Monthly Archives: July 2015

Evidence-Based Decision-Making

There are a lot of meaningless phrases that make the rounds. One of these that wannabe intelligent people pass around to make themselves seem rational is “evidence-based decision making.” This phrase is often used in politics and public policy, where one side will use it to describe the adoption of policies they like (with the implication that the other side is not using evidence-based decision making). It is also contrasted with ideological decision-making.

Now, I am not against using evidence to inform a decision; using evidence is a good thing. As a stand-alone, face-value concept it is unobjectionable, how can anybody be against evidence? But this unobjectableness is the reason for its meaninglessness.

Everybody in politics and public policy uses ‘evidence’ to make decisions. In the days of yore, the autocratic king may occasionally have indulged himself in the occasional bout of thoughtless whimsy, but in today’s bureaucratic world, no policy decision is made without rounds upon rounds of evidence, discussion, writing, revision, etc. Even the autocratic king’s bouts of whimsy were usually based on evidence and fact. “People over six feet are tall” and “an army of tall people amuses me” are both evidence-based facts that can be used to inform policy. The other may not be interpreting evidence the same way as you, they may impute differing levels of legitimacy to certain forms or instances of evidence than you, and they may be using the evidence to pursue different values than you, but they are using evidence.

Using the phrase evidence-based decision making in a modern public policy context is as meaningless as going around saying a four-sided square when discussing geometry. But meaningless phrases are commonplace, the context of the phrase reveals a more important and deep stupidity.

Any time someone uses the phrase with any intent at creating even the tiniest amount of semantic meaning, the semantic meaning is (either implicitly or explicitly) evidence-based as compared to ideological (or opinion-based, which is the same thing), where the ideological is irrational (and therefore wrong). Nobody ever points out the idiocy of this semantic meaning.

Evidence doesn’t make decisions. Evidence is neutral. Evidence is fact and fact is meaningless by itself. Is is not ought.

To make a trite example, the fact that you need to breathe oxygen or you die has absolutely no decision-making implications standing on its own. Only when you create a value system around breathing does the need to breathe factor into decision-making. The suicide and the astronaut will both make entirely different evidence-based decisions on that particular fact.

To make a decisions requires a value-system: the value system under which the decision is being made is the most important part of any decision-making. The value system will create a goal. Reason will create a plan to achieve a goal. Evidence upon which to reason is the final and least important part of a decision-making architecture.

Another word for value-system is ideology. All public-policy decisions are first and foremost ideological. Anybody who thinks they aren’t is so ideologically brainwashed that they are not even aware that they have their own ideology.

To call attention to the fact you use or favour evidence-based decision making reveals either:

1) a very weak decision-making architecture if using evidence is the best you can say about it,
2) the shallowness of your own thinking, if the facts you use are the deepest you can delve in your own decision-making architecture,
3) ideological blindness, if you can not even see that you are making decisions under a value system,

or, it might reveal something more sinister:

4) the purposeful distortion of language to fool the gullible into accepting a particular ideological as reality.

Practically speaking, the use of the phrase ‘evidence-based decision making’ as related to public policy is usually a signal you can safely ignore the surrounding verbiage as wasteful rhetoric, empty-headed stupidity, and/or attempted manipulation. Rarely will it be used in any commentary on public policy that is worth listening to.

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Note: Evidence-based decision-making started out as a concept for medical research and practice. In the medical context, it is a reasonable approach and something reasonable to talk about, as the ideology of medicine is mostly firmly established and medical “conflict” (barring corruption) is based around finding the best methods of healing to input into this system.

Lightning Round – 2015/07/29

Pessimism not realism.

Dressing better

The GOP is performing its function.
Related: How to really win the Hispanic vote.

A cuckservative round-up.
Related: Defining cuckservative.
Related: Roissy on cuckservatives.
Related: Food for thought on cuckservative.
Related: The term is blowing up.
Related: The difference between cuckservatives and conservakin.
Related: A response to the Daily Cuckservative.
Related: A response to Erick Erickson.
Related: The cuckservative stock is tanking.
Related: Why the weak right is dead wrong.
Related: Response to Ace and Taylor Millard. Vox responds.
Related: 10 signs you might be a cuckservative.
Related: Why cuckservatives cry.
Related: Cuckservative and Reactionary Tree at TNR.
Related: Shit cuckservatives say.

The Cathedral is democracy.

The establishment of an alternative principle of legitimization.

What do you do if demons control the church?

Help Anti-Dem out.

The left eats itself.

The story of Moira Greyland. Related.

Buy or rent and the annexation of American suburbs.

On altruism.

Trade and peace: a story from China.

Historical amnesia.

Keith Stanovich and rationality.

The coordinated narrative.

Mugabe wants white farmers back.

Everette Lee DeGolyer.

White women’s tears.

Colonizing the moon will be cheaper than previously thought.

Rigging academic articles: an anecdote.

The Silicon Valley white-Asian divide.

As Japanese civilization declines.

Why the Islamic State is successful.

