Elusive Wapiti Classic #1,Part 1, – Destuction of the Family – Feminism and Communism

The next two posts are in conjunction with the April 25, 2011 post:
<a href=”http://conancimmerian.blogspot.com/2011/04/communism-through-institutions.html”>Communism Through The Institutions
Great video of former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov</a>

Part 2 is below this post for a more traditional/readable continuation.

Original here: <a href=”http://elusivewapiti.blogspot.com/2008/03/evils-of-feminism-part-v.html”>LINK</a&gt;

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Feminism Destroys Family and Society–Intentionally

<center><i><b>
“Most Americans do not realize that they, through their institutions, are being led by social revolutionaries who think in terms of the continuing destruction of the existing social order in order to create a new one”
</i></b> [4]</center>

In <a href = http://elusivewapiti.blogspot.com/2007/12/evils-of-feminism.html>previous installments</a>, I’ve discussed how feminism devalues women, causes them to be sexually precocious, and leads to cultural <i>hara kiri</i>.  Today, I’ll discuss how feminism, purposefully and with full awareness, aims to destroy the religious- and family-based principles upon which our country and civilization is based, and replace it with its totalitarian matriarchal utopia.  As this post is very long, I’ll post it in two sections.

Some time ago, reader <b>pjanus</b> gently <a href = https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2136312527901126367&postID=2084901249095159579&isPopup=true>rebuffed me</a> for my naivete in thinking that feminists are simply misguided but well-meaning liberals who know not what they do. Well, I’ve done some more thinking and research on the subject, and I concur with him in that, while some feminists, in their zeal for so-called “women’s rights”, fail to appreciate the long-term effects of what they do, the remainder doggedly and intentionally pursue an agenda that is aimed at nothing less than the subsumption of Western and Christian culture.

I will attempt to explain what I found in as brief a manner as possible.  Because it is instructive to know where something came from to know where its going, this post will contain a short history lesson that explains the ideological roots of feminism.  In this task, I ask for your grace…this is ground well-tilled by those far more talented than I, I am not a “women’s studies” major, and I lack the space to delve into these subjects with any considerable depth.  But I will proceed nonetheless, and see where it leads.  Let’s go, shall we?

<b>The Age of Reason</b>

I start my very brief history with the Enlightenment, when man began to reject <a href = http://www.saintswithouthalos.com/n/pcraft.phtml>priestcraft</a&gt; and the theocratic State and used science and his powers of reason to define the world. One primary feature of this event is the decoupling of culture and morality from external sources such as religion.  Man began the process of turning inward and located his compass there, rather than on an Almighty Being, a process probably best exemplified by the rise of the Transcedentalists and the Unitarians in the 1700s and 1800s and the incorporation of their theories into the philosophies of Hegel, Kant, and Marx[4]. As Dreher recently observed, this turn was <a href = http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/02/western-culture-wrecked-this-f.html>doomed to fail</a> as we only now are beginning to fully understand.

This use of humanist reasoning, uninformed by theology, came to a crescendo in Germany in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  We all know what nightmares came of that, both there and elsewhere (such as the USA and USSR).

<b>The Godfather: Karl Marx</b>

Karl Marx thought it all up. His unified, single-factor economic theory of history divides peoples into two classes, sorted by ownership of the means of production. Put short, he dreamt up modern class warfare, in which certain classes of people–in his case, the workers–are <i>a priori</i> good, and others such as the bourgeoisie and capital owners, are evil. His theory of economic organization dictates expropriation from the haves to the have-nots, according to their politically determined need. Marx critiqued society through an economic lens, and he had an intense hatred for Western civilization itself, querying in 1919, “who will save us from Western Civilization?”.[1] He also viewed the family as an instrument of oppression, particularly for the wife who is under the thumb of an oppressive patriarchal male, and advocated for its abolishment in favor of the family of the State.[2]  As one can see, HRC wasn’t the first person to think that raising children “took a village”.

<b>Critical Theory and the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research (ISR)</b>

After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, it became clear that economic Marxism was not yielding the worker’s utopia that Marx envisioned. Thus a group of Marxists got together and created the ISR–the first modern-day ‘think tank’–in 1923, in Frankfurt, Germany.

The ISR’s purpose was and is to translate Marxism from economic into social terms, and enable Marxism to be fully realized. The key tool with which to do this was called “critical theory”, at term which sounds vaguely academic at first blush. In fact, the theory behind “critical theory” is just to criticize. Relentlessly criticize, relentlessly “deconstruct”, and relentlessly discredit social institutions and mores at every opportunity.  With one’s criticism, the aim is to undermine the prevailing order with the most descructive criticism possible without offering an alternative, and the ISR was hard at work doing just that when the NASDP came to power in 1933. In this staunchly anti-Marxist and anti-Semitic environment, the Frankfurt School fled to Columbia University, various positions in the US government, and in Hollywood, where they promptly begain to apply critical theory to American culture. The Frankfurt school would not return to Germany until after the War.

End of Section 1.

Tomorrow: <a href = http://elusivewapiti.blogspot.com/2008/03/evils-of-feminism-part-v_03.html>Gramsci takes the stick from Marx and runs with it…</a></p>

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PART 2 BELOW


Elusive Wapiti Classic #1, Part 2, – Destuction of the Family – Feminism and Communism

Original here: <a href=”http://elusivewapiti.blogspot.com/2008/03/evils-of-feminism-part-v_03.html”>LINK</a&gt;

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<i>Note: This is the second half of a post that argues that feminism aims to destroy the family and the cultural fabric in favor of a new social order.

Read the first section <a href = http://elusivewapiti.blogspot.com/2008/03/evils-of-feminism-part-v.html>here</a></i&gt;.

<b>The Protege: Antonio Gramsci</b>

An Italian, Antonio Gramsci, took Marx’s theories and expanded upon them, creating what we now know as ‘Cultural Marxism’.  He took Marxism’s monolithic bloc of aggreived “workers” and broke them up into several smaller constiuencies, each claiming its own variant of oppression, be it sex, race, economic, blue collar workders, or homosexuals. Each had its own particular axe to grind, each had its own reason to be “critical” of the enveloping culture, and each demanded that the wider culture accede to its demands through accomodation or even publicly funded remuneration. Women, usually the largest group in any human population, became the largest “oppressed” constituency in cultural Marxism, and thus swung the heaviest political weight[4]. Gramsci also coined the term “hegemony”, and set it in the context of a full-scale culture war in which each oppressed group was to buck the hegemony which was seen as keeping each down in a state of servile oppression. Gramsci defines hegemony thus:

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“… Hegemony operates culturally and ideologically through the institutions of civil society which characterises mature liberal-democratic, capitalist societies.  These institutions include education, the family, the church, the mass media, popular culture, etc.”
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In other words, hegemony is the culture.  It is the whole system, both tangible and not. From Marx, we know that Gramsci’s hegemony is just code for all of Western Civilization, particularly Chritianity, and especially the Patriarchy.™  By attacking the hegemony with the weapon of critical theory, Gramsci hoped eventually so discredit the guiding influences of Christianity and traditions of Western law and English common law, so as to be able to supplant them with with his own “anti-hegemony” or “counter hegemony” of “scientific”, atheistic, cultural Marxism.  This would best be accomplished via a “slow march” through the cutural institutions (such as the public schools and the universities), where, like a frog in boiling water, the opposition would not know that they were in danger until it was too late.

