Category Archives: Reason

Equal-Pay Idiocy Refuted

Economy, Free Markets, Gender, Labor, Logic, Reason

The logic is as simple as it is foolproof. An “air-tight free-market argument,” as I explained: “If women with the same skills as men were getting only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, men as a group would have long-since priced themselves out of the market. That entrepreneurs don’t ditch men en masse for women suggests that different abilities and experience are at work, rather than a conspiracy to suppress women.”  (“The Week of Whining Womin”)

The logic is not, however, female proof.

Ridiculous:

 

Travel Ban II Overturn: When Legal Reasoning Is Lost

Justice, Law, Reason, Religion, The Courts, The West

Alan Dershowitz doesn’t grasp the extent to which traditional western legal reasoning has broken down, or is being dismantled, in American courts. Likewise, conservatives rabbit on about liberal judges. Replace them and respect for the Constitution will be restored.

But there’s much more to the fact that, “A federal district judge in Hawaii has just issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) blocking the key provisions of the President’s revised Executive order that pauses the refugee program and admittance of foreign nationals from 6 terrorist hotbeds (Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen) until thorough vetting can be put in place.” (Via ACLJ. RELATED: “ACLJ Goes to Court, Files 2 More Briefs Defending Revised National Security Executive Order.”)

You have a court that is seeking to establish a precedent, whereby taking “statements made during a political campaign” are used to “strike down a faithfully constitutional executive order,” as Dershowitz put it. (“Dershowitz: Why the Supreme Court will uphold Trump’s travel ban.”)

To CNN, Dershowitz said this:

… here you have a judge who is finding statements made during a campaign, if you can take the statements into account, Trump loses if the statements are devastating. But if the court rules that you can’t take those statements in account and you have to look only at the text of the order, then Trump wins because the court is dead wrong when it says it’s unconstitutional if it includes six countries all of which are 90 percent Muslim. That’s perfectly constitutional because that’s what Obama did. So, what the court rules if Obama does it, it’s constitutional, but if Trump does it, it’s unconstitutional because of what Trump said during the campaign. That is a fascinating constitutional issue.

WRONG. This legal brain storm is not fascinating; it’s frightening, because absent from it are certain fundamental givens of Western legal reasoning.

As Hawaii’s Trump travel ban ruling (full text) stands, the American Bill of Rights belongs to THE WORLD, and was written to enrich the American immigration-law industry and its clients the world-over.

An Individualist’s Position On Rubbing-In Racial Differences In Intelligence

Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intelligence, Morality, Paleolibertarianism, Political Correctness, Race, Racism, Reason

Leave a reply

It’s about etiquette and kindness, really.

I had tweeted out the American Renaissance interview with a young black man, the point being to note how he was “ostracized as an Uncle Tom for being a bookish, high-achiever, high IQ individual, who spoke standard English.”

On the Facebook thread, our reader made this point:

Paul Bustion: “I find articles like this distasteful. I find it distasteful to emphasize the racial differences in intelligence. Its probably true that Europeans, Northeast Asians and Ashkenazi Jews on average are more intelligent than Africans, but I think its distasteful to make a point of emphasizing the fact.”

My reply:

Ilana Mercer, Author: “Perfectly put. My sentiment exactly. The lady in me recoils from such cruelty. I could never. I’m an individualist. While I recognize reality about everything—cleave to it in writing, closely deduce from it—I find no redeeming personal virtue in [rubbing-in the point on inter-racial, aggregate differences in IQ scores]. I do, and will, fight tooth-and-nail when I am called a racist because of the intellectual and moral shortfalls of others.”

“Kudos [to our reader] for making this point! “

This quagmire is touched on in my “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.”

UPDATED: FACEBOOK THREAD:

Ilana Mercer, Author Agreed, John Cronk. It’s just something I find tacky. What am I confronting a nice black man about? I’ll confront him if he dare to accuse me of racism b/c not as smart as I, or blame me for his lower inhibitions. I will not tell a perfectly good individual he is inferior. For one, maybe he isn’t? You interact with individuals based on their individual characteristics, not on an aggregate character of a group, valid though it is.

Ilana Mercer, Author: Kerry, I don’t ignore the rule for the exception. You treat each individual as an individual. I write copiously about race and aggregate racial differences. People here are obviously not keeping up with this work. Other than Steve Sailer, Peter Brimelow, Jared Taylor, I don’t know who has incorporated the topic more into analysis than this writer. (Colin Flaherty wisely sticks to chronicling and providing us with an enormous reservoir of data. But he’s a sweet man. I think he might agree with me about personal interactions. Ditto Jack Kerwick.) The point I am making is one of manners and courtesy to a fellow human being. ‘Tis all. We need to be virtuous, too. And anyone who suggests I am not a fierce writer, aggressive too, on the topic, hasn’t been reading. Search under Racial Issues: http://www.ilanamercer.com/…/public_article_list_list.php

About The Republican ‘Facile Argument’ That Obama Halted Immigration. Just Like Trump

Barack Obama, Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Logic, Reason, Republicans

Republicans are whinging about “how the media didn’t mind much when Barack Obama halted immigration, why are they making a fuss about the Trump refugee pause.” The whine amounts to one of those tit-for-tat, vacuous, non-arguments. It’s not an arguments of substance.

In fact, I dearly hope the Washington Post is correct and that it’s “facile”  to “claim that Trump’s refugee policy is similar to Obama’s in 2011.” Why my hope? Because, I don’t know about you, but I despised Obama’s immigration policy. If Trump is merely doing what Obama did, then that’s not a positive thing in my book—and it’s not an argument in defense of Trump’s welcome ban.

Moreover, if Obama already did what Trump intends to accomplish with his executive travel ban—then he wasn’t so bad, now, was he? See how the non-argument above can be turned on Republicans? If Obama already did what Trump is doing about refugees—and I hope not—then Republicans and their media were  guilty of ignoring BHO’s “great merits.”

Yes, that’s what happens when you make a you-pulled-my-ponytail-first “argument.”

But since we know full well BHO was G-d awful—that he increased immigration overall, refugees and illegal aliens—it’s obvious he never came close to fulfilling the Trump promise of a Muslim immigration moratorium.

So what is the whine about? Is it to point out that mass media prefer Obama and didn’t hold him accountable? That’s a no-brainer! Better to offer a substantive defense of Trump’s positions on their merit than to keep disgorging dumb case after another to the tune that, “Hey, our guy is just like the other guy, it’s just that the media don’t like him for no reason.”

Our guy is not like Obama and I hope the media continue to hate him. That’s one measure of how well the president’s keeping his promises.

 

Comments Off on About The Republican ‘Facile Argument’ That Obama Halted Immigration. Just Like Trump

Written by on