What’s Soros doing this month?

Explosions in Malmo, Sweden.
Related: Leftists holding counter-demonstration to right-wing gay parade in Sweden.

Oil won WW2.

Brett Favre singled out for unenthusiastic clapping.

Homosexuals are the pawns, not the enemy.

Meat, sacrifice, and community.

The existential threat to Christianity in the ME.

Hatred of authority is envy, not hatred.
Related: Anecdotes of why men should lead.

Feminist self-loathing.

Semen alters women’s brains.

A husband cannot substitute for a woman friend.

SoBL thinks the open marriage article is fake, as does Roissy.

Psychologists more likely to rate aggressive behaviour by husbands as abusive.

Why is Twitter still employing Randi Harper?

Alpha Male of the Month: Trump.
Related: McCain’s an asshole who’s being out assholed.

GG tactics work against Planned Parenthood.
Related: Gamergate is a model.
Related: Another video of Planned Parenthood haggling over dead baby parts.
Related: The 41 companies that funded Planned Parenthood. Related.

Another study of nature beating nurture.

First nations.

Greece is an economic success (for being a non-market economy).

The wages of socialism: coming soon to a country near you.

At Iowa “anti-bullying” conference teaches middle- schoolers about anal sex.

IRS used donor list to target conservatives.

MPAA plans to use Today Show and Fox to smear Google.

PayPal tries to destroy small business for selling Confederate flags.

Every Salon/Alternet headline about libertarians for 3 years.

A general factor of correctness.

Leftist legal fictions and the atheists who love them.

Freedom on the centralized web.

White Canadians in public housing moved after death threats from immigrants.

H/T: SDA, NBS, SSC, RPR

Guest Post – A Tribute to Russell Moore

Today we have a guest post regarding this article from Russell Moore from a John Doe:

This month the Christians everywhere reel over the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex “marriage.” At the same time, one of the issues hurting many is the excessive celebration performed by President Obama even in the aftermath of this perverted approval of sodomy. This raises the question of what we as Christians ought to think about the American Flag, given the fact that many of us are from the United States.

The flag of my home country will now forever be associated with state approval of tax-exempt orgies, and I’m deeply conflicted about that. The flag represents home for me. I love Christ, church, and family more than America, but that’s about it. Even so, that flag makes me wince—even though I’m the descendant of WWII veterans.

Some would say that the American Flag is simply about heritage, not about sodomy. Many pastors fly the American flag on their property even though they believe that the country is hopelessly irredeemable.

Defenders of the flag would point out that the United States flag has not always been like this. At one point it was, after all, considered the most Christian nation on earth. The difference is, though, that the United States has plummeted into a wicked system of Progressivism (though fortunately late in the game). The United States of America is not simply about limited government and individual liberty; the United States of America is constitutionally committed to the continuation, with protections of law, to a great evil. The moral enormity of the sodomy/baby-killing/divorce/secularism/income-tax-is-theft/let’s-bomb-countries-on-the-other-side-of-the-planet question is one still viscerally felt today, especially by those who grew up in families that were broken by such policies.

The gospel speaks to this. The idea of a human being simply approving of another human being’s degeneracy is abhorrent in a Christian view of morality. That should hardly need to be said these days, though it does, given the modern-day perverted enterprises of gay cocaine orgies all over the world. In the Scriptures, humanity is told to engage in life long monogamous relationships. We are told that it is an abomination for man to lie with man  (Lev. 20:13). The current system of progressivism is built off of things the Scriptures condemn as wicked: sodomy (Rom 1:26-27), giving women authority (1 Tim. 2:12), the breaking up of families, and on and on.

In order to prop up this system, a system that benefited the Progressivism of urban SWPLs, American religion has to carefully weave a counter-biblical theology that could justify it (the biblically ridiculous “hate the sin, love the sinner” concept, for instance). In so doing, this form of American folk religion is outside of the global and historic teachings of the Christian church. The reactionaries were right—and they were right not because they were on the right side of history but because they were on the right side of God.

Even beyond that, though, the Flag has taken on yet another contextual meaning in the years since. The American Flag is the emblem of Marxist defiance to Western Civilization, of the elitist opposition to White existence, and of the Zionist terrorism of Israel and the Globalists of our all too recent, all too awful history.

White Christians ought to think about what that flag says to our children, especially considering that most of them will be brainwashed in government run schools. The gospel frees us from scrapping for our “heritage” at the expense of others. As those in Christ, this descendant of American veterans has more in common with a Nigerian Christian than I do with some New York atheist who knows how to signal his liberalism.

None of us is free from a sketchy background, and none of our backgrounds is wholly evil. The blood of Jesus has ransomed us all “from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers” (1 Pet. 1:18), whether your forefathers were Communists, Americans, Vikings, or whatever. We can give gratitude for where we’ve come from, without perpetuating symbols or pretend egalitarianism with others.

