I’d also like to see a discussion about social issues such as women’s and gay rights, and how that relates to the counterjihad and Western renewal. Since Dymphna is busy writing something else, why don’t we have a topic without a whole essay, or a guest essay, or whatever. It’s long overdue. To save time, it could read something like: Women. Gays. The West. Discuss. We all have lots to say, we don’t have to wait for someone to write a whole essay.
You asked for it, you got it. Discuss.
I’ll just put in my own two cents before the food fight starts in earnest.
All the rights that women have or might want to have — or the rights held by anyone else, for that matter — do not trump the rights of the larger community. When any given personal right, if fully exercised by large numbers of people, threatens the existence of the community or the culture at large, then that right is forfeit.
It’s unfortunate, but true: your right to do X without restriction is worthless if the simultaneous practice of X by millions of people leads to the destruction of society. Then the barbarians — who summarily execute people who practice X — take over, and the whole question becomes moot.
In the case of women, such issues might include voting, abortion, contraception, etc. Many other practices have been added to the list of modern “rights”: the autonomy of children, sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, bestiality, satanism, you name it.
An argument over any given right would do well to examine whether the full implementation of that right would tend to destroy the culture that permits it.
OK, check all your weapons at the door, and then have at it.
410 comments:
1 – 200 of 410 Newer› Newest»The problem with your argument is that nobody ever knows where any particular "right" will lead. Therefore no "right" that is in any sense a change from the status quo would ever be permitted. Which is, basically, the core determining assumption of Islam and its most "regressive" , literally "conservative" elements, being those who seek to keep "society" (by which you mean a given culture) exactly as it was in the time of Muhammad. Even into details of dress and beard-dye.
In effect, your argument makes you essentially the same as proponents of the very Islam that I for one oppose so vehemently.
Baron Al Qadarwi?
Great idea!
Does the assumption of wanting to do X not depend on how many people might actually want to do X given the opportunity?
In a sense you could argue that homosexuality was wrong because if everyone was gay then there'd be no people - which is a fair point but at any one given time only about 2% of the population actually want to **** a member of the same sex anyway, and so having a permissible attitude towards it has very few consequences, if any.
I would say that some forms of feminism are far more destructive....
In the West the demands of the few ruin things for the many. The toxic ideas of the West are equality and fairness. Anybody who can get themselves portrayed as a victim can demand equality and fairness, no matter how destructive this is to society as a whole. A few women want men's jobs, so they sue. Blacks demand jobs they don't qualify for. Retarded and autistic children get huge educational resources that will do them no good.
Quote BB:
"your right to do X without restriction.."
In the other thread, the focal point was the right of women to cast their vote in a democracy. So "without" restriction would only mean that women would cast their vote, just like anyone else. Only problem is, that certain stats may show that on average women tend to vote more often for a candidate that the would be "restrictor" deems a threat to a greater collective, society, culture and so on. So the combination of unavoidable group membership and damning statistical evidence would decide in matters of natural rights?
Before you know it, we'll be discussing stats and ways (not) to interpret them, with many of us here lacking in sufficient formal training to discern the pitfalls of statistical "evidence".
Apart from that, there's the moral question that entails issues like natural rights, the nature of freedom and the onerous practise of using political power on behalf of the greater good.
So I repeat my questions put forward in the other thread:
- Who will do the actual excluding, i.e. who will broach the news to women that in the general interest it would be better to abstain from voting?
- On behalf of what collective body would the exclusion be effected?
- How will this become law and of what kind of society exactly?
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
http://www.the-spearhead.com
http://roissy.wordpress.com
etc.
(warning, that second one contains NSFW discussions - but, in my experience, there is more truth to be found in its current and past articles than just about anywhere else on the net discussing men and women)
Women and men are not the same. Men build civilization. Women create the next generation. Neither one can do the other one's task. Trying to pretend that society can still work while deliberately ignoring or discounting these basic facts leads to collapse. This is a major part of what is going on today.
Men build civilization because, and only because, they are doing it for children they know are theirs. They don't do it out of charity. Without that knowledge, they're fine drinking beer and playing video games all day. Women, all feminist indoctrination to the contrary, simply do not demonstrate the same level of focused innovation and energy that men do, that is required to create and maintain a civilization. Women are good at multitasking and social interaction and doing lots of little things. Which is exactly what you would expect from a specialization towards family matters.
Homosexuals _may_ serve some sort of organic purpose and not be just an error in the biological programming, but their presence always tends to be highly correlated with decadent and collapsing societies. They contribute little or nothing to the future of a society. Even if they do secure "rights", those will be lost within a couple generations, because they'll all be dead. They are at best parasitical on the broader society.
Such liberalism/libertarianism is based on the unspoken premise that only the present generation matters, who cares about the future, or if there even is one. No healthy society will tolerate such behavior: it is suicidal.
The basic functional unit of a society with a future is the patriarchal family.
Was my last post unacceptable for some reason, or is Blogger auto-deleting me?
"If everyone was gay then there'd be no people".. Well, there sure wouldn't be any procreation, from which it follows that homosexuality, as such, is morally superior to heterosexuality.
Consider how any ethical-moral system worthy of the name holds that it is wrong to needlessly inflict, or bring about, suffering. Since all who are born are destined to suffer to some, often a great, extent procreation is dead wrong.
But what of all the joyful experiences in life(?) you may ask. I'll tell what.. None of them count when considering whether procreation is right or wrong as the unborn cannot be deprived of them as long as they remain unborn. Harm cannot be inflicted upon them either, but that surely is all for the better.
Of course, you need not be gay to make the ethically and morally sound choice of not putting children into this world. Leave it to the hypocrites (christian or atheist) and to the barbarians. Antinatalism is the way to go.
The earth is not our home. We came from nothing and to that condition our nostalgia should turn.
Maybe it was the links. Blogger sucks.
Anyway:
"So I repeat my questions put forward in the other thread:
- Who will do the actual excluding, i.e. who will broach the news to women that in the general interest it would be better to abstain from voting?
- On behalf of what collective body would the exclusion be effected?
- How will this become law and of what kind of society exactly?
"
Each individual male head of household. A functional society will be made up largely of families headed by men capable of leading their wives in such matters - whether by simply decreeing it by force, or convincing her, or of inspiring her to follow him out of respect and love, any will work. If she won't obey him in this, she won't obey him in much else either, and the family isn't destined for the long term.
(And yes the word 'obey' will set off all sorts of feminist reflexes. When my grandmother was visiting, I took her somewhere in the car, we had a long talk about my parents, she was complaining about how my mother - her daughter - was so headstrong and didn't listen to advice and bullheaded and on and on, and finally said "Well, at least she obeys your father." Which is true, although I had never thought of it in those terms before.)
There is no need to create any "collective". Each individual head of household who actually wants his family - and country - to last will arrange matters in this manner. Women who revolt against it will find themselves with much poorer-quality marriages and families. This is exactly what is happening right now, actually.
Law? Well, you change the requirements for suffrage to be: landowning man, married to a woman, with at least one child. Simple. Of course you need to get the law passed in the first place. That means that the people voting need to largely agree with it, which means that, probably, you are creating a new system among the ruins of the old. I don't see a way to smoothly transition from the current political system into a no-female-suffrage one. It has to run down all the way first.
al-ttt --
Your extension of my argument is a reductio ad absurdum. Do you not think it is prudent to consider the larger consequences to society before granting a new “right” that has not been commonly accepted as such in the past?
I am a Burkean conservative with libertarian tendencies. This means that I want to live in liberty within a lawful society overseen by the smallest possible state. In such a polity I expect to enjoy the “ancient liberties” which were ours for centuries, first as Englishmen and then later as Americans.
These ancient liberties did not include many of the “rights” that are now being flung about willy-nilly by modern hedonistic culture.
Is there a reason for this?
Should we heed the wisdom built up over centuries by our ancestors?
Or should we just throw it all away?
Until very recently a man did not have the “right” to break a lifelong oath given during the sacrament of holy matrimony. There was a good reason for this, as we are now discovering. Divorce was made difficult and therefore rare because its prevention served the deepest needs of an ordered and prosperous society.
Divorce has been a relatively simple matter for the last forty-odd years, and the results are obvious, even if most people prefer not to discuss them. Easy divorce has been more destructive to Western culture than just about any other recent innovation. I don’t really need to list the consequences here, but they include female and child poverty, violent youth gangs, poor educational performance, child sexual abuse, and many other devastating results.
And did easy divorce make its practitioners happier and more fulfilled?
There is ample evidence to suggest that it did not. People may have had more sexual encounters with a greater number of partners, but there is no sign that this has increased the general level of happiness.
There was a good reason not to introduce this wonderful new right, which would purportedly grant the condition of self-fulfillment to those who practiced it. If anyone had cared to think it through, common sense would have argued against it.
The traditional and customary liberties of Western Civilization allowed it to reach its apotheosis. Most of the newfangled ones are the agents of its ongoing destruction. The evidence is there for all to see.
To follow up on my earlier comment, just a simple observation from Europe on the political situation in the US, at the national level.
- Republicrat cabal
- Both parties supporting welfare state govt. deeply involved in the looting business (illegal taxes, like income tax and so on; monetary inflation through progressive central banking, i.e. the FED)
- Both parties spreading PC MC propaganda, most notably the meme that "Islam is a Religion of Peace"
Given that we all know Islam (and its progressivist enablers) to be the biggest threat to Western civilization, my question would be:
In current (and past) elections, how could any person in the US, male or female, have cast a right vote?
Same goes for Holland before the advent of Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders. Today, we Dutchies at least have a voting chance to change things. In the foreseeable future and to my regret, I can see no PVV party in the US.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
In short i would say that the lies and refusal to stick to the turth have rendered us defenseless against more lies and dangers. This begning of lies has been greatl facilitated by the rise of homosexuality and feminsim. Both are lies fighting against reality and truth. The acceptance of these has led us ot where we are, confused and paralyzed with our truth detectors, like carbon monoxide detectors shut off or totally removed by political coercion.
I have seen a clear relation between the push of homosexuality and rise PCMC in my own time in order to protect it from criticism and rejection. This has also led way for others lies and dangers to follow, one being Islam.
Baron,
as you say, many so-called "rights" exist that were not considered rights in Burke's time, and the contradictions inherent in these have only served to demean the entire concept of rights, to the extend that a Right is now little more than a selfish act that others are forced by law to tolerate.
"When any given personal right, if fully exercised by large numbers of people, threatens the existence of the community or the culture at large, then that right is forfeit."
Correct in concept but not in expression. Properly phrased, it would be "When any _supposed_ personal right, if fully exercised by large numbers of people, threatens the existence of the community or the culture at large, then it isn't really a right."
Rights apply only against other people, and hence exist only in society; Robinson Crusoe had no prospective rights until somebody else showed up.
Rights, therefore, being inextricably an attribute of society, cannot without intellectual fatuity include any activity that would work to destabilize or dissolve that society. Such a "right" is self-destructive, because its exercise soon means that society goes away, and with it that "right".
Quote:
In effect, your argument makes you essentially the same as proponents of the very Islam that I for one oppose so vehemently.
end quote.
You have stated my suspicion perfectly.
Individuals have rights.
Institutions do not.
Communities do not.
If anything, collective entities must be tightly controlled and circumscribed in everything they do.
Where crime is concerned, the minority, not the majority of individuals are engaged.
So what is this fear of the individual?
Islam is a problem unto itslef but our problem is lies and our remedy lies in uncovering the lies and telling the truth.
@ Nightmare ,concerning homosexuality, if you consider life not ot be worth living and procreation something wrong, you are a part of the lie because if that were the truth what prevents you from clinging to this life now?
As a matter of fact just as Islam has been observed to be parasitic as St. Augustine said of evil, so it is with homosexuality, it exists off of what you call heterosexuality but which is in actuality the only reality, found in female and male, nothng else. Male and female truly exist and supprot existence whcih you claim to despise, while homosexual unreality enters into existence only by virtue of male and female and has none unti itself. Perhaps a better name would be homounreality. How dare you insult reality and the truth and male and female with such deranged and nihilistic words. You demonstrate the spirit which militates against reality and inadvertantly helps our enemies.
goethechosemercy -
I'd like to second your suspicions. "Wrong voting" can only exert so much devastating influence because of the evermore encompassing welfare state, both in Europe and in the US.
On a further note, I'm afraid that it is in itself a sign of cultural decay when people start devising political systems that should be impervious to the free exercise of the natural rights by its own members.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Michael Servetus,
For everyone, whether they recognize it or not, it would have been better never to have been born. That is not just my opinion. It is the truth, as I believe I have demonstrated succinctly in my previous post. However, that is not to say that, having been born, the only right thing to do is kill oneself. I don't know about you, but I certainly feel that I have certain obligations and responsibilities in relation to friends and family that are stuck here too. How's that for nihilism?
As for your treasured 'heteroreality', never has there been anything as overrated.
In hoc signo vinces
Ultraliberal rights have been imposed on societies they have not been arrived at through a process of greater knowledge or spiritual empathy and human understanding that could be called moral evolution.
They are a political construct to advance a political agenda. Ultraliberal human rights the totalitarian moral code that will destroy us all majority and minority alike.
This is a very interesting discussion, and one in which I am not surprised to see that apparently only Baron has seized upon the kernel of human socio-moral dynamics, and which John Stuart Mill (whom, I suspect, Baron has familiarized himself with) summed up in "On Liberty": "...That which produces the greatest utility to the majority is morally correct."
In other words, I agree with Baron.
Although he identifies himself as a Burkean, there are a great many utilitarian aspects to Burkean philosophy. Morality, as a humanistic construct, can and should be defined as the mores and ethics which uniformly bind a society together for the common good (utility). Individual liberties - while important - mustn't contravene overall welfare and social cohesion.
Nightmare: For everyone, whether they recognize it or not, it would have been better never to have been born.
The fact that you are still around to type such noisome and patently irrational claptrap clearly demonstrates that you lack the courage of your convictions.
Perhaps you are one of those well-heeled millionaires who thinks that our world would be so much better off if only all of the rabble would just politely excuse themselves from this mortal coil.
Claiming that whatever temporary sufferings in our existence thoroughly outweigh the beauty and joyous exhilaration of daily life constitutes ― not just a niggardly esteem for mankind but ― such a nihilistic degradation of the human spirit as to void even the least scintilla of moral authority which you so undeservedly seek to cloak yourself in.
By your dim lights, one may as well commit suicide in order to permanently preclude ever having to endure the agony of a splinter.
Eloquent.
Nightmare: As for your treasured 'heteroreality', never has there been anything as overrated.
Which you are clearly such ample proof of. Still, as is quite often the case with natural selection, most alternatives are far less appealing.
Isn't it curious how the overwhelming majority of homosexuals who so detest every last thing about heterosexuality are, themselves, the product of heterosexual unions?
How sharper than the serpent's tooth be the thankless child.
It is precisely this sort of penultimate ingratitude that has obliged me to recalibrate my support for gay rights. Radical homosexuality's declaration of war upon the nuclear family has essentially voided their collective civil rights. How to fairly implement that notion in a free and open society still escapes me but not in the voting booth.
No better example of the snide and denigrating attitude displayed by so many radical homosexuals could have been hoped for in this discussion. It would be impossible for me to script a more useful demonstration of why I have been obliged to personally reassess my entire position on gay rights.
Gays had best take heed of the old maxim:
Just because you have the right to do something does make it the right thing to do.
Launching a full scale assault on the nuclear family in a largely heterosexual society seems to fit rather well with that admonition.
EJGB --
Morality, as a humanistic construct, can and should be defined as the mores and ethics which uniformly bind a society together for the common good (utility). Individual liberties - while important - mustn't contravene overall welfare and social cohesion.
Yes, I agree. And it’s worth noting that one may come to the same conclusion via the pathway of strict Darwinism. The logic would run something like this: A society will not survive if it confers rights upon its members which tend to bring about the destruction of the society itself. It will be replaced by a society which does not possess the same fatal flaw.
Although I am a believer in God, I’ve noticed that many useful moral conclusions may be reached entirely through an atheistic calculus, provided that one is willing to remain rigorously logical.
But not all moral conclusions. An atheist can find no logical or Darwinian case against genocide, since the extermination of a competing set of alien genes confers a selective advantage on the genotype of one’s own group.
Many of the most self-righteous moral stands taken by today’s militant secularists and atheists cannot be supported without recourse to a moral philosophy that relies on the existence of a supernatural order. It’s unfortunate, but true.
WRONG! Individual rights always are the most important issue. NOTHING supersedes the rights of the individual. Rights discuss what action of force is justified when two moral agents come into conflict. If I can perform action X and action X aggresses against nobody then I have a right to perform action X, PERIOD. "Society" has no rights since it is not a moral agent. Also rights are not cumulative. 10 people do not have 10 times more rights than one person.
If I am performing action X and I am not aggressing against another then I have a right to perform action X AND since its non-aggression rthewre can be no claim this action is "harming" society... again disproving any notion that a persons' rights somehow must be limited.
And maybe you need to question if some society NEEDS to destroy liberty for its survival then its not worth surviving. You might want to view Van Jone's speech on the need to destroy liberty to create equality... you sound just like him.
Hugh --
And maybe you need to question if some society NEEDS to destroy liberty for its survival then its not worth surviving.
That, of course, is a matter of personal taste. But reality teaches us that an “ordered liberty” is necessary, or there will be no liberty at all. Completely unfettered liberty — also known as “anarchism” — eventually destroys the liberty of everyone except the strongest bully, who ends up ruling everybody else.
Yours is a rather Manichaean worldview. I accept the existence of intermediate conditions between absolute liberty and absolute authority. There are more choices for us than complete Hedonism and fundamentalist Islam. It’s not an either-or situation.
Zenster,
Did you say 'irrational'?
In that post of yours you clearly do not engage rationally with any point of my argument in either of my two previous posts. All you are offering up is thinly veiled abuse. Your eloquence doesn't fool me. And as I'm sure you are intelligent enough to understand it - the truth sometimes being simple - I can see your off the mark verbiage as nothing other than an act of denial. But no worries, I've seen too much of that in my day to be bothered much by it any longer. I suppose it is a natural reaction to a moral truth of such consequences. For those interested in seeing these matters more clearly I'd recommend South African philosopher David Benatar's book 'Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence'. Have a nice one!
Hugh -
I would respectfully disagree with you on several points:
1. Society is, in fact, a moral agent. The very nature and purpose of a society, ANY society - large or small, is to form a structure and collective of like-minded individuals oriented toward advancing the common welfare and ideology of the body politic. This is demonstrated throughout not only the history of humankind, but also the animal kingdom.
2. Your statement "If I can perform action X and action X aggresses against nobody..." directly contradicts the notion of individual rights, since - if action X inflicts no contravention on the body politic - no societal mores have been compromised.
3. Individual liberties can, and often do, become cumulative. As a group attains a certain liberty or set of liberties, the natural human tendency is to desire more liberties.
As a group, this manifests itself on an exponential scale as each individual's desires become part of the whole.
4. With regard to your last assertion that a society willing to sacrifice personal liberties on any scale is not fit to survive, i would counter with a quote from Benjamin Franklin:
"[Any] society which trades liberty for security deserves neither."
Make that "in those posts of yours.."
youtube.com/watch?v=SvZ9SldqdIE
Natural rights are "transcendent". They are not dependent on gender or whatever category, susceptible of statistical damnation.
Natural rights are also "unalienable", which means that even the individual can't do anything to deem them forfeit. And others most certainly can't. We cannot give up our rights, even by free will, and no man-made government - still in the shadows or not - can ever take them away.
Not to respect this, is to relinquish one very important premise of true Western civilization, which i.m.h.o. is based on the concept of Natural Law, not on progressivist so-called "Human Rights", or utilitarian political philosophies, like those of Mill, that run the risk of handing ammo to "Social Contract" progressives.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
My point is this, and again I agree with Baron:
There is and must be a middle ground, yes. It isn't and can't be an either/or equation, lest you place the society in danger of EITHER a tyranny OR an anarchy - which inevitably leads to tyranny (since nature abhors a void).
