It would seem not…Rasmussen, via Pirate’s Cove, via Linkiest:

Voters strongly believe the debate about global warming is not over yet and reject the decision by some news organizations to ban comments from those who deny that global warming is a problem.

Only 20% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the scientific debate about global warming is over, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Sixty-three percent (63%) disagree and say the debate about global warming is not over. Seventeen percent (17%) are not sure.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of voters think there is still significant disagreement within the scientific community over global warming, while 35% believe scientists generally agree on the subject.

The BBC has announced a new policy banning comments from those who deny global warming, a policy already practiced by the Los Angeles Times and several other media organizations. But 60% of voters oppose the decision by some news organizations to ban global warming skeptics. Only 19% favor such a ban, while slightly more (21%) are undecided.

What is really being studied here, by everyone who has the good fortune to be alive & aware in these contentious times, is not humanity’s effect on the ecology but rather humanity’s attitudes about disagreement.

We’re taught from toddlerhood to have such a curious relationship with it. Everyone loves to win, of course. You get that rush of winning something, plus you look not only wise, but persistent about your wisdom, doing your thing to make sure good prevails and evil is vanquished. It’s a triple-threat. But, you can’t win an argument if there isn’t an argument.

Paradoxically, it seems we also have this social consensus, from which some may dissent in small isolated pockets, but is never challenged much — that when we get closer to something we perceive to be truth, we know we’re getting closer because the argument subsides. Therefore, it seems some among us figure that if the arguing can be forcibly stopped then that will bring us all closer to the truth. It’s “cargo cult” learning. Ah, we certainly do love to think of ourselves as more learned than the other guy, without taking the time or effort to learn much of anything.

Back to the “science-is-settled” people. They never did have much by way of actual evidence that the science really is settled; they’ve been living in their fantasy bubble on this thing since Day One. I guess they’re drunk on the elixir of winning-the-arguments or something. Problem: Winning at just about anything requires a fastening to reality, most of the time with some actual measurements to back it up. I speak not of the measurements of earth’s temperature, but rather measurements about whether “the science is settled” or “everybody agrees.” Forget about serving the community and bringing the people good, reliable, verified information. Just think about the measurement of this victory they desire so feverishly. Their “measurements” say it simply hasn’t happened, and so great is their desire to win-win-win, that they’re pretending the measurements say something else…and they’re just playing a game of pretend and calling it good.

That isn’t just climate change alarmism; that borders on a psychosis.

And He isn’t interested in photo ops.

David Limbaugh (via Linkiest):

Oh? In 2004, as senator-elect, he said, “I’m so overexposed I’m making Paris Hilton look like a recluse.” His name or face appeared on half of Time magazine covers in 2008. As of the August 2009 edition, he had appeared on seven Time covers since his election in November 2008. Newsweek featured Obama on 12 of its 2008 issues. Obama marked his first 100 days in office with 300 photos — all of him. On Nov. 25, 2009, Drudge Report had a photo of him leaving the White House holding an issue of GQ magazine with his own picture on the cover. He appeared on “America’s Most Wanted” to commemorate its 1,000th episode. He’s appeared on ESPN, Leno, Letterman, “60 Minutes,” Conan, Oprah and on and on.

How about his claim that he just wants to solve a problem? As exhibits A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L and M, I offer Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the Internal Revenue Service scandal (the FBI hasn’t even interviewed the IRS employees involved), the border invasion, the Department of Veterans Affairs scandal, Obamacare, Iraq, our Marine in Mexico, the deficit, the debt, entitlements, jobs and education. I could go on. This man is not about solving problems but about creating them — unless you believe that America, as founded, is a problem.

“It’s funny how so many far-left posers get a hard-on for violence and smashing stuff.”

That’s from the comments over at the blog of David Thompson, where there is a link to Dalrymple‘s observations on crime and punishment:

Revenge, as Lord Bacon tells is, is a kind of wild justice; and the desire for it has had a very poor press over the millennia. We are enjoined not to take it, in fact to turn the other cheek to those who strike us, to return good for evil. This is easier said than done: and the question is whether it should be done. Is total forgiveness, that is to say forgiveness in all circumstances, desirable?

What is certainly true is that it is easier to forgive the evil done to others than to forgive the evil done to oneself, especially if in the first place we don’t really like those others to whom the evil is done. Then conspicuous forgiveness becomes a kind of sadism, an additional burden to bear for those to whom the evil was done: for as I know from clinical experience with my patients, the lack of proper punishment of the perpetrators of evil is itself a punishment of the victims of it, a punishment that is often long-lasting and even rather like a life sentence. This is because it removes from the victims all confidence that there is justice in the world or that anybody cares what happens to them. Their experiences and their feelings are of no account; they (the people who have them) are nothing, no more than insects under the feet of society.

A most eloquent expression of the thoughts I was having as I watched Star Trek Into Darkness. My goodness, the If You Kill Him You’ll Be Just Like Him trope has gotten tired. That’s because it doesn’t work. I go to the movies to be entertained, and Kill Bill is a much better movie, entertainment-wise, when you get right down to it.

But what kind of grown-ups do kids become after watching “don’t kill that bad guy, bring him to justice instead” movies? Non-vengeful, angelic types? Or, are they taught to de-value human life, to see it as not worth avenging, or for that matter, much of anything else. The latter, I think. For that reason, and some others, after watching the recent Star Trek installment I always come away with the same aftertaste as the closing credits roll: I don’t want to see the “don’t kill the bad guy” trope, ever again. Let’s go back to Han shooting first again. It isn’t that I entirely disagree with the point, that the desire for vengeance should be checked. The problem is that it’s bland, boring, reeks of lazy writing and that’s probably what it is. My impression is that the writers never even bothered to contemplate the other problem with vengeance, that those who crusade against it may have as many problems as those who crusade for it. They may pose just as grave a threat against what we think of as “civilization,” which, if it relies on anything at all, must rely on the idea that humans are worth something. Also, that actions have consequences.

