Archives for February 2005

Well, I didn’t watch most of The Oscars last night, but I caught a bit of it. Clint Eastwood is as good as you get in Hollywood, and from what I know of him, he’s a real human being. Glad he took a couple of the top prizes. My wife & I just happened to see Million Dollar Baby the night before, and I’d recommend it. Glad to see Jamie Foxx get top actor for his unbelievable performance in Ray, my personal favorite film of the year.

But, of course, Hollywood is never in short supply of Useful Idiots. At Oscar time, it’s as veiled as they can make it. Hell, they even managed to keep that fat, obnoxious liar Michael Moore out of it entirely this year. So, I guess they had to make up for it elsewhere, and the natural place is to be found in the short films, documentaries, foreign language films, or obscure artsy fartsy films.

Did anyone notice what won best original song written for a motion picture? It’s called Al Otro Lado Del Rio and it’s from The Motorcycle Diaries. It was performed by Antonio Banderas singing and Carlos Santana on guitar. I thought it sucked, musically, in spite of Cosmic Carlos’ legendary talent. The performance was introduced by Salma Hayek, and rather than say that The Motorcycle Diaries is a film about two commies, one of whom was Che Guevara, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Cubans and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of other innocent people in Latin America, she said it was a film about "two idealists."

Damn, and I really liked watching Salma, too. Very pleasing to look at, and now all I’m going to see is another run of the mill Hollywood Useful Idiot.

OK, I’ve expressed my rage over our treatment at the hands of the TSA (Yea, like I’m going to deny that it’s rage? The proper distinction is between mindless and principled.). Having read the comments thereto, let me expound in greater detail and in a calmer tone.

First, I don’t get into proposing alternate (but more “efficient”) ways of disposing of your natural freedom. I don’t contrive to identify groups it would be “better” to steal from or deny freedom to. So, I won’t be proposing that you “call your congressmen” with my pat solution. I demand freedom for all human beings on the sole condition that they act as human beings, which means that they recognize all of the freedoms inherent in all others, and all that it implies.

I reject the notion that there is a thing in the world too risky, too costly, or “socially unjust” about unbridled human freedom. Yes, let freedom ring. And that’s all. The issue is not that we’ll be better off if we do. It’s just what we must do, for no reason other than that we’re human beings—or supposed to be, anyway.

It is not my problem that you don’t feel safe to get on an airplane unless you and your co-passengers are frisked prior to boarding (under federal mandate, imposed by force). Using “safety” as an excuse to violate rights is logically untenable (utterly so). Just take one moment to think of the myriad ways that terrorists could make your life a living hell when they set themselves purposefully to the task. Here’s just one: four or five simultaneous suicide bombers in a huge indoor shopping mall. Hell; make it 20—and make it 50 shopping malls around the country at the same time.

In truth, the planning and preparation for such an operation would be child’s play compared to what was carried out on 9/11. I could go on, and if you’re honest with yourself, you know that I can.

So the simple and obvious fact derived from the above is that the TSA has nothing in the world to do with safety, and your insistence on clinging to it as some magic bullet is simply irrationality motivated by fear. You’re just not thinking clearly. Understandable—people do their stupidest things when in fear mode. That, however, does not alleviate your basic responsibility to think. It also does not absolve you of your culpability in supporting such an abomination as the TSA.

The Big Lie at work here is in the ‘we’, as usual. It’s “our” national air-transportation system, you see, so “we” have to keep it safe for “our” sake. Et cetera. And while I’m at it, the white-collar-hoax pipsqueaks that man the boardrooms and executive offices of these major airlines are just as at-fault—if not more. The very first thing the shit bags did after 9/11 was not to step up and tell you: “We messed up, and by God, we’re going to do better. We pledge to do the best that can humanly be done to get you safely to your destination.” Not at all. The first thing they did was to point fingers of blame and whine about how they needed a federal bailout.

This should have been a clue to anyone thinking about the issue. The airlines, and by proxy, their shareholders wish to be absolved of a portion of the very thing that you contract with them to provide you—safe passage to a destination. Why on earth should they be responsible for the material safety of their aircraft (which they do very well), but not the skies in which they fly (I’m taking a shot at the FAA, here, in case you didn’t notice), or the comportment of the passengers they carry?

In the end, it all comes back to laziness. Laziness is at the root of each and every collectivist scheme. Nature has blessed us with human beings who benevolently produce far more than they could ever consume—in spite of every obstacle thrown at them by the do-nothings. This fortunate circumstance has its double edge, as no good deed goes unpunished. The lazy are, at once, incentivized by democracy and plunder.