Your suppositions, Hugh - while admirable after a fashion - are, I daresay, rather altruistic.
As I said before it seems reasonably clear to me that whatever mental distortions and contortions make it mentally palatable for homounreality to be tolerated and put in a protected class are the same constructs and memes that facilitate the abuse of our system and render us paralyzed in the face of other threats. For to allow that one to pass we had to go beyond the concepts of liberty and actually commit a form of wilful mental suicide and habituate ourselves to ignoring the voice of reason. Once you swallow that one nothing is too big or nasty or threatening to swallow.
"Many of the most self-righteous moral stands taken by today’s militant secularists and atheists cannot be supported without recourse to a moral philosophy that relies on the existence of a supernatural order. "
As an atheist myself, I have to quibble with this. Specifically, I dispute the claim that morality is supernatural. My best guess on the topic (and that's all this is, so take it with however much salt you want) is that it is an emergent property of the interactions of thinking creatures, the same way gravity is an emergent property of the existence of mass particles. The more complex the possible mental computations, the stronger the potential moral force - with the caveat that it is an extremely _weak_ force in the short term, much like gravity when compared to electromagnetism over short distances. It is only in the general long-term pattern of events that the general trend becomes clearer, and even then other events - of a purely physical nature, such as earthquakes or avalanches - can interrupt it.
Rats and parrots and cats and dogs and lots of other animals all have displayed a clear understanding of fairness and justice, both in the laboratory and in interactions with anyone who has lived with them. They didn't learn that from an arbitrary standard handed down at their animal church: it's something close to instinct. It's a part of the fabric of reality. You can say that God wove morality into the universe he made, or that it is an accidental but interesting emergent property in the same way that the fine-structure constant is, with the anthropic principle dictating why it happens to be the one we happen to observe - but to call it "supernatural" is, I think, entirely wrong.
Also, regarding this
"That, of course, is a matter of personal taste. But reality teaches us that an “ordered liberty” is necessary, or there will be no liberty at all. Completely unfettered liberty — also known as “anarchism” — eventually destroys the liberty of everyone except the strongest bully, who ends up ruling everybody else."
Moldbug always digs up the best quotes:
"And truly I desire their Liberty and Freedom as much as anybody whomsoever. But I must tell you, that their Liberty and Freedom, consists in having of Government, those Laws, by which their Life and their Goods may be most their own. It is not for having a share in government, that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things."
- Charles I of England
Nightmare: Your eloquence doesn't fool me.
Nor did I mean it to.
Your mentality reeks of a "malevolent universe" mindset. If there is one thing that is perfectly clear, this universe is life oriented and quite benevolent. Were it not so, we would not even be alive.
That you deem it better for people not to exist at all reveals a deep seated hatred for mankind that is as basely hypocritical as it is noxious. Your sweeping dismissal of millennia worth of human achievement defies all reason. Yours is an acrid pessimism that flies in the face of beauty, grace and harmony.
While the meaning of life has somehow escaped your myopic perception that does not mean others should heed what is so obviously an impaired sense of appreciation for the miracle that is human spirituality.
Your ability to disregard the clear and profound message that each moment of life makes available to those who are even marginally cognizant is stark testimony to a deep and abiding hatred of love and life in general.
No trained professional is capable of rescuing you from yourself. The way in which you violently reject any exuberant celebration of life betrays a malaise of the soul whose lassitude voluntarily bars you from communing with all that gives ultimate meaning to human existence.
I have no pity to waste upon such obstinate ingratitude.
Zenster thinks this, Zenster thinks that; none of which has the least bit to do with any real cognizance of the moral fact I was so ungrateful to point out. I rest my case.
Rollory, glad you linked to The Spearhead and Roissy. They've been essential reading to me for years, and I recommend The Spearhead especially.
I would have linked to them if nobody else did, because when it comes to the fallout from feminism and other leftarded policies, they have excellent articles and commentary.
Cheers,
A further side note to the role of John Stuart Mill, is that i.m.o. he has been a disastrous boost to statism, especially in his views on economic policies. And I am very weary of using this flip-flopping social philosopher as a guide for policy recommendations about rights for individual citizens. His justification of the state using its power (in the general interest of course) in order to prohibit marriage for people deemed unfit to support a family is a particularly ominous example of a progressive social engineering mentality. Some of his recommendations to control population growth go straight back to Malthus, champion of arch-progressive interventionists of all ages.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
About John Stuart Mill, he lived and wrote in an age when the idea of the sacred was being abandoned in favor of, what was thought to be scientific principles applied to government. It is the attempt to live without God or the idea of a judge or judgement with unchanging ways.
It has been argued that we can find the same principles as are revealed in sacred Scripture by reason alone and that was believed by many at first whose reason and presuppositional starting point and conduits had been saturated by common Christian-Mosaic sentiments. In this scenario readiness acting ascopt cat not original authority but rather inspired to find rationalizations for accepted mores. The proof that reason alone cannot stand on it's own two feet is the ways in which we see reason being used today to support contrary and opposing principles to those it was associated with before. I would then have to agree eighths Baron more or less in that reason is limited and liberty unfettered is self opposing.
Oh, well if it's population control you wish to discuss, I am personally in favor of Jonathan Swift's ideas regarding that issue.
Brilliant man, that Swift. I'm proud to be his fellow countryman!
EJGB - Society is NOT a moral agent since it cannot reason. It is nothing. Only individuals reason.
2.No my statement confirms the definition of rights since rights are not handed out by any politics nor by the state. If my action does not aggress then I have the right to perform the action. I do not need permission from anyone else.
3.And so what. As long as that desire does not impose force upon another it causes no harm. You cannot aggress against someone UNLESS you aggress against them. If I perform no action that is force upon you then I have not used force upon you.
4. Your quote is irrelevant. Franklin clearly proves MY point that if one trades liberty for security they accomplish neither. The point of the article was that liberty must be controlled "traded". Franklin merely supports my position.
Baron Bodissey - an "ordered liberty" is unnecessary and undesirable for the very reason that any "order" applied would be arbitrary and the special interest of a few. WHO'S ORDER? All liberty must be expanded since liberty is based on non-coercion. Me expanding my liberty does NOT aggress against you and so you are not harmed. Therefore I have a right to expand liberty.
Liberty is NOT hedonism. That is a horrible comparison. Liberty is merely the removal of arbitrary obstacles to the pursuit of freedom and happiness. Expansion of the mind. Growth of the spirit. Hedonism is neither of these things. In fact the only true purpose a rational being could have is pursuit of happiness.
How does my expansion of liberty aggress against you? Unless I am forcing you to support me in some coercive manner I do not harm you in my liberty expansion.
Sohns und Dottirs -
My 9mm is checked.If we are discussing the value of Female HUu.man Beings in Islam -Sorry Girls, you rank under Goats. ISLAM would have it NO OTHER WAY. Violated Goats can be sold in a neighboring village according to the Qua'ran. Violated Human Females under ISLAM - Not So Lucky. That is all.
Dr. Shalit
Sagunto - I agree about Mill. On the one hand he writes supporting utilitarian thinking and on the other states the pursuit of happiness is the only goal a person can have. "How can one plan a society without necessarily imposing one view upon everyone else?" which is one of his paraphrased quotes yet he indulges the greatest good for the greatest number and is routinely referenced by progressives for utilitarian excuses to weild power.
Hugh -
We are indeed in agreement in our opposition to the collectivist spirit that sometimes pervades the still inchoate counterjih.. ehm, no wait, now I'm stealing someones favourite line. Shouldn't do that ;-)
But anyway, at first I was rather disappointed to see this John Mill championed as some kind of founding father of "social cohesion" (a favourite term among progressives).
On second thought, I think it is good to have his name mentioned, especially in a topic that relates to the survival of Western values, culture and liberty. For if one seeks to understand one of the great puzzles of the 19th/20th century, i.e. the shift of (classical) liberalism from adhering to limited govt. and laissez faire, towards the progressive and expansionist inflation of government, meddling with social life, Mill is mandatory reading, for he has been instrumental in destroying the Anglo-American tradition by infusing it with radical French progressivism. Two inherently opposing traditions blended into the highly contradictory doctrine of "modern Liberalism", seeking to boost individual liberty through the collectivist apparatus of centralized government.
The key here is his so-called "Religion of Mankind" he was so zealous about, with its resounding echoes of the deeply anti-Christian Jacobin sentiment. Voegelin has described this line of reasoning and radical rejection of transcendent religion as the "progressive immanentization of existence".
Embracing Mill (for the radical progressivist notion of the "common good" or "social cohesion") is to embrace a pivotal figure in the ultimate destruction of true liberty (and religion). If you want to study a highly successful founding father of the political religion of progressivism, John Stuart Mill is your man.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Nightmare: Zenster thinks this, Zenster thinks that; none of which has the least bit to do with any real cognizance of the moral fact I was so ungrateful to point out.
Couching your suggestion that the entire human race voluntarily go extinct in the same sentence with the word "moral" so perverts every concept of morality as to negate any possibility of productive exchange. Referring to it as "fact" is merely icing on your thoroughly poisoned cake.
Your screen name amply suggests the sort of world you inhabit. It is yours for the keeping. Enjoy it.
Hugh, in society we musty have a amount of consideration and respect for others feelings and beliefs, if we offend inordinately we must also be prepared to defend by strength of arms our liberty against their perceived liberty to be free of your offence .This then enters into the realm of ideological aggression and it seems you have only considered physical.
Hugh -
First, it's "whose order". As for whose - that defined by nature. Human society is subject to rules and laws the same way physical behavior is, it is not arbitrary. Find what order best complies with human nature, or indeed the nature of the people for whom you want to create a society (because not all may be the same), and that is the order to follow. American style libertinism, for example, would be neither suitable nor accepted in Japan. Japan's society might stand for some improvement, but to say that there is no defined order whatsoever behind it - or indeed behind traditional American, or European society - is a plain lie.
"How does my expansion of liberty aggress against you?"
When you are part of the same society I live in, and establish the precedent or rule that it is acceptable to behave in ways that lessen the cohesion and viability of that society, then you are hurting me - if I value my existence within the context of that society.
What we have here is a basic disagreement on definitions and responsibilities. No man is an island, vs all humans being strictly independent. I claim strict independence is untrue and impossible.
Now, if you want to go establish your pure libertarian society somewhere apart from mine, fine, go to it. However you can not decree that all the people around you, who wish to be part of a non-pure-libertarian society, must then modify their behavior to suit you.
Baron says:
"Your extension of my argument is a reductio ad absurdum. Do you not think it is prudent to consider the larger consequences to society before granting a new “right” that has not been commonly accepted as such in the past?"
The very definition of a "right" renders it distinct from the self-interest of any party. Essentially, your position is that the interest of one arbitrarily chosen party (your "society" as opposed to, for instance, Muslim "society") trumps any other consideration.
Indeed, your statement (quoted above) in effect validates my equation between your position and that of Islamic purists who insist that no change that has ever occurred ("rights" or otherwise) since Muhammad are ever valid. Applying your argument we find that there is no longer any grounds for criticising Islam. So, if they believe in murdering Jews and non-believers, as long as they can show that to grant the "right" of life to Jews and Non-believers would be as you put it: "...granting a new “right” that has not been commonly accepted as such in the past?"...then by your criterion their continued murder of Jews and non-believers is not only insusceptible to criticism but is, by your yard-stick, the only morally right thing to do.
Now, dont get me wrong, I take the position that "morality","rights" etc are terms that refer to nothing that actually exists in the real world. They are purely expressions of culture. Your "moral" is another persons "immoral". I adamantly the existence of "right" or "wrong", in the absence of religious dictate, other than in relation to what is best for myself and my own in the long run. Irrespective of its effect upon strangers or the unborn. The position I take is that self-interest DOES indeed trump all other considerations. My individual self-interest necessarily encompasses that of my family, friends, community and state or tribe. My objection to your position is not with the arbitrary proritisation of the value of one culture or group (or "society" as you put it) that is at its core, but the fact that, for one thing, you seem naiive to this BEING the core of your position and for another, that my "tribe" and self-interest certainly appears to be different to yours.
If we agree that perpetuation of ones preferred "society" trumps all other considerations (your basic premise) then I am duty bound to oppose both Islam, and YOUR "society", which your choice of examples implies to be very narrow, parochial and rooted in a lack of knowledge or experience of a wider world. My "community" patently appears to me to encompass a vast number of realities that your world denies. It is therefore, in your choice, fatally opposed to your "society" every bit as much as it is to Islam.
Ultimately,you have to accept that you have to make a choice. Is your opposition to Islam more or less important than your sqaemishness about aspects of non-Muslim "society". Are you willing to let Islam triumph out of a dislike of some aspects of non-Muslim culture. Do you in fact have more in common with Muslims than non-Muslims?
Other than this, arguing about "rights" and which are or are not "valid" is pure sophistry apt only for sophomores.
Baron says:
"Your extension of my argument is a reductio ad absurdum. Do you not think it is prudent to consider the larger consequences to society before granting a new “right” that has not been commonly accepted as such in the past?"
The very definition of a "right" renders it distinct from the self-interest of any party. Essentially, your position is that the interest of one arbitrarily chosen party (your "society" as opposed to, for instance, Muslim "society") trumps any other consideration.
Indeed, your statement (quoted above) in effect validates my equation between your position and that of Islamic purists who insist that no change that has ever occurred ("rights" or otherwise) since Muhammad are ever valid. Applying your argument we find that there is no longer any grounds for criticising Islam. So, if they believe in murdering Jews and non-believers, as long as they can show that to grant the "right" of life to Jews and Non-believers would be as you put it: "...granting a new “right” that has not been commonly accepted as such in the past?"...then by your criterion their continued murder of Jews and non-believers is not only insusceptible to criticism but is, by your yard-stick, the only morally right thing to do.
Now, dont get me wrong, I take the position that "morality","rights" etc are terms that refer to nothing that actually exists in the real world. They are purely expressions of culture. Your "moral" is another persons "immoral". I adamantly the existence of "right" or "wrong", in the absence of religious dictate, other than in relation to what is best for myself and my own in the long run. Irrespective of its effect upon strangers or the unborn. The position I take is that self-interest DOES indeed trump all other considerations. My individual self-interest necessarily encompasses that of my family, friends, community and state or tribe. My objection to your position is not with the arbitrary proritisation of the value of one culture or group (or "society" as you put it) that is at its core, but the fact that, for one thing, you seem naiive to this BEING the core of your position and for another, that my "tribe" and self-interest certainly appears to be different to yours.
If we agree that perpetuation of ones preferred "society" trumps all other considerations (your basic premise) then I am duty bound to oppose both Islam, and YOUR "society", which your choice of examples implies to be very narrow, parochial and rooted in a lack of knowledge or experience of a wider world. My "community" patently appears to me to encompass a vast number of realities that your world denies. It is therefore, in your choice, fatally opposed to your "society" every bit as much as it is to Islam.
Ultimately,you have to accept that you have to make a choice. Is your opposition to Islam more or less important than your sqaemishness about aspects of non-Muslim "society". Are you willing to let Islam triumph out of a dislike of some aspects of non-Muslim culture. Do you in fact have more in common with Muslims than non-Muslims?
Other than this, arguing about "rights" and which are or are not "valid" is pure sophistry apt only for sophomores.
Furthermore, I would like to point out that blocking comments frompeople who disagree with you has to be the cheapest low shot of any pseudo-intellectual "debating" style.
We have already seen on this blog your facile defence of deleting comments that it is not "censorship" because it is always possible to post the same comments elsewhere. Which is like saying that if Blogger deletes / blocks your account and closes your site because a reader complains that it is in some way objectionable (which can happen all so easily) that’s simply fine because there are plenty of other blog providers where you can go run a blog instead!
Its a highly disingenuous argument. Moreover, when you open up a debate as you have here and accept comments on the basis that you can of course present your counter-argument, to then arbitrarily block your interlocutors response to your counter-argument is an act of both cowardice and traduction. Cowardice because it exposes you as having no confidence in your capacity to argue in any depth. Traduction, because it skews debate to misrepresent the other party as not having a counter-argument, which they may have been blocked from posting.
You like to deploy brow-beating assertions of a quasi-philosophical mien ("reductio ad absurdum" indeed) but clearly lack any confidence in your ability to handle ideas in any depth beyond these paddling-pool clichés of pseudo-intellectual posturing. So you bar reply comments from anyone who appears liable to plumb that shallowness. This is cheap. I have seen it a few times here. I wonder if this comment will also disappear?
Rollory: … I dispute the claim that morality is supernatural. My best guess on the topic … is that it is an emergent property of the interactions of thinking creatures, the same way gravity is an emergent property of the existence of mass particles.
R. Buckminster Fuller once said:
"The flow of energy through a system tends to organize that system"
I would argue that life has similar self-organizational properties which become "emergent" once a certain threshold of community size and average intelligence ― not necessarily sentience, mind you ― is reached.
While in the Philippines, I had this exact same discussion with my dear friend Father Rex Alarcon. He was taken aback to find that ― as an agnostic ― I maintained, nonetheless, how there is only one option and that is the path of moral conduct.
Immorality is not life-giving and, just as often, operates against life. Logic, and reason both point towards the superiority of cohesive behavior of which immorality is not a part.
Baron Bodissey: A society will not survive if it confers rights upon its members which tend to bring about the destruction of the society itself. It will be replaced by a society which does not possess the same fatal flaw.
The philosopher, Ayn Rand, summed this up rather tidily in her observations “about the relationship of principles to goals”:
"1. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins."
Similarly, if a society "confers rights upon its members which tend to bring about the destruction of the society itself", it is internally inconsistent and "will be replaced by a society which does not possess the same fatal flaw".
PC MC protection of Islam and lack of outcry by feminists regarding the misogyny of shari'a law are both premium examples of near-fatal inconsistency which must be addressed in order that Western civilization may survive.
This is especially so in the case of women. Their largely irrational and deafening silence over Islam's institutionalized policy of Abject Gender Apartheid is such a profound inconsistency that the rights of women justifiably could be abrogated in the name of preserving the greater whole.
Recent "interfaith alliances" between European Jews and Muslims that seek to prevent any proscription of Islam in the name of preserving "religious freedoms" is another example of a large group posing a threat through active facilitation of a far more dire one.
Be it through passivity or direct action both women and Jews are providing the world with excellent reasons to view them adversely.
Furthermore, I would like to point out that blocking comments frompeople who disagree with you has to be the cheapest low shot of any pseudo-intellectual "debating" style.
We have already seen on this blog your facile defence of deleting comments that it is not "censorship" because it is always possible to post the same comments elsewhere. Which is like saying that if Blogger deletes / blocks your account and closes your site because a reader complains that it is in some way objectionable (which can happen all so easily) that’s simply fine because there are plenty of other blog providers where you can go run a blog instead!
Its a highly disingenuous argument. Moreover, when you open up a debate as you have here and accept comments on the basis that you can of course present your counter-argument, to then arbitrarily block your interlocutors response to your counter-argument is an act of both cowardice and traduction. Cowardice because it exposes you as having no confidence in your capacity to argue in any depth. Traduction, because it skews debate to misrepresent the other party as not having a counter-argument, which they may have been blocked from posting.
You like to deploy brow-beating assertions of a quasi-philosophical mien ("reductio ad absurdum" indeed) but clearly lack any confidence in your ability to handle ideas in any depth beyond these paddling-pool clichés of pseudo-intellectual posturing. So you bar reply comments from anyone who appears liable to plumb that shallowness. This is cheap. I have seen it a few times here. I wonder if this comment will also disappear?
Furthermore, I would like to point out that blocking comments frompeople who disagree with you has to be the cheapest low shot of any pseudo-intellectual "debating" style.
