Erstmap

Colin Grabow: If You Think Communism is Bad For People, Check Out What it Did To The Environment:

When the Berlin Wall came down and the Iron Curtain was finally lifted to expose the inner workings of communism to Western eyes, one of the more shocking discoveries was the nightmarish scale of environmental destruction. The statistics for East Germany alone tell a horrific tale: at the time of its reunification with West Germany an estimated 42 percent of moving water and 24 percent of still waters were so polluted that they could not be used to process drinking water, almost half of the country's lakes were considered dead or dying and unable to sustain fish or other forms of life, and only one-third of industrial sewage along with half of domestic sewage received treatment.

Do yourself a favour and read the whole thing.

h/t Bernie

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.  ~G.K. Chesterton

If gratitude is happiness, then given the unhappiness exhibited by most feminists, what does that tell us about the state of their hearts?

On a previous thread, I remarked:

It’s interesting to me that so far, none of the men have objected to the idea that men have obligations within marriage.

My husband addressed my comment later in the thread:

I think that part of the reason is because men don’t consider “obligations” (in marriage) to be work. We (men) perform these “obligations” out of a passionate love. We take great pride in our abilities to give our wife and children the best that we can give. We don’t think of these “obligations” as work, they are a natural response to love. To a man it would feel weird and wrong to not do these things. I WANT my family to have a roof over their heads and food on the table and I will happily give my hard labor for this. I want my family to be safe and I will HAPPILY lay down my life to defend them.

Feminist Hater added:

And this is the issue though, when I look at your family and how they connect over your father’s stroke and recovery, it shows a deep love for his life and all he has given you. That is what men want in exchange for our labour and our sacrifices. It’s not the sacrifices that make us mad, it’s the mere fact that we want our sacrifices to mean something and to made for the right people, not those that would throw our sacrifices back in our faces.

What does it look like to have your sacrifices thrown back in your face?  On an individual level, it looks like Jenny Erikson, who frivorced her husband and tore their family apart because she wasn’t haaaaappy.  Everything her husband had worked for in order to build a home and family with her…just gone for no reason.

But what does it look like on a society-wide scale to have your sacrifices thrown back in your face?  Stephanie Coontz, feminist researcher and author, gives us the perfect example in her recent New York Times piece, How Can We Help Men? By Helping Women, from which I’ve extracted the main points (emphasis mine):

This week Maria Shriver brings together a star-studded cast of celebrities, from Hillary Rodham Clinton to Beyoncé, to call attention to the economic plight of American women and demand that women’s needs be put “at the center of policy making.”

…

Social and economic policies constructed around the male breadwinner model have always disadvantaged women. But today they are dragging down millions of men as well. Paradoxically, putting gender equity issues at the center of social planning would now be in the interests of most men.

This was not so evident 40 or 50 years ago, when the struggle for gender equity threatened many male entitlements. In those days, men of every skill and income level had preferential access to jobs that provided security, benefits and rising wages.

Today, however… [m]illions of men face working conditions that traditionally characterized women’s lives: low wages, minimal benefits, part-time or temporary jobs, and periods of joblessness. Poverty is becoming defeminized because the working conditions of many men are becoming more feminized.

Whether they realize it or not, men now have a direct stake in policies that advance gender equity. Most of the wage gap between women and men is no longer a result of blatant male favoritism in pay and promotion. Much of it stems from general wage inequality in society at large.

Establishing a “livable wage” floor would immediately reduce the gap in average pay between American women and men. But it would also boost the wages of millions of low-income male workers, who earn a much lower percentage of the average male wage than their counterparts in other wealthy countries…

Another source of the gender pay gap is the lack of reliable, affordable child care, which forces many mothers to stay home or work part time even when they need and want full-time work.

…

Putting women first would mean strengthening America’s social safety net, because a higher proportion of single-mother families live in poverty here than in any other wealthy country. But a stronger safety net would help single-father families and two-parent families, too, because these families also have higher poverty rates than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.

…

Putting women’s traditional needs at the center of social planning is not reverse sexism. It’s the best way to reverse the increasing economic vulnerability of men and women alike.

Given the increasing insecurity of many American men, they have good reason to back feminist policies. And if those policies alienate some women in the upper echelons, then maybe feminism isn’t for every woman, and doesn’t need to be.

Given that liberal feminist policies caused no small part of those insecurities, I’m skeptical that more of the same will do anything positive for men or women.  Anonymous Reader paraphrased Ms. Coontz’s article:

MOAR! MOAR! MOAR! MOAR OF EVERYTHING I WANT!

which is really just another way of saying what Dalrock noted a few days ago:

…we have institutionalized unthankfulness as our response to gracious acts by men.

Don’t be fooled by Ms. Coontz’s reframing of these issues as male issues.  They are not.  They are entirely female issues, and they were caused by feminism.  Consider:

It’s never good enough, is it, feminists?  Women have spent forty years shrieking at men about their supposed privilege, demanding that they give us some of what they had.  And when they did, it turned out that it wasn’t a privilege they’d been carrying but a burden.  So after demanding that society be entirely rearranged, feminists now want men to rearrange it all again by enshrining into law that women should have all the “freedoms” that feminism gave us but none of the responsibilities that come with freedom.

In other words, feminists want women to have what we had before – access to provision from and protection by men - but we do not want to be under the authority of any man, so feminists agitate for policies that will redistribute all men’s income to all women equally.  This will never work in the long run; men will work themselves to the bone for their own women and children, as my husband’s comment above shows, but they aren’t going to work like that for all women.

Feminism has inculcated in women what Dalrock calls a “culture of miserliness”.  This miserliness is bad for individual families when ungrateful women destroy their marriages without cause.  This miserliness is bad for our entire society when ungrateful women blame men for women’s declining well-being even though this decline is due to policies that women demanded men enact.  It is time for women to stop tearing down their families and society with their miserliness and ingratitude.

The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. Proverbs 14:1

 For the most part, Vox Day is largely responsible for helping me to see the error of my ways, and curing myself from an addiction to Mass MediaPCP. It took years of reading his old World Net Daily columns and daily posts at his blog, to eventually unplug from my regularly scheduled programming of establishment Republican/Neo-con-driven ideology. During all that time of reading and debating amongst the dread ilk (the nickname for the regular participants of Vox Popoli comment threads), I eventually clicked over to some references to Austrian Economics websites and the Mises Institute. This, to say the least, introduced me to a whole new way of viewing economics and politics. 

Having graduated with a (now largely useless) Business degree from the University of Hawaii, I had two years of economics courses, and in hindsight, I've come to realize the primary difference between the Keynesian-based economics curriculum of my Business college and the Austrian school and it's proponents, is that Keynesian economics starts off with the flawed deceptive premise that economics (as presented and taught in academia) is an exact science, on par with chemistry and physics, and that scientists can control the economy with centralized planning based on scientific "laws," while Austrian theory is based on Praxeology. 

Anyone interested in an in-depth description of Praxeology and the difference between it and the 'hard' sciences, should read Austrian luminary, Murray Rothbard's piece on Praxeology here(pdf).

But for expediency's sake, as Rothbard's treatise on the topic is somewhat in-depth, we can just go with the definition posted by Wikipedia, who's entry for Praxeology defines it thusly:

"Praxeology is the deductive study of human action based on the action axiom. The most common use of the term is in connection with the Austrian School of Economics, as established by economist Ludwig von Mises."

 The deductive study of human action based on the action axiom...so what's the action axiom?

"An action axiom is an axiom that embodies a criterion for recommending action. Action axioms are of the form "If a condition holds, then the following should be done."

Given that Vox is both an ascribed creationist Christian and an avowed proponent of the School of Austrian Economics, I find it completely fitting that he is also a proponent of game while completely dismissing the relevancy of evolutionary biology and psychology that are the so-called sciences cited by many game proponents and PUA. In the comment thread of Vox's response to GBFM, he writes:

"Evolutionary biology is nothing but ex post facto fairy tales and psychology is bullshit. Game doesn't require grounding in anything but observation of human behavior and the construction of predictive models from it. The "why" is irrelevant."

In other words, Game as we've come to know it here on these fringes of teh Interwebz, is a Praxeology...i.e. Game is the deductive study of human sexuality and inter-relational behavior based on the action axiom - "If a condition holds, then the following should be done."

Here is but one example that I can think of off the top of my head, that is a game-based action axiom:

*** Women often "fitness test" or "shit test" men. Men interested in mating with a woman need to learn how to recognize when she does this. When he ascertains that in fact she is attempting to fitness test him, there are several known responses that other men have employed with varying degrees of success, such as "agree and amplify."***

Looking at game as an exercise in Praxeology should help those who struggle with the morality of accepting these ideas of game description and proscription, versus the vehement distaste for the immorality of promiscuity many (but not all) game proponents advocate and celebrate.

While I am not trying to speak for anyone else here, I do believe the defining line between those of us in the MAndrosphere who are nominally Christian and advocate Christian Marriage (Vox, Dalrock et al), and see no conflict between Game and Christian morality, versus all the other Christians who are up in arms about it and repeatedly denounce it, is that those of us in favor, simply view game as a Praxeology; it is not a hard science, nor is it a moral code to live by. Rather, it is simply using deductive reasoning to come up with action axiom's to describe the hows and whys of human intersexual attraction and mating behaviors.

These action axioms are useful tools for men to recognize and reverse engineer the myriad of deliberately inculcated dysfunctional behaviors and characteristics that pervades societies institutions, mass media programming and subversion of our churches with the idolatry of Goddess worship. As more and more men embrace the axioms of the Game Praxeology, more and more discover anecdotally that they are based on observable truths regardless of the morality of the men doing the "testing in the field."

Just because men committed to Christian morality may take ideas from and discuss with the axiomatic truths of game with the immorally promiscuous PUAs, does not mean we are holding it up as a new religion, a new moral paradigm or a new idol to be worshiped blindly and in total faith; nor does it mean we are deifying or glorifying fornication, adultery and promiscuity. 

We are ALL fallen sinners. Based on our common, fallen and debased nature as sinners, throwing out the axiomatic truths of game simply because they are espoused by sexual sinners is akin to throwing out YOUR argument (any argument on any topic, that you choose to make) based on your own sinful nature.

If one considers the ideas on their own merit, and not the person who is voicing the idea, there should be no moral problems with men employing the axiomatic actions prescribed by immoral game practitioners for his own use, to achieve his own Godly goals of sustaining the covenant of marriage and leading his family.  

As Vox wrote on his post Game vs. Churchian Idolatry:

Now, Game is not Christ. Game is not Truth. But Game is truth, and he who comes to love truth will, in time, come to love Truth as well.

Amen.


We are all one day going to face our creator, and have to account for our sins. 

Of all my sins I dread accounting for, "learning to neg my wife from reading the anecdotes of Pick Up Artists on teh Interwebz," is definitely not one of 'em.

ANTI-APOLOGETIC #5

“Science can’t explain quantum mechanics.”

This line is tossed out in conversations when all else has failed in a desperate attempt to fortify the fiefdom of faith. As frequently as I’ve heard this, and asked people exactly what they mean, I’m not even sure how this could be a defense of faith. Quantum mechanics is science, discovered through the tools of science, and is verifiable and testable within science.

The attempt to draw fire away from the discussion may be why I’ve never read this defense of faith in peer-reviewed literature. It also doesn’t fall into one of Harris’s categories. It is not another version of the God of the gaps argument, and is not precisely a deepity.

I think this statement may be a way of saying that we can’t really be certain of anything. On one level, this is a feeble attempt to undermine reason by stating that there are some mysteries even our best and brightest can’t grasp—thus giving the faithful license to pretend to know things they don’t know.

On an even more pedestrian level, I’ve often heard this deployed as a justification for miracles. That is, quantum instability leaks into the visible realm—what Dawkins calls the Middle Kingdom, or what British philosopher J. L. Austin termed the realm of “medium-sized dry goods” (Dawkins, 2005)—and could be responsible for a whole host of bizarre occurrences, like the sea parting or people being spontaneously healed.

In the latter case, the response to this is that quantum weirdness does not lend itself to a specific faith tradition. That is, if somehow what was happening in the quantum realm seeped into the Middle Kingdom and caused unexplained phenomena (and there is no evidence it has) this wouldn’t be relegated to a single faith tradition. Quantum weirdness didn’t cause only the alleged miracles in the Koran (or the Bible)—but if someone claimed to know this is how the phenomena manifested, I’d ask how they knew this and to produce the evidence. (For practice, you can also argue that quantum states do manifest, but only in [insert any faith tradition other than your interlocutor’s].)

In the former case, I’m not sure how a lack of understanding about subatomic particles translates into the need for faith. Because we don’t yet and might never entirely understand how the universe is ordered and operates in the realm of the very, very small, this does not translate into needing to use an unreliable epistemology.

VD RESPONSE: How quickly you forget your own definitions! You have been droning on and on about how bad faith is, and how faith is pretending to know what you don't know, and now that it is pointed out that you don't understand quantum mechanics or know how the universe is ordered and operates at the finest level of detail, suddenly you abandon all that? Suddenly you can't figure out how a lack of knowledge about subatomic particles relates to pretending to know something you don't about the universe?

The existence of quantum mechanics completely undermines your entire epistemology. It undermines your entire pretense that your materialism is any more meaningful, any more indicative of true objective reality, than the pagan who believes the universe is resting on the back of a giant turtle.

Your epistemology is entirely rooted upon the basic assumption that what we can see, touch, feel, and measure is all there is. Quantum mechanics upends that assumption, and thereby delegitimizes the materialist metric by which you have been attempting to pass judgment on the supernatural.

As for how the quantum world potentially relates to various faith traditions, I would direct your attention to a televised lecture by Bryan Cox, the British pop physicist, called A Night with the Stars. At minute 36 of the lecture, Cox explained that the Pauli Exclusion principle is a universal phenomenon and that by heating up a diamond by rubbing it, all the electrons in the entire universe would immediately adjust their energy states so that none of them would precisely match any of those in the diamond.

Now, I don't know if this is true or not. You don't know if it is true or not. The electron state of a diamond-sized object orbiting a star in the proto-galaxy UDFy-33436598 is not the sort of thing we can readily observe. But the fact is that the idea of a Creator God, and any other number of observed supernatural concepts, is considerably less ridiculous to nearly everyone than magic universe-transforming trans-galactic diamonds that operate at speeds much faster than light. Quantum mechanics may not lend itself to proving any faith tradition, but it does tend to destroy the effectiveness of conventional Newtonian science as a basis for ridiculing the various faith traditions.

A citation of quantum mechanics is not so much a defense of faith as it is people pointing out to you that you have the very sort of faith in things you cannot prove and things you do not know that you decry in others. As we can easily observe in your next anti-apologetic.

ANTI-APOLOGETIC #6

“You have faith in science.”

This is usually a “late game” line, offered after faith has been demolished and exposed as fraudulent. People say this because they want to show some parity in belief: they have faith in X and you have faith in Y. You both have faith, but in different things. I’ve also found that people make this statement because they’re afraid of being seen as stupid or ignorant, so they want to leave the conversation and save face.

Science is the antithesis of faith. Science is a process that contains multiple and redundant checks, balances, and safeguards against human bias. Science has a built-in corrective mechanism—hypothesis testing—that weeds out false claims.

Claims that come about as a result of a scientific process are held as tentatively true by scientists—unlike claims of faith that are held as eternally true. Related to this, claims that come about as the result of a scientific process are falsifiable, that is, there is a way to show the claims are false. This is not the case with most faith claims. For example, there’s no way to falsify the claim that the Norse god Loki was able to assume other forms.

Scientists also try to prove claims false (falsification), unlike faith leaders who unequivocally state that their faith claims are true. Related to the bizarre notion that there’s a vast conspiracy among scientists to suppress certain lines of research, if a scientist can demonstrate that a popular scientific claim is false, she can become famous, get tenure, publish her results, earn more money, and become respected by her peers. Moreover, the more prominent the defeated hypothesis, the greater the reward. If a preacher states that the claims of his faith tradition are false, he’s excommunicated, defrocked, or otherwise forced to abandon his position.

Science is a method of advancing our understanding. It is a process we can use to bring us closer to the truth and to weed out false claims. Science is the best way we’ve currently found to explain and understand how the universe works. It should be jettisoned if something better (more explanatory, more predictive, more parsimonious, etc.) comes along (Schick & Vaughn, 2008).

