The Paramilitarized Bureaucracies

Mark Steyn: The Paramilitarized Bureaucracies -- I don't have the time to fish out any of the gems, but as always, it's well worth reading the whole thing.

'Liberal' mugger: 'Give me OUR money'

Bruce McQuain: Famous dumb ideas: Let’s have a maximum wage, shall we?

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Billy Hollis: Obama: "I’m prepared to make a whole range of compromises" Me: “As long as you let him define what a compromise is”

When someone's goal is to take your liberty, as when someone's goal is to take your life, then *any* "compromise" with him is to surrender your liberty ... and your life.

It's not just 'feminists'

It's not just 'feminists' who "think" in the way described, but also most (incorrectly) self-identified conservatives -- Mark Richardson: How does an Oxford feminist decide moral issues?

I've often said that feminism is liberalism applied to the lives of women. And at the heart of liberalism is autonomy theory: the belief that autonomy is the overriding good that defines us as human. Therefore, feminism seeks to maximise the autonomy of women.

Sarah Pine is a young feminist at Oxford University. Her comments on two controversies at the university illustrate her commitment to autonomy theory.

The most recent one concerns a dating guide:

A Guide To Dating Posh Girls warns its readers of modest means that a partner from the upper echelons will have had so much sex she has ‘duly worked her way through the Eton rugby team’

Sarah Pine's response was this:

Treating women like objects that lack any autonomy in who they date or sleep with is outdated and boring.

So she isn't concerned to defend the reputation of the posh women being commented on; her focus instead is that there might be a negative connotation to the idea of promiscuity - a limitation on the autonomous choice of women to sleep with however many men they like. ...

Incorrectly self-identified conservatives (*) will *always* defend the "right" of "strong, independent" womyn (**) to behave as sluts against the right of the rest of us to honestly say what they are when they do.

(*) who are actually "liberals" (as that word is currently used in America), for they implicitly and uncritically subscribe to the premises of "liberalism"; they incorrectly imagine they are conservatives because they do not (yet) want to go to all the places that the logic of those "liberal" premises dictates they must. But, they will, in time.

(**) who are so "strong" and "independent" that they collapse like wet tissue paper when they encounter views they don't like to have expressed, much less when they encounter reality, and who need those "white knights" to defend them against trogs like me.

JMSmith makes a good comment to Mr Richardson's post:

Perhaps you should say that feminism is liberalism applied exclusively to the lives of women. In the comments of the lady philosopher, for instance, a young woman is free to "work her way through the Eaton rugby team," but the writer of the dating guide is not free to register the fact. Likewise, a female prostitute is free to exploit her customers, but her pimp is not free to exploit the female prostitute.

The first example is especially interesting. Whose autonomy is to be protected? That of the slut, or of the slut shammer? ...

Promiscuity does plenty of harm, and yet liberalism defends it. Censoriousness of promiscuity seeks to avert this harm, and liberalism condemns it [the public disapproval of promiscuity and shaming of promiscuous persons]. Why is this?

Doing Well by Doing Good: Motel Version

David Friedman: Doing Well by Doing Good: Motel Version -- Much of what goes on in public life these days is just the sort of hypocrisy Mr Friedman noticed.

On Reading Yourself in the Story

Douglas Wilson: On Reading Yourself in the Story -- "... What we often fail to recognize is that true moral choices come in the context of the interplay of relationships between characters. Moral choices occur within stories, and if you don't understand the stories, then you won't understand the moral choices. Aaron wasn't walking along in the wilderness one day until he came across a golden calf which he then decided to worship. No, he was pressured by other characters in the story, characters he was afraid of. To use this instance in application, if you can't see the characters you are afraid of, then you won't be able to see the golden calf either. ..."

Or, to put it another way, if you are more afraid of being scorned or mocked by the men who are already slaves to the Spirit of the Age than you are of being ultimately rejected by God, then you will worship the golden calf ... and you will call it "the wise thing to do", and you will viciously attack your (former) friends who will not bow down.

A Little Political Humor

Good night! The Democrats run this (hilarious, when you think about it) trope every election cycle: Republican Women for Obama

Here's Mark Steyn on this cycle's re-incarnation of the trope: Democratic Women for Romney*

Sometimes, one feels like Socrates

Deogolwulf: Thermippos — The Complete Dialogue

Should Todd Akin Drop Out?