We have already seen on this blog your facile defence of deleting comments that it is not "censorship" because it is always possible to post the same comments elsewhere. Which is like saying that if Blogger deletes / blocks your account and closes your site because a reader complains that it is in some way objectionable (which can happen all so easily) that’s simply fine because there are plenty of other blog providers where you can go run a blog instead!
Its a highly disingenuous argument. Moreover, when you open up a debate as you have here and accept comments on the basis that you can of course present your counter-argument, to then arbitrarily block your interlocutors response to your counter-argument is an act of both cowardice and traduction. Cowardice because it exposes you as having no confidence in your capacity to argue in any depth. Traduction, because it skews debate to misrepresent the other party as not having a counter-argument, which they may have been blocked from posting.
You like to deploy brow-beating assertions of a quasi-philosophical mien ("reductio ad absurdum" indeed) but clearly lack any confidence in your ability to handle ideas in any depth beyond these paddling-pool clichés of pseudo-intellectual posturing. So you bar reply comments from anyone who appears liable to plumb that shallowness. This is cheap. I have seen it a few times here. I wonder if this comment will also disappear?
Furthermore, I would like to point out that blocking comments frompeople who disagree with you has to be the cheapest low shot of any pseudo-intellectual "debating" style.
We have already seen on this blog your facile defence of deleting comments that it is not "censorship" because it is always possible to post the same comments elsewhere. Which is like saying that if Blogger deletes / blocks your account and closes your site because a reader complains that it is in some way objectionable (which can happen all so easily) that’s simply fine because there are plenty of other blog providers where you can go run a blog instead!
Its a highly disingenuous argument. Moreover, when you open up a debate as you have here and accept comments on the basis that you can of course present your counter-argument, to then arbitrarily block your interlocutors response to your counter-argument is an act of both cowardice and traduction. Cowardice because it exposes you as having no confidence in your capacity to argue in any depth. Traduction, because it skews debate to misrepresent the other party as not having a counter-argument, which they may have been blocked from posting.
You like to deploy brow-beating assertions of a quasi-philosophical mien ("reductio ad absurdum" indeed) but clearly lack any confidence in your ability to handle ideas in any depth beyond these paddling-pool clichés of pseudo-intellectual posturing. So you bar reply comments from anyone who appears liable to plumb that shallowness. This is cheap. I have seen it a few times here. I wonder if this comment will also disappear?
Furthermore, I would like to point out that blocking comments frompeople who disagree with you has to be the cheapest low shot of any pseudo-intellectual "debating" style.
We have already seen on this blog your facile defence of deleting comments that it is not "censorship" because it is always possible to post the same comments elsewhere. Which is like saying that if Blogger deletes / blocks your account and closes your site because a reader complains that it is in some way objectionable (which can happen all so easily) that’s simply fine because there are plenty of other blog providers where you can go run a blog instead!
Its a highly disingenuous argument. Moreover, when you open up a debate as you have here and accept comments on the basis that you can of course present your counter-argument, to then arbitrarily block your interlocutors response to your counter-argument is an act of both cowardice and traduction. Cowardice because it exposes you as having no confidence in your capacity to argue in any depth. Traduction, because it skews debate to misrepresent the other party as not having a counter-argument, which they may have been blocked from posting.
You like to deploy brow-beating assertions of a quasi-philosophical mien ("reductio ad absurdum" indeed) but clearly lack any confidence in your ability to handle ideas in any depth beyond these paddling-pool clichés of pseudo-intellectual posturing. So you bar reply comments from anyone who appears liable to plumb that shallowness. This is cheap. I have seen it a few times here. I wonder if this comment will also disappear?
Furthermore, I would like to point out that blocking comments frompeople who disagree with you has to be the cheapest low shot of any pseudo-intellectual "debating" style.
We have already seen on this blog your facile defence of deleting comments that it is not "censorship" because it is always possible to post the same comments elsewhere. Which is like saying that if Blogger deletes / blocks your account and closes your site because a reader complains that it is in some way objectionable (which can happen all so easily) that’s simply fine because there are plenty of other blog providers where you can go run a blog instead!
Its a highly disingenuous argument. Moreover, when you open up a debate as you have here and accept comments on the basis that you can of course present your counter-argument, to then arbitrarily block your interlocutors response to your counter-argument is an act of both cowardice and traduction. Cowardice because it exposes you as having no confidence in your capacity to argue in any depth. Traduction, because it skews debate to misrepresent the other party as not having a counter-argument, which they may have been blocked from posting.
You like to deploy brow-beating assertions of a quasi-philosophical mien ("reductio ad absurdum" indeed) but clearly lack any confidence in your ability to handle ideas in any depth beyond these paddling-pool clichés of pseudo-intellectual posturing. So you bar reply comments from anyone who appears liable to plumb that shallowness. This is cheap. I have seen it a few times here. I wonder if this comment will also disappear?
Furthermore, I would like to point out that blocking comments frompeople who disagree with you has to be the cheapest low shot of any pseudo-intellectual "debating" style.
We have already seen on this blog your facile defence of deleting comments that it is not "censorship" because it is always possible to post the same comments elsewhere. Which is like saying that if Blogger deletes / blocks your account and closes your site because a reader complains that it is in some way objectionable (which can happen all so easily) that’s simply fine because there are plenty of other blog providers where you can go run a blog instead!
Its a highly disingenuous argument. Moreover, when you open up a debate as you have here and accept comments on the basis that you can of course present your counter-argument, to then arbitrarily block your interlocutors response to your counter-argument is an act of both cowardice and traduction. Cowardice because it exposes you as having no confidence in your capacity to argue in any depth. Traduction, because it skews debate to misrepresent the other party as not having a counter-argument, which they may have been blocked from posting.
You like to deploy brow-beating assertions of a quasi-philosophical mien ("reductio ad absurdum" indeed) but clearly lack any confidence in your ability to handle ideas in any depth beyond these paddling-pool clichés of pseudo-intellectual posturing. So you bar reply comments from anyone who appears liable to plumb that shallowness. This is cheap. I have seen it a few times here. I wonder if this comment will also disappear?
Furthermore, I would like to point out that blocking comments frompeople who disagree with you has to be the cheapest low shot of any pseudo-intellectual "debating" style.
We have already seen on this blog your facile defence of deleting comments that it is not "censorship" because it is always possible to post the same comments elsewhere. Which is like saying that if Blogger deletes / blocks your account and closes your site because a reader complains that it is in some way objectionable (which can happen all so easily) that’s simply fine because there are plenty of other blog providers where you can go run a blog instead!
Its a highly disingenuous argument. Moreover, when you open up a debate as you have here and accept comments on the basis that you can of course present your counter-argument, to then arbitrarily block your interlocutors response to your counter-argument is an act of both cowardice and traduction. Cowardice because it exposes you as having no confidence in your capacity to argue in any depth. Traduction, because it skews debate to misrepresent the other party as not having a counter-argument, which they may have been blocked from posting.
You like to deploy brow-beating assertions of a quasi-philosophical mien ("reductio ad absurdum" indeed) but clearly lack any confidence in your ability to handle ideas in any depth beyond these paddling-pool clichés of pseudo-intellectual posturing. So you bar reply comments from anyone who appears liable to plumb that shallowness. This is cheap. I have seen it a few times here. I wonder if this comment will also disappear?
Furthermore, I would like to point out that blocking comments frompeople who disagree with you has to be the cheapest low shot of any pseudo-intellectual "debating" style.
We have already seen on this blog your facile defence of deleting comments that it is not "censorship" because it is always possible to post the same comments elsewhere. Which is like saying that if Blogger deletes / blocks your account and closes your site because a reader complains that it is in some way objectionable (which can happen all so easily) that’s simply fine because there are plenty of other blog providers where you can go run a blog instead!
Its a highly disingenuous argument. Moreover, when you open up a debate as you have here and accept comments on the basis that you can of course present your counter-argument, to then arbitrarily block your interlocutors response to your counter-argument is an act of both cowardice and traduction. Cowardice because it exposes you as having no confidence in your capacity to argue in any depth. Traduction, because it skews debate to misrepresent the other party as not having a counter-argument, which they may have been blocked from posting.
You like to deploy brow-beating assertions of a quasi-philosophical mien ("reductio ad absurdum" indeed) but clearly lack any confidence in your ability to handle ideas in any depth beyond these paddling-pool clichés of pseudo-intellectual posturing. So you bar reply comments from anyone who appears liable to plumb that shallowness. This is cheap. I have seen it a few times here. I wonder if this comment will also disappear?
Furthermore, I would like to point out that blocking comments frompeople who disagree with you has to be the cheapest low shot of any pseudo-intellectual "debating" style.
We have already seen on this blog your facile defence of deleting comments that it is not "censorship" because it is always possible to post the same comments elsewhere. Which is like saying that if Blogger deletes / blocks your account and closes your site because a reader complains that it is in some way objectionable (which can happen all so easily) that’s simply fine because there are plenty of other blog providers where you can go run a blog instead!
Its a highly disingenuous argument. Moreover, when you open up a debate as you have here and accept comments on the basis that you can of course present your counter-argument, to then arbitrarily block your interlocutors response to your counter-argument is an act of both cowardice and traduction. Cowardice because it exposes you as having no confidence in your capacity to argue in any depth. Traduction, because it skews debate to misrepresent the other party as not having a counter-argument, which they may have been blocked from posting.
You like to deploy brow-beating assertions of a quasi-philosophical mien ("reductio ad absurdum" indeed) but clearly lack any confidence in your ability to handle ideas in any depth beyond these paddling-pool clichés of pseudo-intellectual posturing. So you bar reply comments from anyone who appears liable to plumb that shallowness. This is cheap. I have seen it a few times here. I wonder if this comment will also disappear?
smorgasborg --
I did not “block” any of your comments.
I made the mistake of leaving my computer desk to go and eat dinner, and while I was gone, your 15 comments (many of them evidently repeats) were blocked by Blogger’s stupid spam filter. As soon as I saw them in the cache, I released them.
Now I must go through them and see if they violate any of our rules. If they do, then I will delete them.
Your automatic assumption that I had blocked your comments is offensive to me. I will not engage you any further in this argument.
smorgasborg: Furthermore, I would like to point out that blocking comments from people who disagree with you has to be the cheapest low shot of any pseudo-intellectual "debating" style.
We have already seen on this blog your facile defence of deleting comments that it is not "censorship" because it is always possible to post the same comments elsewhere.
As both a contributor and commenter here at Gates of Vienna, it is my pleasure to inform you that your accusations are so totally out of line whereby the only lasting aspersions they cast are upon yourself. Congratulations, you couldn't have done it without you.
In the GoV thread, “The Art of Strategic Citizenship, Part 4”, a rather salient point was made:
UltimateAwesomeness: latte, considering that turning the ship around requires quite a bunch of loss of human life, which will be overwhelmingly male, the question is not what will get the support of us, women, but the support of men. The way I see it, a man has no reason to support Western civilization and if I was a man, I'd probably rather convert to Islam and get slave girls when push came to shove, rather than protect some entitled fruitcakes, which is what the vast majority of Western women are. In reality, all rights are built on the death of men.
Whatever it is that comes out the back end of this impending economic crash and Islam's global jihad will, in all inevitability, be delivered across the backs of millions of dead White males; not to mention countless more dead Muslim males but that is of their own doing.
Women had best pay close attention to this fact and the very real possibility that White males may lose a great deal of patience if they are expected to put up with any more of this ridiculous silence on the part of feminists ― and females in general ― when it comes to the Islamic threat.
Playing deaf mute in the face of something so vile as Islam wears thin quite rapidly.
One good thing about debates like this, they always expose the bigots.
ib: One good thing about debates like this, they always expose the bigots.
Now, now. Don't play coy. Be specific. Otherwise you come across as just another obliquely insinuating nebbish.
We rec'd this email a while ago. It certainly sums up how many people feel about this thread:
Dear Baron and Dymphna,
I have to say that this line of discussion pains me greatly. I was an active member of the counterjihad for many years, under a number of different Interent names, which I prefer to not go into at the moment.
I have studied Islam for many years and I have done a lot, surreptiously but effectively, using my knowledge for the cause, for all those years. I knew Fjordman before he was Fjordman, and I was writing on the Internet against Islam before blogs even existed, and I was in the game years before even your good selves. I was a pretty damn valuable member of the early movement if I do say so myself.
I dropped away from the "movement" in disgust when the Roissy/Spearhead crowd started to invade our forums about a year and a half ago (note that I was already in the game nine years before these Johnny-Come-Latelies even showed up).
If you are going to take my rights away from me because I am female, I don't see any point in fighting Islam or sharia, because what you are proposing is the same thing.
Women have fought in this battle and we've fought longer and harder than a lot of men, including Johnny-come-Latelies like Takuan Seiyo, Whiskey, Rollory, and all the rest. Brigitte Gabriel, Bat Ye'or, Hirsi Ali, Elisabeth S-W, Melanie Phillips, Phyllis Chesler, Oriana Fallaci, and more. I really resent these Johnny-come-Latelies from the perverted "Roissysphere" hijacking our forums and belittling the good and brave work that WOMEN have done for the cause for YEARS before people like "Rollory" even knew what Islam was all about.
I tried to post this at your site for all to see, but I couldn't get Blogger comments to work for me.
I'll continue to fight Islam on my own, but I part company with anyone who wants to take away my right to work, vote, or be an equal citizen in my country. I've read this blog for many years, but if this is the way it's going to go, I'll continue to go my own way.
Please do NOT go down this route. You will only alienate intelligent women like me who have given our hearts and souls to the counterjihad for years.
Thanks for letting me vent,
Just sign me
--A Dedicated CounterJihadder from Way, Way Back
A Dedicated CounterJihadder from Way, Way Back: Women have fought in this battle and we've fought longer and harder than a lot of men, including Johnny-come-Latelies like Takuan Seiyo, Whiskey, Rollory, and all the rest. Brigitte Gabriel, Bat Ye'or, Hirsi Ali, Elisabeth S-W, Melanie Phillips, Phyllis Chesler, Oriana Fallaci, and more.
Your list of women counterjihadists includes one I know personally and several whose works I have quoted for the better part of a decade.
I deeply regret having to say that they are, for the most part, statistical outliers. This, in no way, means to denigrate their outstanding work or to question their immense value to the counterjihad. Yet, the simple fact remains that across America and Europe women consistently come out in favor of government or religious policies that protect Islam from the criticism and legal proscription that it so richly deserves.
In contrast, a vastly disproportionate number of Western MEN continue to die in this fight and a relatively similar disproportion of MEN continue to carry the blogsphere banner in the counterjihad.
I resolutely maintain that it is a most damaging and conspicuous position that women have taken ― inadvertently or not ― in being among those with the absolute most to lose even as they are deafeningly silent about the barbaric misogyny of Islam and shari'a law.
What accounts for this and how can this exceptionally disturbing trend be reversed? I would much rather see droves of Western women step forward and join ranks with those of us on the counterjihad's front lines than, ever for one minute, consider reversing any hard won equality of rights that has been gained over the last few decades.
I should know. I have marched in support of feminist causes all my life and actively worked ― much to my later embarrassment ― towards increasing the participation of women in American politics.
"If you are going to take my rights away from me because I am female, I don't see any point in fighting Islam or sharia, because what you are proposing is the same thing."
I don't believe that was what was being implied - at least I hope not. I think the point was that if certain "rights" are destructive or disruptive to the body politic inasmuch as it protects the individual rights of all, then it becomes incumbent upon the majority to act accordingly.
I hope I've stated that correctly.
I'd like to 2nd the words and sentiments of a Dedicated CounterJihadder. Notice how few women have been commenting (as far we can determine gender over the internet). Most, like us, are are either reading this thread with horror and disgust or else have quit reading it. Looks like a bunch of men finding excuses to try to take away our rights to put us in an inferior position. Stupid and counterproductive. The general sentiment among intelligent women is probably something like FU. And you're welcome to couple up with the less intelligent women!
If the majority of men vote toward the right and the majority of women vote toward the left (I don't know the stats--but I'm sure some of the commentators do) there is still an enormous amount of overlap.
With respect to Takuan Seiyo's last GoV article, given this enormous statistical overlap, to support a new, conservative community, all you supposedly-bright men would have to do is to select women who vote the same way and who have similar political philosophies (if any would have you after reading all the bilge in these comments). This is not such a problem. Repeat, earth to posters-on-this-thread: this is not such a problem.
I'm done. My enthusiasism for GoV has considerably lessened.
By the way, you had better also talk about taking away voting rights for Methodists and various other groups who are trending left in their voting.
EJGB: … if certain "rights" are destructive or disruptive to the body politic inasmuch as it protects the individual rights of all, then it becomes incumbent upon the majority to act accordingly.
You are on the money. A prime example of this is the over-reaction to decades of law enforcement's wink and nod attitude about rape ― "boys will be boys" ― and gay bashing ― plain homophobia in action.
Now we have "hate crimes" that should never have been given special status and represent unequal protection under the law where simple equal application in a prompt and timely manned would have sufficed.
Women now have the ability to get a man arrested without a shred of evidence just by claiming rape. Even if the rape kit turns up negative, the guy is already in jail and his reputation smeared with an undeserving degree of permanence. The Duke lacrosse team is but one example of how false charges by women tend to stick.
Were the previous years of institutionalized disregard for the safety of women and gays fair or proper? Hell no.
Should compensation for them take the form of wholly unfair and imbalanced enforcement and prosecutorial protocol?
Well, that's what's happened and the entire "hate speech" and "hate crime" industry is eroding a major building block of American civil rights in the form of limitations on free speech and restricted freedom of expression.
Islam is capitalizing on this ham-fisted redistribution of judicial wealth and it promises a backlash that could just as easily reverse decades of progress. Gays and women must summon up the courage to come forward and agitate for traditional equal protection under the law or face the possibility that their refusal to help bring about the re-balancing a system that is totally out of control will, one day, be held against them.
on-my-own-in-berkeley --
I’m used to people renouncing further association with this blog after someone says something they vehemently disagree with. It seems to happen all the time.
Me, I like to hear a lot of back-and-forth — if everyone always agreed with my own thinking, things would get boring, and I would learn nothing. Yes, it means I have to tolerate a lot of wackos and trolls and whatnot, but that’s OK — it’s part of the price of a free and open discussion.
In this particular case, however, I’d like to point out that an open thread on this topic was requested by a woman, whose request is reproduced in its entirety at the top. The fact that she didn’t show up to participate is mysterious; perhaps she had an urgent engagement elsewhere today.
In any case, to divert the topic from a direction you don’t like, we need your active participation, and that of others who feel similarly. I’m sure you can make a good case for women’s retaining the franchise — I know I can — so why not make it, instead of just complaining about all these testosterone-poisoned cavemen who have hijacked the thread?
Seriously — the best antidote for bad ideas is better ideas.
A hearty thanks to latte island for suggesting this topic and to al-ttt, Sagunto, goethechosemercy, Hugh, smorgasborg, A Dedicated CounterJihadder from Way, Way Back, and on-my-own-in-berkeley for making some reasonable points about the topic at hand.
EJGB: Unfortunately, the surreal discussion here - as continued from another thread - is indeed about a proposed "Utopian" anti-jihad society removing the right of women to vote - so that men can "protect" women for the benefit of the greater society.
Baron: Really, no one needs to make any arguments for or against women's suffrage. All of the pertinent arguments are available in the historical record of the modern British and U.S. women's suffrage movements.
Baron B., I wouldn't dream of not commenting on a thread I asked for. That would be rude. I'm often late for internet things, because of my strange schedule.
That said, I'm sort of appalled at some of the comments here. I don't believe in group responsibility, although it's inevitable that if the majority of X group (Germans, women, Jews, Muslims, etc.) behave badly towards the victorious group, the whole group will be punished, however unfair to some innocent individuals.
I'll just say that if any particular group is systematically discriminated against, that creates social instability. So, it seems to me that when society, until recently, prevented some gifted women from using their gifts professionally, that was the root cause of the excesses of feminism. When all people are included in society, according to their abilities, not affirmative action, which I've always opposed, that creates stability, because no one is excluded and resentful.