The Apostle Paul says that we should not prize our freedom to the point of destroying those for whom Christ died. We should instead “pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Rom. 14:19). The American Flag may mean many things, but with those things it represents defiance against common sense and against natural order. The symbol was used to abort the little brothers and sisters of Jesus, to bomb little kids in Vietnam, Germany, Japan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Atlanta, to terrorize Eastern Orthodox preachers of the gospel and their families by threatening to vaporize their churches with nuclear weapons.

That sort of symbolism is out of step with the justice of Jesus Christ. The cross and the American flag cannot co-exist without one vaporizing the other. White Christians, let’s listen to our common sense. Let’s care not just about our own history, but also about our future. In Christ, we were slaves in Egypt—and as part of the Body of Christ we are all slaves too in the United States. Let’s watch our hearts, pray for wisdom, work for justice, love our neighbors. Let’s take down that flag.

5 Reasons Gun Owners Should Join the NRA

Luke McKinney at Cracked has an(other) idiotic article lacking that substitutes snark and insult for anything resembling logic or reason over at Cracked on why we should hate the NRA (Spoiler alert: Because they think you should be free to own a gun). So, I’m going to reply to his distortions:

#5. They’re Paid By Gun Manufacturers

In 2013, Business Insider reported that less than half of the NRA’s revenue came from membership dues and fees …

Which means almost half of its funds come from member dues and fees (it has 5 million members according to wiki). Compared to other lobbying groups, that’s pretty high. For example, the AMA (the second largest lobbying group next the the Chamber of Commerce) supposedly represents physicians. It gets only 16% of its fees from dues.

In this section, Luke throws out a bunch of random unrelated trivia, but never gives any reason why they matter. Why is it bad that the NRA is half-funded by the industry? Luke never explains, he just says it is. In fact, I’m happy that the gun companies support their customers and their freedoms.

Also, notice how Luke links an article saying the NRA engages in illegal activities, when the article’s big findings (after the updates are taken into account) were that a website page was accidentally improperly routed, that taxes were properly paid but incompletely documented, and that a single box was left unchecked on tax papers (not effecting taxes paid).

So, Luke McKinney believes that if your webmaster screws up a link and you screw up your tax forms, nobody should ever associate with you again. I’ve done both, you all must never read my blog again.

#4. They’re Allowed To Casually Talk About Shooting People

Ted Nugent made a joke about shooting senators, therefore the NRA is evil. (That is literally his argument).

Cracked made multiple jokes about beating retarded children, therefore Cracked is evil. If Luke McKinney has any decency at all he will quit writing for Cracked. Or does Luke support beating developmentally disabled children?

#3. NRA Board Members Are All Kinds Of Scary

According to McKinney, because one NRA member argues for school paddlings you should leave the NRA. Maybe you don’t agree with school paddlings, but it is a normal practice and is hardly that frightening to support. 26% of the US supports school corporal punishment: so Luke literally thinks a quarter of the US is so evil you should not interact with them.

Fellow board member Don Young, a congressman from Alaska, described the BP Gulf oil spill as a “natural phenomena,”

What he actually said, right where Luke links is:

Young said: “This is not an environmental disaster, and I will say that again and again because it is a national phenomena. Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries, will continue to do it. During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilt from ships, and no natural catastrophe. … We will lose some birds, we will lose some fixed sealife, but overall it will recover.”

If you are not retarded (sorry Luke) you can easily read, even in that conveniently clipped quote, that it is referring to oil spilling into the sea is a natural phenomena, not that the BP spill itself was.

Then Luke just flat out lies:

and thinks wolves would be a great solution to the homelessness problem.

Actually, if you read the article Luke linked, you can see that he wasn’t talking about solving the homeless problem at all. He was talking about how wolves are dangerous and how urbanites who never had to deal with the danger of wolves are making laws to prevent rural folk from protecting themselves. Of course, Luke, being an ignorant urbanite, has no idea about the danger of wolves in rural areas where their aren’t a lot of police and where animal control is far away. It almost seems like he supports wolves killing people.

So, if you are one of the quarter of the US who support paddling in schools and believe that rural people don’t deserve to get eaten by wolves, you are so scary that everyone should disassociate from you.

#2. They’re Pretty Racist

The NRA’s 2015 annual meeting featured a presentation on how whole swathes of American cities had been turned into Muslim “no-go zones,”

It seems Luke McKinney thinks Muslims are a race. I think that makes him a racist, not to mention just plain ignorant of biology, sociology, and religion.

“Demographically symbolic” is a masterpiece. Nine syllables that would be less obvious if he’d just screamed, “Racism sexism racism!” It’s a code word, but not a disguised code word;

He links to this:

Eight failed years of one demographically symbolic president is enough. Eight years of the Obama-Clinton regime has sent our nation into a tailspin of moral decay, deceit and destruction.

I guess Luke McKinney thinks the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein is racist for thinking of the emotional symbolism of Obama’s victory, or Habib Aruna for thinking of the sybolism of an African American winning resoundingly twice, or NBC news, or CTV news, etc. The symbolism of the first African American winning the presidency was a huge topic in 2008. I guess Luke’s ignorant of recent political history as well.

