Politics

Sports fan politics - “Refudiate”

ArgusEyes — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:07:50 GMT

What is sports fan politics? It’s where you pretend to care about something that you wouldn’t care about if someone from a political party you support had said/done it. I got the term from Ed Brayton on this podcast which deals with the book “mistakes were made” (which is excellent and should be read by all).

Here is a good example of sports fan politics:

Gathered from our referrers page, here are some reactions to Sarah Palin’s now-famous “refudiate” post on Twitter.

Many people (but by no means all) seem to be focusing on Palin’s neologism, and missing the real point — the bigotry and hatred her statements on the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” endorse.

…

Ben Smith: Sunday reading: Refudiate

The New Yorker: Meme Watch: ShakesPalin

The Atlantic Wire: Palin Demands Muslims ‘Refudiate’ NYC Mosque, Sparking Criticism, Mockery

Language Log: Refudiate?

Bob Cesca: Refudiate

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/36778_Refudiation_Round-Up

“Refudiate” seems to be a combination of “refute” and “repudiate”. It seems to be the kind of brain fart that I would make on a daily, nay, hourly basis.

I’ve made silly typos and I’ve garbled words. In my “problems with feminism” video I pronounce Simone de Beauvoir’s last name as “boo-vee-ey”. Oops.

It doesn’t matter. It’s inconsequential crap. If someone writes something that is basically incomprehensible then I can understand making a fuss about it. It’s like the people who say “you expect to take me seriously” when I make a typo in a blog post pr essay transcript. The idea that you discount the argument of a person based upon a mistaken work or typo is self evidently stupid as they will not do so when they see it in the writings of a person they like. It’s something that happens only when you don’t like the person or the ideas (and therefore the person) and the brain seeks to reduce dissonance by settling on whatever reason it can to dismiss those ideas or that person. This is a psychological theory of the mind known as “cognitive dissonance” and it' is a very important theory.

NASA to outreach to the Muslim world: Atheist/Skeptic blogs silent

ArgusEyes — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 04:12:09 GMT

This isn’t exactly new, a lot of you might already know about this story: Obama's New Approach to Joint Space Exploration (original story). Below is a quote from an MSNBC article.

Bolden raised eyebrows in the space community and outrage among conservative pundits by telling Al-Jazeera television recently President Barack Obama had instructed him to work for better outreach with the Muslim world.

He said Obama told him one of his top priorities was to "find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38212800/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Charles Krauthammer is scathing on this:

I didn’t touch the original story. However, what is noteworthy is that the skeptic/atheist blogs I most regularly visit haven’t mentioned this to my knowing. Take the two main ones on my start-up menu, pharyngula and badastronomy:

muslim nasa site:http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

muslim nasa site:http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

muslim nasa site:http://skepchick.org/blog/

muslim nasa site:http://www.theskepticsguide.org/sgublog/

If any of you know about something I’m missing then do let me know but it appears very much that political allegiances are getting in the way of objectivity.

Jonah Goldberg: See You Next Tyranny Day!

ArgusEyes — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 02:26:46 GMT

Excellent article from Jonah Goldberg at National Review.

According to New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman in his mega-best-selling book Hot, Flat, and Crowded, China banned plastic bags a few years ago. “Bam! Just like that — 1.3 billion people, theoretically, will stop using thin plastic bags,” he gushed. “Millions of barrels of petroleum will be saved, and mountains of garbage avoided.”

China’s got us beat, suggests Friedman, because its leaders aren’t hung up on democracy, checks and balances, or any of the other dusty old impediments found in the American system. Friedman has proclaimed his envy for China’s authoritarian system countless times. It’s why he titled one of the chapters in his book “China for a Day.” The idea — he calls it his “fantasy” — is that if we could just be China for a day, the experts could impose by diktat what they cannot win through democratic debate.

…

Such arguments are as old as they are dangerous. And they are arrogant beyond description. People like Friedman automatically assume that their preferred policies are so obviously right, so objectively enlightened, that there’s no need to debate them or vote on them.

…

Such arrogance is dangerous. The literature on the unintended consequences of policies crafted by experts is at least as old as the field of economics. Frédéric Bastiat, the great 19th-century economist, noted all that separated the good economist from the bad is the ability to appreciate the possibility of the unforeseen. Nobel Prize–winning economist Friedrich Hayek demonstrated that healthy economies couldn’t be controlled by experts, because the experts will always have a “knowledge problem.” They can never know all of the variables and never fully predict how their theories will play out in reality.

This is Iran: Iranian Woman Sentenced To Stoning After Being Lashed

ArgusEyes — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 14:29:56 GMT

This is Iran:

Amnesty said she received flogging of 99 lashes as per her sentence but was subsequently accused of "adultery while being married" in September 2006 during the trial of a man accused of murdering her husband.

Mostafai said his client knew the man who "killed her husband and because she was at home when the murder took place, she was accused as accomplice."

"But after her kids pardoned her in the case of murder, she now stands accused of adultery with that man."

Mostafai added that such cases involving women in Iran arise due to difficulties in getting divorces with husbands despite "having troubled marriages."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hsH_Nwq_L045KhDsWEhGeDExJ6_A

This is the UN:

Iran Wins Membership to the U.N Commission on the Status of Women

Women arrested and imprisoned for having suntans? Check. Women stoned to death for adultery? Check. Random persecution, detainment, violent arrest, and imprisonment of women's rights activists and mourning mothers? Check. Women blamed for causing earthquakes? Check. Use of makeup illegal because it makes women dishonorable? Check!

Sounds like the Islamic Republic of Iran is all set for membership to the U.N Commission on the Status of Women! Welcome, Iran, and thank you for helping to set the bar for the status of women around the world. It's exhilarating that the U.N and its member states have so clearly sent the message that women belong under the control of authoritarian governments, under the cover of dress codes and the watch of morality police, and in prison or the grave if they don't obey their male controllers.

http://womensrights.change.org/blog/view/iran_wins_membership_to_the_un_commission_on_the_status_of_women

This is stoning:

Stoning is typically a punishment for adultery, although it can also be use for cases of incest and other sexual or “moral” crimes. Typically, a stoning victim is first wrapped in cloth and buried up to the waist for men, or up to the chest for females. Then the crowd is to throw stones at the victim. However, it is very important that, “… no stone should be thrown that should kill with the first or second blow, or so small as a pebble to do no injury to the condemned.” (Hulagu's Web, 64) Stoning is a unique form of punishment in that there is no single executioner. The simplistic act of gathering the victim’s peers around him creates killers out of everyone.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Fact-to-Fiction:-The-Brutal-Truth-about-the-Practice-of-Stoning&id=11574

Any questions?

African-American women struggle to overcome wealth gap

ArgusEyes — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:02:51 GMT

When I saw a story on the BBCs website entitled “African-American women struggle to overcome wealth gap”, I must admit I was sceptical. I thought that I would get an article about how western society tramples all over blacks who can’t get ahead of insurmountable obstacles thrown in their path, etc.

What I got, in part, was a surprisingly practical article about how some black women in America (I don’t say African-American.. doh!) are tackling their poverty with good approaches and good results.

The prospects, you'd think, are bleak. But Kenya Williams is far from downhearted. With the help of Allendale County ALIVE, a community development corporation, she's learning how to manage her finances.

"They show me how to budget my money," she says.

Treyonde Allen runs ALIVE's classes in basic book-keeping. She's on a mission to break a cycle of ingrained and inherited poverty.

"I'm trying to instil a culture of saving and budgeting for the entire household," she says.

Ms Allen also warns students of the dangers posed by predatory lenders and lives lived on credit.

"Don't sign up for a credit card just because they're going to give you a piece of pizza and a T-shirt," she tells them. "That stops something right there."

Right at the start of the piece, is an interesting fact.

A recent academic study found that the gap in wealth between white and black Americans had more than quadrupled between 1984 and 2007.

Are we to assume that the treatment of blacks has worsened by a factor of four from 1984 to 2007. Has the station of blacks decreased to account for that gap? No. Look at America now and as I have heard many leftists revealingly admit that they never would have thought that they would see a black man in the Whitehouse in their lifetime, but there he is.

By the way BBC, references please. Anyway. So far so good. Now on to the victimology.

"In this country we call America, for more than 250 years, African-Americans were property," says Anton Gunn, an African-American member of South Carolina's House of Representatives.

...

"African-Americans have just started... to be able to obtain and own anything," he says.

Mr. Gunn. The 60s were fifty years ago. What part of the sentence “African-Americans have just started... to be able to obtain and own anything” is even remotely true? Seriously. How can he say that? Bold faced lie? Or delusional distortion of reality brought on by a deep victim mentality. Probably the latter.

But Bernie Mazyck, president of the South Carolina Association of Community Development Corporations, says narrowing the wealth gap in America needs to start with a more honest conversation about how we got here.

"There are reasons why blacks are still behind the ball when it comes to accumulating wealth," he says. "It's a conversation of basic economics."

Yes it is basic. You live sensibly and take personal responsibility and you will accumulate wealth. If you work hard and live by some sensible rules (like don’t leave your current job until you have another, etc) then you will likely do well, you don’t live in the gulag. Over time, you will have more and your mentality will be passed onto your children who will likely grow up with more opportunity than you had and will succeed even more. Thus you have lifted yourself out of poverty.

The most acidic thing to destroy the potential of this happening is attitudes like Bernie Mazyck’s. Dwelling on the past is a road to the ruin of many black people’s lives. Does anyone here think Mr. Mazyck’s call for “a more honest conversation” is itself honest? I don’t think so. I think that at the first sign of arguments like the ones contained in this blog post will generate cries of “racist” and “bigot”.

Watch out for the envy police

ArgusEyes — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:51:42 GMT

Occasionally I take a comment that someone has entered elsewhere in the site, and write it up as a new post. I do this when I feel the answers and questions are prominent enough to be featured. Commenter “goLookGoRead” has posted the following on my “women are more sexist than men” video as well as many others. The first two parts have been omitted because I didn’t have a lot to say to them. I am starting a couple of paragraphs in.

It is very easy to fall into a mindset of 'envy' (I think of envy as the worst kind of hate - because it leads to racism, misogyny and man-bashing behaviour) irrespective of gender or race, it is 'envy' itself that creates urban rude behaviour. Stop labelling people racist or politically correct/incorrect, male or female and start talking about being 'envious' for what 'envy' really is - the most divisive thing in the universe!

The mindset of “envy” seems to be what you take up later on in your comment where you suggest that the government must steal the money from the wealthy and give it to the poor (I.E. you) but it’s other people’s envy that’s the problem isn’t it? Like how socialists cry about the greed of capitalists but their own personal greed’s and wants go unnoticed. That makes me feel like re-posting this:

That aside, the idea that “envy” (or “greed” as some state) leads to racism, misogyny and man-bashing behaviour seems, to me, to be foolish. You are welcome to develop that idea more but when I think of these problems then envy doesn’t come into it. What is the racist envious of? What is the misogynist envious of?

Let’s take racism. What causes racism in my mind? Well, I happen to think it is an indelible part of human nature, the de-humanisation of other groups because of their physical race differences. Racism is founded on hate, to state that another race is different but deserve equal rights is not racist, to argue that another race or sex is “inferior” in a whole and intractable way is irrational and founded on hatred for that race or sex. Feminists do this all the time. Where does it come from? The victimisation complex.

The English as a people are aghast at racism against certain groups (say, an African for example) but we allow ourselves to be fairly bigoted towards the French and Germans. Feminists coo at how they are the progressive ones in society but they are some of the most tyrannical people out there. Their own bigotry is wrapped up in the self-justification of the various ways they have been slighted (or think they have) and this slides their route down the pyramid oppression towards those they feel have slighted them. The feminist, the victim, comes to oppress men. The black, the victim, acts more racist then whites do. Bigotry never goes away, it simply shifts from group to group. Bigotry is human and human is bigotry.

Political Correctness and Racism - Harlesden and Brent, the 'Heinz 57' borough of London, is where I experience arrogance, and rudeness everyday whenever I step out of my front door. The politically correct intelligentsia haven't got a clue because they have a choice not to live in Harlesden. I do not call my neighbourhood 'multi-cultured' because 'culture' (imnsho) can't exist alongside council estate ghettoism combined with a selfish type of street culture. The only genuine 'multi-cultured' society happens in more affluent parts of London where everybody can afford to live decent lives among well educated and polite society.

That is why, as I always said to people, I would never live in London. It’s overcrowded, it’s too violent, the people are rude and it smells. Why are you there? You seem to dislike it too. No one is going to save you, you need to move if you dislike it so much.

I am a white woman and I live in Harlesden in London. I hate living in Harlesden, but Harlesden is where I can afford to exist (I would not call it 'a life', in the sense of living, because I don't like the quality of my life here in Harlesden - even though it is a relatively green borough and it is quite close to the centre of London).

I’m confused. Is living in London cheaper then every other part of the country? There’s nothing to stop you moving if you don’t want to live there. I moved from the UK completely and move from Devon, to Wales, to Cambridgeshire when I did live in the UK.

In an ideal world we would get a government who would rob from the rich and give to the poor, but that is never going to happen! So 'envy' control is a logical approach. So I shut up and put up hoping that one day me, and my man, will afford to escape the country or escape to the country.

Your utopia has been tried and it has failed. Envy is the cause of so much evil in your mind but your own envy on this matter is fine? Also, how would a world be “ideal” when it would rest on a fundamental sin (theft) to keep it going? Would the moral spirit of people living under a system be unimpeachable as their subsistence is dependent on a moral wrong?

If the wealth producers in society have the produce of their hard work, capital, taken from them, then they will simply stop producing capital or will be massively de-incentivised to do so. The “pie” of wealth that people seem to think comprises societies’ money like some zero-sum game will shrink and the pieces that it doles out to the people will become miniscule. Again, this is not abstract theory, this has been tried over and over again.

The scent of fascism inherent in your desires is confirmed by the term “envy control”. Images of 1984 thought police and the secret service coming to take you away in the night for “envy crimes” come to mind. Put England to the sword in the name of your theories? Such is the fate of when society’s path is set by an oligarchy of people who see themselves as the enlightened ones. It will be another lesson for history that to do so will lead to failure. Freedom, despite its flaws, is a better way.

Dalrymple: Sympathy Deformed

ArgusEyes — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:34:30 GMT

To sympathize with those who are less fortunate is honorable and decent. A man able to commiserate only with himself would surely be neither admirable nor attractive. But every virtue can become deformed by excess, insincerity, or loose thinking into an opposing vice. Sympathy, when excessive, moves toward sentimental condescension and eventually disdain; when insincere, it becomes unctuously hypocritical; and when associated with loose thinking, it is a bad guide to policy and frequently has disastrous results. It is possible, of course, to combine all three errors.

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_otbie-sympathy.html

How do feminist oppress men? Plus other questions

ArgusEyes — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 01:52:25 GMT

From my previous answering questions post comes yet more questions from “bob”. So here they are:

“How do feminist oppress men, or how do they take away men's rights?”

Two ways:

One way is by pushing ideas into the zeitgeist that are anti-male, a good example of this is the Norwegian board of women law (where 40% of the boards of companies must be female) and any quota based law. These laws are not necessarily passed by feminists but are the result of feminist/leftist memes that hold that equal outcomes are necessarily the product of systemic sexism against women and therefore laws must be passed to pass power from the privileged (men) to the underprivileged (women). That unequal outcomes point absolutely to sexism is a though based upon the meme that men and women are the same. After all, if they’re not the same then that difference might explain the differences in outcomes in certain professions – an idea that feminist do not entertain.

The second way is direct action my feminists be it male only university courses (May Daly) or by self-professed feminists who are usually in the government. A good example of this is Harriett Harman who would actually pack the board of a bank with women. Which is direct sexism.

“What rights don''t[sic] men have?”

I make videos for a reason. If I may quote a section from my “Men are more oppressed than women” video.

First unlike the example above this pension tale is genuine oppression. Men in the UK have to work until 65 to qualify for a full pension, women have to work until 60 and generally make less and have more paternity leave. Laws that impose different standards on us based on our sex. Sounds like oppression to me.

How about the fact that discrimination against men is governmentally mandated. Forget about the companies and the universities. The most solid example of this is the new leader of the conservative party in the UK proposed quotas to get the shortlist of political candidates to be half women [2]. Where you see quotas read discrimination.

