Contra Mozilla

Friday, August 30, 2013

Morissey vs the Moron

Ed Morissey (and the rest of the internet) performs his autopsy on the recent Slate article claiming that people who don't send their kids to public schools are morally evil:
"Benedikt’s entire argument is that non-participants in an organization ruin it by their non-participation.  It’s not the actual participants who are to blame for the institution’s failures – not the teachers, not the administrators, and not the policy-makers — but the people who avoid the failure that should be blamed.... 
Before we deconstruct the idiocies in that argument, let’s test that theory.  The worst-performing school districts tend to be those in densely-populated urban cores, where teachers routinely complain not of half-empty classrooms but of student-teacher ratios that are way too high. If Benedikt’s theory holds water, then those districts — where school choice is verboten and economic opportunities to provide alternatives are nearly as rare — should be models for educational improvement. Over the last 50 years, which direction have these schools taken?  According to every measure, it’s not the path of excellence
Even more fundamentally, Benedikt argues that parents should have the welfare of the public sector as a higher ideal than that of their own children.  So what if they get a lousy education?  Kids fifty years from now might get a better one if parents today would only sacrifice their children’s future on the altar of the Public School Gods, whose beneficence can only be derived through complete sacrifice! And speaking of the common good, exactly how does producing a few generations of mediocre-educated children improve the communities and the country as a whole?  The only way this strategy makes any sense is we aim for a future that looks a lot like the film Idiocracy."

What is it with leftist "progressives" and doubling down on abject stupidity? That the public schools are failing is basically reason to pull as many children out of them as possible. Tear them down and start a new system, preferably one in which there is some balance-of-power between parents and teachers (but not unions, which in this case are worse than worthless). Making the failure into an "education" monopoly (or, more accurately, a publicly-owned education cartel) will not result in their bettering their product (in this case, education), nor for that matter will it result in better conditions for the teachers. A vibrant (and accessible) private/charter/homeschool system which exists as an alternative to the failing public schools is a boon to those parents who do care about their children's education.

Slate-fest Hate-fest Hosted by Ace

Ace is doing a Slate-hatefest, and it is awesome.It begins with, "Slate, the Amateur Online Webzine Specializing in Hit-Trolling and Outrage-Fishing: First in a Series." Opening line: "Well, it looks like the Washington Post was just so many chains holding back the Mighty Joe Young that is Slate. Because they're now parading their naked id in public, in all its stupid, ridiculous, laughable, sub-retarded inglory." We then continue with "Slate, the Group Blog That Troll-Baits With Provocative Stupidity: Second in a Series," and finally end with the real doozy post: "Slate, The Blog That Trolls Its Own Readers, Last in a Series."
"I'm going to digest this rather than quoting it: It's the straighforward proposition that if the state compels you to put your child in a horrible school, you will have skin in the game, an investment in the system, and then will in turn forced to vote the way the Teachers Unions want you to, and this will make Skoolz Better, or something. 
Although she does specifically say she doesn't want to ban schools; she just wants to make the moral case why you're horrible if you attempt to educate your children.... 
I'm omitting something here. You can check the article for her exact words. She sneers off the idea of religious reasons outright, but then says wanting your kid to go to a school which is not horrible is a worthy impulse in and of itself, but that's all the more reason to send your kid to a horrible school. 
Here it comes. Here's the part where she starts saying -- and she really does say this; I won't be paraphrasing, but quoting -- that she went to terrible public schools and learned (by her accounting) almost nothing, which is precisely why all kids must be forced to go to public school."

Saddly, I've seen this argument mad before by real live people, and not just the leftbots who propagandize for Slate/Gawker/MSNBC.


Thursday, August 29, 2013

Repent or You Shall Be "Rehabilitated"

And by "Rehabilitated," I mean brainwashed. That's right, Oregon's Labor Commissioner (a.k.a. a rogue low-level employee of the department of labor in Oregon) is saying that the owners of the Oregon bakery which refused service to a gay "marriage" (isn't that still technically illegal in Oregon?) ceremony should be "rehabilitated." We are seeing Christianity and Christian morals slowly turned into something which is treated as a mental disease. God help us.

More Bad News on the Homosexualist Front

Not to pile on too many posts on the topic of homosexualists and the gay agenda front of the culture war, not to mention kick the folks like Bottom who want to surrender to them, but there is some more bad news on this front. Some judge from Massachusetts has decided to allow a lawsuit to go forward against an Evangelical pastor for committing a "crime against humanity." His crime: speaking out against the gay lifestyle. And people laughed at Scalia when he said that we would be labelled "enemies of the human race."

I will grant that the situation in Uganda is also not good, that it is too far to the opposite extreme of hatting the sinners and not just the sin, but still, this is a case which ought to have been thrown out:
Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) accuses Lively of inciting “persecution” through public speaking and advising Ugandan leaders who introduced legislation against homosexuality. SMUG advocates for legal and social acceptance of lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. It opposes legislation to strengthen anti-homosexuality laws. 
The lawsuit describes several events in Uganda, such as a raid of SMUG’s office. Lively is not mentioned a “single time within the many pages of the complaint that describe” those events, said Liberty Counsel, the law firm representing Lively.
I'm hoping this is a case of satire or parody being passed off as news, but I'm doubting we will be so lucky. Meanwhile, homosexuals are continuing to become a most protected (though least endangered) class in America, to the extent that merely speaking out against homosexuality (the action) is now be considered a crime. I'm not so optimistic as pastor Lively's attorneys that this will come back to bite the homosexualists: my best hope is that the pastor won't be charged with anything.


Wednesday, August 28, 2013

On Hitting Bottom: Some More Reactions

A couple more reactions on Joseph Bottom.

First, on the National Review site, J.D. Flynn gives arguably the most charitably kind piece I've yet read on this which still conveys a sense of taking the Church's opposition to "gay marriage" seriously:
If Bottum had pointed out only that the fight seems largely over, most Catholic leaders might have quietly agreed.

But Bottum didn’t stop there. Instead he said that “same-sex marriage might prove a small advance in love in a civilization that no longer seems to know what love is for.”

I don’t know whether Joseph Bottum believes that a falsehood such as same-sex marriage can advance truth, or charity, or goodness. I doubt it. His mind is too sharp for that, and too well formed. I do know that most Americans would agree with him — that same-sex marriage is here to stay. And that while we still argue, other battles — most particularly the irreducible moral battle over abortion — rage on.

Joseph Bottum knows that without a foundation of truth, laws against abortion are a faint hope. He knows that we order our common life to natural law in order to protect the unborn, and the disabled, and the elderly. That same-sex marriage will lead only to greater injustice.
He concludes that Mr Bottom is haunted by the apparent cries of those "hurt" by this fight, and so turns his back on it. He "tramples the fumie," that is, he turns his back on the good (if to him abstract) fight, which is to say that he turns his back on Truth (again, if abstractly). This is a mistake, though Mr Flynn conveys a sense of sympathy to those who are tempted in this way, and prays that we will not all be so tempted, or at least that we will not succumb to that temptation.

