The Illegality of Christianity

I read without real surprise about the Oregon bakery that's gone out of business because the Christian owners refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding.

In addition, they're being investigated by the State of Oregon for discriminatory practices.

Here's why I'm not surprised: in many states, it is already illegal to practice Christianity and I'll formulate an argument for why.

Christianity is a discriminatory religion.

It makes certain claims about humanity, and these claims are intensely discriminatory. It calls people names. It categorizes people.

Of course, it also freely ‘offers’ a way out of that categorization, but that's neither here nor there in the context of this post.

In the modern state, it has become illegal to discriminate.

Therefore to practice Christianity is illegal.

There are quite a number of people who can't wait to see this come to actual, practical fruition, when practicing Christians will be imprisoned for holding fast to a faith that discriminates.

These will be interesting times.

Behold A Pale Horse

I do not watch the news (and no, not even Fox News). I stay away from these 24-hour factories of perfectly useless information because they have a way of sensationalizing their product such that one ends up believing the hype. What I’ve noticed by doing so is that 95% of what they deem newsworthy is definitely not. 4% of it is barely newsworthy and certainly will have no bearing on my everyday life. Which leaves the 1%.

Ah yes, the 1%, made famous by a group of unwashed, entitled jerks in makeshift camps (I had typed makeshit, which is actually precisely what these camps were). The 1% of news that actually is pertinent to my life. Yet even then they manage to make a mess of it, marketing it with such ferocity and frequency, it sears trails in the brain resulting in information overload and fatigue.

Friday, 14 December, 2012. Newtown, Connecticut. A ‘crazed’ gunman—and boy, don’t we hope he was crazy!—forced his way into the so-called Gun-Free zone of an elementary school and slaughtered the most innocent of victims possible. No one could protect those children from the onslaught of this asshole, not the teachers responsible for the kids’ safety and certainly not a piece of paper (the law).

As I was at the gym tonight, I found myself in the unfortunate circumstance of forced watching—volumeless—the usual suspects: CNN, NBC, MSNBC, and FOX. These networks and their smarmy hosts had descended on the small town in CT, snagging at anyone who wanted a few minutes of fame: tell us what you know, even if you don’t know anything. And everyone, believing of course that being on television is THE BEST THING EVER! obliges, including relatives of the murdered children!

Every so often, they would feature the pictures of the murdered children with their ages (6! 7!) highlighting the sorrow of a life snuffed out way, way too young. Interspersed with these grim, lump-inducing pictures, these media vultures leveled the info that this or that senator had rescinded his previous stance on Guns (“No one needs an Assault Weapon to go hunting!”) in seeming courageous defiance of the NRA! Some courage, some defiance. We have come a long way since ‘give me freedom or give me death.’

All at once I was overcome with an intense feeling of loathing for these media scum. Oh! You could just sense the gloating, the almost orgasmic delight—with the appropriate somber mask in place of course—that children had died so that their political agenda would finally (finally!) be pushed through: Assault Weapons Ban, Y’ALL!

I was so overcome with this feeling of scorn, that I fired off several tweets of invective. Yes, in America, that is what now passes as a display of indignation, 140 characters of hard-hitting snark. Useless, and like most of the citizenry, completely ineffective. As is this blog post. No one will listen, and even if they do and especially even if they agree, a barely noticeable nod will appear and vanish like the morning dew. Life goes on, Monday Night Football reappears to take up a place of honor in our mental lives.

I realized that in two months, the names and faces of these precious children will fade from national memory. Their parts have been played, and Obama—I will not call that phony, reprobate cast about President, as an ineffective measure of the derision I hold for that shitbird—and his liberal ilk will have rammed down our collective throats another completely ineffective piece of legislation (“We did something!”) aimed at … what, exactly? The last time this was tried in 1994, absolutely nothing came of it. Let me repeat that for the hard-of-understanding: nothing came of it. Zilch, nada, zip, zero, NOTHING.

Laws do not deter criminal behavior. This is something we all know and if you were the victim, what you have experienced. Like so-called Airport Security, it’s Kabuki theater, meaningless, a storm in a tea cup. If these sorts of bans worked, the United Kingdom would be the safest place, but don’t look up the actual statistics unless you want to be shocked—if that is still possible. Because since their ban, “gun crime” has bloomed quite nicely, thank you very much.