To accomplish this clandestine overthrow of the culture, however, Gramscian theory needed a vehicle upon which to perch upon. Heeding the maxim that “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”, the cultural Marxists deliberately targeted the industrialized Western civ family’s center of gravity: women. Recruit women as the change agents; they would become the perfect vector by which Gramscian Marxism would infect the whole of the culture.

<blockquote>

Gramsci hated marriage and the family, the very founding blocks of a civilized society.  To him, marriage was a plot, a conspiracy… to perpetuate an evil system that oppressed women and children.  It was a dangerous institution, characterized by violence and exploitation, the forerunner of fascism and tyranny. Patriarchy served as the main target of the cultural Marxists.  They strove to feminize the family with legions of single and homosexual mothers and ‘fathers’ who would serve to weaken the structure of civilized society [3]
</blockquote>

So we know that the cultural Marxists targeted women, both here and elsewhere (as I document <a href = http://elusivewapiti.blogspot.com/2008/01/folly-of-womens-suffrage.html>in my piece on female suffrage</a>), in an effort to abolish the traditional family and usher in their new world order. They found willing accomplices in feminists, who happily exploited the power that cultural Marxism provided, and later crowed about this merging of feminism with cultural Marxism. To wit: “Marxism and Feminism are one, and that one is Marxism”, “Sexuality is to feminism what work is to Marxism”, “Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism”.[5]

<b>The New Feminist Family: An Import from Bolshevist Russia?</b>

Speaking of socialism and communism, some readers would be surprised to learn that the American family law system, of which no-fault divorce is a prime feature, wasn’t an American invention.  It was imported from Bolshevist Russia early in the last century.  That’s right, the same system that the West defeated in the 1980s lives on in our own culture, rotting us from within in the same way that Communism collapsed under the force its own weight.  Bolsheviks, when they came to power, attacked the Russian family with zeal, pushing for loosened divorce laws, granting ‘consorts’ identical property and status rights as wives, and encouraging free love unfettered by any obligation of one party to the other.  Chaos soon ensued: men and women both lightly entered into temporary unions only to abandon them with zest.  Illegitimate births skyrocketed, and the abortionist was busy.  Both men and women could charge each other alimony, and some women found child support quite profitable as they flitted from wealthy man to wealthy man, being impregnated and enriched by each.  Orphans clogged orphanages, and the Soviet state could not bear the additional fiscal burden of it all.

Indeed some Russians fretted about the corrosive effects of these reforms:

<blockquote>

The opposition to the proposed law seemed to centre around four points: (1) that it would abolish marriage; (2) that it would destroy the family; (3) that it would legalize polygamy and polyandry; (4) that it would ruin the peasants[7].
</blockquote>

Their dire predictions look eerily prescient given how they’ve been realized in the current state of the modern American family.  Marriage is tapering off into oblivion, the traditional family now is outnumbered by non-traditional ones, American culture is one marked by serial polyandry and polygyny and soon may feature legalized polygamy, and the middle- to lower strata of American society are disintegrating into ruin.

But these predictions fell on deaf ears. MacKinnon, and feminist scholars like her, were pushing for Russian-style easy divorce as early as 1947[6].  They found their huckleberry 20 years later in then-governor Ronald Reagan, who signed the nation’s <a href = http://www.dadi.org/bolshvik.htm>first no-fault divorce law</a> in 1969. Marxist feminists rammed through the Wisconsin model of child support across the country–itself modelled on Article 81 of the Russian Family Code–soon after.  These cultural revolutionaries continued to push the Russian model even after it became clear that the 30-year Bolshevik attack on the family threatened total social collapse within the USSR and had produced 7 million fatherless children by 1947[5]. To date, there has been no repudiation of the failed Russian model in the family law system despte the evidence right in front of us.  Instead, it continues to wreak havoc to this day, producing legions of “liberated women” who are “married” to the State and, by 1998, nearly <a href = http://www.fathersloveletter.com/Ministry/statistics.html>25 million children</a> lacked a father in the home.

As a result, we no longer have a family law system that honors the Constitution; it has been wholly assimilated by a Bolshevist-cum-Gramscian Marxist “anti-hegemonic” philosophy specifically designed to destroy the family and create as many people dependent on the State as possible.  Western “hegemonic” legal traditions upon which our society was founded have been turned on their heads.  As I’ve <a href = http://elusivewapiti.blogspot.com/2007/10/justice-system-corrupted-by-leftist.html>blogged before</a>, the justice system is fairly shot through with Marxist ideology in the service of Feminism; now we have the dubiously moral practice of rewarding wrongdoing and penalizing, even enslaving, those who have done no wrong, sometimes based on no evidence at all save one person’s self-interested accuation, all for the goal of eradicating the independent, nuclear family and increasing the influence of the State on its subjects.

The effect of this Russian import has been catastrophic to our social fabric, posing a dire threat to our society’s ability to survive. Divorce, while down slightly from its all time high, consumes nearly 50% of all marriages. Marriage is way down. Cohabiting is way up. Abortion slaughters over 1M fetuses annually. Single motherhood, either by “choice” or by divorce, is skyrocketing.  The fertility rate is sub-replacement; even more so when you subtract illegal aliens from the mix. Crime is rampant. Educational achievement is spiralling downward. And just this week, we <a href = http://www.abajournal.com/news/1_in_100_behind_bars_record_high_us_incarceration_rate/>established an all-time record</a> in incarceration.  This is where our society puts disenfranchised men–and the few women who run afoul of Big Sister–who don’t fit into the Marxist-feminist picture of the State acting as the ultimate husband for the family. The government discourages competition, after all.

Feminists and other Gramscian fellow-travellers know exactly what they’re doing. Their aim is to enlarge the State through weakening the family and other hegemonic institutions. How do we know this? Because their acolytes tell us so:

<blockquote>

“[T]he stronger the ‘counter-hegemonic’ strength of unions and left parties, the stronger the welfare state…  When we argue for ‘decommodifying’ (i.e., taking out of private market provision) such basic human needs as healthcare, childcare, education, and housing, we have in mind a decentralized and more fully accountable welfare state then [sic] exists in Western democracies.”[5]
</blockquote>

The feminist agenda of female “liberation” goes way beyond gender equality.  If that was the case, the feminist movement would have ended decades ago when women achieved legal parity with men.  Rather, their aim is to create a omnipresent, omnipotent, socialized matriarchal government.  To do this, they need to destroy the traditional nuclear family–which has sustained civilizations for millennia–and replace it with a solo, female head-of-household wedded to the State. In other words, a matriarchy, with Big Sister as benefactor. Problem is, in destroying the traditional family, they have threatened the very fabric of society.  If 1940s Russia is any indicator, the new social order will not be self-sustaining.

