SOCIALISM WAS BORN BAD: The Case of Oskar Lange.
His fans notwithstanding, Lange’s views strikingly confirm my view that the socialist movement was “born bad.” Though Lange was an exceptionally economically literate socialist, his clarity of thought led him directly to a totalitarian vision that he gladly embraced.
You need not take my word for it. Just read Lange’s case against socialist gradualism – and remember that this is the era of Stalin.
ANOTHER WIN FOR DIVERSITY: Hispanic Immigrants Taking Over FBI’s Ten Most Wanted.
That’s right—60 percent of the Ten Most Wanted criminals were “Latinos.” . . .
Maybe this is all for the good, as the progressives tell us about “change.” Where FBI’s Ten Most Wanted was once white and black, it now includes plenty of “Latinos.” It’s a victory for diversity!—as well as more proof that immigrants do the jobs that Americans won’t do.
VOX DAY: Dumbing down tech. “The real reason the courses are being dumbed down, of course, is so that women can pass them. But they’re not only being dumbed down, they are being prettied-up and sparkle-ponied in an attempt to make the girls feel as if they’re actually able to do something meaningful. This isn’t the case, of course, but the programs are being designed in such a way that the young women won’t figure out that they’ve been sold a very expensive course in self-esteem until after they graduate and realize they can’t actually do any real programming.”
THE ANGRY REACTION to the acquittal of the Dartmouth student charged with rape is evidence of what’s wrong with “rape culture” advocates.
Rick Rogers, one of the 12 jurors who actually sat through the whole thing (in contrast to persons now pontificating about it on the Internet), explained the jury’s thought process: “. . . Her statement in the morning (to a friend) — that Parker stopped by and we had sex — is just not the answer that a rape victim would have.” Mr. Rogers pointed to other evidence that, he said, didn’t add up for the jury: the fact that after Mr. Gilbert left the room, the woman went to sleep without even locking the door, and the woman’s decision not to alert a residence hall adviser who lived on the floor. Moreover, the testimony of Nancy Wu, the accuser’s suitemate who said that she was awake and heard sounds consistent with consensual sex, was the most credible evidence for the jury. . . .
WISE, a non-profit organization that seeks to empower victims of domestic and sexual violence, issued a formal statement that is jarring in its certainty about Mr. Gilbert’s guilt: “Today’s decision in the Dartmouth rape trial of Parker Gilbert is devastating and there is no doubt that it sends a terrible message to survivors of sexual assault. . . .”
Another writer, commenting on the fact that Mr. Gilbert was acquitted of six counts of rape leveled by his accuser (including anal, vaginal and oral rape), called the accuser “the victim” and made the following bizarre leap in logic: “. . . when 6 charges of rape are brought in against one person, innocence seems somehow difficult to believe.”
All the talk about “rape culture” is not about protecting people and punishing criminals. It’s about letting any woman ruin any man’s life on her word alone.
TITLE IX AT WORK: Baseball bleachers taken down after ruling that girls softball team’s seats must be equal.
A set of seating is being torn down outside the Plymouth Wildcats varsity boys’ baseball field, not long before the season begins, because the fields for boys’ and girls’ athletics must be equal.
A group of parents raised money for a raised seating deck by the field, as it was hard to see the games through a chain-link fence. The parents even did the installation themselves, and also paid for a new scoreboard.
But, after someone complained to the U.S Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, an investigat[ion] by the department determined the new addition was no longer equal to the girls’ softball field next door, which has old bleachers and an old scoreboard.
“I HAD A VERY HARD TIME understanding the nuances of transgenderism as an 8-year-old girl.”
I did not feel that any of my father’s [male] partners were really there in the home for me. I felt like my brothers and I were neglected. Our needs were not met. I don’t remember any one of my father’s partners reaching out and saying, “Dawn, how are you feeling? How was your day?” And really really caring about me. But what I did feel was, I was being criticized about my appearance. That I had to go out and get something more fashionable. Or wear Chanel No. 5. Or get my hair done. . . .
My father affiliated almost all of the time with the gay subcultures. But of course we had the GLBT LGBT subcultures – even though everyone was separate under that umbrella, there were times when we would see each other. The transendered males were often – I had a hard time figuring out if they were gay males dressed up in drag, or they were men that actually thought of themselves as females. I had a very hard time understanding the nuances of transgenderism as an 8-year-old girl.
