A Pleasant Surprise...

...greeted me when I returned home from work today. I was probably the last to learn that a goodly portion of Republicans grew a spine over the weekend and voted to reject the $700B Dem-Bush Adopt-a-Pirate plan. Perhaps there is hope after all for those who are just learning to walk upright and use hand tools:





Of course, in the process the markets plunged today in the biggest one-day loss ever, wiping out a lot of the middle class's paper wealth. Better that I think than mortgaging our grandchildren's future so that the robbers fleecing our ship of state can keep their houses in the Hamptons. All the scare tactics propogated by the New York financial classes--you must support this bailout plan for me and my cutlass-wielding crew or YOU WILL ALL DIE!!!!!!!--have thus far been for naught. I agree with Vox, Wall Street's pain isn't necessarily felt by the whole country...most of the economy will keep churning along whether or not those paper-pushers show up to work.

I'm sortof enjoying watching the pirates writhe and twist. Here's hoping that the Republican Representatives keep the pair they just grew, 'cuz the pressure's gonna get applied to them big-time to fabricate golden parachutes for our version of the Barbary Pirate from money looted from the public trust.

Chavez: USA Needs Liberating From Corporatism

The Western Hemisphere's favorite little socialist is at it again. Only this time I find myself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with him, sorta:

LISBON, Sept 27 - Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday it was the capitalist system that had caused the financial crisis in the United States and the country should come up with a new constitution.

"It was capitalism that caused the ruin" in the United States, said Chavez, who is one of Washington's fiercest critics, calling the financial crunch "the worst financial crisis in history".

"Let the U.S. empire end and let a great nation and great republic rise from the ruin ... It's time to shout 'Liberty!' again in the United States," Chavez said, calling for a new government to be free of the "dictatorship of the elite" such as big banks and corporations.

What makes Chavez' statement so powerful is that it is half-right and half-wrong at the same time. It is half-wrong in that we do not have a capitalist system. Our markets are far from free, and it is daft to blame the present crisis on free marketeering when it was govenment meddling with market forces* in the first place that brought this whole crisis upon us. Yet many ignorantly parrot the untruth that we have free markets; it is this ignorance that gives Chavez' statement power.

Chavez' statement is half-right in that we do have a 'dictatorship of the elite' such as banks and corporations in this country. We ceased living in a Republic long ago, and have ignored Adam Smith's warning to be on guard against the influence of merchants who will advance their own interests at the expense of the People. As a result, we live in a corporatist/mercantilist pirate society, where companies, banks, and merchants draft our laws to loot and pillage while the commoner foots the bill.

* The gov't required lenders in the late 1990's (thanks for nothing Clinton administration) to lend against their will to subprime borrowers--this created the housing bubble that has recently burst

Baldwin On Divorce

Alec Baldwin has apparently penned a book about his contentious divorce from Basinger. Agree with his politics or not, the guy relates a reality that nearly all men face when going into the lion's den of family court, hopefully people will realize that even a man with significant resources is as helpless as a babe in the Star Chamber of our family court system:

Foolishly, I walked into a courtroom with the expectation that I would be given some equitable rights regarding my daughter. I ignored the less than subtle message that tells non-custodial parents, especially fathers, to abandon such hopes and face the realities of this system. Walk away, we're told. Accept your fate as your penance for the poor choices you've made. Write off this failed family as the price of learning difficult lessons. The longer you hold out for what should be the right of every parent, the more expensive and painful the process becomes.

Indeed, I went through very bitter litigation. But I did not have a contentious divorce proceeding because I sought alimony or other financial concessions from my ex-wife...I had a contentious divorce because I wanted a meaningful custody of my daughter. I refused to settle for becoming a "Disney Dad," one whose role is nothing more than outings to theme parks once or twice a month. Instead I wanted to share the joys and responsibilities of raising my daughter. I wanted to be a real father, and the system punished me for that.

My relationship with my daughter is a casualty of parental alienation, aided and abetted by the Los Angeles family law system.

One of the first myths that are exploded for soon-to-be divorced men is that the charnel houses metaphorically--and not without a touch of humor--called family courts will act in a fair and impartial manner toward you relative to your soon-to-be-ex-wife. The reality was far from that, as both Baldwin and I found, much to our collective surprise. One thinks that we live in a free country, where the legal equality of all is assured by the 14th Amendment; the reality is that family law has been deemed "social policy" where legal rights are subject to modification or dismissal based on the fiat of a government bureaucrat.

Like me, Baldwin quickly found that very few people were interested in keeping the marriage together. In fact, the opposite holds: most are there to see it disintegrate in as speedily and as orderly a fashion as possible. In a process vaguely reminiscent of nuclear fission, these 'professionals' and technicians swarm over the nucleus of an unstable family, poking it with more instability if necessary, hoping to catch a piece of the just-released binding energy that used to hold the nucleus of the family together. Judges, attorneys, GALs, social workers, cops, legislators, state government budgets--all soak up the energy given off by an exploding family. Their very livelihoods depend on it.

Also like me, Baldwin found first-hand that the non-custodial parents who insist on discharging their role as a father are dissuaded from doing so, and if they don't take the hint, are viciously rebuked and/or slammed with harsh court orders that impost draconian visitation terms that make being an adequate parent very difficult. Baldwin also quickly discovered that the aptly titled 'visitation'--as in you visit an inmate in jail--is de facto parental alienation under the best of circumstances. That's hard enough on the children. Lord help your kids if the mother adds insult to injury by engaging in some alienation of her own.

The bad part about all of this is that both Baldwin and I had sunny expectations about marriage that were proven to be sadly wrong when divorce visited our lives. Nearly half of marriages fail; while that statistic is no secret, many (most?) men don't think about that when contemplating marriage to some bonnie lass. We assume that love conquers all. We assume that principles of equal treatment and best interests of the children apply in the event of a breakdown and divorce. We don't think it can happen to us. But the simple fact of the matter is that hundreds of thousands of fathers find out otherwise each year.

HT: Dr Helen

Making War On The Dollar

When I read Ollie North's account of how people and states who mean America harm attack our currency as an indirect form of warfare, I couldn't help but think about Pogo and we Americans being our own worst enemy:

...corrupt officials in other capitals are also hard at work undermining what’s left of the U.S. dollar – by printing and distributing their own versions of American currency.

Counterfeiting another nation’s legal tender is not only a crime – it is also an act of aggression. During World War II, Adolf Hitler produced British bank notes to destabilize England. Mao Tse Tung used phony money to undermine Chaing Kai Shek’s Nationalist government through inflation. The Soviets created passable replicas of African, European and other monetary instruments to damage local economies. But no one has ever engaged in this kind of economic warfare against the United States on a scale – or as effectively – as is now being waged by the regimes in Pyongyang and Tehran.

You know, I find it hard to get all fired up about NK or Iran flooding the market with phony $100 bills. Isn't this what the Fed's been doing, since oh, 1913, and especially since we went off the gold standard in 1971? We've been printing notes like gangbusters, and each note printed erodes that much more the value of the dollar. How can we expect to succeed when we, as Ollie puts it, conduct economic warfare against ourselves?

Treasury agents go after Liberty Dollar guys--and don't even charge them with a crime--for allegedly passing counterfeit currency. Perhaps they oughta look inward to arrest some real counterfeiting crooks. We'd be better off if they did.

The Function of the Police Bureaucracy...