Meanwhile, Dr Edward Feser responds to Joseph Bottom's article.
If what Bottum means here is that the jurisprudential arguments that have won the day in recent decisions are obviously compelling ones, then as Matthew Franck says, this is simply a “howler.”  But perhaps what Bottum means -- given the qualifier “available today” -- is that the despotic legislating-from-the-bench that has become the trump card of even “conservative” justices like Roberts and Kennedy essentially makes a victory for opponents of “same-sex marriage” impossible.  Maybe so, and maybe not.  But such an argument would in any case prove too much.  It would “justify” caving in not only on “same-sex marriage,” but also on abortion, health care policy, and pretty much everything else.  It amounts to a recommendation that judicial despotism not be resisted if the despots are sufficiently ruthless.  What is conservative, Catholic, or even remotely sane about that? ...
He adds that the clergy sex scandals have undermined the Church’s moral authority on matters of sex anyway.  Perhaps Bottum would also have advised the early Christians to just lighten up and offer a little incense to Caesar -- the young people, after all, couldn’t see what the big deal was, and anyway all that martyrdom stuff was just making Christians look like fanatics.  Perhaps he would have told Athanasius to knock it off already with the Trinitarianism, since it was just alienating the smart set.  Besides, most of the bishops had caved in to Arianism, so that the Church lacked any moral authority on the subject.  And maybe Bottum would have advised the Christian warriors at Spain, Vienna, and Lepanto to get real and learn to accept a Muslim Europe.  After all, these various desperate Catholic efforts were, as history shows, a waste of time -- the Roman persecutors, Arians, and invading Muslims all won out in the end, right? 
But to be fair, those analogies aren’t quite right.  A better analogy would be Bottum suggesting that a little emperor worship might actually serve the cause of monotheism; or that giving Arianism free reign might advance recognition of the divinity of Christ; or that submitting to dhimmitude might be a good way of restoring Christendom....
As a famous non-American once said, no man can serve two masters.  And by Bottum’s own admission, people like his pal Jim aren’t likely to be satisfied with back-slapping bonhomie, or with the Church being a good loser.  They don’t want Catholics merely to quit the field.  They want them to obey -- to pay for contraceptives, to photograph same-sex “weddings,” to keep their opinions about sexual morality to themselves if they know what’s good for them.  If you’ll forgive more pop culture references -- perhaps the only “stuff we all still share” any more in this One Nation Under Compulsory Genial Tolerance -- Bottum starts by channeling Sally Field, but will end up on the floor alongside Kevin Bacon.
Also, this seems fitting for the occasion:

Quick Link: Brutal, but Just

Via Mark Shea comes this link to a satirical re-writing of Joseph Bottom's Commonweal column. It's even harsher than I was. I'd call it a harsh lashing, but it really is an intellectual spanking that Bottom has merited.

War Against Power and Principalities

It maybe old news, but I missed it earlier. That it's happening at all is bad. That it's being considered in San Antonio, in the heart of one of the reddest states in America, is downright scary:

In early August, the City Council will consider an ordinance to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the discrimination ordinances in the city code. The proposal would ban anyone that has ever opposed (“demonstrated bias, by word or deed…”) homosexuality from being involved in city government and/or performing a city contract/subcontract. The proposed ordinance provides no exemptions for religious beliefs on homosexuality, even beliefs expressed in Church.
They have since changed some of the wording, but there are still some remaining problems:
  1. Ban on speech supporting traditional marriage and sexuality by board members and other appointed officials. (Sec. 2-252(b))
  2. Men in the women’s restrooms and changing facilities. (Sec. 2-592)
  3. Does not provide a free-exercise of religion exemption for places of public accommodation and will discriminate against (Christian) businesses that want to operate according to their religious faith. (Sec. 2-592)
  4. Bans (Christian) businesses that refuse to add “Sexual Orientation” and “Gender Identity” to their companies’ nondiscrimination protections from working with the city. (Section 7)
  5. Does not give Churches and other religious organizations clear protection in their hiring practices. (Sec. 2-550(b))

Yeah, not good. As an acquaintance put it, the Devil must be smiling at this set of ordinances. Another friend noted (concerning a different situation related to this same overarching issue) that this reminds him of the passage from Revelations in which all people who wish to interact with the market place must wear the mark of the beast. It's happened before under different guises (e.g. the persecution under Diocletian), and now it's happening again under a different guise:
I’m not an eschatological literalist (far from it), but I have to wonder if there might not be a bit of the “mark of the beast” in anti-discrimination law.  Consider this case of an Iowa baker who refused to provide a cake for a lesbian wedding.  Hate mail, a boycott, and a possible investigation by the state Human Rights Commission have followed.  Or this case, where Western Washington University has booted a Christian law school from participation in a law school information fair because the law school’s code of conduct prohibits homosexual activity (among other sexual sins).  This campaign against Christians is simple: regulate everything in a way that prohibits Christians from conducting business (or even administering charity) while following their faith.  Force Catholic pharmacists to dispense contraception (and Catholic universities to provide it), Catholic hospitals to perform sterilizations and even abortions.  Force adoption agencies to place children with gay couples.  Require businesses to participate in gay weddings.  Force teachers to promote homosexuality.  These are not distopian predictions about a slippery slope, these are reality, and they will get worse.  Professional certifications will be contingent upon approval of homosexuality.  The goal is simple, the economic strangulation of Christians.


Meanwhile, the occasional report surfaces about Christians in general and conservative Christians (Catholic, Evangelicals) in particular being classified as "extremists" and "potential threats" by our government. The two things are not unrelated, and they make apparent just why it is that our "surrender" in the culture war--and especially the specific issue of "gay rights" and "gay marriage"--will not result in our finding a culture which is suddenly more friendly to us. That logic only works if we assume that we are fighting against merely secular power and principalities.

The "gay rights"/"gay liberationists" movement is merely the guise under which this struggle is brought into the public sphere, and our opposition to this particular sin may become the pretext of eventual persecution. We've been there before many times, but removing this pretext won't really change the persecution. This is especially evident by the original intent in the ordinance, to punish "anyone that has ever opposed ('demonstrated bias, by word or deed…') homosexuality" (my emphasis). Surrender only works when the enemy will actually take prisoners and not mistreat them.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

I Never Doubt the Equality of the Sexes

I never doubt the equality of the sexes until I read Feminists. Ace does the autopsy.

A Sign of the Times

This form letter posted on National Review is not really that far off the mark. Browsing through the bottom half of that page, one wonders how many of the commenters are planning to use it, and how many more are just sad that they didn't have such a form letter available to them.

Sometimes, the Narrative Is Satirical

Some narratives are already tragicomedies, at which point we might ask what's the point of satire. Recent examples include The Onion's most honest article yet, and the fact that the so-called "Brights"  fell for a post on a parody site which paints the Vatican in a bad light. See, this latter matches the narrative which the supposed "Brights" desire, so it must be true. All that is gold does not glitter, nor apparently does all which is bright actually offer light.

Bottom of the Barrel

The other guy has already written up his reflection on Joseph Bottom's interminably pointless Commonweal piece. Rock bottom, indeed. It's not just the despair and "weariness" of the piece, which really was "weary and wearisome" (as somebody who was not fired from First Things so aptly put it). There have been many criticisms leveled at it, though I think that Emily Stimpson's summary of them should suffice from hitting each one in turn:
Around the 1,000 word mark, however, I realized this piece was more worthy of skimming than reading. That’s the point where he fell into the heresy of Americanism, noting that “We are now at the point where, I believe, American Catholics should accept state recognition of same-sex marriage simply because they are Americans.”
Right. 
That tidbit of heretical wisdom and just about every other shortcoming of the essay is being roundly criticized elsewhere on the Catholic internet. I don’t disagree with a one of those criticisms. The essay was interminably long, rambling, self-indulgent, shoddily reasoned, and woefully deficient in its grasp of first principles—of what really matters.
I feel a little sorry for him, because from reading the comments around the internet, it would seem that he doesn't have many friends left in this fight. As Mark Shea put it, "I come back to work today and FB is teeming with flutterings about Jody Bottum and Miley Cyrus. And for the same reasons." On the other side, Bottom knows that his gay friend isn't going to be mollified: the "homosexualists" who are pushing this campaign don't want to stop at winning on marriage, but rather are engaged in a scorched-earth campaign in which surrender isn't an option save on the terms presented Germany after the first World War.

