Category Archives: Individualism Vs. Collectivism

UPDATE II: ‘Dead Birds Flying’: Help Steve Boyes Help The Cape Parrot

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intelligence, Pseudoscience, South-Africa, The Zeitgeist

Birds in flight are the very symbol of liberty. Yet what do people do to the most sentient, socially and intellectually evolved among them? We cage them and maim them by clipping their wing feathers.

And what a heart has Dr. Steve Boyes!

He has dedicated himself to reversing the destruction humans have wrought on the Cape Parrot. What a heroic commitment he and his team (including Cape communicator Rodnick Biljon, who captures the Cape Parrot on film) have pledged to rescuing the Cape Parrot from extinction, brought about by the decimation of the Yellowood forests of the Eastern Cape. (Your host hails from Cape Town.)

The Cape Parrot Project is one of my favored charities. Owned as I am by an Un-Cape Parrot (a genetic relative to the wild Cape Parrot), I’ve had the privilege of experiencing first-hand the intense brilliance of these precious Pois (mine is Poicephalus fuscicollis; the Cape Parrot is Poicephalus robustus). We rescued Oscar-Wood from a cage in a store, where he had languished for 4 years, plucking his feathers down to the pink skin beneath. This, after having been sold into the trade by a well-known breeder in Hawaii.

LOOK at him then (2009):

Another heartbreaking image (2009):

Here Oscar-Wood is today (2012), fully flighted, nesting in a bag of tortillas. This state of relative well-being has come about only because I work from home and am able to give him the attention and freedom he requires to thrive. And still he plucks; once acquired, this neurotic habit is hard to eliminate.

Oscar-Wood has a facility with … wood (all parrots require wood, preferably from a tree, in the wild):

WARNING. Do not try the above at home. By all means, rescue an abandoned and abused parrot, but do not fuel the wicked pet parrot trade, which everywhere and always involves breeding mills, inhumane by definition. As to wild-life traffickingg … words fail.

Those who’ve bothered to get to know a parrot in flight, if hobbled horribly by the walls of a house (the Cape, for example, can fly hundreds of kilometers in a day), know this: Out of a cage, free to be adorable and impossible as only hookbills are—parrots are so much smarter than any of the domesticated animals (and than some of your neighbors).

Even showmen such as parrot whisperer Clint Carvalho attests that the larger parrots are “twenty times smarter than dogs.” I’m not sure how Carvalho quantifies his findings, but these sound about right.

Know a politician with this magic macaw’s problem-solving skills? Tan’s Japanese admirers are enthralled. As well they should be. Watch Tan solve an impossible magic-cube like puzzle:

What’s positive about Carvalho is that, unlike your average avian dabbler, he has realized that parrots acquire rudimentary language (often greater than those acquired by the bumper crops of illiterates US public schools produce) through conditioning and cognition, just as kids do.

The cognitive capacities of the parrot, however, match his emotional needs.

Unlike dogs and cats, birds are wild animals, ill-suited to captivity. Moreover, they’re flock animals who wither without the physical proximity of a feathered family with which they fly, forage, communicate and mate, often for life.

The trade is fueled by consumer demand.

Being slaves to authority and convention, the mass of humanity doesn’t much like or appreciate the independent-minded individuals among them. Imagine the fate of a creature as smart, as independent-minded and as individualistic as the parrot?

Consider the cruelty of excluding parrots from assorted public-awareness campaigns. Funds are invariably solicited for and awareness raised over the airwaves about abused and needy dogs and cats. Not so for parrots. Despite their popularity as pets and their prevalence in American homes, natural disasters come and go without any mention of the plight of the Psittacine victims.

Coveted. “Consumed.” Discarded.

That is the fate of parrots bred for the pet trade. Break the cycle. Adopt a neglected and abused animal from a shelter. Support your community based shelters.

AND donate to save the Cape Parrot.

Writes Dr. Boyes:

Most people know about the popular African Grey parrots of central and western Africa, but very few people know about Africa’s most endangered parrot, South Africa’s Cape parrot. Today, there could be as few as 800 Cape parrots remaining in the wild and they are considered Critically Endangered due to continued habitat loss, poor nesting success due to lack of nest cavities, a severe Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease epidemic, historical persecution as a crop pest, and illegal capture for the wild-caught bird trade. If Africa was to lose this “green and gold” ambassador of some of our last-remaining Afromontane forest patches, it would be a sign of very bad times to come… We would have lost one of the last Afromontane endemics clinging onto these forests through their own ingenuity and collective intelligence. Intensive logging in their forest habitat, persecution (e.g. being shot or caught in nets and clubbed to death), nest poaching and mist-netting adults for the wild-caught bird trade, and very little or no conservation intervention, has left the Cape Parrot in ruins with an aging populations in declining physical condition. We need to intervene now and stimulate positive change for Cape parrots in the wild

UPDATE (3/25): Following the Facebook thread.