He went on to blame the president for all problems, to describe how guns solve all problems, and to explain, “For that right, NRA will always fight and, believe me, the fight is coming.” Of course, there’s no possible problem with the leader of an armed group blaming a single named individual for all the problems in the world in public and insisting “the fight is coming.” Not even in a country where a Cracked writer can be placed on the No-Fly list for writing a satirical article. Right now the only difference between NRA talks and Al-Qaeda videos is production value.

Do I honestly need to explain how retarded this is?

Maybe I do. Luke believes that using a fighting metaphor to describe a political battle (oh no, a war metaphor, I must be Hitler) is exactly equivalent to to literally talking about blowing thousands of other people, and yourselves, up. (But only when the evil NRA does it).

I am sure Luke has never used a war metaphor before.

#1. They Blame Victims (And Everything Else)

The NRA makes the very accurate point that if you vote against people’s ability to defend themselves they won’t have the ability to defend themselves. This makes them evil (somehow, he doesn’t exactly explain how).

After Sandy Hook, Wayne LaPierre blamed music videos, movies, video games — they’re on course to blame every object in existence for shootings except for objects that actually shoot. Blaming everything except the gun is their only job, and the angrier it makes people, the better it works.

Luke McKinney believes guns are magical objects that have their own agency and willfully kill people. People who don’t share this belief are implied to be evil (for some unexplained reason).

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Finally, though, through all the distortions Luke finally gets to his real point:

Their sole function is to prevent rational debate…They’ve buried the country under so much bullshit that even intelligent Americans start talking about individual rights and waiting periods, as if there was any sane sequence of words that ends with a peacetime civilian holding an AR-15

He wants to limit any discussion of guns to “rational debate” and by “rational debate” he means people who agree with him that guns he doesn’t like should be banned being able to talk and everybody else should shut up. He wants to control the discussion and he wants to limit your ability for self-defence. And he is willing to distort the truth and slander others to do so.

The whole point of his rambling, illogical, unconnected anti-NRA rant was that he hates the fact that civilians can own a semi-automatic weapon. He wants to take them away from you.

Join the NRA so he can’t.

Join the NRA: where business and citizens work together to protect freedom, where celebrities make jokes, where people don’t believe rural dwellers deserve to be eaten by wolves, where people make and understand common metaphors and use basic communication skills, and where people don’t believe inanimate object have agency.

If you value sanity, join the NRA!

Lightning Round – 2015/07/22

How to be the greatest.
Related: The three ingredients for making a change.

Social justice and ideological hijackings.
Related: The 8 steps of an SJW attack.
Related: Social justice is lucrative.
Related: A successful SJW attack.
Related: SJW-weaponized law.
Related: @Heartiste silenced by SJWs.

About exit.

Embrace your extremists.

Democracy and the clerical class.

Going home.

Racial kryptonite.

I don’t care about black people.

Annex Mexico.
Related: Mexican crime and the border.

No such thing as racism.

Neanderthals, Japanese, and diversity.

Sick of false empathy.

The human operating system.

Relativism.

Frazzled.

Guns, words, and feels.

Land is wary of the Trump enthusiasm.
Related: Trump and the shitlord insurgency.
Related: Manufacturing consent.

Cuckservatives.

State society.

Some history of communists in America.

Reality TV and the difference between men and women.

Welcome to the new America.

A liberal test from Suicide of the West.

Anti-Dem with some anecdotes of a friend.

Disney NRx.

Kicking the Greek can.

CC discovering academia’s role in the Cathedral.

The Benedict Option: the parallel society.

Biomechanics of walking.

City girls are Elaine, not Carrie Bradshaw.

Sexual liberalism consuming itself.

You’re independent; your safety is not our problem.

Weev: Misogyny and Ellen Pao.

Alcohol and casual sex, and some other stuff.

Feminism is being happy your wife is cucking you.

UK: Marriage and children are legal slavery.

Feminist misses the catcalls.

Planned Parenthood sells victims body parts. Yum.

World War V starts rolling.

Women couldn’t own property.

 Beware the grasshoppers.

Hate crime and free speech.

The density divide.

Looks like Gawker’s in trouble. Good. Related.
Related: The 10 most unpleasant Gawker writers.
Related: Gawker lets two people go.

Democrat apologizes for saying ‘all lives matter’.

A brainstorm with Wright is upcoming.

The prosecution of Dinesh D’Souza.

The NYT lies (surprising).

No to nets and meds, yes to Mercedes and private jets.

The falling sun. Heh.

5 hours of TV a day.

Stuff on WW2 Japan military training.

Anti-Chinese sentiment growing in Vancouver.

Canada Green Party for population replacement.

H/T: NBS, Isegoria, TRP, SDA

Hail the Donald!

Land is wary of the Trump enthusiasm from some of the NRx crowd, and rightfully so, we can’t become demotist around here. Being one who occasionally joins in on the Trump enthusiasm, I thought I’d respond. I should note that I’m Canadian and can’t vote in the US and that I wouldn’t vote even if I could, but here’s why NRx should support Trump.

