Category Archives: The State

How Dramatically Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?

Democracy, Elections, Feminism, Gender, Political Economy, The State

In 2007, I ventured that, “I’d give up my vote if that would guarantee that all women were denied the vote.”—ILANA Mercer (August 8, 2007)

Coming from the anti-statist stance, the sentiment is a solid one. It’s anchored in data.

One only has to trace the statistically significant correlation between women’s suffrage and the change in the size and scope of the state, as did John R. Lott, Jr. (Yale University) and Lawrence W. Kenny (University of Florida), to realize that the female suffrage has undermined the small-government project.

“How Dramatically Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?” is in the Journal of Political Economy (Vol. 107, Number 6, Part 1, pp. 1163-1198, December 1999).

Of course, the tipping point has long been reached, so my altruistic gesture would be in vain.

Naturally, some will laud the growth of government under female tutelage; others will lament it.

Abstract

This paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of giving women the right to vote. Using cross-sectional time-series data for 1870 to 1940, we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by U.S. House and Senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives, and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise. Contrary to many recent suggestions, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s, and it helps explain why American government started growing when it did.

And look at these excerpts with their bold deductions. The following writers would have been “canceled” by the bumper crops of cretins who control the American intelligentsia (that is not very intelligent).

It is not really surprising that this welfare state should breed a politics not of “justice” or “fairness” but of “compassion,” which contemporary liberalism has elevated into the most important civic virtue. Women tend to be more sentimental, more risk-averse and less competitive than men—yes, it’s Mars vs. Venus—and therefore are less inclined to be appreciative of free-market economics, in which there are losers as well as winners. College-educated women—the kind who attend Democratic conventions—are also more “permissive” and less “judgmental” on such issues as homosexuality, capital punishment, even pornography.

—Irving Kristol, “The Feminization of the Democrats,” The Wall Street Journal (September 9, 1996): p. A16

Citing marriage as “a very important financial divider,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Doug Besharov suggests more married women did not vote for Dole because of a widespread sense of societal insecurity: “It is not that they distrust their husband, but they have seen divorce all around them and know they could be next.” The Polling Company’s Kellyanne Fitzpatrick is categorical: “Women see government as their insurance.” (Perhaps significantly, of the 24 million individuals working in government and in semi-governmental non-profit jobs, 14 million—58 percent—are women.)

—The Richmond Times Dispatch, December 5, 1996

THE REST.

NEW COLUMN: The Barbarians Are In Charge: Scenes From The Sacking of America

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Cultural Marxism, Culture, Law, Media, Military, Multiculturalism, Socialism, The State

NEW COLUMN is “The Barbarians Are In Charge: Scenes From The Sacking of America .” It describes, among much else, what Seattle’s mayor, Jenny Durkan, calls a block party. There is such a “party” across the USA.

The column appeared on WND, the Unz Review, and The Saker. And is currently featured on American Greatness, where you can read it now.

An excerpt:

On June 9, I tweeted out the following:

“Seattle’s East Precinct has fallen, as Police Chief Carmen Best orders Seattle Police to evacuate. The occupiers, aka the ‘peaceful protesters,’ declare victory. ‘They’ve given us the precinct,’ they boast. Not even in South Africa.”

A mere day on, and the City of Seattle was de facto occupied territory, fallen to the “peaceful protesters”—the same counterculture media darlings who’ve been sacking cities across America.

The rabble—Black Lives Matter sympathizers, which, as police arrest records show is almost entirely local—was further roused by Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, formerly of Mumbai.

Most reprehensibly, pied piper Sawant led the “peace makers” to occupy City Hall in downtown Seattle, on Tuesday, June 10.

The altercation between Council Member Sawant and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan gives new meaning to the “broad” sweep of ideas in this dysfunctional city. Sawant, a socialist, called on Mayor Durkan, a progressive, to resign over abuse of power (what power?) and systemic racism (a meaningless abstraction). This, as the city was being sacked.

Surrender Monkeys

As of this writing, the Seattle Police have surrendered without defeat.

Seven blocks of downtown Seattle, renamed the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ), have been appropriated by the Peaceful Ones, with the imprimatur of the mayor and her police chief (Carmen Best aforementioned). Now loosed on the public, these buccaneering entrepreneurs are reported to have set up checkpoints to shake down residents who imagine they may come and go. Not in this satrapy.

On the positive side, Seattle now has that shithole-country vibrancy.

President of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, SPOG, penned an open letter to lunatic Mayor Durkan, pondering how he would fulfill his sworn oath of office to protect lives and property without so much as tear gas.

He got his answer. America did. Across the U.S., the message to law-abiding Americans, from city, town, county council members and other legislators came loud and clear: You’re on your own. Neither police nor politicians are coming to protect what’s left of your businesses or your banal, bourgeoisie little life.

Last I looked, there were 400,000 “guardian angels” in private security toiling to make up for the South African state’s failure to protect its people. Every year, millions in taxpayers’ money are forked out to private security firms to protect the new South Africa’s police stations. “South Africa’s protectors, in other words, can’t protect themselves.” Will Seattle’s neutered policemen be investigating this option? Is it time for them to cut the shafted taxpayers loose? Let us go private?

When all is said and done, the George Floyd riots are a law and order event. Nothing else matters in the overarching context of a failed state, in which ordered liberty is dead, and the law-abiding are utterly forsaken, even vilified.

