Category: Protein Wisdom

Fun Gerbils

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by Smitty

Roxanne gets me thinking with this one:

Now, I suspect that the retort is “That’s not what I meant by fungible,” but that leads us to the question: in what way are men fungible with each other but not with women? Can we really not take a male scientist and replace him with a talented female scientist, but he could be swapped out with another male scientist? In that situation, the premise of not being fungible is downright sexist – assuming that men can do things competently but women cannot.

Raaaaacism and sexism, I contend, are both DNA-based decision making. To say that any individuals are completely fungible is a joke: a Venn diagram will never have a complete overlap. I daresay that if you, the reader, could be cloned and never see your genetic copy for a decade, you wouldn’t even be fungible with yourself. For all the genetic makeup of you and otherYou, retroviruses notwithstanding, may be identical, a decade’s worth of neurological state changes are going to matter. Stacy’s clone, for example, might have made peace with Tabitha Hale.

However, I’m no longer convinced that feminists are even arguing in good faith. I suspect they understand that XX <> XY, in their heart of hearts, but will continue to argue, contra rationality that XX = XY simply because being contra rationality is more important that being correct. When people reject the possibility of Truth, all that remains is dishonesty. It’s who they are; it’s what they do.

None of the preceding should be taken as disagreeing with Roxanne’s post. She merely prompted.

On the same topic, Goldstien has some powerful words, emphasis mine:

That the term feminism has been corrupted — just as the terms “liberal” or “tolerance” or “fairness” have been corrupted — does not mean we as classical liberals / legal conservatives need give up the fight to take back ownership. In fact, ceding ownership over such terms has enabled the left to claim the mantle of being liberal, tolerant, and fair — to claim that it is they who are advocates of the equal rights of women, even as their corruption of feminism has rendered them particularly cynical special pleaders — which of necessity suggests of their political opponents the obverse: legal conservatives / classical liberals — now framed as racist, homophobic, misogynistic and patriarchal right-wingers — must be illiberal, intolerant, unfair, and resistant to allowing the “equal rights” of women.
It has been my argument here over the course of the last ten years that by rejecting and then countering the left’s attempts to usurp the language of individual liberty, we as conservatives are able to then forcefully and consistently make the case that the left’s entire political facade is based on the ideological perversion of what are fundamentally classical liberal principles.

Preach it, Jeff!

From the abstract pits of Postmodernism, to the vermin of the #Occupy movement, everything about the Left is an assault on the Enlightenment values that inform America. They hate you; they hate your face. For the end result of Progress is a vast mob of purely emotional, state-dependent rodents squeezed by iron fisted demagogues.

Our task as Americans and bloggers is to oppose the Left at every turn.

Indoctrination: What the Occupiers Believe and Why They Believe It

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NYPD arrest Occupy Wall Street protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge, Oct. 1

“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.”
– William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)

“We have a class called 21st Century Challenges and Choices. They’re studying the current world. They went on a field trip to see Occupy Denver.”
— Dierdre Cryor, principal, St. Mary’s Academy

“We want them to see the democratic process in action.”
— Celia Bard, Social Studies Department chair, St. Mary’s Academy

“You’re f–king up our future. . . . What do you think we learn at school? This is what we learned about. . . . We’re the 99 percent.”
— 17-year-old student, St. Mary’s Academy

Workers World Party national conference, New York, Oct. 8

“An epic battle is underway for the direction of our country. The Occupy movement is not alone. . . . We stand with the courageous young people who have sparked this movement and join with the occupiers who are putting themselves on the line to transform our nation and achieve a secure and sustainable future. . . . The time has come to put people before profits.”
— “Communist Party heralds Occupy Wall Street movement,” Oct. 18, 2011, CPUSA.org

“How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”
— Ronald Reagan, Sept. 25, 1987

During today’s first anniversary broadcast of Da Tech Guy‘s radio show on WCRN, Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom was discussing his video of Catholic schoolgirls who took part in an Occupy Denver protest against last weekend’s BlogCon:

In discussing the beliefs of the Occupiers, including these 17-year-old girls who attend a private Catholic academy where the tuition is $14,000 a year, Jeff suggested they had been “indoctrinated.” This called to mind Buckley’s description of indoctrination in Up From Liberalism, and made me wonder how these girls were taught that they are “the 99 percent” on whose behalf the Occupiers claim to speak.