...is to sustain itself, just the same as any bureaucracy, not to serve and protect. Lest you forget that the police are under no obligation whatsoever to protect citizens or catch crooks, Palm Bay PD (near Melbourne, Florida, on the Atlantic Coast), offers this reminder:

PALM BAY, Fla. -- A budget crunch in Palm Bay could mean city residents who forget to secure car doors or close garages will get only a case number and nothing in terms of a visit by patrol officers if something is stolen. The possible policy revision is part of a wider cost-cutting look at the Palm Bay Police Department's $20 million annual budget, Local 6 News partner Florida Today reported. "We're looking very seriously at the types of calls we would go to," Palm Bay Police Chief Bill Berger said. "Still, about 85 to 90 percent of the people who've had their cars broken into left the car doors open. But, obviously, if it's an actual break-in, we'll respond." Berger, however, pointed out that his agency has been hit hard by higher fuel costs and a cut in revenue. Earlier this year, Berger implemented a number of cost-saving efforts, including a no-idling policy for patrol cars.

While on one hand, it's somewhat logical to decline to respond to calls where a citizen's failure to keep honest people honest resulted in a financial loss, it does illustrate that police have no obligations to do anything at all when laws are broken.

The best policing tool is a citizen acting in his self-interest to advance his own security, not some paid and unionized government agent (sometimes indistinguishable from the gang-bangers they're said to oppose) whose self-interest includes getting paid and staying safe, not protecting others or arresting code-breakers.

Bringing back the posse comitatus would be a huge improvement; if only to do away with lots of the problems we are having these days with loss of rights and police abuse of authority.

Study: Traditional Men and Women Earn More

Recently, researchers Tim Judge and Beth Livingston published a study in the Journal of Applied Psychology published the results of their investigation into the male-female pay gap. They noted, inter alia, that the less egalitarian men were in their attitudes toward the female half of the species, the more they made. $8500 more, to be exact.

Of course, the full story is bigger than that sound bite, but the headlines the last few days regarding this study have been practically apoplectic, if not uniform in their use of shaming language, downright hysteria, and abuse of the meaning of words in the Queen's English. That's not even accounting for the messages conveyed by the photos that accompanied some of those captions, a few of which are sprinkled here for your visual enjoyment. 'Sexism Pays!' a female writer for BusinessWeek shrieks. 'Male Chauvinism == Big Paycheck' bleats another woman at Newsweek. 'Sexist Pigs Earn Most Money' squeals an unattributed author at the Australian Courier-Mail. 'Sexist Pig Men Get Paid More' squeals yet another unattributed author at the UK online publication NewsLite. Mangina Daniel Nicholas opines that 'Men Who Consider Women Only As Housekeepers Earn More'. And in a headline that is sure to win awards for spell-checking, 'Sexest Men Make More Money'.


Obviously, if one is looking for the much vaunted journalistic objectivity when reporting of the findings from this study, the MSM is not where it will be found. I'd bet you'd get a more balanced take on the findings here at EW, and I make no pretensions about what side of the fence I sit. On any topic, but especially issues of sex and race.

Well, I bothered to read the study, which I suspect is far more than what these, er, reporters did, and what I found was interesting. So that you don't have to go wading through the whole study as I did, I have duplicated Judge's and Livingston's figures here for you:



Figure 2, in the upper left-hand corner, describes the effect that one's sex has on one's sex-role orientation, and it's effect on earnings. This graph contains data from those working within and outside the home.

Figure 3, in the upper right-hand corner, describes the effect that occupational segregation has as a predictor of the effect of sex role orientation on earnings. The upper, solid line depicts male-heavy occupations, the lower, dashed line, depicts female-heavy occupations. This graph contains data from those working within and outside of the home.

Figure 4, in the lower left-hand corner, is similar to Figure 2, only that the data is specific to those working outside the home. Note how much more pronounced the wage differential is.

Figure 5, in the lower right-hand corner, is similar to Figure 3, only that the data is specific to those working outside the home. Once again, the effects are much more pronounced.

So what to make of this data? Well it certainly seems that those fellows with more specialized attitudes toward men's and women's sex roles make more money. But let's dig a bit deeper, and see what we get.

Those who work from the home make significantly less money (Figures 2 and 3)

Duh. One rule about work is that the more inconvenient it is, the more it will pay. This is to entice people to put up with the ass-pain involved with suits and ties and skirts and stockings and long commutes and cubicles and office politics.

The more one believes in a sexual division of labor, the more men make and the less women make (Figures 2 and 4)

This one makes sense as far as women are concerned (women with family responsibilities take jobs that accomodate those responsibilities...and pay less...than those who do not). I have a more difficult time thinking of reasons why more 'specialized' men earn more. Perhaps it is because less egalitarian men don't pull a second shift at home and therefore can dedicate more time and energy to work. Perhaps also they have more testosterone, are more 'alpha', and therefore are higher performing than their beta or gamma brothers wedded to wanna-be alpha women. Or even that more egalitarian men are more family focused and therefore not willing to work the kinds of hours that the more specialized "provider" types are willing to work.*

Male-heavy jobs make more money than female-heavy jobs.

This one's also a no-brainer. Male-heavy jobs are usually too dirty or dangerous for women to lower themselves sufficiently to work in. Thus the labor pool for those jobs isn't saturated with people willing to work for peanuts.

Women in female-heavy occupations make more than women in more egalitarian occupations

The only thing I can think of that explains this phenomenon is that jobs that are women-heavy are unattractive to men for whatever reason (too squishy, too risky for men because of false allegations, too girly) and therefore also don't have a bunch of guys bidding down the wage scale with their competition.

In the end, what we have here is a bunch of chicks and their mangina enablers shouting "sexism!", when if one just looks at the data and thinks of why, the picture is easily explained by the normal behavior of humans competing in the marketplace.

* Given how the provider type dies earlier and is more heavily hammered in a divorce, I know where I sit

Slouching Toward Socialism

Thank God for bloggers like Vox and El Borak, from whose keen financial acumen I have learned much. They have enhanced my awareness that things really are 'afoot at the Circle K'. In quite a bad way.

Thus when I stumble across articles like this in the London FT, I breathe a sigh of relief. Perhaps the world hasn't gone mad after all:

The US has nationalised the core of its mortgage industry and the government has become the arbiter of which financial companies should survive or die. Financial markets have an enormous capacity for flexibility, but market participants need to be sure that there are rules, and a referee willing to impose them.

That the British, a country not exactly known for its laissez-faire attitudes toward anything, realize that the US nationalizing anything, in particular its mortgage markets, is generally bad for all involved, is interesting to me in its own right. Why we, in the land of the purportedly free market, can't seem to be able to grasp this*, is patently amazing. The US government bailing out the same executives and bankers and financiers who precipitated this crisis simply reinforces El Borak's thesis that the ship of our economy and our government has been boarded by pirates who are looting the ship's stores for all its worth.

* Well some lawmakers are coming to their senses, finally. Unfortunately, when it comes to the root cause of this crisis, I have every confidence that they'll pin the tail on the wrong donkey. Certainly they won't finger certain sitting senators (so much for Dems being the party of the people), colleagues as they are in the pirate assault, for their complicity.

Here's One Reason Why...

...easy divorce-on-demand ain't going anywhere...it gives government the power over too many people who haven't done anything wrong:

Child Support is ruining my life. C.O.L.A modified my payments back in 2006. They lowered it from $200 a week to $115 a week. I have always made my payments (every week) my company takes it before I see it. I am a sub-contractor and have no health insurance.

Child Support Enforcement contacted me close to a year ago and claimed that I was in arrears of $20,000. I went down to the Support Agency with the new modification document and no one wanted to hear it, so I copied all my paperwork and mailed it "Certified" mail. No one contacted me at all.

Now my personal bank account with money that my dad left me when he died (life insurance, the money is to fix the house) and my business account has been frozen. They put a lean [sic] on more money than they claim I owe. I can't even go to work because when I deposit my check in my business account they keep it. Cash checking won't accept it.