In this way, feminism intentionally, purposefully acts to destroy the family, which in turn threatens to destroy society. Their agenda is clear to those who bother to look.

<i>Feminism delenda est</i>

References:
[1]: Lind, Bill.  “<a href = http://www.academia.org/lectures/lind1.html>The Origins of Political Correctness</a>”
[2]: Lawson, Dominic.  “<a href=http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-you-can-blame-it-all-on-karl-marx-437043.html>You Can Blame It All On Karl Marx</a>”.  The Independent (UK), 20 Feb 07
[3]: Borst, William.  “<a href = http://www.mindszenty.org/report/2003/mr_0103.pdf>A Nation of Frogs”</a>
[4]: Atkinson, Gerald. “<a href = http://www.freecongress.org/PC_Essays/F_chapter_five.pdf>Radical Feminism and Political Correctness”</a>
[5]: Wood, Bill. <a href = http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings.asp?formmode=view&id=954>Statement before the US House Ways and Means Committee</a>.
[6]: Mohler, Albert. “<a href = http://www.businessreform.com/article.php?articleID=11722>No Fault Divorce–The End of Marriage?</a>”
[7]: “<a href = http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/26jul/russianwoman.htm>The Russian Effort to Abolish Marriage</a>”.  <u>The Atlantic Monthly</u>, July 1926.</p>

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Classic Post: Hawaiian Libertarian – Got Game

From the Hawaiian Libertarian. Reposting the entire original that can be found here:

Hawaiian Libertarian – Got Game

Monday, November 7, 2011
Got Game?

Well, it looks like the “Great Game Debate” has wrapped up over at A Voice for Men. Rather than weigh in on the various points and counter-points made, and throw in my own opinion on who I think “won,” I think I’ll take a different approach, and go over my initial introduction to “GAME” on teh interwebz.

Fair Warning – this one’s gonna be long.

My entire support of this thing referred to as “game” has never been about “teaching guys to get laid” or how to “pick up chicks.” I support the continuous, ongoing discussions of this topic, because it does help many men open their eyes to the realities of how the human mating game works.

Before the advent of our current Brave New World Order, much of what is considered “GAME” was simply advice older men gave to younger men who reached the age where they found themselves suddenly attracted to members of the opposite sex.

Thanks to a generation shaped by sexual revolution, re-defined gender roles, and the pervasive influence of a mass media culture, many males are left clueless about how women think, how women’s sexuality works, and even what masculinity is.

For some, discovering these online discussions in forums and blogs regarding “Game,” they usually have a moment of clarity. The proverbial light bulb that goes off. Understanding and awareness dawn on the formerly befuddled mind.

Suddenly, given the insights gained from studying this theory, many men realize how and why events and relationships in their pasts turned out the way they did, where they went right, and in most importantly, where they went wrong.

One of the first online sources that I encountered Game theory, was the articles written by an author and shooting instructor by the name of John Ross. I found his online archives (that covered a whole range of topics) about the same time I found several obscure “PUA” blogs that discussed this thing called Game. I immediately saw the connection of what Ross was discussing in his articles and what the PUA bloggers like “The Reality Method” were talking about. This was around 2007, a good year before I ever even heard of Roissy in D.C.

Ross was never a self-proclaimed “guru” or “pickup artist.” Just a real guy, who had a Father who steered him in the right direction when he was a teen. He was essentially a “natural.” In none of his writings did he write the word “game” or “pickup artist” or any of the other lingo many of us are all familiar with now. But everything he wrote about was describing the use of “Game theory” applied in real life.

His first article in which he addressed the topic, was based on some advice he was trying to give to a young man in an online forum for gun shooting enthusiasts. The young man had met an attractive girl he wanted to ask her out on a date to take her the shooting range, and he was asking for advice from the forum members on how to go about it. Ross weighed in with his advice, playing the role of advice columnist, in a piece entitled: Women, Teasing, Tests, One-itis, and Hope

Keep in mind, he wrote this in 2003.

If this really is “the girl of your dreams” I have a few suggestions that don’t have to do with what guns to bring, as others have given you good input on that score.

1. Maintain an air of quiet competence. People in general dislike motormouthed know-it-alls but are impressed when they see knowledge and skill at work. This is doubly true when the activity in question has the potential for danger if safety concerns are ignored.

Explain, don’t lecture, and early on say something like “If I see you doing something dangerous I’m going to stop you immediately. You probably won’t, but I’m telling you this now so you won’t get upset if I raise my voice. I don’t much care about your marksmanship today but I care a great deal about safe gun handling.”

Inner game. Confidence. Dominance. Taking the lead. Demonstrating Higher Value.

2. Do not fawn over her. Pretty girls get this so much they lose all interest in the guys who kiss up to them. New mindset: You are LETTING HER join you in something exciting. I hope the invitation was “I’m going shooting this weekend–it’s going to be perfect weather and there’s a great range I use. If you’d like to join me I’ll pick you up at 8:30, if you’ve got something to wear that you won’t cry about if it gets a little dirt on it” (said with a grin.)

The concept of establishing frame. YOUR frame. Note his advice using a “neg,” said with a grin. Cocky humor showing confidence and putting her in the position to qualify herself to you – if she’s interested, she’ll want to let you know that she’s not like all the other girls that would “cry” if they got their clothes dirty.

When she said “yes,” I hope you added “I’m assuming you’re not one of those flaky women who thinks 8:30 means ‘sometime before noon.’ I intend to be at the range by 9:00.”

More dominance. Reinforcing his frame. Showing leadership, and letting her know he has standards.

3. Pack up and quit shooting while she’s still having a good time. Do not wait until her shoulder or hand hurts or she’s tired.

4. After shooting, do not make plans right away to do something else next weekend, no matter how well you think things went. I cannot stress this strongly enough: DO NOT SELL TOO FAR IN ADVANCE. Not even if she rips your clothes off on the ride home. End your first date with her while she’s still wanting more, and don’t be too eager to plan the next one. This holds for future dates as well. And don’t think of them as “dates,” think of them as “I’m doing this and I’ll let you join me if you behave.” New mindset: Welcome to MY world.

Is this being “manipulative” or “putting up a false front” or “supplicating” and being a “pussy beggar?” Nope. All of this advice from Ross essentially boils down to a man developing skills and confidence – aka “inner game.” None of this advice is based on trying to be something that your not to manipulate a woman into dropping her panties because you pulled a fast one on her. It’s about displaying masculine confidence, assurance and social dominance.