How about the right to reproductive control. When a woman becomes pregnant then she can abort, give up for adoption and in America shortly after the birth she can abandon the baby and resolve herself of parentage of that baby, this is called safe haven abandonment. When a man gets a woman pregnant then he is screwed, his entire life now becomes a script that the woman will write. If he wants the baby and she doesn’t tough for him, if he doesn’t want the baby and she does then tough for him also.

How about the right to equal protection? Our fascist police state will oppressively arrest a man for a woman’s violence because only men can abuse. A message that is spread by our system and our politicians.

How about the denial of parentage for men? When a split happens the man is treated as sub-human, completely controlled by the government who tell him when he can see his children and when he can’t like he is some sort of criminal.

How about divorce? Where a woman is entitled to her husbands assets and men are made to pay out large sums of money to their wives from businesses that they made succeed. A recent case involved a large payout and continual payouts every year for the rest of the woman’s life!

A man is more likely to be convicted and convicted for longer periods of time than a woman for a similar crime, like murder. We need only look at the attitudes surrounding the Clara Harris case and we see the sympathy that is poured on a woman murderer.

Health spending, for every £1 spend on men’s health care, £8 is spent on women’s health care [3]. Government and charity spending for breast cancer is 37 millions, it’s 10 million for prostate cancer, both diseases kill as many. So the government is spending more to protect a certain segment of the population, how about that?

http://www.true-equality.net/archive/2008/05/10/men-are-more-oppressed-than-women.aspx

“What power do the feminist have to do so if their only power is their voice?”

Ideas are powerful things. The mass murderers of history got into power, in part, by appealing to the masses with ideas. Theories on repressed memory syndrome were used to implant memories of abuse into the minds of patients, by psychologists, and led to convictions of completely innocent day-care workers (many of whom were women) and fathers.

Feminists are an advocacy group who have the current position, of representing women and being equated with what is good for women. I don’t believe this is so but nonetheless, they can influence policy, craft laws and last but not least they can indoctrinate young women and men with their ideas through the apparatus of university.

Never. Ever. Underestimate the power of ideas.

“What's wrong with protesting,[sic] isn't being active part of activism?”

I believe they are protesting on behalf of bad values. That is what I object to in feminism. Are you talking about physical protests? I expect it. Any protest that gets to obnoxious and loud will irritate me, even if I support the cause (tea parties for example).

“Also, are you anti any other movements?”

I am anti any movement that stands against liberty or/and on the side of political correctness.

I am against antiquated and corrupted victimist movements such as feminist and “blackism” or minority racist movements such as the modern black movements or any that is based upon race.

I am against pure racist movements such as the black panthers, K.K.K or white supremacists in general.

I am against the general milieu of anti-freedom movements such as socialism, Nazism, communism, Maoism, Islamism, etc.

I am against radical animal rights movements which are based on the idea of equating humans and animals (like P.E.T.A.), not the ones which want decent treatment for animals.

I am against movements based upon magic, which want the consequences of that magic to be influenced upon others. Such as creationism pseudoscience and religious movements.

I am against anti-science movements such as creationism and anti-vaccination and feminism (yes, many victimist movements have strong anti-science components).

I think I covered most of the bases. In short, I am against most movements as well as the idea of movements. Because at heart, movements are made up of people who represent a certain mindset, the mindset that the world revolves around their particular issue and they tend to view it in the extreme. Movements inevitably tend towards degradation such as feminist fighting for genuine equal rights for women to become the twisted movement it is today. They get invested in perpetuating the movement, and do so, normally by shifting the goalposts of what they oppose and manufacturing new controversies to fight.

Rape is equality? What?! These are not the MRA’s you’re looking for.

ArgusEyes — Sat, 29 May 2010 19:42:59 GMT

From P.Z. Myers blog, pharyngula. I get this article by some guy called Eivind Berge (case in point, this is why anonymity might be a good idea on the internet), called “Rape is equality”.

Maybe it’s a clever title, right? I have planned many videos with risqué titles that explained what they mean later on. Not here though, he is literally proposing that “feminist countries such as Norway stop thinking of rape as wrong.”. Lovely.

When men have something women have less of, such as money or power, women simply take it by force. It's called affirmative action and feminists believe it's right. I am not going to argue against that. I accept that as a lost cause. So instead I am going to embrace forced equality and demand it for men as well.

…

So let us give women equality if that's what they really want. Remember that due to the hypergamous nature of women, men get less sex as women get more money and power. Women are generally incapable of feeling attraction for men who are not better than they are, and soon men are no better than equal. So it is about time men in feminist countries such as Norway stop thinking of rape as wrong.

I don’t know who this guy is, and anyone can blog, but I don’t know how anyone claiming to be a libertarian can hold such views. Also, it seems that Berge is using feminist-inspired thinking here, as opposed to libertarian thinking. The idea that we force, through the apparatus of law, the equality of groups who have perceived "”slights” above or below another, is leftist. The fact that this is not a libertarian position in any way is not going to be mentioned by Myers who has a rather fairytale image of what libertarianism actually is. This from a man who doesn’t like the subtleties of atheism passing the religious nuts by. Oh the irony!

That said, he just appears to be some berk on the internet, any reason to take thus guy seriously? Nope.

Despite this, such a juicy bit of material isn’t going to slip by Myers as he makes this statement:

What do women have that men don't? Vaginas. So poor pathetic Eivend Berge is asserting his right to rape. He's quite open about it: "it is about time men in feminist countries such as Norway stop thinking of rape as wrong" and "Rape is equality." You'll find his type is fairly common among a group who call themselves "Men's Rights" proponents, where Men's Right seems to be to maintain economic and social inequities that benefit them.

“You'll find his type is fairly common among a group who call themselves "Men's Rights" proponents”. If by “his type” you mean people who advocate rape then no, this is the first time I can remember seeing something like this. I can't hope to be as big an expert on the M.R.M. as P.Z. Myers is so I just hope that the next time he makes a calumny like that, he provides some evidence to back it up.

However, if by “his type” you mean the general misogynist woman hater label that leftists utter as commonly as the word “the”, then you will find a lot of those in the Men’s Rights Movement; if your principle source of information is blogs.

P.Z. Do you want me to trawl the feminists blogs and bring up some of the things they say? I don’t fancy the proposition very much and since we know what you would say, it would be a fruitless exercise. How about the feminist nuts who want the extermination of men? How about those who make biologically ignorant statements about men being parasites (literally) or about men being “an accident”. Do those positions say much about the broader movement of feminism? It depends. If the broader movement also has leaders who parrot those views or teach them in universities or use them to pass legislation then yes, otherwise no.

How many times do I have to keeps saying this? It matters not what kinds of nuts you can find and link to a movement. Unless the normative movement they stand behind can be show to support those views, then you cannot parlay the views of the nuts into anything larger unless you’re a demagogue who doesn’t care about the laws of logic being applied in unpartisan ways.

About this claim:

I'm afraid he needs to learn that legal corrections to a long and ongoing history of economic oppression of women are fair and just,

I’m sorry. Am I allowed to disagree? Or is it just a case of me being not being learned enough? (can you say gulag?). Yes there is one and only once acceptable view, and that is that coercive fiddling and quotas by the apparatus of coercion, government, is fair and just. Disagree, and expect the standard name-shower by the left. Racist, Sexist, Homophone, Xenophobe, etc.

What I love about “legal corrections” is that it is never suggested when these legal correction must stop. At what point do we stop “correcting” for women? When they’ve achieved equality perhaps? What kind? Literal or opportunity? Also, how about the boys falling behind at university? Do we roll back female privilege in university programs and admissions? They’d rather die.

Also, how about the philosophical point that a “legal correction” is sexism by the very definition of the word. In that, it requires the recognition of a candidate’s sex and the hard-coded rule of the land to dole out benefits according to that sex. Sexism pure and simple.

Would people who hate sexism so much actually use it so freely? Leftists don’t have sexism, but instead love victim theology and the politically correct Marx-based view of a society of battling oppressed groups who need the re-distribution of power amongst them.

In a battle for who disgusts me the most. Berge wins hands-down.

Good eats for the brain

ArgusEyes — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 00:43:45 GMT

Theodore Dalrymple (aka Anthony Daniels) is a fantastic write who reads some of the most gripping and readable books around on the topics of modern society and culture. His book, Life at the bottom, should be mandatory reading for those who desire to understand human behaviour and life. He has penned an extremely short essay for City Journal called When Freedom Isn’t Free.

Freedom is freedom, not the means by which everyone comes to precisely the same conclusion and conducts himself in precisely the same way.

The depressing, and perhaps sinister, aspect of the public commentary on the case is how largely it has ignored the question of freedom. For liberals, it seems, any trampling on freedom or individual conscience is now justified if it conduces to an end of which they approve. Thus liberalism turns into its opposite, illiberalism.

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0414td.html

RE: Libertarianism defined. Is Libertarianism right or left?

ArgusEyes — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:05:03 GMT

One of my favourite blogs is P.Z. Myers pharyngula, although I rarely agree with much of what he says when it’s not about atheism. He write a doozy of a post entitled “Libertarianism defined”. Here’s the money shot.

“Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.”

That is perfectly in line with my own sentiments. Libertarianism isn't so much a political and economic movement as it is a widespread pathology.

That’s A-grade intellectual discussion right there. Head on over to the post and you won’t find much in the way of justification, nor will you find any at another post he links to. It’s interesting to see such nonsensical primitive denunciations of a whole system of belief from someone who is undoubtedly fed up of hearing the same from religious people. Does he think that when he makes a simplistic dismissal of libertarianism that it’s okay? When a creationist says that atheists “don’t believe in anything” or “they just want to live consequence free lives”, does P.Z. breath a sigh of annoyance at how ignorant and uninformed they are? Well this proves he’s really not that different from them, change the subject but the attitude remains the same.

Now what of the substance? What substance? There’s really no point trying to address such a mess but there is one point there that makes me cringe.

“Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology”..

I’ve heard this charge levied against Libertarianism often. When you hear someone make this claim then you can be sure that they’re quite ignorant of the etymology of political terms and the meaning of libertarianism.

Let’s start at the beginning, with a little help from Wikipedia of course.

The terms Left and Right have been used to refer to political affiliation since the early part of the French Revolutionary era. They originally referred to the seating arrangements in the various legislative bodies of France, specifically in the French Legislative Assembly of 1791, when the king was still the formal head of state, and the moderate royalist Feuillants sat on the right side of the chamber, while the radical Montagnards sat on the left.[8] This traditional seating arrangement continues to be observed by the Senate and National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic.

Originally, the defining point on the ideological spectrum were the attitudes towards the ancient regime ("old order"). "The Right" thus implied support for aristocratic, royal and clerical interests, while "The Left" implied support for republicanism, secularism and civil liberties.[1] At that time, support for socialism and liberalism were regarded as being on the left. The earlier "left-wing" politicians were advocates of laissez faire capitalism[citation needed] and the "right-wing" politicians opposed it, until the early nineteenth century when anti-capitalism gained favour among the leftists due to the rise of socialism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left–right_politics

The terms “left” and “right” are very nebulous. Leftism and conservatism have no political content to them, in that the radical imam who wants the society to remain under the rules of Shariah is conservative but he is very different to an American or British conservative. The political content of the conservative is dependent on the society he or she wished to conserve.

The same is true for people on the left. Being left means that one wants to move society towards a goal or new order. In this sense we can see that Libertarianism is left based. It has a societal ideal that it wants to achieve. If you don’t know what this ideal is then hit Google and do a bit of research. Libertarians often call themselves “classical liberals”, in that they adhere to the liberalism of yore, the free market kind that existed before it became synonymous with diluted socialism.

People mix up libertarianism with the right because of the similarities between libertarianism and conservatism in the western world, which is where much of the discussion happens. Libertarianism overlaps with conservative in America because conservatives want to conserve a society which has been conducive to freedom whereas Libertarians follow a political philosophy grown out of the American experience and hold freedom as a value. Therefore they follow the same policies much of the time, such as smaller government, smaller taxes, etc.

America and the UK slide further down the index of freedom.

ArgusEyes — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:05:16 GMT

There has been a nifty little resource that I have been using for a while now. It’s called the index of economic freedom and is produced by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank based in Washington D.C. thus it assesses freedom from a small government perspective. It is by no means definitive but operates as a good loose guide to the amount of economic, business and fiscal freedom that a country may offer.

Last year the U.K. was hanging in the number 10 slot but it has fallen off of the top ten in 2010, which was expected. What was surprising was the negative 2.7 drop of the Unites States from a “free” country to a “mostly free” country. I knew it would drop but not by so much.

New Zealand, my new country of interest which is holding all my attention at the moment (hence no posts or videos) has risen to number 4 in the list. Leftist/Statist governments make a country and people less free.

Cherchez-le-Femme

ArgusEyes — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:10:02 GMT

Cherchez-le-femme means “Find-the-female” in French. It is a term that I got and modified from Charles Krauthammer where he mentioned “Klein's peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif” (find-the-Jew) in reference to the Time’s Joe Klein who decried the odious attempts of "odious attempts by Jewish extremists . . . to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs.". I’m not touching that one now so don’t even try, but ever the thief, I will attempt to crowbar this term into the popular discourse, by which I mean i will use it a lot, so remember who came up with it first, alright?

Before your brain drops out with my inconsequential wittering (hey, I’ve been away a long time), let me introduce this piece from the BBC, Poor women ‘bear climate burden’:

Women in developing countries will be the most vulnerable to climate change, a report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned.

The agency said there was a disproportionate burden on those women and called for greater equality.

They do most of the agricultural work, and are therefore affected by weather-related natural disasters impacting on food, energy and water, it said.

Regular readers will notice similarities to the “Greener Gender: The Greener Gender: Are men worse for the environment?” essay that I wrote some time ago, in which I criticised author Gerd Johnssom-Latham for bandwagon jumping and using climate change to server her ideological agenda. The exact same thing is happening here. Notice the middle paragraph in the quote above. “The agency said there was a disproportionate burden on those women and called for greater equality.“. Call me a fool if you want, but that sounds like a roundabout way to solve the problem. If an deleterious phenomenon is going to disproportionally affect a certain group of people then one would think that the first order of the day is to mitigate the effect, not to propose a social solution targeted at the group of people, people like this are meddlers and they irk me.

This is where the term “Cherchez-le-Femme” comes in. This is the phenomenon we saw in the “Greener gender” report and in this report from the UN. People with an agenda are extraordinarily adept at linking a lot of things that happen in the world to their particular agenda. Certain people are obsessed with Jews, and everything that happens comes back to the Jews somehow, it really is quote boring talking to such people. This is why I am skeptical about climate change. I will accept that it is happening to a certain degree because as I know from defending evolution and science on so many occasions, that it takes a little bit of chutzpah to go against the scientific community. However, as an astute observer said on the Dennis Prager show one time, climate change has become catnip to a bunch of failed “isms”. It is a ripe fruit dangling in the faces of various political groups, to be picked and used to advance their purposes. The imaginary female that will be damaged by the next big thing must be sought by the feminist and identified as a victim to be solved by the medicine they offer. Hence the reason they say “more equality” is needed rather than “stop global warming” or even “raise the standard of living”.

I must also point out for people who don’t know my views. There is a problem in the third world, you’d have to be blind to not see it. Women in many countries around the world have less rights, some people say “therefore feminism” whereas I say “therefore equality”. Contemporary feminism as a solution the the plight of women in the third world is a bad idea. You can look to this and other blogs to advance that particular case. One last observance on this issue, the executive director of UNFPA is Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. If you go to her bio then you will see her dedication to standard feminist causes. I have highlighted the instances of the word “women” in the image below to show this. Now, I don’t normally dig into people’s past but it goes to the central message. Ms. Obaid is clearly a feminists who is looking to climate change as the catnip to sell her cause. It’s sneaky and veiled and will turn people off of her cause in the end.

Liberal Fascism at Pharyngula

ArgusEyes — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:44:03 GMT

My favourite blog is by a person I largely can’t stand. P.Z. Meyer’s Pharyngula has a post on a recent bloggingheads.tv kerfuffle.