Is society really better off, forcing women like Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, etc., to stay home and raise children? We don't just lose their contribution, we create resentment that has to lead to social unrest and extremism. And the two great women I mentioned aren't alone. How many equally great women haven't we heard of, because they weren't allowed to go to school? I'm not great, but it would have been a great injustice even for a modestly gifted person like me, to not be able to participate, to the best of my ability, which no one can do without society's permission.
This is probably the longest discussion thread I have seen at GoV since I started reading here 5 years ago. Thats good. I guess that the site also attain a good deal of visitors. The technolgy seems a bit outdated however and posting comments is quite troublesome.
Would it then not be a good idea to leave Blogger? Maybe set up a wholly indepent site, if there was enough recources to do such available?
Kind regards,
Birkebeinr
Baron: Most of my comments are rejected by Blogger and NEVER show up. In other words, my comments are NOT caught in your spam filter. At present, I can only post extremely short comments. Hence my multiple posts. What a pain! :(
Again, I maintain that a lot of the "discussion" here is based on murky logic - and it would take too much time and psychic energy for me to unravel every faulty assumption. Who would read it all anyway? Who would change their minds? When the gulf is so wide, it becomes too much effort to contemplate.
It took women thousands of years to get to the point that the bulk of middle class women in the West are finally "allowed" to vote in various elections, attend higher education, work in a professional capacity, and, most importantly, choose compatible spouses (and yes, choice does indeed include the right to un-choose abusive - thus incompatible - spouses via relatively easy divorce).
Thousands of years to secure our GOD-given rights - and yet some women are prepared to backtrack into the Dark Ages on behalf of the fantasy that giving up their vote secures the "protection" of men.
Ironically, who do women require "protection" from? Oh yeah, MEN!
It also concerns me that so many people seem to equate homosexuality with the ridiculous extremism of today's gay rights movement. Homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality, and whatever I've left out, have always been part of culture. Some cultures have managed this part of human nature better than others.
One reason so many people here don't even understand the subject is that it's a feature of our culture to interpret sexuality according to the prevailing morality, which is heavily dependent on Christianity. The pagans were more permissive, and sexual expression other than heterosexual monogamy was compatible with a stable society.
Even Mesopotamian law was inclusive of bisexual adventures, even though it was expected that everyone would marry and have children.
Those of you who assume that all gay or bi people are inevitably the whiny extremists who are the most visible of that community today, should consider how easily various types of sexuality were included in pagan society. Was Alexander the Great subversive? The love of his life was one of his generals. I don't want to give other examples, to save time and space, but if one reads ancient history and literature with an open mind, one has to notice that greater civilisations than ours accommodated homosexuality quite well.
Like feminism, the excesses of today's gay rights movement are probably caused by our culture's previous suppression of ordinary human rights for gays.
And where does this sexual conformity end? I've seen discussions on conservative blogs, where many otherwise intelligent people were against masturbation. So regardless of whether one is gay, straight, bi, or uninterested, there are probably very few people in the world who wouldn't stand to lose, if sexuality could be restricted as much as some here would prefer.
Oh yeah, and UltimateAwesomeness sounds just like RebelliousVanilla....
Well, I found an old Blogger ID I thought had been deleted, but wasn't, so I'll put in my two cents here.
I am the Counterjihadder from Way Back who emailed Dymphna earlier.
This comment is directed to Zenster:
There are two types of feminists in the world, real feminists like myself and latte Island, Phyllis Chesler and Brenda Walker, and then there's the multi-culti feminists like Naomi Wolf and Germane Greer, whom I despise. I have gone toe to toe with multi-culti feminists in various forums for years. I have also turned numerous feminist-leaning women away from Islam with my knowledge of that "religion" so it's untrue that anti-jihad women are "outliers." Both women AND men are woefully ignorant of Islam and it takes patience to educate them. But women are fully capable of being educated and "flipped" to our side, as I know full well.
Secondly, for anyone who thinks that female sufferage is the cause of the downfall of the West, let's just note that the Communist Manifesto was not written by a woman, and Lukacs, Marcuse and Gramsci were not females.
Regarding the "contributions" of such as "Rollory" who want to take away my right to vote: may I ask what exactly qualifies you to post on a Counterjihad blog, friend?
Have you read about Islam extensively, for more than 10 years, as I have? Do you know the meaning of terms such as Pact of Omar, fiqh, Dar-al-Suhl vs. Dar-al-Harb? Can you name the five schools of fiqh and broadly, how they differ? Do you know what the Pact of Omar is, and why Western people should care about it? Have you read Mawdudi and Qutb? Have you read the Reliance of the Traveler, 23 Yeears, The Political Language of Islam and other sources detailing the impact of Islamic law on us "infidels"? Do you know what the Battle of the Camel was,or the Battle of the Apostates, or the Kufa Ambush, or can you write intelligently about the theological differences between Sunni and Shiite Islam? Do you know the names and bios of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs and why they are important to know? Do you know why many radical Muslim imams dye their beards and hair red?
I know about all of those things, pal. Yes, it required reading hundreds of websites and hadiths and books, and my tiny little inferior female brain suffered with getting through all those big words and long sentences and complicated abstract concepts, but I managed to do it. How about you? How come a superior-brained man like yourself hasn't bothered educating yourself about Islam as extensively as I have done? The most important challenge facing our civilization since World War II, and you haven't read a single book about Islam, have you? Too busy chortling over accounts of anal sex with 14-year-olds over at The Chateau to be bothered about it, aren't you?
What makes you think that you are more qualified to vote than I am? I've actually studied the fracking "religion" that is the point of this blog, and I've turned HUNDREDS of people against it.
Don't embarass yourself again by posting your inanities on a Counterjihad blog where people who actually know something about the subject of Islam post.
test
Lukacs, Gramsci, Marcuse and Marx were not women.
Let's get down and dirty and point the fingers at the REAL cause of the weakness of the West, and it ain't women. Maybe the vote should be taken away from men so that they don't ever devise something as evil as Marxism again and kill 100 million people in the process.
As unpleasant as it is to confront this major fault line in the counterjihad, it has to be confronted somehow. I retired my blog and stopped commenting on any blog for over a year, because of the issues illustrated here.
But women need to protect their interests, and I have to admit, I can comment on almost any right-wing blog and get a fair hearing, while when I comment on a socially liberal and/or feminist blog, I do so to reach a few people, through the howls of the mob.
So we liberated women and our men friends can solve the problem on this side of the blogosphere more easily than the other side, even though we need to show up on both.
I have a question for the women who have either left the conversation or haven't commented: where do you comment? Is there a forum for people who are both socially liberal and anti-Islam? that isn't hopelessly universalist? or anti-semitic? Does anyone want to help me start one? I'm tired of my blog, but someone has to do something, obviously.
Dedicated CounterJihadder -
What can I say other than that I wholeheartedly second everything you have brought to the front.
In the wake of a fairly eloquent guru, working his way into the CJ initiative to promote his highly idiosyncratic vision about some kind of regressive survival-sect, some followers have demonstrated a penchant for collectivist group-think and in the process turned god-given natural rights into something akin to privileges, granted or retracted on account of statistical "evidence".
Reading about initiatives in denial of the natural rights of say, one half of the Western populace, one is almost tempted to suspect some repressed fascination for Muslim mores to be at work, effecting this remarkable lapse into orientalesque mimesis.
I strongly resent the route that some of this is pointing towards. I can't stress enough how much I reject servitude "for the Greater Good", that is to close to the Islam-option for comfort. I have nothing but contempt for the so-called "Prophet" of Islam, and I am deeply suspicious of false "prophets" who are - willingly or not - leading the CJ-initiative astray.
Egghead -
You wrote:
"Again, I maintain that a lot of the "discussion" here is based on murky logic - and it would take too much time and psychic energy for me to unravel every faulty assumption. Who would read it all anyway? Who would change their minds?"
Well, it wouldn't change my mind, but that's only because your comments - in this and in the "survivalist" thread, provided me with little to disagree about. Would love a disputation with you, but alas, not this time ;-)
Meanwhile I'd really like to read it all, provided it wouldn't take too much out of your physical reserves, if you allow me this chauvi-male protectionist impertinence.
Kind regs, and take care, from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Tolerance must be subject to the mirror test - would I like it if this person died this to me.
While this is also known as the golden rule, or Matthew 7.v12, the mirror application of the golden rule can be applied to others in the form of arbitration and is considered less personal.
Q:Should women be permitted to vote?
A:Would it be ok if all men were forbidden to vote on the basis of gender? If the answer is no, then it applies to both genders.
Should white people be slaves on the basis of skin colour?
Should stamp tax be calculated according to religion?
Should boys be forced to stay totally covered in all weathers?
one can continue ....
gsw, the mirror test wouldn't work, because everyone is different. Some people want things I'd object to. There are intelligent women bloggers, for instance Laura Wood, the Thinking Housewife, who prefers a traditionally feminine role. And why shouldn't she have it? Who am I to say she shouldn't have a society where women have a more traditional lifestyle?
Since people want different things, it could very well be oppressive to insist that every society have equal rights for all. I think it's more sustainable and fair to organize society into smaller units, where people could choose their rights.
Voting could be seen as similar to marijuana. Some areas will have universal suffrage, some not. Some areas will have legal pot, some not. As long as everyone consents and has the right to move, what's the problem? We'll never agree on social issues, so the best way for everyone to get along is to separate and cooperate on the big things like trade and the common defense, as was already agreed on over 200 years ago.
Quote:
Baron Bodissey: A society will not survive if it confers rights upon its members which tend to bring about the destruction of the society itself. It will be replaced by a society which does not possess the same fatal flaw.
end quote.
And this is why Islam is on the fast track to its own destruction and transformation.
To learn from its errors is not necessarily to favor the rights society over the individual.
In Islam the dualistic perspective pits men, and particularly young men, against the rest of the society itself. Those who think themselves strong tyrannize, those who are frustrated tyrannize, and they all view themselves as living against women and children, not for them.
I also think that if young men had more perceptible constructive directions in which to take their lives, the world would be a far better place.
Let me also point out that these "Roissy" freaks who've tried to infiltrate the CJ movement clearly don't know jack about Islam.
All they ever post about here is "gender relations" and "evo-psychology".
When it comes to Islam, they clearly don't know Hanafites from Hanbalis, or Shiites from Shinola.
That alone tells me that they are trying to hijack the movement for their own ends; fighting Islam is the LEAST of their concerns.
Well, while I was snorting in the seven sleepers’ den, y’all were beavering away like crazy here. Good on you!
Thanks for participating, and thanks to latté island for the idea. It’s obviously one whose time has come.
I think we could gain a better perspective if we backed off and looked at the what started the whole thing: the feminization of Western culture. That was Takuan’s original issue.
Those who want to roll back female suffrage are overlooking the fact that a large part of the cultural feminization process — “let’s make everything fair” and “no one must ever be left out” and “no one must ever suffer” — is overseen by men, and began long before women got the vote. Male politicians today may be converting themselves into girlie-men to troll for female votes, but that is obviously not the whole explanation.
Takuan is talking about an excess of yin, the female principle, that which soft and yielding. If our culture does not correct its current yin-yang imbalance, it will destroy itself. Nobody’s rights will be worth a damn once that happens — the imams will dictate the new rights for everyone.
This is the brick wall towards which we are headed. Suggestions for how we can decelerate the vehicle are welcome.
From Chapter 78 of the Tao Te Ching:
Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;
It has no equal.
P.S. Queen, I should have known that was you! Welcome back.
Queen: There are two types of feminists in the world, real feminists like myself and latte Island, Phyllis Chesler and Brenda Walker, and then there's the multi-culti feminists like Naomi Wolf and Germane Greer, whom I despise.
Please rest assured that I despise gender traitors like Germane Greer. I’ve been outing her oblique support of FGM for several years. You can also be sure that I know the difference between ultra-feminazis and genuine advocates of gender equality like Phyllis Chesler, whose work I have been citing for just as many years.
Secondly, for anyone who thinks that female sufferage is the cause of the downfall of the West, let's just note that the Communist Manifesto was not written by a woman, and Lukacs, Marcuse and Gramsci were not females.
You'll need to provide verbatim quotes with cites before I'll let you smear me with that sort of rubbish.
What part of:
I would much rather see droves of Western women step forward and join ranks with those of us on the counterjihad's front lines than, ever for one minute, consider reversing any hard won equality of rights that has been gained over the last few decades.
… is unclear?
In no way do I advocate any rollback of universal suffrage. My position is one similar to the stance I maintain regarding the looming Muslim holocaust.
Quite simply, if things do not change for the better damn soon, there await some truly ugly potential consequences. Radical gay assaults upon the nuclear family along with the way that women continue to vote in support of PC MC politicians and governments that pose a totally flaccid response to Islam are among those things that need to change.
Which is all that I meant by noting how:
Gays and women must summon up the courage to come forward and agitate for traditional equal protection under the law or face the possibility that their refusal to help bring about the re-balancing [of] a system that is totally out of control will, one day, be held against them.
Queen: Have you read about Islam extensively, for more than 10 years, as I have?
…
How come a superior-brained man like yourself hasn't bothered educating yourself about Islam as extensively as I have done?
My career and other life pursuits do not permit me the leisure of pursuing Islam to quite the depth you have. That said, Gates of Vienna has seen fit to publish several of my essays about Islam and jihad, so I must be doing something right.
With the formal knowledge of Islam you present yourself as having, I'm left wondering why you have not published here, too.
What I would appreciate is you refraining from such condescending horse puckey like how your "… tiny little inferior female brain suffered with getting through all those big words and long sentences and complicated abstract concepts". Well, boo-fricking-hoo! As a lifelong supporter of gender equality I don't need you or anyone else talking down to me like that.
And why in the Hell you feel obliged to spew such drivel as;
The most important challenge facing our civilization since World War II, and you haven't read a single book about Islam, have you? Too busy chortling over accounts of anal sex with 14-year-olds over at The Chateau to be bothered about it, aren't you?
… is beyond me. That is raw incivility, which is frowned upon at GoV.
Queen: What makes you think that you are more qualified to vote than I am?
Again, verbatim quotes and cites with links, please? I’ve never maintained anything of the sort. You’re trying to lump me in with other participants here in a wholly unfair manner.
Don't embarass yourself again by posting your inanities on a Counterjihad blog where people who actually know something about the subject of Islam post.
You mean inanities like "… chortling over accounts of anal sex with 14-year-olds over at The Chateau"?
Pot → Kettle → Black
Zenster -
You might have missed this part, posted after the first paragraph, where @Queen directs her comment @Rollory:
"Regarding the "contributions" of such as "Rollory" who want to take away my right to vote: may I ask what exactly qualifies you to post on a Counterjihad blog, friend?"
It might be that all of her subsequent remarks weren't directed at you at all.
Take care,
Sag.
Zenster, most of my remarks were directed at "Rollory", not at you. I know you are a dedicated CJer. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Baron: thanks for the kind welcome back.
IMHO, it has reached the point where this thread needs to be terminated.
The initial tenor of discussion has now devolved into a pissing contest of who has done more for whom and for how long.
It is - in the final analysis - irrelevant.
IMHO...
I have never experienced so fully having my words and ideas twisted into freakish things I never wrote or thought.
An example: my opinion about women needing protection was pretzeled into a little hate glob & projected out there via the triumphant observation that the people women need protection from in the first place are...ta da!...men.
Like that wasn't obvious already?
The same bell curve which shows men to be ON AVERAGE smarter (in the areas our culture rewards) and stronger than women also shows that the outliers on this curve contain lawless, barbarian MEN. Those outliers are dangerous and bestial. When they group together, the barbarity rises exponentially. A lone person against a group of these beings is in danger, but a woman is in particular danger of being used. Of course, she might have her super-strong robot to protect her against this mob o’ yobs. That is, if she has sufficient funds to buy her robot protection and the smarts to maintain it in good working order. Other women? Not so lucky.
[On a side note, Islam’s primitive gender arrangements make for a much larger population of male barbarian outliers. Thus women are especially unsafe in that environment of poisonous patriarchal supremacism.]
My other questions, though repeated, were never responded to in good faith, either. Again, they were used to score easy one-up debate points. Those questions remain:
1. Has our culture improved since the 'liberation' of the 60s?
2. Are the children flourishing?
3. Are families more secure?
=========================
The structure of this thread resembles those I read on the far left. A kind of mirror image. Definitely both are ‘through a glass darkly”. They have folks who believe women are superior and designed to rule. We have their opposites: men who think patriarchy is going to make a comeback. Both ideas are risible and both comment extremes are uncomfortably reminiscent of what was done to poor Larry Summers.
Baron and I have a rule re posting: whichever of us wrote a given post is responsible for maintaining the thread. Since this one is his, I’m not going to let the door hit me on the behind as I head out. My attempts at communication failed utterly. Rather than throw away any more time or energy I’m going to follow those others who’ve left already.
If I post again – I have already made several commitments to do so – I’ll make like Lawrence Auster & close comments. My other choice is not to post at all, which is pretty much what I’ve been doing…and now I remember why.
Dymphna -
In the spirit of the absolute tenacity which my lovely lady swears I am cursed with, and brevity which I am NOT noted for, I will attempt to answer those three questions.
1. Has our culture improved since the 'liberation' of the 60s?
Answer: In some ways yes, in others - no.
2. Are the children flourishing?
Answer: Technologically, yes. Socially, morally, and emotionally - I don't believe so.
3. Are families more secure?
Answer: No.
EJGB -
I see your point (previous post), but I think this thread needn't be closed for the reason you mention.
Yet, suppose someone would jump at your request, I'd like to take you up on the fact that you mentioned both J. S. Mill and Benjamin Franklin, to support your views.
You might find it interesting to know that it was Franklin who vehemently opposed Mill's assertion (made in "On Liberty"), that freedom in the economic sphere wasn't necessary. Franklin argued that especially for the common man, freedom of contract, of free enterprise, of the free market and so on, in short, freedom in day to day economic matters, was perhaps more essential than the freedom of speech, the latter being more of interest to high minded intellectuals like Mill himself.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Sag:
I have been referred to as a man of contradictions. Clearly, there may be some truth in that.
I cited Franklin in what was apparently a misguided attempt to illustrate that he, too, was a man of contradictions, in that although - as you correctly point out - he opposed Mill's economic philosophies, he contradicted himself in his statement regarding freedom and security.
Mill, on the other hand, was a staunch advocate of "high-minded" ideals such as freedom of speech, of the press, and of political expression - which ultimately were and are of more benefit to the common man than merely the freedom of economic self-determination, since arguably you cannot have the latter without the former.
EJGB -
I want to avert the impression that we're sidetracking here, for Mill - as the arch progressive that he was - is i.m.o. of vital importance to the topic at hand.
You obviously have read my previous comments as to why I think that Mill has been a disaster, especially for the common man, and how useful he could be to explain the peculiar progressivist mentality (giving up individual rights in the "Service of Man") that seems to have crept in some of the discussions at GoV, especially those that deal with the u- or dystopian vision of retreating into secluded enclaves of Western civilization.
But don't take my word for the disaster that Mill really was for Western liberty, here's what prof. Raeder has to say on the subject:
"Mill muddied the waters of classical-liberal philosophy and practice by his conviction that the end of government is the all-encompassing “improvement of mankind” and not the preservation of individual liberty-under-law, as well as by his self-conscious embrace and advocacy of the “social” moral ideal. Moreover, Mill’s ambition to replace the theologically oriented society of the Western tradition with one grounded in and oriented exclusively toward Humanity necessarily entailed a departure from classical liberalism. For individual liberty-under-law, as historically understood in the West, is crucially and inseparably wed to the belief in a law higher than the enactments of mankind, as well as to the sanctity of the person that derives from his or her source in God. In short, Mill’s attempt to replace God with Humanity not only eviscerates the higher-law tradition crucial to the preservation of individual liberty and limited government but their spiritual foundation as well. For it is the transcendent spiritual purpose of each human being that, historically and existentially, engendered and sustains resistance to the pretensions of merely political power. When “Humanity” is elevated to the ultimate source and end of value, the political rulers become, in effect if not in name, the new gods."