I feel so discriminated against. I went to court today and the only thing they did for me was to give me a court date for Nov.12. How do I eat until then? How do I pay my bills? How do I survive without any means to live?

Paraphrasing Ayn Rand, one way that governments acquire power is through the creation of criminals to crack down upon; when one does not have enough criminals to crack down upon, one makes them through passage of laws that make more and more people outlaws.

Divorce is a wonderfully efficient device at making criminals out of honest, law-abiding men. You don't even have to break any laws to be sucked into the maw of law enforcement and quasi-judicial executive agencies. All a man has to do is to be stupid (or unlucky) enough to let his wife be sufficiently unhappy as to divorce him, have a child support judgement ordered against him, and lose his job. It is very difficult to get child support reduced--even if you are incarcerated and have no job--and if you fall behind, the Bradley Amendment proscribes judges from clearing said 'debt' through bankruptcy or other proceedings. The so-called debt follows you around for life; in clear violation of the Anti-peonage act, you can and will be enslaved until you discharge it. Next thing you know, you belong to the much maligned class of people known as deadbeat dads, much-pilloried, much hated criminals who 'shirk your responsibility' to your children. As punishment, your driver's- and other professional licenses will be taken away, your passport confiscated, your accounts frozen, your name printed on milk cartons. You will be a pariah the same--or worse--as if you molested a child or two or knocked off a liquor store.

There are way too many people involved in this racket for easy divorce-on-demand to go away. The so-called family law bar, judges, child support enforcement agencies, single-mothers-by-choice, women's groups, local and state governments, the federal government. All feed off the drippings from non-custodial parent's lividitous corpses which, while not quite dead, are kept alive enough to provide sufficient blood to feed the many vampires that hover over their prostrate bodies like vultures. All these parasites benefit in one way or another from the government-incentivized fission of the family and the resultant categorization of 800,000 innocent fathers annually into proto-criminals. Proto-criminals who are but a couple missed child support payments away from being thrown into the government's Pit of Carkoon.

The breakup of the family is the sausage grinder that feeds the big-government monster. Ironically, the decreasing rate of marriage through cohabitation--while giving a veneer of security--actually feeds the growth of government even more, in that cohabiting relationships are even less stable than marriages. Thus siring children with a woman you are shacking up with is a more assured ticket to the slammer than had you just married the chick.

Whitey Dems Holding Nobama Down

In a shining example of academic integrity, pollsters and Stanford researchers found exactly what they shaped their poll to find...that latent white racism is keeping the the Anointed One from ascending to the throne as easily as he ought to:

The pollsters set out to determine why Obama is locked in a close race with McCain even as the political landscape seems to favor Democrats. President Bush's unpopularity, the Iraq war and a national sense of economic hard times cut against GOP candidates, as does that fact that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans...The poll sought to measure latent prejudices among whites by asking about factors contributing to the state of black America. One finding: More than a quarter of white Democrats agree that "if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites."...

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents—voters Obama can't win the White House without—agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't have such views.

Given a choice of several positive and negative adjectives that might describe blacks, 20 percent of all whites said the word "violent" strongly applied. Among other words, 22 percent agreed with "boastful," 29 percent "complaining," 13 percent "lazy" and 11 percent "irresponsible." When asked about positive adjectives, whites were more likely to stay on the fence than give a strongly positive assessment.

On the other side of the racial question, the Illinois Democrat is drawing almost unanimous support from blacks, the poll shows, though that probably wouldn't be enough to counter the negative effect of some whites' views.

Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama's support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.

I really don't quite grok how Dems pull off so well the slanders and libels that only whites and Republicans are irredeemable racists and bigots while Democrats are fair, even-handed, and open-minded about matters of race and ethnicity. Particularly when the candidate in question says things like this about working-class whites in Penna. This poll shows that a whole heap of white Dems harbor some fairly negative sentiments about black folks, thus providing the exception that disproves the rule. Now if you want to call negative sterotypes racism (if negative sterotypes are racist, are positive sterotypes any less so?), I think you're murdering the Queens English, but fine. What I would like to see is a poll of black Dem's attitudes and see if they'll own up to some negative stereotypes about whites or Asians or Mexicans (here's a preview) or Jews. Anyone care to take bets that blacks don't harbor some unhappy or un-nice thoughts about those groups of people? No? Didn't think so.

Speaking of these sentiments / stereotypes, the implication of this article is that such conclusions are unreasonable bigotries that have no place in everyday life. Economist Walter Williams disagrees when he casts stereotypes and prejudices, right or wrong, as 'cheap information' about categories of people that may cost a lot to acquire for a specific situation. For instance, one of the negative perceptions about blacks is that they are 'violent'. Is this perception entirely unreasonable? Not really. Based on this information, who has more reason to fear for his safety? A black person in a white neighborhood, or a white person in a black neighborhood? Which is more likely to find that confirming for himself the 'cheap information' provided by crime stats and stereotypes too costly?

I also love how perfectly reasonable political positions are cast as racism, namely the opinion that "if blacks tried harder, they'd be as well off as whites". Not everyone signs up to the assertion that systemic racism is what is holding blacks down, given that other factors, such as crime, extra-marital childbearing, rejection of marriage, and rejecting academic achievement as 'white' have some influence on the condition of black folks. People choose to be these things...a thug, a serial inseminator, a serial gestator, a fornicator, a droupout; those choices impact your quality of live and those of your progeny. But it seems that if you disagree with the NAACP-approved blacks-r-victims narrative, you're a racist, full-stop.

Central to this article is the assertion that if you don't vote for the half-black Obama on the basis of his half-blackness, you are a racist. What is unspoken is that the near-universal support for the half-white Obama amongst blacks for no reason other than a shared similarity in skin pigmentation is just as racist. Just because this is seen in some quarters as 'positive racism' doesn't make it any less prejudiced or bigoted. Moreover, it justifies whites voting against Obama for his blackness.

Domestic Violence Against Men Study

Readers, I've had a some posts to my blog in the last couple of days soliciting male volunteers to participate in an intimate partner violence study.

While I wouldn't normally repeat those solicitations, the topic--domestic violence--is one that gets some attention here on EW, if anything for the lopsided nature in the perceptions of DV. Men are the targets of partner violence just as much as women are, you just wouldn't know it because of propoganda that suggests otherwise and male reticence in reporting.

If you've been on the receiving end of female aggression, then these folks would like to contact you:

If you are a man between the ages of 18 and 59 and you have been physically assaulted at least one time in the last 12 months by a current or former intimate female partner you may be eligible to participate in this study.

Participants have the option of filling out the study survey online or by calling a toll free number. Visit www.clarku.edu/faculty/dhines to participate online or call us at: 1-888-743-5754 or email us at: dahmwagency@gmail.com to obtain the toll free number.
Your participation in the study as well as your contact with DAHMW will be kept strictly confidential.

I've checked on the DAHMW, and as far as I can tell, the solicitation is legit. So, if interested, they'd appreciate some help in getting their study numbers up.

Ron Paul on Glenn Beck

It is a shameful fact that prophets are often scorned and ridiculed before their visions and messages are taken seriously. Unfortunately, they are taken seriously only after much pain is assured, or it is way too late to avoid destruction altogether.

Ron Paul may seem like a crank to many, citing as he does an irrelevant Constitution when even law schools don't even pay attention to that document anymore, but it appears that a whole lotta people are paying attention to our modern-day Cassandra now. Particularly when it comes to monetary policy and fiat currencies.




HT for the video: Toku

El Borak has it exactly right with his assertion that our economy has been hijacked by pirates who see to it that, no matter if they win or lose, they come out smelling like roses. Example? I point to the most recent object of federal-bailout-style nationalization, AIG, whose fired CEO walked away with a $7M severance package two days ago. The man he replaced? His parachute was golden to the tune of $47M. Both these guys were handsomely rewarded for driving AIG into the ground.