Back to Thompson’s post. What’s interesting about it is that it has offered a connection — without meticulously explaining how the connection works — between this “lust” for not-vengeance, and the lazy condescension of the intellectuals by way of a link to Mises.

The intellectuals are a paradoxical product of the market economy, because “unlike any other type of society, capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.” Like Hayek, Schumpeter described intellectuals broadly as “people who wield the power of the spoken and the written word.” More narrowly, “one of the touches that distinguish them from other people who do the same is the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs.” That is, intellectuals do not participate in the market (at least not in the areas they write about), and do not generally rely on satisfying consumers to earn a living. Add to this their naturally critical attitude—which Schumpeter argues is the product of the essential rationality of the market economy—and it is easy to see why intellectuals would be hostile to the market.

In other words, intellectuals are often out of place in entrepreneurial societies. The growth of the intellectual class is not a response to consumer demand, but to the expansion of higher education. Passing through the higher education system does not necessarily confer valuable skills, but it often does convince graduates that work in the market is beneath them:

The man who has gone through a college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work. His failure to do so may be due either to lack of natural ability—perfectly compatible with passing academic tests—or to inadequate teaching; and both cases will, absolutely and relatively, occur more frequently as ever larger numbers are drafted into higher education and as the required amount of teaching increases irrespective of how many teachers and scholars nature chooses to turn out.

If higher education takes little or no account of the supply and demand for useful skills, it will produce graduates who naturally gravitate to the intellectual class, bringing with them feelings of estrangement and dissatisfaction:

All those who are unemployed or unsatisfactorily employed or unemployable drift into the vocations in which standards are least definite or in which aptitudes and acquirements of a different order count. They swell the host of intellectuals in the strict sense of the term whose numbers hence increase disproportionately. They enter it in a thoroughly discontented frame of mind. Discontent breeds resentment. And it often rationalizes itself into that social criticism which as we have seen before is in any case the intellectual spectator’s typical attitude toward men, classes and institutions especially in a rationalist and utilitarian civilization.

A swelling intellectual class then molds public opinion, swaying it in favour of socialism.

Thompson (via Small Dead Animals) then adds:

This “conspicuous forgiveness,” a kind of vicarious tolerance, can be quite striking in its boldness and disregard for facts, with acts of savagery being met with improbable excuses and rhetorical diversions. Generally from a safe distance. In 2011, following the London riots, China Miéville, a middle-class Marxist and member of the International Socialist Organisation, claimed to be “horrified” that members of the press and public had used the word feral when describing the career predators and assorted thugs who, seeking excitement and a sense of power, had beaten passing pensioners unconscious and burned random women out of their homes. And who, on the arrival of firefighters, had dragged them from their vehicles and punched them insensible.

To use the word feral when describing such people was, Mr Miéville said, our “moral degradation far more than [theirs].” You see, by referring to such behaviour as savage and anti-social, we are the degraded ones in Mr Miéville’s eyes, the ones in need of chastisement. Our compassionate Marxist was hardly alone in his rush to invert reality and flatter the brutish, even as it became clear that an overwhelming majority of the looters, muggers and arsonists had previous convictions for similar crimes, an average of 15, and some more than fifty. Despite such bothersome details, flattery and evasion were very much the done thing as fellow leftists Nina Power, Laurie Penny and Priyamvada Gopal were happy to demonstrate. Presumably on grounds that none of the feral behaviour, the random beatings and violent predation, was being directed at them.

Tying this all together is the concept of worth. Say what you like about those who think humans are worth avenging; at least part of their mindset is “humans are worth.” Their philosophy is not, as we’ve been repeatedly told by the pop culture, opposed to justice; it’s more of a close-cousin to it, since you can’t have justice without thinking humans are worth something. The work they do, for each other, is also worth something, inconvenient as that may be to the intellectuals who consider themselves to be above it all.

Captain Capitalism has completed an interesting item of Internet research:

I had to search her name and after finding her newly hyphenated name was able to track her down.

What is she doing today?

Well….this.

I want to highlight this because there’s a couple important lessons to pull from it.

1. Look at the money raised and their pleas for money. Also look where it goes to. It goes into just basically supporting themselves. These aren’t professional activists. They’re panhandlers on the internet pursuing some sad pathetic crusade they’ve been told to by media, leftist professors, and yes, even the government.

2. Precisely what is their crusade? To take selfies on Monsanto’s signs out in the middle of nowhere as they hold up craptastic home made signs? Not only is the crusade itself pointless and ultimately mentally-egotistically self-serving, but they’re not even doing it right.

3. She is obviously with child. If they only have $160, guess who’s going to pay for her birthing expenses! That is the least of our concerns though. Any body want to place odds on the kid growing up right?

I could go on, but the larger point is this is ultimately where crusaderism leads. A dead end wasted life of delusion and no real practical or meaningful achievements.

In the last post I had made reference to nihilism, singling out for special criticism the “don’t discuss politics” types and the “I’m a (phony) moderate” types and the “conservatives and liberals there’s no difference between the two” types:

Nihilism — the belief that life lacks meaning or intrinsic value. It’s really a “Captain Obvious” thing when you think about it: The belief that ideas and actions are pointless, leads to the belief that life itself is pointless.

That is our culture clash. This is why we see all the arguing. “First Black President” has nothing to do with it, nothing whatsoever, it provides no motivation at all on either side. We’re having a national shouting-match about all the rest of us, and our worth. A certain Secretary of State summed it up very well, as she was being grilled in the Senate about her most glaring failures: “What difference…does it make?” Waitaminnit, did I say “very well”? I meant “perfectly.” That is the epicenter of disagreement.

