Nagging Begot The Nanny State On Steroids

Affirmative Action, Feminism, Free Speech, Gender, Labor, Welfare

At the not-so-new news that “more men in this country are opting out of the workforce and signing onto government entitlements,” Gerri Willis (whom I like) asks: “Where are all the good men?”

Let me attempt to reply.

For the sake of argument, let’s presume that all things are equal between men and women in our state-commanded labor force—also the faulty premise shared by those who comment on the lackluster performance of men in this economy. (“You Go Girl” gloat the pundits, left and right.)

Let us pretend along with the rest that women have not benefited from decades of fem affirmative action in government and big-business bureaucracies.

Notwithstanding legislation that privileges women, the wholesale feminization of American society comes at a price, especially to men.

Ours is a soft society. The women folk have molded men in their image. And what an awful image it is. Too many American men, like their women, don’t shut about their (invariably shallow) feelings, worship Oprah and watch chick flicks with equal zeal, deify and mollycoddle their solipsistic, badly behaved kids, become parasitical social activists (rather than mountaineers or entrepreneurs), cry on cue, and broadcast their (usually barren) inner-lives to the world.

For the purpose of a purchase I was making for him, I described my husband to a more traditional American woman. And she asked: “Where did you find this guy?” Although we were not discussing men qua men, I realized that what I had described was normal to me, but not to her.

“Oh,” I explained, “he isn’t North American. He’s an old-school WASP from South Africa.”

This type was raised (by like-minded parents) to keep a stiffer upper lip, dutifully assume his role as a man (in other words, get things done), and be both individualistic and self-sufficient to a fault. I joke that my husband doesn’t believe in the division of labor; he thinks he should do everyone else’s job. (A nerd’s joke, because to free marketeers like us, the division of labor is sacred.)

Men, however feminized, need moral instruction and manly role models. This a hierarchical, traditional society provides. The collapse of the work ethic among so many of America’s men is no doubt related to the progressive, matriarchal society rising.

American women didn’t like their WASPs (they’re not getting mine), so they molded the men into women, albeit with a preponderance of testosterone.

Nagging begot the Nanny State on Steroids.

Columnist Jack Kerwick Parses Paleolibertarianism

Classical Liberalism, Ilana Mercer, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy

Who is paleolibertarian? Yours truly argues political philosopher Jack Kerwick, in his New American column, “Ilana Mercer and the Paleolibertarian Ideal” :

“It is [first] the conviction … that a world in which men and women are free to order their lives in accordance with their own moral purposes, not those of the governments under which they live, is an ethical ideal worth aspiring toward.”

But that’s not all:

In addition, a paleolibertarian is someone who rejects “the contemporary Western temptation to indulge in abstractions,” and labors tirelessly “to remind us of something that this generation of liberty’s defenders are all too ready to forget: Liberty is as dependent upon historical and cultural contingencies as is any other artifact. And it is just as fragile.”

“The pursuit of the … paleolibertarian ideal,” concludes Kerwick, is the pursuit of “an ideal of liberty brought down from the clouds to the nit and the grit of the history and culture from which it emerged.”

The complete column, “Ilana Mercer and the Paleolibertarian Ideal,” is at The New American.

Jack also blogs at Belief.Net.

UPDATED: Conservatives And The Diversity Dross (NASCAR Drive for Diversity)

Affirmative Action, Conservatism, Founding Fathers, Government, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Paleolibertarianism, The West

The next news item is unremarkable. “The U.S. government,” reports Fox News, “paid a Chicago consultant hundreds of thousands of dollars to put on diversity training workshops that, according to one watchdog, included an exercise in which employees were told to chant ‘our forefathers were illegal immigrants.'”

What do you expect from “the U.S. government”? It’s a criminal gang out to erase every vestige of a history that might rekindle in a pliant people the quest for freedom. The government, and its excrescences, does these things reflexively rather than as a matter of collusion and conspiracy. Like a big amorphous amoeba—a simple, single-celled organism—government will instinctively act to preserve its own integrity.

The people to condemn in his story are the “Conservative group Judicial Watch.” While we are grateful to JW for uncovering the bestialities of bureaucrats—in the substance of their complaint, they are almost as complicit as government. They complains that,

“Instead of being diversity-oriented or tolerance-oriented, it’s more about adopting a mindset,” said Lisette Garcia, a senior investigator with the group.

Garcia of Judicial Watch is quite fine with the government conducting mind-control workshops on taxpayers dime, so long as these indoctrination sessions transmit true “diversity and tolerance,” as promised.

What kind of a conservatism is this? The watch dogs are worse than the dogs in power (my apologies to dogs). At least the people who dreamed up the “diversity intelligence advantage course” know what they are after. What do Garcia and her friends want?

A truly conservative watch dog would, first, object to the unconstitutional appropriation of taxpayer funds. Second, they would reject the diversity doxology. Americans should not relinquish their birthright for a mess of pottage.

