The Gods of the Copybook Headings

 Ludwig von Mises once said, "Rulers do not like to admit that their power is restricted by any laws other than those of physics and biology. They never ascribe their failures and frustrations to the violation of economic law."  My entire series, "Supply, Demand, and Price" is a catalog of sad examples of our rulers creating failures and tragedies by ignoring the laws of economics.

Unfortunately, these days our rulers are no longer content with pretending that only the laws of economics are subject to their control and revision.  They are trying to make the laws of biology subject to their will, as well.  And, like ignoring laws of physics and economics, this leads to tragedy and disaster.

Copybooks were the manuals used to teach children writing.  Back when Kipling wrote the poem referenced in my title, the exercises were basic moral doctrines.  

Not my usual thing

I don't do hot takes. I first saw this video yesterday, and it made me mad enough to fisk it today.

Getting mad that someone won’t date you is weird. Just move on and find someone who does actually want you pic.twitter.com/s4V3vKlSGm

— nicoco✿ (@PetiteNicoco) May 28, 2021

This video was posted to TikTok by Lexi Nimmo, who is billed as an actress, Instagram influencer, and plus-sized model, and from there was posted to Twitter. I'm going to post her spoken words in purple.

Let's start with her presentation. She's well groomed, has regular features, and has a friendly, attractive smile. Aside from morbid obesity (i.e., a BMI greater than 40kg/m^2 (e.g., 5'5", 240lbs) or weight more than 100lbs over ideal for height), she appears to be healthy. She has nice skin and long hair, both markers of good health.

Note the opening word balloon: "Reply to mellcannon's comment
Or he isn't attracted to bigger girls like how some people arnt attracted to smaller girls. Everyone is entitled to their own preferences [Very startled, wide-eyed emoji.]

"Heyy Bestie! [giggle]"

subtext: I like you and am your friend.

[serious]"You're wrong."

subtext: Aaaannnd there goes the friendliness. She's let the mask slip, and revealed, if only for a moment, the rage.

"I think it's time for another adult pre-k lesson, what do you think?"

Note Ms. Nimmo's wide, fake smile, and the contempt evident in using baby talk to tell her bestie that she has a pre-k level of consciousness and/or morality. And she's about to crank that contempt up to ELEVEN.

"Aaaall right, turn your listening ears on! Zhoooop! Catch a bubble in your mouth! [gasp] Good jo-ob!"

Subtext: Not only does Bestie clearly deserve to be told to shut up and listen, it is necessary to do so in a manner appropriate for a toddler, which is why Ms. Nimmo is doing so. And she does so often enough to have created a Tiktok hashtag for this practice, #adultprekwithlexi.

I would like to suggest to Ms. Nimmo that perhaps contempt is not the best way to keep friends, let alone persuade them. I would readily suggest to my wife that any one who treated her like that did not deserve my wife's friendship at all, let alone to be my darling wife's best friend.  In truth, such advice is appropriate for any human being.

"Okay, here's the thing. Having a preference is something like, 'I'm looking for a partner who likes kayaking, or wakes up early in the morning, ooooor, loves pizza.'" [giggles]

Those are in fact examples of preferences, but it's hardly an exhaustive list. Maybe one of the preferences of the man in question is, "I'm looking for a partner who will run five miles in half an hour with me before breakfast twice a week."

"But when your preferences exclude an entire group of marginalized people, that's problematic!"

Remember, "problematic" is to the woke as "blasphemous" is to Sharia law. It is something to be punished always, and never, ever forgiven, except perhaps by dying in the struggle to advance the faith.

"Okay, that's not nice, that's not a preference."

Sure, it may not be nice, but it IS a preference.  Maybe it's just a preference Ms. Nimmo opposes, because it excludes her. Remember that when we're talking about attraction, romance, dating, and marriage, the whole biological purpose of all that stuff is for people to start families and have babies. And that is ABSOLUTELY somewhere that each person's preferences should be honored. I'm sure there are plenty of men whom Ms. Nimmo has turned down, and perhaps harshly, when they pursued her with too much ardor, on the basis of preference.