5. Be prepared for a test. (Men call this a “shit test,” which is a more accurate term, but from now on I’ll avoid the vulgarism for the sake of Internet decorum.) You may get such a test before you pick her up for the date, a phone call at the last minute telling you her best friend just broke up with her boyfriend and needs consoling, so she has to cancel. It may be an attempt to get you to do something different than what you planned. Do not accept this. Call her on any attempt to change plans. Make it clear such behavior is unacceptable. Be ready to say “Next.”

Man. Too bad John Ross has a day job as a shooting instructor. He could make a fortune holding workshops or selling DVD’s to gullible, hapless guys desperate to get laid.

Pretty girls have a different reality than you or I have. Their reality is that men almost always do whatever they demand. Believe it or not, the women are tired of this. The “test” is a way to cull out the mediocre males and find the ones with backbone. It’s instinctive for women, because it works so immediately and so well. When you pass one test, you will get another, sometimes right away, sometimes later. This usually goes on as long as you remain involved with a woman, but as you keep passing her tests, they become less and less frequent. Be aware of this, and act accordingly.

This was the very first time I ever heard of this thing called a “shit test.” Yet, as soon as I read this, I had that “light bulb” moment. I immediately recognized how this applied to my past interactions (and failures with women in relationships).

6. Whenever you find yourself wondering what to say or how to act, and wanting to avoid screwing up because you think this girl is THE ONE, imagine how you would treat the hottest babe in your zip code–who happens to be your little sister. You’d tease your little sister, right? You’d laugh at her and call her on it every time she tried to get YOU to behave the same way she gets all the other guys to worship her and do her bidding. When she was acting exceptionally princess-like, you’d tell her of your surprise that she’d wear such a tight skirt when it made her ass look so fat, or a hairstyle that made her ears stick out. Then you’d tell her you liked the way her nose wrinkled up when she got mad, and would she bring you a soda from the kitchen? If you don’t think this works, you’ve never tried it.

More advice on how to neg. Note: No mention of wearing amulets, feather boas or eye liner.

7. Don’t get “one-itis.” Talk to EVERY girl that catches your eye. Tease them. Let others come shooting with you on other weekends (if they promise to behave.) Pretty girls have lots of options–it just happens. You can have lots of options, too, but it won’t just happen. You’ll have to see to that yourself.

The final advice – you have to take responsibility for yourself and maintain your state of calm, cool and confident masculinity, and not put a pretty woman up on a pedestal for worship…but tease her and treat her like your kid sister.

I found this stuff fascinating. At that point, in 2007, I had already been “MRA” blogging for a bit, and had fully immersed myself into the subject matter of the divorce industry; the travesty of single mother households and a welfare system that subsidized it; why feminists are sluts and ball busters; the rampant misandry of our system and culture; and all that other MRA topics we are all familiar with.

The MRA blogosphere was my first “Red pill.”

Finding John Ross and a few PUA blogs were the next “red pill” I took.

Ross’ follow up column to that initial advice gave me another “AHA!” moment of clarity, and it marked the moment where I first began to analyze my own life and my own relationship with my wife and began my personal transformation I eventually related in all those comments at Roissy’s blog in 2009.

From Understanding Women & “The Rules” For Men

Judging from my email traffic, a lot of you are absolutely clueless when it comes to dealing with your wives, girlfriends, and women in general. I get more praise for the 7/7/03 column than all the other ones put together, and “Give us more!” is a common refrain. Okay, here goes. It’s Women 101 at John Ross University and class is now in session.

Who knew he could’ve charged these men thousands of dollars by holding a seminar or selling them a DVD set…wait, did we even have DVD’s in 2003? I don’t remember….

Anyhow, his follow up article is so good, I’m reposting it in it’s entirety:

1. Women process (and act on) information completely differently than men. Never forget this. Stop thinking of women as screwed-up men and start realizing that their minds were built from an entirely different blueprint.

Just as a hawk can discern details at distances that a man needs a ten-power scope to see, a woman is many times more capable than a man at reading the emotions of other women. (Women may be equally capable at reading men’s emotions, but have never seen a need to.) Walk into a large party with a woman. You, the man, will see a bunch of people in a room, talking in groups of two to five. You’ll see where the food and bar is, and notice any exceptionally attractive women in the room. That’s it. Your companion, however, will be able to tell you which woman is angry, which one is lonely, which is happy, which is upset, which ones feel self-conscious, which ones are jealous, and (probably) which ones are having affairs and with which men. Your female companion will be able to accurately tell you these things within ten seconds of entering the room.

This ability comes at a price: Women are many times more sensitive than men to emotional pain. Imagine a man whose skin was so sensitive that ordinary contact was painful. Whenever someone shook his hand in greeting or clapped him on the shoulder in congratulations, it would feel to him as if boiling water were being thrown on his flesh. Now turn that disparity in physical sensitivity into emotional sensitivity and you’ll get a good picture of a fundamental difference between men and women.

Men seldom if ever need to know what a group of other women is thinking, so they usually experience a woman’s heightened sensitivity from the negative perspective. They hurt their wives’ feelings without realizing it (just like the handshake in the above hypothetical) and then are baffled when their women are upset with them, often for days or weeks at a time, for seemingly no reason. (I’ll discuss what to do about this later. Keep reading.)

2. Men and women have very different definitions of integrity. Men have integrity to their word, but because of the heightened sensitivity as explained above, women have integrity to their feelings.

Women base their actions on how they feel at the time. This means that if something no longer “feels” right, they won’t do it, period. It infuriates most men when a woman “flakes” on them. (“Flaking” is the term that men who study this sort of thing use to describe when a woman who has eagerly made plans with them doesn’t show up, or calls at the last minute to cancel because her girlfriend needs consoling etc. Roughly speaking, a woman’s tendency to flake is proportional to her options and inversely proportional to her age, although I did meet one 38-year-old single mother of two with this habit.) Understand that the need to be true to one’s feelings is an extremely powerful force with women. Look at the dominant theme in all romance novels: The woman is “swept away” by emotions too powerful to be denied, and has an affair when everyone knows she shouldn’t. Another example is the adage “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Even the former First Lady (according to the Secret Service) regularly threw things (lamps, etc.) at her husband when angry. Can you imagine a man doing this, instead of saying “Next”? The idea is ludicrous.

If you’re a man, you probably do what you’ve agreed to do (help someone move, etc.) because you said you would. However, you wouldn’t go through with your plans to help your acquaintance move if it had suddenly become a felony with a mandatory 10-year prison sentence to do so, would you? Of course not. Ten years in prison trumps a promise to move furniture. Well, that is the kind of aversion that women have to doing things that no longer “feel” right. Later I’ll explain how to make this “integrity to feelings” work to your benefit.