Bob Parks: Should Todd Akin Drop Out? -- "Yes, he said something stupid and has apologized. However the same people claiming outrage are the some of the same that still supported Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton…"

What did he say that was stupid? As best I understand it, what he said is:

1) Not every time a woman charges 'Rape!' is *actually* a rape;

2) That a child may have been conceived by a rape is absolutely no justification for murdering him in the womb;

3) Conceptions from rapes are statistically rare, in any event:

3a) a woman's body seems to have some sort of built-in defense against such conceptions.

That last isn't stupid. It may be incorrect -- it's "common knowledge" via "old wives tales" -- but it isn't a stupid thing to say. It may even be correct.


Here's another claim that I expect most "liberals" will say is "stupid" -- "A girl who does not live in the same household as her biological father has a higher chance of entering puberty earlier than girls who do live with their biological fathers."

Or, to put it another way that will *really* cause the "liberals" to blow a mental gasket -- "Growing up in the same household with her biological father affords a girl some measure of protection against early sexual experimentation and early pregnancy."

However "stupid" it may seem, medical science says it's true -- Early Female Puberty Linked To Absent Biological Father [edit: while the linked article is but two years old, I had read similar article(s) a number of years ago; the point is, this effect has been known and studied for some time longer than two years.]

So, is it *really* "stupid" to suspect or believe that women's body may have built-in defenses against conceptions from rape?


Take-Home Message --
The fact is, 1) and 2) are true - and that he said those truths is why the “liberals” want to string him up. And, of course, the GOP Establishment, being "liberals" and all-but indistinguishable from Democrats, will never stand up for him.

Bob Parks: The Todd Akin Dangerous Precedent

Democrats are equal opportunity opportunists.

Michael Egnor: Vice-President from party that put people in chains accuses presidential candidate of party that took people out of chains of wanting to put people in chains. -- "... The Democratic Party is the party of race-baiting. It is the thread that runs from Preston Brooks through Nathan Bedford Forrest to George Wallace to Al Sharpton to Joe Biden. What unites Democrats through the past two centuries is the use of race hate and fear for political gain. It is race-baiting, not the particular race bated, that really matters to Democrats.

Democrats are equal opportunity opportunists."

Do read the whole thing

Incommunicado

Gentle Reader my recall my frequent grousing over the level or quality of wireless internet access service provided by Verizon, which, by the by, had been even worse over the past couple of months (*). A week and a half ago, I'd finally reached my limit of frustration, and cancelled the Verizon account, despite that they imagine they're going to charge me an early termination fee.

I gave Sprint's "4G wireless" service a try last week. Here at home, an area that was "Sprint territory" before Sprint spun off its landlines, it didn't work as well as the Verizon service. If it seemed to work better away from home, that might have been the eyes of hope.

Since Sprint and Verizon are using much the same infrastructure, and specifically in many cases the same cell towers, I wasn't too surprised at that result.

I thought about giving ATT a try ... but, for the device I'd have to buy, there'd have been a $35 "restocking" fee had I decided during the amusingly named "trial period" to cancel the "service". Plus, there is that stupid two-year contract all the big cell companies insist upon.

So, anyway, for the near future, I'm pretty much incommunicado except on the weekends.

(*) It always worked fine when I'd test it at home ... but I didn't need it at home; I have DSL at home (which is almost never out of commission, and even the slowest-rated DSL service that I have was consistently faster than the "4G wireless" service of Verizon).

[This is definitely not an item with an 'Ilioncentrism' label; I'm torqued]

Grounding Morality

Brent (Unapologetical; Apologetics without apology): Grounding Morality: The Atheist’s Problem

Three Men Walking

One normal guy walks up. I ask him to jump. He does.

Another guy walks up. He is as normal as the first guy, with one exception. He is walking in the air. I ask him to jump. He tries, but cannot. He is not grounded.

A third guy walks up. He is as normal as the other two, with a different exception. He is walking on the ground, but says that he doesn’t believe in the ground. I ask him to jump. He does.

Now, when I and others say you (an atheist) have no grounding for a binding morality, you think we are claiming that you are the second “guy”. “But”, you say, “Look! I can jump just as well as you!”, and you can.

