Quotulatiousness

July 13, 2020

QotD: Anti-semitism

Filed under: Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… if anti-semitism was “only about Jews” it would still matter. Jews matter not because they are Jews, but because they are human. No different qualification is required. That anyone thinks a better qualification than being a human is required to enjoy particular human rights is precisely what is wrong with our society today. Every time someone speaks of “Gay Rights” or “Women’s Rights” or “Black Rights” or “Muslim Rights” or uses the phrase “hate crimes” I am immediately on my guard. Such people are more than likely to be a threat to human rights in general.

Damn it, how often does this need to be said before tribalists stop blathering? The whole point of the post-Enlightenment West is that every individual matters, regardless of who they are. Not just anti-semitism but tribalism in general is the virus that, as Rabbi Sacks says, keeps mutating. The only valid reason to regard an individual as better or worse is, as Dr King famously said (but as the Left seems to have forgotten) “the content of his character.” The only valid reason to treat an individual differently before the law is his or her conduct.

Tom Paine, “What Is It About The Jews?”, The Last Ditch, 2018-04-12.

June 22, 2020

QotD: Victimhood

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Victimhood bestows upon its legions a certain cloak of inviolability. One must remember that those who wear their victimhood like a badge of honor (and their liberal enablers) only want “one” thing: to be treated the same as everyone else is treated and to be treated special. This profound cognitive dissonance pervades their lives and defines them. They are allowed to say or believe things that would cause outrage if one of the oppressor groups said or thought the same thing. The best, most famous instance of this is Muhammed Ali’s virulent opposition to mixing the races. Ali, a man of great athletic and intellectual skills and one who had enormous courage in standing up for his principles regarding the Vietnam War, was also an appalling racist for much of his adult life. But he was insulated by his victimhood and so his odious views on miscegenation were rarely ever mentioned, let alone condemned. A more recent example was Kanye West’s infamous interruption of Taylor Swift’s award during the 2009 MTV awards. Rude and inexcusable, but no one dared to chastise him for his actions even though everyone knew that no white singer could ever interrupt a ceremony giving an award to a black singer and ever hope for continuing his career.

The irony of all this, of course, is the reluctance to hold everyone to the same standard of conduct and the same rules of discourse proves that racism is still alive and well in America. We still, as a society, refuse to treat everyone equally. It is, in fact, an insult to Ali and West that no one thought them equal enough to be chastised and condemned. In our society’s own peculiarly paternalistic and condescending way, we are saying that some people must be handled differently because they are not yet quite equal.

Joseph Mussomeli, “Victim Privilege, Cultural Appropriation, & the New Enslavement”, The Imaginative Conservative, 2018-02-09.

June 20, 2020

Soviet Gender Equality Was a Scam – WW2 – On the Homefront 004

Filed under: History, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 19 Jun 2020

The future looks bright for soviet women in the 1910s, they have the right to vote and they’re on track for social emancipation. Yet this doesn’t last long. Soon, the demands of the nation will rob them of these promises.

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Hosted by: Anna Deinhard
Written by: Isabel Wilson
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Isabel Wilson
Edited by: Karolina Dołęga
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations by:
Klimbim
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations, https://www.instagram.com/blaucoloriz…

Visual Sources:
Library of Congress
Adam Jones from Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/adam_jo…

Icons from The Noun Project: Sandhi Priyasmoro, Sarah Rudkin, Andrew Doane, Vectors Market, Adrien Coquet, ProSymbols, Luke Anthony Firth, Russia Woman & Gan Khoon Lay

Music:
“March Of The Brave 10” – Rannar Sillard
“Disciples of Sun Tzu” – Christian Andersen
“Deviation In Time” – Johannes Bornlof
“Other Sides of Glory” – Fabien Tell
“The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
“Sailing for Gold” – Howard Harper-Barnes
“London” – Howard Harper-Barnes
“Split Decision” – Rannar Sillar

Research sources:
Lenin On the Emancipation of Women (1965), pp. 63–4. First Published July 1919, as a pamphlet
Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, Allison & Busby, 1977, First Published 1921, as a pamphlet, trans Alix Holt.
– Wendy Goldman, “Recasting the vision: The resurrection of the family”. In Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936, (Cambridge Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Studies, (1993) pp. 296-336), p.310