Before I begin, Trump won’t win and even if he does, not much will change (except maybe the wall). No matter how popular Trump becomes, he won’t win the presidency. I doubt he’ll even win the Republican primary. There is no way the Cathedral will let him win; they will do everything in their power to destroy him, and it will work. If, by some miracle, their efforts fail, Trump will lose against the bureaucracy and if he manages to get past the bureaucracy, the Supreme Court will shut him down. Nothing real will change (except maybe the wall). Whatever minor changes he gets through will be reversed a decade later.

#1: lulz: Everybody worth hating hates Trump. Lapping up their tears as he succeeds beyond what anybody expected is a worthwhile endeavour in its own right. There are two things that makes me consider voting and liberal tears is the second (gun freedom is the first). Sure voting means nothing, but it sure is fun to watch liberals suffer when their candidate loses.

#2: The destruction of the Republican Party. The Republican establishment are afraid and are doing what they can to try to stop him, but Trump speaks for the base. By trying to destroy him the GOP will destroy itself. If Trump somehow wins the nomination, the establishment will have suffered a huge blow and maybe the base can use it to clean house and heighten the ideological conflict. But in the more likely event the GOP rigs things against Trump (as they did with Ron Paul) and Trump loses, the GOP’s credibility will be destroyed. How many libertarians were alienated by the GOP’s treatment of Ron Paul? (How much did his treatment do to drive some to NRx?) And he was just a small side candidate. How fully will the base be alienated when the GOP destroys Trump? Unless Trump pussies out (and he does not seem the type to do so), Trump’s run could spark a bloodbath in the GOP no matter what the result. One of NRx’s goals is to get conservatives to realize that the GOP is no more than the controlled opposition who exist to lose and Trump could be a catalyst for endarkenment.

#3: Immigration. Immigration is the issue all the elites try to suppress. Trump is bringing it to the forefront and the people are responding. When he gets shut down and it is further drilled in that their elites hate them, how much endarkenment will that engender among the masses?

#4: Flowing from this: the truth of democracy. If the Trump train starts chugging for real: the Cathedral will bring all the rigging, all the slandering, all the viciousness, all the lawfare, etc. it can against Trump and his supporters and he will almost inevitably lose. How many of his supporters will realize how much of a sham democracy is as this occurs? How many people will people will come to understand the Cathedral and its ways through this?

#5: The Wall. If against all odds Trump wins, the wall will go up. There is no way I could see him back down from it, as the wall is his campaign, and I can’t see anybody who will be able to bring a clear enough threat against him to stop him. Once the wall is up, bureaucratic self-preservation will keep it up.  The wall is good because collapse is coming; it is nigh unavoidable. The question is the conditions under which the collapse comes. Living out in Asia, Land may be mostly insulated when the American Empire (and its dependencies: the Commonwealth and the EU) implode, but for those of us who refuse to leave our homeland the on-the-ground conditions when the collapse occurs do matter quite a bit. There are two main issues relevant to collapse: immigration and guns. Guns is obvious: will we have the ability to defend and hold our own when the happening goes down? This issue has mostly been won in the US and is the only real victory conservatives have ever achieved. When the happening occurs, people will inevitably split along tribal lines: when this happens how many of them will there be at war with us? The wall will lessen the number of them and maybe savagery can be prevented or at least mitigated.

#6: The punishment. Trump is both rich enough and bombastic enough to punish those activists attacking him. He’s already suing Univision for $500M and is threatening to sue the Hispanic Media Coalition and NBC for dropping him. Trump has the resources to really bring the heat against those who cave to activists and show that there are consequences for bowing to liberalism.

#7: The fluke. Have you read Caliphate by Tom Kratman? In it, a future-history tells of not-Patrick Buchanan winning the presidency and establishing a dictatorship through manipulation of presidential powers that freezes the decline. While he probably won’t do that, Trump is a wild card. I wouldn’t put much past him if he had the opportunity. If somehow he wins, you never know what could happen. (King Trump, anyone?)

As for the man himself:

Sure, Trump may be clownish, arrogant, and self-aggrandizing, but it’s an honest arrogance. The entire system holds you in contempt and wants to destroy your culture; every wanna-be chekist, SJW, bureaucrat, and politician is arrogant enough to think they should be able to dictate what you think, what you say, what you eat, what guns you can own, what you buy, what you drive, etc. Compared to that contempt, that insufferable, smug, all-consuming arrogance hidden under a thin veil of ‘the greater good’, a bit of honest old-fashioned arrogance is a breath of fresh air. As for clownishness, nothing Trump has done or could do could possibly compare to ‘a thrill up my leg’ and the outright worship everybody bestowed upon Obama 8 years ago. Democratic politics is clownish by its very nature; Trump is the only influential person awake enough to see it.

