Thoughts on Gays in the Military

It's finally occurred to me why leftists don't see any potential problems from having homosexuals in close quarters with other people of the same sex, including bunking together, showering together, etc., even when they are okay with segregating women and men in those situations.

It's because they are so convinced of the fundamental justice of letting gays serve openly, that any problems that may arise cannot possibly exist, because that would deny fundamental justice.

They are also so opposed to the idea of stereotyping gay men as predators that they cannot conceive of gay men acting inappropriately; any policy which would tend to protect people from a gay man who acts inappropriately is therefore unjust, and to be concerned about a homosexual the same way you would about a heterosexual automatically becomes homophobia; in effect, the lack of a double standard that favors homosexual men is considered to be discrimination.

In effect, of course, we are being told that homosexuals are more sexually enlightened than heterosexuals.

After I commented on this issue on a recent post by Thoreau on Unqualified Offerings, typical leftist joe from Lowell had a hissy fit, suggesting that I was "projeccting my own issues," that "Operating in an all-male environment where some of the men are gay is... no different from being around any other men," and overall suggesting that sexuality is not why we segregate men and women in certain situations.

Commenter Professor Coldheart was slightly more honest, in that he said that the results of putting homosexual men in close quarters with other men would be that: gay men who serve in close quarters with straight men will do the same thing they’ve done for the last ten thousand years of human history. They’ll either keep it under control, or they’ll make a pass at a guy, or they’ll find a quiet spot behind the HummVee for a combat jack. And somehow the Empire will abide.

The not-so-subtle implication here is that men who would be uncomfortable with another man making a pass at them should get over it - or put more bluntly, that we should tolerate sexual harassment if the harasser is gay.

And that is ultimately what will happen, I think. People keep telling us that homosexuals in the military hasn't been a problem for other countries, but considering how hard the government has tried to suppress information regarding the problems of putting women in certain military situations (i.e. not publicizing the number of women who are absent from ships due to pregnancy) and how little actual debate there is over issues such as the fact that certain requirements are being re-defined to accomodate women (i.e. stretchers are not operated by four rather than two people, because most women are too weak to operate half of a stretcher), and how there were attempts to present the Jessica Lynch story in a way to make women in combat seem more palatable, who here thinks that any problems that gays in the military might cause would not be suppressed, both by the countries which already instituted the rule (which are more into egalitarian fundamentalism than we are) and by us in the future.

What Professor Coldheart implies, and what I think the military will do, is ultimately make an unofficial policy that anyone making any charge of a homosexual behaving inappropriately will be immediately labeled homophobic, and be punished for it. The effect of this will be that a certain amount of same-sex sexual harassment will be unofficially required to be tolerated, and any objections will be seen as bigotry. Anything that gets in the way of egalitarianism will be crushed, and concerns about harassment will be swept aside the same way that they were largely swept aside by feminists when it came to Bill Clinton.

That is all.

Short Manifesto

It has come to my attention in recent years that many of the problems facing the U.S. are not the result of well-meaning fools; rather they are the deliberate result of a hostile elite class whose goal is the destruction of traditional society and the delegitimization of all traditional institutions, and indeed the destruction of the historical American peoples. These devastations are to be replaced with a semblance of radical individualism (not in terms of individual liberty but in terms of a lack of restraining social mores), the equalization of all forms of relationships, and the importation of hostile alien populations.

In the end, the destruction of the institutions by which society is formed will lead to the functions of such institutions being taken over by the state; where social mores restrained behavior now we will only have force of law. No distinction will remain between personal morality and criminal/civil law, as all moral objections to things which are not expressly prohibited by law will be effectively banned.

The most potent weapon I think that conservatives now have in their arsenal is contempt. The first step to confronting the enemy is to realize that he is the enemy. He* certainly sees us as such, and so we should not believe that we can make him friendly. We can certainly behave civilly towards him when the situation warrants, and when confronted with new people who are on the other side, we can give them the benefit of the doubt. But once a person sides with the enemy, and explicitly sees us as the enemy, we must not make the mistake of seeing him as a possible friend.

If someone announces that they have no interest in the preservation of traditional American society, they should be denounced. Any claims that we are being racist or intolerant should be met with "if you want to do away with my society, why should I care about your feelings?"

Above all, we need to realize that we are defenders; we are the ones who have been attacked. We are reacting to an attempt to delegitimize and to destroy us, and we should not have to apologize for that.

That is all.

*I use "he" here as a generic personification of all leftism, not aimed at the gender of the writer of the particular piece I am referencing.

Naked Leftism

Checking out Alas, I came to this piece.

I think it is very instructive in understanding the leftist mindset, and why the supposed beacons of "tolerance" are so willing and eager to try to destroy all dissent. Does anyone doubt that if this woman were in charge, being an evangelical Christian would be criminalized and all who dissented would be sent to re-education camps?

Q. When does a liberal believe in tolerance?

A. When he isn't the one in power.

That is all.

Holland, Stop Prosecuting Geert Wilders!

Randall Parker and Dennis Mangan take the Netherlands to task for their persecution prosecution of someone for simply standing up for his own country against incompatible invaders.

That is all.

On Joseph Sobran's Death

I think the best way to remember Mr. Sobran (whom I know only from reading his writings - I never had any contact with the man) is to remember some good quotes from him. To the extent that he contributed to my political development, it was through the use of one-liners that summed up principles I believed in but had never been able to express so succinctly. He could get to the heart of issues in a way that allowed me to describe and defend my worldview from some of hte more vexing attacks. So here are a few that I remember:

"I’ve always believed there’s really no such thing as a double standard. When people appear to apply a double standard, it means they are actually applying a hidden single standard — one they don’t want to admit."

"I guess the label that suits me best is reactionary utopian. I want to go back to a better world that never quite existed." (This one is especially apt, because it allows a conservative to admit that he thinks we have lost something that we need to get back without having to fight the old "the good old days weren't perfect!" retort).

(from the same article as linked above) "You know you’re politically homeless when you go to a John Birch Society dinner and you feel you’re surrounded by well-meaning liberals. "

"Notice that the Tenth Amendment is one of the few passages in the Constitution in which the Federal judiciary hasn’t discovered reservoirs of penumbras and emanations. I wonder why."

(btw, yes, I am aware of some of the more - unsavory aspects of Mr. Sobran's writings - but now is not the time to dwell on them).

That is all.

New Link

Due to a request, I am now putting "Satellite News," a blog concerned largely with issuess relating to artificial satellites, on my blogroll.

That is all.

NO AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS! STOP THE DREAM ACT!

Lawrence Auster has a post on how to contact your Senators to tell them to block Harry Reid's attempt to put the DREAM Act into the Defense Reauthorization bill, as well as comments on why the DREAM Act is a terrible and dangerous bill.

Click here to read about it and to find out what to do.

I would connect you to the NumbersUSA site, but their pages appear to be having difficulties loading. I am presuming that this is because of increased traffic, which I think is a very good sign.

That is all.

Christine O'Donnell

Although I haven't heard much from her recently, I do remember watching Christine O'Donnell on Bill Maher's old program on ABC.

While I was never impressed overly much by her, I do think that anyone who can make Karl Rove blow a fuse is worth something.

The "dabbling in witchcraft" thing should, I think, blow over. O'Donnell has long since repudiated witchcraft and is an evangelical Christian, so I have a hard time believing that her previous experiences are going to turn off conservative Christian voters once it is clear to them that she has been redeemed from her past sins. The whole point of her "dabbling in witchcraft" comment was to indicate that she recognized that it was a bad thing and now avoids these things.

As for Rove, his big problem is that whatever his reservations about her were during the primary, to continue to harp on her deficiencies after her nomination is counter-productive. He seems almost determined to make certain that she loses because she beat the guy he wanted in, and that is bad sportsmanship. I saw Bill Kristol on a Fox News show, and his treatment was far more savvy, admitting to her problems, and that he would have voted for Castle as more electable, but then saying that she actually had a much better chance than we have been told and stating that he would support her in the general election no question.

Not that I mind Karl Rove criticizing the nominee; but if he does, it should be for substantive issues of policy that he wants her to change her position on, or, if he does want her to lose, it should be because of severe policy differences that make him prefer the Democrat. What makes Rove's treatment of her so bad is the fact that (a) it is not as if he has huge policy disagreements, and (b) it seems more driven by resentment over her defeating Castle than over a concern about her performance were she to be elected. His attitude seems to be "I said she was unelectable, and by God, I will make certain that if nominated she WILL be unelectable!"

That is all.

Florida 2000 Blog Postings by Nick Stix

Here,
here, and here are some really great articles about the misrepresentations that some leftists have made about the 2000 election problems in Florida.