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

June 11, 2020

QotD: Equal rights

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

We must separate the moral dimensions of a subject from the empirical questions surrounding it. For example, on the radioactive issue of sex (or gender) differences in cognitive abilities, there is the empirical question of whether or how men and women diverge in certain tasks, and then there is the moral question of how men and women should be treated. Empirically, there is much evidence that in some tasks women excel over men, and in other tasks, men excel over women. For example, women are more dexterous while men are better at throwing; women are superior in visual memory whereas men are better at mentally rotating shapes; women are better at mathematical calculation while men are better at mathematical problem-solving; in terms of overall general intelligence (g), however, there is no gender difference. Morally, however, none of this matters. We should support women’s rights regardless of any physical or cognitive differences between the sexes. To yoke one’s moral evaluation to empirical questions like this is a big mistake; worse is to assume that this is what people always do and therefore we must suppress any empirical evidence that there are differences, as this will only tilt people’s moral judgments toward empirical outcomes.

This reminds me of the debate in the late 1980s through mid-1990s about whether homosexuality was nature or nurture, something you were born to be or a lifestyle choice. Conservatives and Christians argued for the “choice” position and this led to efforts to “convert” gays to straight (or “pray the gay away”) because something that is learned can be unlearned. This led the gay community and supporters thereof to argue for the “born this way” position. The cumulative evidence from multiple lines of inquiry led to the nature position more than that of nurture, but this was another example of confusing the empirical question of the origin of homosexuality with the moral question of the rights of gays and lesbians (today the LGBTQ community). It should go without saying — but unfortunately in these times it must be said again and again — it doesn’t matter what the origins of homosexuality turn out to be, gays and lesbians and everyone else in the LGBTQ community are entitled to the same rights and privileges as everyone else protected by the constitution of their nation (and those nations that have yet to extend legal rights to gays and lesbians need to change their constitutions).

Michael Shermer, interviewed by Claire Lehmann, “The Skeptical Optimist: Interview with Michael Shermer”, Quillette, 2018-02-24.

March 7, 2020

QotD: “Jim Crow” laws

Filed under: History, Law, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Everyone raised in the Unites States over the last fifty years has been required to memorize the official dogma regarding Jim Crow laws. These were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. The official version preached to this day is that they were draconian restrictions on blacks preventing them from having a normal life. Modern blacks are told that their condition is the direct result of white discrimination against blacks via these laws.

Now, there is a debate as to the intent and the effect of these laws, mostly because the Left has re-imagined that period in American history. The official version of the Civil Rights era is a fantasy with little connection to reality. What is not under dispute is that these laws existed and they had a negative impact on blacks. Black institutions did not receive public support. Blacks were denied access to the legal system, which often denied them justice when the victims of white malfeasance.

The best argument against these sorts of laws is that they created a second class of citizens, as a legal construct. You cannot have democracy if you have second class citizens, as democracy assumes all men being equal before the law. If the effect of Jim Crow was separate and equal, then maybe they would fit into democracy. In reality, they were separate and unequal, even accounting for the differences in the races. Therefore, as a legal construct, they violated the ideal of equality before the law.

The Z Man, “The Jim Snow Laws”, The Z Blog, 2019-12-01.

February 24, 2020

Bidding farewell to the rule of law in Canada?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Politics, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

John Carpay on the importance of the rule of law in civil society and why we’re at risk of losing it here in Canada:

The rule of law is one of the most important legal principles on which Canada is based. Along with the supremacy of God, it is mentioned in the very first words of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.”

The rule of law means that we are ruled by laws, not by the whims of a King, or the clamouring of a mob. The rule of law also means that the law applies to everyone, even the King; there can be no exemptions for the King or his favourites.

Countries which practice and uphold the rule of law tend to thrive economically, socially, politically and culturally. Countries which uphold the rule of law become wealthy because people can work, buy, sell and trade in the knowledge that their property and their person are protected by law. Economies thrive when people know that the law will be enforced, and that the law will be applied to everyone, even to the King and his favourites. The rule of law provides investors, foreign and domestic, with confidence to invest their money in business projects.

Conversely, when a country condones law-breaking, investors will put their money elsewhere, and quickly. The world’s poorest and most violent countries are those where politicians are above the law, and the law is not applied equally to all.