3. Most women are much more rational than most men at the initial meeting. For all of men’s complaints about “screwed-up ‘chick logic’,” it is men who unconsciously fall into a very irrational pattern of behavior when they first meet a new woman that interests them.

Upon meeting an attractive and perhaps interesting woman for the first time, most men behave as if they are thinking about…wait for it…marriage! Hollywood has bombarded us with “love at first sight” stories, but what kind of message does it really send to a woman you’ve just met that you’ve already decided she’s the one? It screams pathetic loser who couldn’t get laid in a women’s prison with a fistful of pardons. “One-itis” is the absolute death knell to any person’s chance with someone new. Women know this. Men, as a rule, don’t.

There’s an old saying that “To meet her handsome prince, a girl has to kiss a lot of frogs.” Given that few American women age well or are financially self-sufficient, this adage is much more appropriate for men aspiring to marriage than it is for women.

4. What women say they want and what they actually do want are two different things. Men need to be keenly aware of this and act accordingly. The crap that women claim they want in the personals ads is exactly the kind of thing that would have the same women running for the nearest exit out of boredom if the men actually provided it.

Women want to feel attraction for someone, and attraction doesn’t come from finding a man who is sensitive, or caring, or likes long walks on the beach, cats, and candlelight dinners, has a college education or a good job. Attraction isn’t a choice. Attraction comes from that little shiver of anticipation of not knowing what’s coming next, of not being able to pigeonhole the man she’s with into any one category, of being just a little bit off-balance and not in total control.

5. Women read things into men’s actions that aren’t there. Accept that, and make it work for you, if possible. This phenomenon probably comes from women’s heightened emotional sensitivity. It may also come from the need many women have for drama (and for some women, chaos) in their lives.

What the above things mean for you, and how to stop screwing up like you’ve been doing:

Dealing with a woman’s heightened sensitivity: When a woman complains about a problem in her life (she will see it as “sharing,” not complaining), never offer a solution to the problem. She doesn’t want to fix it, she wants to relive it, over and over. Show sympathy but suggest that only another woman could truly understand what she’s going through. This acknowledges women’s superior emotional capacity. Depending on how you say it, it may send another unspoken message if the complaining was a test (and it probably was): You’re trying my patience here. I don’t fall for that BS. Watch it.

Integrity to feelings: If you can keep a woman in the state of feeling excited, anxious, off-balance, and emotional when she’s around you, you can pretty much lead her wherever you want. An extreme example of this is the group of attractive young women who did anything they were told by a homely little runt of a man named Charles Manson. I’m not advising that you turn into a sociopath, but it’s kind of fun getting the girl you met this afternoon to slip off her thong during dinner and hand it to you. Learning how to keep a woman’s emotional state at the desired level takes a lot of practice and experimenting (which is fun) and can’t be described in a one-page column, but here’s a start: Women are attracted to Mystery, Uncertainty (not the same thing), Confidence and Arrogance when combined with humor, and believe it or not, Indifference. Observe the desirable women you know that are obsessed with their boyfriends and you will see that the boyfriends invariably exhibit these qualities, irrespective of whether they are decent guys or total jerks.

Gifts: Gifts can be good at eliciting emotions and even smoothing the rough spots, but don’t make the mistake of giving the wrong kind. You’ll go broke and not accomplish what you intended. Since women’s emotions are so powerful, realize that all gifts to women have a soothing effect and “goodwill time frame” that is proportional to the emotion evoked. This has nothing to do with the value or utility of the gift, believe me. Whether you’re in the early stages of a relationship or have been married ten years, never give expensive gifts, agree to extensive home remodeling that you don’t particularly want, expensive trips, etc. in the hope that it will improve her feelings for you. If you do, you’ll be paying for the expenditure long after your girlfriend or wife has stopped smiling at you for what you did. Instead, give little nothing gifts like a funny card, or a stuffed animal holding flowers, and say “I was thinking of you today.” Do this at unexpected times. A week later (or maybe even the next day), the $12 stuffed Dalmatian with the heart-shaped spots will be forgotten, and your woman’s attitude will probably (and understandably) be “What have you done for me lately?” But guess what? The same thing will happen a week after you agree to pay for her eight-year-old’s private school tuition, which is a $120,000 tab over ten years. You do the math. The exception to this rule is if you decide to give an expensive, useful gift to a woman who needs it and who has been exceptionally good to you already. Few men do this. Men usually give presents, take women to expensive restaurants, etc. in the hope that the recipient will be grateful. THIS DOES NOT WORK. Expensive gifts should always be unexpected rewards. They should never be attempted inducements.

Testing: Reread my 7/7 column’s comments on tests. Remember that testing will continue until one of you dies. Even if you break up, she will probably test you if an opportunity presents itself. Plan for this accordingly.

Flaking: The younger and hotter the girl, the greater the chance she will flake. Hotties and flaking are like alcoholics and drinking: If they can, they probably will. The only way to completely prevent an alcoholic from drinking or a hottie from flaking it is to create an environment where it cannot occur, like sending the alcoholic to live in the Saudi desert. To prevent flaking, only offer an activity if it is something you can do right now. Get her to do something fun and exciting with you right at that moment. If she demurs, end the conversation as quickly as possible and eject–don’t coerce. When she stops you from leaving and says to call her so you can make plans, don’t believe her, and call her on it. Tell her you like talking to live people, not voicemail. Tell her that maybe you’ll offer something else if you run into her again. Unspoken message: Seize the day.

What if you absolutely have to plan a “date” in advance with someone you suspect may flake on you? When you make the plans, give the girl something specific to do, like to be sure she’s wearing a silk scarf around her waist when you pick her up. Don’t tell her why, but make sure she realizes that she has to do it, or you’ll turn around and leave if she opens the door and isn’t wearing the scarf. She will spend all her time before the date wondering about this, selecting the perfect scarf, etc. She’ll be caught up in the mystery, drama, and anticipation (women love these things) and she won’t be thinking that “going on this date doesn’t feel right anymore.”

Initial meetings: Follow the three second rule. You’ve got three seconds from the time you first notice a desirable woman to the time you say something to her. If you take longer than that, cross her off the list and move on, because she’s crossed you off her list of possibles. Never work up your courage to talk to a girl that you’ve been looking at across the room for ten minutes. Women hate this. And for God’s sake, never use some service to track down the girl you lusted after in high school or college. This is called stalking, and unless you graduated within the past 6 months, chances are she now looks nothing like the goddess you worshipped from afar. There are better women who don’t have any bad preconceptions about you as close as the nearest Starbucks, Borders, Safeway, or QuikTrip. Unless you live in a remote area, pretty girls are everywhere. Always operate from a theory of abundance. There are more available women in your area than you could ever meet, but they’re not going to come looking for you. Get out and chat up as many of them as possible. Most will turn out to be frogs. Expect it. (And realize your high school dream girl that you were thinking about tracking down is probably a frog.) You won’t find a princess by convincing yourself that the one girl you’ve met in the last month is one. Meeting and dating lots of women gives you a much more accurate perspective and has the added benefit of making you more attractive to women, not less.