Sure, it’s hard to tell what is theatre and what is real, but it’s honest theatre. Everybody knows Trump is playing to the audience and he’s not even trying to conceal that he is. Compare that to the democratic theatre we regularly have. The GOP pretending to stand for something, the barely concealed corruption of the iron triangle, the farce of a democracy where Judge Roberts can single-handedly rewrite the law, the delusion we are free when we pay taxes even serfs and slaves of bygone days would think harsh. At least Trump’s show is a fun spectacle, rather than mind-killing, soul-draining drudgery of lies that is our normal politics.

So, however much you hate democracy, however useless you know politics is, however doomed you think we are, you should still agree:

Viva la Trump!

No One Will Help You

Going around is the story of a Democratic activist who encountered diversity on the subway and was culturally enriched with a folding knife. The Federalist goes on some kind of shaming rant of the beta males who watched his encounter with vibrancy, but this is misguided. The better question is why would we expect anyone to help?

The freedom of self-defence has been under full-court attack, particularly by the progressive types of whom Sutherland was a part. If you read his blog and look at the voting record of the man he interned with, Sutherland was in favour of removing people’s ability to protect themselves and others. Why would anyone protect a man who not only is unwilling to protect himself but is dedicated to preventing others from protecting themselves?

Beyond the why, is the how. Contrary to what you see in the movies, fighting off a knife attack is very difficult if you’re unarmed and don’t have training. Davidson has no clue what he’s talking about when he says, “Any two adult men in that subway car could have stopped him, no matter how crazy or strong he was.” Thanks to Democrats like Sutherland, DC has very restrictive concealed carry laws and bans open carry, among other restrictive gun laws.

The only effective means of stopping stopping a knife attacker is practically illegal in Washington, so how exactly was someone supposed to intervene?

Further, the progressive types of Sutherland was a part have been actively trying to remove the ability to prevent these types of attacks from police. Look at what Jim Himes, the Democrat for whom Sutherland interned, has to say on the issue of Ferguson and policing black crime:

One indisputable fact in the United States of America today, and there’s no argument about this, is that the judicial system, from stop and frisk to who gets arrested to what crimes they get charged with to how long they get sentenced to all the way to the application of the death penalty is dramatically discriminatory against our African American population, There’s no argument about that. National data shows that if you’re an 18-year-old African American man arrested with marijuana in your pocket versus a white 18-year-old with marijuana in your pocket you’re treated totally different by the judicial system. The African American community in Ferguson knew that.

Well, we can see what supporting that opinion got Sutherland. Did you know that Jasper Spires may have been high on synthetic marijuana and had been arrested for felony robbery a week earlier, but was released only the Friday before the stabbing? Sometimes, you have to learn the hard way that ideas have consequences; sadly, Sutherland learned the hardest way.

Finally, why would anybody want to intervene to stop a black criminal from violence. Why would anybody volunteer to be the next George Zimmerman? Who wants to be the next Darren Wilson? Why would someone want to have risk having their life destroyed to protect some random stranger?

Did you know that Jim Himes, the person Himes interned for, attended an “I am Trayvon Martin” rally back in 2012?

It seems the demonization of those who protect their neighbours and themselves didn’t turn out too well for Sutherland.

Now, none of this is an accident. There has been a campaign (intentional or not) to get you to stop helping your neighbours so that the atomization of society can continue. As a Democratic operative, Sutherland was on the front lines of this campaign. It’s too bad the atomization worked against him when the time came.

We can’t atomize society and attack those who help others then expect others to help when people are in need. Jesus might help, but we’re not Jesus. A person might help family and friends, but strangers? Probably not. Why would anybody help a random stranger when helping is impossible and will lead to a lynch mob?

Congratulations, you won. No one will help you.

Lightning Round – 2015/07/15

The delta perspective on dating: part 1 and part 2.

How to act when you’re fired.

Monkey politics and political entrepreneurship.
Related: Building an organizational ladder.
Related: Thoughts on creating an antiversity.

It’s time to kill conservatism.

Notes on our war: Never give up.

Status and deviancy.
Related: They stripped marriage of its sacredness.
Related book review: Death of the Family.
Related: Gawker keeping track of who stopped clapping first.
Related: Russia unveils ‘straight flag’.

The difference between a totalitarian and an authoritarian.

Non-discriminatory lending. Read Handle’s comment as well.

They drove you from the cities, now they want to drive you from the suburbs.
Related: The banlieuification of Chicago.
Related: Some history of neighbourhood destruction.

Embracing race.
Related: The praxoleogy of privilege.

Economists fail at basic math on open borders.

The density divide.

Innovation propaganda.

Share your pedoteacher links.

Anti-Dem with some anecdotes of a friend.

Public choice+.

NRx schism.

On the noble lie.

Working for protection from “hostile environment” firings.

Frazzled.

Walmart, the hoodrat hatchery.

The Benedict Option: the parallel society.

What Bonald’s blog is for.

SCOTUS and the love of Jesus, part 2.

Roissy points out the horrors of the Christian adoption scene.

Disrespecting the respectable.
Related: Young, male, and single: The gender imbalance.
Related: Revenge of the lost boys.
Related: Why would someone intervene to prevent a shitlib from being culturally enriched?