The decisions of Canada’s politicians and police to condone – for three weeks or longer – the blockading of railway lines by aggrieved protesters violate the rule of law in at least two ways.

First, our politicians are effectively stating that individuals with strongly held political opinions are entitled to engage in illegal activities, in this case shutting down railway lines. Second, law-breaking is permitted because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other politicians sympathize with the protesters’ ideology and demands: the law does not apply to the King’s favourites.

September 18, 2019

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms* (*not all sections apply in Quebec)

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Andrew Coyne on the disgraceful habit of the federal government (and nine provincial governments) to look the other way when Quebec decides that some of the guarantees in the Charter don’t apply in La Belle Province:

For many observant persons, particularly Muslims, Sikhs and orthodox Jews, this amounts to a religious hiring bar: the wearing of the hijab, the turban and the kippa are key requirements of their faith, and as such core elements of their identity. To demand that they work uncovered is, in effect, to post a sign saying Muslims, Sikhs and Jews need not apply.

We should be clear on this. It’s not just a dress code, or an infringement of religious freedom, or religious discrimination, or those other abstract phrases you hear tossed about. We are talking about a law barring employment in much of the public sector — not just police and judges, but government lawyers and teachers — to certain religious minorities.

Existing workers may have been grandfathered, but only so long as they remain in their current jobs. Should they ever move, or seek a promotion, they will face the same restrictions. The signal to the province’s religious and, let’s say it, racial minorities, vulnerable as they will be feeling already after the mounting public vitriol to which they have been exposed in the name of the endless “reasonable accommodation” debate, is unmistakable: you are not wanted here. Not surprisingly, many are getting out — out of the public service, out of Quebec.

That this is actually happening, in 2019, in a province of Canada — members of religious minorities being driven from their jobs, and for no reason other than their religion — is sickening, and shameful. That shame is not reserved to Premier Francois Legault or his CAQ government, the people responsible for designing and implementing this disgraceful exercise in segregation, this manifestly cruel attempt to cleanse the province’s schools and courts of religious minorities. It is no less shaming to the rest of us, everywhere across Canada, so long as we permit it to continue.

That is, so far as we are capable of feeling it. But experience has taught us to look the other way when it comes to Quebec, to tell ourselves that it is none of our affair, that we must not raise a fuss when the province explicitly elevates the interests of its ethnic and linguistic majority over those of its minorities, or threatens the country’s life for long years at a time — the beloved “knife at the throat” strategy — to back its escalating fiscal and constitutional demands. We dare not. We cannot. For then Quebec would leave.

June 30, 2019

Chipping away at Martin Luther King’s reputation with new FBI surveillance revelations

Filed under: History, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Stephen Smith discusses the struggle of scholars specializing in the life and works of Martin Luther King, Jr. to cope with new revelations about the civil rights leader:

President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the White House Cabinet Room, 18 March 1966.
Photo by Yoichi Okamoto via Wikimedia Commons.

These are difficult days for students of Martin Luther King, Jr. The man many of us have dedicated long months and years to researching, often out of a profound sense of respect, is facing an allegation of laughing and even offering advice while a fellow Baptist minister raped a woman in a Washington, D.C. hotel room in January 1964.

The source of this explosive claim is a trove of newly released FBI surveillance documents unearthed by the dean of MLK historians himself, David J. Garrow, author of The FBI and Martin Luther King: From “Solo” to Memphis and the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography on King, Bearing the Cross.

Since the article detailing Garrow’s new findings came out at the end of May in the British magazine Standpoint, Garrow has taken more of a pounding in the press than King. No surprises there, perhaps. Like those now criticizing Garrow, I desperately want to believe that the 55-year-old allegation is a trumped-up product of the FBI’s “viciously negative attitude” toward King, as Garrow described it in “Solo” to Memphis — a book that earned him the Bureau’s enmity prior to its publication in 1981.

The record, however, is also pretty clear that King relieved the crushing stress of daily death threats and the insatiable demands of the civil rights movement with women and liquor. To his credit, King was the first to admit he was far from perfect as America’s “moral leader” — but this far?