The government will try to keep the music going for as long as they can, but eventually the music will stop, and the pirates will abandon the sinking ship after they have looted as much plunder--paid for by you and I and our children's futures--from her as possible.

The Silver Lining...

...inside the money bubble-burst cloud:

Homeowners may despair as turmoil in the property market slashes value off their houses, but new research shows they could have the weak economic climate to thank for helping them hang on to their spouse. Data from the Office of National Statistics suggests that an unforeseen consequence of falling house prices is a lower rate of divorce among married homeowners over the past 10 years.

[Director of Savills Research Lucian Cook said]: "As house prices rise home owners undoubtedly feel wealthier and our supposition is that they also feel able to afford to get divorced," he said. "We forecast that the current falls in property prices - unwelcome and uncomfortable for the majority - will result in fewer divorces, even allowing for the overriding downward trend in the UK's divorce rate."

Divorce accounts for around 6% of all house sales in the prime property market, rising to 13% among houses valued at more than £1m and 18% among houses valued at more than £2m.

Well hog tie me and chicken fry me. Whodathunkit that when you take away the financial incentive to divorce, well, golly, fewer divorces happen? I've been saying for a long time that a significant cause of divorce is how the system rewards mercenary behavior. Make divorce less profitable, say, by ensuring that parenting duties are shared, or by making a post-divorce environment less secure and lucrative for the initiating party...and voila! Families magically stay together. Amazing!

HT: Vox

Palin and Clinton on SNL

I was laughing after viewing this video. Think you will too. Give it a go...

The Difference Between...

...Christians and heathens--particularly the secular humanist variety--may be found right about here:

Because a person afflicted with Down syndrome is only capable of being marginally productive (if at all) and requires constant care and supervision, unless a parent enjoys the wealth to provide for the lifetime of assistance that their child will require, they are essentially stranding the cost of their child's life upon others.

For many, [Down's Syndrome victims will have] a lifetime of endless burden. In this light, it is completely legitimate for a woman to look at the circumstances of her life and decide that having a child with Down syndrome (or any child for that matter) is not an obligation that she can accept. After all, the choice to have a child is a profoundly selfish choice; that is, a choice that is an expression of the parent's personal desire to create new life.

Now, I'm a Johnny-come-lately to this excreble post, having first seen it fisked by the always entertaining (if a tad potty-mouthed) Rachel Lucas and over at MikeT's place. Ordinarily, I'd let those more talented than I have the last word. But this clown's words illustrate quite well the moral chasm between the Christian and the heathen: the Christian believes in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception. We jealously defend that child's right to live even if he is afflicted with a debilitating genetic condition. The heathen does not.

The Christian has to believe that life begins at conception, for science forces him to acknowledge that a genetically distinct being comes into existence at the moment that ovum and sperm unite. Moreover, and more importantly, the Gospels instruct him that God values all human life, not just Christian ones, and it seems to be a fairly presumptuous thing to do to smite a life just because you don't think that life is worth living, when God sent His son to die on the cross for that very doomed life. The heathen, OTOH, rejects God and God's assignment of value to life from the very start. But he has to assign value to life somewhere, else his own life becomes valueless. Thus, he must dream up some other standard, such as "looks like a person", or "can live independently", or Provenzo's own standard: "is not a burden to the Collective".

Provenzo's criteria for determining human worth is only rational if you believe as he does that there is no innate worth in a human life. One's value as a person becomes a function of what you can produce, and if you consume resources more than you produce and have no family willing to assume the burden of your care, you are a burden to society and therefore must be smitten. Provenzo, if consistent, would proceed to put to the sword most children born to single mothers, all orphans, welfare queens, and the geriatric. And as MikeT mentioned in his post, there exists a huge slippery slope here, if for no other reason than the standard of 'burden to society' is relative in Provenzo's moral taxonomy. It is ultimately a political question, meaning that the strong (or the many) condemn the weak (or the few) to die for the benefit of the strong / many.

That said, I seriously doubt that Provenzo would seriously propose the cold-blooded offing of undesirables. He probably would say that killing born children and orphans and welfare queens and the old would be murderous. And from a Christian perspective, he would be correct. But from a secular humanist perspective, he would lack a rational imperative to make that judgement. In short, he has no basis whatsoever to make such a claim.

Thus Provenzo's inconsistency helps highlight the central paradox of the Unbeliever...that the heathen's nihilistic moral system parasitically yet necessarily adopts portions of the Christian moral system, else the heathen cannot justify his own existence. Provenzo's probable squeamishness about whacking kids and welfare and Medicare recipients stems from his partial assimilation of Christian values, not from any reasoned consideration of the relative value of such undesirable persons in a rational framework.

Teaching Girls How Not to Stumble

I hope to have a daughter(s) someday. I'm a big believer in "being the change you want to see", and I would welcome the opportunity--if granted the chance--to raise a Godly woman or two who will make fine brides to Godly men someday. If our culture is to be saved, it will be saved starting at the individual family level, with solid marriages from within subsequent generations will be reared. If our culture is to survive, it will be from efforts at the bottom bubbling up, not the top-down. I don't know if our culture is able--or willing--to save itself, but if it is to be, this is the only way it will happen.

As the father of three boys, I think a lot about what I want to teach them about the world and about the female half of the species. I think about concepts like faith, responsibility, accountability, honor, integrity, and the value of a good day's work (fine lessons applicable to both sexes, methinks). There will also be fair warning about the opposite sex, if only so that they will not repeat my mistakes and those of my brothers whose sad stories I read about on the net. I will count on Mrs Wapiti--and the example that her and I set for them--to help me draw a complete and balanced picture.

But I also think about what I, as a wanna-be father of a future bride, would want to teach his daughter about how the world works. I hope to avoid the mistakes which produce the kinds of women I flame here on this blog, mistakes in word and deed that lead her to the Dark Side.

A proper education starts at birth. The hand the rocks the cradle rules the world and all that. Some time ago, MikeT had this excellent post about how our culture, from the cradle onward, teaches girls some poor lessons in mate selection. For instance, good guys are found among the exciting and thrilling criminal class--if only a woman would give those misunderstood fellows a chance. Or that a rough and rude exterior is cloaking a nice, gentle, honorable man--and that the only thing needed to change him is the right woman who's willing to give him a chance. Or that, to find a great guy, a woman needs to kiss a lot of frogs; once again, a woman needs only to give an ugly guy a chance to be rewarded with the handsome prince. Seeing a pattern here? Mike nails it with his observation that bad men need only the investment of a woman to be redeemed--which comes awfully close to trading places with Christ. Women are not Christ, nor do they possess the Spirit's transformational power. Little wonder then that they become disappointed, even resentful, when the 'edgy' dude they're dating fails to metamorphosize like the fairy tales say.

Other lessons include avoiding a sense of entitlement. So many women these days feel entitled to feel good, to a comfortable living, to shiny baubles, to happiness, to opportunities, property, or persons that aren't theirs to take. And if they don't get what they want, they stamp their feet until it happens. The world doesn't exist to give you what you want. You have to grow up, put big girl panties on, and earn it.

Related to entitlement is indulgement in fantasies. Fantasies are focused on gratifying the self, on sating the id, which can never be satisfied. Some particularly noxious fantasies include attempting to change a man to fit the image of him you have in your mind, about magically living happily ever after, or that happiness may be found in another human being or in materialism. And there is probably no fantasy more popular than the girlhood fantasy of the marriage pageant, where all eyes are on her, through which many a woman has transmogrified into bridezilla.

