It’s lesser form, “I’m just doing my job,” brings to mind the incompetent half-ass; the man at the printing store who delivers $500 worth of stationary to you, with an obvious typo in the title – a typo you missed as you wrote the order in haste – which he didn’t think worthy of a telephone call to verify.*

For any Man of Red Blood, no explanation of the Nuremburg Defense is necessary: Right is Right, and Wrong is Wrong.  The very pathways of our souls are ordered along these lines.  Debates, perhaps, when the situation is particularly nuanced – but there exists a common sense as to what Justice means, as well as an acknowledgement that it is a social construct, existing objectively, outside of us; that it is not something subjective, ammenable to our whims and fancy.  There’s no need to write down what everybody knows.

But because we are Men, we have codified it explicitly.  The Canadian Forces Code of Conduct says:

…every member of the CF [Canadian Forces] has an obligation to disobey a manifestly unlawful order regardless of rank or position.

Emphasis mine.

In other words, if your CO commands you to execute a disabled enemy soldier, it is your duty to turn around and train your rifle on him.

Yet another document emphasizes just how serious Ethics are to a True Military Man:

QTC: You are an ambulance driver. Your military ambulance is clearly marked with the Red Cross. You are about to return to the front to pick up more wounded. A senior NCO approaches you and orders you to open up the ambulance so that he can load ammunition into it. You tell him that such action is illegal. The act of transporting the ammunition in the ambulance is illegal under the Law of Armed Conflict. True or false?

A: True. The use of a vehicle marked with a Red Cross for a military purpose is perfidy. Therefore, it is illegal to transport ammunition in an ambulance.

Now, I can’t say I’m a fan of the Law of Armed Conflict – it reeks of Univesalism, and the rampant Leftism of the UN.  There’s a callow vegetarianism to the whole thing, with an authorship coming out of the well-fed classes.  It lacks an understanding of aggression, violence, or the implications of total war, and yet…

And yet the soul of the document is bold statement, shouted out at the great unwashed masses of the world: “We are Civilized Men; we are Men of our Word.  We shall grant quarter to a defeated enemy, and respect the courage with which he fought.  We disdain the use of torture, indignity, and the savagery of chemical/biological weapons.  Violence is instrumental – not a principle.  We reject your Big Man State.  We shall fight you, and grind you into the earth… but we shall fight with Honour.”

This has been a principle I’ve lived my life by, in spite of Doctor Milgram; I always figured that the 65% who failed at morality were the cattle living in the suburbs, the doughy soy-bean people, the group which cops and criminals alike refer to as ‘citizens’ (not to be mistaken for Heinlein’s gun toting, meat eating, spaceship building, family raising Citizen).  I understood the world to be a place where the majority of Armed Men carried the Authority of the Karateka in their heart.

At least, that’s what I believed until a year ago; as I made my way through the distended bowels of that gluttinous beast known as the ‘Justice System’ I saw first hand the divergence of values between the militar,y and the government as a whole.

“Listen-” said the Probation Officer, after I pointed out, not just the cruelties and indignities, but the outright material harm she was subjecting an Innocent Man to; “I’m just doing my job.  We’ve all got a job to do.  I could have you put back in prison, right now, to await trial.  Is that what you want?”

Reading this article on The Spearhead got me thinking, again, on all of this; on just how Low and Contemptuous is the character of the modern Cop, Prison Guard, Prosecutor, Probation Officer, and Bureuacrat.

Events such as this – all too common nowadays – bring up discussions about the “militirization of the police force” – and in one sense, that discussion is bang on.  SWAT Teams have become paramilitary death squads, using weapons and tactics similar to what you’d find in Afghanistan.**  But there’s one important difference.

Before a Civilized Army attacks you, they declare war.  They are clear about their intentions; they are clear about their behaviour; they are clear about what led to the conflict.  And when they lock you in a POW camp, make no mistake – you are still resisting. You may have acquiesced for the time being, but you are still their enemy.  They know this; you know this.  And yet, chances are, you will be better treated than any two-bit crook locked up by the government which claims to represent him.

The acutal military at least has the civility to Declare War before grinding you under the heel of their boot; our Modern Police State bellows “We are your Friend!” whilst tasering you for no reason at all.

The concept of Right and Wrong as Abstract Ideals has flown out the window long ago; we’re back to the scoiety of the Big Man.  The legal system has grown capricious, schizophrenic; Right has become a question of Might – be it from the barrel of the gun, or from back-room politics.  Might makes Right, and Lies rule the day.  You show me a corrupt cop getting fired, and I’ll show you a bigger, stronger, better connected Media Conglomerate who took issue because the Innocent Victim had a sympathetic nature – a Media Conglomerate who turned a blind eye to the past hundred victims; members of the Unfavoured Class who wound up “bleeding from the forehead” as the cops like to say.