I could go on talking about the statistics and the empirical results of these sorts of legislation and their utter uselessness, but that is not what matters any longer. No, in America, we have become a nation of thirteen-year-old girls. Emotion reigns supreme, it overshadows all thought, all action. It overshadows entertainment, political discourse and every facet of life. We have become a nation of entitled thirteen-year-olds thinking feeling for today only.

Thirteen-year-old girls form cliques, a herd of conformist titterers. Go against the wishes of the herd and suffer the consequences of ostracism and exile, as screed after teenage-angst-filled screed is directed at the unfortunate trespasser in the form of endless snark, petitions signed to rid the trespasser of their jobs, aided and abetted by the Mainstream Media. Since their ‘parents’ are also thirteen, lack education and understanding and therefore wisdom, no guidance or discipline is forthcoming from that quarter. When the feelings get overwhelming, clique members seek comfort in distraction. Like 13-year-old girls, we don’t produce, we consume and voraciously so.

Even so-called Conservatives are 13-year-olds; slightly plainer and certainly pudgier 13-year-olds, sure, and as such not members of the ‘elite’ (elitist?) Cheerleading squad fawned over in the Leftist corner of the cafeteria. While not members of that particular group, this doesn’t prevent the Conservative brand of 13-year-old girls from forming their own less shiny facsimile of that group all the while daydreaming of being just as popular, pimples and crooked teeth notwithstanding (wouldn’t it be so cool if the media was on our side?!)

Conservatives may not be as flighty, but they are still 13. Which means emotion over substance, knee-jerk, thoughtless reactions (honestly, the woman’s body rejects the rapist’s baby?!). No sir, Conservatives are just as bad. I have read it somewhere that Social Conservatives are Third Wave Feminists who don’t believe in abortion and thinking about it, there is truth to this put-down. If you’re a Conservative and that statement stings, it does so for a very good reason.

So who’s in charge of this once-might nation? The depressing answer is no one. The ship of state is adrift in a sea of irrelevancy: the things that should matter don’t, even if we could determine what was relevant.What a mess!

An enchanting magic trick, once learned, will become prosaic and disappointing. Before I arrived its shores, America used to be my magic trick, but now I can see where the magician hid the string of dirty handkerchiefs and I am no longer enchanted.

Elections

Mencken:

“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

 Harumph.

Seeing as I obviously have no idea what I'm doing re politics, I'm going to stop writing about it.

Rape And Truth

Dennis Prager is an astute and eloquent observer of the human condition. In Worse Than Wrong, he dissects Representative Akin’s mindflub. An excerpt:

While he should not have used the term “legitimate rape,” he could have explained later that, given the expanded definitions of rape, not all claims of “rape” are truly rape. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for “Feminist Perspectives on Rape,” for example, states that “we must recognize that, in some cases, ‘yes’ also means no. . . . The man may threaten to sue for custody of their children, to derail her green card application, to evict her, or simply to sulk and make her life miserable for days should she refuse to have sex. Which (if any) such nonviolent coercive pressures should be regarded as rape, either morally or legally, is a matter of some controversy.”

That would have largely ended the issue. And he could have further noted that Republicans generally incline toward harsher penalties for violent crime than do Democrats.

However, as usual there are deeper issues with which to contend and Prager, also as usual, does an outstanding job of revealing those issues and thus why Akin’s candidacy is no longer viable.

Read the rest and be edified (or, if you’re a liberal, angered).

Government Bearing Gifts

Here’s a pithy summation of why higher education isn’t either:

There's something of a pattern here. The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we'll have more middle class people.

But homeownership and college aren't causes of middle-class status, they're markers for possessing the kinds of traits -- self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. -- that let you enter, and stay in, the middle class.

Read the rest.

Veritas Odium Parit

Terence, in his Andria, wrote that truth can breed hatred.

From Crimes Against Logic:

The slogan, “You are entitled to your own opinion” is so often repeated that it is near impossible for the brain of a modern Westerner not to have absorbed it.

Like many other views that have at times enjoyed universal assent, however, it isn’t true. You don’t really have a right to your own opinions. And the idea that you do, besides being false, is forever invoked when it would be irrelevant even if it were true.

The Irrelevant Right

Before showing that this cliché is false, let’s first be clear that its common use in discussion or debate really does amount to a fallacy. It is often used preemptively, when an assertion is prefaced with the acknowledge that “Of course, you are entitled to you opinion, but …” Yet its more basic use, which the above acknowledgement is intended to preempt, is false.