Ultimately, if you are dedicated to a consumer-economy in which we rely on helping each other, lots of things matter that otherwise wouldn’t. In fact, whether you realize it or not, just about everything matters. But if you’re above-it-all, then none of it does. So then you can join some crusade that doesn’t really have any meaning, or value, material or otherwise. Get yourself knocked up with no means of support, no food in the cupboards, no cupboards, just panhandling on the Internet? Burn randomly-selected women out of their houses? Beat up old people? Get beaten up yourself? What difference does it make?

Let’s concentrate instead on banning words like “feral” and “bossy,” because words mean more than people. Yes, that does start some arguments. I should certainly hope so.

Hawkins at Townhall:

1) No matter what they fail at, it’s always someone else’s fault. George Bush did it, the Republicans are mean, the dog ate Obama’s homework. It’s not his fault that he’s flunking every class!
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5) They demand to be treated like adults, but the moment they get an adult responsibility — like being President — they quit doing it the right way five minutes in because it’s “boring” and wander off to find something more “fun” to do (like golfing or campaigning).
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11) When they don’t like something, they throw a tantrum and demand that other people change their behavior to work around their attitude problem.
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15) They torment, bully, and provoke other people at every opportunity until someone hits them back, at which point they start crying and demanding sympathy.

In all these examples — just like with the bratty kids — the common situation is that the object of study makes reliable errors, out of a sense of conviction that their feelings are somehow important.

Me, in the e-mails, on the subject of people who insist “all ideas/ideologies are equally valid,” and then somehow end up (or always wanted to be?) voting straight-lefty-dem:

I have concluded that this is the natural sentiment people end up having, when they don’t see linkage between actions they exercise, and results produced. When they build nothing, or think they’re building nothing. I’ve found people who disavow that notion, have made a lifestyle of some kind out of producing favorable consequences. It doesn’t have to be software engineering…It can be 4H. It can be gardening. But when your most impactful effort in this world is something like “I’m going to keep drawing a paycheck for no work, and my boss is never going to get rid of me,” it produces nihilism.

Nihilism — the belief that life lacks meaning or intrinsic value. It’s really a “Captain Obvious” thing when you think about it: The belief that ideas and actions are pointless, leads to the belief that life itself is pointless. And if all these things are pointless, then the only thing that has a point to it is being happy, right? Therefore, the only thing anybody can do that’s wrong, is raining on your parade. Crowding your buzz. Ruining your little party.

Being a square.

I can’t imagine living any kind of life as some sort of “adult,” that somehow permits me to maintain the same world-view I might have had in middle school. I have a great deal of trouble envisioning how that’s possible. I don’t envy it, but there must be a sort of bliss in it. Especially when the person at the center of it, has become accustomed to feeling his or her way through every little problem that comes along, and ignoring all consequences.

All the way to the eighteenth hole.

Betsy’s Page:

It really has been amusing to hear all these nice liberals bemoaning the use of the Religious Freedom Reformation Act when it was a law passed with near unanimity and signed into law with great self congratulation by Hillary Clinton’s husband. Suddenly, liberals no longer like the idea of finding a balance between the reach of the federal government and people’s individual religious beliefs if it interferes with their desired policy goals.

And all this for the goal of forcing employers to provide employees free contraceptives. It has always struck me as rather strange that that is the one prescription that the administration wants to insist should be provided at no cast to insured employees. Think of all the possible medicines that they could have chosen to be provided for free – prescriptions for heart problems, cancer, diabetes, asthma, HIV, or psychiatric treatments. But none of those were considered worthy of mandating that they be provided free of cost. Only contraceptives. Not covered with a deductible or for a certain percentage. Nope, absolutely free. I would love to have a reporter ask Obama why didn’t they have similar mandates for other medical needs? I think it was all done deliberately so that they could take advantage of the opposition that they knew would arise in order to gin up their phony cries about a war on women.

Obviously, they don’t really care about health. What’s really going on here? Three explanations:
1. Liberals have far more ability to “troll” conservatives, than the other way around, and they’re making the most of their battle-superiority here.

2. Heavy overlap with explanation #1, arguably inseparable from it: Liberals, like any political force arguing for an entitlement, defeat their own purpose of existence if they ever enjoy complete success and so they’re waging a battle on vanishing ground. Their most potent battle-weapon has been a “reproductive freedom” that isn’t actually listed in the Constitution, they’ve won this fight, so now they’re arguing to make it freer and freer and freer and freer…

3. Who cares about politics? Liberals are opposed to the human race.

From watching their actions as they form positions on existing and new issues, and arguing those positions, I find a persuasive strength in all three of these.

They are vastly more talented at trolling their opposition, by the way. And it’s good for them; “moderate” after “moderate” after “moderate” watches this go on, and yells something like “Eek, those rotten conservative men are going to force me or some poor woman to carry a pregnancy!” and starts voting straight-dem. But there’s some give-and-take involved in this. A parallel argument emerges about whether or not abortions are being used for “casual” birth control; this gets “settled” in the sense that everybody’s socially stigmatized from offering any opinion that they may be; but, as liberals continue their arguing and advocating and lobbying to keep abortifacient drugs “accessible,” meaning free for their constituents while others are forced to pay for them, there certainly is an appearance that they’re arguing to maintain unhealthy and unproductive lifestyles.

Now they’re trying to move the ideological line in our society so that it becomes an extremist and intolerably right-wing position to say people should pay for what they use. That part of it is not good for their cause; they’re weakening themselves by pushing for this. At least, I hope so.

curi.us, hat tip to Rhymes With Cars and Girls:

Declaring a debate already over is a common irrational approach that blocks off any further learning. About the debate already being over, he wrote: “Within physics and chemistry and climatology, the people who think anthropogenic climate change exists and is a serious problem have won the argument — but the news of their intellectual victory hasn’t yet spread…” Then true to the idea of the debate being finished, as you’ll see below, he didn’t want to address criticisms of his position.

He replied to me to assert he was open to debate while subtly blowing me off, then didn’t respond to some questions I sent him in reply. I think he’s more interested in convincing himself that he’s rational – which required dealing with a [direct] question about his openness to debate – than he is interested in actually discussing the issues.