The book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (review) is a compendium of Legal Insanity.  Its eponomy based on the fact that – yes – thanks to excess legalislating, we all commit three indictable offenses per day, but it gets worse: most of these crimes lack the element of mens rea.  In other words, you don’t have to have evil intent, and your ignorance is no excuse (a premise which only makes sense when the laws are sensible).  Just piss off the wrong cop and you will find out, first-hand, what a Horror prison is to the Free Man.

So if I could offer one piece of advice to any of you Good Folk out there, it would be this: never leave your house without some cash in hand, your phone in your pocket, and a fresh pack of cigarettes.

You never know who’s going to be taken next.

* The inverse of the lesser form is LFCA TC Meaford motto: “Never pass a fault.” If you see something that’s all fucked up – you stop and fix it.

** I lie, there are two important differences: the second being that SWAT Teams are utterly incapable of dealing with a trained, alert, and determined Man of Violence.  Their tactics – the cowards! – assume docility in the target.  Anything more dangerous than a gangbanger with his blat-blat is utterly beyond them.

By their standards, dear reader – by virtue of the unhealthy society in which we live – we are, both of us, Quite Mad.

But madness goes in all dircetions; just because The Teacher is wrong doesn’t mean that Any Answer is right.  So when I find that I’ve struck a chord – that others find my thoughts to be accurate and timely – it is comforting.  It increases the probability that I am Mad in precisely the Right Way.

In fact, thanks to some excellent comments, I feel the need to follow up.  Specifically, regarding one implicit premise from last time: why do I assume that education and career are things that ought to be primarily male?

We could start at the beginning – but that’s been done before.  Always more fun to go In through the Out Door, I always say.  So, let us ask: what is the point of all this chattering?

Beauty, art, friendship, accomplishment, family, a home, love! Are these not the things that matter in life?  Forget for one moment about money – elsewise you turn into one of those damned fools who buys brand-new leather sofas every two years.  Forget about being cool, about being empowered, fame, fortune, and all those other windmills.

Building a home, raising a family, and having honest friends is what it’s all about.

So – say it with me now!  Females in the Workforce: what’s in it for Us?

Fifty years ago, women weren’t allowed to work.

Horseshit.  Forget about history’s Madame Curies for a moment – I don’t need them.  Just think of your grandmothers.  Fifty years back, women used to tend to the home, raise the children, and take part in the community; if their husband was an entrepreneur (as most were, at the time) they had His Back.  Women sacrificed all of this to work in munitions plants during the war, they have been candy stripers and they have been nurses.  They made their husband lunches before he headed off to the factory.  They were the mortar which held the bricks of society together.

But women’s work wasn’t paid.

So what?  Seriously, so-fucking-what?  Did everything your grandmother did somehow ‘lack value’ because there wasn’t a piece of currency attached to it?  Nowadays the work hasn’t changed – it’s still primarily women in the social work/childcare/food service industries – only now, instead of having a loving wife taking care of Her Own Family, we have outsourced all of this labour to soulless bureaucracies.

I’ll bet that old lady at Tim Hortons is just ecstatic to make my bagel for me.

Work is empowering.

Are you kidding me?  Work sucks.  I hate having a job.  It’s a Dog’s Life.  Maybe if you’re some hack like Margaret Wente, earning an inflated income for low-quality work thanks to a ~125 IQ and feminist politics, work can feel pretty empowering – but what about Sheila who works at Bick’s pickle factory?

Let’s recall Roissy for a second here:

Female economic equality = male dating inequality; male dating equality = female economic inequality.

When Steve works at the pickle factory, he might hate his job, but it allows him to find a wife and a family.  Chicks dig guys with money.  When Sheila works at the pickling factory, it actively prevents her from finding a husband.

Let me explain.

When it comes to sex and evolution, men have two strategies: the Alpha strategy of multiple children, with low investment, versus the Beta strategy of fewer children, with higher investment.  Women, on the other hand, have a singular, two-part strategy.

Step 1: Achieve financial investment.

Step 2: If possible, have Alpha males sire children (thus producing sexy sons).

By working at the pickle factory, Sheila has inadvertantly achieved Step 1.  Because of this, she will not find Steve attractive; he cannot ’show off’ his wealth, because she earns as much as he.  Fifty years ago, she would have admired his Toyota Corrola (what with her not having a job); today, she drives the same, and is unimpressed.  As a consequence, Sheila only feels True Tingles for men who are either out of her league (higher class, richer) or Badboy Alphas (such as yours truly).