The playa’s paradise.

Weev: Misogyny and Ellen Pao.
Related: Pao is gone from Reddit.

UK: Marriage and children are legal slavery.

Sexual liberalism consuming itself.

Marines: Accountability is abuse.

Female singers and the sexual market.

World War V starts rolling.

Crime and IQ negatively linked. Surprising.

How to ruin batgirl.

The social media shaming of Pax Dickinson.

Time for European Jews to find safety in Israel.

Dissecting Politifact’s smear of Trump.

The bias of Wikipedia.

Microsoft fires local and hires global.

The NYT lies (surprising).

A brainstorm with Wright is upcoming.

Planned Parenthood sells baby parts.

Dune: 50 years on.

SCIENCE!: Ice age on the way.

The Greeks surrender to the Euros.

https://twitter.com/StuartJRitchie/status/614003599220322304

H/T: SDA, NBS

Safe, Affordable Housing

Sailer has pointed out that the federal government is trying to use housing vouchers to get poor people out of public housing and bad neighbourhoods and into good neighbourhoods in the suburbs.

This will fail.

I will state what should be obvious, but nobody ever seems to state:

Neighbourhoods aren’t dangerous, neighbourhoods don’t murder people. Building aren’t dangerous, buildings don’t rob people. Homes aren’t dangerous, homes don’t rape people. Look at this picture of the infamous Cabrini Greens:

How many people did those buildings murder? How many drugs did they sell? How many people did they rob? None, because the Cabrini Greens buildings didn’t move, they were inanimate objects.

However convenient a shorthand it might be, neighbourhoods aren’t dangerous, the people in them are. Housing isn’t safe, the people in them make a safe environment.

It is the people in the neighbourhood who make it safe or make it dangerous.

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With that bit of self-evident obvioussness out of the way, it is easy to see why this will fail. When you start moving people to new neighbourhoods, the people stay the same. Because the people make a neighbourhood good or bad, the people moving from a bad neighbourhood will make the new neighbourhood the same as their old one (over time).

You can not use vouchers to make safe neighbourhoods, because the kinds of people who use vouchers are the kinds of people who make neighbourhoods unsafe. The poor, the unemployed, the shiftless, the criminals, the single mothers, the addicted, the drunk, the high time orientated, etc. are the types who receive vouchers, they are also the types who make neighbourhoods unsafe.

Safe, affordable housing is an impossibility, because as soon as you make housing affordable, the type of people who make neighbourhoods unsafe move in. These unsafe people then cleanse the neighbourhood of safe people and the neighbourhood turns becomes just like the ones the people were trying to escape.

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There are two possible exceptions.

The first is discrimination. A neighbourhood can remain safe and affordable if the neighbourhood is allowed to discriminate to keep the safe poor (college students, young married families, large traditional families, struggling entrepreneurs, etc) while keeping the unsafe poor out. The safe poor though, are likely not going to be on vouchers. Vouchers select for the unsafe poor. As well, discrimination is evil, so it can’t be allowed no matter how much it would improve the lives of the safe poor.

The second is dispersal and selection. You could select desirable candidates on an individual basis from the unsafe poor to give vouchers and then then disperse them, no more than one family per a block, in safe neighbourhoods. If the selected individual is not naturally an unsafe person, they could fit into the neighbourhood and be uplifted by it, while not adversely effecting the neighbourhood.

But it’s risky. If the selected family turns out not to be a safe one or if their progeny regresses to the mean, they could start causing trouble, starting a downward spiral that drives safe people out, lowers home prices, and brings unsafe people, turning the neighbourhood into an unsafe one. As well, if the voucher families are not dispersed enough, they could come into contact and feed into each others’ weaknesses and start the downward spiral, even if one family alone might not.

But either way, the second method is, of course, is not going to happen. To select safe individuals and not select unsafe individuals is discrimination and discrimination is evil.

Cultural Evolution Response

Scott has a post where he fails to see the dangers of gay marriage to cultural evolution:

First, he distinguishes between two types of cultural evolution and concludes:

Consider: one Inuit tries the red berries and discovers they make her sick. Out of pure self-interest, she decides not to eat them again, and tells her friends the same. Also out of self-interest, they decide not to eat them; those who think they can get away with eating them anyway are quickly disabused of the notion. The taboo against eating red berries quickly spreads throughout the culture.

Marriage doesn’t seem to work that way. If one person decides not to marry in the usual way, it doesn’t necessarily hurt that person. They might have lots of affairs, and enjoy them. Or they might get gay married, and enjoy that.

Here he misses the obvious: STD’s.

About 1.2 million Americans have HIV; about 658,000 have died.

On gays specifically, one-fifth have it.”Although MSM represent about 4% of the male population in the United States, in 2010, MSM accounted for 78% of new HIV infections among males and 63% of all new infections. MSM accounted for 54% of all people living with HIV infection in 2011, the most recent year these data are available… Since the epidemic began, an estimated 311,087 MSM with an AIDS diagnosis have died, including an estimated 5,380 in 2012.”