VD RESPONSE: Your attempted defense only succeeds in proving the charge is true. Let me remind you that you defined faith as "pretending to know what you don't know". And while you say that "all faith is blind", yours is observably blinder than most. Even if the religious faithful are pretending to know something they can't know to be true, you are pretending to know something we all know to be false. You make fun of people who believe in fairies in the garden, then promptly proclaim your belief in white-coated fairies working in the lab.

The science you describe doesn't exist. It has never existed. It is the Platonic Form of an ideal Science that exists nowhere but in your imagination and the overheated imaginations of the scientific faithful. Science, as it is actually practiced by scientists on this planet, does not contain "multiple and redundant checks, balances, and safeguards against human bias." As it is actually practiced, one could make much stronger case for Accounting. You don't only have faith in science, you have a badly misplaced faith in it.

The fact is that the vast majority of published and peer-reviewed papers are never checked, not even once. The fact is that most published and peer-reviewed papers are littered with basic mathematical and statistical errors that are never discovered because most scientists are mathematically and statistically incompetent. The fact is that modern science is a corrupt big business and most scientists are intellectual mercenaries whose compensation and continued employment depends entirely upon producing results that are in line with their employer's expectations.

Your declarations are manifestly untrue. Scientists don't try to prove claims false. They do precisely the opposite. Not only have a statistically significant percentage of published and peer-reviewed papers been confirmed to contain FABRICATED data, but the former editor of the British Medical Journal, Richard Smith has declared: "Most scientific studies are wrong, and they are wrong because scientists are interested in funding and careers rather than truth."

I strongly suggest you read the paper, published in PLOS Medicine, entitled "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" to better understand how fundamentally misplaced your naive faith in science is. What you are claiming to be "the best way we’ve currently found to explain and understand how the universe works" observably doesn't even work as well as a coin toss, and that's before we even get to Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, Global Warming, Evolution by Natural Selection, and a whole host of other "scientific facts" that are no more currently falsifiable than Loki's purported shape-shifting

ANTI-APOLOGETIC #4

“My faith is true for me” is rarely heard among more sophisticated believers and almost never heard among fundamentalists.

It is very difficult to explain why this claim is fallacious because often the type of person who makes this statement does not have the intellectual or educational wherewithal to understand more thoughtful, substantive responses. (The exceptions are the youthful solipsists, the postmodernists, and the epistemological and cognitive relativists.)

The statement, “My faith is true for me,” means the faith-based beliefs one holds are true for the speaker and not necessarily for other people. The utterer of this statement is not making claims about faith beliefs being universally true—that is, true for all people.

Here’s my response: does your faith tradition include statements of fact about the world? For example, humans are thetans trapped on Earth in physical bodies, Jesus walked on water, the ability to fly can result from fasting (Jacobsen, 2011), or the Garden of Eden is in Jackson County, Missouri.

If your faith tradition includes no empirical statements, then it’s unclear what your faith tradition entails. However, if your faith tradition makes empirical claims (and all faith claims that fall within the domain of religion make empirical claims), then what you’re saying is that your belief is true for you, regardless of how the world actually is. Since the world is the way it is regardless of our beliefs or of the epistemology we use to know the world, “my faith is true for me” is a nonsensical statement. One can have faith that if one jumps out of a twenty-story window one will polymorph into an eagle and fly to safety. This doesn’t make it the case.

What one is really saying when one states, “My faith is true for me,” is, “I prefer my delusions, and I wish to remain with them in spite of the evidence.”

Once more, we see Boghossian making an appeal to his personal incredulity. And the fact that some people may not understand "more thoughtful substantive responses" explaining why the statement is fallacious does not mean that it is difficult to explain why it is fallacious. After all, Boggie correctly notes that the youthful solipsists, the postmodernists, and the epistemological and cognitive relativists all have the intellectual wherewithal to understand any such explanation, and yet Boghossian does not provide one.

As will become clear from my recommended response, it's not hard to understand why Boghossian doesn't want to explain why the statement is fallacious. Nevertheless, because I am not a relativist, I would not recommend relying upon this particular defense of faith except as a rhetorical feint that is a prelude to an attack on unwarranted atheist morality claims.

VD RESPONSE: My claim that my faith is true for me is no different than your claim that your morality is true for you. Do you believe that some actions are good and others are evil? Do you believe that some actions are objectively desirable and others are objectively undesirable? If one believes in an objective moral Law that is universally applicable to everyone, then one must necessarily believe in a Lawgiver.

However, since you reject the existence of the Lawgiver, we know you also reject the existence of an objective universal moral law. Therefore the limits of your moral claims extend no farther than you. What you’re saying is that your moral beliefs are true for you, regardless of what the moral law actually is. You're saying that you prefer to act however you momentarily desire, regardless of the morality of your actions.

This is why even atheists believe other atheists are less trustworthy than believers. And the bloody history of atheist rule has shown that people whose moral reality is subjective are far more dangerous to the world than people whose perception of reality is subjective. The subjective believer may be delusional and dangerous to himself, but the subjective moralist is not only delusional, he is dangerous to everyone else.

ANTI-APOLOGETIC #16

Defense: “Atheism and secular humanism are as much a religion—and require as much faith—as any religion. Atheists and secular humanists love to equivocate on religious issues—claiming they are not religious and are free of religious bias—but they are no less religious or faithful than anyone else. They are not aware of their own faith and are blind to their biases. There is a saying: ‘There are no nonreligious people, only false Gods.’”

Response: “Confusing atheism with secular humanism demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding as to what the terms mean. Secular humanism is a philosophy and a set of ideals; atheism is simply the lack of belief in a God or Gods. There is no dogma attached to nonbelief in a divine Shiva the Destroyer. And, as to the saying—it’s silly. To assert that people are incapable of letting go of belief in mythological fairytales without attaching themselves to some other form of worship is narrow-minded, condescending, pessimistic, and without evidential merit.”

VD RESPONSE: How can you possibly think that is an adequate response? You are providing an example of the very evidence you claim does not exist! You are responding to a charge of atheist equivocation by blatantly equivocating! The claim was that atheism and secular humanism were religions that required faith... and your response is to say that atheism is not secular humanism? That is a complete non sequitur.

As a Street Epistemologist, you are an atheist who is actively selling secular humanism, a specific "humanistic vision" as Peter Boghossian describes it, and yet the moment you're called on what you are doing, which is religious proselytizing, you retreat to pretending that your atheism is totally unrelated to your secular humanism.  And describing secular humanism as "a philosophy and a set of ideals" doesn't mean that secular humanism isn't a religion. Quite to the contrary, by describing it that way you have admitted that it is "a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons". That is the literal dictionary definition of a religion!

You are not merely religious, you are a religious fanatic. You're the secular humanist version of the crazy guy raving about the End of Days in the park.

As for atheism, it is merely a specific belief that is a subset of the secular humanist religion. Your position is no more reasonable than a Southern Baptist who doesn't believe in infant baptism claiming that his lack of belief in infant baptism means he isn't a theist. That sounds absurd, but it is no less absurd than your attempt to delink atheism from secular humanism.

Anti-Apologetic #3

“I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.”

I have personally heard this objection innumerous times—mostly from those who are more fundamentalist in their orientation. My suspicion is that people who have genuine doubts about their faith but want to demonstrate or voice strong verbal support for their faith (not necessarily to others but for themselves) make this statement.

This defense is problematic for several reasons. First, what amount of “faith” is required for someone’s nonbelief in the Norse god Thor? Or, are most people Thor atheists? Does nonbelief in Thor require effort? Do people need to congregate and sing songs together to reinforce their nonbelief in Thor? Anyone who says, “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist,” doesn’t understand what the word “atheist” means, or is simply insincere.

Second, one possible reason this defense has gained such traction is the starting point. The faithful start with defaulting to God; in other words, the faithful look at the world around them and say, “God.” I happen to be on a plane now, and when I look around I see clouds, seats, people, my laptop, but I don’t see an invisible, unifying metaphysical and supernatural element. I see objects. It is unclear to me why one’s default would be God.

Borrowing from a term first used by pastor and French theologian John Calvin, contemporary American Christian apologist Alvin Plantinga tries to answer questions of defaulting to God with the Sensus Divinitatis or “God sensor” (Plantinga, 2000). Basically, Plantinga’s answer is that some people have a built-in sense of the divine—something within them senses God in the same way that we have eyes that sense things in the visual realm.

One of the main problems with the God sensor argument is that just as some people allegedly claim to sense God, other people can allegedly claim to sense other imagined entities. This common rebuttal is referred to as “the Great Pumpkin” objection. In American cartoonist Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip Peanuts, Linus believes there’s a Great Pumpkin who arises from the pumpkin patch to reward well-behaved children. If the theist can claim that her sensation of God is immediate, why can’t anyone who genuinely feels an imagined entity claim that entity is real? (This argument can become very complicated, and as a general rule I’d suggest avoiding it whenever possible. Focus instead on the fact that one’s confidence in a sensation does not map onto its accuracy—just because people feel in their hearts the Emperor of Japan is divine, does not make the Emperor of Japan divine.)

When responding to, “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist,” I begin by clearly defining the words “faith” and “atheist.” I can’t imagine how these two definitions could align so as to make this statement sensible.

VD RESPONSE: An appeal to your own lack of imagination is not only a fundamental logical fallacy, but is so hapless and inept a response that I would be embarrassed for you if I didn't think you were an intellectually dishonest jerk who is willing to say anything in order to tear others down.

Also, you're wrong. Let's look at your own definitions of "faith" and "atheist". You defined faith, improperly, as "pretending to know something you don't". As for atheist, you say: "Atheist,” as I use the term, means, “There’s insufficient evidence to warrant belief in a divine, supernatural creator of the universe."

The two definitions don't align because your definition of atheist doesn't even conform to the grammatical rules of the English language. "Atheist" doesn't mean "there's insufficient evidence to believe" anything. It's not a statement, it's a freaking noun! An "atheist' is a type of person, specifically, a person who does not believe in the existence of God, gods, or the supernatural, who "offers a humanistic vision", to quote Peter Boghossian, and in most cases, also subscribes to rational materialism and scientific determinism.

And given that the possibility that God always existed cannot be ruled out, as per Mr. Boghossian's Anti-Apologetic #1, it should be obvious that every atheist who claims God does not exist is someone who is pretending to know something he does not know. Which, according to your own definition, is someone who has faith.

Very few theists have the sort of faith required to engage in that pretense, to say nothing of the vast quantities required to pretend to know that the universe always existed, life came from non-life, science is the only means of obtaining reliable evidence, and global warming requires a global government.

ANTI-APOLOGETIC #15

Defense: “You’re just talking about blind faith. My faith is not blind.”

Response: “There is no need to modify the word ‘faith’ with the word ‘blind.’ All faith is blind. All faith is belief on the basis of insufficient evidence. That’s what makes it faith. If one had evidence, one wouldn’t need faith, one would merely present the evidence.”

VD RESPONSE: Your thinking is too simplistic. Faith is no more a binary matter than science is. I also notice that you're changing the definition of faith again: before you said faith was "pretending to know what you don't know". You are also contradicting yourself here. What distinguishes "sufficient" evidence from "insufficient" evidence? What is the magical binary line that separates one form of evidence from the other?

Even "insufficient evidence" is still evidence, by definition, so your assertion that if one had evidence, one wouldn't need faith is obviously false since you declare that faith necessarily requires a form of evidence upon which the belief is based.

In my essay Casualties I described the situation of my sister-in-law and her first husband committing suicide.

The first guy I knew to commit suicide over a woman was my brother-in-law. I don’t like to go into too much detail about it as critics may think it’s my casus belli for getting involved in the manosphere, but suffice to say it was after a 20 year marriage and 2 children. My sister-in-law promptly married the millionaire she was seeing less than a year after he was in the ground. This is a real point of contention her family and I have with her, but it was his terminal  beta-ness / ONEitis conditioning that greatly contributed to his hanging himself. The psychologist in me knows there are plenty of imbalances that dispose a person to suicide, but I also know there are plenty of external prompts that make taking action more probable.

My brother-in-law hung himself as a response to having the unthinkable happen to him; his ONE, his soulmate, a woman he was very posessive of, was leaving him after 20 years of marriage (for a millionaire we discovered later). She was the ONLY woman he’d ever had sex with and had been (to the best of my knowledge) a faithful and dependable husband and father since they married at 18 and 19. He did the ‘right thing’ and married her when he’d gotten her pregnant at 17 and stuck by her, sacrificed any ambition he had and worked his ass off to send both his kids to college – an advantage he’d never achieve. He wasn’t a saint by any means, and I’m not going to argue my sister-in-law’s motivations, since those aren’t my point; my point is that he was an AFC who never came to terms with it and believed his life was only completed with his ONE. He literally couldn’t go on without her.

He couldn’t kill the beta (if he was even aware of it), so he killed himself.

This was back in 2003 and I’ll admit the trauma of this experience and the behavior and consequent mindset of my wife’s sister was a catalyst in waking me up to a much broader definition of feminine hypergamy. No longer was this curious term just about “the tendency of women to ‘marry up’ in status with men”, it was about an entire psycho-social dynamic written into women’s psychological firmware since birth. It was this experience that made me aware that hypergamy was an overriding psychological imperative based on a constant condition of doubt and uncertainty about how well she might optimize this hypergamy in measure with her capacity to attract men of equal or greater SMV than her own.

I’ll also admit this episode in my life was personally jarring for me when I considered that my own wife would necessarily be prone to the same predispositions. Her sister, a God-fearing evangelical ‘good girl’, had gone feral on the husband who’d done the right thing after knocking her up at 17 and married her and set about working his ass off for the next 20 years. She was already in the process of divorcing him when he decided a noose and a tree were a better option than living in a world where he had to see his still gorgeous ex-wife with the millionaire she’d met (and later married). So why not Mrs. Tomassi too, right?

I can list any number of reasons as to why I trust Mrs. Tomassi, all of which I’ve read from every blue pill married chump in my time in the manosphere, but I’m not so naive as to think that certain circumstances and conditions ‘could’ change and she could also go feral. This is what my brother-in-law never could grasp. His world literally revolved around his wife.

He was by no means a saint, and for all of his dedication to his family and wife, his main fault was his possessiveness. My brother-in-law controlled the frame of his marriage, but this frame control was rooted in an insecure possessiveness bordering on the obsessive. On some level of consciousness he knew, by happenstance, an unplanned pregnancy and an early marriage, that he’d married well above what his realized SMV would’ve normally merited.

Possessiveness

I’ve seen this type of possessiveness in other men as well, but the common thread among them is usually an underlying, subconscious sense that the guy doesn’t deserve the woman he’s locked down in one way or another. A lot of them would be counted amongst the same Betas who subscribe to the Leagues mentality, only much more pronounced – it’s as if through luck or circumstance, or maybe due to a natural Alpha dominance that they don’t really understand they manifest, they get into an LTR with a woman they would otherwise consider “out of their league.”

Just this possessiveness might seem bad enough, but when it’s combined with ONEitis (the soul-mate myth), a Scarcity Mentality, a subscribing to the myth of Relational Equity or especially a self-righteous dedication to his feminine conditioning and White Knighting, then you’ve got a volatile mix of psychoses and a recipe for suicide or murder-suicide. When possessiveness is a man’s ego-investment and his worst fears of losing the “best thing he’ll ever have”, the relationship he subconsciously believes he didn’t deserve, comes to actuality, he may cease to exist because that former reality ceases to exist. What’s worth living for when you’ve already experienced the best you never merited to begin with?

A lot of my readers got irate with me when I suggested that if their girlfriends or wives wanted to head out with the girls for a GNO they should, as indifferently as possible, let them go. Granted, I attached more than a few caveats as to how to go about it, but the operative behind this indifference is really a test of your own possessiveness.

I’m sure many guys reading this are experiencing the twangs of possessive insecurity even in my suggesting this course of action. The reflexive response most guys will have in a situation like this will be one of mate protection; the fear being that if they don’t express their disapproval they’ll run the risk of their woman thinking they don’t care enough about them to be jealous. This is a trope most guys sell themselves, because it’s more about suspicion than jealousy. As intuitive as this sounds it really masks the insecurity that their girl will meet another guy and hook up with him. On an instinctual level we’re well aware of women’s pluralistic sexual strategies, thus an evolutionarily honed suspicion was hardwired into our psyches to protect men from becoming the beta cuckold provisioning for another male’s offspring. However, as counterintuitive as this sounds, a GNO is an excellent opportunity to display confidence behaviors.