After some questions, I concluded my reply, “If you don’t wish to answer all of these questions, could you tell me where to get answers to my satisfaction which would persuade me about the climate consensus and related issues? (If there is nowhere, what do you suggest?)”

He didn’t answer that either. When people don’t answer something like that, isn’t it disturbing? He says climate change is a settled debate, but he won’t answer questions about it, and he won’t even refer people to anywhere they can get their doubts answered. (Presumably because there actually isn’t anywhere, which means the debate isn’t actually settled in a reasonable way. Which is an important enough problem with his side’s “victory” on the issue that he ought to have some comment.)

This is a common problem where people are more interested in the social role of a rational intellectual than truth-seeking discussion. They’re more interested in feeling smart than being smart. They’re more interested in self-image than action. They care about popular opinion and socialized legitimized status, and only feel much need to address arguments with some kind of (social) authority behind them. They look at the source of ideas and then wonder whether, socially, they can get away with ignoring the ideas (ignoring arguments is something they seem to treat as desirable and try to maximize).

It’s not about, “Have I already written an answer to this argument? Has someone else written an answer to it that I can endorse? If yes, I’ll give a link/cite. If no, maybe I or someone else better write something.” That’d be rational but few people think that way.

Instead it’s about, “If I don’t answer this, will other people think it was a serious argument I should have answered? Am I expected to answer it? Do I have to answer it to protect my social status? Do I have any excuses for not engaging with the argument that most people (weighted by their status/authority) will accept?”

I’ve noticed there is a recent mental feebleness in the air, an epidemic of a Learning Disability if you will, of flibbertigibbets prattling on and on, over & over, about things that ought to be obviously and emphatically true. On and on they go, until a situation arises in which their refusal or inability to allow this obvious & emphatic truth to stand on its own merits, is the strongest case to be presented for doubts. Then, they do it a few more times.

In an attempt to convince themselves; it very often cannot be proven, but all the signs are there, that if their beliefs were more earnest things would be much, much quieter. There’d be a great deal less endless re-litigating of the same ol’ stuff.

They often are heard to claim, like the litigant described above, that some disagreement is already over. Problem is, these are the flibbertigibbets who never allowed it to begin: “If you want to win a debate, you have to first allow it to happen.”

But they don’t want to win. They want to feel like they won; they want to look like they won. Really winning the debate? That’s something you want to do when your position in the debate is, “this bridge is capable of supporting my weight,” and you’re about to walk on it. Therein, I think, lies the problem — we have too many people arguing about bridges, and not enough people planning to walk on them. Therefore, as more people in our society become insulated from the work and the danger associated with it, this society is losing its connection to truth. Through lack of interest. Fewer and fewer people are invested in any of that truth, save for the truth of their own social standing.

Psychology Today: When Ignorance Begets Confidence: The Classic Dunning-Kruger:

The Dunning-Kruger effect describes a cognitive bias in which people perform poorly on a task, but lack the meta-cognitive capacity to properly evaluate their performance. As a result, such people remain unaware of their incompetence and accordingly fail to take any self-improvement measures that might rid them of their incompetence.

Peggy Noonan behind a pay-wall, via Stuart Schneiderman, via The News Junkie at Maggie’s Farm:

I don’t know if we sufficiently understand how weird and strange, how historically unparalleled, this presidency has become. We’ve got a sitting president who was just judged in a major poll to be the worst since World War II. The worst president in 70 years! Quinnipiac University’s respondents also said, by 54% to 44%, that the Obama administration is not competent to run the government.
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But I’m not sure people are noticing the sheer strangeness of how the president is responding to the lack of success around him. He once seemed a serious man. He wrote books, lectured on the Constitution. Now he seems unserious, frivolous, shallow. He hangs with celebrities, plays golf. His references to Congress are merely sarcastic: “So sue me.”
:
This is a president with 2½ years to go who shows every sign of running out the clock. Normally in a game you run out the clock when you’re winning. He’s running it out when he’s losing…The president shows no sign — none — of being overwhelmingly concerned and anxious at his predicaments or challenges. Every president before him would have been…
:
Barack Obama doesn’t seem to care about his unpopularity, or the decisions he’s made that have not turned out well. He doesn’t seem concerned. A guess at the reason: He thinks he is right about his essential policies. He is steering the world toward not relying on America. He is steering America toward greater dependence on and allegiance to government. He is creating a more federally controlled, Washington-centric nation that is run and organized by progressives. He thinks he’s done his work, set America on a leftward course, and though his poll numbers are down now, history will look back on him and see him as heroic, realistic, using his phone and pen each day in spite of unprecedented resistance. He is Lincoln, scorned in his time but loved by history.

He thinks he is in line with the arc of history, that America, for all its stops and starts, for all the recent Supreme Court rulings, has embarked in the long term on governmental and cultural progressivism. Thus in time history will have the wisdom to look back and see him for what he really was: the great one who took every sling and arrow, who endured rising unpopularity, the first black president and the only one made to suffer like this.

That’s what he’s doing by running out the clock: He’s waiting for history to get its act together and see his true size.

He’s like someone who’s constantly running the movie “Lincoln” in his head. It made a great impression on him, that movie. He told Time magazine, and Mr. Remnick, how much it struck him. President Lincoln of course had been badly abused in his time. Now his greatness is universally acknowledged. But if Mr. Obama read more of Lincoln, he might notice Lincoln’s modesty, his plain ways, his willingness every day to work and negotiate with all who opposed him, from radical abolitionists who thought him too slow to supporters of a negotiated peace who thought him too martial. Lincoln showed respect for others. Those who loved him and worked for him thought he showed too much. He was witty and comical but not frivolous and never shallow. He didn’t say, “So sue me.”

Back to the Psychology Today article…

Fremdscham (the noun) describes the almost-horror you feel when you notice that somebody is oblivious to how embarrassing they truly are. Fremdscham occurs when someone who should feel embarrassed for themselves simply is not, and you start feeling embarrassment in their place.