The best Steve can hope for is a 6-month-to-6-year hypergamous fling.

But wait – so far we’re only looking at how Sheila is miscallibrating her own genitalia.  What’s she doing to Steve’s?

Well, as a member of the Half Formed Chromosome group, Steve has three objectives in finding a mate. First, and most importantly, she must be fertile (young, and without disfigurement).  Secondly, she must be of good stock (intelligent, personable).  Thirdly, if he is to invest in her, she should be chaste (no bastard spawn for him).

So right off the bat, Sheila (who I’ve now decided has spent five years at University instead of the pickle factory – it’s my example, goddamnit!) – has blown away his most important objective: she is 30, getting older by the minute, with a quarter the eggs she once had.  As for the second point – this baseline for their compatibility no longer applies.  And finally, the third point – if he can’t offer her resources, in exchange for long term commitment, then what’s he supposed to offer her?  Love?  Only men feel that for the long term; for women it quickly sours into contempt.

Ergo, thanks to her working at the Post-Secondary Pickle Plant, this match made in Mediocre Heaven is now dead in the water.  Goodbye marriage, I knew thee well…

***

So who says marriage is the only option?  I sure as hell don’t.  But maybe I’ll save that for next time…

For the moment let’s consider another social order: that exemplified by lions.  How about if us dudes just chilled out 24/7, while we sent the bitches off to the coal mine to work?

Have you ever worked in an office full of women?

This, I think, is the final nail in the coffin when it comes to females in the workplace.

Premise: Men and women have different intellectual, physical, and emotional makeups.

This is so blindingly obvious that few will refute it, when boldly stated like this, and yet few will factor it in to their calculations.  Women are far better at Empathizing (an incredibly complex brain module which requires accurate simulation of The Other).  The price of empathy is excess emotion; the same circuits which allow it, tie-in directly to their hearts.  This improves their ability to nurture and network, while imparing their sense of justice and aggression (a fundamental attribute of teamwork).

Men are better abstract thinkers; this is what makes justice, competition, and technology come as second nature to them.  Time and time again I have seen men use violence in a reasonable, judicious manner; even street thugs engage in violence ‘reasonably’, according to their goals.  If you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to see a violent woman, than you know how nihilistic and extremist it is.  A violent woman knows no limits – she will accept any level of self-injury for the sake of harming you.

And these are just our emotional differences; the differences in our physical and intellectual makeups are just as profound, but even if they weren’t, it still wouldn’t matter.  Our innate drives – the lifestyles we choose – are different enough.  A lower-skilled, average male worker will be willing to work 45 hours a week, grunting away without complaining, accepting his status in a competetive environment.  When a man starts working he just wants to get the job done.  A higher-skilled female in the same job will be more concerened with the pecking order, take offense at slights, and will be more likely to take time off for friends and family.  Women are intrinsically concerened about their status – they want attention.

In other words, a half-competent dude makes a better employee than a competent woman.

So, in conclusion:

1. Women – as a whole (demographics, not individuals) – are not particularly good at working in productive industries; they complement men, they do not replace them.

2. Women damage their value as wives and mothers when they have a full-time job

3. Working sucks sweaty goat balls, but men (and only men) achieve a net benefit from it.

4. “Women’s work” is neither devalued nor degrading – except according to Feminists.

5. Women are still doing “women’s work” only now with a paycheque, and poisonous bureaucracies governing it.

6. This is an idiotic way to run our society.

Good lord, fifteen-hundred words – and I’ve only laid the ground work for where I’m heading.

“Aurini is a misogynist who’s afraid of strong women,” in 5… 4… 3… 2…

And I ain’t down with religion – particularly not Dawkin’s.

The problems with ideology is tri-fold.  First is the sheer complexity of the thing; Nietzsche (for instance) only penned a few tomes, the sort which you could get through in a long weekend, if you wanted – but that’s just the start of things.  Philosophy (and this includes Natural Philosophy) demands exploration and interpretation, so by the time a century goes past there’s been so much critique of the matter, and so much evidence brought in through the new heuristic, that you could devote your entire adult life to studying any of the philosophies mentioned above that you become Impotent in the process (people who do this are known as PhDs, and they have little influence on the world beyond misinforming University students).

No one can know everything about anything; specialization is the name of the game.