That is all.

Quote for the Day:

If a woman walking around a locker room full of naked men isn’t sexual harassment, then the term means nothing more than yet another feminist power play.

- Nicholas Stix on the Ines Sainz "scandal"

That is all.

Thought on Liberalism and Islam

It has occurred to me that regardless of one's thoughts about Islam specifically, there is something strange in the liberal conviction that all religions can be "domesticated" to be liberal-friendly. One underlying current of all the talk about "Islamophobia" is the idea that "true Islam" is perfetly compatible with liberalism because in the end, all religion is the same, except for the extremists.

People who make the claim that all religious beliefs are the same, or that they all say pretty much the same thing, actually reveal that they have no respect for religion at all. In the end, they believe in secualr humanism, believe that it is so obvious that secular humanism is correct that everyone, deep down, really believes in that (or at least all people of goodwill), and that all religions ultimately boil down to secular humanism, and that what the official doctrines say really don't matter.

In short, most people who worry about "Islamophobia" do not take religion seriously (not just that they disbelieve the doctrines, they reject the notion that those doctrines have any real importance to those who believe in them), and therefore the concept that religious beliefs can be dangerous (as opposed to only extremists on any belief being dangerous) is foreign to them.

In the end, a lot of people assume that people of faith are no different than, e.g., Star Trek convention-goers, and therefore that differences in religious doctrine, rather than representing different beliefs about objective reality, are nothing more significant than opinions over whether or not the tie-in novels should be considered canon.

That is all.

New Link

I have just added a link to my blogroll to the blog "Today World News," a blog that contains interesting new stories from around the world. It isn't anything particularly political, it seems, but rather a nice aggregator if you are looking for interesting random stories of the day.

That is all.

New Book on Women in War

It has occurred to me that one problem that conservatives have in the culture war is that the leftists have most of the resources devoted to supporting their ideas on cultural issues, e.g. same-sex "marriage." One of the great things about the internet is that we can use it to find obscure sources that tell the other side of the story and then get the information that can be used to argue our case factually.

Kingsley Browne has an excellent tome, Co-ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn't Fight the Nation's Wars, that I have recently discovered that explodes the myth that gender equality in fighting war is beneficial. It not only uses thought experiments, but actually presents evidence that disproves the assertions of the other side, cites specific cases where gender integration has caused problems, and points out how evidence that goes against the idea of gender equality is systematically pushed under the rug.

Click on the link above and buy a copy from Amazon, and support Glaivester with a referral fee!

That is all.

Shirley Sherrod vs Rodney King

A reader at VDARE points out that the famous Rodney King tape was more heavily edited than the Shirley Sherrod recording. But we aren't supposed to remember that fact, are we?

That is all.

Whites are Always Evil

When a white man kills immigrants, we are supposed to blame anti-illegal immigration rhetoric:

Hate Crimes Tied to Immigration Debate?
Subtitle: Civil Rights Group Says Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Driving Increase in Hate Crimes

When a black man kills white people, we are supposed to focus on white racism.

Conn. Gunman: 'I Wish I Could Have Killed More People'
Subtitle: Girlfriend of Connecticut Gunman Who Killed 9: Racial Harassment 'Would Make Somebody Go Crazy'

More from Steve Sailer:

Did the Hartford Massacre victims have it coming?
More Pavlovian News Analysis
Breaking News!

from Lawrence Auster:

The Big Lie, in its efflorescence
Eight whites murdered for their “racism” at Connecticut beer distributorship

from Dennis Mangan:

The Media's Anti-White Agenda

from Nicholas Stix:

Family: Racism caused Conn. gunman to snap

That is all.

Shirley Sherrod

First of all, I should say that I am appalled by the use of a selectively edited recording to impugn Ms. Sherrod's character. Racial McCarthyism is racial McCarthyism, and what was done to her was wrong, and to the extent that Mr. Breitbart's involvement in this involved a reckless disregard for the truth or worse, involved delberatley misleading people, he shuld be held in contempt.

Having said that, James Fulford has an interesting article on VDARE where he points out that Ms. Sherrod still is not exactly an unobjectionable figure, even if we have no reason to believe her to be racist.

I also think that his assertion that Breitbart should, under the liberal interpretation of the Constitution, be immunized from libel suits is a very good starting point to discuss the limits of free speech as it relates to relaying deliberately false information, or of information that was deliberately underchecked.

None of which i to say that she should have been let go for the statement she made, or for that matter for any radical political views she might be accused of having; as long as the job is civil service rather than appointed, her political views do not make firing her on false pretenses any more justifiable, nor should she be fired for her views (in the latter case, it would be different if she were a political appointee, e.g. secretary of HUD).

But the idea that she is not radical or objectionable at all may not stand up to close scrutiny.

That is all.

Let's Play a Game

The next time that Lawrence Auster has a post about Alt Right or that Dennis Mangan has a post about Jewish influence on American politics, how long do you think it will be before the other posts a response? I say six hours.

That is all.

Is Jewish Hypocrisy vis a vis Israel and the U.S. Really that Prevalent?

Recently, Dennis Mangan put up a post decrying a Jewish writer who said that Israel really didn't want friends who were nationalists. That is, who supported the right of their own nations to exist rather than just supporting Israel's.

This brought up an issue which is becoming somewhat bigger on the paleo, nationalist, and white nationalist right. Are Jews mostly hypocrites who want one standard for Israel and another for Gentile countries?

While it certainly is a convenient stand to take, and while blaming the decline of white America on Jewish perfidy creates an easy target, I think that the case for this is weaker than it may initially seem.

The problem is that while there are Jews who very strongly take Israel's side on any foreign policy issue, and Jews who very much want to disempower whites and replace them in order to multiculturalize every white country on the planet, they are by and large not the same Jews. Plenty of leftist Jews dislike Jewish Israel as much as they dislike white America and/or Europe. M.J. Rosenberg of TPMCafe comes to mind.

Anyone advocating a "one-state solution" where Israel would have to stop being a Jewish state is essentially wishing to do the same to Israel as the open borders crowd wants to do to the U.S.

And many of the more pro-Israel Jews are also very pro-U.S. Take Don Feder, for instance, who has described himself as "to the right of [Ariel] Sharon on Zionism, [and] to the right of Pat Buchanan on immigration and Americanism,"

The pro-Israel anti-white America (and Europe) position is taken largely by a small number of neocon or noeoliberal Jews. The reason why this has been picked up on as representative of Jewish hypocrisy in general is probably because paleoconservatism is, to a great extent, a reaction to neoconservatism. This has caused a much greeater focus on neoconservative positions than on the positions of any other sector of the political landscape. It has also caused a focus on non-neocons who take a position that is similar to that of the neocons on either Israel or the U.S., and assuyming essentially the neocon position on the other subject - or, alternately, combining each of the two positions (pro-Israel and anti-white America) one each espoused by two different Jewish people, and assuming a level of hypocrisy from that, as if both being Jewish meant that their opinions were, in essence, the opinion of one person.

In short, I think that the idea that Jewish positions are driven by different attitudes towards Israeli ethnic policy and U.S./European ethnic policy is not that applicable to most Jews.

That is all.

Obama Administration Tries to Stop Arizona from Punishing Illegal Immigrant Employers

So the Feds won't do the job, and now they are trying to stop anyone else from doing it?

I thought that punishing employers was what the liberals said we should be doing.

I especially liked this part:

A separate Arizona law penalizing employers of undocumented workers would "disrupt a careful balance that Congress struck" in the 1986 federal immigration act, the Justice Department told the court in a filing Friday.

What balance? There was an amnesty, and then no enforcement.

I also liked this part:

The Arizona law, passed in 2007, subjects employers to stiffer penalties than federal law and lacks safeguards that Congress provided against employment discrimination, government lawyers said.

Screw the antidiscrimination laws.

That is all.

The Problem with Gays in the Military - or, is Homosexuality More Enlightened than Heterosexuality?

*

A reader at VFR lays it out:

Congress is now moving to admit open homosexuals to the military. We're told that homosexuals are no more likely to engage in sexual misconduct or harassment than heterosexuals. That's debatable, but so what? Heterosexual men in the military don't bunk down and shower with the women. But homosexual men will indeed bunk down and shower with the other males if Obama gets his way. Ditto for lesbians and the other females. There would be universal outrage if heterosexual male soldiers demanded to shower with naked female soldiers, but naked male soldiers are expected to shower with homosexuals who might desire them. Female soldiers are expected to shower with lesbians.

