Remember when ...

Do you remember when leftists cared about liberty?

It was 1999.  That's the date on this George Carlin concert.

It's George Carlin, so of course he uses filthy language.  But he opens by yelling at his audience for giving up essential liberties in exchange for a little safety.  Leftists don't do that any more.  They're all about power.  Their patience is wearing thin.  The threat they mean to present to those who value liberty over obedience is self-evident, and meant to be.

Make no mistake, the establishment Republicans are no different, or we wouldn't have former President George W. Bush comparing the Jan 6 riot UNFAVORABLY to 9/11, when Muslim terrorists did their best to destroy the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the U. S. Capitol, and batted over .500, murdering nearly 3000 people in the process.

And remember what L. Neil Smith said -- the perfect X-ray into a politician's mind, to see whether they value your rights and liberty, is where they stand on gun control.  If they are for any kind of gun control, they are against every right and liberty that God has granted you, or at least for the government being able to take them away from you.  

 The battles at Lexington and Concord were not fought over muskets.  We attacked the British there because duly appointed Royal government officials, authorized by law, came to seize Colonials' private artillery pieces (cannons) and gunpowder.  May God grant that our current government does not seek to tread that same, tyrannical path.

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.  

Reflecting on Father's Day

 I originally composed this in response to a group writing challenge posted by Jennifer Fuwiler, "What are three things your parents did right?" It's mainly about my Dad, rather than both of my parents, because I've come to realize that he did in fact lead our family in nearly every respect. The older I get, the more like him I want to be. Of course, I've rambled on beyond three things.

The most difficult, and the most important thing he did right for me was that he threw me out of his house. I could visit any time I wanted, but I wasn't allowed to sleep there.  I grew to be very grateful for it, and I was glad to be able to tell him so before he died. I was a selfish, sessile, immature ingrate of twenty-three years when he did it. It put me through some hard times, but I would not ever have become self-sufficient had he not compelled me to do so. The number of blessings which have come from this are beyond counting, believe you me, and thankfulness is foremost of them.

He always resolved his disagreements with my mother. It might have taken time, involved obnoxious debating tactics and yelling, and been difficult and trying, but not one of us ever for a moment imagined that either of them would leave. Somehow, in spite of reading dictionaries to relieve boredom from the age of seven, the word "divorce" never entered my vocabulary until age 10. He may have been motivated by the fact that my mother was the only woman he met who actually liked his rotten sense of humor. From this I've taken the lesson to be absolutely faithful and committed to my marriage. I also learned from both of them to use and respect reason and logic, and I'm grateful that they attended Marquette back when that was part of the curriculum.

They set limits and made us responsible. They didn't compel responsibility, but rather enforced consequences when we overstepped the boundaries or failed in our responsibilities. One example of this was that after about age 10 or 12, I forget which, each of us was expected to earn our own spending money; this was before the near elimination of minors as paper carriers. It helps to explain why I had no real anger or resentment when my dad decided to throw me out.

Another example that I think deserves wider application, was the TV ration (though they didn't call it that). We were each given one hour a week where we could tune the telly to whatever we wanted (of the 3 major networks, CBC, PBS, and the three independent stations that they had in Detroit at the time). One of the by-products of this was that I read a lot, learned a lot from reading, and listened to a lot of good music. In fact, I credit about 20 points of my Intelligence Quotient to this policy alone.

But the ways we benefitted from it do not stop there.  It taught us that resources are limited and the wisdom of planning. Every Sunday, we'd all pore over the TV listings, planning where we'd spend our allotted time on the TV. We would carefully weigh the merits of all the shows we wanted to watch, and which was the very best on which to spend our time. It taught co-operation and risk-taking. Most movies are broadcast over two hours, so in order to see an entire movie, we had to either obtain the co-operation of one of our siblings beforehand, or watch the first hour and hope that one of them (or one of our parents!) would be sufficiently engrossed to watch the rest.  It also taught us that most of popular telly is crap.

And finally, it taught us that the recipient of a positive externality does not owe anything to the person who provides it. If my brother the Geek happened to choose in advance a program I was seriously considering choosing, that freed me to choose something else, without any concern over whether he'd like it or not.

This is a lesson that also applies to the rest of life, and far too few people seem to grasp this. As an example, suppose you live in a neighborhood with a neglected home that is such an eyesore that it has depressed the value of your own home, and those of your neighbors. I move into the eyesore, kill the rats, mow the lawn, fix the windows, scrub off all the graffitti, install fiber-cement siding, plant a garden, repair the sidewalk, and pour a new concrete driveway, making the former eyesore into a model home. The value of your home, and the others in the neighborhood, increase, along with the equity position of each of the homeowners. In short, you have benefited from my action. You will get more money from them if you choose to sell or obtain a second mortgage/ home equity loan. And you don't owe me a cent!

