Category Archives: Reason

UPDATED: Cite Your Sources, Creep!

Ethics, Etiquette, Ilana Mercer, Morality, Paleoconservatism, Race, Reason

I receive the Taki Magazine newsletter in my In-Box.

I often click on it for a quick once-over.

With some exceptions, speed reading is the mode reserved for the stuff. With exceptions like Sailer, of course (Pat Buchanan is read on WND), the reason for this was touched upon in a Feb. 15, Facebook, thread with a Fred Reed fan.

While I too think “Fred Reed rocks,” information-rich work is my preference. I love Reed for his audacity, but riffing does not do it for me. I need information.

Unless I learn something substantive in the process, I’m not interested in other people’s opinions. I have too many of my own. 🙂

As I was skimming a riff by a character called Jim Goad (one of whose light-reading posts I was decent enough to reference in a January post of my own; naturally I cite my sources)—I came across a remarkably familiar line on a rather obscure matter of logic, also the only analytical part in this riff of a column.

This character was motivating (dah) against an “egalitarian … fallacy, which roughly runs thusly.” And Goad writes:

Differences within any group are greater than those between groups.

The familiar part of the Goad column was this:

“Against every known rule of logic,” he notes,” “this statement is always used as some blanket proof of equality.” Goad promises to “carefully dismantle this super-dumb time bomb.” He continues:

Here’s why the statement is deceptive: Differences between highs and lows WITHIN a group do not discount or magically wash away differences between group AVERAGES.

High and low did I search Barely A Blog, but was unable to locate the familiar point of logic made on BAB so long ago. Finally, it came to me: I would have alluded to inter-group differences. Yes! I found what I was after using the “inter” prefix in the BAB search window.

The post is “The Kindness Of (Caucasian) Strangers (On Brotherly Love).” It’s dated 01.31.10. My identical line of reasoning about this obscure matter is as follows, verbatim:

… no; we’re not all the same. A common liberal refrain (I would like to see what Steve Sailer has said in this regard) is that differences between individuals are statistically more significant than those between cultural, ethnic, and racial groups. I don’t see why the fact of inter-individual differences would nullify inter-group variance. That’s liberal logic for you. [ILANA MERCER]

Moreover, I have never heard of the formal fallacy Goad cites to label his inquiry. However, on perusing the Wikipedia entry, I found empirical refutations but no analytical ones–no allusion was made to the deduction that appears in the Mercer post titled “The Kindness Of (Caucasian) Strangers (On Brotherly Love).”

Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but unacknowledged, lifting someone’s ideas without attribution is disgusting—it tells me all I need to know about a person.

Alas, borrowing of this nature is mostly impossible to prove. This is why passing off the often-idiosyncratic ideas or references of others as their own is “par for the course” in these circles. Nevertheless, shame we shall when we come across this lowly practice.

About the natural law, Sir William Blackstone noted that it should include such precepts as that human beings should live honestly, hurt nobody, and render everyone their due (in Conway, 2004). Clearly, this is an instinct alien to some.

UPDATE (3/2): As my dear (most original) friend professor Walter Block once said to me, when we first met (2000?), “You are a natural praxeologist.” I’m sure I make a lot of mistakes, but this method comes naturally. Mercer columns tend to consist in logical deductions. Other than in similar circles, this is not a common style/habit. (We stand on the shoulders of the brilliant David Gordon.) When you see your reasoning, it’s like seeing an image of your offspring. Others might say, “All babies look the same,” but you know that bundle is yours.

Conservative Argument From Feelings Against Fem Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action, Ann Coulter, Argument, Conservatism, Feminism, Gender, Reason

Presumably pursuant to the posts “Conservatives and Lefties United Against The Beauty Ideal” and “With Some Exceptions, ‘Women Are Fascists At Heart,’” Ben Cohen of “American Thinker” has been kind enough to send me his piece, “The Legitimacy of White Male Anger.”

Thanks.

My problem, however, with “The Legitimacy of White Male Anger” is its non-stop apologetics, which come close to accepting the premise of “gender parity through affirmative action,” provided women are a little more gracious about all the concessions they are getting.

“Those demanding that more women be hired in various academic fields” are “sanctimonious and callous,” “blatantly self-serving”; not nice, demanding.