And he sums it up in a way that no one ever has before (at least to my knowledge):

What we're being told, indirectly, is that homosexuality is a more enlightened form of sexuality... Heterosexuals can be barred from situations where sexually improper behavior might result, but homosexuals cannot. Indeed, they have a right not to be barred.

That is all.

Tax Striker vs. Illegal Immigration

Nicholas Stix at the VDARE blog has a good point.

Every single argument that is used against immigration enforcement can also be used against paying income taxes. Likewise, people who seem to insist that deportation should be treated under criminal justice presumptions rather than civil ones (that is, that people should be considered legally here until they are proven illegal) never seem to put the same thinking into filing out individual income tax forms.

While I do not advocate "tax striking" it does seem to me that as a thought experiment it provides a good counterpoint to those who demand amnesty for illegal aliens, and reveals their hypocrisy when they couch their terms in the impossibility of enforcement or in the unconstitutionality of effective enforcement.

That is all.

Thoughts on Rand Paul

Update: Lawrence Auster says that my assumptions on Rand Paul not knowing this question was going to be asked beforehand are incorrect. I will have to check this out more, as I have been rather busy and haven't had time to check everything out as fully as I should have. More on this as I check it out.

But yes, if he knew this was going to come up he should have %%#&&*^!! well prepared for it.

Original entry:

I pretty much agree with Rand Paul's assessment that extending anbtidiscrimination laws to private business is bad. I do think that Lawrence Auster's distinction (scroll down to the fourth, and as of now, last, comment by Auster ("LA") to see him make his point) between employmenbt and service (i.e. that people could be allowed to discriminate against people in hiring them for a job, but still be legally forced to accept them as customers) has some merit, although I never thought of the issue that way before.

I think that people who criticize Paul for stepping in it are somewhat correct. Having said that, Paul's problem is not, as Unqualified Offerings' Thoreau suggests, that Paul focused on the wrong aspect of racial issues with liberty to deal with. He didn't choose this topic, it was thrust on him. On the other hand, Paul could talk more about issues where his philosophy would disproportionately help black people and emphasize that, as a way of reducing the impact of issues such as this - in fact, it would be a good idea to have done so early on as a "vaccination" against issues like this later.

I think that Lawrence Auster has a much better point, that Paul (a) should have prepared for such questions in advance, and (b) should have avoided hostile forums until he had prepared.

That is all.

Thoughts on the Upcoming Movie MacGruber

Aside from the fact that the film is a parody of a TV show that ended 18 years ago, the fact that the TV trailer for the movie contains not one, but two jokes about "number two" gives me grave doubts about this movie.

That is all.

Sorry for Lack of Posts

Sorry. I've been worn out the past few weeks. I will try to get up a few posts this next week. I have big post about Austrian economics that I have saved as a draft, but I haven't added to it for a while.

That is all.

Astronomy Suggestions

Anyone else think that they should rename the constellation Orion "Mortar and Pestle?"

That is all.

Finally, a Snappy Comeback

I have finally figured out a snappy comeback to one of Krugman's anti-Austrian fallacies. This makes me happy, because my previous efforts against him took practically a thesis to explain.

But I finally figured out the snappy answer when he asked the question again in a blog post today:

The Austrian view is that unemployment in a slump results from the difficulty of “adaptation of the structure of production” — workers are unemployed as resources are painfully transferred out of an overblown investment-goods sector back into production of consumption goods.

But this immediately raises the question, why isn’t there similar unemployment during the boom, as workers* are transferred into investment goods production?

This is a variation on a question he asked previously:

And now as then, the whole notion falls apart when you ask why, say, a housing boom — which requires shifting resources into housing — doesn’t produce the same kind of unemployment as a housing bust that shifts resources out of housing.

The simple answer:

During the boom, resources are transferred into investment goods production from savings, not from production goods investment. During the bust, there were no more savings, so the transfer had to come from decreased investment.

*It makes more sense if you assume that Krugman meant "resources" here.

That is all.

Books on the Austrian Theory

Looking through my bookmarks, I found this old piece by Jeffrey Tucker.

Some interesting reading material, and also a good insight as to why the Austrian Theory can seem like such a light bulb in the darkness of modern economics.

That is all.

Real Good Quote

If the crowd is overwhelmingly white, it's not because the Tea Party has a problem with people of color. It's because so many people of color have a problem with limited government.

-Mark Davis

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to James Fulford on the VDARE blog.

That is all.

Why I Oppose Cap-and-Trade

Chris Roach has an excellent post detailing why reducing greenhouse gas emissions the way the government wants us to is likely to be unrealistic and why better approaches are needed, even if global warming is a serious issue.

Meanwhile, I am certain the the environmentalists are still simply confident that somehow if we ban the use of carbon, solar energy will suddenly become cheap and efficient, or else they welcome a return to horse-and-buggy days.

That is all.

French Not Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys But Pork-Eating Resistance Pigs (The Title Makes Sense in Context)

The VDARE blog has an interesting video of French people standing up against their dispossession in their own country.

That is all.

How Rude of Them to Be Alive When No One Wants Them

Apparently, in an attempt to prevent them from becoming too numberous and taking over, Jordan is rescinding the citizenship of some of its Palestinian people, although the excuse is that it will somehow prevent Israel from preventing them from returning to their homeland when that pesky conflict is finally resolved (any day now).

This does actually point out one of the big problems in the idea of "transfer" as a solution. Who is going to take them, or do you give a damn if the Palestinians topple the current Jordanian government.

It seems to me that no one wants the Palestinians, which leads to the inevitable question of how are they going to be dealt with? I have a feeling that the general feelin throughout the entire Middle East is probably something along the lines of Lord Farquaad's famous statement about Shrek,

Now really, it's rude enough being alive when no one wants you.

Is there any solution?

Of course, there is for the U.S. Stay out of the whole business. This one's not our problem.

That is all.

A Nation of Cowards

Based on recent events, I have decided that on balance, it would be a good thing to add "Nation of Cowards" to my blogroll. It takes a comment by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and turns it around (making it more accurate in the process).

I don't necessarily agree with everything the blogger does (and sometimes he is a little more impolite than I would be, especially in his "moments of racial levity"), but overall I think that his voice is worth hearing.

That is all.

Ban Him from Wal*Mart, Don't Prosecute Him

If the kid who made the stupid declaration in Wal*Mart gets prosecuted, it is a grave injustice.

Don't get me wrong. What he did is despicablke, and Wal*Mart is within its rights to ban him from its property.

But if he wasn't using a non-public phone, I don't see him having done anything illegal.

Wal*Mart has every right to say "go away and don't come back,"* but to get thelaw involved in this way is stupid.

That is all.

*But if the situation were reversed, does anyone think that they would be allowed to ban a black kid for saying things like this against white people?

Trent Lott- Fired for Being Right (About Strom Thurmond)?

According to Charles Mills, he was.

I find the idea that racial tensions were actually thawing in the South prior to the Brown v. Board decision to be interesting,

On the other hand, I've heard it claimed that vagrancy laws were implemented in the postbellum period largely to re-enslave blacks. Whether or to what extent this was still true in the period immediately preceding the Brown decision I do not know, however. In any case, I suspect that Mills probably would underemphasize the role of such things, while traditional historical interpretation would overemphasize them, underemphasize progress that blacks were making prior to federal intervention, and overemphasize the positive impact on black civil rights that federal intervention had.

(This is, of course because the current zeitgeist is in favor of centralized intervention to secure their goals - federal when necessary, but preferably global).

That is all.

Homeschoolers as Refugees

Amid the bad news about European persecution of homeschoolers is the good news that the U.S. has granted some German homeschoolers asylum.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Karen Kwiatowski on the LRC blog.

That is all.

Oy Vey....

The guy I voted for for President recently wrote this column.

I can't believe it.

This is really stupid.

Whatever our beefs with the IRS, ramming planes into buildings is wrong, not just a tragic act. I do not think that it is at all unreasonable to call Joe Stack a terrorist, although I will agree that it does not appear that he is part of any organized movement.

Also, we need to remember that he set his family home and fire, perhaps trying to kill his family.

We should not be looking for excuses for him. What he did was wrong. As satisfying as the idea of hurting some bueaucracy that is frustrating you may be, it is not the answer. Letting "desperation" drive you to killing innocent people is just wrong, no matter how many self-justifying speeches you give.

And Chuck, no matter how much you hate the IRS, this is not an event that should be used as a platform for criticism of the IRS.

That is all.

The Brisco County Olympics

Ever hear that tune they play at the Olympics and wonder what it is?

It's the theme song from the 1993-1994 TV series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

I loved it when I was a freshman in high school (the only year it was on).

See it here.