Five-and-a-half down, two-and-a-half to go.

Oh, my. There’s a durable argument for you.

Hat tip to Chicks on the Right.

Update: You realize, if you can show there is a consensus among our modern lefty movement that this incongruity is right and proper, and should be maintained — which I expect would not be difficult — what that would prove, is exactly what I was saying here:

This sub-surface alternative economic system is for people who do not like money. Here’s the deal: You want something and decide your want is actually a need. So, since you need it, your employer buys it for you, because he’s compelled to do so by force of law. Forget about how much it has to do with the contract between you & him, that doesn’t matter because you need it.

And because you need it, you get to dictate the parameters of this thing you need so, so badly — but somehow, can’t quite get around to opening your billfold to pay for it.

The fact that this sub-surface alternative economic system for people who do not like money, works for “health care” but not for guns, proves that this has nothing to do with basic human rights at all. Our throat-clearing wussie guy here “puts it into a different category,” but there are sure to be some people who do not look at it that way. Where, then, is the protest to force employers to provide ammunition?

Captain Obvious points out: It is a culture conflict. The abortifacient protesters are aligned with the advocates for this sub-surface economic system — “It’s an economic system built on wrath instead of on greed,” as I said. Gun nuts like me are none too fond of this slimy slithering other-economic-system, this “Fluke-onomy” system, in which such extraordinary lengths are undertaken merely to avoid opening a purse or billfold. And the feeling is mutual. They love their abortions. And hate guns. As much as they hate money; that is, having money. The wrong people having money.

What is the connection?

Current operating theory: It’s all about faith in one’s fellow man. Trust. Should ordinary, run-of-the-mill people be trusted with guns; money; babies; the planet. One side of the conflict says no, no, no and no. People aren’t good enough. They’re icky. And they didn’t build that…

The other side says, not quite so much yes-yes-yes-and-yes, but rather: Why would anyone ask me? The decision has been made already, by a power higher than ourselves. We have the guns, we have the money, we can have the babies and we have the planet. It’s not our place to decide whether that should be so, what’s on us is to make the result of these gifts and trusts, as positive as we possibly can.

These two sides are absolutely irreconcilable. The beliefs, ultimately, are about life and death. It’s not too likely you’ll ever see an adherent to one side, re-think things and cross over to the other. Well…I could be wrong. I’d like to be. But I’ve not yet seen any evidence of that.

Ask John Wayne why he loved America? He had a million reasons why.

Me? Not sure I have a million reasons, but I have one that I like more than most of the others: It’s a nation started on a tax revolt.

America is a debate that needed to happen. Yeah sure, if we pool our resources together in a big pot, we can accomplish some amazing things…but maybe, just maybe, we can accomplish more amazing things with the loot that stays with us. Is that really so selfish? Some may say so; but the word for which they’re grasping, whether they realize it or not, is not “greedy” or “selfish” but responsible. Can you impose your will over a finite value of assets, and leverage them to produce something glorious. To even entertain the question is to embrace a responsibility; not just any responsibility, but one that many of our fellow world citizens will never know.

Turns out, when you put your individual creativity and resourcefulness in competition with a bureaucracy in a contest along those lines, it’s not so hard to come out on top. Bureaucracy has an effect on such efforts, and the effect it has is not beneficial.

Celebrating our nation’s birthday, in the final analysis, is really all about celebrating individuality. Not diversity or tolerance or immigrants or, for that matter, Arizona rains or sunsets or white people. It’s a celebration of human capability reaching its pinnacle, when & where people are closest to the work that has to be done. In other countries, it’s the bureaucrats who are thought to be the smartest. In still others, it’s the hereditary sovereigns. In others, its is the clergy. And that’s fine. They can keep that.

Here, we celebrate human potential. Human strength, human wisdom, human L.I.C.O.R.I.C.E.: Leadership, Initiative, Creativity, Ownership of one’s own problems, Resourcefulness, Ingenuity, Courage & conviction and Energy. We celebrate the fact that when an individual sees a problem, and resources that can be used to address it, he doesn’t need to wait for a committee to be gaveled to order. We celebrate resolve, determination, decision-making, and good, old-fashioned grit.

From Have Some Fun With Progressives This Independence Day:

Their view of our Founding Fathers is split into two camps: 1) Those exemplified by a line in the great movie Dazed and Confused, when a teacher says “OK guys, one more thing: This summer when you’re being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don’t forget what you’re celebrating, and that’s the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn’t want to pay their taxes.” And 2) Those who claim the Founding Fathers were progressives and loyalists were conservatives.

Both claims express an elementary school-level understanding of history, if that. But we’re dealing with progressives here, so I repeat myself.

Dealing with either claim is fruitless. They’ve made it this far in life repelling reality. Your best efforts, no matter how well reasoned, won’t make a dent in their ignorance armor. But much like a firecracker becomes fun once you light the wick, a progressive is a carnival ride when you bring up the Founding Fathers. Light the fuse, step back a safe distance and enjoy the show. There are few things more fun than inciting progressives to expose themselves in front of smart but otherwise unengaged people. The faces of others will be priceless. Then you will all be called racists and the progressive will storm away.

So wait…the proggies are saying they share a kinship with the slave-owning white guys who didn’t want to pay their taxes? I still don’t have this straight.

I don’t think anyone does.

A compendium of examples of The Left, in that never-ending crusade for ++giggle++ greater equality, losing their shit over the Hobby Lobby decision.

Via Instapundit: “Fuck you, Hobby Lobby.” And, “Scalia law is a lot like Sharia law.”

The most partisan Supreme Court Justice of all: Sam Alito.

Hobby Lobby Makes Them Dotty.