Jack has offered some opinion—that President Bush invaded Iraq to steal its oil, let’s say—with which his friend Jill disagrees. Jill offers some reasons why Jack’s opinion is wrong and after a few unsuccessful attempts at answer them, Jack petulantly retorts that he is entitled to his opinion.

The fallacy lies in Jack’s assumption that this retort is somehow a satisfactory reply to Jill’s objections, while, in fact, it is completely irrelevant. Jack and Jill disagreed about Bush’s motivation for infacing Iraq, and Jill gave reasons to believe that Jack was mistaken. She did not claim that he had no right to this mistaken view. By pointing out that he is entitled to his view, Jack has simply changed the subject from the original topic, the reason Iraq was invaded, to a discussion of his right. For all it contributes to the invasion question, he may as well have pointed out that whales are warm-blooded or that in Spain it rains mainly on the plains.

As with most of our fallacies, once seen, it is obvious. Here is a simple way of putting it. If the opinions to which we are entitled might nevertheless be false, the entitlement cannot properly be invoked to settle a dispute. It adds no new information on the original matter; it does nothing to show that the opinion in question is true.

Interpreting the cliché to exclude the possibility of falsity—that is, to mean that we are entitled to have all our opinions be true—has two problems. First, it is ridiculous. Second, it does not in fact make the entitlement to an opinion relevant in deciding who is correct in any dispute. If Jack has a right to his true opinion then presumably Jill has a right to hers too. But then, since Jack and Jill disagree, one of them must be suffering a rights violation; one of them has a false belief. So, even if we had the right to true beliefs, that would only show that it is a right that is violated all the time, on precisely those occasions when our opinions are in fact false. In any dispute, to know whose right to a true belief is being violated we would first need to settle the original dispute—in the case of Jack and Jill, about President Bush’s reason for invading Iraq. And a diversion on the matter of rights gets no one any closer to answering that question.

So, even on the strongest, and utterly incredible, interpretation of our opinion entitlement, it is irrelevant to anything else we might be debating. Why then is insisting on one’s right to an opinion such a popular argumentative ploy?

In part, it is encouraged by an ambiguity in the word entitlement. It has a political or legal interpretation, by which we are all entitled to any opinion we might have, however groundless. But it also has an epistemic interpretation, that is, one related to, or concerned with, truth or knowledge. You are entitled to an opinion, in this epistemic sense, only when you have good reasons for holding it: evidence, sound arguments, and so on. Far from being universal, this epistemic entitlement is the kind you earn [emphasis mine]. It is like being entitle to boast, which depends on having done something worth boasting about.

So, the two senses of entitlement could not be further from each other. Yet it is too tempting to muddle them. The implied argument of the muddler runs as follows:

1. If someone is entitled to an opinion then her opinion is well-supported by evidence. (This is precisely what it means to be entitled to an opinion.)
2. I am entitled to my opinion (as is everyone in a democratic society).
3. Therefore, my opinion is well-supported by evidence.

This is a beautiful example of the fallacy of equivocation, i.e., slipping between different meanings of a word in an argument that would be valid only if the word were used with the same meaning throughout.

Once pointed out, it’s easy to see that this confusion of the political with the epistemic notion of entitlement is a mistake. And though, strictly, that will do for the purposes of this book, I don’t want to leave the matter here. Even if the cliché that we are entitled to our opinions is not employed in the truly egregious way so far discussed, it is part of a mindset that increasingly impedes the free flow of ideas and their robust assessment. Many people seem to feel that their opinions are somehow sacred, so that everyone else is obliged to handle them with great care. When confronted with counterarguments, they do not pause and wonder if they might be wrong after all. They take offense.

The culture of caution this attitude generates is a serious obstacle to those who wish to get at the truth. So it is important to strip away any bogus ideas that support the attitude, such as the idea that we all have a right to our own opinions.

Rights and Duties

To see that there is really nothing at all to this idea that we have a right to our opinions we need only understand one basic point about rights, namely, that rights entail duties [emphasis mine]. I don’t mean to endorse the fashionable slogan, “No rights without responsibilities,” which is supposed to justify policies whereby the government imposes good behavior conditions on the receipt of social welfare. I mean something more fundamental about rights: they are defined by the duties to which they give rise.