Born in 1994, these girls cannot possibly have any useful memory of political events prior to the Bush presidency. They were in first grade during the 2000 election and were 14 when Obama was elected. Therefore whatever “knowledge” they have of history is what they have been taught, and the content of that curriculum undoubtedly accounts for their sympathy with the Occupy movement. Continue reading Indoctrination: What the Occupiers Believe and Why They Believe It →

The Tea Party Budget

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by Smitty

For a printout and a quick glance, The Tea Party Budget scoops Congress in general and the Stupor Committee in particular. Sure, #OccupyResoluteDesk, as well.

To achieve these goals, our plan, among other things:

  • Repeals ObamaCare in toto.
  • Eliminates four Cabinet agencies — Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD — and reduces or privatizes many others, including EPA, TSA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.
  • Ends farm subsidies, student loans, and foreign aid to countries that don’t support us — luxuries we can no longer afford.
  • Saves Social Security and greatly improves future benefits by shifting ownership and control from government to individuals, through new SMART Accounts.
  • Gives Medicare seniors the right to opt into the Congressional health care plan.
  • Suspends pension contributions and COLAs for Members of Congress, whenever the budget is in deficit.

Kind of like the ancient military recruiting ad: “What a great place, it’s a great place–To Start!”

This blog calls on all the GOP candidates to either (a) substantially adopt this plan or (b) offer substantive reasons why not.  Note that (c) ignore it will be interpreted as an admission of “Yes, I’m a Ruling Class Tool”.

Sadly, I don’t expect any of the GOP candidates to locate the intestinal fortitude to do much with this. Which is why I’ll probably write in Sarah Palin in the primary.

Admittedly, Ron Paul has already offered ideas along some of these lines. Running with this could be Rick Santorum’s breakout chance, since Herman Cain is all about Cool #9.

As far as people already in office, the gutless surrender monkeysSenate managed to wet itself rather than pay attention. No sympathy here. If you’re an organization like the U.S. Senate, headed by Gollum Reid, and you’re the better part of a thousand days into blowing your job off, you look really, really stupid if you admit that some common-sense conservatives could do in 36 pages what your impotent organization couldn’t even get halfway to failure on for less than 2,000.

via Instapundit

Herman Cain Under the Bus? ‘No Wonder We’re So Well and Truly F–ked’

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“I write for money. And so far, nobody’s offered to pay me to save the world.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, May 5, 2008

Mike Hendrix at Cold Fury has an excellent round-up about the argument among conservatives about how we should react to the accusations against Herman Cain. And in that round-up, Mike cites Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom:

We’re living through an attempted coup. And our major worry seems to be how well Herman Cain’s staff is handling suggestions that he once made a pass at a woman. Who waited 16 years to hold a press conference about it.
No wonder we’re so well and truly f–ked.

Indeed, and we can boil the argument down to its essence: What is the object of the game? To win. Period, end of sentence.

Our Guy is in a fight, getting pounded like hell by our common enemy and, instead of sitting around wringing our hands about the niceties of tactics, we ought to be jumping into the fight and pounding the hell out of Our Guy’s attackers. Whatever the ultimate fate of Our Guy, we cannot rally people to our cause by appearing to be weak.

Weakness is not an attractive quality, in politics or anything else, and it is an error in political combat to worry about making the “smart” argument when what is needed is a winning argument, or at least a gesture of solidarity and a show of force that lets our opponents understand that we’re not a bunch of gutless weaklings.

Nothing is more dangerous in political punditry than the temptation to be “smart” rather than being strong. Granting the intellectual’s natural desire to be seen as insightful and consistent, there are times in politics when pragmatism and strategic necessity require the pundit to suppress such concerns long enough to make the crude and cynical calculation: “How can we win?” or even, “Never mind winning, how can we inflict maximum damage on our opponent in this fight?”

Understand that I do not mean to accuse anyone of insincerity in their arguments, or of trying to curry favor with the proverbial “Georgetown cocktail party circuit.”  Quite the opposite, I suspect some conservative intellectuals have succumbed to the same error that I attributed to Conor Friedersdorf in May 2008: Insufficient cynicism:

If you want to save the world, join the Peace Corps or become a missionary. If you want to be a professional journalist, stick to the facts, mind your grammar, hit your deadlines, and try to write something that somebody might actually want to read.