Recommended reading: L. C. Raeder,"John Stuart Mill and the Religion of Humanity" (2002)
Sag.
So Mill was a humanist. Most of his contemporaries were. That doesn't necessarily detract from the benefits of the reforms his ideas led to.
That said, the man wasn't perfect in his philosophical machinations. Just forward thinking.
Queen: Zenster, most of my remarks were directed at "Rollory", not at you. I know you are a dedicated CJer. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Thank you very much for clarifying. No harm, no foul then. I found it difficult to believe we were at such odds and am relieved to see that nothing of the sort applies.
Hat tip to Sagunto for noting the same.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.
EJGB -
I think it best at this point to leave the matter at the well-known "agree to disagree" juncture. Perhaps we meet again sometime on the subject; thank you for the exchange so far.
Baron -
You wrote:
"I think we could gain a better perspective if we backed off and looked at the what started the whole thing [..]"
I agree, that would be wise indeed. Perhaps I step back from a slightly different position, for I'm not sure whether I agree with you on what started this (thread). I can only say - without getting too personal, I hope - that for me, the necessity for a second thread became obvious as soon as suggestions were made to somehow (the precise manner, pre-selection or otherwise, not being of central importance here) revoke basic natural rights, such as the right for women to cast their vote.
The "feminization" thread ended with that suggestion and this thread continued where the survival thread left off. I think that the debate about feminization (which also extends to men, of course) would have remained relatively unremarkable (that's not the right word, but soit) if it hadn't been for the abovementioned far reaching suggestions about voting rights.
I have proceeded to comment on the issue of retreating into post doomsday-enclaves and the necessity to pre-select the most suitable men and women, because I honestly believe that this issue lies at the heart of the muddled and sometimes esoteric group-think (at the cost of rights) that I detected.
Meanwhile, and though I know there's no need, I thank you for providing the opportunity to discuss this issue.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Baron Bodissey: Until very recently a man did not have the “right” to break a lifelong oath given during the sacrament of holy matrimony. There was a good reason for this, as we are now discovering. Divorce was made difficult and therefore rare because its prevention served the deepest needs of an ordered and prosperous society.
Divorce has been a relatively simple matter for the last forty-odd years, and the results are obvious, even if most people prefer not to discuss them. Easy divorce has been more destructive to Western culture than just about any other recent innovation. I don’t really need to list the consequences here, but they include female and child poverty, violent youth gangs, poor educational performance, child sexual abuse, and many other devastating results.
And did easy divorce make its practitioners happier and more fulfilled?
latté island: But women need to protect their interests …
Baron, have you ever been to the Philippines? I have and over there the Church has managed to have its doctrine inserted into national law so that divorce is flat-out prohibited. What happens then? Many Philippine men simply up and leave their wives ― and, just as often entire families ― in order to take up with their next paramour. The result? Innumerable fatherless and unsupported families with starving children begging on the street who are vulnerable to sexual abuse, gangs or human trafficking.
I’ll just say that a walk on foot through urban Manila can break your heart in a hundred ways.
Do I like divorce? Having seen it up close as a youngster ― replete with child abduction, stalking, infidelity and horrible step-parents on all sides ― I can answer with a solid, “no”. Should people have the right to divorce? I have to answer with an unequivocal, “yes”.
Has the ease with which a divorce can be obtained worked against society in general and children specifically? I am obliged to say that it does. Men and women both seem to feel little compunction about dissolving marriages and families with a readiness that is simply appalling. My own perception is that a personal vow ― as in wedding vows ― has little meaning because so few people hold their own integrity in very high esteem. Nor does society seem to punish people very much for breaching their integrity.
Atomization, urban anonymity ― whatever you wish to call this gradual process of breaking down societal cohesion ― has resulted in a culture where individual reputation and character are no longer subjected to a lot of scrutiny nor is there much emphasis placed upon moral fiber. The ascendance of rap or “gangsta” culture spells out this deterioration with brutal clarity.
latté island: … I have to admit, I can comment on almost any right-wing blog and get a fair hearing, while when I comment on a socially liberal and/or feminist blog, I do so to reach a few people, through the howls of the mob.
This is something that I have noticed as well. It is also responsible for a large part of my conversion away from Liberal politics. The amount of hysteria and shouting down that is allowed to happen in Leftist forums is an indictment of how supposedly open-minded they really are.
I have routinely encountered far more well-thought-out and cogent arguments at Conservative sites where the tenor of debate is of such consistently higher quality that I was quite unable to ignore it.
Sag:
I have enjoyed the exchange. I prefer discussions where ideas are examined and debated, rather than preached and reduced to diatribe.
Thank you. I look forward to future discussions.
Eric
@ “The position I take is that self-interest DOES indeed trump all other considerations.” – Smorgasborg. And you too, anti-natalist Nightmare (no pun intended):
It took Will Durant more than three decades to write the monumental The Story of Civilization. After finishing the ten volumes of the Story, it followed the essay The Lessons of History, which reflects both Durant’s erudition and his accumulated wisdom. I read The Lessons of History in 1996 and would like to quote some excerpts from one of the chapters, “Biology and History”. No ellipsis added between unquoted paragraphs:
/Quote:
So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. The second biological lesson of history is that life is selection. We are all born unfree and unequal. Nature loves difference. Inequality is not only natural and inborn, it grows with the complexity of civilization.
Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave man free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically, as in England and America in the nineteen-century under laissez-faire.
Utopias of equality are biologically doomed.
The third biological lesson of history is that life must breed. Nature has no use of organisms, variations, or groups that cannot reproduce abundantly. She has a passion for quantity as prerequisite to selection of quality. She does not care that a high rate has usually accompanied a culturally low civilization, and a low birth rate a civilization culturally high; and she sees that a nation with low birth rate shall be periodically chastened by some more virile and fertile group.
It is amusing to find Julius Caesar offering (59 B.C.) rewards to Romans who had many children, and forbidding childless women to ride litters or wear jewelry. In the United States the lower birth rate of the Anglo-Saxon has lessened their economic and political power. So the birth rate, like war, may determine the fate of theologies; just as the defeat of the Moslems at Tours (732) kept France and Spain from replacing the Bible with the Koran.
There is no humorist like history.
/end quote
Talking about “the empire of the Yin”, or how feminized the Western males have become…
It may be indicative of a serious blind spot here at Gates of Vienna that so few others took exception to the anti-human fanaticism exhibited by Nightmare.
Even if this world managed to rid itself of Islam and the dire peril of jihadist nuclear attacks or other types of WMD assaults, there would still remain another serious threat in the form of individuals like Nightmare.
Image someone (or a group) with such a deep seated hatred of all humanity gaining access to a pair of keys and ICBM launch codes or several drums of modified Ebola (hemorrhagic fever) virus. This sort of maniac would happily welcome unimaginable death tolls without a twinge of conscience.
Long after Islam is nothing more than a bad memory and Communism has been ground into the dust mankind will still have to beware this ultimate wolf-in-the-fold.
Just like numerous Islamic imams, those such as Nightmare prescribe suicide to so many others but, somehow, never manage to lead by example and rid our world of their morbid selves.
In a not-too-distant-future where asteroids will be steered and parked like so many rental cars and mankind has invented even more unimaginably powerful weapons, there will linger a most terrible danger in the form of those like Nightmare who are capable of terming humanity's extinction as a desirable and "moral" concept.
I suggest that now is the time to call out and denounce such individuals whenever and wherever they may surface so that no quarter is given them in civilized society. Much again, like Islam, tolerance only permits the danger to multiply.
EJGB (or was it EGJB? I forget) wrote:
"Morality, as a humanistic construct, can and should be defined as the mores and ethics which uniformly bind a society together for the common good (utility). Individual liberties - while important - mustn't contravene overall welfare and social cohesion."
This is a perfectly empty paragraph; and that may be proven by the fact that Muslims, using Islam, may say -- with perfect consistency and cogency -- exactly the same thing about their model society.
Hesperado:
In response to your critique of my statement I say -
hmmm...
Dymphna: Has it ever occurred to you that your ideas are perhaps (ahem) less criticized out of deference to the fact that Baron and you run this quite wonderful (really!) blog? Thus, perhaps you are less used to criticism. If you make a comment, be prepared to hear it criticized just like everyone else - without complaint that bona fide criticism of your idea is "hate" speech! It is quite amusing how "leftist" the various commenters on this site have sounded on this particular thread. It is the mien of the left to claim that people who disagree with them are practicing "hate speech," but I expect more from you. :)
That said, I find it totally incredulous that any woman today - whether you or any Islamic woman living in the West - would argue to eliminate women's suffrage for any reason.
The idea of women voluntarily abandoning their suffrage is so absurd that it is difficult for me to take this entire conversation seriously - even in the abstract.
If Western men are to "force" women to abandon women's suffrage in order to secure women's safe passage from Islam and its horrors, then SHAME, SHAME, SHAME on any men who would require that barter. Your mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters deserve more respect and consideration.
Egghead --
It would behoove you to read Dymphna’s comments more closely.
I just re-read all of them, on both threads. She never said she wanted to “eliminate women’s suffrage” or anything similar. She said:
“I don’t think I ever said women shouldn’t vote. In fact, I demonstrated the fact that they led the Abolitionist fight, proving once again the moral force women can be.
“What I did propose (for the purposes of discussion only) is whether or not the ‘right’ to vote wouldn’t be better based on other considerations besides being a warm body…”
This is something quite different, and even a feminist should be willing to discuss it without great rancor.
The granting of the vote to women was not an unmitigated good — few things are. But that doesn’t mean that we think it should be removed. Quite the opposite.
I know my wife, and I know her opinions, which are similar to mine. We’re both concerned with the feminization of Western culture, which is one of the major factors contributing to its imminent destruction. The issue urgently needs to be addressed, and there’s no reason to inflict the Larry Summers treatment on anyone who dares to talk about it.
@Egghead--
I find it totally incredulous that any woman today - whether you or any Islamic woman living in the West - would argue to eliminate women's suffrage for any reason.
And, in turn, I am puzzled that you were able to read ANYWHERE IN MY WORDS the idea that women's suffrage should be limited or rescinded.
Yes, my original sin was being ironic & flip at first in my reply to Takuan when I said I "couldn't wait for the return of the patriarchy"...or WTTE. I presumed our readers, familiar with my ideas, would "get" the level of absurdity in what was intended as a throw-away line, a joke. Obviously I was mistaken.
However, I spent a much longer time explaining why women had *earned* the vote (in the US, anyway) by being the moral force behind Abolition. One shouldn't have to earn it, but that experience prepared those courageous women for the long slog toward gaining universal suffrage.
After pointing to their valiant efforts, I SUGGESTED that we might be better off reframing the discussion, moving away from gender "rights" and toward a more rational focus on economic bases in earning citizenship. It was simply an off-the-cuff thought experiment.
IOW, what I wrote was a description of a possible alternative to our current requirements for voting. The franchise as it stands now descends all the way to the grave and beyond. Our electoral privileges have been trashed and debased. Thus the need for new foundations seems obvious.
There is a big difference between descriptive versus normative speech. Look at what I really said, not what you say I wrote. I prescribed no course of action, and no-freaking-where did I remotely even imply that women shouldn't have the vote. You inferred a great deal that doesn't exist except in your assertions.
What I was suggesting -- that we look at new ways of awarding the privileges of citizenship - has been done by others. An economic qualification for voting rights is worth consideration, if only because our culture, for better or worse, has an economic basis and at least some of the attendant consequences would serve us well.
When Queen Margrethe of Denmark wrote her autobiography a few years ago, she made this suggestion in setting up guidelines for future immigration. She thought people coming into her country
ought to have job skills and money enough for housing, and they ought to learn the language. She wanted to limit "spouse" citizenship to those (mostly women) from the old country to a minimum age of 24. She also admitted she’d been “lazy” about thinking thru the effects of immigration.
Her ideas were the origin for my own musings.
I won't permit further comments distorting what I say. There is a standard of truth and integrity at stake here, and I refuse to be further bullied, to be assigned words or beliefs that have never been mine.
This persistent attack based on fallacies is calumny. Any further episodes will be treated as such.
==
N.B. You haven't been reading my comments for any length of time if you believe that people hold back in their criticisms. In fact, this is the first time in six years (outside the fever swamps of LGF) that a would-be critic put words in my mouth. I'm quite capable of being hoist by my own petard; I don't need people to make stuff up for me.
"What I did propose (for the purposes of discussion only) is whether or not the ‘right’ to vote wouldn’t be better based on other considerations besides being a warm body…"
Excellent idea. If we're going to base voting rights and representation for Congressional apportionment on, say, reciprocity instead of mirror-fogging, what's a worthwhile criterion? What kind of investment in society and its future should be required to have a say about its path?
Excellent idea. If we're going to base voting rights and representation for Congressional apportionment on, say, reciprocity instead of mirror-fogging, what's a worthwhile criterion?
---
The first step would be to increase the voting age so that it is back to what it was before 1972 (21). In fact, I would increase it to 22-24, as that is when most young people start their careers. Exceptions would be made for active military personnel who could vote at 18 (so no one would be faced with having to die for their country before having a say in how it is governed.)
Those receiving public assistance would not be able to vote until they had a job or other source of non-governmental income.
Proficiency in English would also be required. Voters would have to prove that they could read the voter form before being allowed to vote. (Not sure how this could be enforced.)
Citizenship: For immigrants, I would limit the franchise to the third generation (as is done in Mexico.) This is because most immigrants tend to have divided loyalties and also tend to favor open borders (so that they can bring in more of their relatives and co-ethnics.) Obviously, no non-citizen voting, no felons voting, and no dual citizenship allowed.
OT but sort of relevant to the earlier discussion about divorce: the divorce rate in Saudi Arabia is significantly higher than in the US:
http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article300603.ece
62 percent! What hypocrites. Their imams are always slamming the West's "immoral" lifestyles.
Baron and Dymphna: I am glad that BOTH of you have taken the time to clarify your true feelings about the right of women to suffrage.
Re-read the ladies' comments on the two threads in question. I sincerely believe that, based on your own words and your deafening silence to the comments of others, quite a few commenters here were confused (and thus dismayed) about your opinions about the issue of women's suffrage.
Dymphna, I believe that you can clarify your thoughts without 1) twisting my words and intent (oh yes, you did, think robots), 2) threatening to take your proverbial marbles and go home from the thread discussion, 3) accusing me of distorting your words, 4) calling me names like bully, or 5) threatening to ban me (because that is the definite idea that I got from your last comment). Have you heard of the concept of "fair fighting"?
Fair Fighting
Before I wrote my last comments, I did re-read ALL of BOTH of your comments on BOTH threads. I am of the opinion that it would have been to BOTH of your benefit to clarify your true feelings about the right of women to suffrage much earlier in the discussion. Your previous comments were too oblique to be understandable. Your present comments are clear.
You can choose to displace your anger to me for being confused; but, in this case, you did indeed hoist yourselves by your own petards. Oh well! Hopefully, we will all live to "fight" another day! Otherwise, I still wish you all the best. :)
Egghead --
I am of the opinion that it would have been to BOTH of your benefit to clarify your true feelings about the right of women to suffrage much earlier in the discussion.
I don't agree. Much of the time it is not to my benefit to reveal my opinion concerning what everyone is arguing about.
I value the role that my avatar (Otto von Bismarck, that is) assumed: the "honest broker". I have opinions on some things, and on others I do not. Sometimes I have good reason to express the opinions I have. Sometimes I have various reasons not to express them, and one of those reasons is to let the debate proceed without having the host's muddy boots traipsing around in it, interfering with what our guests have to say.
I voiced my opinion on women's suffrage when it became plain that the situation was getting out of hand.
I don't like to try to make other people agree with me; it's fine with me if they don't. Then I can listen and learn a different point of view, and sometimes change my own mind as a result.
Queen can testify the fact that she and Conservative Swede changed my mind on several things a few years back. I disagreed with them at the time, but I listened carefully, thought about it for a while (months, in some cases), and realized they were right.
I hate being wrong. So now I keep my mouth shut more of the time, to make it less likely that anyone will catch me out in an error.
Sagunto: You are too kind.
Recently, Baron posted an excellent article by Kresten Schultz-Jørgensen that explained how to reason:
"That effort includes, first and foremost, the demand for logic. Are you able to think in a stringent way? Then comes the demand to think freely — do you have the gifts of doubt and curiosity? Next comes the demand to set forth arguments and carry a burden of proof, and the demand for appropriate context."
"Well, and then the subjectivity of your own arguments: Why — and now we’re back to Socrates — why do you really hold the opinion that you do? All of these points should be lucidly clear before you throw your judgments of value in the face of everyone else."
Sagunto: When I mentioned the murky logic of the two recent threads, I felt that some commenters discussing whether men or women are smarter and the right of women to suffrage were simply expressing personal opinions rather than using logical reasoning.
Starting with Pandora's opening her nasty box and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, men have blamed women for introducing evil to the world.
Blaming the Yin feminization of Western culture for the import of Islam is more of the same - just blaming women in particular for the flaws of humans in general - and then using that blame to deny women rights which would enable women to mitigate whatever evil is du jour.
Summary: Women are always a convenient scapegoat for the world's problems.
Baron, I capped the parts of your initial essay that concerned me below:
"I’ll just put in MY OWN TWO CENTS before the food fight starts in earnest."
"ALL THE RIGHTS WOMEN HAVE or might want to have — or the rights held by anyone else, for that matter — do not trump the rights of the larger community. When any given personal right, if fully exercised by large numbers of people, threatens the existence of the community or the culture at large, then that right is FORFEIT."
"In the case of WOMEN, such issues might include VOTING, abortion, contraception, etc."
"the feminization of Western culture...is one of the major factors contributing to its imminent destruction"
Bingo!
Egghead -
I read the article, you mean this one I trust?
Your quotation is probably the only good thing to take home from that piece. Otherwise - for reasons I hope to have explained well enough - I thought it to be not that good an article. The author reminded me of the school director in Amsterdam, who blamed Twitter instead of the (intra-)Islamic violence, when a Moroccan girl put a "slutty" picture of herself on the internet.
And yes, women have been scapegoated, and men have been, just the same. Scapegoating is always a game that collectivists of all stripes love to play. Above all - and in these threads yet again, freedom a the free exercise of natural unalienable rights have been the scapegoat. I hope to have shown that so-called "free speech" and "autonomy" advocates, like Mill, have been instrumental in destroying our traditional ideas about freedom. His agenda of progressivist "free"-thinking was to ultimately destroy organized tradition and religion.
Furthermore, I thought it might be wise to warn that the immense power of the state (also a replacement state) is very much like the Ring. It makes the (sacred) person disappear and therefore it shouldn't be used, not even "from a desire to do good" (think of my oft used Chesterton quote here), for it will set us all on the road to serfdom. Like we've been this past century.
Kind regs - and stay well - from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Does anyone have any input on the franchise reform proposals I put forward last night?
This "he said, she said" line of reasoning is getting us nowhere.
---
Regarding the "feminization" of Westen men, does anyone have a definition of Western masculinity that does not rest on denigrating and demeaning women?
Because most of those with concerns of this nature do seem to have opinions of that nature (i.e. Rollory's patronizing and insulting "women are good. . .at a lot of little things" etc.)
Queen -
Don't know if I'm your guy, but let me try. How about:
The power not to give birth, seeking solace - and subsequently canalized, in ventures best described as "causa sui" projects.
I would gladly enter in discussions whenever concern is voiced that these projects have gradually been cast in the mold (or should that be: mould?) of the deranged altruism spread through progressive philosophy and politics. I would consider progressive "care" by an overbearing govt. as a possible symptom of "feminization", though I must add that for me, this in no way bears any relationship to the individual rights of women. It is a concept that I'm willing to discuss only as a particular manifestation of progressivism, not in the dubious light of senseless "gender wars" that are of no interest to me. For freedom's sake, I am opposed to enslavement, that's why I oppose Islam; that's why I oppose the "liberating" welfare state.