The attitude of those driving this campaign, of those to whom Bottom is surrendering, is encapsulated in this early comment on Ross Douthat's post about the whole affair (my empahsis added):
Listen closely, and you can almost hear the angels tap dancing on the head of a pin. Douthat analyses an analysis of church doctrine, trying to find relevance for a worldview that Oscar Wilde may have been stuck with, but that today doesn't seem to be worth the electronic ink spilled to discuss it. Gay people are real, and religion isn't. The happiness of gay people is worth more than all the hateful hypocrisy the Church has ever uttered. If the love homosexuals feel for each other can rattle the foundations of the Church, then the Church deserves to crumble. We're constantly hearing about the Church denying the full participation of women, demeaning gay people, shielding pedophiles and inserting nonsensical dogma into public policy. It's embarrassing, and it needs to stop.
Left unsaid is how, exactly, it will be "made to stop" (and also, since the person writing it is not a faithful Catholic, how, exactly, it can be "embarrassing"), but the final solution isn't going to be pretty. And if this essay encourages the Bottom-Feeders who would seek to destroy the Catholic Church, I can only imagine the kind of damage done by lines like this:
Mostly when people today toss out a reference to “natural law”, they really mean “biology.” To be crass, they mean “those parts don’t fit together.” If they’re Catholic or Mormon, they might toss in “and they can’t make a baby“. Let me tell you who is convinced by this argument: exactly no one, including, usually, the person making it.... 
I just also happen to agree with Joseph Bottum, that the fight over gay civil marriage is not the good fight we should be fighting....Attempting to stop legalized gay civil marriage because of the “grave threat” it poses seems disingenuous, not just to gay people but to everyone. Even to me. Where was the united effort to stop legalized no-fault divorce? Or contraception? We didn’t fight those civil battles. Why are we fighting this one? 
With friends like these, who needs enemies? The first commenter out the gate takes her to task on this one:
"Where was the united effort to stop legalized no-fault divorce? Or contraception? We didn’t fight those civil battles. Why are we fighting this one?"

It's before my conversion too, but I would never say "we" as if no one fought in my absence. You seem to be saying that "we" should not fight now, and just wait until the disordered society is thoroughly disordered. How can you say there was no "we" fighting before and now ask the current "we" why we are fighting?
She's joined by the next one:
The battle against contraception and against no-fault divorce was barely fought and completely lost before I was even born. Why should the failures of the previous generation force me to throw up my hands on the only live issue on which I can articulate a unitive-procreative view of marriage as opposed to a contractual-emotional model? If everyone thinks that marriage must include same-sex couples, they can't admit the first model. Our recitince to argue against this hurts our chances of re-opening the issues of divorce and contraception.
My sentiments exactly. And it's more than a little annoying to have my sincerity (collectively) called into question by turncoats and people who have all but admitted that they don't know what they're talking about. That our parents' and grandparents' generations largely drove the culture to the edge of the cliff on the whole marriage issue so that we have been teetering on the brink (at best) is no excuse for us to insist on finishing the job. Why is it that with these people, it's always an either/or?

Either we can love our spouses and raise our children rightly (Alexander's suggestion, which is itself not bad advice) or we can fight against gay "marriage" in the political realm; I just don't buy it. It's little different from arguing that pro-lifers don't care about children once they're born: it's not only false, but actually disingenuous. The gay "marriage" equivalent is now apparently "pro family people only care about the marriage until the man and woman say 'I do.'"

I can understand that some people are too weary to fight what they see as a loosing fight, too tired to run a losing race, and thus want to bow out. I can even understand the desire to punt on this issue, the supposedly "bad fight" of the Christian right (the "good fight" being against abortion). But if you plan on punting, it would be nice to at least make sure you're personally punting on this issue rather than kicking the people who are willing to attempt the fourth down. It seems (to hide behind the same word as Alexander uses) as if these people not only never cared about this fight, but frankly never wanted Christians to win it. I've known too many people who seemed quick to criticize the Church, in particular through criticizing particular individuals, while pretending to be on the Church's side, only to show their true colors by actively rooting for the fight to be lost. I don't know if Alexander and Bottom are such people, but their writings on the subject sure seem to fit the model.

And while I suspect that neither Bottom nor Alexander wants to see the church take it in the, er, teeth on this issue, they sure seem quick to surrender without attempting to negotiate some sort of exit strategy. We're fighting an opponent whose basic strategy is scorched earth. We haven't yet seen whether our opponents in this particular battle of the culture war will take prisoners and treat them with mercy, but the outlook on the likelihood of that is rather grim.

If the rest of this rant is born of frustration, I should add something in charity to the end. If you want to give up on this fight, and focus on some other fight, or look into some other avenue, look to evangelize the culture, or whatever because the engagement with this dirty bit of politics is not to your liking, then please: at least have the courtesy do do so without stabbing the rest of us in the back. Make a clean break, and by all means be honest, but try to do so without calling the integrity and honesty of the rest of us into question. You may have spent the last few years fighting for something that you didn't believe in, but some of us really do think that this is a fight worth winning, or (barring that), worth losing. Don't go throwing us under the bus for the sake of getting better treatment from the would-be cultural victors.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Rock Bottom

It's become borderline predictable these days, in the debate of the legal redefinition of marriage, that there will be a few weary culture warriors who are ready to surrender before the final battle is fought. So much the more so when the warriors in question are fighting for a cause that they're not sure they actually believe in. I read Joseph Bottum's indefatigably long essay in Commonweal, and then went for a good stiff drink. There's really not much more response I can muster to it.

To treat it fairly as I can, and to give it as fair a reading as possible, I would say that it really isn't that different from what Fr Dwight Longenecker, or Monsignor Charles Pope, is proposing. Oh, I grant that the subtitle ("A Catholic's Case for Gay Marriage") is a bit misleading on that score [1], since he really doesn't make a case "for" so-called "gay marriage." Instead, he makes the case that we should all stop fighting it, at least in the civil sphere. Granted, he uses more than a few grating lines in his tedious tale; I especially groaned when I read this one: "Just as there’s a rule in some online discussion groups that you’ve automatically lost an argument if you compare your opponents to the Nazis, so there ought to be a rule in public discourse that you’ve guaranteed your failure if you compare modern America to the decline of Ancient Rome." It's possible that people are weary of hearing about this, but that does not make it any less true.

Anyhow, that a conservative Catholic is calling for the Church to change her approach to the whole "gay marriage" issue is nothing new. Monsignor Charles Pope has argued before (twice) that we should consider divorcing civil marriage from Holy Matrimony, with the Church then getting out of the civil marriage business entirely. Father Dwight Longenecker has more recently suggested something similar. I still think that these two priests are wrong, but I notice that neither one really elicited the same kind of reactions (both for and against) as Jody Bottum, at least not immediately and not in quite the same volume. And, much as it makes it into every other (negative) appraisal of Mr Bottum's essay, I suspect this has nothing to do with the medium chosen to present the argument [2] nor the source of (financial) inspiration behind the essay, though these didn't help.

Rather, I suspect that the crucial difference is that the posts by Monsignor Pope and Fr Longenecker read like proactive though apparently passive resistance to the march of "progress," whereas Mr Bottum's essay read more like a preemptive surrender. In part this may have been the focus of each essay: the good priests focused on the distinction between Holy Matrimony (the sacrament) and marriage (the civil institution), and on how the Church would refocus on and fight for the former in the face of losing the fight on the latter. Contrast this with Mr Bottum's essay, which devoted roughly 1500 words to his gay former friend [3] and managed to sound more-or-less like the Church's position against "gay marriage" was hurting more people than it helps. In reality, the Church's stance against "gay marriage" is motivated by metaphysics and morality rather than by bigotry, but from reading Mr Bottum's essay you would almost come to the opposite conclusion [4]. Thus, in the words of Mark Shea, Mr Bottum is "God's good servant, but the king's first":
If he wants to say, “Most Americans oppose the Church on this and realism dictates facing that fact” he gets no argument from me. But he’s saying, “The Church needs to get with the program and pretend gay ‘marriage’ is something other than a fantasy agreed upon by a culture that is radically out of touch with reality.” His core message is “Surrender”, not “Maintain the Tradition in a hostile culture.”
It is certainly easy to read Mr Bottum's essay in this way. And, in fact, I have read little to suggest that he intends anything other than surrender by his writing. Sure, he has this short line:
if that’s what the same-sex marriage movement is really about—the redefinition of history as Christian oppression, the rereading of even success stories like the civil-rights movement as tales of defeating Christian evil, all for the purpose of cutting off the religious roots of Western civilization—then to hell with it.

To hell with it, as well, if the campaign for same-sex marriage has anti-Catholicism as one of its major causes, or a feeding of anti-Catholicism as one of its welcome effects.
But this is precisely what the "gay rights" campaign is turning into. Add to this the timing--had he written this essay 10 years earlier, minus the parts about the culture's shifting attitudes, it might have looked more prophetic, more "be careful which battle you choose, and how you choose to fight it." It still has the quality of a warning about choosing carefully the beach or hill on which to die in the culture war, but it lacks that sense of doing so for the actual good of the Church as delivered. It looks far more like a tired missive explaining why he will be AWOL from this particular front of the culture war from now on--and why the rest of us should give up, as well. There are no hopeless battles when one fights on the side of the Church, even if victory in the here and now is far from assured, and even if not all the victors survive.