The same goes when the situation is reversed, however. If I were to sell that home to a postmodern "artiste" who painted it blaze orange and fuchsia and nailed assorted bits of trash to it and the trees I'd grown there, and pruned the trees into phallic topiaries, it could very well decrease the value of your home, perhaps even leaving you owing more on your mortgage than you could get from its sale. But just as you didn't owe me anything for making your home more valuable, neither does the artist owe you anything because its value has dropped.

The most splendid example I have seen of how to morally handle positive externalities, also known as the "free rider" question (i.e., 'how do we make free riders pay?), was from L. Neil Smith's libertarian novel, Pallas. The terraformed world of Pallas is populated by a libertarian society, that tolerates no coercion of anyone, and especially not gun control, fiat money, or taxes. But it suffers an orbital change, resulting in an ice age. There is a technological means to survive, but it is hugely expensive. The villain of the book promptly demands that an armed band be formed to demand "fair shares" of the needed money from others. The hero, who has become filthy rich from a couple of very GOOD inventions counters, essentially, "Don't bother. I'll pay for it all. Why shouldn't I? What good is all the money to me when I'm dead? And how is it any skin off my nose if, by saving my own life, everyone else lives too?"

If you do yourself some good, be glad! If that means you do somebody else some good, be glad! If the good you do yourself is good enough by itself to get you to do it, how on earth does it hurt you if that helps somebody else get ahead too? The idea that just because somebody else gets ahead means you must have been put behind is silly at best, counter-productive or even evil at worst. Besides, if the other has any sense, he'll be grateful and kindly disposed to you for the incidental good you did him.

Surely there's more; they both encouraged me at all times to seek to do and be better; they brought me to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation for at least the ten years from age 5 to Confirmation at 15; they demonstrated by example that what we could prudently afford was always good enough. And Dad left his copies of The Freeman around for me to read, so that I learned to love liberty. The list goes on and on. But I won't.

Happy Father's Day to all men who are fathers of any type, and may God bless you and all those under your paternal influence.

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.

Improving the Constitution

 I've been mulling over the apparent shortcomings of our federal government, and a couple possible constitutional amendments have come to mind.

One of the issues is that of gerrymandering.  The re-election rate for incumbent members of Congress is over 90%.  State legislatures draw districts in very partisan ways.  I recall a Reader's Digest article on gerrymandering that described a district that stretched in six long narrow psuedopods across half the state, and another that was two residential districts connected by several miles of interstate highway.  Somebody tried to get a district that was actually two areas completely separated from each other, but courts shot that down.

My proposed correction:  "1.  Congressional districts shall be drawn so that each can be enclosed within a rectangle with an area no more than 120% of the area of the district.  2.  If the geography and population distribution of a state make doing so impossible, then congressional districts of that state shall be drawn to minimize the total area of rectangles enclosing all congressional districts.  3.  States with only one district shall be exempt.  4.  A rectangle shall be a geometric figure with four sides and four equal vertices."

A second issue is that the states have been rendered subservient to the federal government, which was never the intention of the Founders who wrote the Constitution.  That was the original function of the Senate, to give the States a voice in the legislative process.  A third is that getting rid of bad laws is far more difficult than it ought to be.  As James Madison warned us, ""It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be to-morrow."  To correct these, I propose the following amendment:

"1.  The House of Relief is hereby established.  2.  Members of the House of Relief shall be called Relievers.  3.  The legislatures of each State shall appoint three Relievers, who shall serve at the pleasure of their respective state legislatures, which may recall or replace them at any time, and for any reason, or for no reason at all.  4.  The House of Relief shall only  have the power to pass bills that repeal federal laws and regulations of the United States, and to terminate federal departments and offices not established by the Constitution of the United States.  5.  Any such bill which receives votes of one-third of Relievers currently in office shall be passed to the President of the United States without review by the other houses of Congress, and will become law upon his signature, or fail if the President should veto the bill.  6.  Any bill which receives votes of one-half of all Relievers currently in office shall become law immediately, overriding any Presidential veto, without review by any other branch of government."

While I think these are more-or-less good ideas, I'm sure they could use some polish.  Any ideas anyone may have for their refinement would be most welcome.