Another lesson I would attempt to teach her is to love herself, to embrace her created feminine nature and her given complementary role to men, and reject the envy of the masculine. Much evil has been wrought in this world by those women who normalize the masculine and make the feminine deviant. I hope that she would not make herself into yet another Lady MacBeth who cuts her hair and pours her sexuality into the street in a feeble attempt at being the worst caricatures of men. We have far too many Jezebels like this as it is.

Lastly, I would try to disabuse her of the notion of romantic love, which our society idealizes, much to our detriment. Romantic love needs to be recognized as selfish--it is characterized by taking, not by giving, and that it is merely the temporary aggregation of feel-good chemicals in the brain. The female body is much more influenced by the ebb and flow of hormones and chemicals than the male one, there is little need to reinforce or exacerbate this effect. I would try to let her know that after a time, those feel-good chemicals fade, and that the highest order of love is duty and self-sacrifice for the good of another, not something which is biochemically difficult to distinguish from the effects of eating chocolate.

There are infinitely more lessons that could be taught, and quite a few that I would have no idea how to impart (that's where Mrs Wapiti comes in). But I think these would be a good start.

Morton's Fork for Men

This election, like many others before it, presents few real options for MRAs and FRAs. As this left-wing attorney notes, the Obama-Biden ticket is a one-two punch to the gut for guys, comprised as it is of two men who pander to the (single/divorced) women's vote. Obama, who is already on record bashing men on Father's Day, is co-sponsoring The Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2007 which promises to "crack down men who avoid their paternal responsibilities". Obama is apparently oblivious to the fact that 2/3 of men who owe child support earn less than $10,000 a year (in California, 80% of men who are behind in their child support earn poverty level wages, and 70% of the "back child support" is due the state, not the custodial parent [source]). Although it is hard to squeeze blood from a turnip, HopeChange hopes to change that metaphysical reality. One wonders what other oppression that he would wreak on members of his own sex to make that happen.

And Mr. Obama chose Biden, the author of the unconstitutional bill of attainder VAWA, as his running mate. Clearly these two men have little sympathy for the condition of those men less fortunate than they, and both have expressed a desire to use the power of the state to put the screws to men who find themselves on the receiving end of a divorce or paternity suit. So the Democrat ticket is a no-go for men.

But the Republican ticket doesn't promise much better. To my knowledge, McCain doesn't have much of a record when it comes to men's issues, but his VP choice is a self-declared feminist who makes right-wing men and women alike swoon. That fact right there should ring some alarm bells. In addition, the Republican base is anchored by social cons, particularly those that hail from the so-called religious right; this group suffers from chronic mother-worship and as such are no friends to fathers, particularly divorced non-custodial ones who must have done something terribly wrong to deserve to be divorced. Expect not much action on issues of child support and family and divorce law reform from this crowd.

I have been very critical of Mr. Obama on this blog. But that doesn't mean I'm a McCainiac either. On questions of liberty and freedom in general, and equal rights for men and fathers in particular, I'm afraid we're damned with either equally unattractive choice.

Virginity for Sale

The more bitterly cynical among us would say that trading sex for money is precisely the exchange that happens when a woman accepts an engagement ring and gets married.

For certain, many, if not most people would dispute that analogy, pointing as they would toward the "love" aspect of what is otherwise a pragmatic economic arrangement. But there's little ambiguity in the capitalistic nature of what Natalie Dylan* is proposing: to auction off her virginity to the highest bidding John that, er, does it for her:

[A] San Diego woman...says she wants to sell her maidenhood to pay her college tuition. "I don't have a moral dilemma with it," says the pretty brunette, who's using the pseudonym of Natalie Dylan "for safety reasons".

"We live in a capitalist society," she tells us. "Why shouldn't I be allowed to capitalize on my virginity?"

Dennis Hof, proprietor of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, Nevada's famed legal brothel (seen on HBO's hit series "Cathouse.") [says that] the auction will be conducted online via bunnyranch.com, and that the deal will be consummated at the Bunny Ranch, where Dylan's sister already works. "I think it's a tremendous idea," he says. "Why lose it to some guy in the backseat of a Toyota when you can pay for your education?"

"I understand some people may condemn me," Dylan says. "But I think this is empowering. I'm using what I have to better myself."

I must admit it's hard to argue with her logic. If I were in her shoes, growing up in a broken home, and if my sister and I were "forced" into hookerdom by a wicked stepfather who took out student loans in mine and my sisters' names, and if I had just completed a very expensive, very useful degree in 'women's studies', the only choice that I could conceivably have is to sell the right to first access to my holiest of holies for as much as the market will bear. I mean, I'd need all the money I could get to pay for that piece of paper on the wall, finance a doctorate, and jump-start my future career as a marriage and family therapist, right? After all, I'd have all kinds of practical experience with married couples and would know first-hand what it takes to hold a trusting, loving, monogamous relationship together. All I would need is the cash flow to get it started! And best of all, I can count on my mother's support, because it's a man's world, and I'm one of the Oppressed, and nothing is more empowering than exploiting sex-starved men for money.


* Her slave name

The Travelling Wall

Yesterday, I had the chance to accompany the Patriot Guard Riders to the Vietnam Veteran's Travelling Wall Memorial (link to the Vietnam Vets Memorial Fund, which sponsors the wall, is here). We rode in from various locations within the area (one group coming in from Colorado), and met at a mall in the east side of Casper before riding to the wall which was located at the original Fort Caspar, after which the town was named. Here are some pictures from that ride. Enjoy!




About half of the group riding to Fort Caspar; the other half is behind me




Waiting at a traffic light. As is standard for Casper, the winds were kicking




Parked at Fort Caspar







The Travelling Wall




This trailer had the story of Vietnam, the story behind the wall itself, and photos and momentos of a few of the names on the Wall



A composite photo of Fort Caspar, which has been restored to its original appearance at its inception in 1865. Click on the picture to enlarge


Reading about the story of Vietnam and how the Wall came into being, I learned much more about the War than I was ever taught in school. Like how Uncle Ho was the Vietnamese equivalent of George Washington. Or how Ho Chi Minh approached the Allies at Versaille in 1919, asked for independence from France, was rebuffed, subsequently determined that a peaceful solution was impossible. Not long after, Ho led the Vietnamese in their own version of the Revolutionary War against their French colonial masters that America would get sucked into 30 years later as part of the Cold War.

I was also reminded of how Ho Chi Minh was well aware of the politics in the US during the War, and how lack of national unity and violent, publicized student demonstrations encouaged him to fight on until Linebacker II brought the War to Hanoi for the first time and forced him to the negotiating table. We fought that war stupidly, and apparently we have forgotten many of the lessons learned back then in our current engagement.

Kill and Destroy

If human life matters to you one whit, take a look at this video before you cast that ballot this November. And the funny-sad thing is, this man imagines himself to be the Messiah for us all. Ick.

Rejecting Eros Marriage

Apparently arranged marriages have been gaining some limited traction in the West, says this article from the CSM. Personally, I think that is a good thing:

While the number of nuptials consummated in this way is still small, there's evidence that some of the principles of these traditional pacts are drawing attention and respect from both scholars and singles who are anxious to move into a married state. The tradition of arranged marriages and the lessons it has for 21st-century couples interests author Reva Seth, an attorney of Indian heritage whose parents came together in an arranged marriage. "Everyone I know is questioning the role of marriage today". says the New Jersey-raised writer.

She began to interview women from arranged marriages with an eye to discovering lessons for Westerners. The biggest surprise...is that "most of these women are happy, the main reason being that they have realistic expectations about their partners and always viewed them as a life partner, not a lifesaver."