But to return one last time to the two priests, I note that their concerns really do seem to be more about how to "Maintain the Tradition in a hostile culture," inasmuch as they suggest something for the Church to do other than to surrender. Theirs is still a withdrawal, but it is a withdrawal to rest and regain strength, to renew the Church and then from there to renew the culture. For all of Bottum's musings about wanting to "enchant" the culture, I see no coherent plan for doing this. He may be saying essentially the same thing as Monsignor Pope and Fr Longenecker, but with one crucial difference. Whereas Monsignor Pope and Fr Longenecker's posts convey a sense of renewal and hope beneath the pessimism, Mr Joseph Bottum mostly conveys a sense of weariness and despair.


---Footnotes---
[1] Of course, there is no such thing as a Catholic case for "gay marriage," but I suppose that Catholics can at times break with the Church, at least on prudential matters. This doesn't make that break right, however.

[2] For the priests, it's personal blogs as opposed to the somewhat liberal Commonweal for Joseph Bottom. It is that same Commonweal in which we also read something of praise for the New Mexico Supreme Court's decision against a photographer who refused (on grounds of religion, conscience, and freedom of speech/association) to photograph a gay commitment ceremony and was promptly sued by the homosexualists involved. So much for tolerance from the homosexualists, which in this case includes the gays in question and there defenders at Commonweal.

[3] And rather pointlessly, since he concludes that his about-face on civil marriage is "not the answer same-sex marriage advocates want" and, showing that he really does understand that his surrender probably accomplishes nothing, he continues with "Certainly it will not satisfy Jim Watson, my old [gay] friend from New York. How could he accept talk of the Catholic Church’s charity and evangelizing? He wants the church hurt, its tax exemptions and even property-holding rights stripped away until it not only accepts laws allowing same-sex marriage, not only encourages same-sex marriage, but actually performs same-sex marriage."

[4] Yes, I know that he devotes some time to the idea of "enchanted" metaphysics and "enchanted" morals etc, and that his stated purpose is the work to the re-enchantment of the culture. But much of the rest of his essay sets up to paint the fight against legal recognition of "gay marriage" in a bad light, as if it is a bad fight.

For the Sake of Self-Criticism

Via Ace, there's this piece on the Breitbart site about tit-for-tat racial crime reporting:
I dislike the tit-for-tat stories anyway. The fact that the media and the left are obsessed with race does not mean the rest of us must be. And there is the very real danger that in trying to demonstrate the hypocrisy of race-mongers like Al Sharpton and the journalists who follow eagerly in their wake, focusing on the race of perpetrators and victims ends up emphasizing stereotypes and inflaming passions--quite independently of the argument at hand. We risk becoming no better than those hypocrites whom we would criticize. 
It is becoming harder for some conservative journalists to resist the tit-for-tat arguments when Sharpton et al. continue to pretend the Martin case was about race when everyone involved, including the prosecution, said that it was not. Even the Martin family, given the opportunity (before the verdict) to comment on the fact that there were no black jurors, said that they placed their faith in their fellow citizens and the judicial process. The fact that the racial argument has survived the trial and the facts is both sad and frustrating.
I suppose that this criticism also falls on me, since I've posted my share of black-on-white crime links. And, if Pollak's analysis was complete here, he'd be right. The thing is this; whereas Al $harpton and Je$$e Jack$on and (to some extent) Obama and member of his administration insist on seeing everything through the lens of race, that really isn't the whole story. Hence, counterexamples (and they far outnumber the examples that $harpton et al. can muster). As Ace puts in (in a rhetorical question),
The media does not report black-on-white crimes -- which are, as a statistical matter, far more likely to occur -- due to fears that ignorant, angry, nothing-to-lose whites will be incensed and attempt some racial score settling on their own.
Okay fair enough. 
So... I guess I would have to ask what effect the constant drumbeat of white (Hispanic)-on-black crime reporting would have on ignorant, angry, nothing-to-lose blacks.
My main point in these posts is to show that the media, and Je$$e Jack$on, and Al $harpton, and Obama et al, are in fact helping to incite more black-on-white crime, racially motivated as revenge for a case of, well, of poor judgment. It kind of underscores the hypocrisy of the media, who is willing to jump at every spree shooting or bombing or etc and ask which conservative (or Christian) ideology inspired it, when in fact there have been very few Christian, conservative spree-killers, and when in fact many of these spree killers have had ties to liberal/progressive and/or anarchist groups.

Remember when Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona Congresswoman, got shot, and the media attempted to pin it on Sarah Palin's "targets" ad (the one about "targetting" weakly held democratic offices for getting Republicans elected instead)? This despite some rather similar Democratic campaigns and rhetoric. Now we have so actual examples of race-baiting, some actual examples of stirring up emotions towards violence, and the media suddenly becomes interested in just about anything else.

In Defense of Jesse Jackson

In Defense of Je$$e Jack$on, his "condemnation" of the Lane murder may have been tepid, but it was far more than the Obama administration could muster. I also loved that lie by the White House deputy press secretary about how Obama didn't speak out extensively before the Trayvon Martin trial:


 Which reminds me: if  Obama had a city, it would look like Detroit.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Don't Go to College

So, about my guilty pleasure? Yeah, Matt Walsh delivers another good one, this time about not going to college:
"Although formal “higher education” is obviously necessary for people who wish to become doctors, nurses, engineers, architects, etc., some rebellious souls might question whether ALL young people should be pushed into universities. Some crazed anarchists are beginning to suggest that this situation could be brought under control if we stopped positioning four year colleges as the ideal for all kids. These troublemakers claim that purchasing a six figure education on a credit card might not be in the best interest of those who haven’t a clue as to which job path they will ultimately pursue. These barbarians run around insisting that you should try to figure out what you want to do with your life, and then only invest a considerable amount of time and money into a four year college if it will actually be necessary to attain your goals. These psychopaths even go so far as to claim that, often times, skill and experience are more important than a piece of paper from an expensive college!...

I am uneducated and uninformed. Such is the fate of anyone who does not attend an educational facility. Sure, I can go to bookstores and libraries and read books on many different subjects. Yeah, the internet, if utilized properly, can be a magnificent portal to an infinite expanse of information; but none of these things qualify as an “education.” I merely research topics and explore ideas because I want to know more about them. My motivations can not match the purity and fruitfulness of someone who learns what they’re told to learn in order to pass a test....

Education is something that happens in buildings specifically designed for that purpose. Then, after a few years, you walk across a stage and — POOF! — you’re educated. You’re done. Education complete. You are officially an educated person. You completed all the steps, followed the path, solved all the puzzles, made it to the final boss and killed him, and now you’ve beaten the game. Time to kick back and take it easy!"

I have a handful of successful (and happy) friends and acquaintances who never did college; I know a few more who did college, but not as job training. I've also known more than a few miserable college students (and this is before they get out of college with the $30k debt and the poor job prospects). I've even been a miserable college student, at times, though my particular suffering and frustration is at least in pursuit of a particular life goal. Here's the thing, too: I actually do really like what I'm doing in grad school (I just hate the long hours and the low pay and the expectation that the rest of my life should be placed on hold). And it really could be preparing me for more than a few jobs that I'd like (though I also notice that there are quite a few--a majority, even--that I really am not interested in, and the ones I most like are the ones off the beaten path).

I would also like to note, however, that I have met quite a few grad students (and many, many more undergrads) who don't seem to like what they are studying, who don't seem to like the whole "educational" experience. In some cases, I can't blame them, because going to a university does not guarantee that you'll become educated, and for many it really is an impediment. Frankly, when every other class is there to propagandize for one or another ideology--scientism, utilitarianism, marxism, feminism, gay liberationism, nihilism--and when a large segment of the student population spends its out-of-class time engaged in hedonism, gaining a real education is difficult, to say the least. The very culture is at times antithetical not only to intellectual learning, but disciplining the will, curbing the appetites, and developing the virtues, all of which should form a part of a complete education.