But I am not claiming you are the second guy at all. I’m claiming that you’re the third guy. ...

Brent doesn't yet have a great many posts up on his blog, but do check out what he has written.

And as a side note, can somebody tell me why these cowards need to hide their faces?

In the comments -- "And as a side note, can somebody tell me why these cowards need to hide their faces?"

I hadn't considered it before, but it's strange, isn't it? What I mean is, when *we*, Christians and Jews, perform our religious obligations, we don't need to try to hide our faces from the light of day, from "God and all the angels".

Christians and Jews on the one hand, and Moslems on the other, do not "worship the same God", as the tender-heads are so fond of lying. We worship Life and Truth; the Slaves of Allah worship Death and the Lie.

With His Customary Mildness

Douglas Wilson: With My Customary Mildness

...
David Lampo, in his libertarian/Republican defense of [a dispensation of special privileges for "gays" as "gays"], says this: "It is time for them [Republicans and conservataives] to realize that, in a free society, the highest political virtue should be freedom, not adherence to any specific moral or religious code" (A Fundamental Freedom, p. xii).

Got it. In a free society the highest political virtue should be freedom. And in a triangular society, the highest political virtue should be drawing triangles. So much we may assume, even without argument. But why should a society be free? Who cares if we draw triangles? I invite you to just try to answer that question without recourse to any specific moral or religious code. In fact, let me change that invitation to a defiance. Lampo is not providing serious political analysis here -- these are patched-together bromides from a political operative trying to get new talking points into circulation. Virtue requires serious definition, and it must have a foundation. Public virtue is a species of virtue, and it is no less in need of definition (and foundations) than is virtue generally.

...To return to Lampo's previous point, what should we call it if someone rejects the "highest political virtue" of "freedom"? What is that? Is it immoral to do such a thing? If so, by what standard? If not, why should we worry about transgressing that boundary? Who cares?
...

Or, to put it more bluntly -- those persons who speak of a "need" (much less an oughtness) to have a politics free of moral considerations are either unbelievably ignorant (*) or are disingenuous blackguards.

It's utterly impossible to have a politics free of moral considerations, for politics just is the art of what, and why, and how, we shall compell one another to do or to not do.

The only option in this regard is whether your politics will be based on true and correct moral considerations, or on false.


(*) unless it's simply that they are unspeakably stupid.

Sometimes truth just sort of ekes out of the Obama campaign

Brutally Honest: Sometimes truth just sort of ekes out of the Obama campaign --

Stephanie Cutter: "You know I heard Mitt Romney deride the $700 billion cuts in Medicare that the president achieved through health care reform"

B.H.: "But... but... I thought it was those evil Republicans who are tossing grandmas from cliffs..."

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As I keep pointing out, you cannot *reason* with "liberals" and other leftists, for they will say *anything* ... and its opposite/denial.

The Joe that keeps on jivin'

Bob Parks: The B&R Wednesday Skim

Re: the video which leads the above post --

I suppose that no one is shocked that a (rich) Northern "light-skinned" (*) "liberal" who speaks "with no [condescending] Negro dialect, unless he want[s] to have one" doesn't know that, in this context, the correct phrasing isn't "they gonna put y'all back in chains", but rather "they gonna put [ALL] y'all back in chains!"



(*) and, clearly, light-headed ... except for the plugs.

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The Colored Conservative: Joe Biden and Liberal Racism

Bumbling Biden is at it again. This guy is his own worst enemy.

Tuesday during a campaign speech in Virginia, VP Biden told the crowd that Mitt Romney’s policies where going to “unchain Wall Street,” while at the same time would also put people “back in chains.”

Whether or not you agree with what he said isn’t the issue. The issue is that a Democrat – once again- speaks to an audience which is predominately black or in a city which is predominately black in a condescending, jive-talkin’, faux- negro dialect seeking to exploit blacks by affecting verbal mannerisms to achieve solidarity while exploiting an undercurrent of racial tension…simply to collect votes.

This is the same Joe Biden who said that Barack Obama- who at the time was running for president – was “[the] first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
...
What the hell is wrong with Democrats that they think they can’t relate to blacks like regular folk? Why do they feel the need to constantly appropriate the mannerisms of a Baptist preacher or to stereotypically, “talk black?” Why are Democrats always using race as an issue to manipulate black emotions?