“I've always rather liked Bloggingheads — at least the idea of it, with one-on-one discussions between interesting people. It flops in execution often, since some of the participants wouldn't recognize reason and evidence if it walked up and slapped them in the face with a large and pungent haddock (the right-winger political discussions are unwatchable, and it's always had this problem of giving people like Jonah Goldberg a platform), but their Science Saturday has been generally good. I don't always agree with the people they have on, but at least they're interesting and provocative. And Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer have been superstars of the format.”

Yes, the reason it “flops in execution often” is that it allows people on with differing views to P.Z. Meyers. The very same flop in execution applies to freedom of speech.

However, those of us who are adults can handle opposing viewpoints without throwing tantrums, and may possibly admit that what Meyers considers a flaw is really the biggest strength of freedom of speech.

bloggingheads.tv is a website that offers many views, although I can’t stand creationism I enjoy watching stuff like this and no doubt I would have enjoyed watching Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer too. However, they have pulled out of Bloggingheads because of the presence of creationist babble that was “insufficiently opposed” oh the horror! My first thoughts when I head this is that Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer are childish fools. Is depriving the site of their own opinion in order to curtail future creationist content a mature approach to the problem? If anything, this will give credence to the common creationist claim that they are “expelled” wherever they go.

I think that a creationist love fest is funny to watch, and my hackles certainly don’t get raised at the existence of such a thing.

Not even mentioning that science is a lot more decidable than political opinion is. Jonah Goldberg wrote a book called Liberal Fascism. I recommend that Meyers should pick up a copy if he wants to understand how his “liberal” belief system is not so liberal anymore. As should be apparent by this ridiculous post of his.

Making a Monkey out of Darwin: A Rebuttal

ArgusEyes — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:21:52 GMT

Well, this one's going to be fun.

Patrick Buchanan has written a piece for RealClearPolitics.com called “Making a Monkey Out of Darwin”. It’s a knee-slapping rip-roaring fun ride down lame off-the-shelf creationist claims alley. In short, the claims are:

“Darwinism” inspired Karl Marx
“Darwinism” inspired Hitler
“Darwinism” inspired eugenics
“Darwinism” caused world war 1!? (That’s a new one to me)
The neck of the Giraffe
Nebraska Man
Piltdown Man
The fossil record is rubbish
Stephen J. Gould fossil quote
Darwinism doesn’t explain how life started
“Darwinism” is a religion

Well, isn't that original? Let’s get dug in.

"You have no notion of the intrigue that goes on in this blessed world of science," wrote Thomas Huxley. "Science is, I fear, no purer than any other region of human activity; though it should be."

Right, science as a procedure has created innovation that has completely changed the way we live. However, the people who do the work are humans and humans are flawed, a particular scientist will cling to his or her theory despite reasonable evidence that it is wrong because of his or her personal pride and cognitive dissonance. But, in the long term the theories are gradually refined or thrown out. The scientific method is backing a theory with evidence and submitting it to peer review, it is the best method that humans have derived for finding the truth. It’s a messy process but life is not as simple as wishing making and magical thinking. I don’t believe that a sustainable farce for an extended period of time is likely in the scientific community.

As "Darwin's bulldog," Huxley would himself engage in intrigue, deceit and intellectual property theft to make his master's theory gospel truth in Great Britain.

He is quoted above for two reasons.

First is House passage of a "cap-and-trade" climate-change bill. Depending on which scientists you believe, the dire consequences of global warming are inconvenient truths -- or a fearmongering scheme to siphon off the wealth of individuals and empower bureaucrats.

I am a very light global warming skeptic, I say “light” because as I mentioned above, I don’t think that a prolonged farce is possible in science so I make criticisms very very reservedly. However, I believe that in the global warming issue, there are two groups to the left and right who have emotional reasons for embracing or denying the theory based upon their own belief systems and how much it can advance or recede their agenda. It is a sure golden goose to those who believe in greater governmental control and environmentalists (many times the same people) and people who are the opposite – who believe in smaller government and who oppose the other side consider it to be a thorn in their side.

That Darwinism has proven "disastrous theory" is indisputable.

"Karl Marx loved Darwinism," writes Windchy. "To him, survival of the fittest as the source of progress justified violence in bringing about social and political change, in other words, the revolution."

"Darwin suits my purpose," Marx wrote.

Darwin suited Adolf Hitler's purposes, too.

I should address the endless reference to “Darwinism”. Some evolutionary biologists such as Richard Dawkins use this word often, others don’t like it. I am one of the latter. What does it mean? To put “ism” on the end of something is to make it a belief system of the first word, this no always accurate (I.E. “feminism” is not a belief system of the “feminine” – they often despise traditional femininity) but Darwinism would be a belief system of Darwin, which man or woman who accepts the theory of evolution would accept it as a reasonable term that they base their views on Darwin's? You might as well call me a “Newtonist” or a “Einsteinist”. We accept the body of work of these great people but we do not center our belief systems around them. A good example of a legitimate use of the term would be “Christian” or “Christianity”, the form is different but the idea is to base one’s life on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Darwinism is not an appropriate term in our modern times.

As for the substance of the above quote, I have a certain kind of distaste for such mud-slinging. To assume the superiority of one’s own race or group is a “Darwinist” inspired meme is it? I disagree, I would content that this is a fundamental facet of human nature. Does something like evolution or “Darwinism” lend a patina of scientific credibility to such ideas? Probably. Buchanan states in his article that a theory can be true and yet inspire evil ideas, true, then what is the point of his article? Because he seems to flit between stating that "Darwinism" is false to stating that it has caused evil (even if it may be true), I think he is trying to fling enough mud to make some of it stick.

I have decided to wrap this up as a "part 1" for now.

Hooray!

ArgusEyes — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:06:31 GMT

BBC: Labour slumps to historic defeat

Labour has suffered its worst post-war election result as it was beaten into third place by UKIP and saw the BNP gain its first seats at Brussels.

Labour's share of the vote at the European elections was just 15.3% - worse than party bosses had feared.

The Tories won with 28.6%, beating Labour in Wales but failing to increase their total share significantly.

The results have sent shockwaves through UK politics and led to renewed calls for Gordon Brown to quit as PM.

'Two-fingered salute'

The BNP gained a seat in Yorkshire and Humberside and in the North-West of England, where party leader Nick Griffin was elected - the first time the anti-immigration party has won seats at national elections.

And hopefully Harriet Harman will get a job she deserves. Like cleaning public toilets.

I’m not too happy about the rise of the BNP though, they are nationalists. But I guess that the backlash can be strong when it is against such a bad government as we have had.

Patriarchal Society via Socialization versus Personal Responsibility

ArgusEyes — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:47:15 GMT

The Dogma of Feminism

ArgusEyes — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:20:07 GMT

Hi BoundlessEyes, thanks for the video response. For those who don’t know, I contacted BoundlessEyes in the first place to see if she wanted to make a response to my video “what is feminism”. I did so because she seemed to engage in discourse to a greater degree than many other YouTube feminists, which is not difficult seeing as no other group seems as reticent to explain and defend their views.

There is a talk show host I admire called Dennis Prager who has a saying that goes “I prefer clarity to agreement” and that is what I thought we could do here. Clarify where we differ as opposed to just battling it out to win. To do that effectively we I want to address the most important points where we differ. These topics will be on patriarchy, on gender differences and on Harriett Harman.

On patriarchy: I do feel that your video lacked clarity as it seemed like you were less interested in explaining your position and more interested merely reciting dogma.

[see video]

Answering questions in this way will get your fellow feminists nodding in agreement but I fear it has less effect on the rest of us who haven’t swallowed that blue pill. Far be it for me to get in the way of your intellectual masturbation but could you please define your terms more clearly. Patriarchy would be rule by males, at least according to the dictionary that I know you like to use. How can a democracy be a patriarchy? We have had a female prime minister and we have women in government. Iran and the Catholic Church are patriarchal systems. Western democracies are not.

Far from being a solid concept the term seems to encapsulate whatever feminists want it to, and yes I have read a number of opinions on the subject and in doing so I have encountered raises the bar for decedent writing quite a bit. Take one particular view

Feminist writer Marilyn French, in her seminal work Beyond Power, defines patriarchy as a system that values power over life, control over pleasure, and dominance over happiness.[1]

This is not a rational argument. It is an emotional and religious one. And, to be quite honest, it reeks of conspiracy theory.

On gender differences: I believe that we should all examine the things we believe to honestly assess whether they are true or not.

Take for example the common claim that women use more words per day then men do. The numbers you will hear cited differ in each case but they always cite that women use more words than men do.

As a man I am not insulted by this claim, it is either true or it is not.

If we take these studies and add on top our understanding from other research [3] that different areas of the male and female brain are used in sounding out words along with our plain and common sense observations of our sisters and mothers and female friends talking more on the phone and in the office.

Given thus fact it is not a huge leap to posit that the actions and careers that men and women take could be influenced by our differences. I see an obvious nurturing advantage in women, evolutionarily programmed to aid in the protection of young no doubt. Would this have any effect on more women wanting to be nurses for example? It might not but as us scientific sceptics like to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Could we have the evidence that this is societally constructed and by whom and to what ends?

What evidence you have presented would get you a failing grade in any science class for lack of proper isolation of variables. Yes a girl who was raised by dogs, as some sort of proof that humans are a tabula rasa to be scribbled upon by a conspiracy of white males intent upon god knows what. Are you familiar with the phrase “non sequitur”.

You can’t shame me with such dishonest tactics. I have always held that humans are the product of a mixture of nature and nurture as I specifically said in the original video. It surprises me not that being raised by dogs will be a profound effect on a developing child’s behaviour. The difference between the sexes is a fact and if humans can be manipulated so easily then the question of David Reimer still stands? Let’s see the intellectual honesty with which you approach this issue.

That. Was particularly loathsome. Let me read to you how David Reimer described his experience.

"It was like brainwashing. I'd give just about anything to go to a hypnotist to black out my whole past. Because it's torture. What they did to you in the body is sometimes not near as bad as what they did to you in the mind - with the psychological warfare in your head." [4]

David Reimer is now dead, he committed suicide.

I think your supercilious little dismissal about being teased on the playground is a sham. And you need to be honest with yourself about how easily you grasped onto any little scrap of information that you could use as a plausible deniability mechanism to not have to deal with the obvious black eye that the David Reimer case gives to feminism. If you ever want to know why people like myself get angry at feminists then just think about what you just did.

On Harriett Harman:

Remember at the beginning when I mentioned clarity instead of agreement? Well this is the perfect example of a clarifying moment. I don’t need you to explain how the things that Harriett Harman believes leads to her actions. I know how she thinks and why she is doing what she is doing. People who commit bigoted actions frequently do so on twisted belief systems and believe themselves to be in the right. If I may quote Mr. Prager again.

Victimhood. A lifelong study of good and evil has led to me conclude that the greatest single cause of evil is people perceiving of themselves or their group as victims. Nazism arose from Germans' sense of victimhood — as a result of the Versailles Treaty, of the "stab in the back" that led to Germany's loss in World War I and of a world Jewish conspiracy. Communism was predicated on workers regarding themselves as victims of the bourgeoisie. Much of Islamic evil today emanates from a belief that the Muslim world has been victimized by Christians and Jews. Many prisoners, including those imprisoned for horrible crimes, regard themselves as victims of society or of their upbringing. The list of those attributing their evil acts to their being victims is as long as the list of evildoers. [4]

And to that list we can add you and Harriett Harman.

A woman whose mind has become so twisted as to act like women are oppressed by some nebulous patriarchal force whilst occupying a position of immense power and using that power to actively give a governmentally mandated superior status to women.

You have no excuse, from now on, whenever you open that dictionary and say that feminism about equality know that you are participating in a massive lie. For what you actually come to support in reality is sexism and oppression by the very definition of those words that you’ll find in that same dictionary. For in Harriett Harman’s own words:

'It is about saying, "because you are a woman I'm going to put you in this promotion".' [6]

If you read that and like what it says then you can pat yourself on the back and join a very select club of totalitarians who use their grievances to push for tyranny over liberty. Who masquerade under the banners of changing for the better but who in turn bring more misery onto earth. Who push their small minded dogma onto all.

The “What is Feminism” video encapsulated all of what modern feminism means today and the Pièce de résistance is you, a young feminist coming along and proving everything that I’ve said:

Feminism is a movement with a gendered name that claims to stand for gender equality but really is an activist political movement and sexist belief system which, in its worse forms, denies reality, suppresses women’s choice, tramples liberty, hurts men, infantilises women and fosters animosity between the sexes.

Sources

[1] Patriarchy: Encyclopedia II - Patriarchy - Feminist view
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Patriarchy_-_Feminist_view/id/5367497

What is patriarchy?
http://www.essortment.com/all/whatispatriarc_rhsf.htm

[3] Men and Women Use Brain Differently, Study Discovers
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/16/us/men-and-women-use-brain-differently-study-discovers.html

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/09/24/sex_on_the_brain/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-419040/Women-talk-times-men-says-study.html

[4] The true story of John/Joan
by John Colapinto
Rolling Stone December 11, 1997
http://www.healthyplace.com/gender/inside-intersexuality/the-true-story-of-john-joan/menu-id-1427/

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, Glenn Sacks
http://www.hisside.com/6_6_04.htm

Death by Theory? Wendy McElroy
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120914,00.html

Told to Act Like a Girl, Carey Roberts
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/0519roberts.html

[5] Why Do People Do Evil?
http://www.creators.com/opinion/dennis-prager/why-do-people-do-evil.html

[6] I'll put women in charge of banks: Harriet Harman's plans to use equality laws to challenge macho City culture
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1178140/Ill-women-charge-banks-Harriet-Harmans-plans-use-equality-laws-challenge-macho-City-culture.html

War and Peace

ArgusEyes — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:11:43 GMT

It was recently Memorial Day and an excellent blog called “The Big Picture” at the boston.com website features an array of photographs from prominent world events. It featured a piece on the Memorial Day and I recommend you all check out these amazing photos.

Some videos are planned and written over a span of a couple of weeks and some videos are written on the spur of the moment in a couple of hours. This is the latter. When I read some of the comments at the bottom of the Boston article I felt that at this point in the world nothing is more deserving of deconstruction than the foolish things I have read regarding the nature of war and peace.

Sebastian Munich said:

no war, no death

Hiram said:

Support the troops. Bring them home.

David says:

War is stupid.

Lin said:

WAR=DEATH

NO WAR

PEACE

Al Curtis said:

when will we learn???

Elisabeth said:

Stand for peace.

You get the image. To be sure, most people did not make such foolish statements but the attitude that these people have demonstrated can be seen in society, sometimes in a more elegant form, sometimes not.

For me, this kind of mentality is hard to understand since even a couple of seconds of light thinking can turn up problems with this simplistic way of thinking.

The book I have on my desk beside me is called “Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty” by Roy Baumeister. It has 431 pages and is only one of many books one can buy on the subject of human cruelty. Do you think that when you open it up it has “WAR=DEATH, NO WAR, PEACE” on the first page followed by 430 pages of blank paper? Hardly.

Life is frequently confusing and distressing but saying things like “no war, peace for everyone” is the lazy way to feel good about yourself, such trite sayings are not a respectable moral or intellectual position for a person to take.

War stems from the human animal, I am sure that for as long as there have been humans there has been war, and it is not a simple thing to turn off a fundamental part of us all. To merely suggest that “no war” is your solution and then to sit back and feel morally superior at the “solution” you have just proposed is to announce to the world that you are more comfortable in a fantasy world of your own creation as opposed to seeing the world as it really is.

To suggest that the elimination of war is the vehicle to achieving peace is to be morally muddle headed over the nature of humanity and evil, not fighting human evil does not guarantee peace but merely allows that evil to conquer us all when it goes unchecked. To be sure, the state of not being in war is the state that comes naturally once we have achieved peace. Not the other way around.

Was “no war” an admirable position to have taken in response to Hitler? How many Jews would still be alive if the pacifist crowd had their way back then? Would European Jewry exist in any form today?

This problem is characteristic of a lot of what I see and hear from the left, the lack of ability to think beyond the first stage leads them to the conclusions of being anti-war because of their simple mindedness. After all, war involves killing and death so since those are bad things then the moral path surely exists in avoiding war. But to allow the evil to exist may be worse in the long run than the death toll incurred from fighting a war.