There is always going to be a naturalistic side to male possessiveness. For very good reason evolution selected-for men with a honed sense of suspicion – men want a certainty that their parental investment (or potential for it) will be worth the exchange of resources with a woman who will facilitate it. In other words evolution selected-for men with an internalized, hardwired understanding of women’s biological directive for optimized hypergamy. When a man’s sexual strategy and sexual optimization has to be sacrificed for women’s optimized hypergamous and pluralistic (Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks) sexual strategy in order to breed, monogamy becomes a one-sided risk for him.

Sunshine Mary had a recent post with more than a few loose premises about the nature of women. The first of which was this:

1. Women were not designed by either God / evolution to be traded around among men.  There are few (or no?) societies in human history in which human females were heavily sexually promiscuous, and marriage has existed in some form in nearly every culture.

I’m not drawing attention to SSM to run her up the flagpole for this assumption, but it does illustrate a very visceral point about the possessiveness dynamic we’re exploring today. I responded to Mary with this:

In human male sperm there are 3 heteromorphic types: Killers, Defenders and Runners (fertilizers).

Killers destroy opposing sperm, Defenders encircle the ovum and provide a barrier against opposing sperm’s runners, and Runners specialize in ovum penetration and fertilization.

The only logical purpose for the evolution (or intelligent design if you prefer) of these type-specific sperm adaptations would be to optimize a competitive advantage in female fertilization of promiscuous human females possessing secretive ovulation.

Even the shape of a male penis is “designed” to maximize insertion depth to the uterus and simultaneously shovel out competing sperm from the vagina.

If women weren’t promiscuous, if women’s biological imperative wasn’t dictated by hypergamy, would these biological phenomenon have been a necessary evolution for human males? The predominant state of sexual competition, rooted in the dualistic, cuckolding, sexual strategies of human females, necessitated not only an evolved, male, psychological predilection for sexual fidelity suspicion, but an evolution of three types of purpose-specific sperm cells to maximize passing a man’s genetic legacy under conditions of uncertainty.

The Possessive Difference

Back in his earlier work Roissy had an interesting post about the behavioral manifestations displayed between Alpha men and Beta men. Really he likened the behaviors to more animalistic tendencies, but whether or not you acknowledge similar behaviors in people, the reasoning behind these actions make a lot of sense. Alpha men are slow to respond to sudden stimuli (such as loud noises or boisterous taunts) because they are so unused to any significant challenge – in other words, they’re not jumpy Betas used to opting for flight instead of fight. Their posture and body language convey confidence, but only because this Alpha posture is behaviorally associated with what Alphas do.

This is an important dynamic to understand when we consider possessiveness. A man with an Alpha disposition would be less possessive, and therefore display an indifference to possessing any particular woman due to his condition of (relative) sexual abundance. Possessiveness, or certainly an overly pronounced manifestation of possessiveness is the behavior of a Beta unused to sexual abundance and more likely accustomed sexual rejection.

It’s important to bear in mind that possessiveness is conveyed in a set of behaviors, attitudes and beliefs communicated in many ways. It’s not that possessiveness necessarily makes a man unattractive to a woman; on the contrary, it’s almost a universal female fantasy to be possessed by a so deserving and desirably dominant Alpha Man. It’s a visceral endorsement of the status of a woman’s superior desirability among her peers to be the object of such an Alpha Man’s possession; but likewise this is so common a (romance novel) feminine fantasy because of Alpha Men’s general indifference to possessiveness that makes it so tempting for women.

When self-deprecating, undeserving Beta men overtly display possessiveness, women read the behavior for what it is. Beta possessiveness is almost universally a death sentence (often literally) for an LTR. Nothing demonstrates lower value and confirms a lack of hypergamous suitability for a woman than a Beta preoccupied to the brink of obsession with controlling her behaviors. This isn’t to discount the very real reasons an Alpha or a Beta might have concern for a woman’s behaviors, it’s that his own possessiveness conveys a lack of confidence in himself.

Filed under: Biomechanics, Case Studies, Hypergamy, Psychology

The Russians have problems of their own with migrations of peoples but, even so, it's refreshing to hear Russian state officials speak out against liberalism.

The latest is the chairman of the State Duma International Affairs' Committee, Alexei Pushkov. I don't have a complete transcript of his speech, but the highlights aren't bad. He said:

Russia is not suggesting that Western societies live according to our patterns but advocates the right of all countries and societies to live the way they find necessary instead of becoming targets of aggressive exports of values of the radical liberal revolution.

He complained that the West was witnessing an,

“accelerated de-Christianization” that is occurring “under the slogan of forming an indivisible world without borders, in particular, between sexes.

The objective”, he continued, “is to develop a qualitatively new society with no states, borders, moral norms or foundations of civilization.”

He believes it is intended to make the West,

“a common economic space… where free individuals without nationality will be roaming allegedly protected by certain norms of law but being objects of merciless manipulation, stripped of links to their land, history, religion or family in the civilized meaning of the word.”

I don't think his words will have much influence on the Western elites. But they should encourage us to keep up our own resistance to what is happening in our own countries.

Courtesy of Steve Sailer comes this fascinating explanation on the way the House of Saud survives by destabilizing its rivals by the War Nerd:

The Middle East has been Saudi-ized while we looked on and laughed at those goofy Saudis who didn’t understand progress. No wonder they’re content to play dumb. If we took a serious look at them, they’d be terrifying.

And of all their many skills, the one the Saudis have mastered most thoroughly is disruption. Not the cute tech-geek kind of disruption, but the real, ugly thing-in-itself. They don’t just “turn a blind eye” to young Saudi men going off to do jihad—they cheer them on. It’s a brilliant strategy that kills two very dangerous birds with one plane ticket. By exporting their dangerous young men, the Saudis rid themselves of a potential troublemaker while creating a huge amount of pain for the people who live wherever those men end up.

Saudis have shipped money, sermons, and volunteers to Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Russia’s North Caucasus just as they’re doing now in Syria. It’s a package deal—to get the money, you have to accept the Wahhabism and the volunteers. And it works. The Saudi package is usually resented at first, like it was by the Afghans who were outraged to be told they were “bad Muslims” by Saudi volunteers.

But Afghan Islam has been Wahhabized over time. The same thing happened much more dramatically in Chechnya, where Saudi volunteers showed they were serious about war and religion, a nice change from the coopted quasi-Soviet imams the Chechens had known before. Saudis like Ibn al-Khattab, Abu al-Walid, and Muhannad (all noms de guerre) provided the only real jobs a young man could get in Chechnya, and in the process did a great job of miring the Chechens in an endless war that has killed something like 160,000 people while forcing Chechen women into Saudi-style isolation, eventually leaving Chechnya under the control of Ramzan Kadyrov, a second-generation death-squad commander who does most of the Kremlin’s killing for them. This is a typical Saudi aid result: A disaster for the recipients, the Chechens, and their enemies, the Russians, but a huge win for Saudi. Same thing is going on in the rest of Russia’s North Caucasus, especially in Dagestan, where the Boston Marathon bombers’ parents live.

And one aspect of that victory is the elimination of potentially troublesome young males who might have made trouble inside Saudi. Jihad is like the princess in those fairy tales: It draws all the daring young princes to undertake quests no underwriter would insure, and in the process gets them far away from home during their most aggressive years. Better yet from the Sauds’ POV, most of them die.

It certainly puts a troublesome spin on America's various crusades for global democracy, does it not?

Aristotle expounded on the fall of Sparta at the hands of their women. It’s brisk reading and, to CH readers, offers familiar theories about the sexes. The ancients knew more about the nature of women than do our modern, plugged in Wiki warriors with the world’s PC knowledge at their fingertips.

Again, the license of the Lacedaemonian women defeats the intention of the Spartan constitution, and is adverse to the happiness of the state. For, a husband and wife being each a part of every family, the state may be considered as about equally divided into men and women; and, therefore, in those states in which the condition of the women is bad, half the city may be regarded as having no laws. And this is what has actually happened at Sparta; the legislator wanted to make the whole state hardy and temperate, and he has carried out his intention in the case of the men, but he has neglected the women, who live in every sort of intemperance and luxury. The consequence is that in such a state wealth is too highly valued, especially if the citizen fall under the dominion of their wives, after the manner of most warlike races, except the Celts and a few others who openly approve of male loves. The old mythologer would seem to have been right in uniting Ares and Aphrodite, for all warlike races are prone to the love either of men or of women. This was exemplified among the Spartans in the days of their greatness; many things were managed by their women. But what difference does it make whether women rule, or the rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same. Even in regard to courage, which is of no use in daily life, and is needed only in war, the influence of the Lacedaemonian women has been most mischievous. The evil showed itself in the Theban invasion, when, unlike the women other cities, they were utterly useless and caused more confusion than the enemy. This license of the Lacedaemonian women existed from the earliest times, and was only what might be expected. For, during the wars of the Lacedaemonians, first against the Argives, and afterwards against the Arcadians and Messenians, the men were long away from home, and, on the return of peace, they gave themselves into the legislator’s hand, already prepared by the discipline of a soldier’s life (in which there are many elements of virtue), to receive his enactments. But, when Lycurgus, as tradition says, wanted to bring the women under his laws, they resisted, and he gave up the attempt. These then are the causes of what then happened, and this defect in the constitution is clearly to be attributed to them. We are not, however, considering what is or is not to be excused, but what is right or wrong, and the disorder of the women, as I have already said, not only gives an air of indecorum to the constitution considered in itself, but tends in a measure to foster avarice.

The mention of avarice naturally suggests a criticism on the inequality of property. While some of the Spartan citizen have quite small properties, others have very large ones; hence the land has passed into the hands of a few. And this is due also to faulty laws; for, although the legislator rightly holds up to shame the sale or purchase of an inheritance, he allows anybody who likes to give or bequeath it. Yet both practices lead to the same result. And nearly two-fifths of the whole country are held by women; this is owing to the number of heiresses and to the large dowries which are customary. It would surely have been better to have given no dowries at all, or, if any, but small or moderate ones. As the law now stands, a man may bestow his heiress on any one whom he pleases, and, if he die intestate, the privilege of giving her away descends to his heir. Hence, although the country is able to maintain 1500 cavalry and 30,000 hoplites, the whole number of Spartan citizens fell below 1000. The result proves the faulty nature of their laws respecting property; for the city sank under a single defeat; the want of men was their ruin.

Translated into New Shivvian:

“Hordes of pampered, ballcutting, materialistic, meddling, careerist, status whoring, slutty Spartan women riding the cock carousel and riding their hapless hounded hubbies, became self-sufficient property owners and heiresses of a few very wealthy aggrandizing men, thereby robbing Sparta’s beta males of the opportunity to establish affordable families of their own, leaving the city down the road with too few men to defend itself against invaders who themselves didn’t give a shit what proto-feminist Spartan women thought.”

CH is fond of recapitulating the axiom that women are perishable and men are expendable, and this is true in the whole and assessed over discrete blocks of time. But perturbations in the male population caused by long term fluxes in the expendability side of the equation will lead, as observed and noted by Aristotle, (a thinker so great you could jam the writings and wailings of all of history’s leading feminists and mangina suck-ups into a single fold of his cerebellum and it would scarcely amount to more than a fleeting musing in his daily mental output), to the ruin of a nation.

Biologically, men are indeed the expendable sex. A population group (i.e., a nation in the old timey sense of the word) can withstand short term shocks to its total number of men; it doesn’t take but one man to munch a few celery stalks and pop a few zinc tablets and carry on in his duty to impregnate an army of patriotic women and repopulate the countryside.

But given enough male expendability over time, and the first order axiom of fundamental sex difference starts to break down. For although a single man can, conceivably, star in a version of Boogie Years and spread his seed to the four corners of the country to rebuild a stricken population, that single man is also critically vulnerable to overrun by hungry barbarians who get word of a land where they can dine on honeydew and drink the milk of paradise for the low low price of one man’s scalp.

Feminists, equalists, open borders nutjobs, and assorted degenerate misfits ought to keep in mind that their beloved “progress” comes prepackaged with the seed of their destruction. CH (and Aristotle) will slap on the warning label; now it’s up to them to heed it.

Filed under: Girls, Goodbye America, Misandry, Ugly Truths

I thought this 2006 article on Haaretz by Shmuel Rosner concerning a conference discussing the survival of the Jewish people was intriguing, both for what it suggested in terms of what the future holds in store for America as well as what it implied about the Jewish perception of the transience of their relationship with America:

Two groups of Jews gathered together last weekend at Wye Plantation, Maryland for a long discussion on the situation of the Jewish people. The first group, which met Wednesday and Thursday, consisted of the heads of 15 Jewish organizations such as the Presidents' Conference, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, the American Jewish Committee and others. In the second group were the "thinkers," as the organizers termed them: Natan Sharansky from Israel, Charles Krauthammer from The Washington Post, former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler, former Jewish Agency head Sallai Meridor and many others....

The fear expressed that "a real decline of the West, particularly the United States, would have dramatic consequences for the Jewish people," also led to controversy. Brandeis University president Jehuda Reinharz agreed that this type of decline can be expected "in the coming two decades" - but Stuart Eisenstadt was less emphatic about it. He believes the United States will remain the leading power. In all events, it was agreed the Jews "should strengthen cultural links with non-Western civilizations, particularly China and also India," powers that are on the ascent. This is not a question of preference or closeness; it is a question of survival, of readiness for the future.

I am very curious to know if there was any recognition that the observed decline of the West has any connection to a number of the policies that these organizations have supported for the last 50+ years? I also wonder why the targeted non-Western civilizations which are supposedly on the ascent, (raising some real questions about the participating economists given the ongoing Chinese meltdown), would be interested in stronger cultural links given the questionable consequences of those cultural links on the United States. The Indians might be amenable, but Chinese history suggests that the Han wouldn't even blink before taking actions that would make Hitler look like a Righteous Gentile.

As an East Asian Studies major who is neither philo- nor antisemitic, I suggest the Elders of Wye might want to seriously rethink the potential of China as a safe landing place. Japan and Korea, too, are likely out.

The article tends to leave one with the unfortunate impression of rats congregating in order to contemplate the right time to leave a sinking ship. Or, to use a less ominous metaphor, magical golden geese who graciously convey manifold benefits and blessings on those with the courtesy to accept them discussing the right time to stop laying eggs and fly away before being greedily dissected. But regardless of whether one considers those discussing the timing of their exit as rats or golden geese. the mere fact that they are discussing the imminent sinking of the ship should be of no small concern to those who happen to be aboard it.

And before any philosemites feel led to cry holocaust, try to keep in mind that I didn't forge the freaking article. If there is some non-pejorative way to view these discussions by a group of people actively making ready for an incipient American decline, by all means, feel free to share your interpretation. Regardless, it would be hard to deny that the conference participants do not see themselves as being a part of the American people.

There's no care like Daycare!

The feminist movement built the American daycare industry, which, in every state in the nation, is FULL OF MINIMUM WAGE FEMALE WORKERS, who perform the job of MOTHER to America’s children for MINIMUM WAGE. - Nancy Levant

This post has been sitting in my draft folder for awhile...I had almost forgot I had even started it. But Dalrock's post about what makes feminists ugly reminded me about the topic. Sunshinemary's latest post also reminded me of it, as she referred to a term I often use (tell-a-vision), that I picked up from an author who's book and columns I read when I first "took the red pill" back in '06. After first discovering her via Outcast Superstar's review of the book, I ordered the book and read it in a single sitting as soon as it arrived.

Nancy Levant spent 13+ years as a Daycare provider, and by observing the thoughts and behaviors of the women dropping off their progeny for her to raise for minimum wage babysit their kids while they were in pursuit of havingitall, she gained a unique perspective on the state of American Womanhood and the family. She turned years of such observations into a book,  The Cultural Devastation of American Women. That book is chock full of thought-provoking content, but for this post, I focus on excerpts from the first chapter, Today's Moms:

As a childcare provider, and in observation of and conversation with nearly 1,000 women, men and children, five days a week, for many y ears, I can report the following givens for most moms of all ages:

1) They are too tired
2) They are not cooking
3) They are self absorbed

Why are they too tired? They are too busy trying to "have it all."  By focusing on careers and/or consumerist driven status whoring, they are too tired to actually nurture and care for their families.