Answer- blacks let them.

If a white non-Democrat or conservative attempted to shuck-and-jive a black audience it would rightly be called what it is- racist. But when a Democrat of any color does it, it’s defended by the President, the WH spokespeople and the mainstream media as being within the bounds decency.

So, as we often see: liberal racism=good; conservative racism=bad.

As long as black folks continue to vote Democrat and not make the party of the Klan actually earn black votes with outcome-based policies rather than intention-based policies and to force the Democrats to relate to them in a dignified manner, we will continue to see Democrat politicians perform more and more minstrel, Stepin Fetchit speeches that insult the very people who support them.

If blacks don’t take themselves seriously, who will?

"Answer- blacks let them" and "If blacks don’t take themselves seriously, who will?"

Exactly. "Liberals" look down their noses at blacks because most American blacks have willingly sold their own honor -- and the futures of their own children -- for the same old few rhetorical baubles come election time. "Liberals" have no respect for black Americans because most American blacks have no self-respect.

Moreover, it is in the DNA of Democrats to look down their noses at blacks; for let it never be forgotten that the Democratic Party is the party of slavery and Jim Crow and the KKK.

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Also, Gentle Reader, pay attention to that bit before: "... Romney wants ta let the ... he said, in the first hundred days, he's gonna let the Big Banks once again write their own rules .... un-chaaiinn Wall Street!"

What is this [merde]!? Joe Biden (Joe Biden!!?), of the Obama/Biden pseudo-Administration, has the audacity-of-hope to accuse-and-condemn someone else for assertedly wanting to "let the Big Banks once again write their own rules"? What?! Is he outraged (outraged! I say) that Romney is, according to his own allegation, trying to "steal" the Dems' position vis-a-vis "letting the Big Banks once again write their own rules"?

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edit 2012/08/19:
Bob Parks: Defending Racism, Liberally -- "Any number of white liberals have had no problem breaking into negro dialects in front of black audiences. Hillary Clinton in Selma or Al Gore in front of the NAACP in 2000. Thank God they don’t break into spirituals."

It's to laugh

... reasoning with "liberals", that is.

Consider -- Michael Egnor: Are "suppressed" voters without ID receiving government money-- without ID?

edit:
If dead persons and cartoon characters were voting Republican, the "liberals" would be yowling for voter ID laws to be enacted and enforced.

'Gay Bullying: The Early Years'

Kathy Shaidle links to this gratuitous and tendentious silliness. I link to it to share with Gentle Reader the comment she left there:

Alt title:

Gay Bullying: The Early Years.

They refused to shut down their bath houses or change their disease-spreading behaviours even when the facts were known.

Some desecrated churches, others intentionally infected the blood supply, all to "raise awareness" and "make a point."

Instead, they blamed the Pope (!) and Ronald Reagan (!!) for their own irresponsible actions.

They lied and said "anyone can get AIDS" when the numbers proved the opposite.

All these years later, after all the red ribbons and free condoms and PSAs, HIV-infection is rising. Why?

Because some men still refuse to change their irresponsible sexual behaviors.

Billions of dollars have been diverted into treating this preventable disease instead of finding cures for cancer, MS -- any number of "unglamorous" diseases.

Oh and just to cut your assumptions off at the pass:

My mother was the only woman guest at a "gay wedding" in 1965. I lived in Toronto's Boystown for a dozen years. My business partner is a gay Muslim.

But facts are facts. And the horrible fact is:

You probably don't spend a lot of time with ordinary, "flyover" folks. But they are sick of all this petulance and whining and the glamorization of obnoxious behavior.

A backlash is coming and it will be ugly. I don't say that with relish.

What Miss Shaidle said is exactly the truth ... and so, of course, the "liberal" response to it is: "Don't look now, your hate is showing."

The cliff is real

Mark Steyn: Cliff Notes-- "... If the media-Democrat alliance want a clifftop election, bring it on. If the Dems are determined to make Ryan own the plummeting granny, make them own the cliff. Unlike the plummeting granny, the cliff is real."

Need I Say More?