That is all.

Sorry for Lack of Posting

I am getting adjusted to a new job that I started two weeks ago.

That is all.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Found from link on WorldNetDaily:

Is Mona Lisa really a self-portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci?

I remember a big brouhaha over this in 1986, so it isn't exactly the new, groundbreaking theory that it is proclaimed to be.

That is all.

More on Haiti

If you would like to give, but wish to give to an organization that is concerned with Haiti's spiritual as well as physical poverty (I think that Pat Robertson is more correct about Haiti's spiritual state than the secular majority wish to give him credit for), Advancing Native Missions is taking contributions:

Advancing Native Missions is combining with other Virginia agencies to rush practical aid to the Haitian people through native Haitian Christian ministries. Please help. We need your gifts by cash, check, or credit card for the costs.

Click here and then on the "GIVE RIGHT HERE" link to give.

We have an opportunity here I think to spread the gospel and to bring a lot of suffering people to Christ.* There is a short window, though, I think, so we should do all we can NOW.

That is all.

*Crass to think of this disaster as an opportunity? No, crass that we didn't care until now.

Thoughts on Scott Brown's Pick-Up

Is it a racial code? Not exactly.

It is, however, a class code.

The point of the "pick-up truck" is for Scott Brown to identify himself with blue collar workers, despite not being a blue collar worker himself. Yes, he is primarily trying to be identified with working class whites, but his interest is more in being identified as their champion vis a vis snobbish white collar sorts (which is the implication that is desired whenever the term "liberal elite" is used). Put another way, he is saying "I may be white collar, but I have blue roots."

This is also the tack used with Sarah Palin, and at least in her case, I found it rather grating (and to the extent that Scott Brown played the same cards as Palin, found it grating for him as well). This is not because I have anything against blue collar workers, or think that they are not capable of being politicians. What I find grating is the constant emphasis on this identification rather than on the actual issues.

I will admit that I have not followed enough of Scott Brown's campaign to know how much he talked about actual issues. I am under the impression that he did so enough to be a reasonable candidate.

The problem with Palin, however, is that her identity and her life seemed to overwhelm any particular ideas she had, and those who swooned at her did so for identity politics reasons rather than due to any actual issues.

In this way, Palin was in many ways similar to Obama, and those who mock him as the "Obamessiah" should be careful (as many have not been) not to venerate Palin in exactly the same way.

That is all.

Helping Haiti

I personally would recommend giving to the Salvation Army.

That is all.

Na, NA, na-na, na-na, the Senator is, A CENTERFOLD!

So Scott Brown has won in Massachusetts.

If you Google "Scott Brown Cosmo" you will get the meaning of the title.

It will interesting to see if and how this alters the Senate.

Obviously, this is a message to the Democrats, and an indication that they need to be careful lest they get repeats of this in November.

On the other hand, I don't think that we can say with certainty what that lesson is, as much as everyone would like to say "the Democrats need to listen to my preferences!"

That is all.

Martha Coakley: Bitch Who Should Never Be Elected to Anything

Dorothy Rabinowitz has the details of Ms. Coakley's involvement in the Amirault miscarriage of justice.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Lawrence Auster.

That is all.

I Have a New Job

Good news, I have a new job, so I won't be unemployed past the end of the month.

That is all.

Cool Quote

From Lew Rockwell as noted on Wikipedia:

I never liked Martin Luther King, Jr. I thought he was a fraud and a tool. But when he turned his attention to the evils of the U.S. war on Vietnam, I began to like him. That's also when the establishment turned against him, and soon he was murdered.

That is all.

Goode Family Reminder

Comedy Central.

Tonight.

10 pm EST/9 pm CST

That is all.

They Don't Get It

Ampersand argues that refusing "marriage equality" dilutes marriage by causing places to adopt "marriage lite" for homosexuals, which arrangement is then by necessity extended to heterosexuals, diluting marriage.

Supposedly, this is ironic, because marriage would be less so diluted if traditionalists gave in and let marriage extend to same-sex couples without a fight.

The problem, as I said more than four years ago, is that extending marriage to same-sex couples by nature turns it marriage itself into "marriage-lite."

The problem ultimately comes down to that the people who want to redefine marriage really don't understand that expanding the definition of marriage changes what marriage is. They view marriage as some unspecific contract, so there is no reason to restrict it to opposite-sex couples. That it is not an unspecific contract, and that extending it to same-sex cou[ples makes it moreso this, and that this changes the definition of marriage for everyone, cannot enter their brains.

As Lawrence Auster would say, they have no sense of transcendence. (At the very least, they have an underdeveloped one).

That is all.

More Goode News

10 pm Monday/ 9 CST on Comedy Central.

That is all.

Toothpaste Question

Here is a question for anyone with a knowledge of dentistry.

When brushing my teeth, I usually brush everything once with toothpaste, then do one or more rinsing brushes with water. Is this appropriate, or are you supposed to brush the entire time without rinsing off the toothbrush?

That is all.

Goode News

The Goode Family is to be played in re-runs on Comedy Central starting in January. According to this article, it will play at 10:30 pm on Wednesdays following South Park.

Comedy Central has hinted that if the show performs well enough, they may resurrect it.

Although on time, things may be changing. According to this article, its starts on Monday Jan. 4.

I'll keep updating with date and time information as time goes on.

Mike Judge fans, this is your chance to help him keep his show!

I'll also report on internet alternatives (if any exist) for those who do not have cable.

That is all.

The "Paradox of Thrift" in Reverse

It occurs to me that the "Paradox of Thrift" that Keynesians are so enamored of actually works in reverse. In fact, a lot fo Keynesian theory is simply the "Paradox of Thrift" in reverse, which is ultimately the source of the broken window fallacy.

Basically, the "Paradox of Thrift in Reverse", or the PoTiR, is the belief that since, for any business, more consumption of that business's products means more prosperity, then spending more in general creates more prosperity.

What the PoTiR ignores, of course, is that spending is limited by resources available, and that in the near term, we are dealing with a zero-sum game. Spending on kitchenware makes the spoon-makers prosperous, but it decreases what can be spent on glassware. Consumption in and of itself can only direct to which products resources go. Investment is needed for prosperity in the economy as a whole.

That is all.

VDARE Needs Your Help!

Please donate to VDARE. They really need your help. I have already donated $35.00, despite the fact that I am being laid off at the end of the month. Please, someone who currently has a job, donate $100.00 and hep them in their time of need! I've done it before.

That is all.

Claims on Global Warming

Interesting claims by Christopher Booker about some of the data for climate change. He argues that the data used to support global warming is largely based on cherry-picked data points or on cherry-picked methods.

If someone has a good refutation of his claims, I'll link to that, as well.

That is all.

Announcements

Update:
With my new job, there is no need put the tip jar on my blog or to ask for advertisers.


Dear Glaivester readers:

Due to my pending unemployment, soon I will be putting a tip jar on my blog.

If you want to advertise on my blog, please email me.

If anyone wishes to hire me to write an opinion piece for their webmag or anything, one-off, long-term, anything, please let me know, either in the comments or by email. For samples of my writing, see "Greatest Hits" on the sidebar. Don't worry if there are typos, if I am getting paid I will be much better about proofreading.

I am only getting around 40 visits a day, but if I blog more often I may be able to increase this (if I do not find another job for awhile, I probably will blog more often).

That is all.

Sorry for So Long Without Posting

I'm busy, I'm getting laid off, I've got a lot on my mind.

That is all.

Sparkman Death a Suicide, Say Authorities

Anti-Federal Government politics not the cause of census worker's hanging.

That is all.

GDP Data

Thank to fellow commenter Mike S at Yggy's, I found this marvelous site where you can enter in data from year to year and get GDP figures in all four important formats (nominal/real and overall/per capita) flung back at you for any year from 1790 onwards.

Very good for resolving arguments, that. By the way, Mike S is very wrong on economics.

That is all.

Junk Silver Pricing: Calculating the worth of Pre-1965 Dimes and Quarters

The face value of pre-1965 quarters and dimes is based on silver having a price of approximately $1.40 a troy ounce. You can calculate this from the fact that a pre-1965 quarter is about 1/5 troy ounce, and is about 90% silver.

This means that $1.25 is 0.9 troy ounces of silver. $1.25/.9 = $1.39.

So if you want to know the approximate spot value of your pre-1965 quarters and dimes, take the value of silver, and divide by $1.40. The coins are worth that many times their face value.

Currently, silver is $18.52/troy ounce. That comes out to about 13.23 times face vvalue.

So a pre-1965 dime is worth about $1.32, and a pre-1965 quarter is worth about $3.30.