Take, as an example, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These events led to the surrender of the Japanese in the pacific war and thus ending World War 2. Approximately two hundred and twenty thousand Japanese, who were mostly citizens, died in the bombings combined.

A simple mind will merely look at these deaths and conclude that this was a horrific crime to be avoided, and whilst I agree that it was indeed horrific you need to look deeper. This tactical action led to the surrender of Japan, an action that caused War Minister Korechika Anami to attempt to commit seppuku after signing the surrender document. The Japanese were a people who would have fought longer against odds that would have caused another people to surrender to. The mainland invasion of Japan would have been a bloody episode in the history of the world. But, by a display of superior firepower it was avoided.

Therefore it is accurate to talk about the moral clarity of the event, or even the moral mathematics of it. But this concept is reprehensible to those who lack moral clarity. Since people were killed therefore it is an act to be shunned. Thinking in this way makes these people feel happy with themselves as they pursue the path of least resistance to the opiate of mind numbing righteousness, by simply following nice feelings and words like “LOVE”, “ACCEPTANCE”, “PEACE” and “LIFE” and they can feel happy with themselves, even if their way results in more death and misery, because surely there can be nothing wrong with following your heart and loving unequivocally. I don’t pretend to have all the answers in life but at least I know that it’s just not as simple as that.

Let’s translate this to modern events. North Korea is basically a gigantic concentration camp, a backward isolationist fascist state emulating communist Russia from decades ago. Their own people are starving as they rush to bigger and better militarization, the most worrying of which is their recent nuclear tests.

The beaurocrats around the world aid North Korea by giving them time by constantly calling for peace talks that the North Korean fascists continually show no regard for being compliant with, they have abandoned the armistice that ended their war with South Korea and are aching for war. North Korea is an echo chamber of festering paranoia and hatred, and now they have nuclear weapons. I say this now that I think there will be war with North Korea.

There have been many people who have recognised the reality of the situation. General Douglas Mac Carther said the following to the US senate in 1951 on the US withdrawal from Korea.

“history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier wars. It points to no single instance where this end has justified the means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace.”

Gen Douglas Mac Carther to US Senate 1951 on US Withdrawal from Korea

Another person who had wise words on thus subject is a much maligned figure, who I will probably be criticised for featuring. George W. Bush.

[See Video]

Denial of the harshness of life can be one of the worse things that a human being can do because for their own narcissistic sake they enable evil to proliferate on earth. The price of present reticence could well be future massacre. The reason why America is the greatest country in the history of the world is for no other reason that it has done the most to fight evil, to die for the sake of others.

History tells us that human evil will exist forever, and that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Sources & articles of interest

Joe Biden Calls President Bush’s Speech to Israel Bullshit
http://americaswatchtower.com/2008/05/15/joe-biden-calls-president-bushs-speech-to-israel-bullshit/

Memorial Day, 2009 – The big picture @ boston.com
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/05/memorial_day_2009.html

Peering into North Korea – The big picture @ boston.com
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/peering_into_north_korea.html

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

Battle of Iwo Jima
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima

What would you have done?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jul/30/japan.secondworldwar

North Korea threatens war as it tears up 50-year armistice
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6369797.ece

I thought of another good line

ArgusEyes — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:35:31 GMT

Democracy is merely the legal form of buying votes.

If it catches on remember, you heard it here first.

What is Feminism?

ArgusEyes — Sun, 10 May 2009 14:22:47 GMT

This is about as intellectual as many discussions on feminism get. I focus on feminism in my videos so much because no other political movement is so demonstrably wrong and stupid as I believe feminism to be, and yet people still swallow the blue pill and whisper comforting myths to themselves as to the true nature of feminism. This video is a very condensed description of feminism as it exists now, in the modern world, there is not time to cover the history of feminism and I am speaking about the people who form the academic and activist vanguard of the movement.

The first step is to deconstruct the term “feminism”. When we put “ism” on the end of a word we do so to denote a belief system. So apparently feminism is a belief system of the feminine or of acting in the interests of the feminine, as is confirmed by the dictionary definition of the term:

1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.

2. (sometimes initial capital letter) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.

3. feminine character.

This sounds perfectly reasonable, and the early feminist movement has done a lot to raise awareness of the need for women and men to have equal rights but it has been perverted, as most movements eventually do. Here it is mentioned that feminism is a doctrine advocating equal rights but a lot of people mention it as advocating equality. These things are not the same and words have meanings and it is important that we go beyond the beyond to examine how these philosophies play out in real life.

We understand equality, in terms of mathematics most clearly, as two sides of the equation being the same. But a lot of us understand that humans cannot be made uniform, we vary naturally as a species in ability and drive so when using the word equality, libertarians and classical liberals refer to the equality of opportunity and the non-discrimination of law. Whereas socialists and collectivists use the word equality to denote equality of outcome or sameness. Therefore the libertarian definition of equal rights is closest to what this dictionary definition says and the actual feminists are farthest from it.

The feminist stands for the socialist collectivist model, you can see this in the types of arguments they make. When a feminist argues that the fact that women earn less than men and therefore this is proof of discrimination, they never try to explicate whether or not women are making personal decisions which result in less pay, as Warren Farrell proves in his book “why men earn more”, or whether or not this is really discrimination. Feminists assume that the existence of a difference is, in and of itself, proof of discrimination and that is the end of the story for them.

This un-academic and simple minded treatment of a complex subject betrays the religious nature of what feminism actually is. It is a system of beliefs that are not open to examination, they are faith based. Nothing is more faithfully held to the feminist than the belief that the roles men and women assume are socially constructed, that is that the differences between the two are largely due to conditioning and that the main difference is physical.

As much as feminists will try to deny this, the wage gap argument that so many feminists make is one proof for the veracity of this argument. If you assume that an outcome in numbers is all that is needed to prove discrimination then you are tacitly admitting that the two sexes are the same but of course this is not true, any reasonable person can understand this through his or her interactions in the daily world. Male female difference is one of the favourite topics of comedians because it strikes at the heart of the differences between us and our angst at those differences.

The feminist meme that gender is socially constructed, whilst true in some, is ultimately a denial of science. If one is to admit that men and women differ physically and that the brain is a physician organ like any other. Then it stands to reason that men and women have different behaviours due to different brain compositions and hormonal balances and this is exactly correct. As a science geek myself I have read numerous studies about the differences between men and women. I know of not one peer reviewed scientific paper which claims that men and women are the same. Feminists simply do not back up their claims like their detractors do, such as Steve Moxon does in his book “The woman Racket”.

A good example our innate differences is the case of David Reimer who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision left him with no penis. David rejected his indoctrination and changed his gender back to male but suffered mentally and eventually committed suicide. The case was hailed as a success in the media but after the truth came out, Dr Money, who suggested the change, rejects criticisers as being part of the “anti-feminist movement”. [1]

Numerous surveys report that young woman want to stay at home, put more emphasis on the family, prefer male bosses, marry up to men making more than they do and have a different sexual nature to men. However, this evidence does not get incorporated into feminism because they already have their conclusion and they use evidence like a drunk uses a lamppost – for support rather than illumination, this is a prominent feature of many other pseudosciences such as creationism and homeopathy. A good example of reality falling on deaf feminist ears is this extract from the BBC’s women’s hour program.

(please see the video for audio)

The outcome based view of the feminist makes them an enemy of liberty. Since, in liberty you have the opportunity to fail or to have the effects of your actions affect the standing of the social group you are in. Such things are reprehensible to the collectivist so the solutions they propose are always to push for big government intervention into all of our lives.

This is happening constantly, the latest event I am aware of is of “Harriett Harman” the “minster for women and equality” proposing an “Equalities Bill” which would force companies to publish average hourly rates for their male and female employees. In very recent news she will now use this bill to force banks to hire women.

'Sometimes we have to take scary methods in order to achieve worthwhile results,' she told a mainly female audience. 'It is about saying, "because you are a woman I'm going to put you in this promotion".'[5]

I must use brevity in light of the fact that I am physically shaking with anger and rage whenever I read the latest fascist proposal from this worm of a human being. But the next time you hear a feminist squawking about what whatever is disturbing their system at that particular time then just remember this, this is what they believe in and this is what they will do. Female supremacy, sexism and socialism bordering on fascism.

Despite Harman’s efforts to put women on a pedestal, one of the big myths around feminism is the notion that it acts in the interest of women. In fact not many things are more disdainful of women than feminism is. This is exemplified by a famous quote from Simone de Beauvoir in reference to stay at home mothers:

"No, we don't believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make it."[3]

The arrogance of this is staggering. Surely the person who should be acting in the interest of a woman is that individual woman. One of the actions the left performs is that it monopolises a group and pretends to be the only legitimate and allowable moral voice in representation of that group. A woman who subscribes to feminism is making a serf of herself to a particular political agenda.

Apparently a woman cannot choose whether to appear in pornography or to prostitute herself as there is a strong feminist opposition to such things. Why is this so? This is a clear cut case of where feminism acts to restrict the choices of women and as the Simone de Beauvoir quote alludes to, there is an agenda about what the feminists want women to be doing. The objection to pornography comes from being anti-male. Their problem with it is that women are being sexually submissive to males but there is also strong evidence that an increase in pornographic proliferation leads to less instances of rape.

The leftist activism of feminism is inherently anti-conservative. Old models of femininity are seen as being created by and for the benefit of men therefore the aim is to break the bonds between the genders. The example of the wage gap is an example of the disdain for women’s choices; another good example is how things such as Rape and domestic violence have their meanings skewed to include more and more women in their folds.

Does this attempt to broaden the meaning of rape help young women or hinder them? Feminism continues to exist as long as it has a bill of victim grievances to sell. By keeping young women angry and scared they ensure the next generation of young feminists through their paranoid conspiracy theories. I met young women like this at university not too long ago and they had chips on their shoulder that were at complete odds with their status in the 21^st century. Never before have has women had so much choice and freedom and never before have they been so angry.

The truth is that feminism is an identity which people with an activist mindset can slip into like a warm slipper. Their modes of acting and though are not too dissimilar to what one can see in black activism and gay activism and if a feminist was born a black man then she would be following Jesse Jackson instead of Gloria Steinem. Same walls, different wallpaper. These movements start with noble causes but as they succeed the membership is whittled away to the radical members who are left with the task of manufacturing grievances to legitimise their own existence.

The majority of people who call themselves “feminist” have bought the notion of feminism meaning equality and thus call themselves feminist without too much thought as to what feminism is, but these people do not sit on the payroll of feminist organisations or on women’s study faculty or try to pass feminist inspired laws. They are simply a rather convenient human shield for the radical feminists who are doing the damage. Feminists like this:

“The National Organization for Women-NYS stands in solidarity with NYS Assemblywoman Patricia Eddington in support[sic] legislation that will once and for all state clearly that violence against women must be regarded as a "hate crime."”[4]

Believe me, I have a long list of laws and proposals like this. Another good example is gender quotas. There is another name for a philosophy whereby you look at the world through the lens of sex, where every situation must be examined in how many women are in it and how it affects women. The name for this is sexism and that is ultimately what feminists are, sexists. Any man who says comparable things about women would be branded as a sexist and bigot and sent packing in short order.

So in short: Feminism is a movement with a gendered name that claims to stand for gender equality but really is an activist political movement and sexist belief system which, in its worse forms, denies reality, suppresses women’s choice, tramples liberty, hurts men, infantilises women and fosters animosity between the sexes.

Sources

[1] When Feminist Dogma Met Dr. Mengela - Carey Roberts

http://mesarchives.blogspot.com/2004/05/when-feminist-dogma-met-dr-mengela.html

[2] Bill set to expose gender pay gap

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8019605.stm

[3] Chapter 12: The Gender Wardens

http://blog.enlightenedwomen.org/2009/04/06/chapter-12-the-gender-wardens.aspx

[4] NYS Lawmakers Must Rethink Violence Against Women as a Hate Crime
February 26, 2009

http://www.nownys.org/pr_2009/pr_022609.html

[5] I'll put women in charge of banks: Harriet Harman's plans to use equality laws to challenge macho City culture

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1178140/Ill-women-charge-banks-Harriet-Harmans-plans-use-equality-laws-challenge-macho-City-culture.html

[not referenced] Intelligence in men and women is a gray and white matter

http://today.uci.edu/iframe.php?p=/news/release_detail_iframe.asp?key=1261

[not referenced] Women's brains are different from men's – and here's scientific proof

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/womens-brains-uareu-different-from-mens-ndash-and-heres-scientific-proof-870849.html

Dennis Prager comes to YouTube

ArgusEyes — Fri, 01 May 2009 10:37:07 GMT

It’s about friggin’ time.

Read Hitchens (the other one)

ArgusEyes — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:55:56 GMT

When you say Hitchens then most will think of Christopher Hitchens. However, there is another prominent Hitchens who goes by the first name of Peter.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/

He is decidedly more conservative than his brother and is a columnist for the mail and author in his own right. I must say that I am pleasantly surprised by his writing style. Check it out.

Comment: re: Thai king Under monarchy you are a subject not a citizen part 2

ArgusEyes — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:15:54 GMT

I got a comment in reply to this video that I feel requires highlighting mainly because of its length.

I commented the below on your VDO, so I might as well put it here:

#1 I don't like how you post your VDO w/o doing reseach and giving incorrect information. But I DON't generalize you as a representative of British people. I believe there's LOTS of good British people out there who take responsbility b4 posting VDOs.

However, I also disagree with those Thais who post aggressive responses as well. In fact, those who reponse are those who can't control their anger. For those who have more EQ, they have to take 1hour++ trying to write a long response to all VDOs posts in Youtube considering the amount of information we have in order to explain to make you understand taking our culture difference..
Sigh.. It's very tiring I can tell you. Nobody's going to be that free, so it's likely you will have more of impulsive stupid response.. Sorry for that I should say.

Like I mentioned before. A Thai person emailed me and said that they tell this story to many foreigners despite it being true, the story was also relayed to me by someone with a Thai wife so I thought I was on pretty steady ground in retelling it in the video. However, if it is not true then I don’t feel that the message of the video is any different. There ARE lese majeste laws in Thailand and people DO get put in prison under them. This is a fact and the substance of the video remains the same despite a minor factual error on my part. Like most of my videos this is opinion, it is not a facts video therefore leading with the weakest and most petty point is a debate fopah against you. It is amusing that people revel in such glee when they have a factual mistake to hold on to. I feel the joy people take, like you do here, in pointing this out is related to what little substance the rest of their argument, if any, has.

Oh, and I’m glad that you feel that there are lots of good British people out there, despite me.

#2 Please don't deny it. You marked ALL monarchy bad in your 1st VDO. If you only talk about your own monarchy in the UK then why you say so much about Thailand in your VDO, including putting it in the VDO title!???? If you take all references to the "Thai" out then I'll leave your DVOs all alone. Fair enough?

Why would I deny it? Monarchies are outmoded tyrannical oligarchies. As a libertarian and individualist, why would I support them?

I talk about Thailand because I had recently found out about the lese majeste laws and the YouTube ban and I thought “hmm, that would be a good subject for a video”. There is no hidden agenda here.

#2.1 Nope you didn't criticize our King but you criticize us having a King and protecting our King using our own "internal" law. I myself choose to have Youtube temporarily banned in my country in order to ask it to moderate its VDOs mocking & disrespecting our King. (FYI: the law is written by the PEOPLE through its democratic system, not by the King. the king's only there by name but no real power.)

This is why I am against democracy. I have no doubt that people are short minded fools that would cut off their nose to spite their face. When you let populism and mob rule dictate laws such as this then you have no one to blame when an evil king comes into power and then you find yourself locked up in a jail cell for having criticised him.

Remember this: Admiration is the emotion farthest from comprehension. Because you love the king so much, you cannot see that you are creating a rod for your own back.

#3 Yes, you have your right of free speech to say it, and so do I. No personal offence should be taken here either as we're supposed to have a civilized debate. Anyway, telling incorrect information (e.g., In Thailand, one can't stamp on the money, etc.) is not really a good practice of free speech.. Other foreigners will quote from you and there'll be no end to all misunderstandings we have everywhere now. You see, we have to spend so much time in answering all VDOs.. so it'd help if you do more reading-ups first..