My observation, after more than a decade of being enrolled in universities (between an undergrad degree and then a PhD) is that most of the students seem to hate it. Many students are simply miserable, and many don't really even want an education (to say nothing about the training and propaganda which is often passed off as education). I would go so far to say that the majority of my students could not care less about the material that I'm teaching (physics), and that they further resent the way in which I try to teach it (lots of labs with an emphasis on problem solving and figuring things out for yourself). They resent working for anything. I get complaints about homework assignments ("I spent a whole three hours on the last one" which covered two weeks' worth of material), which results in a lowered bar for the handful of people who are willing to put forth some intellectual effort.

They all just want to get the piece of paper which certifies them as degree-holders, and then get out, preferably with as little time spent learning (or, to be fair, spent working at learning) as possible; some then go to "professional" schools (MBA or Law Degree, with the students I have), some of which really do involve the use of an education. And they hate every minute of it. They endure it when they must and attempt to get it to go away when they can, because parents and high-school counselors and later college peers all tell them that they need that college degree. And when they find that there is no employment for that gender studies degree (thankfully), that they need to get more training.

There's nothing wrong with getting a degree that you won't (likely) use for employment: philosophy, history, classics, etc. If that's how you learn best, and if you really do want to learn about that kind of thing, then by all means! Though I'd say pick a smaller school than the various State Behemoth Colleges, and preferably one which takes these things seriously enough to teach them well but lightly enough to realize that they are guarantees of employment. And it's really won't kill you to wait to study these until you've tried getting a careers, whether as an electrician or a beautician or a welder or a brew-master or a salesman.

But, for the love of God (or whatever idol you hold instead), if you are just going to college because that's what everyone else is doing, don't! You will end up as unhappy as they are. And if it's to get a good job, then study something like engineering or science, which are difficult but which lead to most of the "good" jobs anymore; and if you don't like those fields which have the "good" jobs, then figure out what you do like, and only then go to college if it's necessary to pursue that career.

Friday, August 23, 2013

State Sponsored Tyranny

It's hard to say which is a greater example of state-sponsored tyranny in America: the Obama Administration's odious HHS contraceptives mandate, or the New Mexico Supreme Court's ruling against Elane Photography:
Justice Richard Bosson wrote, in concurrence, that the Huguenins are “compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives.” He concluded, “The Huguenins are free to think, to say, to believe, as they wish; they may pray to the God of their choice and follow those commandments in their personal lives wherever they lead. The Constitution protects the Huguenins in that respect and much more. But there is a price, one that we all have to pay somewhere in our civic life.” That “compromise,” he wrote, “is part of the glue that holds us together as a nation, the tolerance that lubricates the varied moving parts of us as a people. That sense of respect we owe others, whether or not we believe as they do, illuminates this country, setting it apart from the discord that afflicts much of the rest of the world. In short, I would say to the Huguenins, with the utmost respect: it is the price of citizenship.”

This judge does not deserve the title justice, though justice will be served him some day. The compromise that he talks about is that religious faith and the rights of conscience must be sacrificed on the alter of "tolerance;" but tolerance only extends to certain favored groups, and must be exacted at the expense of others. One wonders how many actual rights will be crushed under the boots of so-called "tolerance" and how much of the fabric of civilized society must be unraveled in the name of this "glue." This judge can take his false respect and shove it: the pretense only adds insult to injury.

TMM: The Atheist Equivalent to God of the Gaps?

Via Mark Shea comes this review of a book about scientific progress in the Middle Ages. Note that the guy writing the review is himself an atheist: just like many people who take apart God-of-the-Gaps arguments for theism are themselves theists.

The atheist argument--often trotted out, and frequently rebutted--is that scientific progress ground to a halt during the medieval period (of the "dark ages"). The argument basically says that the Christian religion ruled Europe during the dark ages, that scientific progress ceased during the dark ages, and that the first thing is the cause of the second thing: the Christians came to power and immediately started to suppress scientific progress by suppressing anyone who would have been a scientist. Call it, the gap in scientific progress argument.

There are a number of problems with the argument. For one, religious authorities were often not so powerful as we like to paint, and indeed many of the actual monarchs (and princes, and lords, etc) lacked such complete power to suppress science. For another, very few rulers--weather clerical or noble--actually went about suppressing science (whether technological or speculative), and indeed often embraced technological advances: the stirrup, the horse collar, the water-wheel, the printing press, spectacles, etc. were rather quickly embraced by those to whom they were introduced.

Also overlooked is the fact that much of what made the dark ages so bleak was not the relevant rulers and other authorities, but rather the constant invasions from without. There were Huns, Goths, Vikings, Mohhamedans, Franks, Vandals, and Saxons who are various times were invading one part or another of what once was the Roman Empire (and each other). The western half of said empire had basically collapsed, and the Eastern half was often besieged. Manichaenism from the east took popular piety beyond the bounds of Christianity, and (especially in its Cathar/Albigensian phase) often laid waste to the areas where it took hold.

Not shown: Saracens, Normans, Norsemen, Lombards, Mohammedans....
Consider a fictional analogy. Suppose that the Cold War had turned into a "hot" war with nuclear arsenals deployed towards each other. Some cities survived, whether by luck or chance, and were not destroyed by the nuclear bombs. However, these cities found themselves largely cut off from each other, and unable moreover to sustain their present populations due to being cut off from the farmlands. Many people therefore migrated from the cities into the country, many died of starvation, and a few became brigands who made a living by sacking successful cities. Suffice it to say that scientific progress would slow somewhat during such an era. Indeed, most well-written science fictions stories of this type do have science slowing or even being forgotten, and society becomes slowly less advanced despite the efforts of some to re-organize. Even once the populations stabilize and starvation becomes less of a threat, survival is still in question, thanks to the various immigrant invasions.

Travel is dangerous, trade is dangerous, thanks to the brigands, and yet these are basically the only way for information to be passed from one town to the next.

The fact that any widespread developments are possible at all becomes something of a miracle in that scenario, no? Sure, the occasional inventor or genius might pop up here or there, though in such a setting simply rediscovering forgotten knowledge is perhaps more important that making new discoveries. Further, I can't imagine that paper to write down observations come cheaply in such a world.

This is basically the world shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire (at least in the west), sans radioactive fallout. This lasted a while, in part because of the invasions (build a monastery, it becomes a center of study and learning, and in a couple of generations it's been sacked and razed). The occasional renaissance becomes possible, often when one leader unites a large area under his rule (e.g. Charlemagne), but then he dies and his descendants squabble over the empire and it falls back to pieces: it's a story older than Christianity, and indeed had gone on even during the "glory day" of Rome. The big difference is that after Rome, there was a Church which worked to reunite society and rekindle civilization. It took a few hundred years to do the latter, and the former never has really happened (the closest to it might be the rule of Charles V, or possible the British Empire during its heyday). Thanks to the Church, some parts of civilization survived; thanks to the monks, often in unpopulated and thus relatively un-endangered areas, some of the learning of the old world remained with us, and eventually some new inventions caught on, then spread.

As Ye Olde Statistician notes in commenting on this,
"In part, this was self-promotion; in part, a humanist reaction against science and reason. There was virtually no progress in the natural sciences during the humanist Renaissance -- which was really about art and architecture. In part, too, the medieval era was rejected because it was too Catholic. The Age of Reason, another self-congratulatory name now rejected by more objective historians, was an age of demolition of philosophy. The Scientific Revolution was less revolutionary than many suppose. Most of its features were present in the 14th century. The most revolutionary feature, the restriction of science to the metrical properties of physical bodies, shifted natural science from a sort of art criticism (understanding how it all fits together) to a servant of business and industry (knowing how to apply it to useful products).
This was all primarily a consequence of demographics achieving a critical mass of inquiring minds, the medieval printing press accelerating the distribution of new knowledge, the employment of late medieval mathematical notation, and new measuring devices. The medievals knew there was a difference between a form and its quantitative extension -- between say 'heat' and 'temperature,' but they had no instrument with which to measure the latter."
As we learn more and more about the real history of the middle ages (as distinguished from the Enlightenment's propaganda of that era), we see fewer and fewer places in which the Catholic religion can legitimately be called a suppressor of science, to say nothing of civilization.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Transvestites Dilemma

Transvestites present us with a dilemma: what pronoun is proper for the occasion? The Bradley Manning kerfuffle--or is it the Chelsea Manning boondoggle?--is what brings this particular question to mind. The recent New Mexican Supreme Court ruling does not have me feeling particularly tactful towards the queer community; and I will say that if same-sex attraction is "queer" in the sense of being relatively strange, then the desire to actually become a member of the other sex must rank as queerer still. One wonders if there will come a time in the not-so-distant future that men will desire to become, not women, but androgynous beings capable of both begetting and conceiving: the feminist revolution will be complete.