JP: Point taken, but parrot are picky about friends and partners. The chances of a friendship being struck up are greater when the other parrot is of the same species. Personally, I recommend against taking on two parrots. That’s much like planning for one toddler and learning that you’ll be giving birth to twins. It’s never easier. Better that you be a good parront to one parrot than shortchange both and yourself. Of course, if you do not work, or your work is not too demanding (because parrots are), have a large enough house and homestead (maybe even place for an outdoor aviary)—by all means. Caring for parrots under the right conditions is rewarding. There is nothing like the love of a parrot, once earned.

Baby is currently doing lapse from his cage to kitchen cupboard (or what’s left of it; our kitchen has not been renovated and we’re delaying that job until we can think of how to parrot proof Sean’s planned maple-wood cabinetry).

Oscar-Wood is also talking up a storm. Singing his musical repertoire; knocking, and then demanding, “Hello, hello”; asking if I’m going, “Bye-bye-bye?” and if he’s been a “bad bird?” He’s also doing his raspy chest cough, because he knows the sound worries me. Should I dare to attempt to bathe him (parrots bath themselves pretty thoroughly), it’s an indignant, “Hey, hey!” Tell me that’s not a very decent attempt to communicate.

‘Why Americans Should Know and Care About South Africa’ By Jack Kerwick

Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Media, Neoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Racism, South-Africa

“Why Americans Should Know and Care About South Africa,” by Jack Kerwick, was published by FrontPage Magazine. “Decent people everywhere should be aware of the suffering and death that are part of everyday life in South Africa,” warns Jack, as he honors the memory of the “flesh and blood human beings who have been victimized by the predators who have taken over “the Rainbow Nation.” Kudos to Dr. Kerwick.

Liars in the Comments Section, however, resurrect assorted libel that was first leveled at me by the con-men at Media Matters.

1) First up is the lie that I lionized Eugene Terre’Blanche, the murdered leader of South Africa’s Afrikaner Resistance Movement. In the “War on White South Africa,” I had reported on the manner in which the controversial 69-year-old Mr. Terre’Blanche was bludgeoned to a pulp with pangas and pipes by two black farmhands. At the time of his death, the old Afrikaner had not threatened anyone. But vampiric liberals (and, evidently, neocons) bayed for the blood of men like Terre’Blanche, and celebrated his death. That we libertarians defend the life of a non-aggressor offends them. Unlike the liars above, we are civilized that way.

2) Next is the bogus accusation that “Mercer’s family escaped South Africa”: yet more lies. While I indeed left South Africa as democracy dawned (at my husband’s wise insistence; we went straight to North America: Canada first, and then the US)—my father, Rabbi Ben Isaacson, still resides in South Africa. Ditto most other members of my family. They have not emigrated from the democratic South Africa!

3) Finally, there is the wrongheaded claim that I am racist because I acknowledge that crime and other variables have a racial dimension, which is what a perfectly conventional multiple regression analysis would reveal too. (Perhaps liberals should ban that statistical methodology because of the statistically significant correlations it reveals.)

I do discuss demographics vis-à-vis crime in South Africa and the US quite openly, as I believe this discussion is perfectly congruent with individualism—and with the methods of the social sciences.

“Generalizations, provided they are substantiated by hard evidence, not hunches, are not incorrect. Science relies on the ability to generalize to the larger population observations drawn from a representative sample.”

To repeat the complete Cannibal quote, I state the following, on page 41 of “Into the cannibal’s Pot”:

“In all, no color should be given to the claim that race is not a factor in the
incidence of crime in the US and in South Africa. The vulgar individualist will
contend that such broad statements about aggregate group characteristics are
collectivist, ergo false. He would be wrong. Generalizations, provided they are
substantiated by hard evidence, not hunches, are not incorrect. Science relies
on the ability to generalize to the larger population observations drawn from a
representative sample. People make prudent decisions in their daily lives based
on probabilities and generalities. That one chooses not to live in a particular
crime-riddled county or country in no way implies that one considers all
individual residents there to be criminals, only that a sensible determination
has been made, based on statistically significant data, as to where scarce and
precious resources—one’s life and property—are best invested.”

In all, “I cop to Western man’s individualist disdain—could it be his weakness?—for race as an organizing principle. For me, the road to freedom lies in beating back the state so that individuals regain freedom of association, dominion over property, the absolute right of self-defense; the right to hire, fire, and, generally, associate at will.”

David Mamet Packs Heat, Sheds Light

Affirmative Action, Conservatism, Constitution, Government, GUNS, Hollywood, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Race, Republicans, The State

In “Gun Laws and the Fools of Chelm,*” the talented Hollywood playwright, author, director, and producer David Mamet motivates for his individual right to defend life, liberty and property.