About 1.8% of men identify as gay, which would mean that about 2,725,200 men in the US are gay. Over about thirty years, over a tenth of the homosexual population has died of AIDS. Most of that was front-loaded in the 80’s; currently there’s a yearly mortality rate of about 2 in 1000. The only reason this isn’t massively worse is because scientists developed drugs to combat the disease.

The yearly death rate in 1995 before the drugs was about 17 in a 1000. (Assuming gays still accounted for 54% of cases and were 1.8% of the population). By comparison, the death rate due to OD by cocaine addicts is about 4 in a 1000, while the death rate of smokers due to smoking-related disease is about 11 in a 1000. That’s not even including other STD’s, which are also not as deadly/disfiguring as they used to be thanks to modern medicine.

Homosexuality is a huge health risk kept mostly in check by modern medicine.

Not to mention that Scott ignores reproduction entirely.

But beyond that, we can go to the second type, the group selection form of cultural evolution.

So I interpret it as a different claim: a culture that allows gay marriage will, for various reasons, become weak and unsuccessful. Then it will be crushed by other cultures, either militarily, economically, or in a sort of marketplace of ideas where people convert to or assimilate into the other culture because it’s more attractive and successful.

Note that THIS IS REALLY DIFFERENT FROM THE FIRST TYPE OF CULTURAL EVOLUTION. In fact, it might be diametrically opposite. For example, gay sex may be lots of fun – and as people figure this out and tell their friends, it will be positively selected through the first type of cultural evolution. But it might weaken a culture’s Moral Fabric – in which case it will be negatively selected through the second type of cultural evolution.

There is no distinction between the two, which is obvious when he talks here:

How long is a “generation” in cultural evolution? Rome lasted a thousand years, Byzantium another thousand. It took about three hundred years for Christianity to replace paganism in Rome; Enlightenment values have been replacing Christianity for three hundred years already and aren’t nearly done. Any sort of evolutionary process that involves waiting for Rome to fall is a process that will take way longer than human history to come to any sort of conclusion… Communism, which basically took all of the worst ideas in history, combined them together into a package deal, and said “Let’s do all of these at once”, took almost a century to collapse, and still hasn’t collapsed in a couple of places.

These were not static societies; they went through numerous dynasties, governments, wars, coups, splits, expansions, and so on. Cultural evolution never stopped: his ‘generation’ had uncounted evolutions. These civilizations adapt to outside pressures. failure to adapt leads to doom, but having a failing policy then fixing it internally can stop doom before it occurs.

For an example, take Rome in the Punic Wars. They were at a disadvantage because they had no fleet when they started. They adapted by creating a fleet, then eventually won. Had they not created a fleet, it may have been Carthage destroying Rome.

Cultural adaptation is different than genetic adaptation and can not be calculated the same way. Genetic adaptation necessarily happens one generation at a time because genetics can only be transmitted by procreation. Cultural adaptation does not as it is not bound by procreation; there are no generations.

(Not to mention that ‘coming to a conclusion’ would put Scott’s generation as the equivalent of an extinction. How long did it take for the Dodo’s to ‘come to a conclusion?’ As well there is survival bias. Scott is only looking at the major, successful, civilizations.  What of all those city-states Rome conquered or destroyed? Rome was the one that survived; the life of the conquered was probably shorter. But these are tangential to the real error).

Finally, he acknowledges a third type:

Actually, this leaves out a possible third kind of cultural evolution, where cultures try good ideas, learn to like them, and stick with them; or try bad ideas, learn to hate them, and stop… Likewise, there’s a cultural evolution argument that we tried traditional sexuality, that made a lot of people unhappy, and now we’re trying something else. It’s unclear how this is different from the Maoism example in a way that makes jettisoning Maoism good, but jettisoning traditional sexuality bad.

The difference is traditional sexuality is not an idea being tried. Traditional sexuality is (in some form) how every civilization that has been successful has made itself and how our civilization has been for millennia. Traditional society is a healthy dog; Maoism is the bright idea to chop off 2 of its legs and see what happens; gay marriage is removing of one of its testicles and seeing how that works out. The latter might no be as immediately debilitating, but if his other testicle is already gone, he won’t be reproducing.

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For a taste of gay marriage cultural changes, just look at all the effects of other similar evolutions (divorce, acceptable fornication, etc). High bastardry rates, plummeting marriage rates, and a plummeting birth rate. We’ve gotten to the point where simply to keep things running because we’re not having enough children, we import foreigners with different cultures to work for us; foreigners who are gradually replacing us.

That’s cultural evolution in action. White Americans have adopted policies that have made them evolutionary dead ends and will soon be replaced in their own country, after adopting the other peoples’ cultures through multiculturalism.

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Scott put another post up with some responses after I had written this one. It doesn’t address the issues I raise. Also, I know I still have to respond to Scott from about a year back. I have the post half-written, I just never quite finish it.