After that, only a change in species entire becomes more strange (and dare I say disordered), but I suppose I wouldn't be surprised.

And so I return to my previous question: what become the proper pronoun to refer to a transgendered person? The politically correct thought-police will insist that we use the gender to which that person switches, but that doesn't quite sit right. A man who wakes up and decides to be a woman doesn't actually become a woman, however he may mutilate himself; nor does a woman who undergoes some specialized surgery and hormone therapy simply become a man. On the other hand, neither does our hypothetical person remain a man as before, or a woman as before.

Thus, neither "He" nor "She" seems correct--the old pronoun may be more nearly so, since these things are apparently reversible, though whether fully reversible or not is something else. But a woman who tries to change her sex doesn't really become a man: such a person is not eligible for marriage [1] nor for ordination (which is apparently not limited to Catholics). To use the "new" pronoun would rather tend to give some credibility to the claim that the person really has successfully switched sexes; to use the old one would tend to suggest that nothing has changed at all. The other option, I suppose, is "it," but this would make the person out to be inhuman, which is also not quite right. They may be mad, but a madman is still a man. Also, I should add, hey have added a layer of offendedness to those who choose the wrong pro-noun. By this, I mean that there are some who try the sex-change but want to keep the old pronoun, others who undergo no change but try switching to the new pronoun (hence a certain law in California), and others who do both: and each is uniquely offended when those who do try to get the preferred pronouns right fail.

I tend to rather disfavor the politically correct demands that we refer to every group by their own preferred title [2] unless notified otherwise by the PC Thought Police to be a bit grating. It's not that I oppose letting people pick their own name for themselves (if reasonable), but that some groups are constantly changing the acceptable name. First it's negro, then African-American, then person of color, then black... First it's homosexual, then gay, then queer, then gay again, and now (apparently) queer again... Indian, then redskin, then Native American... In the words of a friend, it's the verbal equivalent of a secret handshake. You must use the correct (ever-changing) noun to refer to the favored/victim group to show that you are sufficiently sensitive to their feelings. After so many changes, I tend to stop playing along and then pick my own nouns for them.

The queer community is the worst of the lot, since (unlike with the other groups listed) each name they pick for themselves tends to take on an "unclean" meaning.  I think at this point that they have looped around to picking one of their own rejected terms as being correct--or maybe it was rejected in one region and then embraced in another--but there comes a time of frustration when one decides to simply call them Sodomites and be done with it.

The Transvestite/Transexual/Transgendered (see what I mean) subset of the queerly-lettered community in turn views themselves as the victims within the victim community. It's no longer merely the wrong choice of nouns which is offensive, but but of pronouns.

I will therefore conclude with a palate-cleanser, by linking to two rants worth reading: one by author John C Wright, the other by political commentator PJ O'Rourke



[1] I can't imagine that this was the original meaning of Christ's exception of divorce in the case of non-chastity, though I think it probably counts.

[2] The biggest exception to this is the pro-lifers, who must at all costs be called either "anti-abortion" or "anti-choice,' but never pro-life;

Quick Link: Destructive Uprisings

The followers of Mahound in Egypt have destroyed a 1600-year-old Coptic Church, along with two other Coptics churches, a Catholic church, and a Protestant church in the area. And it's now a "thing" (on the Left) to support these uprisings. I wonder at times how much of this support is vicarious, because some on the Left wish they could have been there and done that; there's no love of the Christians in the secular Left, or (to be fair) in the secular Right (think Hitchens), but it seems to be the secular Left who really is relishing this.

Someday

Some day, I will be less busy, I hope. And when that day comes, I hope I am still able to think, and to write, and to combine the two. Maybe some day I will be able to write like David Warren, for example, in my own idleness:
It is a fascinating history, perhaps too often traced, but never with sufficient irony. In addition to his campaign against slavery, William Wilberforce & his entourage had campaigned against domestic immorality, founding innumerable societies for the reformation of manners & the suppression of public vice. Not only slavery was outlawed, but through high-toned beseigement, Parliament was persuaded to pass various proclamations against “excessive drinking, blasphemy, profane swearing & cursing, lewdness, profanation of the Lord’s Day,” & other “dissolute, immoral, or disorderly practices.” (I am inclined to call this, “Christian Shariah,” reflecting as it does the old Koranic, if not also Presbyterian admonition, to “command the good.”) They installed the “nanny” in our Nanny State, with that heroic commitment to perpetual Reform & Improvement that seized the imagination of the Victorian Age — & which still echoes in the battle cry for Progress, long after their Protestant God was held to have died. (So that now I call it, “Progressive Shariah.”)

For through Darwin, Huxley, & their avant-garde, they also discovered Evolution, or perhaps more exactly, Evolution discovered them. What on the Continent was received as a tentative scientific hypothesis, full of holes, was in England — & then throughout the English-speaking world — taken for a refutation of Scripture. The Bloomsbury set were the vanguard of what became in effect a new secular religion. Darwin’s Origin of Species became the foundational document for the new scientistic faith — its replacement for Genesis. Evangelical religion was not so much abandoned, as transformed. By the more talented of Bloomsbury it was turned into aestheticism & “art for art’s sake.” The moral earnestness continued with polarities reversed. The old obsessions over sexual vice, for instance, flipped into sexual experimentation. Meanwhile, the science types assembled their New Inquisition, hunting down & eliminating from the possibility of employment those who strayed from Darwinian orthodoxy in the academic worlds they increasingly controlled.

"Progressive Shariah" and "New Inquisition" are not unfair descriptions, though both are still in their infant stages. The progressives rose to prominence for a time and continue to drive our culture off the cliff. But when they seize also the reins of government, we can expect worse things to come. They have done this, though not completely. Similarly with many of the other institutions--from the academy to the entertainment industry to the media--these are dominated by the Left, though it's fair to make a dichotomy between liberals (however misguided in policy and action) and progressives (however benign in intentions).

As for the New Inquisition, well, there's a reason why I am blogging here semi-anonymously as opposed to at my old blog under my own name. It's not the idea of the evolution of species that I disagree with per se, but the materialistic dogmas of scientism which are pervasive, and the fact that one practically has to swear by Godless "Progress" in the sciences and beyond as a condition of being a "scientist in good standing." I'm not an ID man, nor (worse!) a geocentrist (yes, they do exist, no, I will not provide a link).

However, I am a Catholic, and so I affirm that man's soul is not descended from the beasts, and I affirm that the world is in some sense the metaphysical center of the universe. I also hold all sorts of unpopular moral positions which are frowned upon by the scientific establishment: everything from the insistence upon a free will to the insistence that certain sexual acts can be evil in kind or degree; and from insistence that contraception (to say nothing of its dark spawn abortion) is evil to the fact that we can't solve all of the world's problems through science alone.

It is fascinating, in any case, to see how "Progress" has changed from an attempt to use social and even political power to curb man's vices, into seeing the use of the same power now to promote those same vices. The former might work in a good way with a society which largely accepts that it is good to curb man's vices, though using political power to so so for such things as swearing and profanation of the Lord's Day would be problematic, especially when ideas like subsidiarity are removed from the political equation.