I didn’t feel that my own femininity and womanhood was being affirmed, and valued, and loved, in that kind of environment, in fact, I felt that it was better to be a gay male, or even a transgender male, than it was to be a little girl growing up. I always felt that I really wasn’t lovable because I did not see the men in my life loving women. . . .
I have to say that of all the adult children I’ve spoken to and had communication with, via email, almost all of us have had some level of sexuality confusion. Not that we came out and labeled ourselves. But we struggled. A number of us—I don’t know about Rivka, but with myself, there was sexual abuse. There was sexual abuse with other adult children I have spoken to. So it’s a very sexualized environment. Not just within the home but within the subculture that I was exposed to.
NABISCO Promotes Homosexuality as “Wholesome”. “The selfishness of these two homosexuals, and of the increasing numbers like them, is sickness bordering on evil. The two boys are human accessories. Their purpose is to ‘normalize’ ‘dad and papa,’ two males who by definition are not normal. I’m certain that deep down they know it.”
Nabisco is a subsidiary of Mondelēz International, which sells these brands, including Cadbury — which might be of importance to some folks with Easter coming up.
WOMEN IN THE MILITARY UPDATE: Savage Boards Naval Destroyer Guarded by a Woman — and Kills Sailor. “The aptly-named Jeffrey Tyrone Savage drove a tractor trailer onto the base last Monday and wrested a gun from the hands of a female sailor who was guarding a missile-guided destroyer, the USS Mahan. Here we see what everyone knows: an ordinary man can overpower a physically fit female sailor. Another sailor, 24-year-old Petty Officer 2nd Class Mark A. Mayo, responded and jumped between the female sailor and Savage — a perfect demonstration of what is likely to happen when male combatants face threats to female combatants. He was shot by Savage. Mayo arguably lost his life because of affirmative action.”
THE LATEST from the Amnesty Pushers.
A Hill source tells me there’s a new Boehner/Cantor gambit to pass an amnesty through the House. Leadership wants to write into the National Defense Authorization Act an amnesty for illegal aliens who join the military. . . .
The goal is to send legislation to the Senate that has an amnesty component built in to it, thus providing the opportunity for Harry Reid to add the Schumer-Rubio bill to a must-pass piece of legislation.
WOMAN GETS OFF EASY AGAIN: Former Female School Employee Gets No Jail Time for Sleeping with 15-Year Old Student.
The judge delayed sentencing for another year. And that’s after a Norfolk judge last week also gave her a year to prove she doesn’t need to go to jail.
“It’s like victims don’t have any rights anymore,” the teen’s mother says.
Prosecutors laid out the stipulation of evidence in a detailed document for the judge. It states the 24-year-old initiated the relationship with the teen while she was working at Renaissance Academy. Eventually, she started driving him to and from school and to and from her house in Norfolk.
There, prosecutors say, the two smoked pot and had sex while Perez’s husband was at work and her two young children were upstairs asleep. They also had sex once at the boy’s home in Virginia Beach.
Prosecutors even provided naked photos she texted the teen. But none of that was enough to bring the judge to a decision just yet.
Earlier: Woman gets off easy.
“Choice Daddies”: Men who choose to be single fathers via surrogacy.
I truly understand the appeal of parenthood without the very real threat of divorce-rape and fractional bondage should one’s female partner become dissatisfied. And from purely numbers standpoint, paying $40,000 USD to be a single father suddenly snaps into focus when the average US wedding approaches $30,000, the cost to undo that marriage nears $50,000, and the average chalimony bill is more than $5,000 annually. Roll it all together, and the cost of marrying and subsequently re-gaining your freedom in the 50% likelihood of marital failure is around $200,000. In some areas of the US, you can buy a house for that kind of money.
So, there are not a few solid reasons for the cynical or jaded or burned or cooly rational to opt for choice daddyhood. Yet I still oppose it, and here’s why.
ROGER PEARSE: The decay of digital media.
But that PDF file has never been anywhere except on my hard disk. How could it have become corrupt, without any other intervention?
More seriously … I have gigabytes of PDFs of books. How many of these, I wonder, have silently rotted?