The law gives all citizens a right to life. Your right to life means that everyone has a duty not to kill you. This is not something that a government may or may not decide to associate with your right to life; it is that right. A law that did not impose on others a duty not to kill you would fail to establish your right to life. Does your right to life mean that others have a duty to feed  you, to house you, or to provide you with medical care? These are hotly debated questions, but no one doubts that the answer to these questions about others’ duties are what define and delimit the right to life.

So when anyone claims a right, first ask which duties does this right impose on others; that will tell you what the right is supposed to be. And it also provides a good test for whether there is, or should be, any such right. It will often be clear that no one really has the implied duties, or that it would be preposterous to claim they should.

Mary Robinson, in her former role as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, claimed that we have a human right to be healthy. Yet, without qualification it is difficult to know what she could possibly have meant. According to the World Health Organization:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

Yet everyone ages and dies. And when they do, their physical, mental, and social well-being are less than complete. So the simple fact of human mortality means that everyone’s right to be healthy is ultimately violated, and someone has failed to do his duty. But what could that duty be? To find a remedy for human mortality, presumably. But who could possibly bear this burden? Surely not each of us, who mostly know so little about the mechanics of human aging.

There is, of course, no unqualified human right to good health, any more than there is a human right to all those other things that it would be nice to have—such as long eyelashes and silk sheets—but which no one has a duty to provide. If she wanted to make sense of her claim, Mary Robinson should have started with the duties rather than the right. What duties does each of us have with respect to others’ health or governments with respect to the health of its citizens? Then we would know what this right to good health is supposed to amount to.

Opinion Duties

What then are the duties that the right to your opinions might entail? What am I obliged to do to respect this right? Let’s start from the boldest possible demands and word down to the more humble.

Does your right to your opinion oblige me to agree with you?

No. If only because that would be impossible to square with the universality of the right to an opinion. I, too, am entitled to my own opinion which might contradict yours. Then we can’t both do our duty toward each other. And think of the practical implications. Everyone would have to change his mind every time he met someone with a different opinion, changing his religion, his politics, his car, his eating habits. Foreign vacations would become as life-changing as the brochures. claim.

Does your right to your opinion oblige me to listen to you?

No. I haven’t the time. Many people have many opinions on many matters. You cannot walk through the West End of London without hearing some enthusiast declaring his opinions on our savior Jesus or on the Zionist conspiracy or some other topic of pressing concern. Listening to them all is practically impossible and not therefore a duty.

Does your right to your opinion oblige me to let you keep it?

This is closest to what I think most mean when they claim a right to their opinion. They do so at just that point in an argument when they would otherwise be forced to admit error and change their position. And this is also the weakest possible interpretation of the right and thus the most likely to pass the test.

Yet, it is still too strong. We have no duty to let others keep their opinions. On the contrary, we often have a duty to try to change them. Take an obvious example. You are about to cross the street with a friend. A car is coming yet your friend still takes a stride into the road. Knowing that she is not suicidal, you infer she is of the opinion that no cars are coming. Are you obliged to let her keep this opinion?

I say no. You ought to take every reasonable measure to change her opinions, perhaps by drawing her attention to the oncoming car, saying something like, “Look out, a car is coming.” By so doing, you have not violated her rights. Indeed, she will probably thank you. On matters like whether or not a car is about to crush them, everybody is interested in believing the truth; they will take the correction of their errors as a favor. The same goes for any other topic. If someone is interested in believing the truth, then she will not take the presentation of contrary evidence and argument as some kind of injury.

It’s just that, on some topics, many people are not really interested in believing the truth. They might prefer it if their opinion turns out to be true—that would be the icing on the cake—but truth is too important. Most of my friends, though subscribing to no particular religion, claim to believe in a “superior intelligence” or “something higher than us.” Yet they will also cheerfully admit to the absence of even a shred of evidence. Never mind. There is no cost in error, because the claim is so vague that it has no implications for action (unlike the case of the oncoming car). They just like believing it, perhaps because it would be nice if it were true, or because it helps them get along with their religious parents, or for some other reason.

But truth really is not the point, and it is most annoying to be pressed on the matter. And to register this, to make it clear that truth is neither here no there, they declare, “I am entitled to my opinion.” Once you hear these words, you should realize that it is simple rudeness to persist with the matter. You may be interested in whether or not their opinion is true, but take the hint, they aren’t.

