Category Archives: Feminism

Vermont Teddy Bear

Aesthetics, Feminism, Gender

Chocolates are a magnificent food, used throughout the ages to delight the palate and seduce.

Flowers are nature’s art. What things of beauty they are. Men have cultivated magnificent flower gardens for centuries as hobbyists or professionals. Horticulture involves both science and art.

Besides, is there anything as lovely as the fragrance from a garden-picked rose? Or the sight of a bird on a lovely bloom?

But a tacky, synthetic, hideous, giant dust collector like the 4 feet tall Vermont Teddy Bear: What sort of woman wants this horrid house dust mite station in her home?

The 4 feet tall Vermont Teddy Bear is being vigorously marketed as a Valentine gift.

UPDATED: ‘What’s Up With Peter Lavelle’s Treatment of Ilana Mercer?’

Feminism, Ilana On Radio & TV, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, South-Africa

Writes Robert Wenzel, editor of Economic Policy Journal:

“Earlier this week EPJ contributing columnist Ilana Mercer appeared on RT’s show “Crosstalk,” which is hosted by Peter Lavelle. After seeing an earlier edition of “Crosstalk,” I gave Lavelle and the show an enthusiastic endorsement. But, a funny thing happened on the way to Ilana’s participation on the show.

Lavelle provides brief but detailed background introductions of the two other guests appearing on the show with Ilana, when he gets to Ilana, he merely states that she is a paleo-libertarian journalist and writer. He fails to mention her important book …”

Read the complete Wenzel post.

Here’s what happened on the way to the show: Participants are required to return brief answers to questions to indicate their positions. I complied promptly and with brutal honesty. As did I twice provide producers with a bio.

At the studio, I was told by Mr. Lavelle not to worry. He had prerecorded our credentials. Right away I suspected the worst when he proceeded to wax about the other two’s affiliations (but not mine), and their yet-to-be published books (but not my own published work). I have some experience with media’s reaction to my opinions. This is precisely why I mentioned my book first up. I had the feeling that it would go unmentioned.

Except for the “paleo” appellation, 100% of my bio was left off.

As I mentioned in discussion with Robert, it is not my affiliations RT had a problem with (WND, Economic Policy Journal, Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies), but my position and book (published in 2011) on the topic.

Mr. Lavelle intended to present me as a voice from the (Pacific Northwest) wilderness. Had the other two panelists not been the unsharpened pencils they were—I would not have gotten to speak up about the little I did.

The TV embed is reproduced in this EPJ article.

Not that I want feminists on my side, but were they in the habit of standing up for ALL women, they might have protested the marginalization of the only woman on this panel (even though my gender had nothing to do with my marginalization, not that that would have mattered to these generally intellectually dishonest fems, provided I was parroting politically pleasing opinion).

UPDATE: Granted, Mr. Lavelle may never intend to invite me on “Crosstalk” again for reasons noted above. However, he risks not getting controversial guests with whom he disagrees to revisit his set. Who would go through that exercise again for such shoddy treatment? Not me. It is, moreover, dishonest to lure guests to a studio (at the early AM), when there is no intention to treat their work with respect. When you make the effort, you expect that your work, which has gotten you the invite, will be at the very least mentioned.

Über Alec, Barking-Mad Bashir, Death-Defying Libertarians

Ann Coulter, English, Family, Feminism, Gender, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, libertarianism, Objectivism, Political Correctness

“Über Alec, Barking-Mad Bashir & The Death-Defying Libertarians” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

…. BLACKOUT. “Phony panic” and “urban myth” is how the “prestige press” is characterizing widespread reports of en masse, black-on-white Knock-Out attacks. “Boys behaving badly,” noodled one jocular Democratic strategist about the sucker-punching to death of a few people, so far.

The mischief-makers must be laughing. They couldn’t care a fig. In fact, the rhetorical reprisals the perpetrators deploy to define their crimes are as precise as the blows they land on their pale victims: “polarbearing,” Jew hunting, and so on.

But some libertarians were having none of it, insisting à la the left, that to frame the felons in anything but race-neutral terms is collectivist and racist.