Everyone wants to escape their responsibilities. Who is naturally first in line in the chain of responsibility for keeping you safe on an aircraft? You are. You look around. You use your senses and mind, and in a rational world, you’d be able to pick an airline (and probably pay more for the ticket) with an excellent safety record in all aspects of travel, from the time you step into their boarding area at embarkation, to the time you exit at your destination. Second in line, as implied, it the airline you’ve contracted with. Who’s next? Nobody is next. The contract is between two entities—you and the airline. Those are the only two entities with any business in the matter.

Instead, all the lazy have together made passenger security the responsibility of neither party to the contract. No one with any business has any responsibility. The lazy have made it the “government’s” responsibility, which means, everyone is responsible for everyone else’s safety, which means, no one is responsible for any one’s safety.

As I said at the beginning, the TSA has nothing in the world to do with safety. It can’t, since no one is really responsible or accountable. Instead, it operates as a gauntlet of intimidation so that people unaccustomed to thinking can feel safe.

Well, first, my wife and I go walking the dogs over at the local high school. In addition to Rotor, our rat terrier that I walk 3 miles every morning, we’re taking care of Rosie, my brother-in-law’s boston terrier, while he’s trying to sell his house.

We’ve taken care of her before. While she’s protective when someone knocks on the door, she’s never been a problem over at the park running off leash. I’m so used to letting Rotor run around without keeping too close an eye on him that I let my guard down. Before I know it, I hear a noise and see a woman crouched over holding her hand, with Rosie hanging by her teeth from the woman’s jacket.

There’s a fair amount of blood, and a finger wound that will likely require stitches. Damn! In such a situation, there’s nothing for a real person to do other than just be as helpful as possible. I ran to get my car and drove the woman the several blocks to her house. What great fun, looking her strapping teenage son and husband square in the eye. But you do what you ought to do, and you don’t give it a second thought. The woman, her son and husband were all very calm and reasonable. In other words, though a serious situation, they were not blowing it out of proportion. I appreciated that.

It’s not my dog that attacked, and I’d personally never own a dog that attacks without clear provocation (I may never dogsit for one again, either). Still, that’s little consolation, for me. This dog has bitten before (a UPS guy making a delivery—very minor bite). Though I wasn’t around, I knew of the previous incident and should damn well have been more circumspect. On the other hand, sometimes shit just happens and you do the best you can with it.

But if this all wasn’t enough, Bea & I then head over to the local Original Pancake House for a late breakfast. There’s a wait. Once we’re called, Bea & I get up and head directly over to the counter. There’s a bit of a crowd milling about, but no one bumping into one-another.

But just as I get to the counter, some 260 lb. fathead with a girl of about 2 yrs. approaches me and says, “You ought to watch where you’re going. You almost knocked my daughter over.” Almost? I hadn’t touched a soul, and I had not behaved in any fashion reasonably likely to result in harm to anyone. This guy wanted to pick a fight, or to show off in front of his wife or girlfriend, or whatever. But it had nothing in the world to do with me.

Well, I don’t envy telling an organism to Fuck Off in front of its offspring (because she’s still human), but I really had little choice. I was dealing with an irrational wild animal walking on two legs and pretending to be a human being. When you’re dealing with such creatures as that, there’s no way to have any confidence about what they’ll do next. You can reasonably assume that human beings will act predictably, wich is to say rationally, but when you encounter a wild animal, you need to watch yourself, and in this case, my only course of action was to send a clear signal that I was not going to be trifled with.

On the way out of the restaurant, for the first time in five years of living in this neighborhood, a panhandler hits me up for money.

As I said: a bizarro day.

I just returned from a weeklong trip to the Hawaiian island of Kauai. In company was my wife, her parents, and my parents (yes, we all get along swimmingly). It was a great trip, all in all, not marred by one single unfortunate event.

But it was tarnished, nonetheless—purposefully and willfully—by a group of loathsome people with the effrontery to call themselves “public servants.”

The first incident came right at the start, leaving from San Francisco (SFO). I don’t travel a lot, per se, but I’ve made two business trips to Chicago and one to DC over the past few months. I try to block it out—the absurdity of it all—and typically I get through “only” moderately inconvenienced. I’ve never taken off my shoes, have never been compelled to do so, and have never set off the Citizen Inspection Device.