For example, when she states "They are not cooking" she speaks from personal observation:

And speaking of food, meals are fast leaving the consciousness of the American female. This is of particular concern to me because for every group of children I've cared for in the past 13 years, half (yes 1/2) of those children are too hungry and underfed or overfed with drive-thru food. I've seen hundreds of children who have never eaten vegetables and hundres more who eat pizza, Taco Bell, McDonalds, and mac and cheese each and every night for dinner.

I have had one and two-years-olds arrive at seven o’clock in the morning holding zip-lock baggies full of chips, Cheetos, M&M’s, sugar pencils, Skittles, potato sticks, cream pies, brownies and Reese’s Pieces. I’ve had at least 200 children come in the morning with fries from the previous night’s dinners and sweet rolls and mini donuts from gas station mini marts. I’ve had two and three-year-olds arrive with Coke, Mountain Dew, and root beer in baby bottles and sippy cups. I’ve had hundreds of children arrive with fast food breakfasts.

Obesity epidemic? ADD, ADHD and ODD? Couldn't possibly have to do with the fast food-ification mentality programming we the sheeple are inundated with via mass media broadcasting?

I began asking children who were old enough to respond, "What did you have for dinner last night?" And the answers, 90% of the times were, "Pizza, Taco Bell, McDonalds or macaroni and cheese."

Of course, career women havingitall are just too busy or tired to actually cook real food, so they buy pre-made, processed, fast and convenient, microwavable or drive-thru FEED for their families. This is now what we can call the Standard American Diet.

So many women don't realize what they are missing. They don't know about the womanly arts, how it feels to give good, nutritious food to children, as many women now rebel against the notion of mom as family cook.... ...but cooking also takes time and unselfishness, which leads me to another subject - beauty and self-absorption.

Indeed, this is precisely the reasoning behind Dalrock's observation about what makes feminists ugly. At it's core, feminism is the gyno-centric philosophy of selfishism. Cooking and cleaning for other people? That's slavery...even if they are your own family!

To many, many women beauty has become a very expensive, weekly, and time consuming task.

Nancy then compiles a list of common services many Mother's are regularly paying small fortunes on a yearly basis for the sake of appearances. Hair, nails, tans, make-up, botox, liposuction, implants and lifts, teeth bleaching, veneers, personal trainers and gym memberships...

On and on - hours spent, family money spent - literally fortunes each and every year....

...How, you may ask, does that equate to my daycare business? Actually, in many, many ways – first and foremost, the message to female children is, frankly repulsive. Secondly, the message to our male children about females is significantly repulsive and, thirdly the fact that average, middle class women have bought into Hollywood-style looks and grooming is shallow, dangerous, financially irresponsible, and makes American women look like shallow twits to the rest of the hungry world...

...So, after I've had a child for 10 to12 hours, a mother calls and asks if she may stop on the way home from work to get her nails done, or her make-up re-applied, or a comb-out, or a tan, or to stop by the gym for an hour. Now there's a message for the tired and hungry child who has been away from home for 10 hours! But mom will eventually come with drive-thru bags in tow. Women have placed their looks and appearances above the time they spend with their children and far above their children's health...

Perhaps, deep down, the modern American Woman havingitall realizes her self absorption and unwillingness to serve her family to nurture and care for them makes her an ugly person. So she focuses on her outward appearance so she can look in the mirror and convince herself she's not really ugly afterall.

 But no matter how she looks, the ugliness and unhappiness of her status-driven, consumerist existence infects not just her, but her entire family.

When I was a child, every night the entire family used to sit around the kitchen table and eat dinner together. Imagine that.

 Thanks to the pursuit of havingitall, dinner is now eaten on the run, in the back seat of the car, or from paper bags or plastic wrapped, microwaved FEED, in front of the tell-a-vision. But outsourcing the feeding and nurturing of children to the industrialized, corporate feed system is not the worst the modern American Woman is doing to her family.

Children talk about their mothers to a far greater extent than their fathers, and children seem to learn communication skills from their mothers. They definitely learn the rules of behavior and eating habits from their mothers. Sadly, they also learn the beginnings of neuroses from their mothers' nueroses. Tiredness, hunger, intensity, sadness, irrationality, anger, sarcasms and bossiness, sullenness, mood swings, compulsions and obsessions - they so oten come directly from maternal lines. And one more thing - an inherent disrespect by children for fathers also seems to come directly from moms. With that said, I offer more quotes from my daycare children.

“My dad is stupid.”
“My dad doesn’t like to be with us.”
“My dad doesn’t like it at home.”
“My dad is a control freak.”
"I'm not allowed to talk to Dad when he's working."
"I'm not allowed to talk to Dad when he's watching TV."
"Dad never does anything."
"I don't know my dad's first name."
"Dad never talks to Mom."
"Dad likes his car better than us."
"Dad never takes us anywhere."
"Dad doesn't like to sit with Mom."
"Dad likes his computer more than Mom."

On and on... Do you think three, four and five-year-olds come up with this on their own, or do you think they heard this from someone?

All this time I swore I'd never be like my old man...

So, I put my children's pieces together, and a picture of family life evolves. I see a man who is purposefully disengaged from his family. I see a woman who is tired, neurotic, and bored.

Where does this familial-killing ennui come from? I say it's just our Brave New World Order's regularly scheduled programming.

...magazines and television showcase women in their new roles - beautiful, free, affluent, entitled and under fed. But the most beautiful, free, affluent and entitled are "stars." And stars live like royalty with their make-up and hair stylists, clothing designers, architects and interior decorators, big cars, professional landscapers, and servants. And America's women find the examples they desire to mimic called perfection through wealth. And the more perfection needed, the less time for anything or any one else.

Yes, in order to realize the havingitall dream life women are told they need to have to achieve happiness, they must become breadwinners and career success stories so they can indulge every materialistic whim and urge through consumerism and materialistic acquisition. If all that time spent on consuming and perfecting their appearances doesn't allow for time to cook, feed, and clean up their offspring and spouses...well, there's all of the convenience of ready made products and services provided by the transnational corporate conglomerates, to take care of all that.

Amy Chua is famous for being a Chinese American tiger mom. With her Jewish American husband, Jed Rubenfeld, she has written a new book which is startlingly outside the usual liberal narrative.

Chua and Rubenfeld have decided to write about why some groups in America do better than others:

"That certain groups do much better in America than others — as measured by income, occupational status, test scores and so on — is difficult to talk about"

So which groups do they identify as doing best? They list eight:

1. Jews
2. Chinese
3. Indians
4. Iranians
5. Nigerians
6. Lebanese
7. Cubans
8. Mormons

Note that the only white Americans included in the list are the Mormons, who aren't part of the core white liberal population.

Chua is correct that Asian Americans do better on average than white Americans - I noted that myself back in 2008.

It is significant that mainstream whites are being left off the advantaged list. For decades, white liberals have attacked their fellow whites as being privileged. Here, though, we have a Chinese American and a Jewish American identifying most whites as being part of a losing group when it comes to seeking high position in American society.

There's something else of significance to consider. Although white liberals like to see themselves as being anti-establishment, at the same time they like to see liberalism itself as an elite ideology - as something that confers status and prestige.

But Rubenfeld and Chua take the opposite view. They see liberalism as a losing ideology - as something best avoided if you want success:

in modern America, a group has an edge if it doesn’t buy into — or hasn’t yet bought into — mainstream, post-1960s, liberal American principles.'

So what does confer success according to Rubenfeld and Chua? They believe there is a triple package which drives people onward. The first is having a sense that the group you belong to is superior to others; the second is a feeling of personal insecurity; the third is impulse control.

I don't think Chua gets it entirely right here. I do think it helps if you have a sense that you belong to a high achieving group. I can remember as a boy in the 1970s the positive sense that Anglo-Australian men had of themselves as being masculine high achievers, particularly when it came to the roles of pioneers, soldiers and sportsmen. I don't remember the focus of this being a feeling of superiority over others, though. It was a positive self-focus, rather than being a superiority complex.

Nor were Australian men insecure. I think Chua focuses on this because she believes that therapeutic parenting styles, in which children are forever positively reinforced, leads to low achievement. She prefers the tiger mom style in which children are held to difficult standards of achievement.

By impulse control Chua and Rubenfeld apparently mean the ability to resist the impulse to give up.

I don't think that Chua and Rubenfelds' book, by itself, will discourage white liberals. It's likely that white liberals will respond by thinking that without liberalism you get dangerous claims of superiority, chauvinism etc.

However, the book does point to a different political scenario than the one we've had over the past 50 years. It's a scenario in which new ethnic elites confidently assert their success in terms of their own values, self-consciously rejecting the liberal values of the older, declining elites.

It's one way that liberalism might begin to lose prestige as an elite ideology.

Ever heard of this study?

Using data obtained (circa 2007) from the Orbis database (a global database containing financial information on public and private companies) the team, in what is being heralded as the first of its kind, analyzed data from over 43,000 corporations, looking at both upstream and downstream connections between them all and found that when graphed, the data represented a bowtie of sorts, with the knot, or core representing just 147 entities who control nearly 40 percent of all of monetary value of transnational corporations.

And who are these "entities?"

Look at the graph generated by the study.

Click to Enlarge

Nearly all of the controlling entities are the Banksters of Zero Liability Corporations (2Big2Fail!).

Most assuredly, these very same banks, are also the shareholders and owners of the stocks in every Central Banking Entity around the globe.

Consider again:

"...analyzed data from over 43,000 corporations...

...just 147 entities who control nearly 40 percent of all of monetary value of transnational corporations."

This is the nuts and bolts of what constitutes BIG BUSINESS.

Want to take an even closer look at the interconnected framework of corporations who OWN our Brave New World Order?

In the article The Global 1%: Exposing the Transnational Ruling Class, published by an Occupy Movement entity that takes a closer look at the close connections between the Transnational Corporations in our Globalized, Corporatist-Fascist Leviathan that has it's tentacles in every corner of the world.

It's important to note before we dive into the content of this article, that just like the Tea Party, any entity seeking to expose the truth about the Owners of the Company Store, MUST be channeled into the false left-right dialectic, so as to maintain the divided and conquered detente of mass distraction amongst the 99%.

Thus, in the following article was written by Marxist ideologue academians, whose entire piece is presented in terms of distribution of wealth, common good, social justice, blah blah blah. But pay careful attention to what the article's most important point here - explicitly pointing out the interlocking architecture of the 1%...the people who are in control of these 147 entities and how they exert power over the entire global economy and political structures of the entire planet.

Primary example number one, of what this report calls "The Extractor Sector," of the 1%.

The Extractor Sector: The Case of Freeport-McMoRan (FCX)
Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) is the world’s largest extractor of copper and gold. The company controls huge deposits in Papua, Indonesia, and also operates in North and South America, and in Africa. In 2010, the company sold 3.9 billion pounds of copper, 1.9 million ounces of gold, and 67 million pounds of molybdenum. In 2010, Freeport-McMoRan reported revenues of $18.9 billion and a net income of $4.2 billion.[xi]

FCX, a transnational corporation who operates precious mines all around the globe. Who runs this entity?

The board of directors of Freeport-McMoRan represents a portion of the global 1 percent who not only control the largest gold and copper mining company in the world, but who are also interconnected by board membership with over two dozen major multinational corporations, banks, foundations, military, and policy groups. This twelve-member board is a tight network of individuals who are interlocked with—and influence the policies of—other major companies controlling approximately $200 billion in annual revenues.

More specifically:

Freeport-McMoRan’s Board of Directors
James R. Moffett—Corporate and policy affiliations: co-chairman, president, and CEO of McMoRan Exploration Co.; PT Freeport Indonesia; Madison Minerals Inc.; Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans; Agrico, Inc.; Petro-Lewis Funds, Inc.; Bright Real Estate Services, LLC; PLC–ALPC, Inc.; FM Services Co.

Richard C. Adkerson—Corporate and policy affiliations: Arthur Anderson Company; chairman of International Council on Mining and Metals; executive board of the International Copper Association, Business Council, Business Roundtable, Advisory Board of the Kissinger Institute, Madison Minerals Inc.

Robert Allison Jr.—Corporate affiliations: Anadarko Petroleum (2010 revenue: $11 billion); Amoco Projection Company.

Robert A. Day—Corporate affiliations: CEO of W. M. Keck Foundation (2010 assets: more than $1 billion); attorney in Costa Mesa, California.

Gerald J. Ford—Corporate affiliations: Hilltop Holdings Inc, First Acceptance Corporation, Pacific Capital Bancorp (Annual Sales $13 billion), Golden State Bancorp, FSB (federal savings bank that merged with Citigroup in 2002) Rio Hondo Land & Cattle Company (annual sales $1.6 million), Diamond Ford, Dallas (sales: $200 million), Scientific Games Corp., SWS Group (annual sales: $422 million); American Residential Cmnts LLC.

H. Devon Graham Jr.—Corporate affiliations: R. E. Smith Interests (an asset management company; income: $670,000).

Charles C. Krulak—Corporate and governmental affiliations: president of Birmingham-South College; commandant of the Marine Corp, 1995–1999; MBNA Corp.; Union Pacific Corporation (annual sales: $17 billion); Phelps Dodge (acquired by FCX in 2007).
Bobby Lee Lackey—Corporate affiliations: CEO of McManusWyatt-Hidalgo Produce Marketing Co.

Jon C. Madonna—Corporate affiliations: CEO of KPMG, (professional services auditors; annual sales: $22.7 billion); AT&T (2011 revenue: $122 billion); Tidewater Inc. (2011 revenue: $1.4 billion).

Dustan E. McCoy—Corporate affiliations: CEO of Brunswick Corp. (revenue: $4.6 billion); Louisiana-Pacific Corp. (2011 revenue: $1.7 billion).

B. M. Rankin Jr.—Corporate affiliations: board vice chairman of FCX; cofounder of McMoRan Oil and Gas in 1969.

Stephen Siegele—Corporate affiliations: founder/CEO of Advanced Delivery and Chemical Systems Inc.; Advanced Technology Solutions; Flourine on Call Ltd.

Note that every last one of FCX's board of directors are also members, affiliates and executive officers of a number of other boards of Transnational Corporations. Other extractor corporations (Oil, Gas, Precious Metals)., financial sector, and military-industrial sectors.

Of course, as I stated earlier, it's the Banksters who own everything, and it is what the Occupy article identifies as the Investment Class of the 1% who own all the controlling shares of the Extractor Class of the Transnational Corporations.

The biggest of these is BlackRock, Inc.

BlackRock, based in Manhattan, is the largest assets management firm in the world, with over 10,000 employees and investment teams in twenty-seven countries. Their client base includes corporate, public, union, and industry pension plans; governments; insurance companies; third-party mutual funds; endowments; foundations; charities; corporations; official institutions; sovereign wealth funds; banks; financial professionals; and individuals worldwide. BlackRock acquired Barclay Global Investors in December of 2009. As of March 2012, BlackRock manages assets worth $3.68 trillion in equity, fixed income, cash management, alternative investment, real estate, and advisory strategies.[xxiii]

In addition to Freeport-McMoRan, BlackRock has major holdings in Chevron (49 million shares, 2.5 percent), Goldman Sachs Group (13 million shares, 2.7 percent), Exxon Mobil (121 million shares, 2.5 percent), Bank of America (251 million shares, 2.4 percent), Monsanto Company (12 million shares, 2.4 percent), Microsoft Corp. (185 million shares, 2.2 percent), and many more.[xxiv]


BlackRock manages investments of both public and private funds, including California Public Employee’s Retirement System, California State Teacher’s Retirement System, Freddie Mac, Boy Scouts of America, Boeing, Sears, Verizon, Raytheon, PG&E, NY City Retirement Systems, LA County Employees Retirement Association, GE, Cisco, and numerous others.

This is how 147 entities exercise control over 43,000+ corporations. They all own shares in each others companies, and they all appoint the same pool of elite executive officers to their board of directors. As the Occupy article points out when it cites the same study I referenced at the very beginning of this post:

Notably, for our purposes, BlackRock board members have direct connections to at least seven of the top twenty-five corporations that Vitali et al. identify as an international “super entity.” BlackRock’s board has direct links to seven of the twenty-five most interconnected corporations in the world. BlackRock’s eighteen board members control and influence tens of trillions of dollars of wealth in the world and represent a core of the super-connected financial sector corporations.