As a conventional conservative or Republican, Mamet’s positions are often pat, lacking philosophical depth. For example: He fingers The Bureaucracy as ineffectual because lacking in compassion and common sense. However, like most members of the right-leaning establishment, Mamet is incapable of explaining the underlying dynamic or structure that accounts for the inversion of economic incentives in the bureaucracy, irrespective of the good intentions and good character of the bureaucrats.

Mamet also mouths the conventional conservative talking points about affirmative action: that it is based in the mistaken premise that “black people have fewer abilities than white people,” a notion Mamert calls “monstrous.”

The “I love blacks, so I want to make them compete on an equal footing” mantra is as prevalent a platitude among conservatives as it is stupid. Affirmative action is based on the immutable fact of blacks’ lower aggregate scores in academia and in other fields. The “monstrous” part of it is that quotas treat all individual blacks as part of an underachieving, oppressed cohort. As does it lump all whites—the poor, the underprivileged and the victimized too—in a group that needs to suffer for the sake of black upliftment.

Also lackluster or absent is Mamet’s defense of a natural right that predates the constitutional right to bear arms. But Mamet should be appreciated for writing very well, and for being a lone voice for reason and rights in Hollywood, writing that,

…there are more than 2 million instances a year of the armed citizen deterring or stopping armed criminals; a number four times that of all crimes involving firearms.
The Left loves a phantom statistic that a firearm in the hands of a citizen is X times more likely to cause accidental damage than to be used in the prevention of crime, but what is there about criminals that ensures that their gun use is accident-free? If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals.
Violence by firearms is most prevalent in big cities with the strictest gun laws. In Chicago and Washington, D.C., for example, it is only the criminals who have guns, the law-abiding populace having been disarmed, and so crime runs riot.
Cities of similar size in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere, which leave the citizen the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed in the Constitution, typically are much safer. More legal guns equal less crime. What criminal would be foolish enough to rob a gun store? But the government alleges that the citizen does not need this or that gun, number of guns, or amount of ammunition.

[SNIP]

* Chelm: From Mamet’s reference to Chelm, I concluded that he is probably Jewish (and well-educated, of course, which he is).

UPDATED: Fighting Words From Left-Libertarian Egalitarians (Andrew Napolitano)

IMMIGRATION, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Military, Old Right, Paleolibertarianism

Judge Andrew Napolitano, who exemplifies left-libertarianism on many issues (not least immigration, civil rights law, etc), believes that freighting men with females in combat is a great step toward the ideal of judging individuals based on their merits and not their group.

To left-libertarians liberty is an abstraction. Apply it “properly,” and it will work everywhere and always. Enforced by the state, this egalitarian abstraction has culminated in the idea that women belong alongside men on the battle field. You know, only the right kind of women—the kind that is as physically able, and will not introduce sexual dynamics to what has been the business of brothers-in-arms since time immemorial.

A crucial difference between left libertarians and the Right kind (the paleolibertarian) is that left-libertarianism is egalitarian; its idea of liberty is propositional–a deracinated idea, unmoored from the reality of history, biology, tradition, hierarchy.

The paleolibertarian, on the other hand, grasps “Liberty’s Civilizational Dimension”; he understands that liberty cannot be reduced to the non-aggression axiom, and that it has a cultural and civilizational dimension.

A paleolibertarian gets that, as an arm of the state, the military is already manacled by doctrinaire mediocrity, multiculturalism, feminism, affirmative action (fem and other), and every postmodern pox imaginable. So now you want to further tweak it in this direction?

As Pat Buchanan puts it in his latest column (“Obama has hijacked the American Revolution”), “The freedom of all Americans to compete academically, athletically, artistically and economically must inevitably result in an inequality of incomes, wealth and rewards. Why? Because all men and women are by nature and nurture unequal.”

But not if liberals and left-libertarians can help it.

UPDATE (Jan. 28): Jack Kerwick writes on some of the Judge’s other left-libertarian positions:

The Judge eviscerated Arizona Governor Jan Brewer when she signed SB 1070 to help Arizonans deal with the ravages of illegal immigration that it had been suffering for years. And he also has never put up any kind of resistance to amnesty. Instead, Napolitano has remarked that if “our rights come from our Creator—as the Declaration of Independence declares,” then “how can they differ because of where our mothers were when we were born?”
With respect to the administration’s decision to lift the ban on women in combat, Napolitano claimed to be “thrilled.” While on a Fox News panel last week, the Judge noted what he perceived to be the irony involved in the fact that it is a “collectivist president” who has decided “that people should be judged as individuals and not as members of groups [.]” Napolitano lavished praise upon the President for relegating to the dustbin of history “the old military prejudices against…women,” ideas rooted, “not in facts,” but “often…in ignorance, bias and prejudice [.]”
This latest development, Napolitano believes, is a victory for liberty and individualism, for “each person in the military will [now] be judged for combat, leadership and command based on their skills and ability—not some group they are a member of based on the consequence of birth” (Emphasis added).