"If you love [sic] all fat people in one group together as though they are not very different individuals, that's fat-phobic. Just like lumping all black people together and saying 'I don't like black people' is racist. And just like lumping all disabled people in one group and saying, 'I don't think people in wheelchairs are hot' is ableist. Do you understand what I'm saying? [giggle]"

One of the things that's built into the First Amendment's guarantees -- freedom of religion, of speech/ press/ opinion/ expression, of association, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances -- is the right to be an obnoxious hateful bigot.  Ms. Nimmo has the right to dislike such people, all she wants.  She can even hate and loathe them if she wants. She can even choose to BE one, all she wants. What she does not get to do is demand that they change their views to suit her.

Nor is commanding others how to think the only thing I can think of that might make Ms. Nimmo unattractive to a man. He might find her religion, Wokism, offensive. Or perhaps he cannot cope with her smug self-righteous moral supremacy. Or maybe it's her habit of treating people of differing opinions like toddlers, especially when they have a point. And given our society's supine willingness to let adherents of Wokism oppress others at will, I would not blame any man in the slightest if he declined to inform Ms. Nimmo if this was his reason for dropping her.

And I'm going to share a hard truth with Ms. Nimmo, and all other unmarried women: There are lots of men who will regard you as good enough to use for uncommitted sex, but NOT good enough for marriage, family, and children. Such a man is very likely to dump all the women he's used, once he's found one he's willing to marry -- or even, just one who's sufficiently better for use.  If you had been wise, you would never have let any such men have sex with you.

And, to go off-topic just a bit, it can reasonably be argued that glorifying obesity (I saw the banner on the set of one of Ms. Nimmo's Tiktok videos) poses a public health hazard comparable to glorifying smoking. Obesity contributes to hypertension, deep vein thrombosis, congestive heart failure, obstructive sleep apnea, pulmonary embolism, shortness of breath, neuralgia, asthma, arthritis (especially of the knees and hips), back pain, gastroesophageal reflux disease, diabetes mellitus type 2, hypercholesterolemia, coronary artery disease, leg swelling, varicose veins, cerebrovascular accidents, chronic kidney disease, and physical disability. As Ms. Nimmo is created in imago Dei, she is as deserving of compassion, respect, and understanding as anyone. Obesity does not change that. But she also deserves to have her errors called out, as much as anyone else does.

Some random thoughts on the passing scene.

One of the most infamous events in the rise of fascism in the previous century was Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.  A bunch of German brownshirts went around in a planned riot, smashing the windows of their target minority group.  No doubt they said it was a righteous protest.

When somebody tells you "I am totally anti-fascist," while acting just like a fascist (for example, smashing windows and setting fires in an oppressed minority neighborhood), they are not just telling you a breathtaking, bald-faced insolent lie.  They are gaslighting you.  They are trying to make you lose hold of reality.  When they do this, you ought to ignore everything they say, and concentrate solely on what they do.  By their fruits you will know them.

When people start smashing windows and setting fires, you do not have a peaceful or even non-violent protest.  You have a riot.  When the window-smashing and fire-setting starts, it is time for all people of good will, who care at all about the community they are in, to leave and go home.  Leave the murderous, thuggish criminals out in the open, with no crowds to hide in, like a cockroach on a plate.  Let the cops round them up.  If they are smashing windows and setting fires, that proves that they hate you and everyone in your community.  They are your enemies.  Give them no aid and no comfort.  Let the cops have them.  Better yet, help the cops get them.

If President Trump is our first Jim Crow president, as Rebecca Hamilton says, he is doing a really bad job at it.  After all, the point of Jim Crow is to keep Blacks poor, disenfranchised, separated, and downtrodden. 

When an administration provides historically black universities and colleges with record funding (and at record durations), and oversees the lowest unemployment rates for blacks in decades, and sees blacks open 400% more small businesses in its first year than they had owned in the year prior, none of that helps keep blacks poor, ignorant, separated, disenfranchised, and downtrodden.  If that's a try at Jim Crow, it's a yuuuuuge fail.

A video interview of Fr. Gordon Macrae has surfaced.  Never before has he been allowed to speak, directly, for himself.  I embed it here.


Part 2:

Blogrollin' 112

If, for some bizarre reason, you prefer my writing to that of David Warren, what's wrong with you?