What better place to start than with ScotusBlog, the news site described to Twitchy.com as “a fantastic resource for learning about all-things related to the U.S. Supreme Court.” Angry birds on Twitter mistook Scotusblog for the high court itself and began tweeting their objections to the ruling. “SCOTUSblog retweeted many [indicated below by ‘RT’ or ‘MT’] and provided a funny running commentary about the cluelessness.”
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Yeah, we know, it’s Twitter. But the quality of argumentation on offer from serious news organizations often wasn’t much better. The Washington Post commissioned an op-ed by Sandra Fluke, described as a “a social justice attorney” and a California state Senate candidate. She calls the decision “an attack on women,” as if religious liberty were an exclusively male domain. Carrying “data-driven journalism” to a pointless extreme, a post on the Post’s Wonkblog is headlined “The 49-Page Supreme Court Hobby Lobby Ruling Mentioned Women Just 13 Times.”

“The anti-choice movement wants to limit not just affordable access, but all access to abortion and birth control,” Fluke claims in the op-ed. “It is an attack at all levels, and today’s decision is just another success in these efforts.” Even if true, that is irrelevant to the legal merits of the case.

“Hooray! The War on Women is back!”

Here’s White House press secretary Josh Earnest : “President Obama believes that women should make personal health-care decisions for themselves rather than their bosses deciding for them…The constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office disagrees with that conclusion.” This appeal to diploma is weird, because Hobby Lobby turned on the straightforward application of a federal statute. The First Amendment’s free-exercise clause wasn’t reached.

There’s another ex-lawyer who should also know better, given that her husband signed the relevant law “to protect perhaps the most precious of all American liberties,” as Bill Clinton put it in 1993. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) sailed through the House unanimously and the Senate 97-3.

Yet today Hillary Clinton thinks the Clinton family’s RFRA legacy is nearly Iranian. Its protections belong to “a disturbing trend that you see in a lot of societies that are very unstable, anti-democratic and frankly prone to extremism,” which is “women and girls being deprived of their rights,” including “control over their bodies,” she said this week.

America’s mullahs are also after Democratic Party chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who warned on MSNBC that “Republicans want to do everything they can to have the long hand of government, and now the long hand of business, reach into a woman’s body and make health-care decisions for her.” Democrats made Hobby Lobby-based fundraising pitches over the weekend, before the decision was even handed down.

Well you know — they’re just treating women like they treat any other target “oppressed” class. Hit the lecture circuit, hit the campaign trail, give speeches, write fund-raising letters, let the oppressed know how poorly they’re being treated — get those votes, get that money. If it had anything at all to do with making people equal, the crusade would be about making it easier to instigate large, important financial transactions while you’re in the process of changing your last name. Fact is, in our society, the difficulty involved in doing that has a lot more to do with making women second-class citizens than anything medical.

But, it also has something to do with being married, and that’s a little bit too much “womens’ choice” for our lefty friends to allow.

No, what’s really remarkable about Hobby Lobby, and the risible aftermath, has nothing to do with women at all. It’s about this sub-surface alternative economic system. Here we have a little-noticed connection to another favorite lefty issue “income inequality.” My exchanges with lefties about this all go pretty much the same way: I make the quite logical point that as long as there is economic freedom, and inequality among people about how to treat money, there will be income inequality because some people do not like to have or spend money. That earns me a sneer, along with any one of a number of other cues that I have toppled over the brink and excluded myself from the reasonable. B-u-u-u-t, it’s really true.

This sub-surface alternative economic system is for people who do not like money. Here’s the deal: You want something and decide your want is actually a need. So, since you need it, your employer buys it for you, because he’s compelled to do so by force of law. Forget about how much it has to do with the contract between you & him, that doesn’t matter because you need it.

And because you need it, you get to dictate the parameters of this thing you need so, so badly — but somehow, can’t quite get around to opening your billfold to pay for it. It is to be provided to suit your preferences, just as if you were the person spending the money. Which is stupid, silly, idiotic…but, it’s gotta be that way. Otherwise, everybody goes completely apeshit, because that’s how they make sure this alternative economic system continues to service them, by going completely apeshit. It’s an economic system built on wrath instead of on greed. And that’s what is happening with this “Hobby Lobby case.” They’re having their pandemic, highly organized temper tantrum, so that consumers in the secondary economic system can enjoy as much choice as consumers in the primary economic system.

Given that, none of this is surprising. Except for the lengths to which these secondary-economic-system advocates will go, to keep on pushing it. It is truly…exhausting. It’s just like the teenager dreaming up endlessly twisting & contorting “legal” arguments about why it isn’t his turn to take out the garbage, when it would be so much less work to just take out the garbage. Why not just earn money for the things they want & need, put it in the bank for awhile, and then spend it? It’s truly baffling. Sandra Fluke, to the best of my knowledge, has yet to answer the question.

By the way, Happy Independence Day!!

Update: “It’s an economic system built on wrath instead of on greed.” That’s quite good, isn’t it? I should expound on that someday.

At The Chive: “The Force is strong with these girls.”

Funniest tweets from low-information voters you will ever see.

From here.

Pallas cats were not discovered until a team of researchers were looking for snow leopards in Nepal and accidentally stumbled across an animal that looked half house cat, half snow leopard.

The majestic, shy, solitary Pallas cats were recorded in the wild for the first time by camera traps placed in an extreme climate 14,000 feet above sea level.

One camera trap caused a Pallas cat to experience an earth-shattering moment, when it realized there was something strange outside its rock den. The fluffy animal still mustered up enough courage to investigate.

Gates of Vienna, via Dyspepsia Generation.

Ah. Still carefully stripped of any sex appeal at all, I see.

Because the sex appeal was in the franchise once, for awhile — feminists don’t like TR. This proves they aren’t about elevating the status of women in society, but instead elevating a gender-neutral culture that has absolutely nothing to do with acknowledging that women have anything special to offer. Women, like men, are just people. They don’t have big breasts, they don’t birth no babies, they don’t even have a particularly distinguishable way of running or jumping; everything they do, a man can do just as capably. That’s the vision.