The second problem arises from the over-abundance of information, and the effect of steeping yourself in any Ideology – Objectivism is particularly bad for this.  If you study the ideology professionally, you don’t have time to study its critiques – not fully, anyway.  Thus you become convinced you have arrived at the End Of History, and all knowledge fits into your paradigm.  This conviction will lead a man to massage data which disagrees with his Great Idea, and he will no longer be able to see the forest for the trees.

Incidentally, this is partly the cause of Intellectual Fashions going in and out of style; whatever Approach the majority start studying in any given year, ends up becoming the New Truth for the following generation (that is to say, that Random Genetic Drift could accomplish this all on its own, even without Leftward forces at play in our Institutions).

The third problem with Ideology is how quickly the terms get perverted.  I don’t simply mean the Anarchists over on Reddit who believe in redistributing wealth; for a sublter example look at the word ‘Capitalist’.  When I or the Captain uses the word, we’re talking about the sort of people who put their Lives, Fortunes, and Sacred Honour on the line to build a new Factory; when the critics use the term they’re talking about the embedded money interests who grow rich, no matter how badly they fail.  Privileging one definition over the other is problematic.

You see, what we’ve got is a deformed conjoined twin; seperating the two is going to take one hell of a sharp scalpel, and even then, it might not be worth the time.

So let’s forget about Ideology for a moment; better to admit if you don’t know something then try and force everything into a paradigm you read in a pamplet.  Protectionism for instance – why does the practice seem to diverge so much from the theory?

Thanks to the Wisdom of Old Age, I can just put that one on the back burner for a while, along with the rest of the stuff I don’t know The Answer to.

In the meantime, let’s consider the grounding for all these Schools; which ideas, which ground-level heuristics do all of us Alt Right Folk subscribe to?  After all, it’s not just the conclusions of the Left that we disagree with – if that were the case we could run the numbers, and figure out who was right.  No, it’s deeper than that, our foundational principles differ from them, putting us in diametrical opposition.

I’ve been thinking on it over the past few weeks, and I think they can neatly be summed up in three major points: Mortality, Biology, and Transcendence.

Mortality

To put it simply, the Universe is a Hostile Place.  At the end of the day, if we don’t eat, we die.  Good intentions don’t matter – trying your best doesn’t matter – results are what matter.

Losers always whine about their best.  Winners

go home and fuck the prom queen.

This principle applies to everything – if your car won’t work, it’s because you didn’t fix it right.  If your business fails, it’s because you didn’t have a competetive product.  If the cops take you out, you should have gone in with a better battle plan.  On the individual level luck can come into the mix, sure – but over time luck cancels out.

Contrast this with the Leftist perspective – with them it’s always about the End State.  They imagine their perfect Utopia (results may vary) and try and force the economy into this mould; no business should fail, no person should be poor, no hiccups are allowed in the stock market.  Nice world, if you can get it, but what winds up happening is that they take a few components off the Brand New BMW, to repair the junker that just got in an accident; now you have a shitty BMW, and a junker that still doesn’t run.

We are mortals; this sucks, granted, but it is the Truth.  Pretending we can all be Rich and Famous will just guarantee that we all wind up Broken Dream-ed and Poor.

And speaking of how the Left shoves their heads in the sand…

Biology

The evidence is in; genes matter.  IQ is 0.7 heritable.  Olympic Black Runners vs White Swimmers is not an issue of Racism.  Men and Women have different talents and abilities.

But you know what?  We don’t even need to go there – different Nuture environments and Game Theory will suit our purposes – calling it Biology just reinforces how deeply rooted it is.

Individuals are all different; groups – in that they’re quantifiable at all – are all different.  Different people want different things in life, and they’re going to have disparate results, by any metric.  So will groups.  Furthermore, as individuals (this is where the game theory comes in) they’re going to be ’self-interested’ within the range of Human self-interest – being charitable, for example, is something that most humans are interested in.

While there is certainly some variability built into the system (are Asians really better at Math, or do they just have better study habits – and are those habits environmental or genetic?), but for practical purposes they may as well be fixed.  Barring a friendly singularity, we aren’t going to isolate the 300-odd variables that come into play.

That won’t stop the Leftists from trying, however.

Just as they try and Force the economy into their New World Order, so do they try and force the individual into becoming their New Communist Man – and they’re failing just as bad as the Ruskies did.  50 years of propaganda, and what do we have to show for it?  An atomized society with voting blocks based upon race, creed, and gender.

Ironically enough, if you treat people as individuals they tend to cohese into a uniform hole; when you force them into a mold, they break, and atomize.