Nobody’s paying me for the correctness of my opinions, OK? Everybody’s got opinions and any random reader’s opinion about the Herman Cain controversy is as valid as my own, except for the fact that I’ve spent a hell of a lot of time covering politics and have known Herman Cain since 2007. Continue reading Herman Cain Under the Bus? ‘No Wonder We’re So Well and Truly F–ked’ →

‘The Cetaceous-Like-Homunculus’

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It’s been a while — too long, really — since we’ve made fun of James Wolcott. I stumbled across the picturesque phrasing of Dan Collins at Piece of Work in Progress (quoted in the title), describing the author of this infamous expression of environmentalist misanthropy:

“I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong — Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke.”
— James Wolcott, “An Ignoble Confession,” Sept. 2004

A year later, after Katrina hit New Orleans, Wolcott defended that post as the product of “a frivolous vacation mood,” but has subsequently deleted it. Yet with vast swaths of the country now devastated by tornados, Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom decided to remind him of it.

Liberalism: Because People Who
Vote Republican Deserve to Die!

Excellent Bits From Protein Wisdom And The Ace Of Spades

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by Smitty

Sophistry:

. . .language divorced from its anchor (intent) and set to semiotic drift results, predictably, in cynical, self-serving, largely recursive narrative enclosures, with desire — a will to power — coming to stand in for meaning, creating illusory “truths” out of self-interested consensus. That is, mob rule.

Or, as Ronnie James Dio put it: “If you listen to fools, the mob rules.” The good news is the fools seem dimly aware that we’re onto them. The bad news is that this vague feeling does not prompt them to pursue wisdom.

Ace nails it here:

Tied for first place as far as “Things that Give Obama Away as a Man of the Left” (Tied with everything else he thinks and everything else he does) is his favorite “explanation” for the public disagreeing with them: That they’re ignorant.

This has a long history on the left as the go-to explanation for the public rejecting socialism. The earlier, more Marxist version of the idea was to claim the public had a “false consciousness” imposed on them by a manipulative capitalist media; the public, in this telling, were unwitting dupes, who didn’t understand socialism was in their best interest because the corporate masters who control the debate fed them a steady diet of lies. Anything to keep the wealthy and powerful in their positions of wealth and power. Anything to keep the Common Man from realizing he could be his own King.

The overarching irony here is that the real assumption of Common Man royalty is delivered by liberty, not socialism. Locke trumps Rousseau, barring actual wolves at the gate.

GOP Hopefuls Will Halt No Whine Before Its Time

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by Smitty

Alternate title: “GOP Hopefuls Note Budget Gallipoli, Neglect To Engage”. Via Protein Wisdom, we have Charles Gasparino in the New York Post:

Sure, the candidates offered vague praise for Ryan after the plan’s release on Tuesday.

Mitt Romney said Ryan is “setting the right tone for finally getting spending and entitlements under control.” Tim Pawlenty cheered Ryan for “offering real leadership.”

In other words, nobody was willing to embrace the details. The closest was probable noncandidate Sarah Palin, who tweeted that it’s a “serious & necessary reform proposal.”

What makes this really disappointing is that I’ve been trying to get the GOP candidates to give their own views on how to grow the economy and tackle spending.

The Left will continue to tempt GOP candidates into self-immolation on the budget, whining and nattering to draw attention away from the Pennsylvania Avenue Leadership Vacuum. That’s who they are, that’s what they do. Unlike an election, which has a definite start time and is over relatively soon and with few surprises, unless your name is Kloppenberg, the budget and the larger entitlement/debt crisis is not going to be solved quickly and painlessly.
Golberg concludes, in response to Gasparino:

Sticking a wet finger into the political wind isn’t a leadership strategy, folks. It’s an election strategy — and it’s one that hasn’t proven too effective for conservatives, who seem to do best when they advocate principle rather than compromise, when they evince fidelity to ideology rather than a transparent feint to populism. And that’s what they need to do here, because Obama is too much an ideologue — and far too ego-driven — to tack to the center, as Laffer suggests. 

– He said, stinkbombing illogically and radically.

I say ‘Meh’. At CPAC10, I asked Rep. Mike Pence about Paul Ryan’s Roadmap, which was less-discussed then, back when Pence was a potential GOP presidential entry:
He did admit to knowing Ryan, but really got no firmer than that.
And why blame any general for balking at an unplanned engagement? Making a not-unreasonable assumption brings instant accusations from the usual suspects.
Furthermore, I’m not confident that “Obama is too much an ideologue — and far too ego-driven — to tack to the center”. I take the man at whatever face value he is offering at the moment. I wouldn’t accuse him of believing in anything (again, I accept his protestations of Christianity for what they are) except winning elections. If the calculus led him to the understanding that going so far left as to come full circle in a dramatic “libertarian breakthrough”, and that was his only perceived chance, do you think he’d balk like a GOP hopefuls on budget cuts? I don’t. Is that leadership? Only if you conflate backed-into-corner-desperation with leadership.