It stands to reason that the first positions to be eliminated are wife, and mother. Those are the two things women can do that men can’t do. Looking genuinely hot while excavating treasure and beating up bad guys, in skimpy outfits, would be yet another thing so that also has to go. And after the Tomb Raider looks like a titless fifteen-year-old boy in skinny-jeans — the feminists still aren’t happy, which is something I find pretty darn interesting.

PJ Tatler:

The owners of this particular corporation are a family. They have rights. They do not surrender those rights because they formed a business. Anyone who thinks that they did surrender those rights when they formed their family business is a moron.

The Greens — they own Hobby Lobby — were literally minding their own business when the Obama administration slammed them with a mandate forcing them to use their property to pay for something that violates their religious beliefs. The Greens acted on their beliefs and took the mandate to court. They won. That’s how it works in this country.
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We are a nation that has enshrined respect for religious beliefs into our Constitution. That’s not some feel-good thing. It’s the bedrock of our system. The Supreme Court found that the Obamacare mandate puts an undue burden on religious people.

If libs were honest — well, they wouldn’t be libs. But if they were honest libs, they’d just come out and say how they want these reconciliations to work between popular will and the Constitution: No consistent principles involved, none whatsoever, just the popular will prevailing over the Constitution when it’s further left than the Constitution, and the Constitution defeating popular will when the Constitution, interpreted as recklessly far-left as it can possibly be interpreted, is to the left of popular will. Whatever makes it so that lefties win, that’s what should determine everything.

That’s what they’d say if they were honest about it. But they aren’t. At this point, I don’t know who they think they’re fooling. The Supreme Court just ruled that they should lose, and so, predictable as a sunrise, they’re plotting some new ways to get around that. They don’t care about anything but more-and-more-liberalism.

I’m tempted to get philosophical and monotonous about this…I have before already. And how could I not? It’s the plague of our times, this mental insanity that you can make things true just by doing a really, really, really enthusiastic job of wishing for them. Grown-ups doing their “thinking” like five-year-olds.

But, people don’t really read or listen to that stuff. Sometimes you need a comedian to make the point.

And, a buffoon. Two people funny, only one trying to be.

Via Newsbusters.

ODDEE, by way of Linkiest:

Geek gals are always looking for cool apparel, especially when it comes to comfortable swimwear. So, here’s some good news: Now, there’s an Evil Dead-inspired Necronomicon bikini that’s supposedly “super comfortable,” according to its makers.

The made-to-order Brazilian-cut silicone bikini, available through Etsy by Bloodlust Productions, is styled after the human flesh-bound Book Of The Dead, the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis from Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead movies. (Source)

That’s about the most normal one out of the lot, of: #FreeTheNipple, Bubble Wrap, 3D-Printed, Evil Devil, et al. Some images not suitable for a general audience or work environment.

There’s been a recent upsurge in the drive to recruit men to feminism, and it doesn’t seem to be related in any way to the Hobby Lobby nonsense (video auto-plays). Oftentimes when there’s a sudden increase in the fevered pitch of something it’s difficult to figure out — as we see in the case of soccer — if that’s an increase in supply or in demand. Or neither of those. Or both. In this case I’m inclined to think it’s a combination of supply and demand, but leaning toward demand; the feminists are trying harder to recruit men to their movement. But then again, it’s likely that they’re trying harder all of a sudden, because they’re finding it easier to do all of a sudden. That would mean supply.

As you can see from that first link up there, it seems a lot of male feminism has to do with figuring out what the female feminists are saying, and emphatically agreeing with it without thinking about it.

Avoid playing the Devil’s Advocate. It’s a really good way to get into arguments, but not a good way to start productive discussions. Read the commenting policy on blogs and websites you want to comment on. Most of them are in place to create a safe, troll free space where blog participants can express ideas and opinions freely without being attacked. There are plenty of other spaces where you can play Devil’s advocate all you like so you can leave these ones alone.

After reading that, you don’t need to know a lot about feminism to figure out this is no place for a man. You just have to know something about being a man. “Productive discussions” come from an echo chamber? Laughable. No really, it is, I’ve seen feminists try to do this. After the “Hooray, we all agree with each other” moment, it looks like the dog catching the car. They don’t know what to do next. They don’t know what they have here — a good idea, or a really super-duper cool idea? How to gauge, how to assess? You can’t. Best you can do is vote on it, and everyone agrees on it, so that gets you nowhere. It’s a sad, sad sight to see.

It is the exact opposite of the process by which a week timid little boy becomes a tower of masculine strength as a man. The echo chamber provides “a safe, troll free space where blog participants can express ideas and opinions freely without being attacked.” It is a shelter from disagreement, be it reasonable or other. The ideas that emerge from the echo chamber, like Pajama Boy, show all sorts of signs of having never been challenged. Among my favorites: Skimpy clothes on good looking women. It shouldn’t happen, ever, because it “objectifies” and “exploits” women, unless it’s a school or some other setting that will piss off the conservatives, and then the rallying cry is that there shouldn’t be any “slut shaming.” In other words, feminists really have no idea how to react to this. Every now and then in the echo chamber, one of the un-attacked will meekly offer up the question “How do we feel about that?” Which, I think, cuts straight to the heart of the matter: Feminism is not about covering up good-looking women, or letting schoolgirls prance around in denim-diapers, or women voting or having private conversations with their doctors or chasing careers or enjoying any sort of “choice” about anything at all. It is about collective thinking.