It’s not fair that some people are smarter, handsomer, and more charismatic than others, but a Reactionary has the Moral Fortitude to acknowledge such a bracing truth.

Transcendence

This is such a fundamental human concept it’s hard to even point it out – it’s like becoming aware of the fact that you blink – and the level of Sociopathy necessary to ignore it is shocking to a Man in possession of a Soul.

Maybe I’ll just let this ‘pacifist’ explain it for you:

John Lennon – Imagine

My Sweet Satan, how I hate that song.  A few choice quotes:

Nothing to kill or die for… No need for greed or hunger… Imagine all the people/Living for today

Let me posit something: if there is nothing you’d be willing to kill for, no cause you’d be willing to die for, then you are little more than a callow slave, desperately in lust with a pathetic existence.  A Human -goddamned- Being is nothing if they don’t live for something bigger than themselves, whether it be their Family, the Truth, their Art, or simply the principle of 2+2=4 – is it any wonder, then, that one can easily find Leftist Professors with Tenure by the Dozens decrying all of those concepts?

Each and every one of them, in love with destruction, full of contempt for all creation.

So thus the third and final principle of a Reactionary: that He would sooner die a Free Man, than live as a slave.

I might not have all the answers, but at least I know where to start.  Keep your powder dry, folks.

The government’s main concern, of course, is the baby boomer retirement – and there are plenty of damned problems with the children of the Greatest Generation; there’s a lack of skilled workers to replace them (thanks to tenure), the upcoming generation is pathologically obsessed with Bread and Circuses rather than civic virtue, and then, of course, there’s the elephant in the room:

It may well be that people are all inidviduals, but a student of history knows that demographics are destiny.

How bad is it getting?  Let’s talk numbers; the global rate is about 20 births per 1000 people – this is considered medium-low.  South Africa’s at 19; China’s at 12; Chile’s at 15, Mexico’s at 19, and Iraq (thanks to the war) has dropped from 35 to 29.  As for Canada?  Hey, let’s go all out and post a chart!

That’s right… we’re creating Emos, Punks & Pussies at a rate lower than Little Emperors.

You know, maybe it’s my steady diet of Little Red Pills, but I eventually had to shut the radio off.  The Official Ideologues (decent folks in their own right, I’m sure) addressed two possible solutions to the problem: immigration-replacement, and financial incentives, such as the Baby Bonus.

[Goddamn, a little education really is a dangerous thing, ain't it?  Somebody learns a tiny bit of Econ 101, and suddenly the March of History boils down to the fact that 'People respond to incentives, LOL!' I prefer to take a more nuanced approach]

So, let’s dive into this, and see if I can get someone to accuse me of being rassist!

First, the immigration solution – remembering of course that Demographics are Destiny.

As individuals, I love immigrants.  Here in Soviet Canuckistan we have Nazi-esque immigration standards (unlike you poor bastards down in Washington-Corp), and the ones who manage to make it through are almost entirely crème de la crème.  They’re hard working, smart, if they’re Black African they almost never pull the race card, and they get shit done – unlike the many, many entitled, lazy, not-quite-fat Canadians that I’ve met.

To put it in perspective I only Hate about 30% of the immigrants I’ve met; with natural-borns that number is closer to 70.

Economics is not a zero sum game.  While the argument (in the United States) that the exportation of low-wage jobs over-seas, combined with the importation of cheap Mexican labour, is harming the black underclass does have merit to it; however, this is not a comparable case.  A hard-working and skilled immigrant, who displaces a native-born, doesn’t ’steal his job’ he expands the economy!  We’re expanding our Human Resources as a Country, and until the water runs out, that ain’t a bad thing (though it may result in a brain-drain in their native land).  In this part of the world, the ‘diverse’ companies tend to be the better ones to work for.

But -

[When discussing race, if the person says 'but' you can then diregard everything they just said, and accuse them of racism for what comes after.]

But – economics ain’t the whole picture.

For any of you Vancouverites – how does if feel living there if you don’t speak Mandarin?

Some might say that there’s Far Too Much corruption in Chinese-run Vancouver.  Possibly.  I think this is too harsh of a term, however.  Call me culturally ambivalent, but so much of our day-to-day behaviour – interacting with strangers, businesses, and government – is based upon the cultural context we pick up with our mother’s milk.  Why do we tip 15% at restaurants, but not at fast food?  I’ve got no idea – but it’s just how we do things.  There are hundreds of these subconscious protocols, they lube the gears of social interaction, and provide the social unification that lets us all get along.  Start to throw that away, and things go south, fast.