That is all.

Nicholas Stix Added to Blogroll

I should have done this ages ago, but I have added Nicholas Stix to my blogroll. It's nothing personal, it's just that I have not been doing much with my blog template for the past two or three years.

That is all.

Die for Diversity

Diversity is more important than the lives of our soldiers, says General Casey.

In fact, Casey is coming close to admitting the real liberal goal: the elimination of whites.

That is all.

Safari 4 Sucks

I need to have the reload and stop buttons in my toolbar, and the new Safari does not have that option.

I may switch to using Opera for everything if this is not fixed.

That is all.

Is Obama the Antichrist?

No.

Don't be an idiot.

Now, based on 1 John 2:22:

22: Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son

You may argue that Obama is an antichrist, depending on whether or not you believe that he is genuinely a Christian. But in such a case, the term "antichrist" is ultimately synonymous with "non-Christian," and would hardly give him any distinction.

But in terms of calling Obama "the Antichrist," as in the final world ruler, associated with the "Beast" of Revelation 13 (which can be taken to refer either to a person or to a satanic government system ruled by him), this is simply ridiculous.

There really needs to be an evangelical equivalent to "Godwin's Law."

That is all.

Hyper Monetary Devaluation - Why Has it Not Happened Yet?

Minyanville, via LewRockwell.com, explains.

That is all.

The Liberal Mind at Work

Unless you are willing to agree that homosexual relationships are equally as valid as heterosexual ones and deserve to be called "marriage," you are hateful.

And that is not simplistic, disagreeing with that is simplistic.

All must bow before the Great God Equality, nothing is better or worse than anything else.

That is all.

The Buffer Theory of Austrian Economics

About a month ago, Steve Sailer had a post that directed me (along with other readers) to this article by Paul Krugman.

In the article, Krugman tried to refute hangover theory with the question:

And now as then, the whole notion falls apart when you ask why, say, a housing boom — which requires shifting resources into housing — doesn’t produce the same kind of unemployment as a housing bust that shifts resources out of housing.

At first this seems a weird question, as Scott comments

Seriously, Paul basically just asked “Why doesn’t hiring people create the same unemployment that firing does?”

But on second thought, the question does bring up a profound issue within Austrian *"hangover") theory:

Why does the period of malinvestment create so much false prosperity, and why cannot the jobs created during false prosperty be continued or similar jobs created during the bust, in order to obviate the recession? What allows bad investements to make the economy seem so profitable?

As Henry Canaday asks on Sailer's blog in the comments:

I think what Krugman is asking is why, supposing the housing bubble created real but sometimes economically wasteful jobs, cannot fiscal stimulus also create real, even if sometimes economically wasteful, jobs?

To understand this issue, one has, I think, to understand the concept of a savings buffer. This is what might at other times be thought of as hoarding, etc.

What it comes down to is this: in Austrian theory, production can either be put into consumption or savings. Consumption in this case means that the resources are put to a use that satisfies an immediate or personal need. Savings means that that which is produced is not consumed in such a manner. Generally, savings by one person can be put into another's consumption, with the debtor obligated to eventually return resources to the creditor in excess of what he has borrowed. However, net savings, that is, that which is saved and not consumed by others, provides the basis of investment.

Investment is the use of resources to create structures which can satisfy needs in the future. From an Austrian standpoint, investment is a subset of savings, because the goods are being used to increase future production, even if in some sense they are consumed. To give an example: using copper to produce wiring to electrify a television set is consumption. Using it to produce wire that is used in the building of a factory to produce TVs is investment. Another term used is good order; a good of the first order is consumed, a good of the second order is used to produce a good of the first order, a good of the third order is used to produce a good of the second order, etc. In this case, the TV would be a good of the first order, and the wire in the factory a good of the second order. If the wire was used in the manufacture of a construction vehicle used to build the factory, it would be a good of the third order, etc.

It is often said that investment equals savings, and in the long run, that is largely correct; that which is not consumed eventually gets put to use.

But there is a lag time. Steel is stored, both as ingots or as beams or other forms. Wood boards are kept in warehouses rather than being turned into finished products such as chairs. People have educations that they are not currently applying, etc. These things provide what can be thought of as a buffer. This buffer is similar to inventory in a warehouse, and serves much the same purpose. What is saved in the buffer can be later taken out for use in investment, or for consumption.

So to recap, production during a given period of time can be consumed, invested, or saved in the buffer.

It should be noted that the buffer is dynamic; many things are not stored in the buffer long-term; rather, new things are added while old thigns are taken away; much as a store that is increasing inventory still uses its inventory; it is just being replaced faster than it is being used.

What purposes does the buffer serve? Is it not just idling there purposelessly? Ought we not to reduce the size of the buffer and put all of those resources to use, as in Lean manufacturing?

Well, for the first thing, the buffer serves the purpose of buffering. At any given time, the amount of savings and the amount of investment may not match up exactly. This is particularly acute if you realize that savings and investment, while they are mediated by fungible cash, are not themselves fungible, at least not entirely so (Note: in the linked Sailer piece, I state that resources are fungible. That was stated poorly; my point was that resource use is interconnected and that using resources one place can reduce resource use in lots of unrelated sectors of the economy; I was not saying that resources or goods were completely interchangeable). Corn meal cannot be magically converted into iron, or an education, or wood. There are times when more of something is produced than is needed, and times when more is needed than is being produced. The buffer helps to smooth these things out; very few people want to have to buy or make everything exactly when they need it; it would be like going to the supermarket every day to get the food for that day, and to be dependent on whatever gets picked at the orchard / slaughtered at the slaughterhouse, etc. on that particular day.

In practice, we have some level of resources held in reserve to allow us to coordinate resource use over time rather than simply moment-to-moment or day-to-day. The surplus grows over time, causing prices to fall, which reduces the amount produced and increases the amount consumed or invested, or it shrinks, causing the prices to rise, increasing production and decreasing consumption and investment. The fact that there is a surplus allows this process to occur smoothly, rather than investment and consumption dropping every time there is a glitch in production (this would throw any long-term planning into chaos; no one could build or invest anything based on any plan, because they would have no idea what resources and how much would be available from day-to-day).

According to Austrian theory, the cause of the boom bust cycle is distortions in economic coordination caused by monetary expansion. Low interest rates and increased money supply cause people to assume that there are more savings than there are and that more resources are available to invest than are actually available. The explosion of investments is the boom, but because theese investments are not sustainable with the actual resources available, there is eventually a bust. (It should be pointed out that the inaccurate resource picture can also lead to increased consumption, which likewise reduces the resources available to complete the malinvestments).

But why the boom? Why are so many jobs created and why is there so much apparent prosperity during the boom?

The answer is simple: all of the apparent prosperity is caused by the consumption of the buffer.

But again, one might ask, isn't this a good thing? What about Lean? Doesn't that work and make things more efficient? Aren't we just bringing idle resources to use?

The problem, again, is that Lean requires intense coordination of a sort that is not possible in a non-centrally coordinated economy, and it is unlikely that the overall economy can be planned in this manner. Moreover, Lean is generally used for production of specific goods that have a predictable production pathway. It is not as useful when producing large heterogenous masses of goods or investing in new technology whose direction is difficult to predict.

Moreover, Lean requires a correct estimate of what is available in the future. A boom caused by monetary expansion is not an example of consciously shrinking the buffer in order to be more efficient; the buffer shrinks because people do not realize that they are consuming more than they are producing; they are overestimating what is being saved, and assumethat the buffer is not shrinking.

The bust occurs when some of the essential resources in the buffer run out, or become too hard to get cheaply. For a time, continued monetary manipulation can keep the economy apparently growing, because people are dipping further into the buffer, altering consumption and investment to use alternate resources of which there is still a surplus, or redirecting resources from producing things are still plentiful to the things that are in short supply.

Eventually, though, the buffer runs out. At this point, the bust must come, and the more depleted the buffer is, the more severe the bust is, because there is less time and there are fewer resources to ease the process of readjusting the economy.

That is why the jobs produced in the boom cannot be recreated in the bust. The resource buffer which funds the salaries that these jobs pay and the materials and whatnot that are required to do these jobs no longer exists. Therefore, any unnecessary or inefficient, unproductive, make-work jobs produced to help the bust will do nothing but take resources away from productive jobs done by productive workers.

This also explains the increase in savings and decrease in investment that you get during the bust; with a depleted buffer, investment cannot be greater than savings, and because perfect coordination of savings and investment is impossible, there is going to be a tendency for savings to exceed investment, thus increasing the buffer, until the buffer is large and diverse enough that it can make up for termporary savings deficits again.