I find this small yet significant trend interesting in that some people are coming to realize that eros-love is not a reliable precursor to, or sustainer of, marriages. I also found that the comment that spouses were to be partners, not lifesavers, particularly apt. Romantic love, by placing the "lover" on a pedestal, sets up a whole house-o-cards full of expectations, some or all of which eventually turn into resentments. In addition, the article pretty much confirmed what reader Christina had to say on this thread, that the shadow of community and family looms quite large--in a good way--in the genesis and maintenance of successful marriages

"For us, marriage is not so much about two people being in love," says Ms. Manzar. "It is about a relationship to a larger community, our family, our friends, and our neighbors." She says her marriage to a man with whom she had spoken only briefly before they wed has been about "two human beings compromising and realizing that the other is only human, not some perfect being." Now pregnant with their second child, she adds that she loves her husband, although she does not feel she was ever "in love" with him.

This notion of romantic love and fulfillment through a soul mate is the cornerstone of much dissatisfaction, says psychologist Stan Tatkin.

This truism may very well be at the heart of why eros marriages fail--they are focused on the individual, with little thought or consideration given to the community as a whole. Which is ironic, given that the failure of a marriage is like a lit stick of dynamite thrown into a small lake...the shockwave emanating outward from that explosion creates waves that affect everyone else to one extent or the other.

While I agree with the article's author that arranged marriages are unlikely to become a widespread practice here in the individualistic West, nevertheless they teach us all something very valuable, in that marriage and lasting love are not about chemicals and oxytocin and love bank accounts and all that. It's about commitment and duty which, when done right, results in attachment, confidence and trust that the other will do the right thing by you. The product of this process: affection, and the women interviewed in this article largely echo that sentiment.

Thus, the romantics have been found to have the formula backwards: it is not eros which begets agape, but the reverse: agape over time begets eros. Sadly, I think this lesson will be lost on people wedded (no pun intended) to the idea of romantic love conquering all.

Poll: 20% of Women Sampled...

...think that "forgetting" about your birth control and getting pregnant under false pretenses is peachy keen. And 90% think that men should be stuck with the bill, no matter what the conditions of the conception.

In addition, the nearly universal opinion of these women was that "if a man doesn’t like it he should keep it in his pants"; I have to wonder what these same women would say to the equally insulting platitude that "if she didn't want to be raped, she wouldn't have dressed like that".

Of course, no consideration was given by these women to the prophylactic concept of a woman keeping her legs crossed, and I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that if C4M were the law of the land, in the way that Roe v Wade gives women the unilateral option to duck the responsibility of a pregnancy, that women would be a lot less cavalier about getting knocked up.

Thanks to fellow blogger Learner--read more about her poll here--for doing the yeoman's work.

Justice Isn't Justice...

...if it isn't tempered with some mercy. In an act that is sure to get some of the race warlords fired up, two black women were removed from the pool of potential jurors for the upcoming OJ jury trial in Las Vegas because they may be tempted to go easy on the defendant:

Both of the women who were removed had strong religious views, and the prosecutor said he thought one of them would be inclined to "forgive" Simpson while the other said she was hesitant to send anyone to prison.

There are two purposes to jury nullification. The first is to provide the People with the final and unchallengable check on governmental power. A legislature can pass all the laws it wants, but if the People refuse to convict, the law is null and void.

The second purpose is to ensure that true justice is achieved via the injection of mercy into the process. Mercy is not in government's vocabulary, concerned as it is with the black-and-white of procedure and facts, and with maintaining a tough-on-crime image. Not much room in there for consideration of extenuating or mitigating circumstances. Mercy is only reliably administered by the People, the peers of the accused; relying on the judgement of elected officials or political appointees--government agents both--to dispense mercy is like relying on debt collection agencies to understand why you can't pay up...it's not in their self- or economic interest to do so.

Leading the Sheep Astray

Elder Einwechter objects to the Evangelical leadership's enthusiastic embrace of Sarah Palin as unbiblical:

Albert Mohler and David Kotter (and other semi-complementarians) are Christian men who have done much good for the kingdom of God and for the family. They do desire God’s order for the family and the church. But the fundamental compromise and inconsistency of their view on the role of the woman in the public sphere has led them to praise and support the feminist vision of womanhood as it is personified in Sarah Palin. This feminist vision is the arch enemy of the biblical vision of the godly woman who is the helper of her husband, the nurturer of her children, and the keeper of her home. And so, intended or not, their stance is a tragic betrayal of the cause of restoring Christian womanhood and the biblical family.

Reading Einwechter's well-written letter, I'm left with a sense of uneasiness, as neither his strict complementarian argument nor that of semi-complementarians Mohler and Kotter satisfy completely. While I absolutely agree with him that Mohler and Kotter are leading the church in the wrong direction with their endorsement of Palin as VP candidate, I disagree with his point of view as well.

A complementarian like Einwechter contends that a woman's place is tending to hearth and home and not an inch further. I find that position difficult to defend in scripture. An unbiased reading of Proverbs 31 reveals that women are permitted to work outside the home, buying and selling and working as needed to aid her husband in the provision for the family. So clearly, women are permitted by the Word to venture past the front door of the family home. How far past the stoop is far enough, then?

The problem for Einwechter comes in where to draw the line between public and private roles. For unless we exist in a vacuum, we are all leaders to some degree or another. Thus eventually, inevitably, some women will find themselves in leadership positions. I suspect that Einwechter would have no objection to a woman's participation in the community PTA or school board, yet these are positions of public influence and dare I say it, leadership. Maybe not as influential a leadership position as say, mayor of Wasilla Alaska, but there is some influence there that she is exercising outside the direct covering and headship of her husband. Again, where does that line get drawn? For certain, the level of appropriateness of female leadership is inversely proportional to her psychic distance from the home and family. I fail at drawing that line with precision, and I'm not convinced that a traditionalist like Einwechter can either.

But all this is not to say that Mohler and Kotter have it correct. Einwechter has an excellent point with this critique of the Mohler/Kotter set's risky theology regarding public egalitarianism and private complementarianism:

In rejecting the biblical arguments for male headship in the state, they are laying the ax to the root of their own doctrine of male headship in the church.

Mohler and Kotter's support for the allegedly Christian Palin does indeed undermine their advocacy for male headship in the home and male-only leadership in the Church. By dismissing the OT as a valid guide for the conduct of Christians, they dispose of the precedent of male headship established therein over the span of thousands of years and strip away support for semi-complementarian doctrine. As a result, Mohler/Kotter's theology thus rests solely on the Pauline letters, and the male headship proscriptions contained there are themselves under heavy sustained assault by so-called Evangelical Feminists. The problem according to them? Those letters are specific to the moral habits of an irredeemably sexist Greek culture that existed nearly 2,000 years ago and are not applicable to today's more "enlightened" society. If you dismiss the OT as irrelevant because we have been released from the law, you depend solely on the NT's less-than-robust reinforcement of the concept for male headship at home. Einwechter is exactly correct that Mohler and Kotter have set the stage for a complete abrogation of the male headship concept in the private sphere with their dualist theology. They think that they are entirely consistent semi-complementarians by endorsing Palin. But what does their endorsement mean for their cause?

Where Mohler and Kotter really err is in their enthusiastic support for a putative feminist for vice president. Men like them should know better than to endorse someone whose associates--and therefore she likely does as well--espouse an idolatrous ideology that is in direct contravention to Christianity. Feminist theology is well known for its hostility to the male headship concept, if not to men as a sex in general. It's a mystery to me how institutionalized misandry and counter-scriptural teachings can garner such support, and I'm at a loss as to why these conservative religious leaders have thrown in their lot with her. Perhaps it is her comeliness, perhaps it is her charisma. Who knows? But I do find it curious that a pair of men who would roundly criticize lesser women for straying so far away from home...and worse, for putting her husband in the position of SAHD and not sole provider of the family...are nothing but smiles in their endorsement of Palin.