Much of the criticism that Garrow is now facing over the article is focused on the validity of FBI evidence concerning King’s sexual activities, namely the bombshell assertion made by FBI agents spying on King in 1964 that he “looked on, laughed and offered advice” during the reported sexual assault (which, as Garrow has since underscored, the agents listening in did nothing to stop). This allegedly took place in two Washington, D.C. hotel rooms rented to King and four other Baptist ministers, although the controversial claim is made in a handwritten note appended to a summary of the FBI’s microphone surveillance.

Garrow argues that “without question” the handwritten annotation would have been added with both the original surveillance recording and a full transcript of the recording at hand. He adds that Justice Department investigators who reviewed both the tapes and transcripts in 1977 confirmed the accuracy of the FBI’s claims. The tapes and transcripts, along with the rest of the fruits of the FBI’s intensive electronic surveillance of King, were subsequently sealed by a court order until Jan. 31, 2027.

I know Garrow and I know his respect for the man he calls “Doc” runs deep, and this is not an allegation he would carelessly report. Some of his detractors have called him “irresponsible” for running with it without access to the original tapes and transcripts, but Garrow has at least 40 years of experience working with primary sources produced by the FBI’s intensive surveillance of King. If anyone can tell what smells off and what doesn’t, it’s him.

June 27, 2019

QotD: “Misandropologies”

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… in the same manner that many white people who initially signed on to the whole “don’t be a racist” program because it seemed fair were eventually alienated by the escalating rhetoric of “justice won’t be achieved until the last evil melanoma-prone ice devil baby is smashed dead against a rock,” many men — and even women — who had no problem with ideas such as equal pay and female suffrage started to get grossly turned off by rhetoric and policies that viewed being born male as an original sin that demanded eternal punishment.

Even though black women live longer than white men in the USA … and even though women control more disposable wealth than men do … and even though women are snagging most of the college degrees these days … and even though the law and public sympathy heavily lean toward women in any dispute between the sexes … and even though the media portray men as either bumbling incompetents or bloodthirsty rape-monsters … and even though men are far more likely to commit suicide, die on the job, or be homeless than women … we’re still lectured by these bitter fat blobs and their testosterone-free male enablers that misandry isn’t real because men still benefit from certain mysterious “systemic” and “institutional” advantages that none of these assholes seem able to enumerate even when calmly asked to do so.

It’s a funny sort of “patriarchy” we inhabit.


To allege that women are capable of malice and violence and deception is only to allege that they’re human. To expect anything less of them would be dehumanizing and patronizing — which, ironically, shares a root word with “patriarchy.” When feminism ditched the “equity” rhetoric in favor of a menses-splattered pagan goddess religion that depicts men as irredeemable worker drones and women as innocent angels, men who weren’t entirely asleep or pussy-whipped realized that the rules had changed and that they were under attack. But even to notice that a lot of women openly exult in hating men gets you labeled a “woman-hater.”

Misandry is real, and those who seek to deny or justify it deserve a stern paddling. And even if you acknowledge that it’s real, don’t try to make excuses for it using some postmodern gobbledygook, because then you become a misandry apologist — a misandropologist. Just admit that women can be every bit as mean, nasty, horrid, foul, vile, shitty, and hateful as men. It’s part of the human condition.

Naïve as it may be, I envision an enlightened future where there is no longer any misogyny or misandry — only a beautiful, sweet, shared sense of misanthropy.

Jim Goad, “Confronting the Misandropologists”, Taki’s Magazine, 2017-05-08.

June 26, 2019

What is the problem that a wealth tax is designed to solve?

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Andrew Coyne asks the obvious question about the sudden keen interest in imposing wealth taxes:

It is noteworthy how the debate on inequality has shifted in recent years: from the problem of poverty, whose evils are obvious, to the “problem” of great wealth; from the gap between the poor and the rest of us, to the gap between the rest of us and the rich, or indeed between the rich and the very rich.

But it is not obvious why it is wrong, in itself, that a small number of people should get stinking rich. It is clearly objectionable if they did so by illicit or unethical means — but then it is the means itself, not the wealth, to which we object. And it would be in poor taste, at the least, if they spent it all on themselves. But that is not how the great fortunes are typically disposed of — it’s physically impossible to spend more than a small fraction of it.

Perhaps the argument is less that the rich are too rich than it is that the government is too poor. You can make a case that government should spend more on certain things, especially in America. It doesn’t follow that you need to raise taxes to do so. A lot of good new spending could be funded by cutting bad old spending.

