Category Archives: Logic

A Color-Coded Theory Of Causation In Mass-Shootings

Crime, Logic, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Race, Reason

A CNN profiler blamed the sense of white privilege for mass shootings carried out by white, young men. These men, the woman was saying, cannot adjust to a necessarily changing society. They cling to the way things were, when the country was predominantly white.

In other words, the oppressor in these young white men wants to continue to oppress. When whites commit unspeakable acts of violence, it only ever comes from a place of power and privilege.

With the same distressing regularity, we are lectured that when browns and blacks commit unspeakable acts of violence, it only ever comes from a place of powerlessness. Black or brown evil is a consequence of oppression.

Excuse me: You have to apply the same method in getting to the etiology/causation of crime.

You can’t have a color-coded theory of causation; one for whites; another for blacks and brows.

I’ve said in my pieces over the years, many times: These individuals all are evil, not ill. No good comes of medicalizing bad behavior:

“School Shootings Are A Moral-Health, Not Mental-Health, Problem”

The facts:

Two shootings: At least 31 people were killed over the weekend in mass shootings in Texas and Ohio.
El Paso: 22 people were killed in El Paso after a mass shooting on Saturday. Police said they found an anti-immigrant document espousing white nationalist and racist views, which they believe was written by the suspect. He may face hate crime charges in addition to capital murder charges.
Dayton: Another nine people were killed in a shooting in the Oregon District of Dayton, Ohio. The suspect in that shooting is dead.

UPDATE III (7/22/019): Logic Disallowed: If Drowning Exposes Risks Of Illegal Crossing, Then … Read On

Crime, Democrats, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, IMMIGRATION, Logic, Reason

Drowning exposes the risks of illegal crossing. So blared the headlines around the world, June 26.

The statement  was in response to the sad image of a father and daughter drowned attempting to break into the USA illegally and recklessly.

Drain and dry that Rio Grande! Level the land to make their passage easier. Let them come in their millions,  no, in their billions.  (That’s the Democrats’ 2020 platform.)

If “drowning exposes the risks of illegal crossing” is a true statement, and it is—-then every murder at the hand of an immigrant exposes the risks of immigration.

That too is a true statement.

See “The United States Illegal Alien Crime Report.” It offers information that doesn’t pop up on the rigged Google search.

“Another Illegal Alien Has Raped A Dog…Ending In Canine’s Death.” Where is PETA? Pamela Anderson? RIP, poor little Estrella. Burn in hell, Fidel Lopez.

UPDATE I (7/12/019): Nullifying immigration law By Daniel Horowitz. 

UPDATE II (7/22/019): That so many of our own American citizens are homegrown illiterates doesn’t mean we should import more.

CRIME, Beloved Country:

UPDATE III: JUST can’t get the facts about killer migrants.

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Ashkenazi Jews’ IQ: Judaism Itself, The Study Of Talmud, In Particular, Is a High-IQ Activity

History, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Judaism & Jews, Logic, Reason

This article reduces the reason for Ashkenazi Jews’ aggregate, genetically based, high IQ to Jewish exclusion and suffering: “selection events”:

… the frequent pogroms to which Jews were subject in Eastern Europe would have been “selection events” which would have selected for correlates of IQ such as future-orientation, social skill, planning and simply the wealth needed to escape. Thus, Lynn argued that, even though Jewish IQ was high before the Holocaust, it was probably even higher afterwards.

There are other reasons for the high IQ in Ashkenazi Jews predating the pogroms and the Holocaust. These have to do with the substantive nature of Judaism itself, not least the premium put on the study and analysis of scripture and certainly the study of Talmud. (I would argue that even the study of our Tanach, which Rabbi Ben Shapiro has mistakenly called Torah, does the brain good.)

At the secular, Israeli secondary school I attended, not enough Talmud was taught, unfortunately. Still, the process of reasoning, called pilpul, captivated me; it’s marvelous—magic, really.

There is the Socratic Method and there is pilpul—“a dialectical method of Talmudic study, consisting of examining all the arguments pro and con in order to find a logical argument for the application of the Law and at the same time to sharpen the wits of the student.”

The Talmud is calisthenics for the mind, for sure, but also sagacious.

Whittling down Jewish thinking and achievement over thousands of years to oppression-generated genetic mutations during the Middle Ages has its flaws. The article, “Are Jews Smarter?”, in the New York Magazine, puts paid to such reductionism:

To say that the Jews have a history of emphasizing scholarship is not just the fantasy of ethnic chauvinists and Woody Allen fans. To look at a single page of the Talmud is to understand this, with its main text at the center, its generations of rabbis arguing around the rim. The dialectic and critical reasoning are at its core.”

Remember, too, that the young scholar who did mental gymnastics the best got the prettiest girl …

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Oy Vey, Owens: Candace’ Nationalism Arguments Are Confused

Argument, Europe, Fascism, Logic, Nationhood, Political Philosophy, Reason, Republicans, War

As appealing as she is as an activist, Candace Owens is no clear thinker. She certainly manages to confuse with her default definition of nationalism vis-a-vis the Trump Revolution.

The setting: Some moronic, white-nationalism Congressional hearings.
There, Owens roughly asserted that “Hitler killed his own people hence he was not a nationalist,” which is a non sequitur.

Ms. Owens here is proceeding from the asserted premise—for she doesn’t argue it—that nationalists do not “kill their own people.” This may be true (but would further depend on definitions; what is meant by “own people”), although I very much doubt it. Nevertheless, it appears that Owens’ thought process is something like,

“I like nationalism [check], and, therefore, Hitler, whom I most certainly don’t like, and who was a monster, could not have been a nationalist.”

Consider: Like all Republicans, Owens, no doubt, adores Lincoln. But would she call Honest Abe a nationalist? Why not? I mean, nationalism is a good thing and Abe, say Republicans like Owens, was a good guy.

Well, there is the pesky fact of Lincoln having killed “his own people” … hmmm. By Owens’ seemingly dogmatic definition of nationalism (not killing your own people), Lincoln, at least, does not qualify as a nationalist.

Just so we’re clear.

What preceded Owens’ odd assertion above was an even stranger comment, again, about Hitler. (This was at the same moronic, white-nationalism Congressional hearings.)

“If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well — OK, fine,” she says. “The problem is … he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German.”

The problem with Hitler? Heavens! Where does one start? It was not that he was a “globalist.” (Is that the kind of “globalist” George Soros Citizen of The World is, Candace?)

How about that Hitler is synonymous with conquest, subjugation, slavery and industrialized mass murder in the service of world hegemony, which, he truly believed, would make Germany  indisputably the greatest power?

the presumed successor of the medieval and early modern Holy Roman Empire of 800 to 1806 (the First Reich) and the German Empire of 1871 to 1918 (the Second Reich)