Sclerosis

As Mark Steyn ably—and so humorously, as usual—points out, even the revolution isn't revolutionary:

America is seizing up before our eyes: The decrepit airports, the underwater property market, the education racket, the hyper-regulated business environment. Yet, curiously, the best example of this sclerosis is the alleged "revolutionary" movement itself. It's the voice of youth, yet everything about it is cobwebbed. It's more like an open-mike karaoke night of a revolution than the real thing. I don't mean just the placards with the same old portable quotes by Lenin et al, but also, say, the photograph in Forbes of Rachel, a 20-year-old "unemployed cosmetologist" with remarkably uncosmetological complexion, dressed in pink hair and nose ring as if it's London, 1977, and she's killing time at Camden Lock before the Pistols gig. Except that that's three-and-a-half decades ago, so it would be like the Sex Pistols dressing like the Andrews Sisters. Are America's revolting youth so totally pathetically moribund they can't even invent their own hideous fashion statements?

Heave a sigh and try to enjoy the decline, folks.

Chesterton On Political Speeches

“Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them.” G.K. Chesterton, ‘On the Cryptic and the Elliptic’

Panorama

I don't see ‘Heathen.’

[Hat tip: Redeemed Mind]

Redrum Map

 

Source: The Economist.

The Difference

Between a conservative and liberal “protests,” in a paragraph:

Just remember that when conservatives organize into grassroots movements, it’s almost always about protecting their own property and individual liberty.  When leftists decide to start grassroots movements, like OccupyWallStreet or Barr’s example of leftist populism, it almost always involves seizure of property, threats of violence, and eventually re-education camps and the guillotine.

They can’t help it:

Jesus The Meek

I left a comment on this post and thought it’d make a good post, so here:

Interesting article, well-written.

Not just the Church, but America, has lost its idea of what being a man means. Manliness is natural, and every man ultimately understands that intuitively. It's built-in, God-created.

It does not mean hyper-aggressive, but it does mean competitive. It does not mean violent, but it does mean having a "stand-up, take charge" attitude. In other words, it is a soldierly attitude: one that shows solid, honorable dependency, a knightly attitude.

For the last 60 years, this attitude has become anathema; America is systematically beating this characteristic out of its men and boys and there are few men standing athwart history, yelling “stop!” without the fusillade of invective (misogynist!!) directed their way. Many men'd rather disengage.

Which allows society free reign to reconfigure the male brain into a gentler, gelded vision of natural itself. From the moment a boy steps into daycare and until college—if he gets to attend—his role models are female. Those from whom he seeks approval are 90% female. And many times, these female teachers will not tolerate “normal,” i.e. generally rowdy male behavior in class. No, what they want are easy-going boy-girls. Girls, on the other hand, are uniquely and naturally suited for such environments. I believe this is the main source of the explosion in mood modifying drug prescriptions for boys of school age.

Unfortunately, this beat-down does not kill but merely diverts natural male inclinations so that we now see Christian (young) men taking the tough guy, MMA route. It's cosmetic, but betrays the guys' natural drives. Isn't that ironic?

The modern Church shares the guilt in allowing this state of affairs to continue and is being rewarded by the distinct lack of male attendance—at least not until those males are in their 70s and basically “inert.” Jesus The Meek hasn't left the building, he's still there whimpering in the corner.

I don’t know if I got my point across well, but who cares? No one’ll listen anyway.

Reductio

I was going to start this latest blog entry with the words, “I believe …” but then I thought about the fact there’s a distinct difference between belief and understanding so I’m going to restart this post as follows, enjoy:

I understand the fact that once one accepts a set of practices or beliefs, one also and without choice (at that point) accepts the consequential or corollary beliefs or practices as well.

You can choose to jump in front of a speeding locomotive, for example, but you can’t choose to have that train jump its tracks and veer around you. These are the “laws” of nature, (mostly) inviolable.

So it never ceases to astound when I see people attempt the impossible: accept an idea but refuse to follow that idea to its natural consequences. Once you pick up that rope, you have to follow it, hand over hand. There is only one other choice: drop it because unfortunately, you don’t get to stand there, rope in hand.

By the way, David Hume reputedly loved the rhetorical tactic of reductio ad absurdum. By showing the holder of an argument that following that argument to its logically consistent destination results in an absurdity, the shock is usually so profound as to cause a derailment. It is indeed, as I have demonstrated in the past, a very powerful argumentative strategy.