 This is the architecture of the fascist system of power and control that spans the entire globe.

 As seen in our extractor sector and investment sector samples, corporate elites are interconnected through direct board connections with some seventy major multinational corporations, policy groups, media organizations, and other academic or nonprofit institutions. The investment sector sample shows much more powerful financial links than the extractor sample; nonetheless, both represent vast networks of resources concentrated within each company’s board of directors.

The short sample of directors and resources from eight other of the superconnected companies replicates this pattern of multiple board corporate connections, policy groups, media and government, controlling vast global resources. These interlock relationships recur across the top interconnected companies among the transnational corporate class, resulting in a highly concentrated and powerful network of individuals who share a common interest in preserving their elite domination.

 One World Governance is already here. The illusion of democracy and nation-state sovereignty is maintained by regularly scheduled programming via mass media broadcasting and institutionalized brainwashing to keep the 99% from realizing and comprehending the true nature of the beast.

Indeed, the only answer controlled opposition and shills for corporate mass media ever offer we the sheeple, is the idea of "more regulatory controls" over Big Business.

In other words, the only solution we are ever offered is for us to support throwing Brer Rabbit into the Briar Patch. Note the interlocking board of directors, executive officers, and political appointees of the Transnational Corporations and the US Government:

Click to Enlarge

The Governments of all the world's nation-states, the global mass media conglomerate, the Transnational Investment and Extractor Corporations, Non-Profit Foundations, the entire UN structure including NGO's, the World Bank and IMF, as well as the members of Global political groups like the ...all of these entities and organizations are interconnected and interlocked in a similar manner as the two examples of FXC and BlackRock are highlighted in the Occupy report.

There is no conspiracy theory. There is only an interconnected and interlocked conglomeration of entities conspiring for the maintenance of total global control. Control to maximize shareholder profits by managing the exploitation the world's vast natural and human resources.

 

So, considering you've made it this far...you may be asking yourself, what's the point of all this then? Simple. I want more people to wake up to the reality of our 21st century. To stop wasting so much time and energy on all the propaganda and mass media distractions. To stop investing in the charade of Democracy and "grass roots" politics. Grass roots movements based on authentic people trying to effect real changes do exist. But the moment they start to gain any real traction, they will be subverted, co-opted, infiltrated, and/or marginalized by mass media propaganda controlling the narrative.

It's ALL a game of divide & conquer and diffuse & distract with bread and circuses.

Stop trying to "FIX" the system. It isn't broken. It's doing precisely what it was designed to do.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...for this has become the Raison d'être for why I have blogged for the past 7 years here:

"We have only one thing we can do, and that is to gain awareness and embrace the truth. Recognition of true reality and how to do the best you can to avoid the worst experiences of our feedlot system."

Find ways, both big and small, to starve the beast. Refuse and resist as much as humanly and humanely possible. Be vigilant in observing and protecting you and yours, and avoid the worst aspects of this system of interconnected and interlocking transnational corporations that rule our fallen world.

I got called in to work unexpectedly today and thus didn’t have time to finish the post I’d been working on this morning.  However, I saw this comment from Novaseeker at Donal Graeme‘s and thought it was worth considering. Donal said he isn’t posting for a few days, so hopefully he won’t mind if I repost Nova’s comment here for consideration.

One thing that usually comes up in these comparisons is why is it that women are using their autonomy to move ahead in the 20s and early 30s much more than men are.

The Hanna Rosins of the world say that this is because women are just better than men are period — she really believes this, and is a full on misandrist.

In reality I think there are quite a few factors that come into it — including the rise in the economy of jobs that are more suited to women than they are to many men. But I also think that liberation and autonomy look different to women and men due to sex differences.

Women crave security — financial, physical and otherwise. Autonomy is often seen as the freedom to create that security for themselves, rather than being dependent on specific other persons for it (typically specific men like fathers or husbands). Men are not as focused on security (we tend to feel less threatened and less dependent overall), and so for men autonomy often seems to mean the freedom to opt out of doing things we don’t otherwise want to do.

So, in other words, if for women liberation meant the freedom to be free of dependence on specific men for security, for men liberation meant the freedom from having to provide the means of that security for women (i.e., building something that is bigger than themselves in being able to satisfy the needs of more people than themselves effectively). When we decoupled the sexes from their relationship of dependency on each other, it should have stood to reason that the hallmarks of this liberation would look different for each sex — because each sex was being liberated from a different “role” in that dependency relationship. That is, it should have been foreseen that women would seek to meet their security needs themselves, while men would seek to dial down doing things that were designed to meet women’s security needs, because this was no longer needed in a context where the dependency link had been removed and women were fending for themselves in terms of security.

Instead, society seems to have expected that men and women would react largely the same way (probably based on the notion that men and women are largely the same other than for genitals) — and that both would basically act in the same was as men had previously done, coupled with men and women somehow “sharing” the less desirable aspects of life in terms of what was previously considered “mothering”. Of course, that has happened in some couples (we see couples like this in the UMC segment, but that’s ~5% of the population total, and many couples in the UMC have more traditional arrangements as well becase they can actually afford it), but the larger trend is what Driscoll is reacting to here, and it only takes a brief reflection to see why it turned out this way. It was virtually inevitable once that relationship of dependency between the sexes was removed.

Society is deeply confused about this, however, and that includes people like Driscoll. If he had a keener understanding of things, he would be harping less on young single men and more on young women and their fathers for creating, and egging on, a world of security independence for themselves/their daughters. If women are not dependent on men, men generally won’t be working on supplying the stuff that was previously used for women to depend on — men never did that because they enjoyed it! Certainly not most of them. In that context, it’s inevitable that many men will focus on other things that they do enjoy more personally, and find that doing so doesn’t really mess up their chances with the financially independent grrls much either. It’s fine to harangue young men for underachieving (it would be better for them to be focused on their futures, quite independent of whether women find it attractive or needed or not), but the issue is that incentives matter, and right now there are few incentives for that beyond people who are naturally ambitious and/or gifted. Haranguing is only going to get you so far with the rest of them. He would be better served by cranking it up with the fathers of the young women … but because he likely largely agrees with the fathers perspectives on young women, he doesn’t do that, and instead chooses an easy target to take to the woodshed — easy and ineffective.

I am working on a post, but I need some feedback before I can finish it.  Without any detailed explanation and in unfancy language, let me lay out my ideas and beliefs in list fashion.

1. Women were not designed by either God / evolution to be traded around among men.  There are few (or no?) societies in human history in which human females were heavily sexually promiscuous, and marriage has existed in some form in nearly every culture.

2. The sexual revolution removed social mores against extra-marital sex and female promiscuity.  The glamorization of casual sex and rebellion against authority  encouraged young women to sleep around.

3. Because women were not designed for this, it leaves them feeling emotionally traumatized.  Because they believe that they should feel good about casual sex / fornication, they don’t understand why they feel traumatized and thus wrongly conclude they must have been raped.

4. Fathers no longer guard their daughters’ chastity; they encourage their daughters to go away to college, which is essentially throwing them to the wolves.  The wolves are the girls’ own sexual desires, but also the machinations of the young men on campus.

5. The proliferation of the knowledge of “game,” a series of techniques eportedly useful for men to employ in order to seduce women, has paralleled the rise of out of control campus rape centers.  All sexual contact between men and women can now potentially result in a sexual assault allegation against the man.

6. These allegations serve the social function of bringing back monogamy, which is the form of sexual relationship women were created by God/evolved to engage in and which is the most beneficial for maintaining a functioning society.  Because fathers do not /cannot guard their daughters’ chastity, and girls have proven themselves to be extremely bad at doing it themselves, but because female chastity before marriage is so important for the continuation of marriage as a social structure and the maintenance of a functional society, an entire legal framework (and extra-legal framework) is springing up in the form for of rape/sexual assault laws/policies which at the meta level may serve the function of guarding female chastity by making males too leery of pre-marital sexual contact to engage in it.

Please consider these ideas in the framework I posited based on Dawkins’ Circular Matrix example awhile back:

1. If women are chaste, it pays men to be committed.
2. If men are committed, it pays women to be slutty.
3. If women are slutty, it pays men to be cads.
4. If men are cads, it pays women to be chaste.

For men, the two choices are:

• committed = offering commitment in exchange for sexual access (monogamous)
• cad = able to gain sexual access while withholding commitment (promiscuous)

For women, the two choices are:

• slutty = offers sexual access without requiring commitment (promiscuous)
• chaste = requires commitment before offering sexual access (monogamous)

We could also put it like this:

1. If women are monogamous, it pays men to be monogamous.
2. If men are monogamous, it pays women to be promiscuous.
3. If women are promiscuous, it pays men to be promiscuous.
4. If men are promiscuous, it pays women to be monogamous.

So right now, what we are perhaps witnessing is dissonance in the market.  Women are still being fast but men are beginning to cease being faithful.  In other words, for the past thirty years, women have been able to be easy sluts and still find a man to marry, but as men are beginning to be less willing to be faithful and committed in exchange for sex, women are just beginning to find it more difficult to be easy sluts yet still find a man to marry.  Perhaps that is what a lot of drunken hook-ups that end in sexual assault allegations the next day are unconsciously really all about; the young woman is still trying to acquire an item (commitment) using a currency (sex) that is becoming less acceptable as payment.

So perhaps what we are seeing is another turn in the circular matrix in which female chastity is brought back around by external control on males in the form of these odd new sexual assault and rape policies.  I have what I believe is evidence that women as a group are responsible for this and the reason they are doing this is to bring females back to pre-marital chastity.  I do not believe the players understand the game, but I think this is a plausible explanation for what we observe.  However, I don’t want to lay out my evidence quite yet, as I am still trying to understand the whys for what we see.

In the real world, it is important for us as parents to understand what is going on so that we can properly advise our children.  If girls are damaged by pre-marital sex (whether they admit it or not), we have a duty to explain this to them; if boys are at risk of having their lives destroyed by a sexual-assault allegation, we have a  duty to explain this to them.  Just railing against sluttery and false rape allegations doesn’t help us understand why things are the way they are and what function these changes serve on a society-wide scale.

I would value reader input.

I will selfishly (but accurately) claim  I pioneered a new line of thinking or "theory" as to why leftists and (especially) feminists are ugly.  In it's most refined and reduced form it is:

"Feminists and leftists are uglier than their conservative counterparts because maintaining physical beauty requires work, effort, and rigor; things antithetical to their leftist political ideology which entails laziness, the avoidance of rigor, and the least amount of effort."

Dalrock came up with a very interesting alternative, though not mutually-exclusive theory:

Feminists are miserly with their love.

Love is selflessness.  Putting somebody ahead of your own self.  And feminists are indeed a very selfish and self-centered lot.  I've pointed it out before and I'll point it out again, the Manosphere is infinitely more loving than feminists in that we actually care about what women want.  So much so we advocate lifting weights, losing weight, eating healthy, etc.  Whereas I ask, when is the last time you heard a feminist advocate staying skinny, getting implants, or cook a meal to make their man happy?  It's simple - they don't.  Matter of fact, they go the opposite direction and advocate such bullshit as "fat acceptance" and dare to lecture men to have the audacity to like what they are genetically programmed to.

This is why they tend not to be pretty.  Because "pretty" is an outward, outside, and selfless quality observed by OTHER PEOPLE.  A kindness or a courtesy you give to your fellow man (and woman) to:

maintain your physical shape
dress attractively
do yourself up and
just plain give a damn about your appearance.


But since feminists are so self-centered and are incapable of selflessness, they don't care what other people think.  They are incapable of empathy.  They are only capable of focusing on themselves.  And when somebody is so myopic and only care about themselves, then they are incapable of presenting beauty to other people.  Ergo, why most feminists tend to be ugly.

The two theories are actually the same, but I like Dalrock's view in that it shows you just what lonely, sad, pathetic and dysfunctional lives these women are living.  They are incapable of considering others.  They are incapable of love.  And it is the fear of effort, rigor and work that keeps them from enjoying the best life has to offer.

Oh well, you feminists enjoy the decline.

This book warns against the dangers of socialism and how its hijacking of a nation’s laws will erode the liberties of citizens. It was written by French politician Frederic Bastiat in 1849.

Bastiat argues that the purpose of law is to protect a person’s liberty and property but no more. It should not be used by the state in order to burden its citizens, but that’s exactly what socialism requires. Instead of being used to protect liberty, the laws of socialist states specifically impinges on liberty while taking the property of others. This is sanctioned by a large percentage of the population because it’s human nature to want to avoid the pain of work by taking what has been earned from another man’s labor:

Now, labor being in itself a pain, and man being naturally inclined to avoid pain, it follows, and history proves it, that wherever plunder is less burdensome than labor, it prevails; and neither religion nor morality can, in this case, prevent it from prevailing. When does plunder cease, then? When it becomes less burdensome and more dangerous than labor. It is very evident that the proper aim of law is to oppose the powerful obstacle of collective force to this fatal tendency; that all its measures should be in favor of property, and against plunder.

[...]

…as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property instead of securing it, everybody will be wanting to manufacture law, either to defend himself against plunder, or to organize it for his own profit.

[...]

When a portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him who has acquired it, without his consent, and without compensation, to him who has not created it, whether by force or by artifice, I say that property is violated, that plunder is perpetrated.

The result is the legal plunder of certain classes by other classes. In other words, socialism. Bastiac argues that the injustice of inequality does not make right the injustice of plunder. The law should not be used to create a “self-serving fountain” for people to grab what they want simply because they have less.

But how is [legal plunder] to be distinguished? Very easily. See whether the law takes from some persons that which belongs to them, to give to others what does not belong to them. See whether the law performs, for the profit of one citizen, and, to the injury of others, an act which this citizen cannot perform without committing a crime.

[...]

Here I am encountering the most popular prejudice of our time. It is not considered enough that law should be just, it must be philanthropic. It is not sufficient that it should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive exercise of his faculties, applied to his physical, intellectual, and moral development; it is required to extend well-being, instruction, and morality, directly over the nation. This is the fascinating side of socialism.

An absense of liberty is required for any state to legally take from one class to give to another.

When prosperous, we should not, it is true, have to thank the State for our success; but when unfortunate, we should no more think of taxing it with our disasters, than our peasants think of attributing to it the arrival of hail or of frost.

Socialists want to tinker with societies from the top down to create their ideal utopias because they believe humanity is inherently flawed. Only they have the vision to make it better.

This tendency of the human race, it must be admitted, is greatly thwarted, particularly in our country, by the fatal disposition, resulting from classical teaching, and common to all politicians, of placing themselves beyond mankind, to arrange, organize, and regulate it, according to their fancy.

[...]

…liberty consists, not only in the right granted, but in the power given to man, to exercise, to develop his faculties under the empire of justice, and under the protection of the law.

Socialists believe that citizens need constant guidance and instruction from the state, never to be trusted with their own choices in regard to education or commerce. This requires an authoritarian government with a thick book of law to uphold their vision of morality and righteousness, which often goes against human nature. Therefore, liberty and socialism are mutually exclusive.

Ask a socialist what facet of man’s life should be untouched by state interference and you will find a short list. Nearly everything must be regulated. Sadly, in spite of this, the lot of the average man (and woman) are quick to pick socialism over liberty, because such a scheme requires less labor of them while they can receive legal plunder from those who are more successful. If you’re on the fence about socialism and whether it is just or not, I recommend this book to put you on the right path.

Read More: “The Law” on Amazon

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MS clings to the myth of equality between different human population groups:

I don't need to base anything on race; the problem with many blacks in America is their culture. A lazy, irresponsible, INFERIOR culture compared to eurocentric "white" culture. If they adopted our culture tomorrow, most of their problems would disappear (IMO).

He's completely wrong. Africans don't adopt European culture for three reasons. First, because they can't. Second, because they prefer their own culture. Third, because Europeans have increasingly abandoned it themselves. Europeans have been trying to force Africans to adopt European culture for more than 200 years. It's not possible, and more to the point, it's not their choice.

Think about it. What could be more racist, what could be more culturally imperialistic, than to insist that Africans must adopt European culture? This is even worse than Muslims imposing Sharia on everyone; Sharia at least permits the dhimmi to retain their religion and customs. Why should Asians not insist that Europeans adopt their culture? If we put it to a global vote, I'm quite confident the Han Chinese would win.