Just my two eurocents, from Amsterdam, kind regs,
Sag.
Egghead --
You neglected to capitalize the key word there: "MIGHT". Some people might suggest that women's right to vote should be withdrawn. I am not one of them, but other people certainly hold that opinion -- that's the reason why this thread was requested in the first place.
If I had meant that I thought women should lose the suffrage, I would have said so.
As for the feminization of the culture -- that is a dangerous and destructive process. It began long before women had the vote, and was initiated by men -- witness Bismarck's welfare state in Imperial Germany.
If you don't see that feminization of Western culture is destroying that same culture, then you and I see the world very differently, and hold different opinions about what is happening.
The current imbalance of yin will correct itself, perhaps catastophically. Whatever is contrary to the Tao cannot last long.
Sag, thanks for your comments. You make a good point of seeing the welfare state in that light, as a "nanny state." I guess that could be seen as an aspect of "feminization."
Regarding voting, even though you are a Euro and voting differs for you in significant ways, we in the West are all still members of the modern welfare state and all still facing the same basic issue: the fact that tax consumers are using the power of the voting box to fleece tax producers. With the former starting to outnumber the latter, especially because we all massively import tax consumers from the Third World. (Sweden's ruling elite recently voted to provide all welfare state entitlements to not just legal immigrants, but to illegal ones as well.)
Queen -
Glad to be of some service ;-)
And yes, you nail it squarely when you say that:
"we in the West are all still members of the modern welfare state and all still facing the same basic issue: the fact that tax consumers are using the power of the voting box to fleece tax producers."
I am so glad to see that you just outlined - in a nutshell - the actual classical liberal theory of class struggle. Marx nicked it (of course, progressives always steal), without the reference to one crucial part: the role of state power as the sought for looting force. So it indeed boils down to rolling back the false and distracting ideas about class struggle and revisit the time honoured notion that, throughout history, the main bone of contention was always between a class of non-producing* people (and their clients), using the power of the state, in order to loot the producing people. In fact, much of the French "revolution" was about a large part of the populace demanding access to the looting business, i.e. get govt. and administrative jobs, which they did (the "new bourgeoisie" that Alexis de Tocqueville refers to in his "Recollections").
The common good in this respect, is always a vehicle for state control (and looting). We should not be fooled into thinking - as some in the CJ-initiative do - that we can trust state worshipping bureaucrats to "reform Islam". They are enslavers themselves who suffer from so much hubris that they think they're capable of doing a better job than their Muslim clients.
But perhaps, just maybe.. Islam may do what critics of the welfare state couldn't: creating more and more dissent among the general populace because the unholy alliance is becoming too obvious to be missed, even by those on a diet of NYT and CNN.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
* "producing", not to be taken literally through some fallacious labour theory of value.
Baron, I think you are framing the whole debate on "the feminization of the West" the wrong way.
The way to get women to vote against Islam and multuculturalism etc. is not to take the vote away from us, but to point out that the importatation of misogynist cultures into Western lands via mass immigration is A VERY BAD DEAL FOR WESTERN WOMEN. (And ALL non-Western cultures are misogynist by Western standards.)For me it's the foremost women's rights issue of our time. The age of consent in Mexico and El Salvador is 12. Any mom with a daughter that age who's walked her child in front of a phalanx of men of that ethnic group knows the score. Ditto the mothers of the 11 and 12 year olds being targeted by Muslim rape gangs in Britain. THIS IS A WOMEN'S RIGHTS ISSUE LIKE NO OTHER.
There is no way the multi-culti feminists can blunt this argument. You simply state, again and again, "Do you think that the importation of misogynist cultures is good for Western women? Do you think that a macho Mexican peasant man who's been raised to think that a 12 year old CHILD is a "woman" will suddenly turn into an Alan Aldaesque lamby pie just because he's suddenly been deemed an 'American'?"
This argument will draw MILLIONS of women to our cause. But if you frame it in the unpleasant terms of "we need to punish the Western women for not producing enough babies" then you will just succeed in pushing more women into the arms of the worldview of the multiculti feminists.
The importation of misogynist cultures into the West is the issue, not "feminization" of the West.
Okay, I posted the above multiple times, please delete the dupes when they show up.
Having a serious problem with posting issues.
Egghead wrote:
t is the mien of the left to claim that people who disagree with them are practicing "hate speech,"...
I too have noticed this rather neurotic behavior from too many of those in the anti-Islam movement. It is important to add, though, that it is not manifested merely by recourse to the hyperbole of mischaracterizing one's interlocuter's words as "hate speech", but can take milder forms which nevertheless partake of the same neurosis that reflects a curious inability to register criticism of one's ideas without taking it personally and then, sometimes, derailing (or tending to derail) the discussion onto a level where personal pique is inappropriately given center stage.
While the most egregious perpetrators of this penchant are Robert Spencer and Lawrence Auster, many others exhibit varying degrees of same. It is not only pointless, curious and annoying; it is also counter-productive.
latté island: It also concerns me that so many people seem to equate homosexuality with the ridiculous extremism of today's gay rights movement.
For some sort of explanation, look no further than my own previous comments about women and Islam.
Just as women have a fundamental obligation to protest and assist in the defeat of Islam's attempts at imposing global shari'a law, so do ordinary gays have a moral obligation ― if only to themselves and how they are perceived ― to protest the distorted and harmful message of their radical counterparts.
Instead, much as with the legendary "moderate" Muslim, we see supposedly moderate gays remain largely quiescent regarding the anti-family views and derogatory attitude towards heterosexuals so commonly displayed by radical gays.
Why not come forward to repudiate these divisive and negative messages? It must be rather apparent by now just how badly the larger Muslim community tars itself by remaining so deafeningly silent on the matters of global terrorism and shari'a. Ordinary gays ― for whom remaining closeted should really not be much of an excuse any longer ― need to avoid this same public pitfall and voice some harsh criticism of the radicals in their midst.
I still contend that a far more serious issue is that of women continuing to ignore the obvious travesty that Islam's purdah represents, be it in Islamic countries or as it is imported and practiced here in the West. Women are a much larger portion of the population than gays and have the power to alter much of public policy or perception about Islam in ways that males cannot.
Why that is and the entire conundrum of Western males being pilloried for the wrongs of the global male community and then placed in double jeopardy with White man's burden as will left for another time.
Dymphna was quoted in a needlessly heated exchange between herself, Baron and Egghead:
“What I did propose (for the purposes of discussion only) is whether or not the ‘right’ to vote wouldn’t be better based on other considerations besides being a warm body…”
If by this proposal Dymphna is proposing society treat women as simply human without any "special" rights, one wonders whether (and makes the educated guess that) Dymphna and Baron believe that women and men are intrinsically different and that it is precisely the ideologically thorough equalizing tendency of Feminism -- by mandating we ignore those differences -- which has done much cultural damage. If so, it's a having-your-cake situation:
Either women are to be accorded the same rights simply because we deem them to be the same as men; or because we want to extend them "special" rights because they are different. One cannot (at least logically) have it both ways.
Ironically, this same having-your-cake problem seems to be shared in a mirror image by the feminists in this regard; and both sides, I imagine, would deny the problem.
Queen --
I don’t know who you’re arguing against, but it’s not me. I don’t want to “take the vote away from” women. I’ve never argued that, except maybe facetiously, and certainly not in these two threads.
This was simply a topic brought up by other people, and one which I earnestly attempted to avoid involvement with.
My main point was (and still is) that no right can be considered sacred if it demonstrably leads to the destruction of the society which permits it. This seems a no-brainer to me, but others seem to disagree.
I’ve never said that “we need to punish the Western women for not producing enough babies”. I don’t know where you get these enquoted phrases, but I am certainly not the source.
I generally agree with you in what you say, so I don’t see what the issue is.
When I mention the “feminization of culture”, I’m referring to the current ascendance of cultural traits that are commonly considered feminine. They include:
* The requirement that nobody be excluded from anything.
* The demand for “fairness” in all human activities, public and private.
* The general insistence that no public good can justify any amount of suffering by anyone.
* The institutionalization of the forced sharing of private assets, a.k.a. socialism.
etc., etc.
These feminized values were first instituted by men well over a hundred years ago, so they are not an exclusively female preoccupation, even if they are commonly considered to be traits that are normally held by women.
Takuan has rightly characterized these trends as an “excess of yin”, but that description is opaque to readers who have little familiarity with traditional Chinese philosophy and theology. Hence the “feminization of the culture”.
If you can think of a better phrase, and if I think it will resonate effectively, I’ll adopt it instead.
Baron, thank you for the kind response. You are right: you did not argue for taking the vote away from women, but others did, and when I wrote "you" I was talking "you" in a general sense, not a specific one. Sorry for the misdirect; I was getting frustrated with my inability to post and was typing and writing very fast.
It can't be denied that we seem to some WN-type guys here who seem pretty upset that Western women are not producing enough babies (Chechar, Sieyo and Rollory, for example). But I think they are going the wrong way about making the argument.
If they want us to have more babies, point out that if we lose the demographic argument, there go women's rights, for us and for our daughters and granddaughters, because of the importation of misogynist cultures. And emphasize again and again how important it is to stop the importation of misogynist cultures in the first place.
This is THE women's rights issue of our time.
---
"* The requirement that nobody be excluded from anything.
* The demand for “fairness” in all human activities, public and private.
* The general insistence that no public good can justify any amount of suffering by anyone.
* The institutionalization of the forced sharing of private assets, a.k.a. socialism."
--
Agree totally that these are bad developments that often work against the social contract to a deletrious effect.
No argument there.
For example, lowering firefighter or police examination standards for women and/or certain "minorities" to get the property "diversity" mix. If this results in poorer public services, EVERYONE loses, including the women and "minorities" who are supposed to be helped by this.
This is an argument that needs to be made again and again. Individuals may come out ahead by lowering standards, but in the long run EVERYONE loses.
A Machiavellian strategy of implementing a one world order, would take a shape that looked to be of feminine quality in origin but might not be such in actuality. Although subterfuge can be related to weakness and a femimine tactic as opposed to attacking head on. Perhaps identifying the things that we think bear the birth marks of femininity in our own culture in its response towards Islam would be helpful. There are things that might bear a deceptive resemblance to womanly meekness but are not. Does effeminancy count as coming from women? Are there not other causes? Could we be confusing docility with femininity? Another idea for the cause of our seeming paralysis might be a confusion of signals in our culture -- " it was the best of times, it was the worste of times". Like the famous immortalized canines of psychology books we are both trained and conditioned directly and indirectly through custom and nature to both heel and sit still -- in effect to deny ourselves action. We men have been subjected by unseen master forces and the part of a male slave is the same as a feminine one they both sit still and follow orders. This whole thing could be cast into a master slave dialectic as well or a general male and female order of principles, both saying similar things. We cannot change the fact that women will usually be associated with a feminine,inferior, weak or slave principle, not on a individual basis or even realistically but rather as a form of communication and literary technique to capture ideas and present them in word pictures. This language most probably is male dominated and reveals a fact of nature and male psychology. Men do assess women as weak or weaker and importantly as non threatening.
Femininity is a gracefulness a beauty and attractiveness for men. It is generally gentler, softer, and submissive unless infected with a meme virus.
But beside the Western effeminate feminine principle and Islamic masculine principle and knowing what happens in Islam when those two meet. Is there not also something seemingly shut off or should I say cut off. When I ponder it it still brings me back to the idea that when we were more dominant, fierce, militant, and proud as a civilization we were more of a male dominant society, full of immigrants of Old World views, one in which children obeyed their elders, in essence more authoritarian but in a social and familial way not political. In that sense we were closer to that which mirrored the same in Islamic society. While that doesn't change the fact that Islam is evil for us and every non Muslim. We had some "barbaric" ways left in us to do combat and extract respect. My point is, we can learn from our enemy and see ourselves clearer in both past and present. There may be something in nature and society which you cannot breakdown, separate and atomize but which are, as they say in the ID movement, irreducibly complex.
A Machiavellian strategy of implementing a one world order, would take a shape that looked to be of feminine quality in origin but might not be such in actuality. Although subterfuge can be related to weakness and a femimine tactic as opposed to attacking head on. Perhaps identifying the things that we think bear the birth marks of femininity in our own culture in its response towards Islam would be helpful. There are things that might bear a deceptive resemblance to womanly meekness but are not. Does effeminancy count as coming from women? Are there not other causes? Could we be confusing docility with femininity? Another idea for the cause of our seeming paralysis might be a confusion of signals in our culture -- " it was the best of times, it was the worste of times". Like the famous immortalized canines of psychology books we are both trained and conditioned directly and indirectly through custom and nature to both heel and sit still -- in effect to deny ourselves action. We men have been subjected by unseen master forces and the part of a male slave is the same as a feminine one they both sit still and follow orders. This whole thing could be cast into a master slave dialectic as well or a general male and female order of principles, both saying similar things. We cannot change the fact that women will usually be associated with a feminine,inferior, weak or slave principle, not on a individual basis or even realistically but rather as a form of communication and literary technique to capture ideas and present them in word pictures. This language most probably is male dominated and reveals a fact of nature and male psychology. Men do assess women as weak or weaker and importantly as non threatening.
Femininity is a gracefulness a beauty and attractiveness for men. It is generally gentler, softer, and submissive unless infected with a meme virus.
But beside the Western effeminate feminine principle and Islamic masculine principle and knowing what happens in Islam when those two meet. Is there not also something seemingly shut off or should I say cut off. When I ponder it it still brings me back to the idea that when we were more dominant, fierce, militant, and proud as a civilization we were more of a male dominant society, full of immigrants of Old World views, one in which children obeyed their elders, in essence more authoritarian but in a social and familial way not political. In that sense we were closer to that which mirrored the same in Islamic society. While that doesn't change the fact that Islam is evil for us and every non Muslim. We had some "barbaric" ways left in us to do combat and extract respect. My point is, we can learn from our enemy and see ourselves clearer in both past and present. There may be something in nature and society which you cannot breakdown, separate and atomize but which are, as they say in the ID movement, irreducibly complex.
Baron, thank you for the kind response. You are right: you did not argue for taking the vote away from women, but others did, and when I wrote "you" I was talking "you" in a general sense, not a specific one. Sorry for the misdirect; I was getting frustrated with my inability to post and was typing and writing very fast.
It can't be denied that we seem to some WN-type guys here who seem pretty upset that Western women are not producing enough babies (Chechar, Sieyo and Rollory, for example). But I think they are going the wrong way about making the argument.
If they want us to have more babies, point out that if we lose the demographic argument, there go women's rights, for us and for our daughters and granddaughters, because of the importation of misogynist cultures. And emphasize again and again how important it is to stop the importation of misogynist cultures in the first place.
This is THE women's rights issue of our time.
---
"* The requirement that nobody be excluded from anything.
* The demand for “fairness” in all human activities, public and private.
* The general insistence that no public good can justify any amount of suffering by anyone.
* The institutionalization of the forced sharing of private assets, a.k.a. socialism."
--
Agree totally that these are bad developments that often work against the social contract to a deletrious effect.
No argument there.
For example, lowering firefighter or police examination standards for women and/or certain "minorities" to get the property "diversity" mix. If this results in poorer public services, EVERYONE loses, including the women and "minorities" who are supposed to be helped by this.
This is an argument that needs to be made again and again. Individuals may come out ahead by lowering standards, but in the long run EVERYONE loses.
Egghead: It is the mien of the left to claim that people who disagree with them are practicing "hate speech,"…
There is a relatively simple explanation for the tendency that Liberals have to engage in this sort of forensic misdirection.
So-called "hate crimes" and "hate speech" are an egregious redistribution of judicial wealth for the entitled class (or classes). Read: minorities, women, gays, etc.
This is quite similar to way that Affirmative Action was an actual redistribution of economic wealth (or opportunity) to much of the same entitled class.
Liberals and Leftists in general tend to identify themselves rather strongly with minority causes. The rebranding of Communism as "Social Justice" is a particularly glaring example of this.
Liberals and Leftists do not tend to do well on a level playing field because of how a substantial portion of their intellectual capital tends to rely upon Magical Thinking™.
If the pitch is not tilted by such artifices as "hate speech" or "minority rights" then their arguments lose a lot of substance. There is a childish subset to wishful or Magical Thinking that should not be ignored as it is quite instructive with respect to the behavior of said Liberals and Leftists.
It is of especial use to note how those who indulge in Magical Thinking ― as Hesperado observes ― often exhibit a:
… neurosis that reflects a curious inability to register criticism of one's ideas without taking it personally and then, sometimes, derailing (or tending to derail) the discussion onto a level where personal pique is inappropriately given center stage.
This reconciles rather well with some of the characterizations provided by the piece I referred to. From the linked article:
Perception of linear time is avoided while cause and affect and natural laws are dismissed. In this mental disorder, focus is placed upon how things “should” be, while all personal responsibility is cast aside. The self and one’s comrades are identified as above criticism. Opponents are made devils, their ideas treated as laughable, and are personally attacked as idiotic, mentally unwell people beneath contempt, simply for disagreeing with magical thinkers.
…
Liberals attacking their “enemies” is a transparent tribal element of primitive Magical Thinking mindset. According to childish leftists, simply opposing their political, cultural or religious positions creates permanent enmity. (Emotivism is the philosophical theory that one’s emotions reveal objective truth.9) In other words, the people you hate are independently wicked—which you know, since you hate them. It is a pagan rite to imprecate, excoriate and execrate one’s enemies. [emphasis added]
Queen: If they want us to have more babies, point out that if we lose the demographic argument, there go women's rights, for us and for our daughters and granddaughters, because of the importation of misogynist cultures. And emphasize again and again how important it is to stop the importation of misogynist cultures in the first place.
Le bingo.
For example, lowering firefighter or police examination standards for women and/or certain "minorities" to get the property "diversity" mix. If this results in poorer public services, EVERYONE loses, including the women and "minorities" who are supposed to be helped by this.
Et encore, le bingo.
All concerned -
I still maintain that the discussion - which now seems to have expanded from conditional voting rights for women, to conditional rights for all - is but a logical result from a certain view on "rights". A view that - to my regret, signals a departure from Natural Law tradition towards progressive "Social Contract" engineering and, indeed, possible suffering for "social cohesion". Natural rights, I repeat, are transcendent and unalienable. And please, don't misunderstand them as hailing from the perverse framework of "Human Rights", those being the basis for the multicultural entitlement-industry:"rights" in the sense of a claim to special treatment by a benevolent state. Rights that have become dependent on group-identity and circumstances as defined by the benefactor, showering these de facto privileges upon its clientèle.
The art and way in which the issue of conditional rights is set up, strangely enough follows a similar route: group membership can be damning for your "right" (that in retrospect reveals itself as a privilege) if statistical "evidence" points to a detrimental difference from a certain societal norm. This is all progressivist speak, larded with conservative sounding provisions. Population statistics are thus going to be the immanent scale that weighs for societal participation. Just like stats are used in today's welfare utopia by whatever complaining "minority" group, preferably with "ethnic" characteristics, to claim forced entry into the workforce.
Base "rights" on "merit" and what you get is not rights in the respected traditional sense, but privileges.
It may seem wise at first impulse, to act accordingly under grave circumstances, but I do hope that one essential pillar of Western Civilization isn't lost, once it has been - temporarily and under siege - discarded in favour of "social cohesion".
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Queen: … we in the West are all still members of the modern welfare state and all still facing the same basic issue: the fact that tax consumers are using the power of the voting box to fleece tax producers.
The double whammy occurs when a top tier of tax producers (the corporate oligarchy), use their influence (i.e., bribery) to persuade government officials that they should be absolved of paying even a small fraction of their proper tax burden.
When that happens (as it has), the Middle Class can bend over and kiss their butt good-bye.