Not that I ain’t guilty of such myself. Ahem.

I have now read enough by Nancy Pearcey to know she owns a lucid, forceful mind. Her books, Total Truth and Saving Leonardo are beyond-words-excellent. I read anything she writes with thirst. Here’s a snippet from an article:

… “I’m a bit fuzzy on why it matters what a person does in the privacy of his or her bedroom, as long as it doesn’t affect me.”

But it does affect him — and everyone else. Every social practice is the expression of fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human. [Emphasis mine] When a society accepts and approves the practice, it implicitly commits itself to the worldview that supports it — all the more so if the practice is enshrined in law.

If America accepts practices such as same-sex “marriage,” in the process it will absorb the accompanying worldview — the redefinition of human personhood as a purely social construction — which opens the door to unlimited statism, because there is no human nature that an oppressive state could possibly offend.

Those who resist will be compelled by the state to go along, or face penalties for “discrimination.”

That article is found here.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Walter Williams:

Poverty in Egypt, or anywhere else, is not very difficult to explain. There are three basic causes: People are poor because they cannot produce anything highly valued by others. They can produce things highly valued by others but are hampered or prevented from doing so. Or, they volunteer to be poor.

Yah, what he said.

Also:

Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior.

Uhuh.

Thanks!

The Guns Of Navarone

The first time I held a gun was in my early youth. My uncle-in-law, a Major in the Nigerian Army, such as it is, had left a Browning on the floorboards on the driver’s side of his car and I found it while he was in the house with everyone else.

I was maybe 10? I don’t rightly recall.

I do remember thinking, “Wow!” as I held it, but instinctively didn’t put my finger on the trigger because somehow (TV?) I knew a trigger pull was required to make the gun go “boom!” I also do remember, now somewhat painfully, that I pointed the pistol at my uncle’s housemaid who’d been travelling with him and motioned her, in the way I’d seen in movies, to move “that way.” She laughed and told me to put the pistol away, which I did sheepishly.

All that time, however painful it is to recollect pointing a gun at something I didn’t wish to destroy, all my fingers were around the butt, nowhere near the trigger guard or the trigger itself.

Now that I live in the United States where the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees citizens the right to own firearms, I own several and I will always guard the ability this gives me to protect my family and myself. This I believe is one of the best things about this country—know why? Personal and painful experience.

In Nigeria, the only persons who had firearms fell into two general camps: the police and armed forces in one and robbers in another. (There was one other, tiny group: the very rich who, as usual, could and did own weapons because of their connections and wealth. Teeny tiny group.) In my experience, the police acted like robbers, setting up “road blocks” where they extorted bribes from drivers and generally threw their weight around at a terrified public. The armed forces would regularly wrest power from the civilians anytime they felt slighted and power was passed from one General to another many times when I lived there.

On the other hand, the robbers operated with near-impunity. There were times when roving bands of armed robbers would ensure a virtual curfew every night starting at twilight. Only an extreme emergency would cause people to leave their houses past 6pm because they didn’t want to get shot. Armed robbers brazenly walked up to my mother’s house and demanded entry, which they obtained then proceeded to steal my brother’s passport after threatening him with a hot iron to his face. The “police” were nowhere to be found and never did show up.

That’s what happens when only the “authorities” and outlaws own guns. I have every reason to believe that the Second Amendment makes the First possible. Simple as that.

So when I see Democrats, many Jews (who should know better, considering WWII) and other gun-banners attempt at every opportunity to turn America into a “gun-free” country, I shudder with dread. Not only is this more than just a bad idea, we threaten the very essence of our Republic, inherited from some very bright people indeed.

Now comes news that once again, Democrats want to ban high-capacity magazines. Why this makes any difference at all speaks either to their mens rea (look it up) or ignorance or both. I think it’s both: they don’t understand how guns work, but they know something about committing political suicide by seeking an outright ban so “death by a thousand cuts” it is!

Ann Coulter writes:

In response to Columbine, schools adopted "anti-bullying" policies; in response to Virginia Tech, eBay ceased selling magazines online; in response to the Tucson shooting, liberals want to ban the particular magazine Loughner used.
And then the next killer will come along with a different arsenal and a different motive, and the only way to stop him will be with an armed citizen with a gun.