His latest essay, Breeding Instructions, describes with empathy and beauty the joy found in a large family united in their struggle against poverty. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

It also describes (and refutes) a few of the lies population planners tell themselves about large families in desperately poor times and places. These lies are embedded deep within their worldview, and implicit in their expectation that poor people must join the rich in not having children. Why do they tell (and believe) these lies? Do they hate the poor? Or perhaps they suffer from acedia (on which both Max Lindeman and Darwin have recently written)? Or perhaps I fret too much; surely their hatred and self-deception arise from the mystery of evil.

the Doom of DOMA

I could have put this post up at Capes 'n' Babes, but that's not what Chris Flick's website is for, and he'd have every reason and right not to post it. He has the site mainly to sell his artwork, and my countercultural Catholic argumentation could reasonably alienate his customers. I couldn't wish that on him. I'm going to ask my two readers not to go and gunk up his site with a flamewar, either.

But as to why that's not good, I think we could learn from the lesson of Chesterton's Gate -- the idea that, before we go to reform an institution, we ought to understand why it is the way it is. I don't think gay marriage advocates have any understanding of why marriage was the way it was. Nor have they found or built any structures to do what marriage was originally meant to do.

The function of marriage has historically been to protect the children which are its natural result. It provides them with a bond with their father, and a incentives for him to protect them. If your spouse dies, then finding and marrying a replacement can be better for your children than staying a widow/er, which is why it's reasonable to allow people to remarry after the death of a spouse. Even if a woman has aged to menopause, it's easy to see how her entering marriage can be good for any children involved.

The giant blows against marriage were contraception and divorce. Divorce especially does grave harm to children, and remarriage is very hard on them, probably far harder than in cases of widowing. Much worse is when Mom just shacks up after divorcing Dad. Children are at greatest risk of sexual assault from mom's live-in boyfriend.

Homosexual marriage does not naturally result in children. Its advocates, like those for divorce and contraception, seem to either not consider the harm that their pet project does to children (which would include being in denial about it), or may actually hate children. Their arguments against these concerns vary from "What could it hurt?" to "Shut up."

I really don't think the SCOTUS considered these things when they struck down DOMA. I think there's compelling government interest in protecting marriage -- doing so gives children the best chance going forward that they can have. In addition to affirming DOMA, they could consider doing away with contraception (which promotes infidelity, which is ALSO very bad for the children) and divorce (which is the result of contraception, and even worse for children). They are far more important than the easy access to the benefits of marriage for gays (and to which they have alternative means of access).

Another PRISM post

Mozilla has launched an anti-PRISM campaign at StopWatching.Us. I signed their open letter with my real name. And I know that by admitting that, I'm giving the government a double-check means of determining my real identity. But I've always assumed that anything I say here can be traced back to me, given sufficiemt resources.

Claire Wolfe said at the close of the last century that it was too late to reform the US government, but too early to start shooting the bastards. I wonder if she's changed her mind about that latter part, yet.

I've long been critical of the US government, but I've never been seditious or proposed violence. Long before the government could cross any line past which I could have felt justified at opening fire on any of them, I became Catholic, and learned that martyrdom was the better response, both in its morality and in its effectiveness. If you shoot the bastards, they use that as an excuse for escalating their tyranny. If they martyr you, they cannot -- at least, not to themselves.

PRISM Break

If you haven't heard about the PRISM scandal (where the feds copy and store everything going through numerous web services, including but not limited to google, facebook, yahoo!, and msn), you really have not been paying attention. Even if your stuff's encrypted now, the feds plan to keep it until they can crack it. But there's a bit of help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: http://prism-break.org/

$8 Billion iPods

Ever get the feeling that when media distributors claim billions of dollars in losses they're just trying to screen their real motives?

Here's an examination of that argument.

Now, I'll be honest; I haven't investigated Rob Reid's information, but it seems largely reasonable. Anyone care to confirm his numbers, or supply better ones?

Murder vs. Justifiable Homicide

So libertarian Charles Murray recently said of abortion: "It’s a murder—it’s a homicide—but sometimes homicide is justified." (Salute to Matt Archbold.)

Sometimes homicide IS justified. When the only way to prevent an imminent murder is to slay the imminent perpetrator, that is justifiable homicide. There are other cases. Justifiable homicide is the entire point of Just War Theory -- to delineate the cases where nations may engage in mass, military homicide. But it is ALSO to delineate where such use of force is NOT justified. In fact, it makes the case that it is possible for soldiers fighting a just war to commit murder on the battlefield.