So in short, the concept of the buffer explains why the boom period can have apparent prosperity, as well as why this same process cannot be used ameliorate the bust. This also explains why savings goes up during the bust, and does so much better than the Krugmanian idea that the savings causes the bust.

That is all.

Does Britney Spears Demean Marriage More than Same-Sex Marriage?

The long and the short of it is no, she does not. In fact, even divorce does not entirely undermine marriage as much as same-sex marriage, at least it doesn't as it is currently considered, although it could if some of the more radical people get their way.

As horrific as Britney's 55-hour marriage to Jason Allen Alexander (not to be confused with Jason Alexander of Seinfeld fame), the fact of the matter is that it does little to hurt traditional marriage for most people because no one takes it seriously. What she did is a joke. People who get hitched and unhitched over the course of days or weeks are generally considered to be punchlines that everyone looks down on. There is little or no movement for the U.S. to make one-day long or one-week long marriages socially acceptable.

Even divorce is not looked at as a good thing, generally, but as a necessary evil. Very few people think of divorce as the natural end of a marriage. Almost everyone thinks of divorce as meaning that a marriage "failed," regardless of what folks like Kerry Howley and Meghan O'Rourke think.

The idea that marriage is by its nature only a temporary union and that divorce, rather than a way to end a relationship gone wrong, is simply the termination of such a union, could very well be seen as more disruptive than same-sex marriage, because it likewise degrades the traditional definition of what marriage is.

But the point is that no one sees it this way.

On the other hand, same-sex marriage is not out there to be seen as some sort of sop to those who cannot succeed as heterosexuals. It is not merely a concession to their weakness and inability. Rather, it is being set up as normal, natural, and as no better or worse than opposite-sex marriage (or, as I like to call it, "marriage."

The only way to make same-sex relationships equal to marriage is to degrade marriage to the same level as same-sex relationships. This is, by the way, why feminists who hate marriage are so gung-ho for same-sex marriage. The fact of the matter is, it isn't enough for the feminists and gay advocates, etc. to have their rights, they must tear down anything and everything that cannot easily be converted to become relevant to their lives.

That is all.

Chronicles on Christianity and Pacifism

An interesting read.

That is all.

Thought on Gay Marriage

The fact of the matter is, no matter what the law says, two men or two women cannot get married.

Whatever their relationship is, it isn't marriage, and legalizing same-sex "marriage" is simply the same as calling a dog's tail a leg.

In point of fact, the best they can have is some sort of "civil union," a legal arrangement that provides some benefits, but that does not really transcend its status as a legal entity (not, mind you, that I am in favor of civil unions, but they are not as definitionally absurd as same-sex "marriage").

What legalizing same-sex "marriage" ultimately will do is to pull down opposite sex marriage (read real marriage) down to the level of civil union.

That is the true reason to oppose same-sex "marriage." By its very naturre it redefines marriage and removes the transcenent element to it.

Reading back through my archives, I find out that this is not the first time I've made this argument, but I still think that it bears repeating.

That is all.

Read Between the Lines

Assuming that there is not anything more that we are not being told, this story about a 6-year-old facing 45 days in reform school for bringing his cub scout knife to class, has an obvious racial subtext.

Education experts say that zero-tolerance policies initially allowed authorities more leeway in punishing students, but were applied in a discriminatory fashion. Many studies indicate that African-Americans were several times more likely to be suspended or expelled than other students for the same offenses.

Translation: African-American students were, on average, less well-behaved, and if people exercised sensible discretion, this fact would actually be reflected in the statistics. So sensible discretion is not allowed.

Update:Why do I have the feeling that "for the same offenses" conflates bringing a cooking utensil to school with, e.g., playing mumblety-peg (link goes to wikipedia article on mumblety-peg, not to any news story)?

That is all.

What is Wrong with Keynesianism

A good video featuring Peter Klein from the Mises Institute.

That is all.

Austrian Thoughts

I think that Arnold Kling here describes the major problem with most schools of macroeconomic thought:

DeLong is of course living in the macroeconomic world where we do not worry about Recalculation. Instead, we all work in one giant GDP industry, and for some mysterious reason many of our GDP factories have shut down, so that government must build and operate some GDP factories to keep us all employed.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Steve Sailer.

That is all.

Liberalism in Full Swing

According to this piece at TPMCafe, opposing same-sex marriage, an idea that was considered joke until, what, ten or fifteen years ago, is comparable to torture.

It is simply amazing how the left has co-opted the issue to make it seem as if being against same-sex marriage is radically reactionary, even though it is not yet legally recognized in most states.

It really seems as if the process ziel describes here is on steroids on this issue.

That is all.

Thoughts on the "Conservative Bible Project"

Via TPMCafe, and then BeliefNet, I found out about "The Conservative Bible Project."

According to the Project, the goal of the Conservative Bible Project is to create a Bible which satisfies the gollowing ten guidelines:


(1) Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

(2) Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

(3)Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]

(4)Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".

(5) Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census

(6) Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

(7) Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

(8)Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

(9) Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels

(10) Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

So what do I think?

Well, let's deal with this one piece at a time.

(1) It's a good idea to the extent that the goal is to avoid a bias which reinterprets passages away from what they are intendend to mean. However, the goal ought to be to neutralize bias as much as possible to get the the original meaning, not just to eliminate bias in a particular direction; one gets the concern that the goal here is not merely to remove any liberal biases but to add a conservative bias. To the extent that the goal is accuracy, which is what the goal ought to be, one should be less concerned with eliminating any particular bias and should attempt to sort through all of the biases from all directions in order to correctly interpret the Bible. Specifically looking for bias from one direction practically guarantees a bias in the opposite direction.

This is not to say that any translation may not have some biases in it, but one should not deliberately seek to impose their bias on scripture.

(2) Avoiding unisex terms is a good idea if it follows the translation; that is to say that it is a good thing not to unisexualize things that were not originally written as unisex. So this is a good idea (unless of course the translators decide to insert gender into some passage where it isn't mentioned.

Unless there is some inappropriate gender neutralization in the King James Version about which I am unaware, it seems to me that this is simply a matter of not going the route of the more liberal modern translations. It does not require any drastic reinterpretations or re-translations, as this has only been an issue in Bible translations recently.

(3) I agree that the Bible should not be dumbed down. Translations should strive to keep the original nuances to the extent possible.

(4) As with #1, this is a good idea only to the extent that one is trying to correct mistranslations or to clarify translations to get closer to their original meaning. It is also not a bad idea to re-translate terms if the meaning of the terms has changed since the last translation. However, again I think there is a problem in that the goal here is not so much to translate the words correctly as to make certain that the translations are charged in the "correct" way. This could spell trouble.

Moreover, sometimes some terms are best expressed by giving the word a context-dependent meaning; for example, I believe that the reference to Jesus as "the Word," or "logos" has particular overtones in Greek. It may be better to try to understand the Greek concept of "the Word" and to understand that it has a meaning all its own rather than to try to find a more precise English word and then to assume that the new word completely captures the concept being referred to.

(5) There are problems here in that in some cases, using modern terms may help to clarify what is being discussed, but in others, the specific terms and idioms being used are necessary for understanding the context. Substituting "gambling" for "casting lots" may make a passage more understandable, but if "Casting lots" referred to a specific game, we lose some precision.

(6) Accepting the logic of Hell just means not watering down what the Bible already says. We don't need a new translation for that, most modern translations that are not explicitly watered down accept the logic of Hell. This is hardly a universal problem.

(7) Explanations of the parables beyond what Jesus says is best done in commentary. It is a bad idea to try and add interpretation into the text, or to deliberately re-translate a parable with the goal of adding in your political philosophy.

(8) While there is some merit in trying to determine whether some of the disputed passages ought to be included or not, it would be, I think, a mistake to put such passages as the story of the adulterous woman in the same category as modern liberal revisions of the Bible. Put another way, the passage "he who is without sin" should not be regarded in the context of whether it is "liberal" or "conservative." Even if you argue for its exclusion, to label it "liberal" immediately suggests that you are leaving it out for reasons other than scholarship.

(9) I'm not certain what "crediting open-mindedness" means. If he is saying that we need to point out that the disciples were convinced by Jesus' actiosn and that their faith was maintained by his faithfulness rather than by cult loyalty, well, while that is true, I'm not certain why we would want to continually assert references into the text. If there is some other, arcane, policial meaning - well, I have no idea what it is, but I would be cautious about trying to ascribe any modern political stance to the disciples.