Read the rest, it’s an intelligent precis of the topic and how brain-dead it is to continue attacking symptoms while the disease rages on unabated.

My Country ‘Tis Of Thee

If you don’t know this by reading my rants, I am an unabashed patriot. I love the United States because I know what it is to live elsewhere. Not just any elsewhere, but Africa ferchrissakes!

In other words, I subscribe to the catch-phrase “My country, right or wrong,” but as one of my few favorite Englishmen John Derbyshire (“Daarbysher”) writes,

most people forget the second half, which goes: “If right, to keep her right; if wrong, to put her right.”

I didn’t know this, but now that I do, I’m re-upping my subscription!

Men’s Plagiarist

Men’s Health magazine is one to which I used to subscribe until they started down the liberal road when, out of the blue, articles criticizing George Bush (not that there wasn’t a ton of things to criticize! I don’t like George Bush myself either) and slobbering all over The Annointed One in 2008.

Anyway, I stopped reading them for the most part, preferring to pilfer a free read at the bookstore instead because I believed them unscrupulous. Well, it turns out the managing editor David Zinczenko likes to steal his writers’ articles and pass them off as his own.

Pfft.

Google Johnny

I’ve read John August’s blog from time to time over the last two years or so and never noticed what a disingenuous blowhard he is until our falling out some time back. Here’s an example: John August’s post On Google, and evil contains this:

I love the United States, but it’s easy to see why many actions our country takes in its own self-interest appear evil to other parts of the world. We want to raise the standard of living worldwide — but not at the cost of American jobs. We believe strongly in human rights, unless we’re talking about suspected terrorists, in which case we go Jack Bauer in a hurry.

The first sentence says a lot in 28 words, doesn’t it? He loves the United States, but. It’s always like this with liberals, there’s always a but (or in John’s case, a butt.)

I love the US, but here’s why I hate it.

And dressing it in seemingly disinterested terms doesn’t make it any better, John. “… it’s easy to see why many actions … appear evil …” really means, I accept and affirm that many of the US’ actions are evil. Know why I say this? Because old John then proceeds to show by example exactly why the US’ actions are indeed evil.

The thing is, reduced to personal actions by one human being in everyday society, the way the US acts is exactly the way even John would act in a similar situation yet he, I’m sure, doesn’t think he’s evil. Far from it.

Here’s what I mean: take out the US and insert a more personal pronoun in his statement:

I love [myself], but it’s easy to see why many actions [I] take in [my own] self-interest appear evil to other parts of the world. [I] want to raise the standard of living worldwide — but not at the cost of [losing my job]. [I] believe strongly in human rights, unless [I’m] talking about suspected terrorists, in which case [I] go Jack Bauer in a hurry.

If you don’t think this is true, consider that if anyone—including pansy John who looks like he can’t —is ever faced with true menace (say a guy with a leveled pistol) against themselves and their family, channeling Jack Bauer would be the first thing on their mind. That is, if they haven’t completely stripped themselves of any sense of self-preservation.

People like John August don’t pick up weapons to defend themselves and their family, they just take it up the ass (no pun intended) and die, all the while thinking “where’s the police?” Or in this case, “where’s Jack Bauer?”

John is all about raising the standards of living worldwide. In fact, he’s even gone to Africa (gasp!!). Yes, like every true liberal, Africa beckons and he jumps. But, to quote Bravo TV’s Andy Cohen, “here’s what”: if it ever came down to a choice between raising living standards worldwide and continuing to live his cushy Hollywood life, guess which one old John has chosen? Here’s a hint: his zip code is still 90210.

He didn’t drop it all to live in Africa. No, no. He came back! That’s right, gotta keep that job! If he really were committed to raising living standards “worldwide,” brother man would send his paycheck whole hog back down there or he’d give it all up to work at at raising those standards.

Damned hypocrite.

Ask Not, JFK!

On this the 50th anniversary of JFK’s “Ask not …” inauguration speech, I remember something has always struck me as askew about that passage. It took reading this quote from Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom to explain why:

"In a much quoted passage in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic "what your country can do for you" implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, "what you can do for your 'country" implies the government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary.

To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served. He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.

The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through government" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom?  And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect?

What he said.

Thanks, American Spectator.