In the face of such dogged denial, I worry that libertarians who reject reality may be doomed to extinction.

Picture this: You walk past a feral gang of black youths, like the ones depicted in all these terrifying YouTube clips. You grin bravely, place honky hands on ears and hum loudly as you saunter by, until… you are coshed on the head by a black youth. Then another. And another.

As you fall to your knees near death, you congratulate yourself on cleaving not to reality, but to a noble “theory” instead. You die a happy, theoretically pious libertarian.

It must be abundantly clear to any thinking man that this is idiotic, not individualistic.

Those who’re derided as apostles of intolerance—”collectivists”—for cleaving to reality will likely outlive the self-sacrificing, self-styled individualists, sacrificed to an idea that has no basis in objective reality. …

The complete column is “Über Alec, Barking-Mad Bashir & The Death-Defying Libertarians.” Read it on WND.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

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Happy Private-Property Day.

Sisters Love Uncle Sam

Elections, Feminism, Gender, Socialism, The State

It’s true. “Sisters love the state.” From “Fluke’s No Fluke; Sisters Love Uncle Sam”:

Andrew Kohut, head of the Pew Research Center, dates the statism of American women to the 1980s, a function of “Ronald Reagan’s assertive foreign policy,” but also of the female affinity for bigger government. Kohut confirms that, “Then, as now, women [have] tended to favor a larger role for government programs than do men.”
John Derbyshire traces remarks about the ladies’ lack of proclivity for liberty to 391 B.C.
“That was the year Aristophanes staged his play ‘The Assemblywomen,'” Derbyshire documents in “We are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism.” “In the play, the women of Athens, disguised as men, take over the assembly and vote themselves into power. Once in charge, they institute a program of pure socialism.”

George Orwell, whose insights into these matters were very deep, also noticed this. He has Winston Smith, the protagonist of ‘1984,’ observe: ‘It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of orthodoxy’ (p. 88).

Having lived in communist China “in the years just after Mao,” Derbyshire seconds Orwell. “If you wanted to hear … utterly unreflective parroting of the Party line, a woman was always your best bet.”

Libertarians like to imagine that their constituency is differently derived than that of the Republicans. However, the fantasy that women flock to liberty is just that, a fantasy. I’ve attended those libertarian gatherings in which, after “subtracting the dragged-along wives and girlfriends from these events, the normal male-female ratio of the remainder is around ten to one.” …

At RedState.com, John Hayward updates his readers on the blight that is “the single woman society,” with reference to the race in Virginia:

The Virginia governor’s race was yet another example of the massive voting gap in a huge demographic: single people, particularly single women. According to exit polls, Republican Ken Cuccinelli won handily on the “hard” issues facing Virginia voters, and won most other demographic slices, but Democrat Terry McAuliffe won big with single people, crushing Cuccinelli by nearly fifty points among single women.
A similar dynamic could be observed in the 2012 presidential race, where the Obama campaign made a very concerted effort to win over single women
…The single female demographic doesn’t get hung up on details. Another of the new liberal icons, Wendy Davis of Texas, couldn’t answer basic questions about the abortion legislation she opposed with a purportedly heroic filibuster. Now she’s claiming she is actually kinda sorta “pro life” when you think about it. This is true of all the emotional appeals directed at single female society – lack of knowledge is not only overshadowed by passionate conviction, it can be a point of pride. Critics who dwell on the fine print are portrayed as somehow dishonest, using tricksy legalistic nitpicks to injure great idealistic crusades. The liberal hero of the hour cares so very, very much that they cannot be bothered to learn what anything costs, or explore the ramifications of the laws they champion….
… That’s another thing about the single female society: it’s not just a matter of dependents voting to preserve or increase their personal benefits. They are highly receptive to the notion of government-managed compassion, fearful of the cold terrors of the predatory wasteland that lies beyond the comforting light of Mother Government’s home fire, even when they personally are not much affected by particular policies.

MORE.

While you’re at it, revisit “Fluke’s No Fluke; Sisters Love Uncle Sam” in its entirety.