Suppose there were a case for raising taxes. Are wealth taxes the way to go? Wealth is, after all, merely the accumulation of past income — and we already tax income. If rich people are exploiting loopholes to avoid paying tax on their incomes, by all means close the loopholes. But the case for taxing income twice seems obscure.

Yes, we already have a kind of wealth tax, in the form of municipal property taxes — and they’re a notorious mess. They conform to none of the usual principles of good taxation, being neither simple, nor efficient, nor fair.

Why unfair? The bedrock criteria of tax fairness is supposed to be ability to pay. That’s only uncertainly related to wealth. Suppose the value of your house shoots up. Congrats: suddenly you’re wealthy. But your income is unchanged. And it’s income you need, or more accurately cash, to pay your taxes. It’s not clear why you should pay more in tax than someone with the same income, but a cheaper house.

May 12, 2019

Mechanisms for redressing employment gender imbalances

Filed under: Business, Education, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

We’ve often been told that too many men occupy positions of power and influence in the working world, but what would it take to meaningfully address those imbalances?

Equity … is based on the idea that the only certain measure of “equality” is outcome — educational, social, and occupational. The equity-pushers axiomatically assume that if all positions at every level of hierarchy in every organization are not occupied by a proportion of the population that is precisely equivalent to that proportion in the general population that systematic prejudice (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) must be at play. This assumption has as its corollary the idea that there are perpetrators (the “privileged,” for current or historical reasons) who are unfair beneficiaries of the system or outright perpetrators of prejudice and who must be identified, limited and punished.

[…]

Now it doesn’t seem like mere imagination on my part that all the noise about “patriarchal domination” is not directed at the fact that far more men than women occupy what are essentially trade positions. Nor does it seem unreasonable to point out that these are not particularly high-status jobs, although they may pay comparative well. It is also obvious that none of these occupations and their hierarchies, in isolation, can be thoughtfully considered the kind of oppressive patriarchy supposed to constitute the “West,” and aimed at the domination and exclusion of women. By contrast, the trade occupations are composed of cadres of working men, with difficult and admirable jobs, who keep the staggeringly complex, reliable and essentially miraculous infrastructure of our society functioning through rain and snow and heat and gloom of night and who should be credited gratefully with exactly that.

Let’s assume for a moment that we should aim at equity, nonetheless, and then actually think through what policies would inevitably have to be put in place to establish such a goal. We might begin by eliminating pay scales that differ (hypothetically) by gender. This would mean introducing legislation requiring companies to rank-order their sex representation at each level of the company hierarchy, adjust that to 50:50, and then adjust the pay differential by gender at every rank, so that the desired equity was achieved. Companies could be monitored over a five-year period for improvement. Failure to meet the appropriate targets would be necessarily met with fines for discrimination. In the extreme, it might be necessary to introduce staggered layoffs of men so that the gender equity requirements could be met.

Then there are the much broader social policy implications. We could start by addressing the hypothetical problems with college, university and trade school training. Many companies, compelled to move rapidly toward gender equilibria, will object (and validly) that there are simply not enough qualified female candidates to go around. Changing this would mean implementing radical and rapid changes in the post-secondary education system, implemented in a manner both immediate and draconian — justified by the obvious “fact” that the reason the pipeline problem exists is the absolutely pervasive sexism that characterizes all the programs that train such workers (and the catastrophic and prejudicial failure of the education system that is thereby implied).

The most likely solution — and the one most likely to be attractive to those who believe in such sexism — would be to establish strict quota systems in the relevant institutions to invite and incentivize more female participants, once again in proportion to the disequilibria in enrollment rates. If quotas are not enough, then a system of scholarship or, more radically (and perhaps more fairly) women could be simply paid to enroll in education systems where their sex is badly under-represented. Alternatively, perhaps, men could be asked to pay higher rates of tuition, in some proportion to their over-representation, and the excess used to subsidize the costs of under-represented females.

May 9, 2019

QotD: Respect for the law

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constitutionalism and legality, the belief in “the law” as something above the State and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible.