The Boredom Killing Revisited

So, it turns out that the killing of Christopher Lane by three "bored" teens was at least partially racially motivated:
Edwards, who has been charged with first-degree murder, posted racist tweets saying he hated white people in the months before the shooting. 
Edwards posted statements on his Twitter feed including a comment on April 29 where he tweeted "90% of white ppl are nasty. #HATE THEM". 
Edwards also weighed when George Zimmerman was acquitted over the death of Trayvon Martin. 
"Ayeee I knocced out 5 woods since Zimmerman court!:) lol sh*t ima keep sleepin sh*t! #ayeeee." 
"Woods" is derogatory slang for white people. The feed also contains tweets glorifying violence, guns and gangs.
And their alleged next target, a black boy, was allegedly being targeted because he wouldn't join the Crips.

More Maps...

Some more interesting maps of the world. Some interesting points in them:
  • Despite the best efforts of Al $harpton (and his ilk), the U.S. is actually relatively racially tolerant (#8).
  • It would appear that many of the most ethnically diverse countries are also the least racially tolerant and vice-versa (#9), though there are some exceptions. Not sure what to make of that, other than that it suggests that attempts to force diversity on a population might tend not to make that population more tolerant.
  • Panarin's map (#11) seems laughable today. If the US actually did break up into smaller countries, and barring actually conquests, I'm thinking that it's unlikely that any inland western states would want anything to do with California/Oregon/Washington as political entities, or that the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky would want anything to do with the Northeast, or that most of the "flyover" state would want anything to do with Illinois/Minnesota/Wisconsin.
  • The world mostly likes us, and the world mostly likes us more than China (#12-13)
  • The "gay rights" around the world map is depressing, but is interesting when juxtaposed with the map below it (#15-16).
  • What is the point of the economic inequality map (#20)? To show that most places which have less of it are relatively affluent but bankrupt?
  • A lot of these seem politically motivated and are biased.
  • The common law vs civil law map (#25) is kind of cool.
  • Apparently, most European countries like the EU, including the ones that hate it (#30)
  • Apparently, a lot of Americans are optimistic about our economy, which is really a commentary on how well the media has covered for Obama (#34), or else a very sad commentary on the state of the rest of the world.
  • The satellite map (#40) is pretty cool.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

On Boredom Killings

The Ace of Spades blog pretty much summarizes my thoughts on the recent shooting of an Australian man by three teens:

  • The murderers were black, the victim white, and therefore the media will ignore race entirely. You'll hear no condemnations from hucksters like Al Sharpton. It only matters if it's a white guy (or white Hispanic guy) killing a black guy, never the other way around.
  • The killing may or may not have been motivated by racism--just as in any case where a white man kills a black man, the murder may or may not have anything to do with racism. However, there has bee a spate of race-related black-on-white crimes.
  • Piers Morgan, may he be deported someday as a foreign threat, has essentially called for a gun ban following this. At least, stricter gun laws, and an uprising against the NRA (who are really behind this, doncha know). As the blogger Andy says, the right response to this is, "Piss off, Piers. The perps were 15, 16 and 17, hence underage under existing US gun laws."
  • Finally, what does it say about the culture that a group of teens would come to the conclusion that killing somebody is a legitimate form of entertainment when bored?

This frankly has nothing to do with gun control, but it might have something to do with racism. Therefore, the people who need to be "stood up to" are not the NRA, but rather Obama, Holder, Al $harpton,, and the rest of the race-baiters.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Guilty Pleasures

So, I've been trying (and often failing) to not write too many rants on this blog. Of course, I give free reign to my co-blogger if he wants to do so. Anyhow, just because I try not to write too many of them doesn't mean that I avoid reading them. They are therapeutic to write, but also therapeutic to read (so long as I agree with them, of course).

Call it a guilty pleasure of mine. It's like putting a boot up somebody's butt vicariously: and there are quite a few people out there who seem to need that swift kick in the pants.

Nevertheless, I kind of go back and forth a bit as to whether I should avoid writing them altogether (difficult, especially at times) or not, and I certainly do my best to avoid writing rants elsewhere (I get the impression that they aren't helpful for catechizing or evangelizing anybody who doesn't already agree with me, usually).

On the other hand, there are some people who are so entrenched in an obvious set of lies that honest dialogue tends to break down no matter how tactful. Thus, a rant is as effective (perhaps more so) as any other attempt as debate, discussion, or dialogue. Indeed, they might even perceive a kind and tactful post as being every bit as abrasive as a rant (perhaps more so, if they are assuming that I am not writing and acting in good faith). In those case, I wonder, why bother with tact? Perhaps for the sake of third party readers?

In any case, the Ace of Spades blog has long been a guilty pleasure of mine (and I notice my co-blogger likes to link to them, too) because of this. At times, P.J. O'Rourke had a few fun rants, and John C Wright as well. Oh, and here's one I've discovered more recently: Matt Walsh, whose blog I don't frequent, but I have seen a few posts linked by my greater circle of internet friends. Here he is tearing into an abortion advocate who opined that Planned Parenthood "is not an 'abortion business."

It speaks to the level of self-delusion in our culture that some people actually believe this. Then again, so does the fact that some people support abortion at all--let alone for the various frivolous reasons they do--and that they oppose any restrictions whatsoever. I mean, I know that there are whole departments (or even colleges) which seek to replace education with propaganda and thinking (independent, critical, or otherwise) with outright brainwashing, but really?

So yeah, it's a bit of a guilty pleasure to read these kind of rants from other people.

Tolerance

Tolerance was long a watchword (of sorts) for the homosexualist movement. Tolerance, as Bishop Sheen noted, applies to persons but not to doctrines, so to the extent that there was a movement about tolerating persons, good for it. But that's not what the movement is about now, nor (if one reads the writings of the radical gay liberationists) has it ever really been.

And thus, as the homosexualist movement takes up the reins of power, both "soft" and "hard" power, we see the marginalization of and then the intolerance against anyone who opposes this movement. Thus there are the gay bullies who wish harm and death to the injured Thomas Peters, the "public hearings" which resemble nothing so much as kangaroo courts, the myriad lawsuits against conscientious protesters (I won't even both to link all of these, since they're both numerous and well-known). Then there is the military commander (soon I expect this to be plural) who asked her subordinate his views on homosexuality and then demoting him when he gave the "wrong" answer, which is enough to make the Christians in the military hope for some version of "don't ask, don't tell" concerning religion and their personal view on homosexuality.

Friday, August 16, 2013

A Few Good Links (vol. 7)/Seven Quick Takes Friday (vol. 2)

If the other guys can combine posts, then so can I.
  1. Darwin's descendant is Catholic.
  2. I have a few friends in Austin, so they might be interested in BurntOrangeReport's endorsement of a certain coffee shop. By endorsement, I mean they say to boycott it because of its stance on abortion, but since this is coming from BurntOrangeReport, I can think of no stronger a political-motivated endorsement.
  3. I've heard tell that even recently, many (perhaps most) Catholic Bishops are registered Democrats. Apparently, that number included Rhode Island's Bishop Thomas Tobin, who has nevertheless been a critic of the Obama Administration's promotion of the culture of death. After 44 years, Bishop Tobin is leaving the Democratic Party:
    "The a-ha moment for me was the 2012 Democratic National Convention. It was just awful," Tobin, 65, told the Rhody Young Republicans during an event at the Holy Rosary Band Society Hall in Providence. The leader of Rhode Island's roughly 621,000 Catholics said he had been a registered Democrat since 1969. 
    "I just said I can't be associated structurally with that group, in terms of abortion and NARAL [Pro-Choice America] and Planned Parenthood and [the] same-sex marriage agenda and cultural destruction I saw going on," Tobin said. "I just couldn't do it anymore."
    It took him until 2012 to decide on this, and even then only after the party's national convention? The ongoing support for the Culture of Death, for NARAL and Planned Parenthood and the gay agenda and the Obama Administration's contraception/abortion/sterilization mandate didn't even do him in? Well, better late than never, I guess, but I wonder how many more of the bishops (to say nothing of the priests) are still Democrats. As Fr. Zuhlsdorf asks, "Aside from the fact that the GOP is not perfect, how can any cleric be a member of a political party that is so clearly pro-abortion?  How can a cleric be a member of a party that actively, openly undermines the true definition of marriage?" Yeah, talk about choosing the greater of two evils, it's no wonder that there are so many Catholics who support Obama, Pelosi, Biden, and the whole lot of pro-death politicians.