Dating multiple women: If you don’t want a woman to think of herself as your one and only girlfriend, don’t do things that would make her think that way. Don’t call her every day. Don’t see her three or four times a week. Be up front, and say “I think too many people get into exclusive relationships far too quickly, and it’s not healthy. I wouldn’t even consider having an exclusive relationship with someone I’d known less than six months.” Most people, and women are no exception, will accept most anything if it is not a surprise. Don’t lie and sneak around. If you see other women and she has a problem with this when she’s only recently met you, she is NOT the one. Next.

Enjoy women for what they are, and don’t imagine them to be something they aren’t. It may sound harsh or negative, but real women are seldom like what we see in movies written by male screenwriters or read about in novels written by male authors. The cute waitress where you eat lunch may visually remind you of Meg Ryan (or whoever) in the movie where she played a waitress, but don’t for one second imagine the real-life waitress to be as intelligent or interesting as the writers who gave Meg her lines. Flirt with the waitress and let her presence make your lunch more pleasant, but don’t start going there every day and turn her into some fantasy of yours (“One-itis”). At best, you’ll waste a bunch of better opportunities mooning around her at lunchtime, while she smiles at you but otherwise blows you off. At worst, she’ll eventually accept your advances, and (since you were fixated on only her and had no other women to compare her to) you’ll end up married before you figure out that aside from being nice to look at (for now), there isn’t much else you really enjoy about her.

Don’t be ordinary. Talk about your job, school, hobbies, etc? Forget it! If she launches into the same old questions, accuse her of husband-hunting, and tell her you’re not ready for that. Be teasing and mysterious. Never give a straight answer unless it’s “No.” Women will complain that they “can never figure you out and it’s driving them crazy.” This is evidence that you are doing the right things.

Spank her. Spank her bottom lightly when she does something you don’t like. Spank her harder when she does something good. I discovered this years ago and the worst results I’ve ever gotten were neutral. The best were volcanic. (I don’t do this unless I know at least her first name, but that’s just me–it’s probably not necessary.)

When in doubt, tease. Keep the “Bratty Sister Frame” firmly in your mind (see 7/7 column). Call her on her girl-like behavior. If she mentions modeling, say, “Oh, you mean like a hand model?” Tell her that her long fingers remind you of E.T. If she’s cute but her clothes are odd-looking to your eye, ask her if she got dressed in the dark. You get the idea.

Sex in long term relationships: If a good long-term sex life with one woman is important to you, never get into a committed relationship (such as marriage) with a slender woman unless she is genetically slender. 200-lb. women who have always been heavy are usually comfortable with themselves and have good sex drives. Former 125-lb. hotties that gain 75 pounds after saying “I do” often lose all interest in sex and are a very bad bet for the long haul. I know dozens of men who found this out the hard way. Conversely, no man I know with a fat partner who has always been fat (I actually prefer the word “plush”) is dissatisfied with his wife or girlfriend’s level of desire. The old admonition about taking a long look at the mother before proposing is sound advice.

If you want to marry a rich girl: Rich women are no different than other women in that they are turned on by a man’s passion for his work. Keep in mind that not just any kind of work qualifies. Women are attracted to artists, especially musicians. Rock stars don’t get just high school groupies, they get rich actresses like Pamela Anderson and rich supermodels like Rachel Hunter and Paulina Porizkova. Singers in local bands do equally well on a smaller level. Women (including rich ones) go for other passionate artists such as actors, dancers, painters, and sculptors.* If you are a passionate artist, you’re a good bet to snag a rich girl, who will likely be happy to support you and your passion. If you go this route, keep the rich girl interested by pursuing your passion WITHOUT going through all her money! Live comfortably but don’t start to believe your own bullshit, getting her to fund your big (and inevitably money-losing) dreams of grandeur. NEVER let her dip into principal. If you do, be prepared to be thrown out on your ear. Any successful investment professional can tell you horror stories about rich women clients with artist husbands who cooked the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Maybe this will hold you clueless guys for a while. More later.

Man, he wrote this in 2003. As far as I can tell from reading all of his other articles, Ross didn’t attend PUA seminars, buy Mystery’s book or subscribe to David DeAngelo’s newsletter. Yet every last piece of advice he gives here jibes with most of what we commonly call “Game Theory.” Note: no mention of the words hypergamy or social dominance or manipulation. It’s just straight up advice, the kind that used to be transmitted from older males to younger males.

As I later found out, Ross got his game advice the old fashioned way: from his Father.

I talked to Dad about how this girl made me feel when I looked at her. He smiled knowingly.

“Son, she probably won’t look that way for long. She might, but don’t count on it. Enjoy looking at her for now. But here’s some advice: If you want to do more than just look at her, then don’t ever talk about her good looks or tell her she’s beautiful.”

“Why not?”

“Because everyone else is always doing that, and it gets old. Girls want a challenge, just like boys do. They don’t want the same old compliments, they want a challenge.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When you play shortstop, do you want the boys on the other team to all strike out every time? No, that would be boring. You want them to hit the ball to you, so you can throw them out at first base. Maybe you’ll bobble the ball, and the batter will get on base, but you want the chance to make a good play, right? If you tell a pretty girl she’s pretty, you’re not hitting the ball to her. You’re not giving her any challenge at all. You aren’t in the game. Get in the game. Hit the ball to her. Give her a challenge.”

“How do I do that?” Dad grinned at me when he heard this.

“Tease her about something. Say something about her that makes her jaw drop, and then act a little surprised at her reaction. But always be calm. Don’t ever be mean, but give her brain a little tweak, see how she reacts, and then do it again. You’re good at thinking on your feet. When a fellow sees a girl he likes, he plays with her, only not with a bat and a baseball glove, but with words and body language and facial expressions. Do that with this Jenny girl. And never back down, no matter what happens. Never break eye contact with her while the two of you are talking—let her be the one to look away. Think about it.” He saw my face register some comprehension, and he added another thought. “Don’t worry so much about her. Make sure you have fun. Figure out a way to tease her. And have fun.”

Many critics of “game” call “negs” and “cocky/funny banter” as manipulative, wrong, evil, dishonest, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Many people who seem to understand and support game are often troubled about using the term “GAME” itself, making it sound un-serious, or trivial, or whatever other criticisms they may use because they really just don’t get what it’s all about.

It IS a Game.

Like any other game, if you know the rules, know how it’s played, and you can discern the many variations and permutations that can arise during the course of the game, you will certainly enjoy playing the game. Even if you end up losing, a well played game can be enjoyed despite coming up short.