Africans have a perfect right to live the way they want to live. So do Europeans. This is why desegregation is not only doomed to failure, but is intrinsically immoral. It is also likely to destroy whichever culture has the longer time preferences.

Remember, there are no shortage of whites, especially overweight, unattractive white women, who genuinely prefer the African culture of living fast, consuming conspicuously, and dying young in a promiscuous, matriarchal society to the European culture of living conservatively and saving to build for the future in a sexually restricted patriarchal society. As with all things economic, these are questions of preferences and time-orientation, not morality or science.

History has conclusively demonstrated that there is only one way to successfully turn a short-term orientation people into a long-term one: kill off a sufficient percentage of those members of the population group with a short-term orientation before they bear or raise children. This process takes somewhere between 750 and 1,000 years and I suspect that Jared Diamond may have been onto something even though he didn't understand the full significance of the European geography in this regard. My thought is that the near-continuous warfare between small and competing groups, in combination with their ongoing contact with advanced civilization, allowed the European nations to kill off enough of their short-term oriented troublemakers to collectively develop long-term time orientations.

Remember, the Roman legions didn't permit their soldiers to marry until AFTER their 20-year term of service was complete.

Not only have Africans not had enough time to go through his process, given when they first encountered European civilization, but they have actually been collectively reverting thanks to the federal and international aid policies of the last 50 years. Neither geography nor law nor even religion are sufficient to convert short time preferences into long ones. Such ideas are mutu, magical thinking akin to the idea that murdering an albino will lead to success in business.

Permitting the barbarians to destroy civilization is not going to benefit either the savage or the civilized in the long-run. The fact that the majority of people in our society cannot grasp this simple fact is, in itself, an indication of the way in which our society has already been barbarized.

It is my very great pleasure to announce the recent nuptials of readers NSR of Night Sky Radio and Allamagoosa of Morning Sprinkles and Evening Gunfire.  Long-time readers will recall that NSR and Alla met right here on this very blog (well, my old one actually).

NSR gave me permission to announce that they are now man and wife, and he also made me an official Yenta banner:

I never really meant to take on the yenta role, but it has come about as readers have asked me to make introductions between them, and being a woman, I naturally find it all quite thrilling.

Though I’m not at liberty to publish them, I’ve seen several pictures of the wedding taken at the church where they were married, and NSR looks handsome, tall, and serious, and Alla looks beautiful and as delicate as a little Nightingale bird.   HHG and I wish NSR and Alla every happiness; may the blessings of the Lord be upon their house and may they always say as Joshua did:

as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Now, after extending our heartfelt congratulations to NSR and Alla, let us turn our minds to the topic of Christian marriage.  Here are five essays readers may find as thought-provoking as I did:

1. Donal Graeme discusses biblical marriage in his recent essay, Thoughts on Marriage and Game:

Something I have noticed…is that some bloggers and commenters confuse Marriage 1.0 with Christian Marriage (or Biblical Marriage).

Marriage 1.0 is not Christian Marriage, it was a legal regime which established how the State treated and recognized marriage back in the day. Christian Marriage is an ideal, a spiritual construct, something that exists outside of any legal context. The various “versions” of Marriage, starting with Marriage 1.0, moving on to Marriage 2.0 and now with a nascent Marriage 3.o in development, provide a background and context for Christian Marriage, they do not set it. For example, the State could theoretically outlaw marriage all together. Under those circumstances, Christians could still marry, because marriage is set by God, not by earthly authorities. Yes, it would make you a criminal to go ahead and marry anyways, but isn’t that a consummately Christian thing to do? Certainly it is in keeping with the spirit of the earliest Christians in the Roman Empire, who suffered persecution and death for their beliefs.

The confusion probably arises from the fact that Marriage 1.0 was the state of affairs for so long that bloggers/commenters…mistake it for having been the background for all of Christian Marriage. But it wasn’t.

2. Zippy Catholic discussed consensual commitments in general and marriage in particular in a post from a few months ago, Imperfect contrition and marriage, or, why positivists don’t have to go to Hell:

A common sentiment I’ve seen expressed shows up in the comments of Dalrock’s guest post at the Orthosphere:

Thus, in effect with the advent of no-fault divorce, marriage has effectively ceased to exist, one’s marital contract is simply an illusionary contract, not a real contract at all. Thus when marital obligations gets subverted by “feelings” or “wants”, etc, it ceases to be an obligation, and thereby ceases to be a marriage in the first place. A promise to do something with the clause that, “provided I feel like it”, is not a promise at all, it is an illusionary promise.

This can only make sense if we take marriage – or consensual commitments more generally, for that matter – to be things which come into existence based on State enforcement.  This can only make sense if we are incapable of distinguishing between the actuality of a commitment and the enforcement of that commitment by some external authority.  This can only make sense if we have no concept of actual morality at all: if moral obligation is not deontologically objective reality, but rather is merely a matter of the selfish avoidance of personal negative consequences: in short, if the only reason to do good and avoid evil is to escape punishment by the State.

A promise which is broken doesn’t cease to exist as a moral object.  Nor do the eternal consequences of breaking it.  Whether that promise is or is not enforced by some earthly authority or other is just a side show: a given authority’s failure to enforce may represent the self-destruction of that authority; but it cannot, in any way, affect the existential reality of the promise [...] People with the understanding that obligation literally doesn’t exist without State enforcement are bound to think that way.  But back here in reality, any marriage which can be unmade by the will of the State is not true marriage.  It was never true marriage in the first place.

3. Scott at The Courtship Pledge shares a recent success in which his teenaged son used the Biblical Courtship principles that Scott is teaching him in order to pursue a young woman and ultimately decide not to court her further at this time.  I am watching all this with great interest because our time to start dealing with courtship will come within a few years when our eldest daughter, now 14, comes of courtable age.

4. Vox Day at Alpha Game Plan discusses a recently-published research study in which the husband was instructed to agree with everything the wife said; the wife was not told that this would be the case.  Over the course of the study, which was terminated prematurely due to how miserable both the husband and wife began to feel, the woman became increasing negative and critical toward her husband.  Vox concludes:

In most male-female relationships, the woman will push until she is metaphorically slapped down. Whether they actually need them in the way children do or not, the observable fact is that women crave boundaries. Men who don’t provide those boundaries, consciously or unconsciously, will tend to incite contempt and infuriate them.

5. Wintery Knight discusses how former-Christian Katy Perry was raised by her parents in a way that was highly conducive to apostasy.  He uses this to exemplify why he has a checklist for evaluating a potential wife.  He writes:

Now the whole point of the list of 10 questions is to detect women who are not going to help me to produce effective, influential Christian children. If I am going to spend north of $100,000 per child + tuition, then I expect to get some sort of return on that investment for God. That money doesn’t earn itself, and it needs to be well-spent serving God.

It’s my wife’s job to help me to do that. My goal in choosing a wife is to find a helper to make the relationship serve God. Otherwise, it’s better for God if I give that money that I worked very hard to earn directly to effective Christian scholars. I don’t have money to burn “playing house” with someone who is guided by her feelings. I can just give the money to Reasonable Faith or Discovery Institute instead.

And definitely check out that list of questions he made for evaluating a potential wife.  He gives ten questions, along with sample answers he would accept, answers for which he would give bonus points, and an explanation as to why each question is important.  Here are five of the questions:

The resurrection of Jesus

Assume you are talking to a non-Christian. Explain how you would make a case for the bodily resurrection of Jesus on historical grounds. This person does not accept the Bible as inspired and/or inerrant.

The moral argument

What is the is-ought fallacy? What is the difference between moral objectivism and moral relativism? Give one reason why moral relativism is false. Give one reason why an atheist cannot rationally ground prescriptive morality. Explain why objective morality relates to God’s existence.

Marriage

Explain the public purposes of marriage, and then outline three threats to marriage and explain what legislation you would propose to neutralize these threats. What choices should people make before marriage to make sure they will have a stable, loving marriage?

Children

Explain a person you admire and then tell me what you would do as a mother in order to produce that person from one of your children. What are some people and laws that you would change to make your job easier?

Husbands

Explain the roles of a man in a marriage, and tell me some of the things you would do in order to help your man to achieve those roles. What groups would oppose your husband from fulfilling those roles, and what have you done in your life to prepare yourself to help your husband in his roles? What are some of the most important things that a man needs from a woman, and what specific things should a wife do to provide them?

I really like the idea of a young man insisting that a young woman qualify herself for marriage.  To my mind, it used to be the case that the woman was the prize, but in the modern day, I think we need to switch our mentality and see the man as the prize.  After all, in the present day, young men have more to lose if a match turns out badly, and their children stand to lose the most, so a wise man evaluates a woman carefully in order to screen out those women who are not suitable, just like Scott’s son did.  If men expect and demand more from women, perhaps women who truly desire marriage will step up; if they don’t step up, men can thus ascertain that they simply aren’t worth marrying.

And finally, from the word of the Lord in Jeremiah 29:

4 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away captive, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon:

5 Build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. 6 Take wives and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters—that you may be increased there, and not diminished. 7 And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace. 8 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are in your midst deceive you, nor listen to your dreams which you cause to be dreamed. 9 For they prophesy falsely to you in My name; I have not sent them, says the Lord.

10 For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place.11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13 And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.

Readers, though we dwell in Babylon, let us carry on doing good and praying without ceasing.  Even so, come Lord Jesus!

ST asks for criticism concerning his attack on a utilitarian argument in defense of punishing Christians who fail to support gay marriage.

I am debating a "Humian Utilitarian" with the moniker Eric The Red (ETR) over at Doug Wilson's place. I post there as timothy. Two men there, Katecho and Dan have done the grunt work of identifying the materialism of ETR and I consider him debunked, but ETR is an evasive little bastard.

I would like for him to hang himself with his Utilitarian positions. I am not pleased with my work on this and am asking your help or criticism.

ETR's position is that human happiness is maximized (pick your flavor of Utilitarianism measurement here--average or greatest--it doesn't matter which) by celebrating gay marriage. Since a Christian  baker's refusal to bake a wedding cake for a couple of gay perverts detracts from that happiness, it is right to punish the Christians.

I am going to adopt the Utilitarian viewpoint in my  argument as it is ETR's viewpoint.

ETR likes to change the subject quite a bit when things get tight, so here is his latest example missive where I think an opening lies:

"Perhaps someone can answer my earlier question:  In light of Uganda, how isn't is the basest and more repulsive hypocrisy for Christians to  complain about having to bake a cake? Take a look at what your fellow religionists have done to gays over the years; you sure have a low tolerance for what you consider persecution in light of your own abuse of gays over the years."

Since it is topical, I am focusing on the Ugandan law he mentions and ignoring the other accusations for now.

The text of the Ugandan law is here.

Clause 3 specifies the penalty for the horror of an HIV-positive man buggering a child. It is on this clause that I am building my argument (this decision may be a mistake, but I am rolling with it for now).

The Logical structure I have in mind is a simple Conjunctive

P dot Q
where both P and Q have to be true.
If one is false then the conjunctive is false and the argument fails.
Here is the truth table.
P Q  P dot Q
T T   T
T F   F
F T   F
F F   F

Argument P

1. A Utilitarian desires the greatest "good" for the greatest number of people.
2. Without children, there are no people for whom to maximize the greatest good, therefore, the good of the greatest number of people warrants the protection of children.
3. Clause 3 of the Ugandan law specifically penalizes homosexuals in the case of HIV positive men having sex with children. Thereby increasing the greater good.
4. Clause 3 of the Ugandan law is valid under Utilitarian principles.
5. The Utilitarian principle of maximizing the greater good requires stigmatizing homosexual behavior

Argument Q

1. A Utilitarian desires the greatest "good" for the greatest number of people.
2. Homosexual marriage increases the greater good. (defined as happines, if I remember the thread correctly)
3. Actions that increase human happiness are to be encouraged.
4. Actions that decrease human happiness are to be penalized.
5. Christians who refuse to bake a wedding cake for homosexuals are at odds with Utilitarian principles
6. Under Utilitarian principles it is a good to punish those who punish homosexual behavior.

Either P is True or Q is True.
Both cannot be true.
P and Q state the same thing
therefore the Utilitarian argument fails.

My take is that this is overkill. Some will recall that one of the first questions I ask myself in dealing with an interlocutor is whether or not he is intellectually honest. Since ST describes ETR as "an evasive little bastard", we can safely assume that he is not. And since he is presenting a utilitarian argument in favor of a statistically insignificant minority, we can also observe that he isn't particularly intelligent either.

Where ST went wrong was in permitting ETR to beg the question. ETR asserted, apropos of nothing, that "human happiness is maximized by celebrating gay marriage". I would have attacked that point and demonstrated his argument to be based upon a false foundation rather than taking the much more complicated approach ST adopted.

Also, Argument P is legitimate, but somewhat convoluted. Steps 2 and and 5 are weaker than they could be. If I were to rewrite Argument P, it would be as follows:

Argument P2

1. A Utilitarian desires the greatest "good" for the greatest number of people.
2. Actions that increase human happiness are to be encouraged.
3. It observably makes the majority of Ugandans happy to see homosexuality criminalized.
4. Under Utilitarian principles it is a good to criminalize homosexual behavior.

This accomplishes the same result and in a much more straightforward action. Better yet, it forces ETR to go back and defend the question that had been successfully begged if he is going to object to it. Of course, the entire argument is stupid on its face; Utilitarianism is nothing more than the democratic fallacy and has been known to be bankrupt for more than a century. The fact is that ETR is not going to be convinced of anything or stop presenting his dialectically false arguments simply because they have been shown to be false and philosophically outdated. His objectives are entirely rhetorical and akin to that of Pajama Boy, which is "to make the opponents feel terrible about themselves". Now, recall that in most cases, the opponent's objective is based on his own vulnerabilities. And that points the way to effective victory.

Because the Left is usually limited to the rhetorical level, it is useful to take a two-step approach of first dialectically crushing the opponent's pseudo-dialectical argument, then to rhetorically rub his intellectual inferiority in his face along with any other obvious psychological weaknesses. (This, by the way, is why the Left is so reliably inept when they attack me; they seldom bother to try to understand their enemy.) However, since the dialectic aspect is only relevant in that it lays the foundation for the subsequent rhetorical assault, it is best to keep it as simple and easy to follow as possible.

Yesterday’s post concerned “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and its focus on approval-seeking as a limiting behavior for men (especially seeking approval from women).

Another thought process that is recognized as a major obstacle to good game and a successful social life is the scarcity mentality. This means that a man approaches interactions with women as if each one is his last opportunity; he approaches dates as must-win encounters and tries to lock each woman down; he approaches a relationship as if he can never get another one and tolerates a lot of crap he shouldn’t. Reversing the scarcity mentality is what’s behind Roissy’s 16th commandment, “never be afraid to lose her.”

Now, reversing the scarcity mentality is easier said than done – in some cases it is forged by a few poor experiences at a time when a man has low SMV (and thus his desperation is at least logically justified), other times it reflects a pedestalization of women or other irrational factors. Normally it’s not something you can just “turn off” because you woke up one day and decided to be “more confident.”

At a recent Just Four Guys thread, commenter Esau delivered a great story that explains the scarcity mentality in another, non-sexual context.

Story time! In academic STEM circles there was a brief era in the late 1980′s early 1990′s where we saw the phenomena of (ex-)Soviet scientists visiting the West in large numbers, many for their first time unchaperoned; and some pretty remarkable behaviors were revealed. One thing the Soviets always wanted to do was to go shopping, particularly for consumer electronics, to bring back home. In one famous story, a small group of these guys went to a Circuit City (young people, look it up) to see what they could find. Right inside the door was a stack of VCR’s (young people, look it up) and the group immediately stationed two of their guys to stand guard over the VCR’s to make sure that no one else bought them up while the rest of the group hunted further. The American hosts labored to re-assure them, that no one was likely to buy up these VCR’s within the next ten minutes, and there were certainly more in the back anyway. But the Soviets were used to a scarcity regime in shopping, that not much was ever available and if you saw something you wanted you had to pounce on it immediately, full-force, or miss out completely. And ultimately there was no way to talk them out of the need to zealously guard this stack of relatively ordinary stuff, even for nominally logically-minded men. It was just that hard to break the habits of a scarcity mentality that had been built up by experience.