Sagunto: Natural rights, I repeat, are transcendent and unalienable. And please, don't misunderstand them as hailing from the perverse framework of "Human Rights", those being the basis for the multicultural entitlement-industry:"rights" in the sense of a claim to special treatment by a benevolent state. Rights that have become dependent on group-identity and circumstances as defined by the benefactor, showering these de facto privileges upon its clientèle.
I was taught that rights are inherent and liberties are granted.
Zen -
The obvious solution (to me), is that the state isn't allowed to rob anyone, and no one is allowed to rob others through the coercive power of the state. The income tax is the US is illegal anyway.
Sag.
Sag. --
The income tax is the US is illegal anyway.
This assertion is in error: the income tax was established by a constitutional amendment (Amendment XVI) in 1913. It is quite legal.
The bureaucratic entity known as the IRS may, however, be unconstitutional, and therefore illegal. And mandating the withholding of income tax from emplyees by employers is definitely unconstitutional.
That last little bit of legerdemain is what holds the whole oppressive system together. Without mandatory withholding, the entire edifice of the welfare state in America would become unworkable.
Ordinary people only permit such outrageous looting of their private wealth because it never really reaches their pockets in the first place.
Some food for thought, the idea is not mine but Frédéric Bastiat's:
Economic freedom is based on a moral rule that - to a certain extent at least, most of us find perfectly reasonable: you have a natural right to your life and property and no one has the right to take that away.
Let me illustrate why, on a personal level, everyone seems to ascribe to that simple principle. For instance: if you'd walk into your neighbour's home and deprive him of his money at gunpoint, you would immediately (or let's hope so) be arrested as a thief. It doesn't matter what lofty things you'd promise to do with the stolen money, for whatever social good, you'd still be put away.
But now the state does that very same thing, and all of a sudden it is thought of as somehow morally acceptable. Bastiat called this "legal plunder" and he pointed at three possible routes:
1) The few plunder the many
2) Everybody plunders everybody
3) Nobody plunders anybody
Today we find ourselves in the obvious situation that everybody is seeking government assistance in trying to enrich himself at the cost of his neighbour, option number two. Unsurprisingly, Bastiat called the state "the great fiction through which everybody endeavours to live at the expense of everybody else".
So here's an idea that might be considered way out there: what if we chose option three and decide to stop robbing one another? Why not stop doing things we wouldn't dream of doing ourselves that suddenly become morally acceptable if some collective body invokes the magic words "public policy"?
See how this argument also applies to the whole "rights" discussion?
Queen -
My take on the whole quota thing, especially applied to whatever workforce, would follow in the wake of my economic freedom argument. Labour contracts should be a matter of two parties, employer and employee, with no external party involved forcing quota into the equation. Of course one of the participating parties could be the govt. itself. All the more reason to make it and its scope as small as possible.
Baron -
I don't think I'm in error on the US income tax. Should I elaborate or just leave it at this point, as an aside? Wouldn't want to digress to far from the topic at hand.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Sag. --
Yes, please elaborate.
Do you believe the 16th Amendment was somehow illegally drawn up and/or ratified?
Is the current tax code as written in some way illegal or unconstitutional?
Are the IRS' methods of collection illegal? (Some of them most certainly are.)
Or is the whole system of income taxation morally repugnant and not in the best interests of the country? (I think this is true.)
Baron -
Perhaps I can be the harbinger of some good news ;-) That is, depending on how much you have wasted on government "services" already of course. I'll try to keep this as short as possible.
To me, it seems the answers to both of your questions 3 and 4, follow from what I have to say about the first two (and from what I have said already about the moral status of govt. intervention in general, and with regard to taxation in particular).
Let me try to answer the first two of your questions in one go, so here goes.
First off, the income tax is unconstitutional because it is a direct unapportioned tax, not in line with what the US Constitution demands. Your Constitution says that a tax must be apportioned, if it's direct.
The US Supreme Court has ruled on several occasions - between 1916 and 1923, that the XVIth amendment conferred "no new powers of taxation" to the government (besides what the Constitution says about direct and indirect taxes and the restrictions on taxation).
In 1894, Congress tried to enact an income tax and the Supreme Court told them it was unconstitutional. In 1913 they tried again, with the same result. So the US govt. didn't have a constitutional basis for taxing the American public on their labour in 1894, and they didn't get it in 1913 ("no new power of taxation", according to the Supreme Court rulings). End of discussion. The government, requiring you to file a 1040, has been acting unconstitutional, the claim on your income has no basis in any specific law, and is thus illegal.
So, at present, there seems to be no law requiring US citizens to pay an income tax on their labour. Moreover, there has never been such a law. A lot of "tax honesty" foundations have tried to find the law that specifically requires any US citizen to pay an unapportioned tax on their income. In 2000 for instance, the "We the People" foundation issued a 50.000 dollar reward for anyone who'd be able to come up with the law. No one could, not even the (ex)-IRS experts themselves. People were put to trial for not doing their 1040 "duty", and defeated the prosecutors because no law could be shown. Joe Banister, ex-IRS agent, would be a good name to "google".
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
continued..
And before you ask:
The definition of income in the US Constitution turns on "gains" or "profits", from corporate activities. It doesn't apply to your wages or anything.
Happy 1040 ;-)
Sag.
Sag. --
The facts you list are correct.
Unfortunately, you’re making the same mistake that various presidents and the Congress have made for the last 75 years or so: you assume that the Supreme Court can override the clear meaning of the Constitution.
It cannot. If the Congress or the President disagrees with a Supreme Court interpretation, they can refuse to recognize or execute it. This has been known to happen, but it was a long, long time ago -- Andrew Jackson, iirc.
An amendment to the Constitution explicitly made the income tax possible, regardless of what the Supreme Court said later. The wording is clear.
I am aware of the movement to force the government to reveal the actual title and chapter of the US Code that implements the income tax law. Strangely enough, no one has been able to produce it — it’s very much like Barack Hussein Obama’s birth certificate in that regard.
Of course, Congress could make the whole matter moot by passing a new income tax law tomorrow, and it would be completely constitutional, imho.
But income tax withholding is clearly illegal and unconstitutional. It’s one of the reasons that makes me say that we have been governed unconstitutionally for a long time.
Unfortunately, all of this is widely perceived as the law. In that sense, nothing that the mandarins of Washington DC do is really illegal, in any practical sense. The rule of law has vanished at the federal level, so whatever they command is legal, since that is the “law” which is enforced against us unfortunate peons whose wealth is looted to line their plush chair cushions and pay for their lobster luncheons.
If the Congress says it’s the law, and the President say’s it’s the law, and no judge will rule against it, and the agents of the executive enforce it, then it’s the LAW.
We can bang our heads against this monstrosity as much as we want, but it stubbornly continues to exist.
Baron -
Thank you for your answer:
"Unfortunately, you’re making the same mistake that various presidents and the Congress have made for the last 75 years or so: you assume that the Supreme Court can override the clear meaning of the Constitution."
No mistake on my part, nor did I assume what you state in the above quote. What I do assume, is two things:
- The definition of "income" in the US Constitution is about "gain", not about wages. So the income tax doesn't concern your pay check.
- The lower courts must be in compliance with Supreme Court decisions on the subject. The Supreme Court didn't, not in any of those cases I mentioned, "override" the meaning of the Constitution, it applied the Constitution that was - and still is, indeed very clear about the powers of taxation granted to the government, as I have indicated.
My point is furthermore illustrated by the fact that, as you have signalled yourself, no one has been able to come up with the law (officials would have done so, long ago if any law actually existed) and, moreover, that many court cases have been won because the law could not be produced. In cases where people were convicted, the law wasn't produced either, so what we have here, is the use of brute force, by the "welfare" state. Plain and simple.
I'll leave this very entertaining and interesting detour at this point
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Sag. --
Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of those who interpret the law. I wish that your interpretation were the one that is currently regnant, but alas, it is not.
As I emphasized earlier, when the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Executive, the federal bureaucracy, and the officers of the law all agree on a particular interpretation, then it is the law, regardless of what ordinary mortals like me believe. Such is the case with the income tax “law”.
There are many other interpretations of the Constitution which the Congress, in its overweening arrogance, has seen fit to enact, and which the Supreme Court, from its lofty pedestal of inerrancy, has failed to strike down. The worst ones concern the Commerce Clause.
As I have said many times, we are being governed extra-constitutionally. Washington D.C. can do whatever it wants to us because American citizens have become passive and indifferent. The law is whatever the bureaucrats say it is.
That may change at some point in the not-so-distant future, but for right now, it’s still the way things are.
As a matter of interest, here is the text of the 16th Amendment:
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
That seems pretty clear to me, regardless of how it may have been interpreted later. The Congress has the power to take whatever portion of my income from me that it deems fit. And yes, I really would love to read the text of the resulting law, but when I delve into it, there are literally thousands of pages of it covering more than a century, and it is beyond my ability to decipher.
You may also be interested in this group’s analysis of the Internal Revenue Tax Code. There are plenty of statute-title-chapter references there from 1894 onwards, but it’s far too complex for an untutored citizen like me to understand.
Baron: To me, as an intelligent and educated counter-jihad and counter-New World Order woman, I find the clearly pejorative application of the term "feminization of the culture" as a putative reason for the downfall of the West to be offensive and inaccurate. The term appears to be an attempt to unfairly assign blame exclusively to women for the altogether HUMAN flaws of GREED and LAZINESS promoted by the Welfare State which you yourself maintain was "initiated by men" - to which I would add was also promoted and maintained by men.
All indications point to the fact that MEN value the Welfare State as much as, or more than, women. So, when does that MALE value for the Welfare State become assigned as a masculine value? After all, we could argue that the Welfare State is a societal manifestation of the male need or role to "protect" loved ones.
BUT, of course, the value for the Welfare State is a HUMAN value....
Egghead -
You may want to extend that list of welfare state-inspired "male needs" with the need for empire and go to war (on the behest of warmongering ladies, no doubt, but that's not the point here). The point is that, to put it in concise terms: "the welfare state is the warfare state".
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Baron: "The current imbalance of yin will correct itself, perhaps catastophically. Whatever is contrary to the Tao cannot last long."
Using your Yin/Yang metaphor: For 1,400+ years, Islam has worshipped Yang and excluded Yin. There is ZERO Yin in Islam, and yet Islam has survived and thrived for quite a long time.
The world today faces a battle of primitive tribal violence against advanced civilization - rather than a masculine versus feminine culture. If I were a Western man, I would want to be associated with civilization instead of barbarism, and I would resist associating civilization with feminization - as an insult to my masculinity.
Sagunto: Always interesting. :)
I was just sitting here thinking that the Welfare State essentially parallels polygamy in Islam. In other words, the Welfare State encourages men to have multiple female partners/families.
By assuring men that any progeny produced via any number of girls and women will be supported into adulthood, the Welfare State encourages men to reproduce.
The oft-cited (argh) biological imperative for men to "spread their seed" far and wide might indicate an inherent male stake in the Welfare State culture.
I quite liked Michael Servetus' comment that "A Machiavellian strategy of implementing a one world order, would take a shape that looked to be of feminine quality in origin but might not be such in actuality."
Do you really think that WOMEN would arrange to strip search everyone everywhere at will - or would that be MEN (generally - sorry - think about who uses pornography more - again sorry)! :)
Baron,
"In this particular case, however, I’d like to point out that an open thread on this topic was requested by a woman, whose request is reproduced in its entirety at the top."
I don't see what difference it makes whether the topic was suggested by a man or by a woman.
"Seriously — the best antidote for bad ideas is better ideas."
You're absolutely right. I stompted off and then was too tired and busy to return to the fray. And I finally posted on another thread. Like others, I've been having trouble with Blogger.
Egghead --
I’ll attempt to answer your salient points, although not quite in their exact order.
First:
…when does that MALE value for the Welfare State become assigned as a masculine value?
The welfare state was not what I was characterizing as “feminine”, but a series of general cultural traits which are commonly labeled as feminine. The welfare state partakes of some of them, but not others. For instance, the imperative for “inclusiveness” is generally considered a feminine trait, but it is not a feature of the welfare state.
In any case, I defined my terms carefully by listing specific characteristics of a “feminized culture”. Takuan’s alternative description — “an excess of yin” — is just as appropriate, but less accessible to the general reader.
If you can suggest a bettor descriptor which is brief and easily understood by most readers, I will happily employ it instead, in order that you might not be so offended.
At various points in your comment I find value judgments, subjective impressions, inferences, and other interpretations which are not inherent in what I said.
To wit:
…the clearly pejorative application…
I was not being “pejorative”, except to the extent that I think that an excess of yin is dangerous and destructive, which is indeed a value judgment. I may be wrong in my conclusions, but if I am correct, such conclusions can hardly be labeled “pejorative”.
…of the term “feminization of the culture”…
This term is explicitly defined, as I said above.
I understand that you object to it. That is not a sufficient reason for me to cease using it, unless I discover an adequate replacement, which must perform the same semantic task just as effectively with no loss of concision.
…to be offensive…
You are offended. That is well understood. But I have not been offensive.
Your being offended may indicate any number of things, of which I can obviously have no knowledge. But those things, whatever they may be, have nothing to do with my being “offensive”.
To take offense at something which was delivered without rancor and in good faith is solely the act of the offended person. Being offended is a decision made by the offendee, and not something which the person who made the statement did or caused.
…and inaccurate…
My assertions can be neither accurate nor inaccurate, since they involve a subjective evaluation of highly complex social and political phenomena, and are all open to different interpretations. They are not facts, so they cannot be inaccurate.
I defined my terms, and gave examples. You dislike one of the terms I used. Accuracy and inaccuracy have no bearing on the issue.
The term appears to be an attempt…
It “appears” to you to be something that it is not. My “attempt” does not have the intentions you ascribe to it.
You infer from my words an attempt to do something, but you are in error; you have not ascertained my intentions correctly.
…to unfairly assign blame…
“Fairness” does not enter into it. Concern with “fairness” is something I explicitly eschew.
Nor do I blame. What I describe are mass socio-political trends that have played out over the course of decades or centuries. Even if they make me angry from time to time, no “blame” is involved here.
The pond is full of algae. I blame neither the algae, the water, the nitrogen-rich fertilizer, nor the farmer. I’m just upset that the pond is full of algae.
…exclusively to women…
I not only did not assign responsibility for the things I object to “exclusively to women”, I explicitly assigned portions of the responsibility to men, especially the political leaders of the 19th century.
This part of your statement is without basis in fact.
[conclusion to follow momentarily]
[continuation]
- - - - - -
This covers the rough outline of your objections. If you continue to be offended, or hold anger, or resentment, or blame, or any other negative emotion concerning what I said, that is your choice, and yours alone.
I approach my interlocutors in this forum in good faith and with civility, and endeavor to receive what they say without rancor, even when I disagree vehemently. This behavior is not always reciprocated, but I will continue to practice it nonetheless.
Egghead -
In the final analysis, I think all of the male/female gender thing - also in the somewhat more esoteric "yin"/"yang" variety of magical experience - has been, and I repeat myself here, has been the consequence of a desire by some to follow down the road of creating some sort of CJ sub-movement (a retreating movement for sure) that i.m.o. shares many characteristics with a sect. One of the main drawbacks is, to my opinion, the apparent need for some kind of pre-selection of the ones worthy of this retreating arkian survival community.
Perhaps it is because I'm not one for the Jungian yin-yang wisdom, which is definitely not my cup of tea (might be a generational thing, I don't know, our teachers loved it). Maybe I'm being overly sceptical when I suspect a guru or prophet at work, and being very good at it, like the voice of Saruman. But if the thoroughly un-religious yin-yang dialectic signals the route to a promised CJ enclave, I will be glad to, if ever comes the time, draw my hanky and wave the chosen ones a heartfelt "fare thee well" (not including the women who choose to hold their ground to fight another day). That's my kind of women ;-)
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
berkeley --
I don't see what difference it makes whether the topic was suggested by a man or by a woman.
I mentioned that fact because you said, “Notice how few women have been commenting…”
If the sex of the commenters is salient, so is the sex of the person who seeded the thread.
When I started this thread, I simply assumed that latté island would be along momentarily to talk about the issues that induced her to request the thread in the first place.
My bad! She was not around, not until quite a while later.
I agree that the excess of virtual testosterone here might have scared off some of the dames. But the ur-men wouldn’t have scared off Ms. Island — it takes more than a few hairy slope-browed atavisms to intimidate the Lady from La-La Land. She’s a tough cookie; there’s no doubt about it.
Thanks, Baron. Just to set the record straight, this thread was also Zenster's idea. I only suggested that we skip having an introductory essay.
Zenster, you and I are in general agreement about the gay thing, but when you refer to gays, or extremist gays, attacking the family, can you and everyone else be more specific?
I sort of know what everyone means, but there are important distinctions to be made. First, the family in general has gone through a lot of changes, so straight people could also be said to be attacking the family. I think people fall back on this cliche, because gay extremists get more attention.
Some gays want to marry and have children. Some gay people already have children from their straight marriages. And so on. So, when a reference is made to gay attacks on the family, it's not always obvious to me what that means.
FWIW, I support gay marriage and gays raising children together. How is this an attack on the family? Gay marriage shouldn't threaten anyone's straight marriage, any more than straight marriage threatens gay marriage. If some people feel threatened, maybe they should ask themselves why. It's not like everyone's all of a sudden running out to marry someone of the same sex, just because it's a possibility nowadays.
Sagunto: Thanks! :)
Baron: Thanks, too. It is my opinion that we are cross-talking with very little chance of changing each others' minds on this particular topic.
We offer our opinions here in a marketplace of ideas that you (and Dymphna) graciously provide. For that, I am grateful to you both.
However, it is my sincere opinion that your use of the phrase "feminization of culture" sounds pejorative and is destructive to the larger goal of attracting increased female support to the counter-jihad movement.
latté island: Because you asked, the general idea is that the Western ideal of marriage is steeped in the Christian idea that marriage is a sacrament reserved for one man and one woman who are committed to each other for life in order to raise children for the larger purpose of creating good people/citizens - who, in turn, create a stable society.
Technically, all people are able to get married - as long as they marry one person of the opposite sex. Thus, no one is preventing gay people from getting married.
The acceptance of gay marriage changes the fundamental definition of marriage in ways that mutate to be very destructive to the overall goals of creating a stable Western society.
The same specious "civil rights" arguments used by the courts to wedge an acceptance of gay marriage into society now being used to argue for the legality of polygamous marriages as practiced by both Western Muslim immigrants and American fundamental Mormons.
Keep in mind that polygamous marriages are often incestuous marriages with much older men "marrying" underage girls and closely-related relatives - often in forced marriages arranged and approved of by the girls' parents.
In Islam, the problem extends to "temporary" marriages which are merely elaborate Imam-approved and parent-approved ruses of forced child prostitution.
For large segments of women (girls, really) locked into repressive religions, the change in the fundamental definition of marriage mutates marriage from being a Christian religious sacrament accepted by two consenting adults and recognized by the state to promote the family into merely a civil contract that might very well lead to an outcome of forced child marriage that most Westerners would consider to be a criminal act.
For large segments of men (boys, really) locked into repressive religions, the change in the fundamental definition of marriage means that much older men will "hog" all available girls and women and deprive many boys and men of the chance to marry.
In addition, everyone locked in repressive religions loses the chance for romantic love where girls and women are traded or sold by contract well before the age of consent.
Most detrimental is the war that an acceptance of gay marriage wages upon Christianity and its values.
Because the forced acceptance of gay marriage has been largely enforced by courts as a civil right, people who disagree with gay (and other flavors of) marriage are liable to be branded as practicing hate speech.
Under Obama, the current plan is to introduce some pretty radical gay and transgender sex education into the public education system in the interest of fairness.
If heterosexual sex education is to be taught, then the doctrine of fairness dictates that homosexual and transgender sex education is to be taught.
Evidently, our children are to be instructed to "experiment" with ideas and acts that will certainly concern many Christian parents.