By having sex with a man, a woman voluntarily assumes the risk of pregnancy. The pregnancy is certainly not the fault of the child. Even if she becomes pregnant from rape, bear in mind that the child is neither the perpetrator of the rape, nor his accomplice, nor his co-conspirator. The child is every bit as much a victim of the rapist as the mother; he has denied his child its inherent right to be reared by its own parents in a stable, permanent marriage. I don't see any justification for slaying the child.

Murder is unjustified. The lack of justification is what defines "murder" as a subset of "homicide." Cases of homicide which are murder and cases of homicide which are justifiable have NO overlap. Mr. Murray's statement is profoundly irrational. He needs to either admit that abortion is murder, or make the case that it's justifiable homicide, and not equivocate the two.

Obamacare: Bad law.

Ever since I first heard of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I've been saying that it is a very bad law. Everything about it, from its length (over 2000 pages), to the secrecy in which it was passed (nobody had been given time to actually read final version of the bill when it was passed), to the naked vote-buying that went on, to the artificial emergency-crisis atmosphere used to rush it through Congress, to the well-documented (but little-known) nature of the man who demanded it, indicated that it was a very bad law.

Nothing has happened that might suggest I was mistaken.

Indeed, many things great and small strongly suggest that I was right. At the small end is the HHS mandate. I don't mean to diminish its tyranny or its unconstitutionality, but I recognize that it doesn't really involve a whole lot of money or people (yet). On the other, we have the Energy and Commerce Committee's Obamacare Burden Tracker, which tallies up Congressional Budget Office estimates of hours spent on compliance with Obamacare. Their current estimate: 127,602,371 hours. To borrow from them:

What could be done in 127,602,371 hours?

• Mount Rushmore, which took 14 years to build, could be constructed 1,040 times.
• Halley’s comet, seen from Earth once every 76 years, could be spotted 191 times.
• The Empire State building, which took 7 million hours to build, could be constructed 18 times.

Is 100% of the new regulatory burden wasted time? It's doubtful. But it is 100% cost, and I very much doubt it was factored into the original CBO estimate of how much the ACA would cost when it was being debated in Congress.  And 100% of that cost will come out of our pockets.  There is no such thing as a free lunch.

here's somebody who knows this stuff better than I do, taking it to pieces far better than I can. Salute to the Pittsford Perennialist.

A pithy quote

Salute to the Creative Minority Report Reader.  From USA Today:

In essence, the Obama administration's message to these Catholics, despite a cosmetic compromise, is akin to telling Austin's bohemians that they can dress like hipsters on the weekends so long as they behave like corporate shills Monday through Friday. 

I think this is one of the best encapsulations of what's being done to us with the HHS Mandate. Only, we're not being asked to sell out our beliefs, man, but to betray our God and Creator. 

Lazy Press Is Lazy

How many times have you heard pro-life people denounced in the news with a declaration along the lines of "You people only care about the fetuses; once a baby's born, you kick them and the mothers to the curb!" As Simcha Fisher ably demonstrates, this is absolutely a canard, a slander, and a lie. And then she links to a further demonstration of the accusation's falsehood.

Blogrollin' on Birth Control

salute to Tito Edwards.

Turns out that it's reasonable to expect that 59% of girls who start on birth control when they're 15 to have at least one unintended pregnancy by the time they're 25. Here's the math.

On infanticide (blogrollin')

There is apparently a pair of bioethicists who claim it is moral to perform post-birth abortions, which are somehow not the same thing as infanticide, in spite of both being the act of intentionally slaying an infant member of the species Homo Sapiens. I have no intention of linking to the article. Rather, I link to William Briggs' most excellent fisking, in which he points out the myriad of fallacies, false premises, non sequiturs, and most important, their failure to point out with anything approaching precision when infanticide becomes moral.

Salute to John C. Wright, comments further.

Telling the Truth

John C. Wright posts about Christopher Stasheff, the only SF author who had the guts to put the truth about chastity into the mouth of one of his characters. Go and read it, as it is an EXCELLENT explanation of the spiritual dangers of fornication.

Read This Book.

Salute to Fr. Gordon Macrae. Buy a copy for your pastor. Buy another for your bishop.