Each Christmas season we take our daughters to a local production of the Nutcracker Ballet.  It is performed by a nearby non-profit dance company which is associated with a fairly prestigious  (for the Midwest) school of dance, where several of my daughters have taken dance lessons over the years.  It is usually fun and sweet – the dancers are almost all students, some of them very young, and only a few of them will go on to be professional dancers, but it is lovely anyway.

It is usually a fairly traditional rendition of the story, but when I went to purchase tickets, I was slightly alarmed to note that this year’s performance was listed on the website as being a new, contemporary take on the story.  The company was touting their new artistic director, who had apparently made some changes to the traditional production.  Still, I thought, it is the Nutcracker, so how bad can it really get?

I should have known.

When we arrived, I looked through the program.  Here is the description of Act I:

It is Christmas Eve at Clara’s house – a large and grand house with a beautiful Christmas tree. Clara and her mother are hosting their annual holiday party, welcoming the arrival of their family and friends.  The party grows festive as the guests present Clara their gifts…

Clara and the guests love all the dance forms but suddenly all attention is drawn to the gift from Clara’s mother.  She presents her with “the Canned Nut” – a nutty guy with lots of energy.  He is so much fun, he gets everyone to dance with him…

The Nut turns into a nice gentleman and takes Clara on a journey to the Land of Snow, an enchanted forest wonderland where they are welcomed by dancing snowflakes.

Poor Dr. Stahlbaum.  Perhaps he was frivorced by Clara’s mother.  In any event, he is out of the scene, and in fact out of the story entirely – it is Clara and her Mama’s house now, and it is their party, too, and they’ll dance if they want to.  And the dancing they want to do is a modern jazz dance, with plenty of hip shaking.

And Uncle Drosselmeyer?  No, he is not there either.  The men have apparently taken their leave  from the former Mrs. Stahlbaum’s life entirely.  There is, however, a large black man who comes dancing onto stage, shaking his hips all around Mrs. Stahlbaum and several other female dancers.  He has no role in the story and his only purpose appears to be for the amusement he provides the lay-deez with his hip-shaking.  Most charming, most charming.  My eldest daughter leaned over to me during the first scene and whispered, with wrinkled brow, “Mama, what is going on?  I’m confused.”

Art imitates life.  No papa, no uncle, just a random hip-shaking man, a baby mama, and her daughter.  Oh, and in ETA Hoffman’s story, Clara is seven-years-old, but in the modern version we just saw, Clara was 18-years-old.  And looked it.  And danced like it.

And what of The Nut?  He was probably the most traditional part of the story, in that he was a skilled male ballet dancer in tights.  Sadly, no duel with the Mouse King is in his future and he does not have his moment to be Clara’s hero.  Of course.  He is more like Clara’s gay male best friend.  Can you not see how this is a vast improvement on the original ballet?

Moving on to Act II – the Land of Dance

Clara’s gentleman companion escorts her to the Land of Dance where they are greeted with many more dancers – beyond her wildest imagination.

Truly, it was beyond my imagination, too.  Rather than charming girls in ballet slippers dressed as peppermint bon-bons, there were chubby teenagers in black pants and t-shirts vogueing – I kid you not.  The older teenaged girls were dressed in bright-red flapper dresses with slits up each leg; one dance move involved them sitting on the floor facing the audience with their legs spread open.  Hey, it may not have been a family-friendly event this time, but at least all the husbands had something to look at.  They looked like they were one step away from breaking out the stripper poles.

Big girls were doing ballet lifts with smaller girls like gender-bending androgynes; it is truly strange to watch 17-year-old girls lifting 12-year-old girls up above them and twirling them around, then cradling in their arms like they are channeling Fred and Ginger.  Oh, and there was also hip-hop and tap and a little bit of ballet thrown in, but unfortunately there was no discernible story line.  The whole thing was a disconnected, disjointed, booty-shaking hot mess.  For children.  Welcome to Ann Arbor; coming soon to a town near you…

Our daughters were very quiet on the way back to the car.  One of them finally said, “I think I like the original version better.”

Liberals believe that solidarity is based not on relatedness between a group of people but on otherness. It is with the marginalised other that we are to achieve solidarity.

And so liberals envisage diverse communities which express communal solidarity: diversity is our strength is the liberal mantra.

Some years ago Professor Robert Putnam of Harvard University cast doubt on the liberal project when he discovered that diversity and solidarity don't go well together:

The evidence that diversity and solidarity are negatively correlated comes from many different settings.

Professor Putnam found that there was less trust in highly diverse communities and that individuals tended to "hunker down" in such communities:

Diversity does not produce ‘bad race relations’ or ethnically-defined group hostility, our findings suggest. Rather, inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours, regardless of the colour of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.

Now another important research project has come to similar conclusions. Two researchers from the University of Michigan, Zachary Neal and Jennifer Watling Neal, decided to test whether it was possible to build diverse and cohesive communities.

The answer? A clear no:

After 20 million-plus simulations, the authors found that the same basic answer kept coming back: The more diverse or integrated a neighborhood is, the less socially cohesive it becomes, while the more homogenous or segregated it is, the more socially cohesive.

Similarly:

Their simulations of more than 20 million virtual “neighborhoods” demonstrate a troubling paradox: that community and diversity may be fundamentally incompatible goals. As the authors explain, integration “provides opportunities for intergroup contact that are necessary to promote respect for diversity, but may prevent the formation of dense interpersonal networks that are necessary to promote sense of community.”

And this:

These findings are sobering. Because homophily and proximity are so ingrained in the way humans interact, the models demonstrated that it was impossible to simultaneously foster diversity and cohesion “in all reasonably likely worlds.” In fact, the trends are so strong that no effective social policy could combat them, according to Neal. As he put it in a statement, “In essence, when it comes to neighborhood desegregation and social cohesion, you can't have your cake and eat it too.”

In brief, these researchers are now convinced that you can either have diversity (desegregation) or social cohesion. One or the other.

The journalist covering the story suggested to the researchers that it might still be possible to have diversity at a city level rather than a neighbourhood one:

On a more positive note, it may be possible to have such sorting by neighborhoods and still have diverse cities. I asked Neal whether he thought that cities that were made up of a federation or mosaic of distinct neighborhoods were more likely to succeed than ones comprised of several more fully mixed neighborhoods.

That would, at least, give some room for distinct communities to exist. The traditionalist ideal, however, is to enact the same principle at a global level, in other words, to enjoy the diversity of distinct national cultures. It's more realistic to have cultures maintain themselves at the national level rather than a neighbourhood one.

However, credit to the researchers and to the journalist for accepting the scientific findings that you build community (solidarity) on the basis of like qualities or relatedness (homophily) rather than on diversity. Right now, getting the underlying principle right is what is most important.

One final point. In traditional communities, in which solidarity is based on forms of relatedness, there is still a diversity of sorts. Such communities have a deep sense of solidarity but there is still diversity based on distinct class and regional cultures. That remains the best way to reconcile the enjoyment of both diversity and community.

The queer thing about bullies is that if you apologize to them and submit to them, they become even more enraged.  We see this time and time again playing out among the cultural elite – politicians, professional athletes, entertainers – when one of them inadvertently says something that offends a Victim Identity Group (i.e. anyone who isn’t male, white, Christian, or heterosexual), and the Victim Identity Bullies descend.  Usually the “offender” is cowed into apologizing.  Consider for example the Paula Deen incident.  Did it do her any good to apologize for once having used the N word to describe a black man who had robbed her at gunpoint?  No, it did not.  It just enraged the Victim Identity Bullies further.  Despite her mea culpa-ing, her career was completely destroyed.

Contrast this with what it looks like when people don’t apologize for stating the truth as they see it.  When Matt Forney wrote The Case Against Female Self-Esteem, feminists far and wide went completely insane; I’ve never seen such disgusting, violent comments as the ones they left on his blog.  Yet Mr. Forney never apologized for his remarks, and somehow these women have been able to get on with their lives.  Also, consider the recent brouhaha when Tuthmosis published an article about dating women with eating disorders.  The feminist Victim Identity Bullies descended en masse, but in a refreshing display of manliness, no apology was forthcoming from either him or the editors of RoK.   It would appear that not apologizing for criticizing or offending a Victim Identity Group actually sends the Victim Identity Bullies skulking away much more quickly than apologizing does.

Now let us turn our attention to the most recent example.  Duck Dynasty is a show I have never seen.  In fact, we don’t even have television in our house, so all shows are shows I’ve never seen.  But you’d have to be living in a cave not to know about Duck Dynasty because their merchandise is everywhere.  Recently, the patriarch of Duck Dynasty gave an interview to the men’s magazine GQ in which he said:

“It seems like, to me, a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man’s anus.  That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.” [...]

“Everything is blurred on what’s right and what’s wrong. Sin becomes fine.  Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men. Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers — they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

Mr. Robertson is a devout Christian and his statements are simply reflecting what the Bible teaches about homosexuality.  Since the article was published, Mr. Robertson has faced relentless attacks by the biggest Victim Identity Group bullies of them all: homosexuals.

GLAAD spokesperson Wilson Cruz said:

Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil’s lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe. He clearly knows nothing about gay people or the majority of Louisianans –- and Americans — who support legal recognition for loving and committed gay and lesbian couples. Phil’s decision to push vile and extreme stereotypes is a stain on A&E and his sponsors who now need to reexamine their ties to someone with such public disdain for LGBT people and families.

Well, what do true Christians believe?  Should we listen to a non-Christian homosexual or a should we listen to a man who has been studying the Bible, believed by Christians to be the literal Word of God, on this issue?  Actually, we needn’t listen to either.  We can just open up our Bibles and see for ourselves:

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. - Leviticus 18:22

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. - Leviticus 20:13

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. - Romans 1:26-28

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. - 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

The sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine - 1 Timothy 1:10

In fact, one of the reasons given for the destruction of Sodom was the fact that the inhabitants practiced homosexuality – hence the word sodomy.  It is clear that, contrary to what the GLAAD spokeswoman said, true Christians believe homosexuality to be a grave sin, and this is all that Mr. Robertson was noting.  He did not call for homosexuality to be outlawed or for violence or discrimination against gays.  He simply pointed out that it is neither logical (and it isn’t, even from an evolutionary point of view; homosexual behavior would have to be just about the most selected-against trait imaginable) nor moral according to Christian (and most other religious) doctrine.

But there are no bullies like queer bullies.  It isn’t enough to live-and-let-live.  Now you must be an enthusiastic advocate and supporter of sodomy and willing to preach the moral goodness of homosexuality or face intimidation, threats of violence, censorship, and loss of your livelihood.

I would imagine that A&E has exerted a great deal of pressure on Mr. Robertson to apologize, but at this time he has not done so and I applaud him for that.  Here is the statement A&E has released from Mr. Robertson:

“I myself am a product of the 60s; I centered my life around sex, drugs and rock and roll until I hit rock bottom and accepted Jesus as my Savior. My mission today is to go forth and tell people about why I follow Christ and also what the bible teaches, and part of that teaching is that women and men are meant to be together. However, I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me. We are all created by the Almighty and like Him, I love all of humanity. We would all be better off if we loved God and loved each other.”

Notice that he did not apologize for his beliefs nor for stating his beliefs.  A&E has suspended him from the show, and it’s quite possible that his comments will lead to Duck Dynasty being canceled.  But this would be so even if Mr. Robertson apologized, begged for forgiveness, went to sensitivity training, and offered to lick the boots of the gay Victim Identity Bullies.  In fact, by not apologizing, Mr. Robertson actually has some hope of maintaining respect and perhaps salvaging part of his career.

What modern liberals and Victim Identity Groups are doing is conducting a massive, culture-wide fitness test (sh-t test).  They are trying to see if anyone anywhere has the nerve to stand up to them and proclaim some moral boundaries.  They don’t realize they are doing this of course; all they understand is that when someone criticizes them, or even just refuses to affirm them, it stings their conscience and they don’t like it, so they attack.  When the person whom they are attacking backs down and metaphorically exposes their neck in submission, it triggers a go-for-the-kill response.  On those rare occasions when the target of their rage refuses to back down, they eventually stop attacking because that person has refused to submit and thus displays his or her dominance.

The only way to handle a bully – whether it be a feminist bully, a gay bully, a minority bully, or an anti-Christian bully – is to stand your ground and refuse to submit.  Apologizing will only enrage them further and will not help you in anyway.

Professor Hale: Duck Dynasty Outrage

SSM: Why do feminists tend to be emotionally volatile, obsessive, violent, and hysterical?

Edited to add:

Free Northerner has also posted on this today:  The Brown Scare: Duck Edition

 

I see Grandma Beatrice every other Christmas. She attends with her husband when the celebration is hosted at my cousin’s house, and on the years that my own family hosts, she goes to her other children’s homes.  Last year’s Christmas set off some fireworks between myself, Grandma Beatrice, and Jayne—my 21 year old cousin.

“Aww, you don’t have an official job yet?  That sucks.  Maybe you should try harder,” Grandma B mocked, while reaching across the couch to grab my cheeks like I was a toddler.  Her chubby, wrinkly arms stretched farther and faster than I had anticipated for a woman her age and weight, and before I knew it my cheeks were between her fingers being kneaded like a loaf of bread.

“I just graduated from college a week ago. I have a verbal offer to start in February but I haven’t signed the paperwork yet,” I gritted back.  I took hold of Grandma B’s wrist and removed her hand from my cheek.

I’d had enough of Grandma B’s drunken comments and bullying, and removed myself from the situation.  All night, she had been ragging on my sister and I.  She has always been the one to promote “cousin rivalries” between the families, and she was on the side with the losing grandchildren.  I had spent the majority of my Christmas Day being harassed by her for not “officially” having a job, for having an “easy” major (I studied economics, you be the judge) which allowed me to graduate school early, being literally poked by her repeatedly to get my attention like a child would do to a parent, and plenty of other little digs designed to get a reaction out of me.

My little sister had been belittled as well.  She had just been accepted into a prestigious university that Grandma B’s granddaughter had been denied at.  Of course, Grandma B said the only reason she was accepted into the school was because she is half-Asian.  Never mind her 4.2 GPA and excellent testing scores, she threw the race card in the mix to hamsterize her own granddaughter’s denied admission.  She could not admit to her granddaughter’s stupidity and lack of work ethic, so she had to bring my little sister down.  This made my father furious, and he attempted to argue with her that being Asian is actually now a detriment to admission at universities.  Poor Dad never learned game though, and his logical, well-thought out arguments eventually were overpowered by Grandma B’s drunken womanese yelling and ranting.

By the time Grandma B had finished turning my cheeks a brighter shade of red than Rudolph’s nose, I had had enough of her bullshit.

I called her on it.

I looked her dead in the eye, and as silence from the other 15 people in the room enveloped around me very sternly said, “Do not touch me like that again.”  I stood up, grabbed my half-empty bottle of Blue Moon, and walked into the next room to shoot some pool.  Five minutes later, as I’m lining up a difficult shot, in walks my cousin Jayne, screaming:

“HOW DARE YOU SPEAK LIKE THAT TO MY GRANDMA.  YOU NEED TO SHOW HER SOME RESPECT AND COURTESY.”

Slowly rising from my shooting position, I look her in the eye, smirk, and pause for a long three seconds before saying, “Really, Jayne?”  The smirk sets her off into another rant of incoherent womanese between the tears streaming down her face.  I look at her again, scoff, and turn back to the pool table.  I have nothing more to say to someone who is going to act like a child.

Jayne stormed upstairs to her room, slamming the door amidst tears.  Grandma B comes into the room and accuses me of upsetting her poor granddaughter.  Of course, I was being pinned as the bad guy; the evil man who made the poor little girl cry.  She’s a 21-year-old woman, for fuck’s sake.  She should be capable of handling her own emotions.  I told Grandma B that I did nothing wrong, and ignored both crazies for the remainder of the night.

Jayne is every bit the crazy American girl we all love here at ROK.  She goes to the same university I attended and lives in the same city I do.  However, her college experience has not been what mine was.  Every roommate she has had has not enjoyed her company; none will live with her for more than a year, and the last three years there has been a fallout in which she won’t speak to some (or all) of her roommates.  She’s suffered from a likely eating disorder.  She was OCD to the extreme – washing her hands up to 10 times an hour to the point her skin turned into a dry raisin.  Her acne was so bad from stress that she had to take an extreme form of medication to combat the acne, which involved bi-weekly blood tests and no alcohol whatsoever.  She has never had a boyfriend and I’m fairly certain she’s somehow made it through almost four years at a Southern California party school without getting laid.