HT: Atlas

Is That A Load In Your Shorts?

Or are you just that happy to be seeing the cops again and again and again?

Just when I was starting to have some sympathy for these retards who evidently don't know how to buckle a belt, thereby subjecting us all to full-on views of their drawers, one of them utters

"Your [sic] a cracker and ain't got shit better to do."

You see, one can object to heavy-handed and stupidly wasteful laws and po'-lice harassment such as this assault on the very dignified 'Sir Saggy Pants' look without getting all racial.

Due to the racist double-standards that exist in this country about which races and ethnicities are expected to control themselves, and which are not expected to be capable of doing so, I know that clowns like this guy probably will get a pass for his racist remarks. I also know that I should not expect one. But that doesn't excuse what he does or his lack of self-control. And I'm right tired of punks like him dumping their cultural sewage into the water that the rest of us swim in.

You want to dress and act like a dumbass? Fine. Just don't be surprised when you get some flak for lowering the bar. But hey, at least you can take some solace in your 'authenticity'.

Rocky Mountain Thunder 2008

Over Labor Day weekend, I had the opportunity to roll to Rocky Mountain Thunder in Loveland, Colorado. Fresh from Sturgis, this rally was pale and unstimulating by comparison. Yet it was still a worthwhile trip, if anything because I got to roll with some friends from work.

Anyways, because I know that you all love it when I post pix, here are some pictures from that adventure:




The first thing you notice is that there were a whole lotta bikes. The H-D dealership in Loveland is (conveniently) right across from a Hooters, which had to import help from New Mexico, Kansas, and Nebraska to keep up with the demand from hungry bikers with a need to be titillated by levitating boobies, tight clothes, and Daisy Duke shorts.

Then you noticed some pretty rad--if not ridiculously impractical--rides:







A 2003 Yamaha Roadstar Warrior. I seriously considered purchasing this 1700cc of hold-on-for-dear-life when I wanted to upgrade from my 750 Shadow. Eventually I decided I didn't want to pay $13k for what was essentially a vanity bike, started looking at the Warrior's stablemate, the FJR, and then spied my baby, the 1999 BMW Rll00rt (which looks a lot like this one). It drives H-D guys crazy that I have more fun, get more admiring looks, and paid 1/3 less than they did for their H-D cruisers.

No rally would be complete without hooched-up biker chicks, albeit they wore way more clothes than at Sturgis:





And of course, there was the adolescent sexuality again. This time the there was the Feelin' Lucky Saloon, which featured autographs signed by Playboy Playmates...



...and the ever-present bikini bike wash...



...and women who rent themselves out as moving stage props for advertisers





When it was all over, we rode home on US 85, with my bros stopping at a local convenience store to buy lottery tickets. Little did I know that this convenience store was behind a "gentleman's club", a nice euphemism for an establishment full of more women renting their sexuality for a paycheck. For a moment, I thought my bros were going to make a stop there, whereupon which I would have just kept going, but they didn't (thankfully). And while I did happen to spy a working girl in full regalia, I wasn't fast enough with the camera to capture her high-speed, low, low, LOW-drag outfit as she strutted from her car to the front door.

Palin == Christian Fundy == Taliban

What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.

A theocrat is a theocrat, whether Muslim or Christian

Juan Cole, in today's Salon edition.

I have two things to say to leftist media clowns like Cole. First, all theocrats are not made alike. I daresay that a Christian theocrat will probably govern a whole heckuva lot different and more beneficiently that a Moslem fundamentalist one, such as UBL or the Taliban. For one thing, he'd have a lot larger chance of keeping his head on his shoulders and not have it sawed off with a rusty knife.

Next, what makes him and the secular humanist religion he espouses any different from the caricature of Christianity and Islam he draws with this hit piece? Does not the Church of Secular Humanism (CSH) "impose [its secular, anti-God] beliefs on others by capturing and deploying the executive power of the state" via legislation, judicial edicts, and media? Does not the CSH happily ban books (most notably The Book)? Does not the CSH require the teaching of a "theory of evolution"--calling it real "science" when it is anything but science and has holes in it large enough to drive a Kenworth through--and resist teaching alternative theories, such as Intelligent Design? Does not the CSH itself forcibly proselytize secular liberal democracy to peoples around the world who do not want to hear it? And use guns to do it?

Cole fails to realize that for people of faith, he is the religious extremist who is intolerant of others' beliefs. He is the one who is "bigoted and invidious". His ilk look to us like Jerry Falwell et co does to him.

Props to Weasel for the linkage

Are Palin & Johnston Married?

Over at Biblical Manhood, Anakin is having a discussion on Palin's selection as the Republican VP candidate.

A portion of that discussion has touched on Bristol Palin's and Levi Johnston's alleged extramarital sexuality and resultant unwed pregnancy, which has had me think some more on the issue of what constitutes a marriage, Biblically speaking.

Part of the problem stems from the confusion about what a "marriage" really means these days. Does it mean a union recognized by the Body, and consecrated before God? Or does it mean a legal contract between a man, a woman, and the State?

That there is confusion here, I am not surprised. In the days before the State partially merged with the Church (and also made clergy Agents, acting on Caesar's behalf, who can't criticize the State too aggressively lest they lose their tax exempt status. So much for the separation of State and Church), marriage was the sole province of religious authorities. Requiring the State's approval for marriage came about in the late 1700s in Western Civilization; a tiny sliver of the thousands of years the history of marriage. And those on the right, such as myself (also here), and those on the left are both on record as agitating to get government out of the marriage business.

So let us disambiguate a little bit. To me, what is called "marriage" in the eyes of government is not a marriage at all. The "marriage certificate" is a legal agreement of sorts (I won't say contract, because it is obviously not one of those) between two persons and the State. The State part is important, because it allows Caesar an "in" into the internal workings of the family and control over the lives of the persons in the event that family dissolves that would not be tolerated otherwise. Moreover--much to the chagrin of heterosexual monogamous marriage proponents I'm sure--a government "marriage" is by definition a polygamous one since it involved three parties, not two. So in conducting joint Church/State weddings, clergy are conducting polygamous marriage. How do you like them apples?

Having ruled out Caesar's so-called "marriage" as real marriage, let's look at spiritual marriage. What qualifies as a "marriage" in the eyes of God? Since I am far from a theologian, value simplicity over complexity, and am of a Baptist bent, I refer to the Word for help answering this question. My first clue comes from Matthew 19:4-6 and Mark 10:6-9:

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one.

There you have it. Man and woman leave their respective families and create a new household together, representing themselves to others as being married. The Word offers up other guidance as well: they are to be faithful to each other, the union is to be respected and honored by others, the man is to love his wife, and the female is to follow her husband's lead and respect him.

That is all that I could find. Not a thing about having to secure the blessing of Church officials. And certainly not a thing that equates Caesar's permission to marry with the Biblical state of marriage. Yet I get the distinct sense that it is precisely Bristol Palin's and Levi Johnston's failure to obtain either/both of these that has everyone all atwitter over their "extra-marital" sexual relationship. I get the impression that it is reflexive legalism, rather than examining what they do, that is leading critics of Palin/Johnston to condemn their relationship.

So let's test the Palin/Johnston situation against scripture and see what we get. First, have Palin and Johnston left the shadow of their parent's authority? Partially, but not completely, I think. Do they present themselves as one to others? Yes. Are they sexually faithful to each other? I suppose so. Does the community respect their pairing? Appears that way. As for whether or not Levi Christ-loves Bristol and Bristol submits to Levi, I cannot determine that heart-state; only God knows for sure.