Jack And Jill Went Up The Hill

I have attended more co-educational schools than non so I feel, however illogically, that I can tell the differences between the two types of schools.

Kindergarten, of course, was co-educational as was my “primary” (or grade) school after which, for the next five years, I attended Immaculate Conception College, an all-male “secondary” (or high) school. Both the universities I attended were, necessarily, co-educational.

I believe that we do a great disservice to both boys and girls—especially boys—when we force co-educational schools on them for various reasons. This gentleman, posting on a site I came across on Wintery Knight’s blog, neatly encapsulates some of those reasons:

I’ve long thought that coeducation is one of the major factors behind the dysfunction of the modern world. Just as important as the academic problems it causes are the socio-sexual ones. Since most boys have very little of the status and power that attracts the opposite sex, the ones who end up being most popular with girls are jocks and badboys[sic], who in turn become the role models for the rest of the boys. (And of course, badboys[sic] are a lot easier to emulate than jocks.) In an all-male environment, boys can be valued for other qualities, whether of intellect or of character, and proper male hierarchies can develop, in which individual boys with different strengths and weaknesses can find their place, gain in confidence, and grow into men. In the past, it was only after these formative years that young men were exposed to all-out competition for the attention and affection of young women.

Of course, the same thing goes for girls. Homely girls or late-bloomers who in earlier times would have had to dread only the occasional party now find themselves evaluated on a daily basis in comparison with their more attractive and confident sisters. I wonder how much of feminists’ venomous hatred of men has its roots in the humiliation felt by scrawny, pimply or bookish girls. Likewise the feelings of bitterness, frustration and rage felt by so many men no doubt go back to a sense of non-stop rejection experienced in adolescence. These emotions are an unavoidable by-product of forcing boys and girls into close proximity with each other day in and day out at the very time in their lives when they are most sensitive to the other sex’s assessment of their sexual desirability and thus most emotionally vulnerable. Add to this the fact that young people often compensate for this vulnerability by being gratuitously cruel in their judgments of others, and the fact that most of the time they are not under adult supervision, and you have a recipe for disaster.

And this all exacerbates the academic disparity between boys and girls. Lots of girls find academic competition a welcome escape from this other kind of competition. Boys who study hard, on the other hand, risk being seen as overly compliant and eager to please—in short, as unmasculine[sic]. Better to be defiant or act like you don’t care—then at least you’re not a nerd. For a teenage boy, being at the top of the class grade-wise is a poor substitute for being popular with the girls.

That there are differences in cognitive capability between boys and girls has been borne out by the study of the brain. My own very limited experience also bears this out: my son was behind his female cousin in walking, for example. She was up and at ‘em very quickly. He didn’t start walking and generally moving about until he was almost one.

However, don’t take it from me but do from Dr. John Medina whose 11th “rule” from his best-selling book, Brain Rules, is Male and female brains are different. For starters, he reports that mental retardation is more common in males than females (ouch). In addition, men seem to be better at coping with traumatic situations and so on. While he claims we need to be very careful in interpreting these data, the point is, there are clear differences between the male and female brains.

Here’s where modern education takes us down the primrose path toward the disaster of a system we have today: professional “educators” earnestly refuse to do anything based on these scientific facts unlike in every other aspect of education where brain “science” is given more than its due with respect to influencing teaching methods.

The blog I mentioned earlier, The Thinking Housewife, has this to say about co-education in a posting on co-education, complete with quotes from the pre-eminent British psychologist, Simon Baron-Cohen:

In the current mode of schooling, these differences work against boys, who are often unfavorably compared with girls in their mastery of academic skills and organization. This begins early in life and extends to higher education, where we now see the disproportionate number of girls in colleges and universities viewed as a sign that young men are lazy or incompetent. In truth, boys and men develop at a different rate than girls, a difference that makes sense in light of the natural roles of men and women.

Single-sex schools or single-sex classrooms, though generally considered less enlightened by modern standards, are practical and sensible. Home education is naturally coeducational, but then home education is by its very nature more individualistic and attuned to differences. Small schools also can more easily accommodate coeducation. Single-sex schooling does not prevent all interaction between boys and girls, which naturally occurs outside of school.

From my own experience, and not wanting to over-indulge in casuistry, I will say that the learning environment in high school was so radically different—in more ways than you think—than at any other time in my educational history, I’ve come to accept it as nigh gospel: separate girls and boys and they’ll learn better.