Yes, victims are now villains and villains are martyrs.

Unbeknownst to Nikolas Fernandez, a gainfully employed security guard, the Capitol Hill district of Seattle now belongs to the “peaceful protesters.” Fernandez dared to drive down it, only to be mobbed by the barbarians and forced to shoot an attacker possessing of animal-like agility. Legacy media quickly turned the narrative on its head. Fernandez, whose brother is a policeman, had invaded “peaceful protester” turf. His attacker took a bullet for peace. The attacker is now a hero. …

READ THE REST … NEW COLUMN is “The Barbarians Are In Charge: Scenes From The Sacking of America .” The column appeared on WND, the Unz Review, and The Saker. And is currently featured on American Greatness, where you can read it now.

China Vs. Uncles Sam And Gates

America, China, Critique, Globalism, Nationalism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Economy, Republicans, Science, The State, The West

Leave a reply

I understand the honest, plaintive anger expressed below by American Greatness reader Major Rage, directed at my argument in “Who Invited The World To Infect America?” (“Hate the Chinese government if you wish, but hold your own government responsible for hollowing America out like a husk.”)

The reader had done everything right. He’s a good, obedient American who has served Uncle Sam. And now I’m suggesting he reconsider; that he consider turning on Uncle Sam and its corporate-industrial-complex.

Major Rage • 14 hours ago

I’m disturbed by this article because at the end of it – I felt as though I was supposed to hate myself……as if I had betrayed my family and community. But, I don’t recall ever doing such evil things.

I’ve served my country, started and run a legitimate and profitable business, paid taxes out the ying-yang, put my children through good schools and universities, been faithful to my wife, and generally stayed out of trouble.

Now, a foreign sourced plague has been introduced into our lives – threatening our existence and livelihoods and I’M SUPPOSED TO FEEL GUILTY! Guilty……for what? For not stopping the rich from becoming richer? For not exposing the corrupt for conniving and cheating society? For not preventing mad scientists from monkeying with Mother Nature? For not standing at the jetway with a gun to prevent immigrants coming into my country?

Please tell me, Ilana Mercer, WTF am I guilty of?

The answer is that NO ONE OUTSIDE OF WUHAN OR BEIJING is guilty in this affair. Feelings of guilt are nearly identical to feelings of shame for being a helpless victim. On reflection – this writer strikes the absolute wrong chord by suggesting that we, ourselves, are to blame for this disaster. How can the victims be to blame? She suggests we did this horrible thing to ourselves. But, did we? NO. I’m outraged at the mere suggestion. No one is going to put the crown of thorns on my brow.

Ms. Mercer……take your guilt trip and shove it!

Not a word did the article say about ordinary Americans betraying their own. To that end, “Who Invited The World To Infect America?” was even divided into clear thematic headings that made that clear:

Trade Goods, Not Places (allusion to top-down population replacement)
Economic Elephantiasis (the endless expansionism of the American multinational)
No Multiculturalists in China (self-evident: Chinese are a homogeneous, chauvinistic people)
Where Accountability Goes to Die (Uncle Sam’s “investigation” of COVID)

But I fully understand “Major Rage’s” rage. He wanted the warm smell of the herd—he wanted to hear amplified (as from most other pundits) that it was China v. America: “USA, USA, USA!”

Instead he was challenged thus:

If the United States must rely on the Chinese government to keep its citizens safe, then what kind of a Micky Mouse country is it?
If the American people can be convinced by their government to saddle a foreign power with the responsibility for their existential welfare—what kind of people are we?
China didn’t force the traitors of the American economy to shift crucial production lines to its country and strand Americans without surgical and N-95 masks and medication; homegrown turncoats made that decision, all by their lonesome.

Less do I understand Dan @ Twitter @deltajulietx
Apr 30
Replying to @IlanaMercer

Ilana, are you losing your way? What price liberty? 61,349? 250,000? 1 million? Etc? What was it that Benjamin Franklin said about exchanging liberty for (imagined) safety? I would reflect long and hard before sacrificing liberty to any government for any reason. Full stop!

Dan was reacting to this:

On March 31, the number of Americans dead from the Chinese coronavirus stood at 3,900! A mere month on, at the time of writing, and 63,801 Americans have perished.

American deaths by COVID-19 account for a quarter of the world’s, including those in the undeveloped world. To ignore this Third-World-like specter is to dismiss the dead and the dying. It’s tantamount to cancel culture.

Dan, like many, conflates the honoring of the dead, the seriousness of the disease and the magnitude of COVID devastation with betraying liberty. In Dan’s cohort, unless you put on a tinfoil hat about COVID science–you are considered a liberty hater. Crap. Unless you dismiss the dead, you are betraying the Great Leader.

Since I wrote the lede to my essay, the number of Americans dead by COVID has reached 68,602. 4801 souls dead in three days. Rest in peace.

* Photo via iStock. Thanks for fair use.

Former National-Security Adviser John Bolton Closed Pandemic Preparedness Office

COVID-19, Donald Trump, Government, The State

Libertarians can debate as to whether closing the U.S. government’s pandemic preparedness office was for the better or the worse, but the fact remains that,

In 2018 John Bolton, the national-security adviser, “streamlined” the National Security Council and, in the process, closed its pandemic preparedness office. The following year, the administration decided to no longer embed an epidemiologist from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with China’s CDC.