Were Lisette Garcia of Judicial Watch a true conservative she’d take the opportunity to mention that “Thomas Jefferson never entertained the folly that he was of immigrant stock. He considered the English settlers of America courageous conquerors, much like his Saxon forebears, to whom he compared them. To Jefferson, early Americans were the contemporary carriers of the Anglo-Saxon project.”

The settlers spilt their own blood “in acquiring lands for their settlement,” he wrote with pride in A Summary View of the Rights of British America. “For themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have right to hold.” Thus they were “entitled to govern those lands and themselves.”

UPDATE (10/7): NASCAR DRIVE FOR DIVERSITY. Another “initiative” conservatives doubtless would endorse:

Drive for Diversity is the industry’s leading development program for minority and female drivers and crew members. The Drive for Diversity program currently supports drivers in two of NASCAR’s developmental series – the NASCAR K&N Pro Series and the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series. The Drive for Diversity Initiative also supports crew member candidates through a year-long pit crew training program. Crew members have gone on to compete in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and the NASCAR Nationwide Series.
The Drive for Diversity program has been successful in creating meaningful opportunities for minority and female competitors. The program helps to further diversify NASCAR’s participant and audience base. The program has seen continuous growth since its inception in 2004.

The only thing that should matter to the conservative-minded person is merit. But like progressives, conservatives buy into the construct upon which social tinkering is based, both in private and public settings (corporations love this stuff). That of built-in bias. Conservatives agree that patriarchal society is innately hostile to “minorities and females,” and that therefore, these special interests need a helping hand.

UPDATE II: Winning A Battle Of Wits With A Half-Wit (The Vicarious Pleasure Principle)

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Democrats, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Journalism, Liberty, Republicans, The State

The current column, now on WND, is “Winning A Battle Of Wits With A Half Wit.” An excerpt:

“It was hard not to feel sorry for President Barack Obama during what was the first of three presidential debates. The dejected demeanor and the perpetually lowered gaze conjured an unprepared student peppered by a pedantic teacher with questions he could not possibly answer.

The president’s pose spoke to the beating he was receiving at the hands of his opponent, Gov. Mitt Romney.

Obama campaigner Chris Matthews—a proxy for this president, who cloaks himself in the raiment of a newsman—demanded to know: Why was Obama staring down at his “notes” and scribbling? What was he waiting for?

To describe what Gov. Romney had done in the course of the 90-minute debate, Matthews, who possesses a nimble intelligence his candidate is without, reached for wild man Charlie Sheen’s zinger: ‘What was Romney doing? Winning!’

Moderator Jim Lehrer is an old-school newsman who has never in the course of a long and distinguished career revealed his own political bias. Now the pack men of the media were piling on the PBS anchor for not controlling the debate’s outcome, and for allowing a free to-and-fro between the men.

And since Mitt won hands down; the moderator must have been bad. Or so goes the loser’s lackluster logic. Never mind that reasoning backward is an error in logic. So how does post hoc ergo propter hoc work? Had Obama won the debate under the same emcee’s minimal intervention, Lehrer would have been lauded. …

… Also at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow provided the ultimate rationalization which her co-hosts on the network and elsewhere quickly embraced. ‘The presidency spoils your ability to be a good debater.’

‘In psychology and logic, rationalization (also known as making excuses) is an unconscious defense mechanism,’ writes Wikipedia. It is intended to shield the fragile ego from reality.

Like Maddow, presidential hagiographer Douglas Brinkley took cover from real life on Fox News’ ‘Cavuto.’ The yang to Lincoln idolator Doris Kearns Goodwin’s yin, Brinkley diminished Romney’s intellectual victory by applying that most stringent historical test to the governor’s performance: It was without a Reaganesque zinger. Obama, however, had not damaged his brand, claimed Brinkley. He was still a gifted ‘retail politician.’ (Read community organizer.) …

… Make no mistake; should he succeed in vanquishing Obama, come Nov. 6, Romney’s brand of “repeal-and-replace statism”—not to mention maniacal militarism and Sinophobia—will be no victory for liberty. …

Read the complete column, “Winning A Battle Of Wits With A Half Wit,” on WND.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

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UPDATED I: The Vicarious Pleasure Principle. Even if you dislike the philosophy of both men (which exists on the same illiberal continuum), there is some vicarious pleasure in watching the one who has caused you such unhappiness whipped good and proper.

UPDATE II: IN HIS excellent column about Romney’s creaming of Obama, Pat Buchanan also draws on the boxing and school teacher metaphors.

Pat calls Obama’s “performance one of the worst in debate history,” and Romney’s “the finest debate performance of any candidate of either party in the 52 years since Richard Nixon faced John F. Kennedy, with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan’s demolition of Jimmy Carter in 1980.”