  4. Now for a palate cleanser after that: a zoo in China is attempting to pass of a dog as a lion.
  5. What is it about the child-free movement that says we have to celebrate them?
    The world's greatest threat, according to some.
    "The hypocrisy of it all is probably obvious to everyone but Time magazine and its subjects: Many of the “child-free” couples mentioned in the Time magazine article lament that others are proudly parents and wish other people were parents, too.  Yet, these very women are proudly child-free and wish more people would be child-free, too."
    They sure seem to resent children, and those who choose to have them.

  6. The Statistician to the Stars gives that atheism/religion IQ study thing a thorough fisking. National review has a shorter and sweeter rebuttal.
  7. The Obama Administration really is tyrannical, even to their loyal lapdogs the media. Case in point: they attempted to re-write the Washington Post's interview/story on NSA violations. I guess we get the government (or the rulers) that the majority of the people deserve.

This week's Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted here. A Few Good Links is our thing, though.



Simcha Fisher Savages Karla Erickson

For the humor-impaired, the title of this post is a joke. Anyhow, here's Erickson's post against breastfeeding, and here is Simcha Fisher's rebuttal. Encapsulating quote from Erickson, a "Gender Studies" instructor: "Next time I won’t breastfeed because it sets up a gendered division of who does what early into parenting. It provides an infrastructure for an unequal distribution of the work (and rewards) of parenting." Also, "One of the fathers [who came to talk to this lady's class] said that after their first child they bottle-fed their children because it was the only way to work against the gender disparities in the parenting process. At the time it sounded kind of harsh – like social engineering in the face of the well-proven benefits of breastfeeding."

Might I suggest that her gut instinct here is actually correct: this is, in fact, social engineering, but then, that would be the point of the various "Gender Studies" programs which have latched onto universities the nation over. Now let's see what Fisher says in response:
"She is telling us, with her tone, so much more than she realizes: that she feels comfortable with motherhood, that nurturing comes naturally to her, that she enjoys taking care of a baby, and the baby loves her with all his baby heart, because she is his mama. 
But all of her training tells her that these things add up to error.  She's been implanted with all sorts of false sensitivities, which tell her something is wrong -- even when everything is, by the standards and instinctive delights developed over the entire course of humanity, going just like it's supposed to go."

Yes. This, after unpacking a few "faulty assumptions" (and they are indeed faulty) such as "that a child's preference for one parent over the other, at any particular stage of development, is a sign that someone is the victim of sexism, rather than evidence that men and women are different -- and that kids need both." Again, the point of gender studies is not to study the feminine and the masculine and the celebrate their differences, nor to see how each one completes the other, but (as with so many other diversity-driven programs) to subvert, ignore, blend, destroy, or engineer and propagandize away those differences.

Yet, as Fisher notes well, this ends up being all an act, and the differences can be repressed and subverted, but they still hide under the surface for anyone who's willing to look. To use an alliterative statement of the sort employed by my co-blogger: that subversion ends in sadness.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Surely Just a Coincidence

One of the pushers of perversity in Canada has been arrested on charges of child pornography (no conviction, yet). Specifically, Benjamin Levin, Ontario's deputy minister of education from 2004-2009, the man who pushed a rather too comprehensive form of sex-education for children:
An indication of the man’s importance and closeness to Canada’s leftist elites was shown at the gay pride parade in Toronto, held just a few days before his arrest, where he stood in line with Wynne, federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, and former interim federal Liberal leader and former Ontario NDP Premier Bob Rae – the leading trio of Canadian Liberal Party.... 
Levin hasn’t been convicted of anything of course, but we cannot fail to mention that he has been at the centre of educational politics and power for a generation, and was a major figure in the educational establishment that gave us the most recent extreme and perverse sex education curriculum....For those who have forgotten just how sordid and provocative this trash was, it proposed that 11-year-olds learn about gender identity, homophobia, personal satisfaction, and discover their bodies through masturbation and vaginal lubrication. At 12 and 13 years of age they were to be taught about anal and oral sex. At all times they would be told that there were numerous genders, that we were the gender we wanted to be or thought we were, and not necessarily what we were born. There was also a concentration on homosexuality, bisexuality and gender transfer, and a weird, grotesque obsession with loveless and fringe sexuality that has no place in education, and certainly not in the education of such young children.
With people like this running education in Canada (and really in America too) is it any surprise that the country's sexual mores are in a continual state of freefall?

The Coolest Thing You'll See Today

It's a shark, inside another shark:
After casting a small fish called a menhaden, a small shark called a dogfish was quick to snatch the bait, only to be swallowed by the much larger sand tiger shark. “The dogfish was about 3 feet long and completely swallowed by the sand tiger shark,” states a post on the university’s ORB Lab Facebook page.
Sharks are awesome. Also, is this the seafood equivalent of Turducken?

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

A Few Good Links (vol. 6)

It's been a busy week at work, so I haven't had the chance to do much in the way of writing.  The reading I do during lunch and dinner breaks (I'm here from morning until midnight most days when I get laser time):
  1. Two links on Millenials: we're adrift in the cosmos and don't really know what we want from churches, or really from anyone. A lot of this has to do with the general wrecking job the 'Boomers generation did on the culture. "What one finds among Xers and millennials alike is a second-order decay of American idealism: the Boomers tore up the world of June Cleaver, but what the Boomers built wasn’t a liveable replacement."
  2. Fear of the Lord (and readiness, and anticipation--most of all hope) has a tendency of driving out other fears and anxieties. On a related note, we will be meeting the Lord in the hereafter, which is the one thing for which we need to be prepared.
  3. The following two things may or may not be related: the (unfortunate) popularity of the childfree life on the one hand, and the development of robots which emulate human emotions to the point of mimicking falling in love (in some sense of the word) with people. Also, please tell me that second link is a hoax:
    "The trouble all started when a young female intern began to spend several hours each day with Kenji, testing his systems and loading new software routines. When it came time to leave one evening, however, Kenji refused to let her out of his lab enclosure and used his bulky mechanical body to block her exit and hug her repeatedly. The intern was only able to escape after she had frantically phoned two senior staff members to come and temporarily de-activate Kenji."
    Ugh. It seems to me that there is some deeply disordered potential market for "pleasure bots", but it seems like we're well on the way to developing the first robotic rapist.
  4. MSNBC fails at geography. That's par for the course with them.
  5. You might be a bad parent if...
  6. I'm not keen on the death penalty in many circumstances, but there are two (technical) ways that we can go wrong in avoiding it: the first is in deliberately prolonging a prisoner's life to inflict the maximum amount of misery possible, and the second is sparing no expenses for prison inmates.
    "Instead of paying the $816 in fines with money, Pappas said Feeley could instead pay with jail time, at a rate of $50 a day. But the math is fuzzy: it costs taxpayers $179 a day to house an inmate at the jail, Sheriff Shaun Golden has said."
    To put things into perspective, the $179/day which it costs the Monmouth prison to house an inmate works out to more than $65,000/year. A lot of people (most, in fact) get by on far less. What is so hard about putting a person in a small solitary cell with three meager meals per day that it costs this much money? Prison should be bad enough that the prisoners don't have any desire to return once released.
  7. We need only listen to the homosexualists speak to understand exactly what their position is regarding us. Tolerance is not enough, silence is not sufficient. And these are the kinds of people who get put on "human rights" councils. It's not going to end with the legalization of "gay marriage," and it has nothing to do with rights: this is ultimately going to be about crushing consciences and restricting religious rights.
Sadly, I have to work Saturday and will still by busy with other stuff Sunday. Sigh. I guess it's on my co-blogger this week.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Quick Links: Some Random Geography

Really, some history and some geography today, in charts and maps (and some beaches, too). In no particular order:
  1. A set of 40 maps to make sense of the world. My favorites are the ones about how big a city would need to be to house the world's population. The answer is: not big, though I think they could do better by building taller. Couruscant in Texas, anyone? Also, the map about which countries England has never invaded (it's not many).
  2. I think I have this chart of world history, somewhere. Still a nice visual.
  3. And last but not least, a few strange beaches to get you through the day, even if most of you will never visit any on these.
Can there be some order to this? I guess it could be in the order that I found them, or the order of how cool I think they are.