Category Archives: Intelligence

Libertarian 'Idiocracy' Rising

Intelligence, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Pop-Culture, Pseudo-intellectualism, The West, The Zeitgeist

Over the pixelated pages of Barely A Blog and IlanaMercer.com, I’ve devoted time and effort to elucidating where libertarianism has gone wrong. The sexy, rah-rah, fist-in-the air aura of anarchism has attracted the worst to the movement. My own readers are constantly seduced and pulled back, on BAB, from the brink of errant thinking—as when they fall into pacifism or social determinism.

Then there are the dumbing-down forces that have taken their toll on the Zeitgeist in general. In America, and elsewhere, we are in the throes of an era that elevates and celebrates the worst of humanity, man and woman; intellect and ethics. To get an exaggerated sense of what the consequences of such a persistent upheaval in the natural order, I recommend my all-time favorite social commentary, “Idiocracy.” Comedic reductio ad absurdum is better than the kind of social science-cum-social engineering produced these days by the likes of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam.

After that prelude, please take a look at what goes for gritty libertarian thought on the website of The Examiner: “Is cannibalism really wrong or just taboo?”

An intellectual pygmy and shock jock gets a forum. An even stupider editor believes musing about cannibalism is edgy and exciting. Your main deduction here as far as libertarianism goes must not involve libertarian legal theory. For the act of cannibalism should go unpunished only in extremis—where the individual would not survive unless he indulges.

Otherwise, a society that is reduced to the skeletal essence of the non-aggression axiom is not a civil society, but an “Idiocracy.” (Bless Mike Judge for that stroke of genius.)

Libertarian ‘Idiocracy’ Rising

Intelligence, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Pop-Culture, Pseudo-intellectualism, The West, The Zeitgeist

Over the pixelated pages of Barely A Blog and IlanaMercer.com, I’ve devoted time and effort to elucidating where libertarianism has gone wrong. The sexy, rah-rah, fist-in-the air aura of anarchism has attracted the worst to the movement. My own readers are constantly seduced and pulled back, on BAB, from the brink of errant thinking—as when they fall into pacifism or social determinism.

Then there are the dumbing-down forces that have taken their toll on the Zeitgeist in general. In America, and elsewhere, we are in the throes of an era that elevates and celebrates the worst of humanity, man and woman; intellect and ethics. To get an exaggerated sense of what the consequences of such a persistent upheaval in the natural order, I recommend my all-time favorite social commentary, “Idiocracy.” Comedic reductio ad absurdum is better than the kind of social science-cum-social engineering produced these days by the likes of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam.

After that prelude, please take a look at what goes for gritty libertarian thought on the website of The Examiner: “Is cannibalism really wrong or just taboo?”

An intellectual pygmy and shock jock gets a forum. An even stupider editor believes musing about cannibalism is edgy and exciting. Your main deduction here as far as libertarianism goes must not involve libertarian legal theory. For the act of cannibalism should go unpunished only in extremis—where the individual would not survive unless he indulges.

Otherwise, a society that is reduced to the skeletal essence of the non-aggression axiom is not a civil society, but an “Idiocracy.” (Bless Mike Judge for that stroke of genius.)

Update III: Lettermen/Palin: Dull Meets Dumb

Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Family, Feminism, Gender, Intelligence, John McCain, Pop-Culture, Republicans, Sarah Palin

I defended the woman effectively in “Sensational Sarah,” “Who’s Stupid? Not Sarah,” and “The Left’s Gallery of Cretins.” I did so mainly because her detractors were so much more odious and pretentious, and because I saw in Sarah Palin something, a spark. That glimmer has fizzled. Her philosophical ignorance was unaided by the trashy family dramas, played out in public; the interviews (and no, Bristol is NOT “a bright young woman,” despite what Mother says), the shrill inflection she has developed, the propensity to talk without stop in senseless, rambling, run-off sentences.

And now, in her “uprising” against Dave Lettermen—a veritable storm in a C-cup—Palin comes off as a cross between a less intelligent Gloria Steinem and that ding dong Carrie Prejean (who too refers to herself adoringly as a “bright, intelligent young woman”; I don’t think so). That “young woman” sobriquet is enough to trigger a conniption.

Update I (June 13): Palin has good instincts and a sinewy intelligence. She is, however, too ambitious for her own good, and has shown herself to be, unlike Ron Paul, “an easily co-opted politician, [who’ll abandon] her conservative core beliefs and restrain her political persona for a ticket and candidate that [had] neither: This [was] likely the reason for the mangled, mixed massages, absent from the governor’s Alaskan record.

Palin [also] slammed a cause she had, at one time, saluted: that of the Alaskan Independence Party. That she was once affiliated with said party speaks to her visceral feeling for freedom. That she has since denounced the IP, and seems to have imbibed no political philosophy to speak of since the McCain escapade, also speaks volumes.