It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes it for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not. Remarks like “They can’t run me in; I haven’t done anything wrong”, or “They can’t do that; it’s against the law”, are part of the atmosphere of England. The professed enemies of society have this feeling as strongly as anyone else. One sees it in prison-books like Wilfred Macartney’s Walls Have Mouths or Jim Phelan’s Jail Journey, in the solemn idiocies that take place at the trials of conscientious objectors, in letters to the papers from eminent Marxist professors, pointing out that this or that is a “miscarriage of British justice”. Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered. The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root. Even the intelligentsia have only accepted it in theory.

George Orwell, “England Your England”, 1941-02-19.

May 3, 2019

The power of the patriarchy

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

As we are often told, men have distinct advantages in modern society that women are still struggling to achieve for themselves. Daphne Patai doesn’t seem to have got the memo, however:

In contemporary America, women and men still act out ancient roles. From the point of view of the men, the society is a matriarchy: Women have physically less demanding jobs — with the sole exception of childbirth, by now a rare event in the average woman’s life. Women sustain far fewer injuries on the job, are not required to go to war, take better care of their health, and for these reasons and many others enjoy a lifespan significantly longer than that of men.

In this society, men use their physical strength, when necessary, on women’s behalf. Women claim to be equal partners when that suits them and claim to be entitled to special consideration when that suits them. They insist on autonomy in maintaining or aborting pregnancies, but at the same time, they determine the fathers’ duties-and rights, if any. Women claim child support. They can either demand or impede fathers’ continuing involvement with their offspring, as the women see fit. The result is that women have advantages over men in child custody suits, just as they have learned to use charges of child sexual abuse and domestic violence.

Though dozens of studies show that women, by their own account, initiate violence against their domestic partners as often as (if not more often than) men, and cause as much injury when weapons are involved, somehow the social mythologies of this country keep that fact from gaining broad public attention, let alone credence.

But worst of all, in terms of the interactions of daily life, are women’s emotional demands on men. At home, men routinely sit through harangues that demonstrate women’s greater verbal skills and emotional agility. Men, inarticulate, try to figure out what is required of them in a given situation. Not by accident, verbal therapies in this society archetypically began with men listening and women speaking. Even as little boys, males learn to be in awe of girls’ verbal fluency. The feeling of ineptness, of being no match for females at the verbal and emotional level, is the common inheritance of all but a few exceptional males.

The matriarchy here described, structured to protect women’s interests as against men’s (and, ironically, having conned men into defending such a set up) puts a premium on women’s special social and emotional skills. Everywhere, women engage men and one another in personal conversation, offering and receiving disclosures, demanding commiseration, giving advice, spreading censure. Men, trained to keep to their workhorse style, are uncomfortably cornered by women, in the workplace, and at home, demanding that they speak from the heart. When asked “How are you?” women give a detailed and precise accounting. In offices, they spend valuable time discussing personal matters.

April 30, 2019

QotD: Successful “democracies” in history have usually been disguised oligarchies

Filed under: Europe, France, History, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Thus we get the “Revolutions” in America and France, where educated and newly politicised chattering classes try to find a simplistic solution to all the world’s problems. Their solution being to adopt a system which fits their preferred world order, and seems to give them an advantage that will allow them to force people into their way of thinking.

Humans being what they are, it didn’t work of course.

The American Revolution, supposedly about ‘equality for all’ – if you want to fall for idealistic propaganda – was actually a tax rebellion by Northern states (who also wanted to get rid of the English government’s treaties that kept them out of Indian land), and the Southern states (who wanted to block the English anti-slavery legislation from spreading to their nice comfy system). It was never really about equality, and all the exclusions of people from voting on the basis of colour, race, sex, religion, immigration status, etc., should have made it clear to anyone that what was being considered was really an Oligarchy. Similar in fact to the Ancient Greek and Roman slave-based societies, where some special and limited classes shared rights no one else had.

Actually all “successful” democracies in history have always been Oligarchies. The 1,000 year old “Sublime Republic of Venice” – on which large parts of the US constitution were based – for instance, being limited to a certain number of families that had the vote. Similarly the “Republics” of Ancient Greece or Rome, and modern Switzerland or Israel, being based on vote by military service – another way of ensuring the voters might put national interests above selfish ones.

The first few French republics (those squeezed in around the inevitable dictatorships and emperors that are the result of such systems) were also based on a limited franchise. In their case not a race or religion or sex one like the US, but a straight property qualification that saw a small percentage of both sexes as voters.