Again you harp on this point. As if it makes up a substantial amount of my total argument. Hopefully all rational people can see what you are doing is petty.

#4 For the future concern, leave it for future. If our future king's not this great, surely enough that Lese Majeste Law won't be there for long!;) lol! If we're not happy, surely Thai people'll never fail to voice ourselves out! (as you've seen here! lol (* can't stop giggling here sorry) OK, serious talking, no system's absolutely best in all situation, neither monarchy nor absolute democracy will be 100% great.. I do expect something bad in future to happen, we'll have to wait and see.. But for now as I commented earlyer, the king's been the country only hope against all corrupted politician we've had from our democracy system.. So without monarchy, we can't guarantee if any other system will benefit us either..

Here’s a strange idea. Freedom.

If you have freedom then people who love the king can continue to love him and people who do not love the king can have their say.

Without freedom, like at the moment with lese majest, only one of these groups can have their say.

In short: Freedom allows all views whereas tyranny only allows a certain number, the freedoms allowed by liberty are a superset of those allowed by tyranny. In a free society the fascist can be a fascist, a collectivist can be a collectivist and an individualist can be an individualist. If the collectivist takes over then he will force all to adopt his particular philosophy. This is the base evil behind collectivism.

#4(cont'd) In fact, if we don't have our monarchy to balance the power, we'd have become like Myanmar where the army has absolute power. Things're not easy there. They king has his power cuz people like me and others here are ready to fight for him, so he's the only one who can persuade the citizen to share a mutual goal. In the army fight with students 10 yrs ago, he was the only one who can stop the fight

You need an absolute power to balance the power to stop you being ruled by an absolute power? Right.

PS. You seem to be more relaxed before the end of this VDO and I'm glad to see that. As I say, I don't want this to become personal or anything. I think it's because of our culture difference. Based on the Thai & Asian context, you look very aggressive in your 1st VDO that's why you got those hateful email. Those response like "go to hell," etc. have to be ignored.
Anyway, every country has educated & uneducated, high EQ & low EQ people. As a Thai I have to say sorry for that. Anyway, your VDO is better than some others that just express their ideas using monkey face & Photoshop.

Thanks for reading.

I don’t like the approach of videos like that. I don’t know what purpose is served by being wilfully offensive and obtuse without making a decent point. I offend people because they disagree with my ideas, not because I’m trying to be wilfully offensive.

BBC: Bill set to expose gender pay gap

ArgusEyes — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:44:04 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8019605.stm

That wicked and wretched woman Harriett Harman is marching forward as she has done in the past with her collectivist agenda.

Many employers will be made to reveal how much male staff are paid compared with their female colleagues, under a bill being published later.

The Equality Bill aims to tackle discrimination against a range of groups including women, the elderly and those from lower social classes.

It will also make it a legal duty of public bodies in England and Wales to address social inequalities.

The Conservatives have described the plans as "class war attacks".

Minister for Equality Harriet Harman pledged the bill would help to "narrow the gap between rich and poor and make Britain more equal". The result of this [bill] will mean that it will take longer to get out of recession and companies will be loathe to take on more employees
David Frost
British Chambers of Commerce

Ministers say the need for new measures is borne out by evidence showing that by the age of six, bright children from poor families are overtaken by less able children from wealthier homes and that people in deprived areas tend to suffer more from ill health.

The government had promised the bill, which will also ban age discrimination outside the workplace, in its manifesto before the last election.

Ministers also want to tackle the fact that - 40 years after the introduction of the Equal Pay Act - women in the UK still earn on average 23% less per hour than men.

The new bill will require companies employing at least 250 staff to publish their gender pay gaps by 2013. If too few have done so voluntarily, the government will use laws to make it happen.

It’s the usual stuff. Equality really mean sameness. The government will be expanded, the power it will have in intruding into our lives and businesses will increase.

People like Harman do not change their tune or their blinkered views of the world. A demonstration of this can be seen in her following words:

David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, will tell its annual convention on Monday that the government too often sees the answer to a problem as being more legislation.

"The result of this will mean that it will take longer to get out of recession and companies will be loathe to take on more employees," he will say.

But Ms Harman said there was "no excuse for having unfairness when times are difficult".

"The economies and societies which will prosper in the future are not those that have rigid hierarchies, where women know their place and where you can't go forward because of the colour of your skin," she said.

"That's a very backward-looking argument."

The usual rot: The gap is proof of unfairness (it is not), women have their place (they do not, what age does Harman live in?). She bangs on about race like the leftist is wont to do and then sums up her ridiculous straw-man by saying "That's a very backward-looking argument.". Yes, yes it is Harriett.

As for Mr.. Frost. I’m glad that some people get it but in all honesty this country is fucked. i consider Britain to be fascistic. A good story that was sent to me by a viewer is this:

Thought police muscle up in Britain

BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.

There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.

Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal tasks was "to alter people's actual psychology". Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people's psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.

The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the "global baggage of empire" was linked to soccer violence by "racist and xenophobic white males". He claimed the English "propensity for violence" was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were "potentially very aggressive".

In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.

Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government's anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: "If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you." Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: "If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings." It took him five years to clear his name.

Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher's first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: "It's racist, you're going to get done by the police!" Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge. The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: "An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form."

A 10-year-old child was arrested and brought before a judge, for having allegedly called an 11-year-old boya "Paki" and "bin Laden" during a playground argument at a primary school (the other boy had called him a skunk and a Teletubby). When it reached the court the case had cost taxpayers pound stg. 25,000. The accused was so distressed that he had stopped attending school. The judge, Jonathan Finestein, said: "Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? There are major crimes out there and the police don't bother to prosecute. This is nonsense."

Finestein was fiercely attacked by teaching union leaders, as in those witch-hunt trials where any who spoke in defence of an accused or pointed to defects in the prosecution were immediately targeted as witches and candidates for burning.

Hate-crime police investigated Basil Brush, a puppet fox on children's television, who had made a joke about Gypsies. The BBC confessed that Brush had behaved inappropriately and assured police that the episode would be banned.

A bishop was warned by the police for not having done enough to "celebrate diversity", the enforcing of which is now apparently a police function. A Christian home for retired clergy and religious workers lost a grant because it would not reveal to official snoopers how many of the residents were homosexual. That they had never been asked was taken as evidence of homophobia.

Muslim parents who objected to young children being given books advocating same-sex marriage and adoption at one school last year had their wishes respected and the offending material withdrawn. This year, Muslim and Christian parents at another school objecting to the same material have not only had their objections ignored but have been threatened with prosecution if they withdraw their children.

There have been innumerable cases in recent months of people in schools, hospitals and other institutions losing their jobs because of various religious scruples, often, as in the East Germany of yore, not shouted fanatically from the rooftops but betrayed in private conversations and reported to authorities. The crime of one nurse was to offer to pray for a patient, who did not complain but merely mentioned the matter to another nurse. A primary school receptionist, Jennie Cain, whose five-year-old daughter was told off for talking about Jesus in class, faces the sack for seeking support from her church. A private email from her to other members of the church asking for prayers fell into the hands of school authorities.

Permissiveness as well as draconianism can be deployed to destroy socially accepted norms and values. The Royal Navy, for instance, has installed a satanist chapel in a warship to accommodate the proclivities of a satanist crew member. "What would Nelson have said?" is a British newspaper cliche about navy scandals, but in this case seems a legitimate question. Satanist paraphernalia is also supplied to prison inmates who need it.

This campaign seems to come from unelected or quasi-governmental bodies controlling various institutions, which are more or less unanswerable to electors, more than it does directly from the Government, although the Government helps drive it and condones it in a fudged and deniable manner.

Any one of these incidents might be dismissed as an aberration, but taken together - and I have only mentioned a tiny sample; more are reported almost every day - they add up to a pretty clear picture.

Scary scary stuff.

Change, progressive, regressive, what?

ArgusEyes — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:34:51 GMT

Il Duce, Redux?

Trying to handle the crisis, the Fascist government nationalized the holdings of large banks which had accrued significant industrial securities. The government also issued new securities to provide a source of credit for the banks and began enlisting the help of various cartels…. The government offered recognition and support to these organizations in exchange for promises that they would manipulate prices in accordance with government priorities. A number of mixed entities were formed… whose purpose it was to bring together representatives of the government and of the major businesses.… This economic model based on a partnership between government and business was soon extended to the political sphere, in what came to be known as corporatism.… The Fascists began to impose significant tariffs and other trade barriers.… Various banking and industrial companies were financially supported by the state.… [The national leader] created the [New Governmental Entity]….[which soon] controlled 20% of [the nation's] industry through government-linked companies.… [The national leader] also adopted a Keynesian policy of government spending on public works to stimulate the economy.… Public works spending tripled to overtake defense spending as the largest item of government expenditure.

As much as that description sounds like U.S. government policy begun under George W. Bush and now greatly expanding under Barack Obama, the above passage of course describes the economics of fascist Italy in the 1930s, as summed up by Wikipedia. (A quick Google search produces plenty of similar summaries of "economic fascism.") Furthermore, "The Fascist conception of life," Mussolini wrote, "stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual."

A disgusting meme is spreading

ArgusEyes — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:59:39 GMT

This has been worrying me for some time now. I have been hearing an increase in mutterings about “the failures of capitalism” and “the death of capitalism”, presumably uttered with straight faces.

What is this? Has enough time passed for us to have forgotten about the immense evil caused by utopian ideals. If not capitalism then what? Socialism? Communism? What?

From Rasmussen:

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

The poll is dubious do I’m not jumping off cliffs yet. There is also an upshot in people mentioning classic defenders of the free market like the Milton Freidman clip from a while back.

This comes at a time where America, traditionally the bastion of capitalism and wealth, has elected a president like Barack Obama. Now, I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon of screaming about this being socialism and communism like Glenn Beck seems to do every time he forgets to take his chill pills. What I will say is that the values and ideals that Obama represents seem to be the opposite of what the US was founded on. From JFK’s “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” to “what can I give you”.

A government built on empathy will ultimately degrade those it seeks to help

ArgusEyes — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:44:59 GMT

There is a guy on YouTube called “Thomas” who I have been having an email exchange with, I have been posting my replies on this blog as I feel it is important to get other people’s take on the matter and to also display a reasonable person who debates well. You can see my previous responses in the posts “I get email: 'Real Injustices'???” and “Our governments stifle the freedom of men in order to infantilise them”. I present his newest email minus introductory pleasantries and signature.

YOU SAY THAT YOU WANT THE FREEDOM TO MAKE YOUR OWN CHOICES AND MISTAKES AND THAT THE OPPRESSIVE SPECTRE OF GOVERNMENT SHOULD STAY OFF OF OUR BACKS.

Unless you are completely anarchist, you will agree with me that the implementation of laws that take away for instance peoples freedom to commit murder is very necessary, because the freedom to do such things severely stifles the freedom of people other than the choice making individual itself. In this way, a human beings right to choose to do whatever it pleases ends precisely the moment when its choice of action does damage to or stifles the freedom of other individuals, and most of us (including you and I) are very appreciative of a government intervening on our behalf to stop other people from compromising our freedom by stealing from us, killing us, hurting us, cheating us and so on and so forth.

Unfortunately the most privileged group in our society, i.e. white western males often seem to believe that government should only intervene to the extent that western white male (dare I say patriarchal?) freedoms and liberties will be protected from oppression, and that the oppression and hardships unique to a single given minority should continually be allowed to be practiced by said privileged group of white males.

We ban murder in our society because we consider a murderers freedom to kill to be worth a lot less than the freedom and security of potential murder victims. By this logic society should also consider male sexual dominance to be worth a lot less than the freedom and security of women and children, especially in the face of all the evidence of both the harmful effect of pornography on the human mind and on the enormous human costs of the sex industry itself. It does not, however, because of the utter lack of empathy of the privileged ruling class in society; a class whose supremacist ideals of individualism and freedom do not apply to the suppressed, but amounts only to the freedom of the oppressor to continue oppressing.

ALSO, IN COMMENTING ON MY ARGUMENT REGARDING THE COMPLEXITY OF HUMAN CHOICES, YOU SAY THAT GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT ANALYSE THE NUANCES IN OUR DECISIONS AND IN THE LIGHT THEREOF DECIDE WHAT IT THINKS ARE ACCEPTABLE WAYS TO LEAD A LIFE BECAUSE THIS STIFLE[S] THE FREEDOM OF MEN [AND] INFANTILISE[S] THEM.

It would seem that you did not read my last letter that closely, so let me answer the above-mentioned (again) with a true story this time. Consider 19-year-old Maksuda. She is a single mother and has been a factory worker since she was 11. She became pregnant with her daughter at age 17 and found herself unable to keep up with the rapid production of goods. Her manager noticed her slow down and said that he didn't want to hear her excuses about being pregnant. She tried to respond but according to her, "He violently kicked [her], hard, in the stomach and [she] fell to the floor. [She] fainted." She worked until she was eight and a half months pregnant and tried to ask for a legal maternity leave but was told that there was no law for this in the factory.

I wont tell you how this story ends, but rest assured that if you as a government official tell Maksuda that you will not analyse the nuances in her decision to be in the factory because you do not wish to infantilise her, the expression on her face will not be one of extreme gratitude. But then again, you did say the freedom of men; not the freedom of women and children my bad.

Moreover I do not think that your very individualist statement that [i]f people want to degrade themselves then let them do it would not look overly humane in the context of Maksuda and neither does it in the case of the victims of the sex industry.

FINALLY, YOU SAY THAT WANTING TO BAN THE DISTRIBUTION OF PORNOGRAPHY AND NOT PORNOGRAPHY IN SPIRIT IS IMBECILIC.

This is, in fact, NOT what I insinuated. If you would care to look at my letter again, it says that I am NOT AT ALL [] proposing that we make it illegal for women to [] participate in pornography. If this was not clear I apologise and I hope that you will let me clarify this point. What I mean to say is this:

If a woman should really (really?) want to engage in double anal and vaginal penetration while simultaneously being called a worthless little slut reduced to the mere tightness of her genital openings in the privacy of her own home in front of her brand new SONY handycam, then that decision is of course entirely up to her. What goes on in a private bedroom between consenting adults is of no business of the state - period. In the same way, if you want to smoke a fat cigar in the privacy of your own home, not caring about the empirical evidence in front of you, telling you that it could kill you in the long run, then that is also entirely your decision. But

The moment you enter a multi million dollar industry in which you get paid (as opposed to doing it for free) to do physically and emotionally devastating things to yourself in public (as opposed to doing them in private) for the amusement of white western males in order to support your children or a drug abuse (as opposed to doing it out of personal inclination), then considered government intervention is most certainly justified as it is was when the government decided that you cannot blow smoke from your fat cigar in my face in public and endanger my health or stifle my freedom from getting lung cancer.

To be honest, Mark, I do not think that our disagreements are as much about a clash of fundamental world views as much as they are about our very differing views on privilege and empathy.

Our differences are indeed about empathy. I feel that making political decisions on empathy is a fools path. Empathy is not normally universal, that is just not what humans do right? When we empathise then we do so towards some perceived oppressed group, and that leads to misery.

Your writing drips with a kind of Marxist demagoguery. When you talk about “white males” at every step then I think it’s not too much of a leap to imagine your mentality causing real oppressions for that group, and then what? Re calibrate, recast them and then they become the new victims? This kind of thinking has caused more human misery than is possible to calculate.

Basing systems on empathy and emotion is the worst thing us humans can do. It is a well know phrase that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. I don’t doubt that you are a good man but your mentality causes harm. Let’s have an example:

There was a luxury tax passed a while ago on yachts. The idea was basically eat (ahem sorry, tax) the rich. What happened? The rich stopped buying yachts, they would buy other things or work around the loopholes to avoid the tax. Sales of yachts dropped. Who suffered? The not so rich people who worked in shipping yards and providing services that related to yachts and yacht owning. So the emotion of punishing those deemed to be the haves, the emotion-based laws punished the types of people they are supposed to empathise with.

The foundational flaw of your argument is where you compare direct action which cannot be misunderstood like committing violence against another person, with an ethereal threat for which you need to make a winding justification for its danger.

People have churches and groups and can make their own mind up on what is bad for them, when you make the government enforce it on all people then this is tyranny. For everything there is a line, a pat on the back is hitting and some nebulous threat according to you is not the same as a tangible threat.