Unfortunately, some people simply can’t grasp the strategies and tactics, they never understand the subtle nuances of the action, and they simply write it all off as a waste of time. Others try to play, but don’t have the patience or self-awareness or humility necessary to learn from initial failure. Game is not for everyone.

But the entire point of blogging, talking, discussing and writing about it, is to at least make some men wake up to something they never even considered in the first place – that there is actually even a Game going on at all.

It’s a game called the human mating dance.

Nobody said you HAVE to play.

You are perfectly within your rights to take your balls and go home.


Vox Day Classic Repost: Flunking Fascism 101

One of the reasons for this humble blog is to repost classics from the interwebs.
Here is one such of Vox Day of Vox Popoli:

Flunking Fascism 101
Posted: June 28, 2004
1:00 am Eastern
By Vox Day
© 2011 WND

There are few words the American Left loves to fling around with such abandon as the word “fascist.” According to them, social conservatives, libertarians and the Religious Right are all various brands of fascism, that political ideology which came into such disrepute following the demise of il Duce, Benito Mussolini.

And yet, is the accusation legitimate? Who better to judge than Mussolini himself, not only the founder of the Fascist movement, but also the author of its manifesto. The Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle is not so well-known as the Communist Manifesto – and deservedly so, being markedly lacking in memorable phrases such as “a spectre haunting Europe” – and is not even as well-known as the Munich Manifesto of Germany’s National Socialists.

In fact, one can seldom find a direct translation of the Fascist manifesto, as it is usually summarized quickly before being swept aside in favor of contorted explanations of how its socialist theoreticians, including Panunzio, Gentile and Mussolini himself, are actually right-wing extremists influenced by the Catholic Church. It is fortuitous, then, that I happen to speak Italian, and so I present herein an original translation of The Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle, published in The People of Italy on June 6, 1919.

Italians! Here is the program of a genuinely Italian movement. It is revolutionary because it is anti-dogmatic, strongly innovative and against prejudice.

For the political problem: We demand:

a) Universal suffrage polled on a regional basis, with proportional representation and voting and electoral office eligibility for women.

b) A minimum age for the voting electorate of 18 years; that for the office holders at 25 years.

c) The abolition of the Senate.

d) The convocation of a National Assembly for a three-years duration, for which its primary responsibility will be to form a constitution of the State.

e) The formation of a National Council of experts for labor, for industy, for transportation, for the public health, for communications, etc. Selections to be made from the collective professionals or of tradesmen with legislative powers, and elected directly to a General Commission with ministerial powers.

For the social problems: We demand:

a) The quick enactment of a law of the State that sanctions an eight-hour workday for all workers.

b) A minimum wage.

c) The participation of workers’ representatives in the functions of industry commissions.

d) To show the same confidence in the labor unions (that prove to be technically and morally worthy) as is given to industry executives or public servants.

e) The rapid and complete systemization of the railways and of all the transport industries.

f) A necessary modification of the insurance laws to invalidate the minimum retirement age; we propose to lower it from 65 to 55 years of age.

For the military problem: We demand:

a) The institution of a national militia with a short period of service for training and exclusively defensive responsibilities.

b) The nationalization of all the arms and explosives factories.

c) A national policy intended to peacefully further the Italian national culture in the world.

For the financial problem: We demand:

a) A strong progressive tax on capital that will truly expropriate a portion of all wealth.

b) The seizure of all the possessions of the religious congregations and the abolition of all the bishoprics, which constitute an enormous liability on the Nation and on the privileges of the poor.

c) The revision of all military contracts and the seizure of 85 percent of the profits therein.

As with National Socialism and Communism, it is easy to see that far from being a right-wing ideology, fascism is simply another variant of leftist worship of the State. I found the first plank in the above platform to be particularly amusing, as last week on my blog, Vox Popoli, a five-day debate sparked by a post on the historical consequences of women’s suffrage caused some hysterical leftists to label me a fascist. And yet, the only serious question is if it is more ironic to tar a libertarian or a member of the Religious Right with the fascist brush, as one seldom hears James Dobson calling for the government seizure of all church-owned property.

In 1925, Mussolini encapsulated the heart of fascist philosophy in a memorable phrase:

Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato. This means “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” Now, I ask you, in the Year of Our Lord 2004, does that sound more like a Libertarian, a Republican or a Democrat?


The Myth of American Freedom

A great summary of where we are/how did we get here.

The Myth of American Freedom
by Andrew P. Napolitano

Here is Judge Napolitano’s closing argument yesterday on his FreedomWatch.

Does the government work for us or do we work for the government? Is freedom in America a myth or a reality? Tonight, what if we didn’t live in a free country?

What if the Constitution were written not to limit government, but to expand it? What if the Constitution didn’t fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence, but betrayed it? What if the Constitution actually permitted the government to limit and constrict freedom? What if the Bill of Rights was just a paper promise, that the government could avoid whenever it claimed the need to do so? What if the same generation – in some cases the same people – that drafted the U.S. Constitution enacted laws that violated it? What if the merchants and bankers who financed the American Revolution bought their way into the new government and got it to enact laws that stifled their competition? What if the civil war that was fought in the name of freedom actually advanced the cause of tyranny?

What if the federal government were the product of 150 years of stealing power and liberty and property from the people and the states? What if our political elites spent the 20th century importing the socialist ideas of big government Statism from Europe? What if our political class was adopting the European political culture from which our founding fathers fought so hard to break free?

What if our political leaders no longer acknowledged that our rights come from our humanity, but insisted instead that they come from the government? What if you had to produce your papers to get out of or into our once-free country? What if you couldn’t board a plane, a train, or a long-distance bus without providing documentation telling the government who you are and where you’re going, without paying the government, and without risking sexual assault? What if your local police department could shoot down a plane? What if government agents could write their own search warrants, declare their own enemies, and seize whatever property they want? What if the feds could detain you indefinitely, with no visitors, no lawyer, no judge, and no jury? What if they could make you just disappear? What if the government broke its own laws in order to enforce them? What if the government broke down your front door in the middle of the night and shot your dog, and claimed it was a mistake?

What if you were required to purchase a product that you didn’t need, didn’t want, and couldn’t afford, from a company you never heard of, just as a condition of living in the United States? What if the government told you what not to put in your body as well as what to put into it; and how much? What if the government claimed that since it will be paying your medical bills, it can tell you what to eat, when to sleep, and how to live? What if the government tried to cajole and coax and compel you into behaviors and attitudes it considered socially acceptable? What if the government spent your tax money to advertise to you how great the services are that it provides? What if the government kept promising to make you safe while it kept stripping you of your liberties and committing crimes in your name that made you a target of more violence?

