culture

Religion and reaction.

Fosetti criticizes Bruce Charlton’s claim that there are only three sides: Christianity, Islam and secular Leftism Obviously most Christians are secular leftists, in that they have chucked the Gospel overboard because of all those horribly reactionary bits commanding patriarchy and commanding toleration of all sorts of things that progressives are not supposed to tolerate, and in the process they have demoted Christ the redeemer to Jesus the community organizer. See …

culture

The neg in romance stories

The authors of A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships have surveyed thousands of porn sites and great stinking piles of slash romance fiction. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it. They tell us that the ideal-looking hero of a romance story has “dark hair,” which accents the “white teeth” in his “sensual mouth” curved into a “crooked smile.”. But a …

economics

Deregulation

A lot of people, including pretty much everyone in academia, including supposed libertarians in academia, agree that deregulation has been happening. Everyone agrees that the US banks were “deregulated” – in that a seventeen page law governing their permitted activities was replaced by three thousand pages of laws governing their activities, which three thousand pages were not so much laws, as headings for regulators to title their decisions. It is …

party politics

The reaction to Clint Eastwood’s speech

Every television station, every radio station, every newspaper … Every mainstream blog that mentions the topic is being spammed with suspiciously repetitious comments. An abrupt and coordinated attack, endlessly repeating a single message, is like an army, its behavior showing it is thrown into action by a single command, issued by a single commander. And what is that single message?

politics

Freedom in Russia and the US.

Observe that Brandaun Raub was arrested for calling for the imminent start of Civil War 2, whereas Pussy Riot committed numerous acts of subversion, desecration and obscenity in their own venues without encountering any response, before they were arrested for desecrating someone else’s altar in someone else’s venue. So we are moving from the position that subversion in the US is likely to lose you your job, because your employer …

economics

Decline of the west

According to official statistics, living standards are rising, inflation is low, and unemployment is falling. If living standards are rising, why are people eating less meat and buying fewer cars? [In the comments Bill makes a telling rebuttal:  That people are eating less meat and buying fewer cars because of increasing inequality accurately reported by the official statistics: that the decline in equality renders official statistics compatible with consumption statistics …

culture

Legitimate rape

Todd is deep trouble for using the phrase “legitimate rape”, for implying that a lot of rapes are not legitimate – implying that a lot of rape allegations are false rape allegations, or the post hoc reinterpretation of profoundly ambiguous events as rape. Evolutionary psychology predicts that women will be far more upset about consenting to sex with someone that they subsequently deem a creep or a loser, than actually being …

culture

Pussy Riot attacked freedom of speech and freedom of religion

And the longer they stay in jail, the more secure freedom of speech and freedom of religion is in Russia. If you desecrate your own altar in your own venue, that is freedom of speech and freedom of religion. If you desecrate someone else’s altar in someone else’s venue, you are suppressing their freedom of religion, and, in that an altar is symbolic speech, you are silencing their speech.