Egghead, all of those things are a concern, but notice that you've brought in all these other things that may or may not proceed from gay marriage itself. It's not that a man marrying a man, in itself, leads to the other things, it's that authority figures who have other agendas can use gay marriage as a wedge to get those other things.
I don't think it's a good enough answer, to say that A can lead to B, C & D, so we can't have A. Are there not other ways to prevent B, C & D? than to deny people the right to A, which may be less harmful than the other things.
In addition, more inclusion of gay people and their ordinary rights, doesn't necessarily lead to teaching rather advanced and icky types of sex ed. to young children.
The argument that gay people are free to marry people of the opposite sex, I'll refer to as the Let Them Eat Cake Fallacy. Isn't marriage supposed to be about the love two people for each other? And yet you and other people who make that argument are saying that only gay people, but not straight people, should do without the love part of the relationship, in order to accommodate the needs of society.
Here's a hypothetical. Suppose Bruce and Bill want to get married. Both of them are right wing Republicans who hate the idea of radical gay sex ed in public school, and they're against Islam, polygamy, etc. They just want to get married and raise Bill's kids from when he made the mistake of marrying a woman. What's your argument against that scenario, specifically, without the other what if baggage?
Also, I'd like to point out that when people marry because it's good for society, but they're not in love, they're doing a great disservice to their spouse and children. When Bill married Jane, Jane really got ripped off, because Bill wasn't in love with her, he was only trying to fit in. Is it really fair to Jane for some gay guy to marry her, just because society expects it?
And we're only talking about a small percentage of people, anyway. If, let's say, only 2% of people would want to have a gay marriage, how would that have such a huge influence?
Also, you mentioned Christianity. Should this apply to Christians only, or everyone? Doesn't this make non-Christians a type of dhimmi?
I have heard that Obama's plan is to force ALL schools to offer gay and transgender sexual education - that means public, private and RELIGIOUS schools will be forced to teach and promote "alternative" lifestyles.
Where religion conflicts with gay marriage, religion is expected to cede to the "civil rights" of gay and transgender people and abandon any religious discrimination or judgment of gay and transgender behavior and its negative effects on society.
Thus, in a gay-accepting military, priests and pastors will be forced to perform gay marriages - or risk being brought up on charges of sexual discrimination against gays. The result is that many priests and pastors will quit military service leaving Christian military families without spiritual guidance.
latté island: You had asked how extremist gays attack the family, and I am providing you the basis for that idea - bit by bit due to Blogger limiting me severely. ARGH.
I truly am a "live and let live" person, BUT I read more and more that the extremist gays are NOT.
If accepting gay marriage in any way diminishes the status of heterosexual marriage (via the introduction of polygamy) - or my ability to freely practice Christianity - or my right to practice free speech to criticize lewd gay behavior, then it behooves me to carefully examine whether gay marriage offers tangible benefits to society.
But, your argument is still, A is bad because it leads to B.
Obama isn't pro gay. Democrats aren't pro gay. Leftists aren't pro gay. What we're seeing now is that leftists and gays are using each other. Gays are, on average, a provincial, unsophisticated, marginalized victim group. They'll latch on to anyone who will throw them a bone. This is due to historical reasons. I can go into more detail sometime, but let's keep it simple.
So what you're saying is that, merely because Obama and some elements of the gay left are colluding in some things, then gay people shouldn't have basic rights? But isn't that similar to the argument that women shouldn't vote, because woman on average, etc...
You're describing all this as a zero sum game. If gays get this, religious people lose that. True, only in the current toxic political environment. But what if gays had rights for the same reason that religious people have rights? Because they have rights. If Bill marries Bruce, no one else should lose their religious or other rights. If that happens, shouldn't we examine what caused that? Maybe not Bill and Bruce, but the people who are trying to use them, who are the same people who use Obama...at the risk of sounding Gnostic.
Some of the ideas that you raise in your comment to me are more wishful thinking than reality. :)
I listen to conservative talk radio, and the extremist trends related to gays that I mentioned are actually happening.
It IS indeed the legal imperative of a societal acceptance of one man marrying another man that is DIRECTLY enabling polygamous men to argue that if any two people can marry then any three or four or more people should also be allowed to marry.
It's essential for the Counterjihad to get clarity on these issues, and not feel threatened on so many fronts, because a few people want access to the institutions that will make them happy, for instance marriage based on love.
Why is it so essential to be fair to a small minority of people? Well, not only because it's right, but also, because resistance to it is a public relations nightmare. People have the right to their opinions about gays and whoever else they want to have opinions about, but if those opinions are allowed to dominate the counterjihad, which should be a big tent, we are losing people we need. We don't just need the 2 percent, but their friends. That's a lot of people who are going to sit this out or help the other side.
I want to discuss Pastor Terry Jones, the guy who burned the Koran recently. Good for him, not enough people like him. But before the Koran thing, he was also known for harassing the local gay mayor. So gay people, not being very sophisticated politically to begin with, think to themselves, homophobia and Islamophobia go together, it's all the fault of those right wing fundamentalists. That's as far as their thought process goes. There are exceptions, but what can you expect? The average IQ is 100, and that simply isn't enough to understand things at a higher level than, this guy burned the Koran, he harassed the gay mayor, therefore all fundies are my enemies, I'll vote for the Democrats.
We smarter people do have to help the others understand what's at stake, and we're not helping them if we don't do enough to understand social issues in a more detailed way than just, Obama is using the gays to undermine Christians, therefore gays shouldn't have rights.
If we leave it there, the ordinary people who are anti-Islam and anti-immigration will resist doing anything about it, if the leaders of the Counterjihad are content to let Terry Jones speak for them.
latté island: I am very self-aware, and I do realize the temptation to compare the situations of women's suffrage to gay marriage rights. The irony is NOT lost on me. :)
I believe that marriage is a religious sacrament between one adult man and one adult woman who both willingly consent to marry for life to raise children together.
Due to the official acceptance of gay marriage, official government forms are being changed from mother and father to partner 1 and partner 2.
I am NOT a partner. I am a wife and mother. Why is it that, when gays are allowed to marry, I am now labeled a partner instead of a wife?!
Regarding polygamy, I believe that can be managed by keeping those people out of this country. The Mormons agreed not to do that a long time ago. If there are still some who do that, that's not a reason to deny others human rights. At some point, people have to just do what's right, and if there's a downside, so be it.
It's like outlawing alcohol to protect alcoholics. Where do you draw the line? Does everyone have to live so strictly, because of the certainty that some people will go too far?
Oh, I agree with you about the "partner" language, but I don't think that's an inevitable feature of including gay marriage, it's just a lack of style on the part of bureaucrats. I'll bet anything that wasn't written by gay people. Let Bruce and Bill write the contracts, it'll be romantic.
Before I toddle off to bed now - it's very late here - I will concede that I vacillate back and forth about the issue of gay marriage (versus civil unions which protect gay couples). And, yes, I do know a couple of male gay couples - one with children and one planning to adopt children later. :)
"People have the right to their opinions about gays and whoever else they want to have opinions about, but if those opinions are allowed to dominate the counterjihad, which should be a big tent, we are losing people we need."
This raises an interesting potential dilemma:
First, it is obvious, after a few seconds of thought, that while the still inchoate Anti-Islam Movement (still inchoate in part because many within it tend to call it the "Counterjihad" movement) may require a big tent, it can't allow simply anyone and everyone in that tent (actual neo-Nazis, for example). Thus, criteria for exclusion do exist, even if they have not been thought through and/or remain in a muddle of incoherence.
Secondly, people who hold opposing views on X can still work together concerning opposition to a common danger Y. However, with this concrete example (gay rights), one or the other side (or both) may refuse to work with the other side.
Thirdly, some people's conception of the danger of Islam differs from others sufficiently to make their at least long-term cooperation a problem: for example, some in the still inchoate Anti-Islam Movement (including some in this very thread) think that Muslims and their Islam are not the primary danger but are rather tools being used by an even larger, darker danger that throbs as a Macchiavellian tumor within the West itself (and whose dangerous darkness is thought to include subverting society through "liberal" values -- including feminism, gay rights, immigration, Hollywood, cable television; etc.). Such Gnostic conspiracy theorists may be useful in limited ways, but also may themselves impede the movement and even may become dangerous not only to the movement, but to Western society in one manner or another.
And so forth.
Hesperado -
You raise some interesting points. To me, it is a question of survival first, and in that respect I'd cooperate with anyone who'd join me in the fight against Islam, and in that concrete situation I couldn't care less about their credentials. Shooting in the right direction will be my prime criterion.
Talk of the size of tents, secluded enclaves and so on, only indicates that very little is "moving", so I'll just stick with calling our gatherings online an "initiative". But as to your person, do you consider yourself to be part of a movement, inchoate or not?
And yes, I think we need a special topic on cable television, so dangerous and subversive..
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Sagunto,
With a metaphor of a foxhole being shot at, or a house burning down, it is relatively easy to determine that anyone helping with putting out the fire and shooting in the opposite direction is to be accepted without question (other than if they show blatant signs of being a double agent or psychotic in such a way as to do the opposite of helping).
The current phase of this war we are in, however, is considerably more complex; and part of its complexity involves layers and stages of readiness as well as a multitude of spheres of engagement. Last but not least, the complexity involves the fact that unfortunately the "being shot at" or "house on fire" is not so simply verifiable: it is a massively messy and complex phenomenon with a mountain of fudge factors to match the mountain of data we have on our side. (Reducing the complexity to a manageable simplicity may be appealing emotionally, and may seem cogent if framed in some kind of overarching Conspiracy, but it is, as Zenster likes to say, tantamount to "magical thinking".)
So in this actual situation we are in, there is room to discuss whom we want to ally ourselves with, and why or why not. Personally, I do tend to favor allowing in anyone who says anything approximating anti-Islamic things; my various criticisms of this, that or the other person who is approximately anti-Islam is not meant to exclude them: it is meant to improve their approach and to point out facets of the danger of Islam they may seem to be overlooking or, worse, minimizing or misconstruing.
Thus, to your question to me as to whether I consider myself in the anti-Islam movement, I would answer that anyone who is approximately anti-Islam is already in the movement. Whether and how he goes further toward the realm of expressing that approximate antipathy in various degrees and kinds of activism is another matter (one that could be enormously helped, and harnessed, were the anti-Islam movement an actual organization, rather than the rag-tag larval social process it remains).
Hesperado -
"Part of its complexity involves layers and stages of readiness as well as a multitude of spheres of engagement. [..] it is a massively messy and complex phenomenon with a mountain of fudge factors to match the mountain of data we have on our side."
You make the CJ-initiative sound almost like rocket science ;-)
It will soon be 10 years since 9/11, and many issues have been discussed by now, not once, but many times over. I can't help but detecting some repetitiveness every now and then, even in the news. We are discussing the minute and intricate details of each other's worldviews, which can be quite interesting and on occasion even entertaining (remember our peace activist, the Arafat-hugger from Israel?).
But suppose there'd be something like a virtual "workplace" on GoV, a clickable banner that would give access to a forum, where people are invited to totally dedicate themselves to come up with creative answers concerning the "what" (to do), and "how", then I'd leave the tent immediately and get to work, so to speak.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Egghead: There is ZERO Yin in Islam, and yet Islam has survived and thrived for quite a long time.
Survived? Maybe, in the same way that existence is life but not really "living". Thrived? That definition really doesn't apply.
Islam could, by and large, be eradicated in just a few short hours. That is not the hallmark of a thriving culture.
Islasm is so toxic, even to itself, that its stagnation has rendered it totally vulnerable to modern technology.
Whether it be feeling threatened by camera cell phones or at the mercy of every nuclear power on earth, that hardly qualifies as having "thrived".
As we are so much more often in agreement, I feel obliged to address your protests about the entire "feminization" label.
Previous classical arguments about the Edenic myth of Eve and the apple plus Pandora are understandably offensive. Especially when one considers that Islam used the "crime" of Eve to perpetually subdue women via purdah for all eternity. What rubbish!
That you find the; "pejorative application of the term "feminization of the culture" as a putative reason for the downfall of the West to be offensive and inaccurate", does not change how women evidence a strong preference for Socialistic states, regardless of who invented the concept.
Without the vote of non-minority American women, Obama would never have been elected to the Oval Office. Sweden, Germany and other European countries evince a strong pro-feminist orientation that equally tends to support Socialism, Political Correctness and Multiculturalism.
Are men entirely exculpated by this? In no way. Yet, there lingers a perception of women — much as with the prevalent “reverse racism” (in reality; just plain “racism”, period) shown by American Blacks — extracting paybacks against men by accepting clearly unfair or imbalanced policies and social trends.
Queen very capably pointed this out in an earlier comment:
For example, lowering firefighter or police examination standards for women and/or certain "minorities" to get the property "diversity" mix. If this results in poorer public services, EVERYONE loses, including the women and "minorities" who are supposed to be helped by this.
The advent of inexpensive, effective oral contraceptives, easy divorce and gender equality by fiat has given women an unprecedented degree of control over their lives and relationships which they have never had before in all history.
Does it mean that women were ready for this level of control and independence? Please keep in mind that nowhere am I arguing as to whether women should or should not have this control but only about if they are prepared to exercise it.
From many appearances, the answer is no. As a man, I cannot tell you how many severely confused women I have met who really, really want to have “it” but don’t have a clue as to what “it” may actually be. As in, “I really don't know what it is that I want but I sure want it!” The damage done by this cluelessness is beyond profound. Please trust me on this matter.
As a contrast, it is easy to presume that any woman participating here at Gov will have an IQ well in excess of 120 points. This does not apply to the majority of women I am referring to in my prior example and the societal mayhem that results from their indecision or confusion is horrific. I’m hoping that some other male GoV participants might check in with their own comments about my observations.
A more common form of this modern malaise is “having it all”. American women are gradually discovering that total gender equality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Enjoying the same long commutes, job-related stress, heart attack rates and so many other plagues that were once exclusively upon the male house has led more than a few women to conclude that being a mother and housewife — as opposed to superwoman — may not be so bad after all.
Too bad that The Lords of Finance™ have other plans for everyone that include economically raping us to such a point where both spouses must work just to make the house payments but that is another story.
This silence about the unpleasantries of "having it all" is something that women need to overcome if there is to be any expectation of having healthy relationships with men. Unfortunately, far too many women seem willing to put up with the discomfort just so long as they ahold of the whip.
In this same way, nowhere near enough American women are rising up in protest against the vicious and unwarranted deposing of Harvard President, Lawrence Summers, solely because of his honest and truthful recognition of gender differences in the various educational departments and post-university career paths.
This harkens back to my previous observations about the deafening silence of women in general about the horrific misogyny of Islamic shari’a law. From all appearances, it is a silence of convenience in many cases although with respect to Islam such an assessment may not apply. The alternative, however, is rather gruesome. Do women really regard Islam as a way to bring down the West’s White male dominated “system” and, therefore, remain silent about the threat of shari’a creep in order to do so?
Sadly, it simply may be a case that, once endowed with these novel and advantageous entitlements, nobody wants to relinquish them despite the recognizable harm they are doing to all concerned. This closely parallels the way non-producing tax consumers refuse to alter the usurious and ruinous legislation that unfairly deprives tax producers even as it threatens to bring down the entire system.
This takes us back to the same issues of Blacks and gays who benefit so much from the respective judicial iniquities of Affirmative Action and “hate speech” or “hate crime” legislation such that neither are willing to abandon them despite their obviously preferential or discriminatory aspects.
It’s long past tea for women to show some real respect for a “system” that — unlike very many others in all history — has taken great strides (perhaps even too great), towards creating genuine gender equality. If sticking it to men for a change remains such a high priority, prepare for some backlash and, possibly, a real reversal of fortune if Islam manages to wrest the reins from the “system”.
Baron,
You prefaced the discussion with this:
"In the case of women, such issues might include voting, . . . "
Methinks you set this up so that you could have a little fun.
Sagunto, Hesperado, and Zenster: What a complete luxury it is for you that Blogger allows you to post more than three short sentences in a single post!
Hey Hesperado: I used to be able to post longer thoughts until I began to mention RFID chips and the New World Order (NWO)! What do you make of that? Complete co-incidence, I'm sure. Ha! :)
berkeley --
Methinks you set this up so that you could have a little fun.
I don't object to a little fun, not at all. But the seed topic on the other thread prominently included female suffrage, and whether it was a good idea. That's why I listed it, because I knew it would become part of the discussion.
This may all have been a little too much fun. I don't know how much fun like this I can take!
Baron: Can you pretty please email Blogger and ask them about the posting problem that is affecting so many of your GoV commenters?
I post using TypePad if that helps.
Due to Blogger refusing to accept comments, I have lost so many time-consuming comments, and it pains me greatly.
Zenster: A plethora of evidence indicates that Islam has indeed survived and thrived to current times. The fact that Islam is a sociological virus that destroys host cultures is irrelevant to the fact that Islam is very successful at identifying and subverting host cultures that invite - rather than fight - Islamic infiltration. On with the Ummah - as Muslims like to promise infidels!
Egghead --
I'm sorry -- I've never been able to find an email address for Blogger that is read by actual human beings. The last time I had a problem, the only way that was provided for Blogger users to get help was to leave a message on the Google group for Blogger users. Fortunately, the problem eventually fixed itself.
If anybody finds what they believe is a working email address that is read by people rather than bots, please let me know, and I'll gladly use it to write and ask Egghead's question.
As a counterpoint to today:
When Muslims used to sail up the coasts of Europe kidnapping entire towns of people - sometimes as the townspeople sat in Sunday church services because it was easy to surround a full church, Muslims would take the Europeans home and force them to convert to Islam - BUT still live as Muslim slaves.
Well, European diplomats would try (and often fail) to ransom their enslaved compatriots, BUT Europeans who had converted to Islam (willingly or not - and Muslims liberally employed torture to enforce conversion) were generally abandoned. Such was the distaste in Europe for all people associated with Islam.
Nowadays, Muslims kidnap European towns in addition to townspeople. Seems successful to me - also a successful modern innovation on past piracy efforts. Now, Muslim piracy is deemed as the practice of Muslim civil rights in Europe - despite the fact that Islam is less than civil to anyone - even Muslims - and, most especially, European infidels.
Zenster: Your depiction of modern women as 1) "extracting paybacks against men," 2) "sticking it to men," and 3) "regard[ing] Islam as a way to bring down the West’s White male dominated 'system'" is dismaying. Argh!
I am a woman who talks to a lot of women, and I have NEVER heard any women speak of the goals that you mention above - in any fashion in any situation.
Most Western women (and men) simply try to get through life without conflict - particularly armed conflict.
In my opinion, women are conflict avoiders because 1) women are generally less physically strong than men, so why would women start a fight that women might lose - especially where rape is a tactic often employed in armed conflict, 2) women bear and raise children who would be threatened by Islamic violence should women speak out against Islam, and 3) women want to protect their sons (daughters, too, if Democrats have their way) who would be sent into war via a draft should women support an armed conflict against Islam.
Sagunto,
There are two distinct problems I think you are confusing:
1) the problem of the AIM (anti-Islam movement) not being effective enough
2) the problem of the West at large continuing to be slow learners along the learning curve about the problem of Islam.
As far #2 goes, that is the problem I was referring to with regard to "complexity" and "layers" etc. That problem will not go away, or become easier, merely through our impatience waving a wand and saying "Enough!"; nor will it go away through our magical re-definition of it as some sinister "globalist" cabal whom we must (and can) fight by donning Three Musketeers masks and sallying forth.
Islam is ALL about conflict - most especially armed conflict - called jihad. Violent tribal-law based Islam effectively exploits the fact that advanced civilizations are full of conflict avoiders who willingly submit to Muslim demands with the VAIN hope to avoid - or at least prolong the commencement of - the forewarned immanent armed conflict with Muslims who LIVE for armed conflict to DIE on behalf of Allah.
P.S. Immanent means inherent. For me, it also means imam-nent. Ha!
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