That, too, is antithetical to being a man. To being a strong man, or a desirable man as Captain Capitalism points out:

This is why, when a woman asks you what color to choose for the carpeting or the furniture, she gets honked off when you reply with “Whatever.” It comes from evolution and instinct. It’s got to do with what the two sexes bring. Women bring the oven, men bring the recipe. So what’s the recipe? How is it different from another recipe? That’s the true male contribution: His signature. Goes for everything. Medicine cabinet in the bathroom, carpet color, how the family computer is configured, what’s in the kitchen junk-drawer, what kind of coffee gets brewed in the morning. If living with a man is like living with any other man, that would mean the woman is expecting something from the relationship she is not going to be getting. It means the dude isn’t bringing anything. For her, it’s frustrating, boring and a turn-off. She’s instinctively wired to avoid this, and in the earlier years when a suitor is facing the instinctive screening process, the truth of it is that’s what’s being screened. Genetic weakness, physical weakness, mental weakness, but those are distant seconds to: The ordinary. Women are wired to avoid the generic. That’s what’s really going on. They don’t crave disagreement, they crave identity.

It’s burned into our culture, and other cultures all around the world. Kids get the Dad’s last name. There’s a reason for that, and it isn’t just because men want it that way.

This thing about “Agree with her about everything,” like much of liberalism, simply doesn’t work. It is a cause, as well as a symptom, of dysfunction (hat tip again to Gerard).

Seriously — have you seen many of these self-proclaimed male feminists? When I see all these sullen dorks standing like political prisoners holding their “I NEED FEMINISM BECAUSE…” signs, I wish that one of them could be honest and say they need feminism because they’re not naturally attractive to women.

I therefore posit that in at least some cases, male feminism is a mating strategy for men who aren’t getting laid on the virtues of being men alone. So they switch gears and attempt to get laid on the merits of proclaiming to be feminist “allies.” The “allies” thing is all lies. It is a sneaky way of trying to appeal to women by loudly proclaiming that you hate the type of guy who normally appeals to women. I believe the most reasonable explanation for the very existence of the modern “male feminist” is rooted in evolutionary biology: Calling oneself a male feminist is a deceptive and despicable little shame-dance, a pathetic self-puffing mating ritual that beta male lizards do to garner even a scrap of female attention.

It’s like going to some pro-marijuana rally because you know someone there is going to have weed. If you hang around enough girl feminists long enough and claim to be a feminist, sooner or later one of them will fuck you…maybe…right?

As is the case in many other walks of life: Receiving greater approval by way of disguising your distinguishing features, is a loser’s game. It would be futile even if it worked, which it usually doesn’t. The thing to ask about it is, what if it did work? Noodle on that one a little bit; you “earn” approval by pretending to be something you really aren’t? Where’s that get you, exactly? Same thing it got you in Grades K through 5, right? A bunch of friends who aren’t really your friends. See, this is supposed to be the benefit of public school. You were supposed to figure out that this isn’t a winning plan.

Prelutsky makes a great point, once again:

I realize that the late Sen. Goldwater is anathema to liberals, even to those who only know him as the unfortunate victim of a famous TV spot in which a little girl picking a flower appears to be vaporized by a nuclear bomb. The vile message in 1964 was that Goldwater was a nutburger who was anxious to get us involved in a nuclear showdown with the Soviet Union. Because most voters 50 years ago were just as dumb as they are today, 61% of them voted for LBJ, who took that as a signal to sink us even deeper into the quagmire of Vietnam.

What more people should remember about Goldwater is based on fact, not a slander perpetuated by a cynical political operative; namely, that he was the man, the Republican senator, who went to Richard Nixon and told him to his face that it was time to resign, that he was an embarrassment not only to the nation, but to the political party to which they both belonged.

Isn’t it a shame that there is no Democrat of equal stature who will go to Obama and point out that what he is doing by ignoring the Constitutional limits on the executive branch, by racking up one scandal after another and by unleashing the dogs at the IRS and the EPA on innocent Americans, is not only bad for the nation, but will be a disaster for every Democrat seeking election this coming November?

Hmmm. Dunno about that. Liberals win elections by fooling people into believing, usually without any supporting evidence at all, that once the liberalism has done what liberalism is supposed to do the liberal will have the sense to say “Okay stop, that’s enough liberalism.” The way you do when you brush your teeth with toothpaste, or something. They win re-elections that way. They lose once it becomes clear that they’re a lot more like dogs begging for food, or ex-wives demanding more quote-unquote “child support,” when it becomes clear, then undeniable, that their solution to EVERY problem is more liberalism and they’ll never, ever stop.

This is all part of the natural cycle. People get prosperous, they find smaller and more nit-picky subjects of their complaints, they get it in their heads that the potholes in their career paths or diminished alms are due to the Republicans in office, and then even in the midst of all their complaining they think they can afford to make poor decisions and think sloppy. Then they vote in democrats, and recite democrat mantras like “The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.”

The democrats take over, everything turns to shit, after awhile people figure out this is not the answer. Nothing stimulates cool, crisp, responsible thinking like an empty refrigerator. Then they turn the democrats out of office and vow never to make the mistake ever again. And keep the vow…for a little while. Then, people get more and more prosperous, and once again get the idea they can afford to make poor decisions and think sloppy again.

Fixing the problems, therefore, would rely on the democrats periodically overplaying their hand. Which is natural. They’re great at winning elections, when the time is right. They suck at pretty much everything else. Including policing their own. They don’t have a Goldwater visiting the White House and telling President Selfie that the time has come. And this is metaphorical for everything else they do. They lack the circuit-breaker. When what they want to do doesn’t solve the problem, and they can see that, the answer is always to do a lot more of it.

And that’s when the voters figure out it’s necessary to pull the plug. The time is coming. That’s a good thing. And I think, this time, the era of prosperity is going to be plush and long. The “Obama lesson” will sink in stay learned for a good long time. Among most, anyway.

There is, “I will make sure that when you do that it will not cost you anything.”

There is, “I will go to the ends of the Earth to stop you from doing that.”

Between these two things, there is a very wide gulf. Lots of positions are possible between those two extremes; it’s not an Either-Or.

I would make a call for the Internet to try to get the message across to The Number One Stupid Slut, but as you can tell from her Twitter feed, you’ll have to get in line to do that.