However, don’t write her off yet. Where her expertise lie is in energy. She knows what she’s talking about. In a better world, Palin would know her weaknesses and cultivate her strengths. This would mean assuming control of the energy portfolio in a Ron Paul administration, just before he dismantles it.

Given her own boundless energy, Plain could also take charge of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, prior to Paul’s scattering of the critters and cretins who infest the place. As the real Diana, the goddess of the hunt, a Palin subservient to a Paul would allow men to kill and hunt wild life that encroaches on—and endanger—communities (like bears, etc).

Alas, Palin will not attach herself to Paul, because she possesses few enduring, important passions and principles, other than for retards: young women and disabled children.

When Palin runs again, she will cling to the most powerful ticket, or she will be That Ticket. She will then overreach, well beyond her ken. And she will absorb and emit the requisite statism.

Update II (June 14): A couple of Palin faithful have made little of the substance of my disappointment in the woman. Let me reiterate the point people are so willing to forget (frightening that). Put it this way: Do any of her fans remember the policies promoted by the man Palin supported blindly? Anyone recall the kind of mammoth government expansion “McMussolini” advocated? You need a refresher! This woman did not confine herself to yammering about a tiny Department for Retards. Perpetual war, anyone?
I gave Palin a great deal of support. I loved the way the sissy media televised images of her speaking against the backdrop of a man feeding turkeys into the grinder—the food liberals gladly eat, but never hunt or gut. But Palin showed zero conviction; she failed to defend her natural, unperturbed pose with an honest worker in the background. She apologized for who she is—a girl who has hunted, skinned, and then cooked what she kills, and who sees nothing wrong in that great, gory, picture-perfect prop (the slaughter of turkeys).
Palin allowed herself to be “handled.” And now, she’s jumping on some bandwagon that is bringing to her side feminists of the left-liberal and “conservative” ilk—the usual cows. Puke.

Update III: There is on BAB a Sarah Palin archive. To check it out, click Sarah Palin under Categories.

Update II: Too Pale To Stay?

Education, IMMIGRATION, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Multiculturalism, Race, Racism, The State

Somehow I think that if this little girl’s name were GARCIA, MARTINEZ, ALVAREZ, RODRIGUEZ, ROMERO, LOPEZ, FERNANDEZ, HERNANDEZ, GONZALES—she’d be allowed to stay in the US of A. Read the story of the impending deportation to Poland of 11-year-old Ewelina Bledniak. (And where-oh-where are the churches and the ACLU?)

If only my own sister were a poor, illiterate, Hispanic scofflaw, sucking at the state’s teat.

Update I (June 11): I’m not sure I can agree entirely with Robert. To an extent he is right: errors and injustices are a function of a lumbering bureaucracy. I think he’ll find, however, that because so many of the bureaucrats are affirmative, or plain illegal, appointees, they often enact their preferences. It is misguided to deny: 1) the tremendous powers of the bureaucracy. 2) That said organ doesn’t exercise these powers energetically. We live under an unrepresentative, managerial state, the kind James Burnham (if I’m correct) wrote about, and certainly our friend Paul Gottfried has covered extensively.

My personal experience: “My daughter was … stripped of her [green card] on a debatable technicality when entering the US from Canada. This took a heroic show of force from the brave, U.S. citizenship and immigration law enforcers at the border. Moral: U.S. immigration law is enforced against people who obey the law. No doubt her hard-won green card was needed urgently for a real Bandido.”

Update II (June 11): So far, I’ve being vindicated. Readers have put down Bledniak’s neglect to nothing more than a “lumbering bureaucracy.” But as I contended, if Bledniak were Banderas, she’d have had CNN’s THELMA GUTIERREZ’s full support.

Tonight, GUTIERREZ went to bat for a “brilliant girl”—so brilliant, she has an “A” in “Race and Gender”—who cannot get you and me to pay for her Harvard degree in Education (worth nothing, clearly), because… wait for it: she’s illegal. However, unlike the Polish cherub, Nancy the Hispanic is not being deported.

The transcripts are here. Just as I surmised in the initial post, Nancy’s equally “brilliant” Harvard professors are LATINAS.

The “matric”—high-school finals—I sat for in Israel was harder than anything this “genius” has done at university. These students graduate from high school without math in the syllabus. Unheard of in my days, if you wanted a university entrance matric. And yes, I will (a little later) inflict on you the kind of core curriculum I was compelled to undertake for the first-rate academic matric I earned in Israel, back in the day.
This Nancy would be relegated to the sewing class—we were streamed into different paths in accordance with academic aptitude in those days. With the kind of nonacademic subjects “Nancy” has taken, GUTIERREZ’s protege would not have qualified to sit the academic finals in my old high-school. But then things have changed in Israel since then too.