So while the Chinese may be ‘corrupt’ by Canadian standards, I don’t view that as a judgement on their population.  In China, with their own set of mores and traditions, the behaviours make sense, they’re more-or-less fair (as fair as having to pay a 15% tip is, anyway); and in cities without this huge concentration, the Chinese get along fine with everybody else.

When immigrants arrive in small numbers they acclimatize; when they arrive in large numbers they balkanize.  Look at the French – it took us 400 years to pacify them, and even now the Bloc is at danger of re-establishing!  Go ask somebody of low- to middle-income, who’s from a major city, what their experiences are with different immigrant groups.  They’ll complain about the banding together of Filipinos, Muslims, or whomever else is beginning to settle in large numbers; the complaints, largely true, are called racist.

This immigration problem is by no means restricted by differing skin colours; when the Italians, Polish, Ukranians, and the rest from South-Eastern Europe came across, they self segregated; there’s still some history of this in the Eastern half of the country (Wops and Porkchops in Hamilton love to pretend to hate eachother).  But back then, before multi-culturalism, the rate of immigration was restricted – we’re only a few generations in, and most whites can’t tell one another apart (incidentally, East Indians in the GTA seem to be following this pattern closely – your typical Young Brown Male is apt to complain about his parent’s traditional mannerisms, and listen to the same godawful music as everyone else).

Immigration can work, cultural osmosis can improve a culture (Britain and Curry, for instance), but only when it’s done gradually, only when the brakes are put on to prevent balkanization.

The NDP contains members who are advocates of allowing Sharia Law in some parts of Canada.  Need I say more?

Immigration at the levels needed to rebuild our country will destroy it, turning it into something it never wanted to be, as well as engendering the strife and sporadic violence which occurs whenever insular communities bump up against eachother.  Just because we can get along, doesn’t mean we always will.

And that’s not even considering the problem that immigration is supposed to solve – when the immigrants control 51% of the votes, what do you think is going to happen to that Old Age Welfare being provided to people they don’t know, don’t empathize with, and frequently don’t like?

So – problem Number One: Immigrants as Solution – that don’t carry water, no matter how awesome my buddy Sange is.

What about financial incentives?

Oh, ho, ho – we’ll get to that next time!

Anyone else wanting a “Pro Choice, Legalization, Gay Marriage, Scientific, Net Neutrality, Atheist” politician?

Hah! I’ll bet you know twenty of these guys. Which isn’t to say that I disagree with him – far from it. I just think he’s wrong.

However, this does provide the perfect opportunity to dispense a few Red Pills (more like Nerd candies, than Horse Pills), without having to summon up the Spectre of Feminism (I’ve grown temporarily bored with the whole topic, and besides, it’ll all be done with by end of decade).  So let’s break his hopes down, one by one, until nothing but sand remains.

Abortion

Now before I get started on this, could I address my fellow bloggers about this?  You’re listening?  Okay, here’s my request – please stop talking about the morality of abortion! You don’t have anything new to say.  I don’t have anything new to say.  Wiser heads than ours have Debated this topic, and if I’m curious I’ll find the arguments.  Quite frankly, 95% of our opinion is due to squick factor, not reason, and if I visit you to read about economics I don’t want to read about dead babies all of a sudden.

The implications of abortion – discuss those, certainly!  But please, please, please – stay away from the morality of it.  Either I already agree with you or I just don’t care.  It’s in Poor Taste.

*Ahem*

I find it amusing that our Idealistic Indoctrinate brings this up as one of the Six Points.  Correct me if I’m wrong… but has there been a Pro Choice candidate in the past thirty years?  That ship has sailed, and if there’s one thing the history of Conservatism ought to have taught us, it’s that things don’t get less Liberal over time.  Oh, some of ‘em’ll talk about it, sure – when the Religious Right gets tired of the Reps and switches to the Dems, they’ll talk about it too – but noone’s going to do anything about it.

Cancel government funding to Planned Parenthood?  Maybe.  But they’ll make it up elsewhere, and Roe vs Wade will never be overturned.

So why does he bring it up?

Look!  There’s a culture war!  Doesn’t matter if we’re trouncing them, they’re so EVIL that they want to take away a woman’s right to choose!  Pick up your arms, brothers!

Heh, nothing like sincere hatred.

Legalization

Take it on faith, brothers – this one isn’t going to happen.

The past three Presidents (at least) have been for using - but legalization is the furthest thing from their mind.  Decriminalization for the Green One, maybe, but never legalization.