What if you didn’t have a right to every dollar you earned? What if the government decided how much of your earnings it will keep and how much it will permit you to have? What if the government took money from you and gave it away to its rich banking and corporate friends whose businesses were failing? What if the government thought it knew better than you did how to lead your life and had no problem telling you so? What if the government took the credit for every success your own human actions helped you achieve? What if the government told you that only it could build roads, run schools, keep you safe, and collect trash even though it’s never been able to do so efficiently before? What if the government spent nearly twice as much as it took in? What if it couldn’t pass a budget on a timely basis and funded itself just weeks at a time? And what if the government kept borrowing money against the wealth of future generations to pay for wasteful programs today?

What if you worked for the government and the government didn’t work for you? What if freedom were a myth? What if we don’t live in a free country? What do we do about it?

From New York, defending freedom; so-long America.

September 30, 2011


Discrimination

Kristor at VFR

writes this post:

I would like to enter a word of support for discrimination. You can’t run your life without it. The doctrine that we should not ever discriminate among people would entail that it is offensive and biased for a woman to withhold her sexual favors from anyone at all, or to favor her own children over those of other women. Likewise, it would be offensive and biased for her to prevent anyone who wants to from staying in her house and eating her food. These are absurd examples, to be sure, but they serve to illustrate the general principle that it is not possible to organize social activity except by discriminating among people.

If it is wicked to treat some people as citizens because they were born here, and others as aliens because they were not, then in order to avoid that wickedness a nation would have to treat everyone in the world as its citizens, entitled to vote in its elections, reap all its civil benefits, etc. But then “citizen” and “nation” would become empty terms, and that society would vanish along with the lines and definitions and distinctions that had differentiated it from its neighbours. Thus suspicion and distrust of abnormal people, inclining us all to discriminate against them and favor those we recognize as fellows, is the only way societies survive.

To have a nation, a society, a firm, a church, any organization at all, you have to draw lines. Furthermore, you have to empower people differently, or dignify them differently. For example, if there is to be any leadership whatsoever, leaders must be somehow disproportionately empowered. Ditto for citizenship, or membership in a group or club: one must pay one’s dues, the membership cannot be free or it is void. In the world as it is actually constituted, nothing is free (with the exception of God’s love for creation, which, being infinite, can be provided to creatures without any cost to God). Ditto also for mate selection, which is an act of discrimination for one person, and against all others.

One of the inescapable elements of discrimination is a moral or aesthetic judgement that some people or things are better than others, in at least some important respect. It would be perverse to dignify someone as a leader if you thought he was not likely to do better at it than the average bear. It would be stupid to turn for counsel to the village idiot. The same holds on the playground when boys are picking sides, and in triage on the battlefield. Discrimination can really hurt. But you can’t run a society without it. And it does work in practice, too, because some people really are better than others, at job x, or in terms of characteristic y.

So it is a fantasy to think that we can make life equally nice for everyone. The world doesn’t work that way.

Note that none of this is to say that in deciding someone is not right for citizenship, or for cohabitation, or for our soccer team, we are deciding also that they are ipso facto actively bad, and that we are justified in persecuting them. That inference is not justified; that only one runner wins the race does not entail that his competitors should henceforth be kept off the track. To decide that a person or class of people are actively bad, or dangerous, requires a further determination. But we can’t shrink from making that determination, either, if we are to survive. For some people truly are bad or dangerous, and if we are to survive we must harass and persecute them: the serial killer, the enemy in wartime, and so forth.

Many members of this community are either Christians, or used to be, or are sort of Christian, or something; at any rate, they hold in high esteem Jesus’ injunction that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. This saying at the core of the faith, and thus at the core of our civilization, had always been a stumbling block for me, because it seemed as though it contravened the whole order of the universe, which operates on gradations in value and worthiness, on differences; and that it contradicted also the entirety of Biblical religion, in which God is (among other things) a Judge discriminating the relative merit of everything that happens, right up to the differences among the choirs of angels.

The best interpretation I could come up with was that Jesus’ first great commandment that we should love God with all our being meant that I should have no love left over for myself. This would not be the death of me, because in loving God I should also love his will for me, which provides for my best good. That is, I should be more inclined to do His will, and so to prosper. Loving God instead of myself would be good for me. How then should I love my neighbour? Just as I should love myself: not at all. If I love God with my whole being, then I will do what is best for me, and I will also do what is best for my neighbour, because God wills what is best for both myself and my neighbour.

I recently read a comment by a fellow named Sage McLaughlin that, “When we are told to love our enemies as ourselves, this does not mean we are to treat them the same way we treat ourselves–Christ did not say, “Don’t have enemies.” He takes for granted that we shall have foes, but demands that we love them as human beings and that we hate the disfiguring effects of sin on their immortal souls, just as we hate them in ourselves. We must do this, and we must forgive all those who ask our forgiveness–but we do not have to outdo God, who abandons to eternal damnation all those who turn from Him and walk in darkness.” I.e., we are to love the good and hate the bad in other people just as we love the good and hate the bad in ourselves. In order to do that–in order to move closer to goodness and further from wickedness in ourselves, and in our society, and in the creation at large–we must discriminate between good and bad, and choose goodness. That we forgive the wickedness of our enemies does not automatically make them friends; and if they cannot let go of their deadly hatred of us, then in order to control the risk to us of their hatred, we must perforce destroy them with it. In that case, we cannot survive to forgive them except by defending ourselves, and working their destruction, however that may grieve us.


Single, Childless Women Now Earn MORE Than Men: Do We Really Need MORE Federal Legislation?

Single, Childless Women Now Earn MORE Than Men: Do We Really Need MORE Federal Legislation?

In 2009, the Consad Research Corporation conducted a comprehensive study on the gender wage gap for the Department of Labor, and produced a 95-page report titled <a href=”http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf”>”An Analysis of the Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women.”</a> This is from the report’s foreword:

There are observable differences in the attributes of men and women that account for most of the gender wage gap. These variables include:

1. A greater percentage of women than men tend to work part-time.

2. A greater percentage of women than men tend to leave the labor force for child birth, child care and elder care.

3. Women, especially working mothers, tend to value “family friendly” workplace policies more than men.

4. Women may value non-wage benefits more than men do, and as a result prefer to take a greater portion of their compensation in the form of health insurance and other fringe benefits.

The study concludes that “the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.”

And yet the Senate will vote this week on “The Paycheck Fairness Act,” which according to the American Association of University Women is a critical piece of legislation that “can help create a climate where pay discrimination is not tolerated, and give the new administration the enforcement tools it needs to make real progress on pay equity.”

Read more here at The Enterprise Blog about how <a href=”http://blog.american.com/?p=22704″>The Paycheck Fairness Act Will Fatten Paychecks for Trial Lawyers, Not Women. </a>

Update: The Paycheck Fairness Act failed in the Senate today – 60 votes were needed to move the bill forward and the supporters had only 58 votes.