So, as I’m disassembling myself (belt buckle, watch, wallet, pocket change, laptop computer, etc.), a TSA goon walks up and asks about taking off my shoes (classic Converse All-Stars with 1/4” soles, at most). I ask if it’s mandatory. He says no, “not if you have lots of time.” Since I knew I wasn’t going to set anything off, I proceeded through the Citizen Inspection Device, and as typical, didn’t set it off. Notwithstanding, I am immediately pulled aside. My high-end laptop, leather Hartmann carry-on, and other valuables—including a very expensive watch—are just sitting there unattended, having come through the Property Inspection Device. I ask, “Is anyone going to attend to my valuables?” “Yes,” he replies, and then just looks away. Another half minute passes and other people’s stuff is stacking up against mine. Finally, I discreetly motion my wife, she gets the clue, and comes and collects my stuff.

I wait another three minutes, there, Temporarily Detained in Federal Custody, and in all that time, not once did any “Authority” look to make sure my property was secure from theft or damage. Finally, a Comrade Interrogator arrives with the express purpose of assaulting me, in person and in dignity, for the crime of Non-Immediate and Non-Cheerful Submission to the faintest suggestion or admonition of “The Authority.” This is where I get to endure the spread-‘em pat down in front of my family and the whole world.

Then there was the trip back. This time, like a Good German, I took off my shoes. But my dad, age 67, failed to heed the sign about putting his video-camera into a separate bin and was taken into Temporary Federal Custody for Search and Interrogation. My father-in-law, age 74, was taken into Temporary Federal Custody for the Crime of having a film canister and pack of gum (foil wrappers) in his pocket.

You know what? Fuck the TSA. Fuck George W. Bush for spearheading it. Fuck Norman “the moron” Mineta. And Fuck every last one of his goons, including even the TSA bitches currently out on maternity leave. Every last one of them can be God damned, and then they can Kiss My Ass. I’m serious.

There’s not one scintilla of a microgram of redeeming value in the TSA. Not one bit. Not for any rational purpose under the sun. Its sole reason for being is intimidation, and in so doing, the Gorillas make all the chimpanzees feel nice and “safe.”

Update: See TSA – Part 2

I wrote briefly about, and posted some photographs of, our just-concluded week in Kauai here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Because of the quite surprising level of very nice and complimentary comments and emails, I promised to put up a good collection of the images in full high-res at Club Photo.

Promise delivered.

Now I can get back to a little rage. It should be no surprise that my first topic will be the TSA.

The tour with Safari Helicopters was fantastic. Note to Commander Preston Myers, USN (Ret.): from one former Navy officer to another, your operation is ship shape from top to bottom. Your offices (even the head), your staff, your shuttle vans, your aircraft and your all-ATP-rated pilots performed superbly, and as for the personnel, each and every one demonstrated a high degree of pride in what they do. Well done, sir.

Here are a few pics (and then I’m off to the airport for the trip back). You may recognize the first one from one of the Jurassic Park flics.

Well, we didn’t take the helicopter tour yesterday. Scheduling conflict. It should go down today.

Relatively quiet yesterday, and we topped it off with a Luau that our traveling companions treated my wife and I too. I’ve always resisted going to one of these group things, but this one was put on by a family who’s been doing it for decades. There’s nothing in the world like competence.

Three pics today. This first was quite a lucky shot, I think, of a peacock trying to impress. I used the flash and it really brings out the colors.

I forgot the name of this tree, but its bark is sure interesting.

Some newly hatched chicks having a conference between two parked cars. I’ve learned that the reason for all the chickens is the hurricane that struck the island in 1992. Apparently, because of the climate, it’s an ideal place to breed, raise, and train chickens for cockfighting around the world. The hurricane came through and blasted apart all the coops around the island.

It goes without saying that we’re having a wonderful time. Today is helicopter tour day: Waimea Canyon, Na Pali Coast and whatever else they have in store for us. Pics tomorrow.

In the meantime, let’s get to yesterday’s pics. Thanks for all the kind comments and emails, and to answer the questions, yes, there are dozens more photos. Once I get back on Saturday, I’ll throw most of them up on Club Photo and announce it here.

Six pics for you today. The first is one of the four Macaws perched in the atrium of the Hyatt Regency Kauai.

Next, we have the view out of the Hyatt’s open air atrium. This is an exclusive place. 2005’s published rates for rooms are from $455 – $785 per night. Suites start at $1,300 per night, and the presidential will set you back $4,400 (yes, per night).

Here we have an attempt at an artsy fartsy pic. It’s using the flash, looking out through the ferns at the Fern Grotto.