This amounts to psychologizing, not arguing.

Moreover, why is it “bad” for men to have given an “unfriendly reception” to women who’ve been forcibly integrated into the traditionally male trades?

If they don’t deserve to be on the job, on merit, why does friendliness matter; why is it the focus here? And why have men taken to arguing like women? (“You hurt my feelings. Be nice.” Or, “do feminists ever stop and consider the men’s perspective?”)

It’s disconcerting.

As an individualist, I am all for recruiting your lesbian, Amazonian lady to the traditionally male occupations. She is a rare creature who can match men in physicality. Seek her. Keep her. In an increasingly feminized, soft society, warrior women need the military, for example, as an outlet for their abilities. Let these women join the police, military or the fire brigade. An exception, not the rule, however, is the woman who can match a man in strength, speed, physical endurance and handiness.

So why on earth is male “unfriendliness” toward women who force them to do double duty on the job relevant? Even the woman-glorifying, TV cop series we all watch can’t help but display men outrunning their partners, catching up to the criminal, pummeling the thug, and saving the more feeble female cop’s life.

A male cop who serves along a 100 pound woman with silicone for breasts is risking his life. Receiving her with hostility into the force is hardly the issue here. Neither is it wrong.

I hardly think an “unfriendly” reception is the crux of the matter in the grander program of engineered gender parity.

Read “Freeze! I Just Had My Nails Done!” by Ann Coulter, where she gets straight to the matter:

How many people have to die before the country stops humoring feminists? … The inestimable economist John Lott has looked at the actual data. (And I’ll give you the citation! John R. Lott Jr., “Does a Helping Hand Put Others at Risk? Affirmative Action, Police Departments and Crime,” Economic Inquiry, April 1, 2000.)

It turns out that, far from “de-escalating force” through their superior listening skills, female law enforcement officers vastly are more likely to shoot civilians than their male counterparts. (Especially when perps won’t reveal where they bought a particularly darling pair of shoes.)

Unable to use intermediate force, like a bop on the nose, female officers quickly go to fatal force. According to Lott’s analysis, each 1 percent increase in the number of white female officers in a police force increases the number of shootings of civilians by 2.7 percent. …

MORE.

The Mindset Of A Subject

Healthcare, Law, Natural Law, Reason

“It is the law of the land,” parrot the statists, whenever the notion of repealing Zero Care is raised.

But even the legal positivist, for whom the law does not have to embody the “ideals of justice, democracy, or the rule of law” to remain in force, must concede that Obamacare is destructive to all Americans.

Americans are certainly coming to this realization. Polls show that “82% of Republicans and 58% of voters not affiliated with either party view the law unfavorably.”

As one natural-law scholar put it, “The human person is not a means for the ruler’s use.” (p. 174.) “A rule that does not issue from the activity of reason, an arbitrary rule or an arbitrary decree would savor of lawlessness rather than law.” (p. 172.)

Idiots Amplify Each Other

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Gender, Intelligence, Race, Racism, Reason, Republicans

Do you find yourself listening to TV talkers and trying to decipher word-salads that result from linguistic imprecision and irrational thought processes?

DANA DITZ PERINO stood in for Gretta Van Susteren (whose viewers detected ditz material). She chatted to an affiliate about the Knock-Out Game, or polar-bear hunting. This last term, devised by perps way cleverer than Perino, is wonderfully precise.

The ensuing conversation was one that could only have taken place between two ditzes. The idiot effect was exponential. Each woman, Dana and Fox affiliate fool, bounced stupid stuff off the other.

Soon the women were nodding over the apparent need to look into the Knock Out game, It warranted an investigation, repeated Dana’s buxom interlocutor, again and again. In order to help her think remotely logically, Danna needs smarter people around. In the absence of such a quantity, she just nodded and paraphrased her friend. The two rehashed the wisdom of investigation the attacks.

None mentioned that “polar-bear hunting” was played by black youth at the expense of Other, Paler People. I could be wrong (no video clip or transcript is available), but I believe the words, “boys behaving badly” were mouthed a few times too. (Only 5 or so deaths so far, so yeah, like, yeah, bad behavior, for sure.)