Despite what some assert

Despite what some assert ... generally, the willfully ignorant and/or outright liars ... Truman was in the right (*) to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Kathy Shaidle: Happy Hiroshima Day! (video)


(*) And surely, Gentle Reader knows how I have to grit my teeth to find anything positive to say about most any Democratic politician, going all the way back to that sneak and weasel, Thomas Jefferson.

Chick-fil-A and the Attack of the Tyrannatots

Douglas Wilson: Chick-fil-A and the Attack of the Tyrannatots

...
Criminalizing sin and folly is always a dangerous thing to do. Where do you stop? And once you have realized you can't stop, you will wind up -- as we manifestly have done -- criminalizing the refusal to go along with sin and folly.
...
Now anybody who cannot see how the legal solutions to the first problem created this second problem is simply not paying attention. Because of how we solved the first problem (not because we solved it), we are smack in middle of the second problem. The two issues are plainly connected, and if we want to solve them biblically, we have to think in terms of principle. And you can't think in terms of principle when you don't have any.

Exactly

Not all sinful acts should be criminalized, for government is a very dangerous thing, and the cure may be worse than the disease. And, as is the mode du jour, when you are criminalizing not acts, but attitudes, the *only* possible result is to increase tyranny.

See also, Alan Roebuck: A Nation That Honors Sin

See also, Ed Driscoll: Five Angry Pieces, Revisited

...
This scene is generally remembered more than the rest of the movie. In context, however, it is even more telling. Dupea isn’t really a working-class guy. He was born to wealth and was successful as a concert pianist, and his work as an oil rigger is just his personal quest for authenticity. The waitress, however, is the real thing: a woman with few other options trying to make a living at a tough job. So the restaurant scene really offers a privileged elitist who has the freedom to float among whatever social roles he pleases, raging against someone he regards as beneath him because she is so bound to the conventions of her job. She is a resident of the working class; he is merely a truculent visitor. But the movie essentially invites us to see things his way. We, the sophisticated audience, are asked to share in Dupea’s contempt for meaningless conventions, even if we squirm a little at his cruelty to the waitress. ...

Even as a youngster, I understood this about the well-off "liberals" (and especially the hard-code leftists) who like to make a pose of "siding with the little man" ... to them, we are just props in their little solipsistic psychodramas, and they actively despise us.

Did you hear about the asshole ...

Did you hear about the "liberal" asshole who thought it would be great fun to demonstrate, full-bore (and full-boor), his "liberal" "tolerance" and "respect for diverse points of view" to a hapless Chick-fil A employee ... and post the result on the interwebs? See, Bob Parks: Liberal Hate of the Day

This fool *was* the CFO/Treasurer of a not-insignificant company ... but, of course he was: "liberals" are almost always economically comfortable or the spoiled (and downwardly mobile) offspring of the economically comfortable. People like me, who grew up in poverty and earned what precarious economic comfort we may have, are almost never "liberals".

Welcome Russians!

One of the changes Google/Blogger recently made to Blogger.com is to present stats for one's blog, whether or not one was initially interested in them. I was not, and never would have gone out of my way to see them ... yet, there they are, everytime I log in. And, so, I look.

One thing I've noticed is that a significant number of pageviews for this blog are from Russia. For example, in the past month (however the software defines that), there were 839 pageviews from Russia, with the next highest being 780 from the USA.

So, Welcome Russians!

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But, to me, the really weird thing about these pageview stats is that the all-time 'favorite' post is the 'Before Pornistan' post, made two-and-a-half years ago, which has garnered more views than the next three posts combined, and which even today is almost always the top "vote getter" week-to-week and month-to-month. Strangely, the post to which I'd linked, which showed a bare-breasted photo of Playboy's Miss March 1966 (and which I presume to be the real draw) no longer exists.

I can't believe you're going to believe your lying eyes

Bob Parks: Flashback Of The Day

I would go further

Mark Steyn: The Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities -- "If you’re gay and you think opportunist thugs like Menino and Emanuel are really there for you, you’re a sap."

I would go further and say that if you’re "gay" and you are not outraged at all the thuggery in the name of "gay rights" currently being committed against the spirit of the US Constitution and against the freedoms and rights of all Americans, then you deserve what's going to happen to you in a few years when this leftist gambit all plays out.