Below is looking up from the grotto. I went back a few minutes later to take another, but the effect of the sun reflecting through the spray of the water was gone.

Here’s another looking up from the grotto.

I’m told this plant is called "red ginger".

So far…so good. Three days—and I’ve yet to have to suffer through some pretentious, teachy spectacle showcasing the “vast superiority” of the native Hawaiian culture to that of Western Civilization. And; you know, how much more “harmoniously” they interacted with nature, et cetera.

I’ve got three pics today. One is from the beach on the southwest of the island, just north of the Navy’s missile rest range. There’s Waimea Canyon, said to be “The Grand Canyon of the Pacific,” or something like that. Finally, a little of the “wildlife.” Seriously though; there are thousands and thousands of chickens running wild on Kauai. This suggest two truths: there are no natural predators for either the chickens or their eggs, and, neither are the human inhabitants of the island starving.

I’m really pleased with our choice of Kauai for this trip. We previously did a week in Maui, which was fantastic (do the bike ride from the top of Haleakala: 40 miles, all downhill, with only about 200 yards of peddling), and a day in Oahu, which was enough (though I’d like to explore the north and interior).

Yesterday, we explored the east and north side of Kauai. Here’s a couple of pics (I’d do more, but I’m on dialup, so you know how that goes):

I’m sitting here, looking out the rear sliding door of our rented condo, situated at the extreme southern tip of Kauai (Makahuena Point, Poipu). We’re right on the rock cliff’s edge and can see the sunrise to the east, and sunset to the west. We’ll be here throughout the week. I’ll toss up some pics later.

Billy Beck, the big show-off, parades his considerable depth of knowledge in the long-range geopolitical consequences of military history.

I recommend taking the time to not only read, but understand.

Ann Althouse delivers a good summary on the topic of comments on blogs, which, since I just enabled comments on this blog, is of some interest to me.

Perhaps someone has mentioned this before, but I think there are two kinds of blogs that transcend the left vs. right divide. Some blogs, like Instapundit, exist primarily as clearing house for links and a quick description of current events, mostly of a political nature. Other blogs, like mine, exist primarily as an outlet for my rage, joy, ideas, and analysis (i.e., commentary on a variety of things). For the former, since the point is to direct people elsewhere, comments make no sense. For the latter, it seems to me that they do make sense if one is interested in what others might have to contribute–including corrections or refutations.

Of course, there are lots of blogs that do both, probably the majority. In that case, it makes sense to me that if the point of your post is only to direct people elsewhere, you disable comments for that post, and if the point of your post is to delve into some topic in more depth, you enable them.

Rachel Lucas, who had a very popular blog, then quit, then started again, then quit again, and then started a whole new blog…is never at a loss for words (unless she forgets about her blog for a while).

<laff>

Shocking news out of the NYT:

…President Bush unveiled a $2.57 trillion budget for 2006, the largest in the nation’s history. The cuts he called for, in areas like veterans’ medical care, farm subsidies and vocational training, were met in Washington with doubts that they would ever get through the Republican Congress.

…

The Cato Institute, a libertarian research institution, says overall federal spending has increased twice as fast under Mr. Bush as under Mr. Clinton. At the same time, the federal deficit is projected to hit a record high of $427 billion this year.

…

"The era of big government being over is over," declared Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist Democratic research organization. That would certainly seem to be borne out in the record of the Republican revolutionaries, known as the "Class of 1994" for the year they were elected. Of the 30 who are still in the House of Representatives, 28 sponsored bills in the last Congress that would have increased government spending overall, according to the National Taxpayers Union, an antitax group.

…

"Too many people started to believe that the surest path to re-election is to spend money rather than cut government," says Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican. "The material that comes from the Republican caucus is not to call for the elimination of this program or that, it’s to brag that we have increased the budget for education by 144 percent."

That is not surprising, says Mr. Wittmann of the Democratic Leadership Council. "Yesterday’s revolutionaries are today’s pragmatic politicians," he said. "It’s a classic tale of any revolution. They start out as revolutionaries wanting to storm the Bastille and the end up as ‘All the King’s Men.’"

…

Mr. Flake, the Arizona Congressman, said the future of his party hinges on the revolution’s revival. "If voters want bigger government," he warned, "then sooner or later they’ll return to the genuine article, and that’s the Democrats."

It looks to me like the voters who "want bigger government" (virtually all voters do, by the way, which is why they vote) are doing just fine and dandy by the Republicans. Both parties have always been about bigger government—always—in spite of all fraudulent rhetoric to the contrary.