Unsurprisingly the Oligarchical Republics of the 18th and 19th centuries were some of the most internally violent (US Slavery, Civil War, Indian Wars, the Terror, multiple revolts and “communes”, Lynchings, Jim Crow laws, etc), and externally aggressive (Napoleonic Wars, Spanish–American Wars, “Interventions” in Central America, Occupations of Hawaii, Philippines, etc.) governments in history. Rivaling the Greek and Roman republics for their aggressive expansionism by land and sea, and certainly being no less effective than more traditional military (Russia and Germany) or trade (Britain and Netherlands) expansionist states.

(And here I would note that the one of the mitigating factors in the idea that German Nationalism was a problem in WWI, was that the populist Navy Leagues and Colonial Leagues of the newly enfranchised voting classes did in fact push Nationalism to dangerous extremes. The Kaiser was a dangerous loon, but he was a dangerous loon responding to the fervor of the dregs of the petit bourgeois who had been enfranchised in his nation, not a man with Napoleonic capabilities in his own right.)

Nigel Davies, “The Solution is… European Union/Multiculturalism/Communism… Name your poison!”, rethinking history, 2015-12-26.

February 27, 2019

Transgender athletes

Filed under: Cancon, Politics, Sports — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Barbara Kay explains why she is against allowing transgender athletes to compete with cisgendered women:

Sport is one area where the community­ will resist “social justice” initiatives if they conflict with sport’s bedrock principles of a level playing field and zero tolerance for cheating. Up until about five minutes ago in the long history of sport, that meant women competed against women and men competed against men in all sports where advantage lies in size, power and/or speed.

When a biologically male runner or cyclist who ranks as middle of the pack in men’s races becomes the gold medallist in a Women’s race, he cheats the silver and bronze women athletes beside him on the podium, and especially the woman who came in fourth. But he also cheats people who came out to see a clean race. Joe and Jane Public know unfairness and reality denial when they see it, and it sucks all the joy out of the word “competition” for them.

[…]

Athlete Ally is one of a constellation of LGBT advocacy groups that “are helping sport organizations in Canada become more inclusive.” This quotation is taken from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport’s most recent policy paper, “Creating Inclusive environments for Trans Participants in Canadian Sport.” Designed as a policy guidance tool for sport organizations, it was developed by the ‘Trans Inclusion in Sport Expert Working Group,’ which I will hereafter refer to as the EWG. If you want to get a flavour of the kind of anti-science Kool-Aid our sports brain trust is drinking, read this document.

It begins factually enough. The paper notes that the vast majority of sport participation in Canada is focused on recreation and development. At this level, trans inclusion is not a big deal, because it’s all about fun and skill building. It is only for the “very small minority” of Canadian athletes who continue into high performance that competitive advantage becomes an issue. Enter the EWG. And here we leave facts behind and enter La La Land.

Sex, the EWG says, “is usually assigned at birth.” No. Sex is established during gestation according to chromosomal development. Sex is observed at birth, not assigned. Gender, the EWG says, “is not inherently connected to one’s physical anatomy.” No. Sex and gender are connected for 99% of humanity, and therefore “inherent” by normal metrics.

The definition of the word “trans,” for sports purposes, according to the EWG, “includes but is not limited to people who identify as transgender, transsexual, cross dressers (adjective) or gender non-conforming (gender diverse or genderqueer).” This is quite a puzzling mashup. Cross-dressing males do not believe they “are” female. Neither do non-conforming males and females who have no wish to transition.

But the document does not address this important inconsistency, nor the alarming imprecision of “not limited to.” From what they state in this definition, EWG is okay with cross-sex competing by biological males who do not believe they are females and females who do not believe they are male, but whose appearance or fetishes are atypical for their sex. We’re off to a very confusing start. Things don’t improve.

Indeed, to be trans can mean almost anything an individual wants it to mean (“not limited to…”), according to this document: “It is important for sports organizations to understand that each individual is different. There is no single transition process and each person will make different choices,” including, significantly, “whether they undertake hormonal or surgical transitions.”

And “[a]n individuals’ personal choice to not use hormones does not make them any less trans nor do these choices change their right to be recognized as the gender with which they identify — man, woman, both or other.” In short, the definition of trans, to be accepted by official governing sports bodies, is left entirely to an individual’s “sense” of gender identity, completely untethered from biology.

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