STEVE SAILER: CNN: White males inventing too much stuff. “If black Puerto Rican females were acing the AP exam at a high rate when they were allowed to take it, it would be obvious that getting more to take it is a high priority, since even diminishing marginal returns would just bring the pass rate down to the white male average. But when those legally privileged individuals who take the AP Computer Science exam currently are failing it at a high rate, well, expansion will increase the failure rate.”
Related: Sailer: National Journal: “Tech Pipeline Is Alarmingly White.”
Obviously, an even more disproportionate number of Asians took the computer science AP test, but we don’t have a conceptual category for whites and Asians combined.
Is there some well-known dessert that combines vanilla and lemon flavors? It would sure help the quality of discourse on education and demographics and discrimination if journalists had a food-based ethnic slur that lumps together whites + Asians.
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: Two Mexican Nationals Arrested for Running Alleged Stash House on Texas Border.
WELCOME TO THE 90s: UK will finally allow citizens to rip CDs legally.
GALLUP POLLS show that men are more pro-life and more pro-marriage than women.
Suppose a man is considering marriage to a young, unmarried woman. It’s likely that she supports abortion, given what polls show and what exit polls show. Now if a woman thinks that it is OK to kill an innocent unborn child in order to avoid being burdened with that child’s needs, even though she consented to the recreational sex that produced that child, then should the man marry her? . . . If a woman is willing to kill a baby in order to protect her happiness, then she will certainly divorce her husband to do the same. Husbands are much less innocent than babies. . . .
It’s likely that she supports gay marriage, given what the polls show and what exit polls show. Now if a woman thinks that it’s OK to deprive a child of a mother or of a father and expose children to a notion of marriage that deprives them of stability, sexual faithfulness and permanence, then should the man marry her? . . . If a woman is willing to deprive a child of a mother or a father and of the interaction between a man and a woman cooperating in marriage, then she will certainly be willing to deprive any children she has with him of his presence, since she already believes that fathers are expendable and that the selfishness of adults trumps the needs of children.
MORE SCHOOL DISTRICTS defying Michelle Obama, ditching her lunch menu.
“The move will mean an estimated $42,000 less in federal reimbursement, but should result in a net savings of $60,000 because the school will no longer need to meet expanding federal nutrition guidelines,” the News-Gazette reports.
“We’ll only be serving the things kids are buying, because we’re not required to serve three vegetables per week so there will be less food waste,” Superintendent Vic Zimmerman tells the paper.
CONSENSUS: ‘Gayness’ more socio-cultural than biological, LGBT scholars say. “He has interviewed leading scholars of homosexual history and anthropololgy, almost all LGBT themselves, and reports that they have decisively concluded that ‘gayness’ is a product of Western society originating about 150 years ago. He says the scholars he met were dismayed or appalled by the idea that being homosexual was ‘hard-wired’ or innate.”
JILLIAN KAY MELCHIOR: Audits find serious abuse of federal employee credit cards.
THE NEW TOLERANCE: Homosexual Activists Attack Parents Protesting German Curriculum.
VOX DAY: How to get more women in tech.
A woman who couldn’t hack either programming or mathematics herself despite majoring one of them came up with a program to retain the very weak students that traditional programs are specifically designed to weed out. This is great news from the college’s perspective, as it can now graduate considerably more female STEM graduates.
The bad news, of course, is that virtually none of them will be employable, as the program has been softened and dumbed down to the point that both men and women who were capable of hacking the original one won’t be prepared for post-graduation employment.
DON ROBERTO: Girls can do anything… until female psychologists get to them!
Welcome to feminist/ ‘gender studies’ science:
1. Take the ‘fact’ you need to prove (x thing causes negative body image; rape culture is endemic etc.)
2. Construct a scientific or statistical study that is guaranteed to support the ‘hypothesis’ you already believe – make sure anything pesky that could affect the results is ignored, words redefined for the purpose of the survey, etc.
3. Tell the world via the mainstream media how evil men/patriarchy/gender norms are, as shown by your study.
Pretty much.
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: Australian Sharia.
TOM JAMES: The Rights of Unwed Fathers.
In 1972, the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Stanley v. Illinois. In that case, the Court held, for the first time, that fathers of children born out of wedlock, like mothers of children born out of wedlock, have parental rights; that the parental right of custody is a fundamental natural right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment even when the parent in question is male; and that statutory schemes that unreasonably discriminate against unwed fathers with respect to the custody of children are unconstitutional.