Quite simply – drug laws turn the majority of us into Criminal Scum, and they couldn’t be happier with that.  Why do you think MADD is so eager to effectively criminalize alcohol, even when it increases Drunk Driving Deaths?  Because it ain’t about fairness, or justice, or freedom, or utlitarianism – it’s about control.

Stupid People get caught using drugs – and prison guards need jobs.  The only hope for legalization, is if they realize what a great opiate weed is for the unemployed and revolutionary.

Gay Marriage

Go ahead and get married; marry your dog for all I fucking care.  My question for the Simple Scholar is – why do you care?

Spousal insurance rights?  Deathbed decisions?  Okay, I’ll grant you those – though I question why it’s so important that the Government get involved here – but weren’t the Conservatives (those evil, fag hating Conservatives) proposing something called Civil Union?  What’s the difference, exactly?  Why do you care so much about it? Gays have so many rights that they have a parade each year.  They can call it a Marriage, the bureaucrats can call it a Union.  Potato Po-tah-to.

The cons are upset because they think marriage ought to perform the socially function of spreading the pussy around, so that all the Betas get laid, and work hard at their mind-numbing job.  You?  You’re equating this to Human Rights, or something…

Welcome to the 21st century: weird sex is Officially Licensed, drunk sex is an Assault.

Scientific

Funny thing, that Science – officially it’s a method, a process, a routine you apply when you want to figure out why your car won’t start.  But our Enlightened Aristocrat seems to think it’s a Book of Knowledge.

On the one hand, you have Quantum Mechanics, Genetics, Evolution, and even Galileo’s Laws of Motion (created despite government) – on the other, you have Psychology and Global Warming (the ones who’re funded by government).  Hmm – how about we start studying genetics and pre-labelling people for criminality, just so we have a trifecta?

Imagine the beauty of a government which chose to leave science alone all together.  Separation of Church and State didn’t go far enough, if you ask me.

Net Neutrality

So – instead of having greedy Telcos selling their services to us as if it were a cellphone (and throttling free riders like Netflix), you’d rather have a joint task force from the CIA, FBI, and FCC monitoring things?  Here in Canada, it’d be CSIS and the CRTC – and those bastards banned Ren and Stimpy, for Christ’s sake!

Atheist

My friend, they’re all Atheists – the sort who attend church.  I’m afraid they’re much closer to Pol Pot in their views, however, than they are to this fine bunch of Rationalists.

Conclusion

Hmm… I’m smelling a troll.  After considering your Six Points, I suspect you were describing Barack Obama.

But then, Doublethink really is the perfect troll, isn’t it?  Perhaps you’re just a Naive Neophyte after all.  One for the History Books indeed.

At first I kept myself amused by playing with any of the equipment I could get my hands on, and then by casing the security systems and examining the door locks, but the security guards – complete with tazers, handcuffs, and multitools (they were far better equipped than the old men you see guarding our military bases; the closest thing they have to a weapon is a radar gun) were quick to notice a Free Man standing in their midst, and ordered me to head across the street to the bar, where my drinks were served by a young Asian girl in a bikini.

The whole experience was jarring, particularly in a place called an ‘Emergency Room’. Several other customers – I mean, members of the proletariat – decided they’d waited long enough and left, one whose progressive alcoholism had resulted in a seizure, and another who was complaining about a swollen appendix – presumably of the opinion that either A) once their case worsened the ambulance would give them prompt attention, or B) dying at home in the loving glow of their televisions would be preferable to waiting in this stale, halogen-lit environment with nothing for entertainment but a single cathode ray tube playing a CBC report about how the Premier of one of our East Coast Provinces made it a habit to visit New York for his medical needs.

I chatted with one of the nurses, and she told me that they’d recently converted one of the storage closets into a patient room. They now stack their equipment along the walls.

But ranting about make-do solutions like that, the ratty-looking desks and tables, the Windows 95 Operating Systems, and the general 3^rd World vibe to the place misses the point. Having brand new mahogany desks and MacBook Pros (that’s what House uses to read his spreadsheets, isn’t it?) aren’t going to make a lick of difference with the treatment you get. The reason I mention them however is because of the mindset they imply – Fuck You if you have a problem with it, it’s not like you have anywhere else to go. Veterinarians may be expensive, but at least they know which side of their bread is buttered; that’s why you get things like comfortable seats, decent magazines, and prompt service when your ferret catches the flu.

Long story short, my friend got better despite the medical service he received. I spent a week helping him out, jumping through pointless bureaucratic hoops, and raging impotently at his Kafka-esque system which retains the right to judge me Psychologically Unsound without any sort of Due Process.

I hear something similar’s been happening in the US. I’ll get to that next time.