Also, ever considered that you might be wrong? I feel that rape has decreased due, in part, to the proliferation of porn (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDshCXHBjQc). Think beyond your specific causes for a moment. The average life expectancy of a homosexual male is decreased about 14 years by their actions, compare this to the loss of life through cigarettes (7 years the last I heard). Now, in a system you want where policy is made on what people emote about being good for society. What is to stop a bigoted anti-gay group from oppressing homosexuals? Nothing, if you can make a strangled case for it then it might pass. In my system nothing like this can pass because of the basic freedoms that I would grant to all.

I heart Daniel Hannan

ArgusEyes — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:18:25 GMT

Also, via a Vox day interview (thanks liberal fascism blog on national review online):

VD:One thing that tends to confuse Americans is that the British National Party is not very popular despite holding what appear to be populist views on immigration and the European Union. Why do they enjoy so little support compared to the three major parties?

DH:Because they are, contrary to the way they are described in the BBC, a party of the far left. They're in favor of nationalization, they're in favor of protectionism, they want workers' councils to run industry, they want a massive state program of rebuilding manufacture. Like Hayek said about the socialist roots of Nazism, they are a national socialist party and the socialist bit is very important to them. Plus, there is a line, a very important line in politics, between being anti-immigration and anti-immigrant. And they've crossed that line.

VD: In a certain respect, they really are fascists, but in the Italian Fascist sense.

DH: Yeah. I think most of these so-called “far right” parties are on the left by any normal definition. It's a brilliant media trick in Europe to always refer to them as “the far right”. The target of that is the mainstream right. Every time you read about the BNP in the press, it's always prefaced with “the far right BNP”, as though they were like us, but more so, which is the opposite of the case. When somebody reads that, it doesn't make them think any worse of the BNP, it makes them think worse of the right. Which, of course, is why they do it.

It’s nice to hear that talk from a British MP bit it’s too little too late.

AIG bonuses: Destroying your kitchen to swat a housefly

ArgusEyes — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:24:00 GMT

Yep. Government that retroactively has the power to punish groups of people that it wants to, to satiate the ignorant torch-wielding masses misinformed by the media. This is why you want to keep government as small as possible, as open as possible and as restricted as possible.

Female Bigots

ArgusEyes — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:34:11 GMT

People criticise me all the time for the things I say against feminism, they claim that I am a woman hater and want to keep women barefoot and pregnant in kitchen. I always retort back by saying that most of my critiques are against feminism which has erroneously been made synonymous with women’s rights.

But I must say, that the things I say pale in comparison to the kind of demeaning pap one can find in the mainstream media which is written directly against men by females. As Fred Reed observed:

An industry exists today in the writing of pieces proclaiming the weakness of men and the superiority of women

I present two such recent cases to you now. The first is an article written by Laura Bennett called “Exactly how are men superior?”, you will find it on “The daily beast” I will read the opening of the article.

I love my sons—they’re funny, sweet, and full of surprises. But I don’t understand how a species incapable of feeding themselves—much less hitting the toilet—ever came to rule the planet.

Last week as I watched the 44th male take possession of the most powerful position in the world, I had to ask myself how men ever came to be in charge of the world. How did they surpass women in status, power, and wealth? I don’t hate men, I live with far too many of them to survive day-to-day harboring such feelings. I just know that women are the more capable sex. As early as the age of two, girls leave boys standing bewildered in their dust as they speed along the social, emotional, and intellectual racecourse of life.

I am not dealing with Einstein here, just regular boys, and besides, I bet Einstein had his mother tying his shoes for him until he was in college.

My daughter, Cleo, was self-sufficient and independent from the time she could walk; my boys can't take a piss without my help, and even then they can’t manage to get it in the toilet bowl. My boys have been slow to walk and talk, impossible to potty-train, and refused to give up breast-feeding. I had none of these problems with my daughter. When Cleo was five, I came home exhausted from work and fell asleep on the sofa. I opened my bleary eyes to find her eating pizza.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“I called Domino’s.”

“Where did you get the money?”

“Your purse.”

“Did you tip?”

“Twenty percent.”

I can’t imagine any of my boys, much less my husband, taking such proactive measures against personal hunger.

What I am not going to do with this article, is try to debunk it, it doesn’t need it. If you agree with Laura Bennett that a fully grow man does not have the cognitive capacity of a 5 year old girl then there is nothing that will change your mind because you, like Laura Bennett, are a reprehensible bigot.

It’s not too hard to prove. I will use the tired, shorthand tactic of saying imagine me writing such an article but instead of men I would be making comparable statements about Jews or blacks or women or Hispanics or any other protected group, then imagine how I would be received, let alone whether or not I could get my article published in any mainstream media outlet.

It is sad that people cannot take the correct message from all of our P.C. madness by assuming the attitude that prejudice against any group of people is not a good thing. Instead, people have absorbed the real meaning of P.C. which is a culturally Marxist class battle attitude towards groups of people who are the haves and other groups which are have-nots, and the redistribution of power between the groups. In this way Laura Bennett’s article is politically correct, women are a protected group and men are deemed as a legitimate target of ire as a group with too much power that needs to be taken from them, either by legislation or through the whip of words. This is why many who are on the pro men’s rights side of the fence are angry, look at the kind of bigotry we have to deal with here.

I will also say that it is a truth that I have observed that girls mature before boys do, both mentally and physically, this fazes me not since men and women are not the same which is a truth that does not send me into paroxysm's of despair like it does to the radical feminist. However, young women who have been raised on the radical feminist memes that men are essentially big clowns find that such notions are swept aside by the harsh mistress of reality as they enter careers where men turn out to be ambitious, resourceful and competitive. How does Laura Bennett figure that young immature boys will usually be the ones ruling the world? Answer: They grow up.

The second article I want to present to you is called “This mess was made by men. Now let the women have their say” and is written by Ruth Sunderland for the Guardian.

There was no shortage of women at the gathering of the global elite in Davos this year. It's just that most of them were either delegates' wives, there to enjoy the skiing at the Swiss mountain resort while their menfolk got on with the serious business of mending the world economy, or upmarket usherettes dressed in smart, air-hostess-style blue uniforms, helping people find their seats.

The heavy-hitting women present? There was a handful, including Angela Merkel, the German leader, and Valerie Jarrett, who came as Barack Obama's representative. Skim the handbook containing the names of the invitees and you had to pass 20 men before coming to the first woman, who just happened to be Princess Inaara, Her Highness the Begum Aga Khan. On the abridged list of about 170 business leaders, I counted five women. As a delegate put it: "Men in well-cut suits still come first at Davos."

Does it matter that women are not getting on to the guest list of the biggest male ego-thon on the planet? After all, most females of sound mind would far rather be anywhere else. But the truth is that it does. It sure does.

The big theme at this year's World Economic Forum (WEF) was "Shaping the Post-Crisis World". The idea that that can be achieved while excluding half the population is breathtaking in its arrogance and shows that the male Davos elite remains mired in its own preening self-regard and complacency. They have wrecked the world economy, but seem oblivious to the idea they may not be the best people to rebuild it. Ignoring the contribution women can make is ridiculous at any time, but how much more so when there is a clear need to reflect on the macho, tooth- and-claw brand of capitalism that caused the crunch in the first place.

I have a certain kind of contempt for those who will introduce their pet cause into situations that don’t need it. These are the actions of a fundamentalist. Also, the base assumptions that men are so inherently self-interested and bad that they will exclude women as a matter of course unless women are present, is projection on behalf of the author. Ruth Sunderland is the one who is displaying the breathtaking arrogance of self-regard here.

My response to Ruth Sunderland is the same response that I give whenever a feminist claims that we should increase the numbers of women in whatever field they’re talking about that day, be it computer science or politics, my reaction remains the same. If we “put” women into roles then we are doing so according to ideology, where someone at the top is deeming what fields need women and how we should insert them. This is totalitarianism which runs the gamut from suggestion to coercion to outright tyranny such as the case in Norway where companies which don’t have a 40% of the board of directors be female, can face closure. I love freedom, which included, by necessity, the freedom to choose the career you want, if women don’t want to be in the field of economics then who are we to tell them they need to be, or to castigate men for choosing to be in that field? Does Ruth Sunderland think that by coercing women into this field then we will be in a better situation to deal with a crisis?

I am portrayed as being an extremist a lot of the time, but it needs to be said that a lot of what I address is reactionary. That is, that I need to spend the time refuting the bigoted words of people such as the two authors I have been discussing here. This can range from large scale assaults in the law and media to small scale assaults such being confronted by a young woman at a party who feels that she can partake in limitless man-bashing in front of a complete stranger. Men’s rights activists are here as a response to the man haters who are, by far, worse.

America, you’ve come a long way baby

ArgusEyes — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 18:20:52 GMT

From Charles Krauthammer’s article Bonfire of the Trivialities.

A $14 trillion economy hangs by a thread composed of (a) a comically cynical, pitchfork-wielding Congress, (b) a hopelessly understaffed, stumbling Obama administration, and (c) $165 million.

That's $165 million in bonus money handed out to AIG debt manipulators who may be the only ones who know how to defuse the bomb they themselves built. Now, in the scheme of things, $165 million is a rounding error. It amounts to less than 1/18,500 of the $3.1 trillion federal budget. It's less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the bailout money given to AIG alone. If Bill Gates were to pay these AIG bonuses every year for the next 100 years, he'd still be left with more than half his personal fortune.

For this we are going to poison the well for any further financial rescues, face the prospect of letting AIG go under (which would make the Lehman Brothers collapse look trivial) and risk a run on the entire world financial system?

Even worse are the clever schemes being cooked up in Congress to retrieve the money by means of some retroactive confiscatory tax. The common law is pretty clear about the impermissibility of ex post facto legislation and bills of attainder. They also happen to be specifically prohibited by the Constitution. We're going to overturn that for $165 million?

Australia joins China in internet censorship

ArgusEyes — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:43:06 GMT

Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

ACMA's blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme.

Not much to say about this, run of the mill fascism. Let’s be clear here, the government has added a political thorn in its side to the list of sides which are banned, it also added an anti-abortion site. So this is censorship of views the political party on power agrees with. What could be the political orientation of the current Australian government be? Hmm, I took my guesses but looked it up as well.

The Australian Labor Party. Who are affiliated with Socialists International. Yup, I win. I give myself a hi-five and freedom dies some more. Let’s file this away under the “the threat to freedom comes from the left” case shall we?

Freedom of speech means nothing if it does not mean the freedom to speak and hear unpopular views.

Watch Hitchens for more:

Important

ArgusEyes — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 14:38:37 GMT

Men's Right's News - The Pendulum Effect Episode 4

ArgusEyes — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:54:04 GMT

Man must pay support though twins not his

http://www.thestar.com/article/563571

Every now and then those who are sympathetic to men's issue need to pause and take stock of just how egregious the instances of anti-male courts can be. In this piece from the Toronto Star entitled "Man must pay support though twins not his".

An Ontario Superior Court judge has ordered a Toronto man to continue paying child support even though a DNA test shows he is not the biological father of his ex-wife's twins.

In her ruling, Madam Justice Katherine van Rensburg decided that even though Pasqualino Cornelio did not father twins – now 16 – with Anciolina Cornelio, he must continue to pay child support because "he was the only father the twins knew during the course of the marriage.

Source: Precious Yutangco http://www.thestar.com/article/563571

At the end of the article it states:

The judge concluded that the children should not suffer because of the parents' wrongdoings.

Source: Precious Yutangco http://www.thestar.com/article/563571

The parent's wrong doings?! I see only one part has committed any wrong here, and it is the mother. Naturally this is all for the children. Apparently you can sell men down any river if the shibboleth of "it's for the children" is there to allow one to do so.

Situations like this are a dime a dozen, and it's a downright shame. It must be the only instance where the defrauded must, by court order, pay the person who defrauded him. And before you say the money goes to the children, I must point out to you the factual inaccuracy of that statement. The money goes to the mother who has no accountability over how she spends it, and can take the father to court to demand more money apparently.

Sorry, but the "it's for the children" line does not allow you to completely stamp on and abuse another human being. Even if that human being is one of those inferior males.

Anyone looking at what the feminists have been up to these last years will notice a certain trend, the expansion of terms and labels to include more and more men under their cover. It happens with the expansion of the term rape and here, with the expansion of the term father.

To all the young men who might be listening to this, if you were thinking of helping out a friend of yours with kids by letting them stay around for a couple of months. Well now it's time to think twice, because you might end up being the only father figure they've known and thus.. daddy.

Only in situations like this do people seem to get all dewy eyed over the important need of fathers... As a wallet.

In related news the blog Psychology today reports that:

On Jan. 1, Massachusetts adopted new child-support guidelines that will likely raise the amount paid by non-custodial parents, usually fathers.

Source: Paul Raeburn http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/about-fathers/200901/child-support-how-much-is-too-much

Dennis Prager Responds

http://townhall.com/MediaPlayer/AudioPlayer.aspx?ContentGuid=81ddddf7-6fc5-4d7d-a3da-e00fc33d38fe

As a follow-up, last week, I mentioned the reaction to a column written by Dennis Prager entitled "when a woman isn't in the mood". In short, Dennis suggests that women who do not feel in the mood to have sex with theirs should reconsider if they actually do so to help their marriages. In a large part, the feminist reaction on the blogosphere was to call Mr. Prager a rape advocate. Since then, Prager invited two of the columnists Jeff Fecke and Megan Carpentier onto his show. This is part of what he had to say (watch clip).

Bravo Mr. Prager.

In related new, this story from the Toronto sun entitled "Hey ladies, just do it".

For her husband Brad's 40th birthday, she gave him the gift of sex -- for an entire year.

It took energy, tenaciousness and focus, but the couple stuck with the experiment, even when they were exhausted, not in the mood, and overloaded with to-do list items.

"One day, the light bulb went on," says Charla, who chronicled their story in a book entitled, 365 Nights.

Source: TANYA ENBERG http://www.torontosun.com/life/sexfiles/2009/01/22/8105766-sun.html

...

Now happy with a regular sex life, the Mullers have held onto one long-lasting lesson: The importance of maintaining intimacy.

"It was, without a doubt, the most transforming year of our marriage," she says.

Source: TANYA ENBERG http://www.torontosun.com/life/sexfiles/2009/01/22/8105766-sun.html

For a woman who was raped for 365 days in a row, Charla sure does seem upbeat.

Women and children first on the Hudson crash

http://www.true-equality.net/archive/2009/01/21/the-hudson-crash---women-and-children-first.aspx

After reading and hearing far too much credulous talk in the news about God and miracles in relation to the crash of flight 1549 into the Hudson River. I encountered a news story that I had not heard anywhere else, which seemed to me to be far more important. The BBC and Associated Press report that women and children were the first onto the life rafts after the plane crash landed, then people who had fallen into the river and been plucked out.

I think that chivalry has a place in a world less hostile to men. But in 2009 with the equality of outcome of feminism prevalent in society I think men damage themselves by capitulating to chivalrous attitudes. Chivalry is the main reason male judges oppress fathers and pass anti-male laws. Throw chivalry into that icy water where it belongs.

NOW President says "Obama cabinet level picks so far under represent women"

http://gretawire.foxnews.com/2009/01/14/now-president-says-obama-cabinet-level-picks-so-far-under-represent-women/

As if we need more proof that to modern radical feminism, equality of outcome has become the goal as opposed to equality of opportunity. From fox news comes an interview with Kim Gandy, the president of the National Organisation for Women.

Synopsis: The President of the National Organization For Women complains that while divers racially, the Obama cabinet-level picks so far under-represent women. She calls it 'disappointing' and says "twenty-five percent seems a little low." She says there is still time to improve that record by appointing a woman to the now open Commerce seat and creating a cabinet level office of Women's Affairs.

Source: Greta Van Susteren http://gretawire.foxnews.com/2009/01/14/now-president-says-obama-cabinet-level-picks-so-far-under-represent-women/

Hopefully the president will not capitulate to supremacist groups such as the National Organisation for Women who would promote that you assign a woman to a post purely because she was a woman. When it comes to the people who will be running the country, I would want the best person possible irregardless of if they were male, female, black, white, Asian, Christian or Muslim.