(10) The last one is definitely a bad idea. Other than the contradiction with #3 (also pointed out at TPMCafe and by Dreher at BeliefNet), the fact of the matter is that wordiness creates nuance. Yahweh/Jehovah, Adonai, Elohim, all of this terms have different connotations when referring to God. Attempts to make passages concise could distort or remove meaning.

In short, while I am not averse to re-translations of the Bible aimed at improving accuracy and precision and at removing previous distortions, I do not think that doing so should be done explicitly politically, so the general idea of a "Conservative Bible" is very dangerous.

That is all.

Roman Polanski

Shouldn't the U.S. have sent out assassins to get this bastard by now?

That is all.

Because, You Know, Rapists Want to Prevent Rape

Via Alas, a bunch of rape-prevention tips that are guaranteed to work, because, you know, preventing rape is the foremost goal of the person committing rape.

The reason why most advice on preventing rape is given to potential victims rather than potential rapists is the same reason that advice on preventing computer virus infection is given to potential victims rather than the people writing the virus. Namely, because they are the ones with the incentive to prevent it.

The only situation in which giving a potential rapist rape prevention advice makes sense is if that person is either at risk of raping "accidentally" (i.e. they get so drunk that they atack someone without knowing what they are doing), if they are engaging in activities that make them more aggressive with greater potential for attacking someone (e.g. taking steroids) but are ignorant of how that might affect their sexual behavior, or if they are truly ignorant of the requirements for consent.

For most rapists, who either want to violate their victims or who are simply indifferent to their victims' desires, such advice falls on deaf ears and is more feel-good pablum.

I previously made fun of this sort of thing here.

More on this later.

That is all.

Review of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra [SPOILERS]

Overall, it was a very decent film.

It did something that Transformers (the first film, I am not paying for a movie ticket to see the sequel to such trash as the first movie) did not do; namely, it managed to transpose the characters from the cartoon into a slightly more realistic-feeling setting quite believably. And it did not get lost dealing with the exploits of new characters created just for the movie or with unimportant side characters.

The movie is very big on special effects, and not very big on introspection or on the analysis of war, but, if you want to see that, don't go to a movie based on the 80s version of a toy franchise.

However, there were a few flaws.

I didn't like the Baroness' backstory. She should be German/Russian with a heavy accent, and should have chosen to be evil. The idea of her as one of the good guy's former love interests, and as a mind-controlled pawn, really don't do her character any good. She's supposed to be a former sudent radical with the hots for the chrome-domed one, for Pete's sake!

At the end, Cobra Commander was given a voice that should have gone to Destro. Cobra Commander should have had a higher-pitched, whinier voice, like the original Chris Latta voice. That's one of the iconic aspects to the character. But the backstory makes more sense than the Cobra-La backstory of the cartoon.

There is an implication that Cobra Commander's nano-facial surgery put Destro under some form of control at the end - maybe not mind control, but it is implied that he has Destro at his mercy and can give Destro great pain if he so wishes. That would be a bit of character decay, as Destro has always been portrayed as being very independent-minded. But the idea of Destro having a metal face rather than actually wearing a mask makes sense - his original appearance, with a fully-expressive metal mask, realy can only be duplicated by him having a metal face.

Finally, I think that Zartan should have had the mask/eye tattoos/whatever that he had in the original series, and that the long hair/hood that he wore would have been good as well. At least he should have had it in one scene, to make the connection with the cartoon counterpart more explicit.

I hope that if there is a sequel that we can see more of Dr. Mindbender. And he reall does need his monocle and menacing moustache.

That is all.

Thinking About The Boondocks

A year or two ago, I watched The Boondocks on Cartoon Network a lot.

One thing that struck me was, for all of the supposed liberal slant of Aaron MacGruder, a whole lot of the commentary seemed to be criticizing the detrimental aspects of black culture and in trying to suggest to black people to get their acts together.

Moreover, a lot of the more biting criticism at white people seemed to be directed particularly at the Stuff White People Like Crowd.

For example, one of my favorite moments occurs after Uncle Ruckus gets up on stage and starts singing "Don't trust them new n*****s over there." All of the white people at the posh garden party stare at each other, and then someone pipes up "I think it's okay when THEY say it." Suddenly everyone looks relieved and begins clapping mindlessly (previously they were all applauding all of Huey's paranoid rants while obviously ignoring their content).

I can think of very little that is as funny as skewering the effete.

That is all.

Exceedingly Good News

Canadian court has found "Human Rights Law" (i.e. CrimeSpeak Law) to be unconstitutional.

Comments by Kevin Michael Grace and Lawrence Auster (more from Auster here).

That is all.

If You Can't Say Something Nice, Don't Say Anything at All

With that in mind, here are my thoughts on Ted Kennedy:

That is all.

Not Getting It about G.I. Joe

I find the last few paragraphs of this piece by Alyssa Rosenberg to be hilarious. Apparently she is criticizing the recent G.I. Joe movie for not portraying war realisitically enough; for ignoring collateral damage, for being too derivative, for making the military organization too independent of government oversight, and for focusing too much on the cool hardware.

Folks, it's a movie based on a cartoon and toy line from the 1980s aimed at boys of single-digit age (yes, I know that the dolls are older than that, but the G.I. Joe characters that we know today basically were not created until the 80s).

I'm not defending the movie. It may be horrible, as the first live-action Transformers was (I'm not looking at the second until it comes out on DVD, and maybe not even then). Buyt Transformers was bad on its own terms; the robots were unrecognizable, too much of the plot revolved around the humans, the human were played too much for comic relief, etc. You don't go to watch Transformers and then claim that it was a bad movie because it had unrealistic giant robots.

And that's the problem. Ms. Rosenberg is looking for a nuanced portrayal of war from a movie that is supposed to be about colorful soldiers with amusing gimmicks fighting over-the-top villain stereotypes. Obviously, the movie will be more sophisticated than the cartoon (although the cartoon was, for what it was, fairly sophisticated (just Google "There's no place like Spingfield"), but first and foremost the movie has to be about the things that make G.I. Joe cool, two of which are the reduced level of moral complexity and the cartoony violence.

That is all.

PETER SCHIFF MONEYBOMB!!!!!

The Schiff for Senate 2010 Exploratory Committee has a moneybomb scheduled for today (that's an attempt to raise large amounts of cash on one day).

I gave $50.00. Consider giving as well.

Rand Paul has something going on as well. I'll deal with that soon.

That is all.

Thought on Hiroshima

As I have said before, I think that the moral rightness of the bomb drop on Hiroshima is contingent upon two issues:

(1) Could we have achieved the surrender of the Japanese without either the bombing or an invasion if we had chosen to negotiate a surrender rather than insisting on an unconditional surrender?

(2) Is there any reason why a conditional surrender that would be acceptable to Japan should not be acceptable to us?

If the bombs were truly the only way to prevent a land invasion, or if a conditional surrender would have had horrible consequences, then the Hiroshima bombing was justified. If the Allies had good reason to assume either of those two things, the bombing was also justified - or, more precisely, the decision to bomb was justified given the knowledge that they had at the time. Otherwise, I think that the bombing was not justified.

There are basically two points that I think are important to consider whenever thinking about Hiroshima )or World War II in general):

(1) Is the demand for unconditional surrender a good thing to have in a war? Perhgaps in some wars it is the right way to fight, but I think that the tendency amongst some philosophers and pundits to look at unconditional surrender as a necessiity in any modern war is rather misguided/

(2) Hiroshima and Nagasaki were extreme decisions under extreme circumstances. They ought not to be considered universal precedents, as some pundits and commentariat would have them be (e.g. the desire to flatten the "Sunni triangle" in Iraq).

That is all.

Another Flaw of Keynesianism

It recently came to my attention that Keynesianism has a second flaw beyond what I deem "the Keynesian fallacy."

(The Keynesian fallacy is the belief that the circulation of money is the prime determinant of the health of the economy; if money circulates a lot, it creates wealth).

It recently occurred to me that Keynesianism has another fallacy associated with it: the belief that capital goods and labor are completely fungible (or as William Anderson puts it, "homogenous").
Therefore, whenever aggregate demand is too low, the solution is simply to increase aggregate demand, rather than to consider whether the specific demands and productions are miscoordinated or whether production is geared up to meet demand. For example, if there is a glut of rubber tires, the goal becomes to find a way to use all those tires rather than to divert production of tires towards the production of something that is more in demand.

So as a result, you hear statements about how government stimulus will definitely help the economy without costing anything or without crowding out private investment, because there are so many idle resources that will go to waste if they are not used, which the government can use. And, according to this way of thinking, as long as we have high unemployment, there is excess labor so there is no danger of the government diverting resources by employing people.