Policy Review: A vs. E:

 Let us consider an imaginary university system, the Generic State University System.  Their board of regents is trying to decide between two policies for admitting students to degree programs whose graduates typically become wealthy professionals such as (but not limited to) engineers, scientists, lawyers, accountants, and the like.  Their foremost goal is to increase black participation in these professions, where they are underrepresented.

Policy A will result in a mean of 60 out of every 100 black applicants to these college programs being admitted, and about 16 of those sixty graduating and joining these well-paid professions.

Policy E will result in a mean of 30 out of every 100 black applicants being admitted, and about 24 of those 30 graduating and joining these well-paid professions.

Now, which of these policies is better for the black community?  I would argue that Policy E is better for the black community, because it results in 50% more blacks entering these well paid professions where they are currently underrepresented.

Which policy is better for everyone else?  That's also Policy E.  The number of available slots for admission to the GSU system is limited.  With Policy A, more freshmen in the GSU system will never graduate.  Those freshman slots are wasted when the students who filled them drop out.  They represent people of all other races who could have entered those professions and provided services to the rest of society, who now are stuck in lower-paid, less valuable work.  With Policy E, fewer slots are taken up by people who won't graduate, instead of more.  And with policy E, there are more highly qualified professionals providing valuable services to the community, both among blacks and among everyone else.

Policy A is affirmative action.  Basically, the rule is that a black student doesn't have to be as good as others to be ADMITTED to a university, but still has to be as good to graduate.  Blacks who would have a very good chance of graduating from (e.g.) University of California at Irvine or UC Santa Cruz, because they're smarter than 80% of the general population, and going on to a successful career, instead would be admitted to (e.g.) UC Berkeley or UCLA, which are geared to challenge students smarter than 99% of the population, where most people only(!) in the 80th percentile would fail, regardless of race.

In 1996, Californians passed an amendment to their state constitution, forbidding use of race in choosing how to fill any sort of government opportunity, including college and university admissions.  

That resulted in Policy E, or Equal Opportunity at the University of California system, in which people get opportunities based on how well they perform against a set of objective criteria, like SAT and ACT scores, high school grades and transcripts, and extracurricular load.  This is also what happens in sports, where the NFL, NBA, and MLB, not to mention track and field, all see blacks outperforming whites, and they do so according to objective criteria.

Four years after this amendment was passed, when the blacks who entered the UC system under this policy first started graduating, the number of black graduates increased by 55%, and they graduated with higher grades and in more challenging fields than under affirmative action.  

Unfortunately for the blacks and everyone else who benefited from equal opportunity, the California state legislature is trying to get the equal opportunity amendment to the California state constitution repealed.

Don't do it, California!

We Are Tin Ducks in a Shooting Gallery

 Even some liberals and Democrats are aghast at what has hppened, lately, to President Trump.  In the aftermath of the demonstrations and riots in Washington, DC, President Trump has been deplatformed and (for all practical purposes) censored, banned from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and his alternate platfrom, Parler, crushed in what certainly looks like action coordinated between Twitter (Parler's competition), Amazon (who owned the computers that Parler leased), and Google and Apple (Parler's distributors).

One liberal put the reason for her discomfort front and center:  "If they can do this to the most powerful man in the world, who or what can stop them if they decide to do it to us?"  And given how the revolution eats its own, it's a reasonable fear for those on all sides, not just those on the right.

So what do we do now?

First:  Get a copy of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein.  While his speculations about alternate marriage systems have been shown to be incompatible with real human nature, it contains a description of the best sort of network for a revolutionary (or counter-revolutionary) organization devised yet to date.  

Second:  Download the latest version of The Amnesiac Incognito Live System, also known as TAILS Linux.  This will boot from a thumb drive on most hardware, connect to the Internet via multiple clients, using The Onion Router (TOR) to ensure that connections are anonymous.  It will also make sure that nothing you do is stored on the hardware you use.  It also bypasses any malicious software that may be on the system you use, but it would not bypass any malicious hardware, like keyloggers.

Third:  Learn and use GNU Privacy Guard, a free implementation of PGP.  Bear in mind the security-privacy axis:  The more secure your communications, the less likely they will be received quickly and accurately.

Finally:  If we do wind up with a Constitutional Convention, there's another idea that RAH put into The Moon is a Harsh Mistress -- governments need to make deregulation and removal of bad laws easier, and to make the hasty passage of laws more difficult.  One suggestion that I rather like is an elected antilegislative body, whose members are only empowered to send repeals to the President's desk for signature or veto, and perhaps on less than a majority vote.  Another is to require at least a 60% supermajority to pass a law.