All Republicans who vote Republican are fully complicit in perpetuating a fraud.

(Mike Tennant)

Law Professor Ann Althouse gives an interesting summation of her speech on blogging to the the University of Wisconsin at Madison Physics Department.

No wonder neither the right nor the left have any capacity whatsoever to tolerate it:

“The danger in free speech does not lie in the menace of ideas, but in the menace of emotions. If words were merely logical devices no one would fear them. But when they impinge upon a moron they set off his hormones, and so they are justifiably feared. Complete free speech, under democracy, is possible only in a foreign language. Perhaps that is what we shall come to in the end. Anyone will be free to say what he pleases in Latin, but everything in English will be censored by prudent job holders.”

– H. L. Mencken; Baltimore Evening Sun, Nov. 18, 1929

(Tim Swanson)

Jeff Jocoby, at townhall.com:

    You don’t have to be a financial wizard to know that Social Security is a lousy investment.  Unlike the money you deposit in a bank or salt away in an IRA, you don’t own the money you pay into Social Security.  You have no legal right to get those dollars back, and when you die you can’t pass them on to your heirs.  Nor can you use your Social Security account before you retire — you can’t borrow against it and you can’t cash it in.  You aren’t allowed to put the money into a balanced portfolio.  You can’t even watch as the interest accumulates, since your Social Security nest egg doesn’t earn any interest.

    Your nest egg, in fact, doesn’t even exist.  Because Social Security is financed on a pay-as-you-go system, the dollars withheld from your paycheck today aren’t being saved in an account with your name. They are immediately paid out to retirees.  The benefits you receive when you retire will be funded by the payroll taxes then being collected.  But because the ratio of workers paying in to retirees taking out is steadily shrinking — it has plummeted from 16 to 1 in 1940 to 3 to 1 today — Social Security is headed for a crisis.

    Within 15 years, the system will be paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes.  Its shortfalls will grow larger and larger.  Bankruptcy will loom.  To save Social Security, Congress will have no choice but to sharply raise payroll taxes, go even more deeply into debt, or slash the benefits paid to retirees.

    This of course is the background to President Bush’s campaign to create personal investment accounts, which for the first time would allow workers to own and invest — really own, really invest — part of the Social Security tax taken from their paychecks.  With personal accounts many of the features that make Social Security such a crummy deal for today’s workers would be transformed into a package most of them could support.  A social-welfare program created in the age of gramophones and the Model A would be updated for a world of iPods and superhighways.

    But to many Democrats, such talk is heresy.  Letting Americans own some of their Social Security would be too risky, they argue – another way of saying that Americans are too dumb to be entrusted with their own money.  Much better to continue entrusting it to Washington, which has managed Social Security so skillfully that workers younger than 50 know they will never get back in benefits what they are paying into the system now.  (Perhaps that explains why 58 percent of Americans under 50 support personal accounts, according to a new poll by Zogby International.)

    Social Security wasn’t always a sucker’s game.  As with all Ponzi schemes, players who got in early made out like bandits.  For many years, Social Security deductions were minuscule.  Until 1949, the combined employer/employee tax rate was only 2 percent, and it was imposed on just the first $3,000 of income, for a maximum payroll tax of just $60 a year.  The first Social Security recipient was Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vt., who retired in 1940 after having paid a grand total of $44 in payroll taxes.  By the time she died in 1975, she had collected $20,933.52 in benefits — a return on her "investment" of more than 47,000 percent.

    It wasn’t really an investment, of course.  It was a forced transfer of wealth from younger persons to an older one.  And as the number of Ida May Fullers grew, and the value of their benefits increased, the amount of wealth that had to be transferred kept climbing.  By the time I entered the workforce in 1975, the Social Security withholding rate was 9.9 percent, applied to wages of up to $14,100.  Maximum tax bite: $1,395 a year — more than 23 times the $60 of a generation earlier.

    And a generation later?  Today Social Security skims off 12.4 percent of the first $90,000 earned – one-eighth of every paycheck.  There are no exemptions, no deductions.  It kicks in from the very first dollar of income.  It is the biggest tax the average American household faces — 80 percent of us pay more in Social Security taxes than we do in income tax.

    One tiny notch at a time, payroll taxes have been ratcheted up to a level that would have been unthinkable in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s day.  No wonder Social Security is so unpopular among the young.  It provides no security for their retirement, while it impoverishes them in the present.  In exchange for an eighth of their earnings today, it guarantees nothing but higher taxes tomorrow.  That there are politicians who defend so regressive an arrangement wouldn’t have surprised FDR.  But how shocked he would be that they call themselves Democrats.