Grandmother Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro on Behalf of Shared Parenting

http://www.acfc.org/site/DocServer/Sheila_Peltzer_Kili_Release_Final.pdf?docID=1701

Not all news is bad news though, this is a heart-warming report from the American coalition for fathers and children.

Charlotte, NC - 70 year old grandmother, Sheila Peltzer, will climb Africa's tallest peak, 19,200' Mount Kilimanjaro raising awareness for Shared Parenting and Familial Dysautonomia. Peltzer, departing January 21, 2009, will make the ten day trek up the western route where sub zero summit temperatures are expected.

Peltzer's coach for this grueling climb is former 3-time Super Bowl Champion and motivational speaker, Tim McKyer.

Many people ask me how a former professional football player and a retired school teacher became involved in this effort," Peltzer said. "It's simple. The family courts in this country are broken. Children are being denied an equal relationship with both parents. I'm unable to be a part of my grandchildren's lives because the courts denied their father enough time for shared parenting. Two of my grandchildren have FD (Familial Dysautonomia), a rare and fatal genetic disease, resulting in recurring intensive care hospitalizations. Because my son has limited access to his own children they are being denied the love of their grandparents, as well as their dad.

Source: ACFC http://www.acfc.org/site/DocServer/Sheila_Peltzer_Kili_Release_Final.pdf?docID=1701

That about sums it up. I wish that the "it's for the children" crowd, like the judge from my first story, will stop and consider the destructive effects that their "beating up on fathers" antics will actually have on children. Doing it for the children mean more than wringing every last penny out of a dad.

Our governments stifle the freedom of men in order to infantilise them

ArgusEyes — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:31:57 GMT

This is a follow-up to some feedback email I received. You can read the original blog post here.

Dear Mark

I could seemingly not upload this letter as a comment on your blog. Will you do that if you can?

With respect to Feministing.com I am glad that you make clear that focussing on the trivialities of a particular cause from time to time is not necessarily always a bad thing. But I completely agree with you that only focussing on trivial matters is to neglect many of the issues that really matter in this instance your trash magazine-analogy was a nice example. I do not know if Feministing.com censor opposing view, are obtuse [or] fling obscenities at their opponents, but if this is really the case, then of course they would go down in my estimation as well. I am just yet to experience this as I do not really spend much time on the Feministing home page.

You go on to say that [w]e hear a lot about women in the media and that a lot of silly commentary like Feministings does appear out there all over the place. I would argue and urge you to consider that you are having this particular experience precisely because you (because of your position in the Mens Rights Movement) are subconsciously but actively seeking out contexts in which trivialities and silliness is bound to occur. I am not making any presumptions about where you are and what you are doing, but I certainly do not experience a great interest in womens issues in the mainstream media (here speaking of the 6 oclock news and the morning newspaper; whatever your average citizen reads), and whatever issues are featured are seemingly not something which is done anything about in any case. I would, however, like to see not only more emphasis on womens issues, but on mens issues as well. If gender relations were something that all men were as passionate about as you then I believe we would have much more varied media coverage of gender issues and as a result hereof these issues would not as easily be dismissed by politicians as I often feel they are in this day and age.

Secondly I do not expect you to address reams of points in one video, but I am glad (not in the I agree-kind of way) to hear that you plan to actually formulate and publish your opinions about pornography in a YouTube-video. Notify me when you have done so, and I will (perhaps) make a rebuttal video. For now I will address the points you make in your reply.

To brand pornography evil is NOT an arrogant presumption. First of all, it could not possible be a presumption since it is not an opinion I pull out of the blue, but an assertion based on long and thorough research on the matter. Second of all it is not arrogant as my view stems from actual knowledge about the industry of pornography and thus subsequent empathy for the women in it rather than from an ignorant and ideological black/white world view which I (without makinf presumptions) think you are exhibiting at this point. Pornography and prostitution is hate propaganda and exploitation. Pornography and prostitution are factors that must be outlawed and eliminated from society in the same way that we have outlawed (but not) eliminated slavery, child abuse and the legality of men stamping on daughters necks because of their religion and bigotry. When you say that women in pornography choose to do it and make quite a bit of money doing so, you are making two assertions. 1: Women choose it themselves and are responsible for their own choices, and 2: They get paid a lot to do it. First a few words about your assertion about choice.

From the point of view you present it SEEMS (note that I am not presuming anything) that you believe that choices are something we human beings either make or do not make and that all choices are uncomplicated, clear cut and gets you from point to point in life by your own responsibility. In my opinion, to hold a view like that is simply to be ignorant of all the nuances and abstractions that a human life is full of. More than quite often, the people I meet who use the trump card argument of choice are people who will thwart any call for self-reflection about their use of pornography; most often because they are born into privilege; never having had to experience how ones social heritage, skin colour, family or economic situation, etc can affect how one makes (or is directly or indirectly forced to make) choices that will lead you to very uncompromising places in life.

I am not saying that you are necessarily one of these people. I am saying that you at least use the choice argument here as if there is not an age-long tradition of academic peer-reviewed and approved research which has long proven beyond reasonable doubt that [a] meaningful discussion of choice cant be restricted to the single moment when a woman decides to perform in a specific pornographic film but must include all the existing background conditions that affect not only the objective choices she faces but her subjective assessment of those choices (Robert Jensen. Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Cambridge: South End Press, 2007. P. 87). You ought to do some check-up research on the matter yourself before speaking so casually about choice. I assure you that thorough research has been done on the matters of childhood sexual abuse and childhood physical abuse and their later-in-life repetitive natures, the role of poverty, homelessness, economic deprivation, socially determined lack of economic opportunity, trafficking, fraudulent job advertisements, and finally cultural training and socialisation to pornified culture. There is a rich body of literature out there for you to explore, or you can perhaps start out at www.againstpornography.org. Anyway, all of the factors mentioned above must be taken into consideration when you speak of choice, and the more factors in play, the less meaningful the notion of choice becomes. Ill emphasise this with an example:

Chinese single mothers who spend 18 hours a day in a sweat shop factory under working conditions that would make even the most neo-liberal asshole cry do also have the choice to either be or to not be in that factory. But taking all of the social conditions under which these women live into consideration, the notion of choice looses all meaning. To bend it in neon for you: If one performs a degrading and/or self-destructive act whilst knowing that there is a chance of there being even worse future consequences IF the degrading and/or self-destructive act is not performed, then your choice to perform the act has been rendered meaningless.

Seen in the light of all this, your second assertion, that women make quite a bit of money doing so, i.e. doing degrading and/or self-destructive acts (my words, not yours) is not any better. That people contribute to the economy on the one side and are humiliated, degraded and abused on the other side as a consequence thereof does not a morally acceptable balance of human interests make. One would have to be either extremely ignorant or extremely cold hearted to render notions of abuse, humiliation, degradation, violence, etc acceptable as long as one could make money off of it. Unfortunately people like these DO exist and they are constantly trying to make you and others adapt their view of human kind (and women in particular, though also men) to make you buy their product and increase the demand for more abuse, humiliation, degradation and violence.

You will perhaps make the argument that some women choose to be in pornography completely of their own free will without any free-choice compromising being in play. While it might be possible to actually find these women somewhere, you still have to take into account the inescapable fact that at least some women (and probably a majority according to research) choose under conditions that seriously complicate their choices. So when you as a consumer throw on a DVD at home or engage in online pornography, you have no way of telling which category the girls you are watching belong in. Even if you knew for a fact that the particular woman or man (or donkey) you were watching was there completely by his/her own free will with no compromising conditions behind her/his decision, you are still helping the porn industry staying profitable and thus helping to increase the demand for new adult performers some of which have not made the choice themselves or under the wrong conditions. There are of course resources for getting off like YouPorn, RedTube or the good old file sharing systems, where the consumer does not contribute economically to the porn industry. But this still useless, since the consumer of porn is both altering his (or her, but in 90% of the cases his) view on sexuality and fuelling his appetite for more rough kinds of pornography; a well-known syndrome of the porn user that one kind of porn leaves you needing more and different visual stimulation for your next fix. In any case the consumer is still looking at women being degraded and humiliated and if that is his erotica then he has a problem.

I know that you are an ardent individualist, but your passionate anger about the patriarchal oppression of women in Islam leaves me thinking that you of course have empathy for other human beings. I urge you to read this article by Martin Amis and reflect on whether pornography is perhaps equally oppressive in nature. Here you go: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4153718,00.html. Now to something else.

The following I did not say in my first letter, but I am going to say it now in the light of what I have just discussed. I think that being against Islam because of Islams oppressive nature towards women while simultaneously being pro-pornography is to be against one form of oppression but for another. And now an apology:

If I in any way made presumptions (right ones or wrong ones) about you in my first letter, I am very sorry. It was a rather quick and not well though through scribbling down of commentary section material. I apologise. In this letter I have tried to emphasise when I am expressing my personal perception of you or when I am talking about people with the same attitudes and ideas as you. When I PERCEIVE something about you, I am not making presumptions be sure of that I am more than open to the fact that you are not the way I perceive you to be. Just tell me when I perceive wrongly.

Finally, I have watched your video Men are More Oppressed than Women, and I really feel that I should not mix this letter with my rebuttal of it. I will perhaps do that in another letter or make a video for you. The long and the short of it is that your assertion that men are more oppressed than women is flat out wrong, and that your arguments for it are easily dismissed we do agree on a few things in your video though.

I hope that some of the previous has made you rethink your attitude toward certain things too.

---

Sorry to bother you again, but I forgot to mention something that might not be obvious to anyone. I just want to make clear that when I say 'BAN pornography and prostituion', I am NOT AT ALL (just to emphasise!) proposing that we make it illegal for women to prostitute themselves or to participate in pornography. Even though there might be conditions that influence what choices they make, it is ultimately their own bodies and their own minds.

What I am saying is that we need to make illegal the BUYING of prostitutes and the DISTRIBUATION of pornography. In that way we will in both cases have eliminated the economic factor which ensures that it remains a growing industry. Once money is out of the picture, the ones who make porn in the privacy of their own home because they WANT to (secular society with respects to pornography as it is our goal with respect to religion) and those who have sex with 10 men a day because they WANT to, can do so without me or others suspecting that pimps and other scumbags are making money off of the humiliation of women, men and children.

At the same time we will of course have to engineer more economic opportunities and social relief for women so we remove the conditions that might make them turn to being humiliated sexually for a living in the first place and create opportunities for those who wish to leave prostitution or the porn industry

Hi,

First of all I have to say that you write well and respectfully. I appreciate that. It is certainly rare on YouTube.

Human choices are not simple, one would have to be a fool to believe that. What I think is that the government (which one implies when one is talking about laws and what should be allowed) must respect people's choices that they make. It is not the role of government to analyse the nuances in our decisions and act like mummy to us, this is tyrannical. I suspect that this is simply where we have differing opinions about what the role of government should be but I think that you too are a man who is seeking to clarify where we differ rather than win.

Some of us base our decisions around some guiding principles. For me it is liberty. The freedom to make my own choices and mistakes and to have the oppressive spectre of the government off of my back.

Bearing that in mind, let's examine your arguments where you present research. You can cite all the papers you want to me, it will mean nothing. Let's compare it to a similar situation – smoking. I know that smoking is bad for me so I don't need you to cite me research that says so.

The government deciding what it will allow me to do based upon what it thinks are acceptable ways to lead a life means we have entered a situation where our governments stifle the freedom of men in order to infantilise them. This is not a good situation.

You may say that smoking is legal and indeed it is, but the government already tells businesses that they cannot allow smoking on their own premises. Also, I cannot smoke pot can I? A substance far more useful than tobacco and far less damaging to society than alcohol is.

Basically you sound quite high-and-mighty deeming the decisions of these women to be "self destructive" and "degrading". I object to attitudes like this, be they the social righteousness of the left or the moral righteousness of the right. If people want to degrade themselves then let them do it.

To address your follow-up email. You might say that all I have written so far does not apply because you say you're not really for banning porn. Then I must say that it is quite a dishonest position to say you don't want to ban porn in spirit but want to ban the buying and distribution of it. That is imbecilic as a position to be quite frank. What is the point? That is like saying "I'm for cars as long as no-one dies in one", then you're not for cars. Also it still represents the ban happy attitude of our government where they intrude into our lives more than is necessary.

Sorry I have not written more, given how much you wrote, but I think there is a clash of fundamental world views here.

Sincerely,
Mark

The threat to liberty comes mainly from the left

ArgusEyes — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:53:49 GMT

This might sound weird but stay with me..

I'm getting more and more interested in fascism.

Not from a personal perspective mind, but from an academic one. I find it fascinating and perfectly relevant to what is happening in the modern world (see below for details). I have been recommended a book called "the black book of communism", and whilst perusing the Amazon page, I saw the following review.

This book is an absolute disgrace. Its pure right-wing propaganda and the sort of book which should be banned from being published.

I agree with other reviewers that Soviet Communism is far different from other forms. Capitalists often forget to look at the flaws in their own system, many of the atrocities which the book mentions have taken place under the command of George W. Bush and his cronies in recent months.

I think the author should have taken a different approach and maybe actually bothered reading the Communist Manifesto!

Source: Amazon.co.uk The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression

I have encountered this myself. As soon as one utters a non-left opinion then there is a subset of people who ill shriek "neocon!" or "right winger!" as if these terms were dirty words in themselves, and whenever I utter a left wing idea then I get the idiots on the right shrieking "leftist" or "liberal". Both these groups are idiots but, as always, there are more on the left and the right.

The person who "wrote" this review is a fool incapable of thought and thus is pretty below the margin for consideration but the attitude of repression on the following statement:

Its pure right-wing propaganda and the sort of book which should be banned from being published.

Source: Amazon.co.uk The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression

Is very worrying indeed. These attitudes come from the view that people who differ are bad. And you can do whatever you want to the bad and/or bigoted. After all, is it not morally excusable to hate Hitler? If you conflate a good person with Hitler then you can justify any action, not matter how heinous, against them. This is one of the cornerstones of human evil, how we demonise those who we disagree with and when they lose their humanity we do not care how they suffer. It happened with the Jews, it happens to a lesser degree with whites and men today. Organised movements of hatred are to be feared greatly. Hatred always precedes atrocity.

Many on the left make the argument that the threat to freedom comes from the right. In many cases they are correct, the difference between right wing fascism and left wing fascism comes mainly from the general right/left differences.

The left dreams of utopia on earth and desires unity for people to come on board with this idea. They treat their politics religiously and murder those who disagree with them politically. They also deem to destroy institutions that represent separate sources of power and morals that could conflict with their political ideals. Religion is one, the family is another. Anything that threatens their sense of unity, you can see this in the statements of the American left today, the calls for unity basically mean "drop your objections, and come on board with my program".

Right wing fascism is tied to religion mainly. Where the belief that utopia cannot be reached on earth is errant. The main way people are oppressed under right wing fascism is in their actions and thoughts regarding religion. They are theocracies where government and religion are intertwined, in the left wing the government is the religion.

Both are faith based dogmatisms. I am a mere whippersnapper in this immense academic field so I shall humbly take your corrections, but this is the way I see it currently. Back to freedoms, where the right removes freedoms is in religious areas, they mainly want to affect what you do whereas the left wants to affect how you think. Which is the bigger threat? Well, leftist socialist regimes such as communism alone has murdered more of its own people than right wing fascist regimes do. Personally, the repression of thought such as currently goes on in North Korea and China scares more than any right wing fascism does. In the west the left is far more of a threat to freedom. We are entering a left wing fascism – that of political correctness. The right is not strong in western society at the moment. The pure size of government and how they control our lives is getting worse all the time, this is not a right wing movement but a left one. The problem is worse in socialist Europe than in any other place.

In the words of Fred Reed. I'm going to move into a shack in the woods and put up a sign that says "beware of radioactive cholera".

As for political correctness fascism. Here is a news piece from the BBC about a Dutch MP who is to be charged for "making anti-Islamic statements". Great, then there is no freedom of speech. End of story. Hate speech is a rotten Trojans horse by the utopians that are always in the wings, it's exactly the kind of smiley face fascism that Jonah Goldberg talks about in his book Liberal Fascism.

Here is Pat Condell on the matter:

Great as always.