I really like this image.  It neatly sums up my feelings about the current political climate with a minimalist, visceral approach.  But at the same time there’s an implicit premise here which can be used to justify the current regime.  It’s best summed up by one Ed Giorgio:

“We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.’”

[Sources indicate that after the interview Giorgio proceeded to savagely rape a howler monkey before defecating on the Bill of Rights.]

With monsters like this in government, we’re lucky to have clear thinkers like security expert Bruce Schneier out there spreading the gospel.  As he has frequently said:

Security and privacy are not opposite ends of a seesaw; you don’t have to accept less of one to get more of the other… Too many wrongly characterize the debate as “security versus privacy.” The real choice is liberty versus control… If privacy and security really were a zero-sum game, we would have seen mass immigration into the former East Germany and modern-day China. While it’s true that police states like those have less street crime, no one argues that their citizens are fundamentally more secure.

Most people won’t just accept a radical statement like that.  After all, the government’s told us that it’s a dichotomous choice, and why would they lie to us?  So with that in mind I’ve designed a little thought experiment to demonstrate why liberty is positively correlated with security, it’s not the inverse.

I seem to remember reading a while back about how Great Britain was going to mandate GPS trackers in your car so that the police could monitor you, and send out automated tickets any time you exceeded the speed limit (I believe there was even talk of installing throttle-governors connected to the GPS).  I can’t seem to find anything confirming that, but with the way things are already going over in Oceania, it wouldn’t be out of place.

So for sake of argument let’s just posit some form of draconian speed-limit enforcement, rather than any specific mechanism.

The immediate effect of this would be fewer speeders; this will probably make the roads safer, and at the very least it won’t make them more dangerous.  So far so good.

But what about the secondary effects of all of this?  Right off the bat the number of violations is going to skyrocket.  A subset of the people fined will no longer be able to afford their increased insurance rates, and this in turn will lead to a greater portion of drivers without insurance…

And then you have the people who will figure out how to avoid being noticed; whether they do it by cutting the GPS out of their car, or by installing some sort of electronic box under the dashboard is irrelevent.  As Ian Malcolm once said, “Nature finds a way.” Now, of course this process of avoiding detection will be made illegal, so these drivers, just like the uninsured, will be Riding Dirty.

With the current system most people speed, but they almost always take responsibility when they get into an accident; even ignoring the moral motivations, it’s generally wiser to take a hit to your insurance premiums than risking a charge of “Fleeing the Scene of a Crime.” But if you’re riding dirty – if a simple fender bender can result in criminal charges – your moral principles are going to suffer some extraordinary pressures.

Thanks to these laws you’re neither safe, nor secure.

Now let’s consider things in the opposite direction.  Here in North America we’re used to being ambushed; speed traps, holiday blitzes, and artificially-low speed limits are the norm – you don’t often get patrol cars pulling you over, its the predations of the traffic cops you have to worry about.  Their measure of success is quantity, not quality of tickets issued.

So let’s say that, instead, the police looked at how safe driving conditions were throughout the city. “There have been a lot of speed-related accidents on Route 9,” or “I was driving along Highway 2, and it seemed to be a little to chaotic to me.” Then, instead of setting up secret ambushes, the cops openly announce where they’re going to ticket, and why.  Allow the drivers to understand what’s going on, and make them an active participant; an ally, not an enemy.  After all, aren’t we all invested in road safety?

When you take away freedoms, when your country goes from being Governed to being Ruled, you wind up alienating a segment of the population.  Censor Hate Speech and you drive it underground, turning its advocates into martyrs; ban drugs and the producers/distributors become criminals, who resort to violence instead of the courts; outlaw guns and only outlaws will have them.  By signing a bill into law, you turn ordinary moral, gainfully employed citizens into anti-state rebels.

Minimum wage proponents love to hold up examples of low-income people, now able to afford X, as proof that their law worked; economists are hard pressed to list all the jobs that weren’t created because the owners couldn’t afford to pay so much for employees.  The Security/Liberty equation is similarly difficult, since the anti-Freedom advocates only look at the easily quantifiable side of the equation – the number of tickets and violations recorded.  But in this case the devil isn’t in the details – it’s in the statistics: “Look at how many drunk drivers our Checkstops have pulled over – what do you mean their net effect has been to increase drunk driving deaths?  Do you seriously expect me to believe that banning guns increases violent crime?”

Not to mention that I’ve only covered the immediate side effects of these laws – who knows what the cops’ll do with this power five years down the road?  You know that the old saying “Give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile”?  It goes double for government.