(Martin McPhillips)

A couple of months ago, everyone, present company excluded, was all abuzz about a new blog called "Libertarian Girl," that sported a pink design template and a large photo of a reasonably attractive blond.

But her posts advocated all sorts of wacky things for a libertarian to advocate, such as a "breast-implant tax." Now, had people actually stopped to think right then and there, they might have smelled something fishy. But no.

So, yesterday, Catallarchy posts the scoop. Within hours, the gig was up.

Hilarious. I wish I could say that I wasn’t had. While I stayed out of the assault leveled by other blogs, I never suspected the scam for a second.

Stupidity; and too much time on one’s hands…

Ann Althouse asks:

These are starkly opposed positions. What mental leaps are required to decide to believe one or the other? Is it perhaps possible to hold in one’s mind the possibility that either might be true or that both might be part true and to make careful case-by-case decisions as we go along?

Both Sharansky’s and Buchanan’s arguments ring true. Sharansky is correct that democracies, in general, are peaceful. Buchanan’s claim is also true: that the U.S presence in various parts of the world is a source of resentment, and that such resentment culminates in attacks on the U.S., both here and abroad. However, I don’t agree with the conclusions Buchanan draws from his assemblage of the facts.

Buchanan misses the point. Most of the “resentment” that’s being touted is just simply irrational, and that’s a very critical distinction that I never see anyone making. A bunch of religious zealots want us off their nation’s public property because we’re defiling their soil? Our culture is polluting their youth? Etc. I think there are surely reasonable cases to be made about the U.S. being too adventuresome or meddling, but the above examples, and ones like it, are not reasonable or rational in any context. To top it off, they redress these faux grievances through terrorism.

This leads to the real reason for doing what we’re doing. Regardless of how well this turns out, those numbskulls over there aren’t going to suddenly love America any more than most of us are going to start loving their stupid culture (yes, I think it’s debilitatingly stupid on just about every level I can imagine). Setting them up with a democracy and economic stability through some degree of free trade is going to change the way that they seek redress of their grievances—not to mention employ the losers who currently have far too much time on their hands. In a multi-party democracy and modern economy, those offended by the U.S. will then have political means by which to [futilely] air their grievances, just as we do here.

Billy Beck throws up an interesting entry about the logic that underlies the conclusions many people come to:

The thing I was pointing to is a difference in why certain people conclude the things that they do. It’s really an epistemic issue, rather than the sort of political implication that I think you just asked about. The Marxists don’t, for instance, hold facts to be of serious value. To them, the first thing to know about how (not "what", but how) a person thinks is his class background. This is going to dictate his logic: the very rules of his thought. They really believe that the rules of thought are different for us, depending on our class background. This is what "polylogism" ("many logics") is all about.

Let me present another, which is a derivative, really, of what Billy has identified above. The religious left sees everyone as God’s creations, each different and unique. Some are endowed with great abilities, while some get the shaft. Those without are helpless to do anything about it themselves. Consequently, it’s the duty of those with abilities to uplift those without abilities. That’s the way to gain favor in the eyes of God.

As such, facts don’t matter much, because this logic undercuts any facts you might present, no matter how overwhelming. You say that you earned your values and are therefore the sole authority in determining their disposition? Irrelevant. You’re being selfish. Your bounty is a gift from God, and the only way to achieve godly virtue is to give your values away to those without such gifts.

My greatest frustration in dealing with the left is their propensity to dismiss facts outright. They’ll just run right by them, no matter how many, and tell me that they have a different perspective. What that means is that they believe they have different rules of thought than I do because of their different background and beliefs.

By way of example, I have recently been told that in spite of my eight years as a Naval officer, and all that entails regarding military tactics and history; in spite of my reasonable grasp of history; in spite of the fact that we have an all-volunteer military; and in spite of quite a lot of other facts, it’s all meaningless. I can’t possibly speak with any authority as to the war. Why? Why, because I don’t have a child with some potential of getting caught up in the conflict. I don’t have the right perspective, so I can’t think how they think.

For essentially the same reason, no matter how many facts I have at my disposal, I can never be a master of public policy as concerns racial minorities. Why? Why, because such facts don’t matter. What matters is that I do not possess the perspective of being a racial minority. I can’t think how they think, and that’s far more important than facts and the argument those facts necessarily imply.

Arguing against facts is a fine thing. But there’s only one way to do it, and that’s to bring more relevant facts to the table.