The point I’m trying to make is, she hasn’t had an easy life the last couple of years and I had always tried to be as sympathetic as I could towards her.  She is family, after all.  I would take her out to dinner and check up on her every couple of weeks.  However, throughout all of this, no one in her own direct family has held her accountable.  It’s always somebody’s fault, but never hers.  There’s always a way to rationalize the blame for her own shortcomings and issues by pushing them off to another external force.  Everybody always was willing to allow her, and her family to do this.

I just never really cared, too bad Jayne made the mistake of pissing me off.

Nobody ever had the balls to call Grandma B or Jayne on their shit and stand up to them.  I never had a reason to.  Until my sister and I were flat-out insulted, egged on, and treated with no respect.  I stood up for us.  I had the balls to calmly put these two “grown” American “women”, who are so used to walking all over men, in their place, by using almost no words whatsoever.  How did they react?  Like children throwing a temper tantrum because Santa Claus brought them the wrong doll for Christmas.

Their tantrums continue to this day, as Jayne is refusing to participate in any Christmas gatherings in which I will be present at this year.  She has, in her own words, “no respect” for me, because of this situation and because I didn’t help with the dishes at Christmas last year.  I’m the only one in the family who is willing to stand up and make waves, but she’s so irrational she won’t listen to me.  Everybody else in the family simply goes along with it, refusing to ruffle her feathers because they fear it will send her back in a downward spiral of girl craziness.  What the rest of the family fails to realize is that by allowing her to skip out on the festivities, they’re simply promoting her behavior.  They’re telling her it’s okay to act irrational, throw tantrums, and be a child, because she’s being rewarded for it.

Her attitude is the perfect example of what women are continuing to become in this country.  Nothing but spoiled, unapologetic children who are never held accountable.

I’m thinking for Christmas, I’ll mail Jayne a bag of cat food.

She might as well start stock piling for the future.

Have a safe and wonderful holiday, to all you readers.  Thank you for all of your support.

Read More: My Grandmother, The Dodo

All t-shirts for only $7, with an extra discount for ROK readers. Visit or December sponsor, 7 Buck Tees.

It's impossible to understand this sort of seemingly hypocritical behavior without at least a partial grasp of female solipsism:

A top diplomat at India’s consulate in Manhattan who lobbies for women’s rights has been busted by the feds — after allegedly mistreating her female nanny. Devyani , India’s 39-year-old deputy consul general for political, economic, commercial and women’s affairs, was busted Thursday for allegedly helping to submit fake documents to the US State Department saying she was paying the woman $4,500 per month — when, in reality, the caregiver received only $573 monthly, or a measly $3.31 an hour.

In an April interview with The Indian Panorama, a weekly Manhattan-based newspaper, Khobragade claimed that she’s a strong advocate for “underprivileged” women’s rights.

Men get tripped up by this sort of thing all the time. They think that because a woman with whom they are involved says she hates being treated in a certain way, she will not treat others in that way. But women don't think like that. To them, the fact that they don't like being treated a certain way has nothing to do with how they will treat others.

But it's not pure hypocrisy. The hypocrite usually recognizes what he's doing is wrong. The solipsist usually doesn't.

I came across a hilarious comment on the Roosh V Forum quoting an article that discussed health factors in book lending (hat tip to RVF user “Kingsley Davis”):

Ever wondered what diseases library books carry? You shouldn’t, because your local libraries need your help. Still, that didn’t stop two Belgian professors from running tests on the 10 most borrowed books in the Antwerp library and finding out what horrors lie between their spines.

The professors ran each book under a gamut of bacteriology and toxicology tests and found that in addition to all of them testing positive for cocaine (because what doesn’t test positive for cocaine?), copies of the ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ tested positive for herpes.

On the plus side — before you go screaming to the nearest doctor to get tested — books cannot pass on sexually transmitted diseases. Which is something we never thought we’d have to type.

The profs said that the traces of herpes were so tiny that they did not pose a health risk and that it would be impossible to get herpes merely by reading a book with herpes.

So I guess Dalrock was wrong and that emotional pornography is harmless.

It appears Kay Hymowitz is once again concern trolling for the state of men and boys in our Brave New World Order.

In fact, signs that the nuclear-family meltdown of the past half-century has been particularly toxic to boys’ well-being are not new. By the 1970s and eighties, family researchers following the children of the divorce revolution noticed that, while both girls and boys showed distress when their parents split up, they had different ways of showing it. Girls tended to “internalize” their unhappiness: they became depressed and anxious, and many cut themselves, or got into drugs or alcohol. Boys, on the other hand, “externalized” or “acted out”: they became more impulsive, aggressive, and “antisocial.” Both reactions were worrisome, but boys’ behavior had the disadvantage of annoying and even frightening classmates, teachers, and neighbors.

Note her real concern here. While divorce's effects on children are worrisome, it's the boys of divorce who annoy or frighten other people that is her true concern. How touching.

Putting aside the snark for a moment, I must note that Hymowitz's article does highlight a lot of issues most of us in the MAndrosphere are aware of and focus much attention to the related issues....but her article still annoys because of her implicit definitions of what it means for boys to become men - her concern is entirely based upon the idea that boys will only become men when they get married and become providers...to paraphrase Rollo, "...in other words better serving the feminine imperative qualifies men to be adults."


Note the following:

So why do boys in single-mother families have a harder time of it than their sisters? If you were to ask the average person on the street, he would probably give some variation of the role-model theory: boys need fathers because that’s who teaches them how to be men. The theory makes intuitive sense.

So far, so good...

These findings can help us refine the role-model theory. Girls and boys have a better chance at thriving when their own father lives with them and their mother throughout their childhood—and for boys, this is especially the case. (Violent or abusive fathers are, of course, exceptions to the rule.)

I was with her up until her little caveat...because we all know exactly how violent and abusive fathers are defined: by how the female in the house feels about the Father in the home. Just like the definition of rape has been expanded to encompass a whole range of male sexual behavior in addition to female's feelings of post-coital regret, so too has violence and abuse been expanded to include any and every instance of a female (wife, girlfriend, daughter, sister etc.) feeling uncomfortable, or afraid of any expression of anger or annoyance by a male. But I digress.

From this point on, her article only gets worse.

On average, boys are more physically active and restless than girls. They have less self-control and are more easily distracted. They take longer to mature. They have a harder time sitting still, paying attention, and following rules, especially in the early years of school.

On average, boys are different from girls. They have a much lower threshold for the institutionalized values of feminized education. This idea that boys who are easily distracted and have a hard time sitting in a chair and paying attention to a teacher and following the myriad of rules in the schoolroom setting is what Hymowitz and her ilk defined as "mature." In other words, maturity is measured by conformity to the institution. This is definitely a female mode of thinking.

In Lord of the Flies terms, we might say that boys need more “civilizing” than girls. They require more cues, more reminders, and more punishment to learn to control their aggression and to mind their manners. Boys—not girls—often require remedial education to sit still, to look at the person speaking to them, to finish the task they were working on. These days, experts might put it this way: boys come into the world with less natural human capital than do girls.

And just who are these "Experts" to declare that boys have less "human capital" than girls? Why, these are the experts who've received credentialed certification for demonstrating excellence in conformity to feminized institutions. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...after all, I got my own institutional credential certifications.)

Let's take Kay's approach to defining "maturity" and "human capital" in swap genders and define "human capital" and "maturity" based on a metric of masculine ideals and see how it sounds:

"We might say that girls need more external "motivating" than boys. They require more encouragement and prodding to explore, apply themselves to hands on activities and attempt to do things on their own. They are far less likely to innovate, show a general lack of curiosity or look for new ways to achieve goals, but instead are content to sit still and do exactly as their teacher tells them in an effort to gain favor and approval from the institutional authority. Girls come into the world with less natural human capital than do boys."

That statement is just as ludicrous as Hymowitz defining "human capital" and "maturity" on a female-centered metric. The source for this idiocy is blank-slate, gender-is-a-social construct brainwashing from feminists that permeates our culture at large.




Girls and boys come into the world with different, gender specific "human capital," specific to their sex. But Hymowitz and her cohorts of concerned Conservatives are only concerned with boys growing up and achieving 'maturity' as defined by conformity to female-centric idealization of "civilization."

If the trends of the past 40 years continue—and there’s little reason to think that they won’t—the percentage of boys growing up with single mothers will keep on growing. No one knows how to stem that tide. But by understanding the way family instability interacts with boys’ restless natures, educators could experiment with approaches that might improve at least some lives. Educators and psychologists have often described boys as “needing clear rules” or “benefiting from structure.”

No one knows? Au contraire, plenty of us out in these fringes of teh Interwebz know exactly how to stem that tide. Boys need clear rules to benefit from the structure of a Father-headed household. We've already experienced decades of social engineering that has resulted in the outsourcing of structure and conformity training, and the transmission of cultural values from a Patriarchal home to society's collective institutions and organizations. The results? An epidemic of boys afflicted with ADD, ADHD and ODD, and the expansion of the prison industrial complex and police state to deal with the pathologies of the generations of  feral children that are spawned in our Brave New World Order's pandemic of single mother households.





My real criticism for Hymowitz's piece is not just based on her feminine-centric definition of maturity and "human capital." Much of what she does write about is an accurate description of how the Fatherless home leads to a cycle of male dysfunction and anti-social pathology. In many ways, she's correct - the absence of the Fathers in the home, removes all the positive aspects of masculinity as an influence and guide to his development.

It just may be that boys growing up where fathers—and men more generally—appear superfluous confront an existential problem: Where do I fit in? Who needs me, anyway? Boys see that men have become extras in the lives of many families and communities, and it can’t help but depress their aspirations. Solving that problem will take something much bigger than a good literacy program.

What she doesn't address (and is most likely completely incapable of even recognizing) is not only the absence of positive masculinity harming to his development....but how the negative feminine aspects of his Mother's influence plays a role in his pathological development.


Boys don't just need Fathers in the home to role model and provide guidance them on how to become Men.

Boys need Fathers in the home, to keep the mothering from becoming smothering.

Yes, the single mother household raises boys without a Father figure and a positive role model for the boy to aspire to...but what it also features, is a household for which a boy learns to deal with his world experiences in female-centric modes of thought and behavior.

Without a Father in the home, young boys only learn to deal with their external environment and internal emotions and fears by the behavior and attitudes of the only significant role model he's exposed to in his home, his Single Mother.

As a "Gen X'er," I grew up in the first generation of children for which divorce and the broken home reached pandemic proportions in the US. In my peer group in high school, more of my friends and acquaintances were the product of broken homes via divorce than were the number of kids who came from stable, two-parent homes. In hindsight, I recognize the differences in archetypal personalities of all these kids I know who came from the stable home versus the kids from the broken homes.

Boys raised by single moms are far more likely to be emotionally out-of-control, more prone to crying and usually allowing their emotions to paralyze them, or cause them to lash out instinctively and without restraint or careful consideration for potential consequences. Boys raised by single mothers are also more likely to be raised with an almost pathological need for female approval, thanks to the intermittent reward dynamic of having his only familial authority, an emotionally-fluctuating, passive-aggressive and manipulative female.

Another archetype I believe that emerges from the boys raised by single mothers, is the promiscuous player...what I called "naturals" long before I discovered the terminology of "Game" and PUA vernacular on teh Interwebz. In hindsight, I can recall two different kinds of 'players' in the Sexual Marketplace of High School and early adulthood - the successful guys who came from two parent families whose Father's were "alpha" themselves....

...and the boys raised in single mother households, whose mothers had a parade of lovers come in and out of their lives as she rode the post-divorce carousel. These are the boys who associate sexual promiscuity as 'normal.' They become "players" because they exhibit the so-called "dark triad" traits that females find sexually alluring...which is to say, nothing more than his masculine expression of the solipsism and hypergamy role modelling he was imprinted with in being raised by his single mother. Solipsism expressed by the male player, exhibits itself more aggressively as arrogant, over-confident narcissism...a dynamic the Chateau oft refer to as "dark triad traits = chic crack."

Boys raised by single mothers are also more likely to be raised with the attitude of being a consumer, rather than a producer, and that using emotional manipulations and intermittent rewards to gain sexual favors comes as second nature to him.

This makes him well equipped to game girls into sexual encounters and short-term relationships.

But the other aspect here I ascertain from my hindsight of observations is that all these "natural" players that went through girls like sticks of chewing gum, were also incapable of sustaining long term relationships. Worse yet, whenever they did encounter "THE ONE" girl they fell in love with and attempted to forge a long term relationship with, none that I can recall, ever ended well.

Not only do they lack the imprinted behavior of a Father and Mother balancing each others best and worst to make a family work with the complementary dynamics of a Father's Masculinity and Mother's Femininity, but they also have a deep seated insecurity and desire for female approval that can never be satisfied. It is an all-consuming hunger. It is the masculine expression of the feminine's equivalent "dark triad" traits.

A male raised with the feminine primal desire to consume is quite adept at manipulating females into sexual conquest...but once they decide to engage in a long term relationship, that desire to consume her is no longer just expressed in sexual need, but it extends further into the same needs he was programmed with being raised in a single mother household: expressed female approval. This turns into a needy, supplicating relationship modeled after his own relationship with his single mother. This neediness for emotional approval and validation inevitably leads to contempt and loss of attraction and desire from his long term partner...and at that point, the relationship is inevitably doomed.

Of course....all this is really just my attempt at analyzing the deeper behaviors and thought patterns behind the dysfunctional relationships I've observed from the boys I've known, raised in broken, single mother homes. It could all be explained by an even simpler and less complex dynamic - being imprinted by their Single Mother's behavior and attitudes towards sex and relationships, the only thing he knows is casual promiscuity, using members of the opposite sex for sexual gratification and knowing nothing other than unstable, short term, inter-gender relational dysfunction.

In other words, the psychological effects of boys raised in single mother homes, are boys who think and act without the influence of positive masculinity of an absent Father role model in conjunction with the worst influences of negative femininity. This is the aspect Hymowitz and other So Cons who lament the results of the broken homes fail to grok.

As Bob Wallace has frequently pointed out at his place:

"The word "bastard" means "a fatherless boy" and "a cruel, heartless man."

Where did this Fatherless boy learn how to be cruel and heartless? By imprinting his single mother's worst feminine traits and emotional stability causing an intermittent reward addiction for her approval, combined with his base masculine drive and aggressiveness.

Which is precisely why the lynch pin to destabilizing and destroying a civilization, is to remove the Father from his role at the head of his home.

This is an interesting experiment which demonstrated one aspect of Game, namely, the foolishness of thinking that being agreeable will make women more pleasant:

As part of an unusual experiment, the husband was instructed to “agree with his wife’s every opinion and request without complaint,” and to continue doing so “even if he believed the female participant was wrong,” according to a report on the research that was published Tuesday by the British Medical Journal.

The husband and wife were helping a trio of doctors test their theory that pride and stubbornness get in the way of good mental health. In their own medical practices in New Zealand, they had observed patients leading “unnecessarily stressful lives by wanting to be right rather than happy.” If these patients could just let go of the need to prove to others that they were right, would greater happiness be the result?

Enter the intrepid husband. Based on the assumption that men would rather be happy than be right, he was told to agree with his wife in all cases. However, based on the assumption that women would rather be right than be happy, the doctors decided not to tell the wife why her husband was suddenly so agreeable.

Both spouses were asked to rate their quality of life on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the happiest) at the start of the experiment and again on Day 6. It’s not clear how long the experiment was intended to last, but it came to an abrupt halt on Day 12.

“By then the male participant found the female participant to be increasingly critical of everything he did,” the researchers reported. The husband couldn’t take it anymore, so he made his wife a cup of tea and told her what had been going on.

That led the researchers to terminate the study.

Over the 12 days of the experiment, the husband’s quality of life plummeted from a baseline score of 7 all the way down to 3. The wife started out at 8 and rose to 8.5 by Day 6. She had no desire to share her quality of life with the researchers on Day 12, according to the report.

My bet is that the wife's quality of life plummeted as well. That's why she was getting increasingly critical. In most male-female relationships, the woman will push until she is metaphorically slapped down. Whether they actually need them in the way children do or not, the observable fact is that women crave boundaries. Men who don't provide those boundaries, consciously or unconsciously, will tend to incite contempt and infuriate them.