Following the decision in Stanley v. Illinois, most states amended their statutes to provide some protections for the rights of putative fathers. They did not completely eliminate the maternal preference, however. Most states left intact the rule that mothers possess the exclusive right to sole legal and physical custody of children born to them out of wedlock until there is a formal judicial declaration of paternity, at which time the father may have an opportunity to petition a court for an “award” of parental rights.
CBS THIS MORNING’S Shameful Derision of Actor Steven Seagal. Why watch TV news commentary when it falls far below the level of everyday discourse?
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: British government intervenes at school ‘taken over’ by Muslim radicals.
In extensive interviews with The Sunday Telegraph, more than a dozen sources disclosed how children at one supposedly non-religious primary school, Oldknow, were led in anti-Christian chanting by one of their teachers at assembly.
The school also conducts weekly Friday prayers, has organised at least three school trips to Mecca subsidised from public funds, and requires all pupils to learn Arabic — almost unheard of at a primary school.
It also runs its own madrassah, or religious school. Oldknow’s highly successful non-Muslim head teacher has been driven from her post for resisting this “Islamising agenda”, this newspaper has learnt.
The head of another successful primary school, Springfield, received death threats, had his car tyres slashed and is under “non-stop attack” by radical governors, according to parents, other governors and staff at the school.
Several sources said their schools had repeatedly appealed to Birmingham city council and the education inspectorate Ofsted for help, but were ignored.
This newspaper has also established that one of the alleged leaders of the Trojan Horse plot, Tahir Alam, is an Ofsted inspector and is employed as a “specialist in school governance” by Birmingham city council. Mr Alam says the plot is a fabrication and denies any involvement.
USEFUL: The Benefits of Protein.
PRO-MALE FEMINISTS Are Still Feminists. “They want women to appreciate all of the hard, heroic and dirty work men do for them, but they have no intention of changing a feminist system which, by its very nature, cannot offer men the same opportunities for reward, status, and esteem in return for their sacrifices that Smith herself admits patriarchal systems offered. Paglia and Smith are right to recognize that the back-breaking work of men has made genteel corporate feminism possible, by way of globalism and industrialization, but because they can’t offer men status or glory or ‘privilege’ in return, all they have to offer is polite appreciation and a comforting, if patronizing, smile.”
IF WE CAN PICK OUR GENDER [sic], Can We Pick Our Age? Our Race?
A big part of the audacity of the legislation is that it goes by the devious name “Fairness for All Marylanders Act.” [PDF] What it really means is “Fairness for Some Marylanders,” only those who perceive themselves to be a different gender from the sex “assigned” to them on their birth certificate. Yet there are no doubt a whole lot more – probably millions more – Marylanders who perceive themselves a different age than what was assigned to them at birth. Senate Bill 212 affords them no protection at all. None. Every single Marylander must abide by the age assigned to them by the State of Maryland. And so this bill really perpetuates – in your face — continued discrimination in the workplace, at schools, and, well, in all areas of life where people might look at us funny or make unfair assumptions when we say we’re one age and they see us as another.
Neither does the Maryland legislation provides any relief whatsoever for individuals who are discriminated against on the basis of their racial or ethnic identity. Should those who perceive themselves as Native American or African American be discriminated against just because the world perceives them as white or Pacific Islander? Not if SB 212 means anything.
FINALLY, SOME GOOD NEWS: Northwestern University football players to receive maternity coverage under Obamacare.
JOHN C. WRIGHT ON ARONOFSKY’S NOAH: “Christian men, save your money.” In the comments he adds, “It was on the sole recommendation of Steven Greydanus at the National Catholic Register that I spent a healthy chunk of change on this well-made piece of Greenpeace propaganda. I trusted his judgment. No more.”
Earlier: Do Christians care if ‘Noah’ movie jibes with the Bible? Survey says … yep.
VOX DAY: 5 percent at 40. “That’s the statistical probability that every young woman should be told at 18.” Fertility isn’t forever.