Generally, this theoretical framework can be summed up by this quote from Dean Baker:

The Post is also worried about the deficit, telling readers that there is a limited supply of capital in the world and that we are borrowing too much. Actually, for practical purposes there is not a limited supply of capital in the world when the United States and most of the other wealthy countries are seeing double-digit unemployment. We can pretty much spend whatever we want without coming up against resource constraints. (Unemployment -- means excess labor supply, get it?)

This, of course, is based on the assumptions that (a) labor is the only resource constraint, and (b) all labor is fungible.

The fact of the matter is that (a), there are raw materials and technological constraints that government can push us to the limit of, regardless of employment, and (b) that a glut in labor does not necessarily mean that there are no labor shortages in certain sectors.

Definitely government can crowd out the use of raw materials, technological infrastructure, and land, even when there is high unemployment. Moreover, government could wind up exacerbating unemployment problems if the stimulus creates demand for jobs that require skills that in short supply. This could, in turn, reduce production at other levels, thus causing the labor glut in other sectors to get worse as demand for jobs declines in that sector.

For an example of the first problem, let's say that the government spends money on building asphalt bike paths and on building new highways into largely untraveled areas (like the famous "bridge to nowhere") in the hopes of getting more settlement in those areas. That could deplete our supplies of the raw materials needed to make asphalt, and thus cost jobs that are involved in making other goods that require those same raw materials. Alternately, the spot the government takes for its road might have been used to build a factory, or some other facility that society might find more useful. This is not to say that spending money on repairing roads or on building new roads in necessarily bad (although what the federal government's role should be in such things is an issue in its own right), but it is untrue to suggest that it is costless and does not represent a drain on other potential uses of resources. In any case, any such project would need to be justified on its own terms, quite apart from its effect as a stimulus.

For an example of the second, let's say that the government decides to put the unemployed to work. There is a glut of people skilled in construction. Therefore, the government sets about trying to create more office buildings to put lots of construction workers back to work. What if, however, it turns out that these buildings also need engineers, and that, due to lots of people with a mathematical background getting into the financial industry instead of engineering (due to the recent investment bubble), there is a shortage of qualified engineers (building houses requiring fewer engineers than building large office buildings), meaning that increasing construction will take the engineers out of other occupations that require them? Then these industries will not be as successful and will lay people off, as they cannot find the number of engineers that they need in order to produce goods and employ people in the other positions in their business.

The obvious solution, of course, would be to get more people to become engineers. But (a) not everyone has the aptidue to become an engineer, and (b) there will be a delay because it takes time to train someone in that field.

In the absence of government intervention, there will still be some maldistribution of resources, as the market process may take time to get things into equilibrium (after all, learning certain professions takes time in any system). But the problem is that the government intervention, being isolated from direct market signals, is as likely to exacerbate a shortage as to solve one.

The problem with Keynesianism in regards to supply and demand ultimately boils down to the fact that it oversimplifies supply and demand into one homogenous mass, therefore eliminating a key element of the economy: diversity of resources. This causes Keynesian policy to become largely about coordinating the overall level of supply and demand, and to assume that all economic problems can be solved by adding or subtracting consumption. This, in turn, leads to all of the nonsense where simply increasing the number of exchanges is seen to be the same things as creating actual goods, which brings us back to the original "Keynesian fallacy."

That is all.

You Mean You'd Like to See them Nominate Someone Like Ron Paul?

Conor Friedersdorf really ought to at least pay lip service to him in this post at Sully's:

What I'd like to see in 2012 is a Republican nominee willing to apply these insights [e.g. about governmental incompetence and and the limits of human nature] -- all of which he or she will surely profess to believe -- to matters of foreign policy.

That is all.

A Good Point

Over at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau makes a good point, one that occurred to me but that I had never bothered to formulate or blog on:

Essentially, it boils down to if lawyers' legal opinions - later deemed incorrect - on an issue such as torture are used to absolve the people responsible for carrying out the orders of accontability, then the lawyers should be held accountable.

Despite talking points by a lot of neoconservative talk-show hosts about how liberals are trying to censor legal opinions, the fact of the matter is that by offering an opinion in an official capacity that encourages illegal behavior, the lawyer is more or less guilty of legal malpractice.

It is one thing to express an opinion as a private citizen, or to argue as to what the law should be. But to give legal advice with the express intent of making an act okay that would not be okay without the advice - that's not okay.

Of course, we need to see how deep this thing goes. One or two issues can be chalked up to political differences. But if there are consistent issues where a lawyer has advised the government to break the law, at a certain point accountability needs to be had.

That is all.

Do (Did) Criminally-Charged Holocaust Deniers Deserve Asylum?

I'm of two minds on this.

On the one hand, laws prohibiting Holocaust denial are a violation of free speech. The hypocrisy of Judge Peters in giving asylum for a terrorist but not for people whose only "crime" was writing something, however false and horrible, is blatantly apparent.

On the other hand, I vehemently disagree with Holocaust denial and I also believe that the vast majority of Holocaust denial is not done in good faith. While what the British government is doing to Messrs. Sheppard and Whittle is unjust, I am unlikely to shed a tear over them.

Should we have asylumed them? While I am not inclined to say that we should have, they are likely no worse than other people we have asylumed in the past. Perhaps, then, that is the problem; not our unwillingness to asylum people in cases where the issue (free speech for genocide deniers) is politically incorrect, but our willingness to grant asylum when the issue is politically correct.

I would probably be okay with making overall asylum policy much tighter, provided it applied to everyone equally. It may sound selfish, but this is a British problem involving Brits on one side and Brits on the other, and I am not inclined to intervene directly. Definitely I don't feel a sense of owing anything to Messrs. Sheppard and Whittle.

Having said that, I would be much more disturbed if the U.S. adopted similar laws here, ironically enough for the old Martin Niemoller reason, that if we let them (i.e. the government) come for the unpopular, even the evil, in an unjust way, eventually they'll come for us as well. But having said that, I am not terribly inclined to try have us try to deal with other countries' problems on this front, unless of course, it involves the other country enforcing unjust laws against U.S. citizens or, to a lesser extent permanent residents.

That is all.

Sailer on Guinier on Ricci

An excellent takedown by Steve Sailer.

In particular, I am annoyed by this statement of Guinier's:

When a city replaces a bad test, as New Haven wanted to do, the employees who did well on it do not lose their right to compete for promotions

No, they did not lose their right to compete, but they lost their right to a promotion that they had earned. Also, if you can only compete as long as the deck is stacked toward a certain income, then you do in some sense lose your right to compete, as you lose whether you pass or fail.

That is all.

Sandra Tsing Loh on Marriage

I think that this piece can be best summed up as "marriage isn't fulfilling for a self-absorbed, stuck-up jerk."

Ultimately, most modern takes on marriage or family or whatnot always seem to end with the author suggesting that marriage is an outdated institution that needs to be changed to be less permanent, and if children are involved seem to suggest that we reallly would be better off if parents didn't bother to raise their children so much and let the society, daycare, and schools do more of the heavy lifting (although Ms. Loh's doesn't touch as much on the subject of children).

Ultimately, all of these things seem to come out of the convicion of the author that she (or occasionally he) is the most important person in the world and that the overweening purpose of her life is to be entertained and fulfilled. Children, spouses, pets - ultimately nothing else must get in the way of their bliss.

I confess to somewhat have some of the same personality tendencies myself; but then again, that is why I'm still single, because I'm smart enough to realize that until I mature enough to do so, I should not take on the responsibility of a marriage -or, for that matter, a serious relationship.

(And before anyone thinks that I am advocating a "free love" lifestyle, I am also a virgin).

That is all.

A New Sponsor

Glaivester has a new sponsor!

It is at the top of the right side bar.

This site deals with information about prepaid (i.e. pay-as-you-go) phone plans as an alternative to "traditional" cell phone plans that require greater commitments on your part.

Please note that this is an advertisement, and that Glaivester is not affiliated with or responsible for the content and claims of the site.

That is all.

He Lost the Election; but He Got His Message Out

An article in Slate about Ron Paul's latest, and (surprisingly successful so far) attack on the Federal Reserve.

It is definitely worth a read.

That is all.

Whoever Wins, We Lose

Obama vs. Bernanke, article by Vox Day.

I also find the quote from Bernanke at the 2002 dinner to honor Milton Friedman to be hilarious:

Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again.

He's right, they did do it. But not for the reasons that he thinks (being too tight with monetary expansion), in fact, almost entirely the reverse.

That is all.

I Know that I am being Slow to Point this Out

But This is bad news for the "audit the Fed" campaign.

However, we must press on to get the bill passed in the House, after which we can worry about the Senate.

That is all.