed that kids with working moms didn’t tend to be as involved with sports, although I can’t say that I ever realized that they were so prone to being overweight. This means that in addition to reducing average wages, lowering the marriage and birth rates, and increasing the divorce and illegitimacy rates, feminism is also creating an obese population. Regardless of whether you are a man or a woman, with 40 years of its observable effects now recorded by history, you have to be almost willfully stupid to still support feminism in any way.

Actual persecution

As atheists continue whine about how no one likes them and how they are second-class citizens, Christians are still being murdered for their faith around the world… as they have been for the last two thousand years:

Islamist militants divided into two groups who accessed the Coptic homes through the roofs of their neighbors’ houses. The survivors say the masked attackers of the first home were led by Ibrahim Hamdy Ibrahim. They killed Joseph Waheeb Massoud, his wife Samah, their 15-year-old daughter Christine, and their eight-year-old son Fady Youssef. The other masked group was led by Yasser Essam Khaled. They killed Saleeb Ayad Mayez, his wife Zakia, their four-year-old son Joseph and three-year-old daughter Justina, his 23-year-old sister Amgad, their mother Zakia, and Saniora Fahim.

Richard Dawkins likes to assert that a child cannot have a religious identity. But the fact that a child can be killed for a nonexistent identity clearly disproves that assertion. It certainly hasn’t stopped others who share Dawkins’s lack of religious identity from killing them. Given the way in which secularism has proven demographically barren, science has proven morally neutral, and democracy has proven to be a two-edged sword, it is time for the secularists and atheists of the West to seriously rethink their intransigent opposition to Christianity.

The choice is the same as it has always been for Europe and the West, between Christian civilization and pagan barbarism. The third option simply doesn’t exist. It’s not that Christianity needs the support of non-believers to survive, history from Rome to Communist China proves that it will survive and even thrive during periods of pagan persecution. It is Western civilization itself that requires non-believers to support Christian institutions and traditions; if secularists continue to align themselves with the pagans against Christendom, they will find themselves destroying the very aspect of society which they wished to save.

Consider the name

In which Israeli commentators appear to be genuinely surprised that a man named Hussein who attended madrassahs as a child might take a slightly different tack in the Middle East than his white Episcopalian predecessors:

If Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak is toppled, Israel will lose one of its very few friends in a hostile neighborhood and President Barack Obama will bear a large share of the blame, Israeli pundits said on Monday. Political commentators expressed shock at how the United States as well as its major European allies appeared to be ready to dump a staunch strategic ally of three decades, simply to conform to the current ideology of political correctness….

Who is advising them, he asked, “to fuel the mob raging in the streets of Egypt and to demand the head of the person who five minutes ago was the bold ally of the president … an almost lone voice of sanity in a Middle East?”

Regardless of whether Obama is a Muslim himself or not, he is obviously going to be sympathetic to the various causes of the non-European third worlders because he considers himself one of them. Look at how he behaves towards longtime European allies like the English versus his kowtowing before the Saudi king and the head of the Chinese regime. Obama’s degrees from Columbia and Harvard no more give him a normal American perspective than did the King of Jordan’s attendance at Deerfield Academy and Georgetown.

It’s rather like the Romans being surprised when they support a Teutonic general’s claim to the imperial throne and then see him taking sides in barbarian affairs. If against all expectations he somehow managed to survive and win a second term, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Obama start openly supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Ikhwān against Israel.

UPDATE: I wrote that before I read this article: The Obama administration said for the first time that it supports a role for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist organization, in a reformed Egyptian government. The organization must reject violence and recognize democratic goals if the U.S. is to be comfortable with it taking part in the government, the White House said.

It would be interesting to learn what “democratic goals” are supposed to be, especially in light of how the Muslim Brotherhood is a bigger fan of genuine democracy right now than the Obama administration is.

Margaret Thatcher was right

The politicians have run out of the middle class’s money after spending it all on the bankers, the immigrants, and the poor… who, it occurs to me, can be described more succinctly as “the non-working class”:

I watch countless news stories about people who are criminals (illegal aliens, felons) liars, cheats, or just stupid getting help with their mortgage loans because they “need it”. And people getting free medical services because they “need it”. And people declaring bankruptcy because it’s just too hard to pay the bills, they “need to”. All the while I see my government crushing people like me–expecting us to just keep doing, just keep paying, just keep being responsible in order to make up for all of those people who were not.

The American middle class is on the verge of collapse, at which point it will almost certainly revolt in some manner. It will likely be less spectacular than the burning buildings in Cairo, but there is no way that the confluence of collapsing bubbles in real estate and education are not going to have a significant effect on middle class behavior once it becomes sufficiently obvious to everyone how they have been played for suckers and financially raped by the banks with the full connivance of the state and federal governments. The middle class revolt is going to start with a refusal to continue paying its debts for mortgages, credit cards, and college degrees. As for where it’s going to end, who can say?