ADDRESSING THE BIRTH DEARTH: Do It For Denmark. “Want more Danes (or native-born Americans, for that matter)? Well, one will need to dispense with liberalism in general, and feminism in particular. It all needs to be defenestrated, immediately. Especially anything that takes women out of the home and into remunerated employment for purposes of self-actualization, or encourages the same. Anything that delays family formation or the production of new members of society, particularly under-utilized ‘education’, subsidies for child care, transfer payments to choice mommy households, man-at-fault divorce, etc.”
GOVERNMENT IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS WE DO TOGETHER: Court awards permanent custody of girl to Mass. Department of Children and Families. “So, basically, if you have a child in Massachusetts, that child can be kidnapped by the state government indefinitely.”
JILLIAN KAY MELCHIOR: SEIU Uses Federal Inspections to Target Houston Small Business.
Such an organized-labor presence on OSHA inspections at non-union businesses is becoming more commonplace, owing to a rule clarification quietly drafted in February 2013. Responding to a union inquiry, OSHA decided that third-party agents who are not affiliated with the employees or the federal government are now allowed to tag along on safety inspections. A SEIU spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the presence of union representatives on inspections and did not respond to a request for comment.
A major change, this so-called “clarification” opens up the potential for unions to use the threat of federal inspections against any business that refuses to bend to their wishes.
JEFF SESSIONS on executive amnesty. “Sen. Sessions today released ‘DHS Enforcement Data Reveals Administrative Amnesty Much Broader Than Previously Understood,’ excerpts from which are included below.”
CATHOLICS OFFENDED BY CATHOLICISM: Charlotte Catholic High calls meeting for parents after uproar over speech.
Sister Jane Dominic Laurel, a Dominican nun based in Nashville, Tenn., addressed a student assembly on March 21. Days later, some students launched an online petition that called her comments “offensive and unnecessarily derogatory.”
A record of the comments was not available. But students attending told their parents she criticized gays and lesbians and made inflammatory remarks about single and divorced parents.
The petition, which has drawn more than 2,000 supporters, listed 10 objections to her remarks, including this: “We resent the fact that a schoolwide assembly became a stage to blast the issue of homosexuality after Pope Francis said in an interview this past fall that ‘we can not insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods.’ We are angry that someone decided they knew better than our Holy Father and invited (this) speaker.”
Some students told their parents that a few teachers left the assembly in tears.
Sounds like this nun did an awesome job.
STEVE SAILER: Why are infrastructure projects so slow these days? Check the comments for some ideas.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Fruit Juice is Just as Unhealthy as a Sugary Drink. “Fruit juice contains some nutrients, but less compared to many plant foods. It contains no fiber and is just as high in sugar and calories as most sugar-sweetened beverages.”
THE PATHOLOGIZATION of Normal. “If the system isn’t working, that means there is something wrong with the person or other people are not allowing the system to work. A young boy finds it difficult to placidly sit in class for hours on end? There’s not a problem with the system, there’s a problem with him. A black man doesn’t have the intellectual aptitude to grasp the abstract concepts necessary to score highly in a math class? That’s not a problem with the system, it’s a problem with racist whites. A man doesn’t prefer to express his emotions in the way particular to women? He’s not emotionally different, he’s emotionally illiterate. The system is defined to work because whoever doesn’t fit into the system is defined as defective.”
JUSTICE: Jordan Graham sentenced for pushing husband off cliff.
A woman in the US state of Montana who admitted shoving her husband off a cliff eight days into their marriage has been sentenced to 30 years in prison. . . .
Graham told a court in December she was unhappy just days after her wedding. When she and her new husband went for a hike on a narrow ledge over a ravine, they argued, and he grabbed her by the arm.
“I just pushed… I wasn’t thinking about where we were,” she said.
Don’t marry an emotion-driven idiot.
EUGENE VOLOKH: UC Santa Barbara Vice Chancellor issues statement supporting free speech.
Note the dismissive language about, for instance, how “outsiders” and “evangelical types” come to “create discord” and “promote personal causes and agendas.” (What exactly does the word “personal” mean there, by the way?)
Would such a letter come out about outside activists coming to, for instance, argue for race-based affirmative action? For legalization of illegal immigrants? For greater protection for abortion rights? Would the university condemn the “discord” and “conflict” these “outsiders” bring with their “personal causes and agendas”? . . .
I’m pleased that the University is defending free speech, but I’m disappointed that it sees anti-abortion speech as worthy of this sort of argument-by-pejorative.