The only defect I can see in this couple's putative spiritual marriage is that they have not completely separated from their parents. This is a big deal actually, particularly for Bristol, who will need to switch from the authority of her parents to that of Levi. On the basis of this element, I would have to judge these teenagers as not authentically married. Therefore, what they have done and are doing is quite problematic, spiritually speaking, and deserves criticism, not from a legalistic standpoint, but from a tested-against-scripture-and-found-wanting-standpoint.

Gotta Appreciate the Symbolism...

...inherent in the DNC throwing away thousands of US flags after their Denver convention was over:

This morning, Republicans tell me that a worker at Invesco Field in Denver saved thousands of unused flags from the Democratic National Convention that were headed for the garbage. Guerrilla campaigning. They will use these flags at their own event today in Colorado Springs with John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Before McCain speaks today, veterans will haul these garbage bags filled with flags out onto the stage — with dramatic effect, no doubt — and tell the story.

It's no secret that lefties hate America and hate Western Civ, and whose actions suggest that they'd like to see our culture replaced by something a bit more accommodating, like an Islamist theocracy. It's all part and parcel to their Marxist "critical theory"--criticize everything of value until nothing has value--which is why attacks on Democrats for being unpatriotic ring a bit true. Republicans can--and do--dress themselves successfully as the more patriotic party, and a zinger such as this just helps them all the more.

Although a gadfly like me points to the Republican party's antipathy for liberty and a stable currency, and can arguably claim that Republicans hate America just as much. They just aren't quite so vocal about it.

El Borak...

...outghta appreciate this can't lose scheme:

WASHINGTON -- The Treasury Department is putting the finishing touches to a plan designed to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that would essentially result in a government takeover of the mortgage giants.

Treasury's likely plan is supported by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and James Lockhart, chief of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to people familiar with the matter. On Friday afternoon, Messrs. Syron and Mudd were summoned to a meeting at the offices of the agency. Also attending were Mr. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Here's the reason why Adam Smith, one of the earliest exponents of capitalism, really didn't cotton too well to merchants and businessmen: they'll stop at nothing to insure a profit or prevent a loss. To include manipulating the politicians into cutting them and their shareholders a check from the public trust (read: taxpayer money). It's gotten so bad with the recent deflationary housing market crash that even Greenspan himself--who presided over the inflationary lending spree that created the bubble in the first place--can't stand the stench anymore.

No wonder the rich stay rich. They have a can't fail insurance policy. And guess who pays the premiums and the deductible?

Judas' Evangelicals

I have noted with some interest the recent body-snatching that seems to have occurred with regard to the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate. Liberals, who used to be all for working moms, now screech about how terrible it is that a woman would dare to work with a disabled five month old at home. Shouldn't she be doing the right thing by her baby?

And, the religious right, who used to denounce the horribly deleterious effects of a mother working outside the home on the children, are suddenly celebrating a mother of five who works full-time outside the home and has someone else care for her kids.

What the heck happened?

One word: expediency. Another word: abortion. Democrats, the party that is led around by the nose by feminists, suddenly cannot stomach a feminist woman in close proximity to the brass ring who doesn't believe in baby killing. Likewise, religious cons have seized on Palin's staunchly pro-life stance and are using that to justify their near orgasmic support of the McCain ticket, completely papering over the fact that Palin is a self-described member of "Feminists for Life" (FFL) and is far from the "traditional" female SAHM role that their religious leaders claimed they used to idealize.

It gets better. We learned this week, to much lefty schadenfreude, that Bristol Palin, the 17 yo daughter of the vp candidate, is pregnant and is due to deliver the baby in December. Again, the usual suspects have switched places...liberals, whose silence on teen pregnancy is deafening and whose support for single unwed motherhood is equally deafening, denounce the extramarital pregnancy as just another instance of right-wing hypocrisy on the "family values" issue. Leading evangelicals crow that, while the Palin daughter screwed up, she is planning to carry the baby to term, the implication being that because the Palin daughter isn't planning to murder her baby, that qualifies them for the evangelical base's support. My, how low we've gotten when being against fetal death is the only qualification needed for support from the social con side of the house. Have we become Judas?

Pastor Voddie Baucham calls this strange and depressing turn of events the "evangelical two-step"

Step One: Use the Bible to motivate and mobilize the Evangelical community behind the Republican candidate. Step Two: Abandon the Bible when its message is inconvenient to ‘our’ candidate. That’s where we are today.

Abortion is murder. Straight up. Thou shalt not murder, and all that. And evangelical leaders, desperate to sway public policy to contain, maybe even reverse this holocaust, have advised the rank-and-file to throw their support behind a pro-life woman who by all superficial appearances seems to be just like family-minded evangelical moms everywhere.

Step one.

But what about the rest of the picture? Palin is pro-gun. Cool by me, but that's a temporal issue, not a spiritual one. She has five kids. Also cool--it separates her from the childless or near-childless liberal women that dominate politics these days--and may even lend itself to the "quiverfull" variety of spiritual discussions. She also opposes homosexual marriage, also okay if you believe (as I do not, but many social cons do) that government has inherent business in awarding benefits to persons based on who they keep house with.

But she herself is a member of FFL, stating in an interview for the Anchorage Daily News that "no woman should have to choose between her career, education and her child".* Reading through the FFL website, it's clear to me that FFL is an organization that advances all the standard feminist wedge issues and pet projects except abortion-on-demand. Readers here at EW are well aware of my criticism of feminism, and the various evils that have resulted, including, but not limited to: a 30% higher divorce rate, exploding levels of single-motherhood-by-choice, declining marriage rates, broken homes, and increased rates of child abuse, child homicide, academic failure, teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, crime, and ostracism and marginalization of men and fathers. In addition, FFL lobbies for publicly financed largess for women only, particularly single women whose irresponsibility has resulted in a pregnancy, unconstitutional bills of attainder such as VAWA, the ill-conceived and anti-father Child Support Enforcement Act, and advocates "responsibility" (read: we want your money, but not your involvement) for men.** Moreover, FFL perpetuates the lie that domestic violence is committed by men only, and counts men's resistance to involuntary fatherhood as "coercion" that should be criminalized. FFL's message is that men's rights--if they are to be called that at all--are subordinate to women's rights where reproduction are concerned, a very feminist POV indeed.

Yet evangelical leaders ignore this stuff--it's not like it's hidden, heck I found it didn't I? To me, they appear to be looking beyond the anti-Christ that is feminism, and instead are salivating at the political influence they can exercise in this election cycle, and possibly the power they can gain in the White House if McCain and Palin are elected.

Step two.

At present, the American right wing, including religious conservatives, are positively orgasmic about Palin's selection as candidate for VP. Yet we know that a man is known by the company he keeps; is this self-proclaimed feminist really someone that evangelical leaders*** should be hitching the evangelical wagon to? More importantly, should evangelical women support another woman whose associates promulgate anti-family policies? And should evangelical men, charged as we are with the care and feeding and leadership of our families, throw our support behind a ticket that will bring more socialism to our country (albeit a bit slower than Nobama will) as well as install leaders in the executive that continue to advance the anti-male, anti-family, and anti-woman idolatrous philosophy of feminism?

* Given that all three of these events happen at the same time...twenties to early thirties...and are mutually exclusive to a certain extent, this is a patently stupid statement to make. Moreover, it is reflective of the "have it all" philosophy that many women have that is destroying the family, abusing kids, and making for unhappy women

** Strangely, the word 'responsibility', so often thrown at men, is nowhere to be found when discussing women and the results of their actions. The result is that, yet again, men are held responsible to underwrite or otherwise support women's choices

*** Do evangelical leaders think that their direct involvement in affairs of Caesar elevates or denigrates the position as shepherds of the flock? Moreover, what does their involvement do to the Church's call to evangelize?