The Pendulum Effect

ArgusEyes — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:13:25 GMT

I have been asked to contribute a regular segment to a new podcast “the pendulum effect”. I’ve linked to it on the left so please check it out. I think you’re going to like it. The latest episode has an interview with none other than Warren Farrell himself.

The pieces that I will be contributing to the podcast will be focused mainly on gender related news items. I will also be recoding these segments as videos and putting them onto YouTube. This particular video is featured in the show, but it is something I have always wanted to address and what a fortuitous situation to finally do so.

I would like describe what I understand the term “the pendulum effect” to mean. I myself have used this analogy in the past and it about time I expand on what I believe it to mean. I have broken down the pendulum effect into chronological stages and I have cited feminism as an illustration of the effect, even though it could be applied to other civil rights issues such as black rights and homosexual rights.

Step 1: A civil rights need is born

For complex historical reasons beyond the scope of this article, a civil rights need is identified on behalf of a group. The pendulum effect is viewed as bipolarity between two groups. With the group on the left deemed as being the oppressed group and the group in the right as being the oppressors. The relationship may be between women and men, blacks and whites or homosexuals and heterosexuals.
Step 2: The legitimate phase of the movement

The oppressed group does indeed suffer from legitimate grievances. They become aware of the need to change their standing and push the pendulum of equal rights with their actions, to correct these grievances and to improve their image in the zeitgeist.

They face some resistance from either side, but they also face a lot of support from the oppressor side, who truly emphasises with their plight. This is the legitimate stage of the movement as the oppressed side gains the rights that they clearly should have. Luminaries of the men’s right movement such as Glenn Sacks and Warren Farrell freely admit that there are genuine gains that feminism has achieved, things such as legislation that codifies the right to equal pay such as the equal pay act of 1963 in the U.S. and 1970 in the U.K., the right to own property and to object to genuinely misogynistic attitudes as can be seen in the old style advertisements and public service announcements. I agree with this attitude personally. There is no such thing as a civil rights movement that has done no good. This is the legitimate and honourable stage of the movement. The pendulum is even.
Step 3: The illegitimate phase of the movement

The transition between this step and the last is hard to identify as the oppressed group transitions from generally doing good to doing bad. The oppressed group now has a respected and powerful lobby acting on its behalf that can affect the law, at this point no reasonable person could describe the group as being “oppressed” anymore, but the movement has turned into an industry of grievance mining, looking under every rock for signs of oppression and slights.

It is important to emphasise the members of the group are not lying to keep up the appearance if being oppressed, they truly believe it, but they are in too deep and lack the ability to holistically view the progress that their group has made, to take “yes” for an answer. The “oppressions” that their group supposedly suffers become more and more academic and created out of whole cloth. The goals of the group come more from the radical activist members, who mostly reside in academia. Issues that they choose to fight for include things such as redefining language, redefining history, redefining their definition of oppression and re-characterising the successes of the movement into further examples of oppression.

A prime example of manufacturing problems is to me, one of the most reprehensible aspects of modern feminism. This is where feminism has achieved a world where women have no less opportunity than men, can take any degree they want to and choose their own career. And then when women do not flock to careers that feminists want them to, they cites this as proof of work that still needs to be done for women’s rights. I think that women who feel empowered to enter the fields they want to enter means that the work of women’s rights is mostly done. To spin the liberation of women into an attempt to further victimise them is a disgusting act that is to spit in the eye of the good achievements that feminism has made.

The worst effect of this illegitimate phase of the movement is to brainwash the younger members of the group into hating men. The feminists have already refined history and distorted the facts to where, as a feminist said in an email to me, half of women are raped and the fraction of feminist haters dwindles in comparison to the number of men who hate women. Yeah, we sure are terrible.

None of this has any relation to the truth but what is to be the expected outcome if a young woman is told that men as such beasts? I’ll tell you the outcome because I saw it firsthand when I graduated in 2005. The young women I went to university with were angry, they were petulant and a hostile and felt the need to partake in constant belittling comments and man bashing. With an angry youth, the road is paved to the next step.
Step 4: The oppression of the oppressors

The discourse has become one sided. The feminists are seen as the authorities in the problem of equality as the status quo is viewed as being sexist and thus un-needing of representation. The feminists are now running a dictatorship of opinion and with a background noise of resentment and manufactured oppressions they start to act in a very hypocritical way. The true idea of equality has been lost, they have a new definition of the word. Equality of outcome. Sameness.

Departments of women’s health spring up, ministers for women are appointed and special programs for women are created. All of these are designed to help a beleaguered minority get the leg up they apparently need. With a population of hostile women some truly horrendous laws are passed, men’s achievements are deemed to be on the back of women. If girls are underachieving in school then they are being underserved whereas if the girls are overachieving then this is a sign of their natural superiority and empowerment. There exists no compassion for the suffering of males, many feminists will come straight out and tell you tough shit – they’ve been oppressing us for so long that it’s our turn now.

Witness the most obscene situation. The generation of women who have never had it so good being the most aggrieved and punishing the generation of men who have oppressed them the lease and want to commiserate the most. The pendulum is well and truly on the other side now.
Step 5: The backlash

The so called oppressors are now the oppressed and the cat’s out of the bag. Men are hit hard, their children are taken away whilst they are treated like criminals and are told when they can see them. They die younger, have to retire later, get shafted in divorce, suffer harsher sentences, are lagging in school, graduate less and are assaulted everyday by man bashing.

They can be sentenced to 18 years as a serf if a woman steals their sperm, they have no choice about being a parent, less is spend on their health concerns, they spend more on insurance, they can get passed over in lieu of a less qualified female at work and every morning on the tube ride to work they get tut-tutted at by adverts as being a bunch of boozing wife beating misogynistic rapists.

Then they have to listen to some snarky little co-worker tell them that.. “It’s a man’s world!”.

It’s enough to make a fellow turn to drink. More and more guys mutter heretical thoughts at the pub. When in the company of men I get favourable reactions to my material. Organised groups like fathers for justice start up and men start voicing their opinions on youtube and through podcasts like this one.

The reaction of the feminists? In one word, hysterical. They cannot react with ideas because their belief system has long been a barren intellectual wasteland populated with unproven hypotheses, conspiracy theories and falsehoods. So they react with shaming tactics, calling us “women haters” and claiming that we want to “turn back the clock” on women’s rights. Well, I don’t want to turn back the clock, but I certainly want to push back on that pendulum.

What remains beyond the backlash step remains to be seen, people who are fighting back against the ideas of feminism might instigate a whole new pendulum effect in the opposite direction. Perhaps we are doomed to endlessly push back and forth in perpetuity. I certainly hope not. Allow me to tell you what I hope the effect of the backlash against feminism will be.

We all know that a political system in which only one side is represented is not a good thing. If one side has complete control to implement their ideas then history tells us that we can end up in a horrific situation. There are two sexes and so far we’ve been letting feminism represent all issues pertaining to gender by itself. What I want to see in the future is a two party system where both sides are represented by movements that actually represent its members. I don’t pretend that I understand a woman’s point of view I am a man not a woman, let the feminists speak for themselves and men’s rights activists speak for ourselves. This two party system will also keep the other side honest, feminism has grown sloppy and overly academic in the face of no opposition so let us shine the light of scrutiny onto feminist ideas and let the ones that don’t stand to reason scuttle from sight.

I get email: 'Real Injustices'???

ArgusEyes — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:26:36 GMT

Okay, for some reason I could not post this in the comment section even when breaking it down into little pieces. If you can, please do in the name of free speech:-)

Feministing.com could spend their time on more important things.

But your argument seems to be that one is a coward if one does not address the biggest and most challenging problem of ones cause first. If I was to follow this line of reasoning I too could say that YOU are a coward for taking on Feministing.com as an easy target in this respect surely there are bound to be more pressing issues out there for a stern liberal conservative than a feminist video blog, or?

Feministing.com often relies on very trivial information (which is why it is not exactly respected for its academic inquiry in feminist circles), but it DOES serve the purpose of making known the day-to-day women’s issues that we otherwise don’t hear about in the media. If you are really for women’s rights then lets appreciate Feminsiting.com for what it is.

While I’m at it, why is it that you blame Feministing.com for NOT dealing with bigger women’s issues while those of us who DO devote our time to fighting the evils of for example prostitution or pornography (under which millions of women are suffering world wide) still have to suffer your stigma of ignorance?

I might as well tell YOU that being against Islam because it is oppressing to women while simultaneously being against the work of radical feminists, who spend their lives fighting for women’s rights in different battlefields is a hypocritical self-contradictory load of crap. However, I am not going to.

It is as if you believe that the Islamic world is the only world in which oppression of women is taking place? Freest does not necessarily mean free and thus saying that the western world is the freest society for women in the world does not make inequality in the western world magically disappear.

Remember: Your cause to secularise the Islamic world (I’m on your side there!) is not the ONLY topic related to women’s issues out there. And since you have not experienced what inequality really is, being a white middle class male living in a western society, I would be very cautious using the phrase real injustices.

I am almost inclined to not answer this email as it ascribes imbecility to me, but since I have far better things to do I might as well give it a shot. First of all, your email makes many claims as to what I believe that are out and out lies since I did not make these points, you made them up and then assigned them to me, in many ways this is worst than a lie. Consider this a tip on how to write decently. Address the points of your opponents only, bunch of strawman logical fallacies does not a good argument make.

But your argument seems to be that one is a coward if one does not address the biggest and most challenging problem of ones cause first.

This is an accurate summary of my position. As pertaining to Feministing. However, I would not treat this as a rule to be applied to all people who meet the criteria. There are a few extra things about Feministing that makes me call them cowards. They censor opposing view, they are obtuse and fling obscenities at their opponents, they seem to deal only with trivial crap and they pretty much symbolise the modern feminist sandy vagina method of complaining about nothing legitimate. Given all this, I have no doubts about calling them cowards.

If I was to follow this line of reasoning I too could say that YOU are a coward for taking on Feministing.com as an easy target in this respect surely there are bound to be more pressing issues out there for a stern liberal conservative than a feminist video blog, or?

Only if I don’t take on any larger issues. I do. Also there is a marked difference between an individual person passing comments on youtube as compared to an organisation with the goal of (supposedly) helping women. Given this your comparison of my situation to Feministing’s doesn’t hold up. People can focus on trivialities, we cannot go at 120mph all day, but if triviality is all you do, then I look down on that. This is why I have a certain disdain for people who read trash magazines all the time and never pick up anything better.

Feministing.com often relies on very trivial information (which is why it is not exactly respected for its academic inquiry in feminist circles), but it DOES serve the purpose of making known the day-to-day women’s issues that we otherwise don’t hear about in the media. If you are really for women’s rights then lets appreciate Feminsiting.com for what it is.

We hear a lot about women in the media, if the superficial crap that Feministing peddles doesn’t appear then there is a reason for it. Perhaps you could elaborate on what these issues actually are? Anyway, I content that a lot of silly commentary like Feministing’s does appear out there all over the place.

While I’m at it, why is it that you blame Feministing.com for NOT dealing with bigger women’s issues while those of us who DO devote our time to fighting the evils of for example prostitution or pornography (under which millions of women are suffering world wide) still have to suffer your stigma of ignorance?

I cannot address reams of points of view in one video, that would make it long and unwatchable. The remit of the video was to make a point against Feministing so let it stand for what it attempts to do. I’ll make other videos on other days about some of what you said there.

Also to brand things such as pornography evil is an arrogant presumption that will not be left standing here. A man stamping on his daughter’s neck because of his religion and bigotry is inherently evil and thus I label it as such. Whereas a woman in a free society making her own decisions as to what to do with her own body and choosing to be filmed having sex and making quite a bit of money doing so.. Is not being oppressed. And to label a situation such as this “evil” is to display your real contempt for women’s choices. I, like many other MRA’s don’t want to “turn back the clock” and remove women’s rights like you apparently want to do.

I might as well tell YOU that being against Islam because it is oppressing to women while simultaneously being against the work of radical feminists, who spend their lives fighting for women’s rights in different battlefields is a hypocritical self-contradictory load of crap. However, I am not going to.

That was clever. Ooh, but I cannot complain because you didn’t tell me this apparently. I might as well tell you that you are a presumptuous unwise dishonest fool who has bought a pack of lies.. But I’m not going to. (beat that)

It is as if you believe that the Islamic world is the only world in which oppression of women is taking place? Freest does not necessarily mean free and thus saying that the western world is the freest society for women in the world does not make inequality in the western world magically disappear.

This is what I mean by ascribing imbecility to me. To believe this I would have to be an idiot, and I didn’t say this but you assume I am an idiot because I hold different beliefs to you. This is a character flaw of collectivists and you need to get it sorted.

Remember: Your cause to secularise the Islamic world (I’m on your side there!) is not the ONLY topic related to women’s issues out there. And since you have not experienced what inequality really is, being a white middle class male living in a western society, I would be very cautious using the phrase real injustices.

I wouldn’t say that I have such a cause, but more importantly your statement that “you have not experienced what inequality really is” is the most presumptuous thing you have said so far, you know nothing about me and whilst I have suffered no serious oppressions, men are certainly more oppressed than women in modern western societies. You need to watch my video “men are more oppressed than women” for this proof.

Sincerely,
Mark

If you’re going to protest then don’t misspell your sign

ArgusEyes — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:49:38 GMT

Don't you love that other guy grabbing the sign.. He's like, "Dude, get that shit out of here before someone takes a picture of it". Whoops.

Get real "Isreal". You too will soon be "exstinct".

Whatever that is.

Animals

ArgusEyes — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:32:48 GMT

We are still primitive apes.

In politics, does race trump gender?

ArgusEyes — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:21:41 GMT

From politico is a story called "In politics, does race trump gender?". The abstract of the story is essentially that Roland Burris has had an easy time getting into the U.S. senate whilst Caroline Kennedy has had such a hard time, is proof that race trumps gender.

How come Roland Burris has had such an easy time getting to the U.S. Senate while Caroline Kennedy has had such a hard time?

Could it be that the race card trumps the gender card in U.S. politics?

Well, yes. It could be.

Source: Roger Simon, Politico In politics, does race trump gender?

Of course, I don't know how anyone who at least casually observes the modern zeitgeist can not have come to this conclusion a long time ago. The feeling of Barack Obama as a black man far outweighed that for Hillary Clinton as a white woman. Race and gender have political civil rights movements which advocate for them. For blacks it doesn't have a colloquial name but for women it's feminism.

Feminism is generally given less shrift than black civil rights because anyone with the brain power of a plum can identify that the pandered middle class women of the mid 20th century who started the movement were about as oppressed as my big toe. The blacks had far more genuine and repressive acts committed against them in the past whereas the egregious oppression against women I can think of would be the denial of suffrage and even that does not compare to slavery or the enforcement of the lower status of your entire race. Also, blacks are a genuine minority whereas women are a literal majority whose supposed oppressions are actually benefits that raise them above men, such as chivalry.

People who commit anti-pc acts against blacks suffer far more repercussions than those who do so against women. I hope I shouldn't need to belabour this point. Would an anti-black version of Tom Leykis be allowed to exist in our modern cultures? There are examples on both side but I think that the outrage at anti-black comments (real or imagined) is far larger than for anti-women comments.

So blacks have more advocacies for them and you don't need to look at Roland Burris to realise this. The point that is not mentioned in this article is that both groups have a "victim card" over white males. We have so many victim groups that we can judge the degree to which cards they play can act over the other victim groups. Enough of this rubbish already!.

Oh, and if anyone needs more proof that race trumps gender, may I present my final and definitive evidence.

Proof by star trek bitch!
B.T.W. the guy at the beginning should be at the end if you want to consider it from the perspective of the chronological making of the T.V. series. Is this a portent for the men's movement?

The state of Mississippi fronts the next attack on evolution

ArgusEyes — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:36:51 GMT

I heard of this story via Pharyngula, the state of Mississippi is the latest front in the attack on evolution by taking up the previously tried (and failed) tactics of adding disclaimers to any textbook that includes the teaching of evolution. This is stated in House Bill 25 under section 1 to take effect after July 1, 2009. The bill itself states:

SECTION 1. The State Board of Education shall require every textbook that includes the teaching of evolution in its contents to include the following language on the inside front cover of the textbook: