Category Archives: Liberty
Hot Women, Cold Ca$h
[Or: “Me So Warm-y”]
From The Hill –
Several House Democrats are calling on Congress to recognize that climate change is hurting women more than men, and could even drive poor women to “transactional sex” for survival.
The resolution, from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and a dozen other Democrats, says the results of climate change include drought and reduced agricultural output. It says these changes can be particularly harmful for women.
“[F]ood insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health,” it says.
Climate change will make women into prostitutes. Of course. Why couldn’t anyone see it before now? It will be so hot in here, women will be forced to take off their clothes to stay alive.
I’m not sure how transactional sex would increase the rate of STIs and unplanned pregnancies any higher than the present climate (heh) of uncontrolled recreational sex is now. In fact, the dreaded early marriage may even serve to reduce the occurrence rate of disease and unplanned pregnancy, by limiting the number of sex partners people have.
Also, whatever legitimate concerns there may be about climate change,* this shines a high powered neon spotlight on how climate change has become a prop for the most nakedly transparent political nitwittery –
In a statement to The Hill, Lee said women are critically underrepresented in the development of climate change policy.
“My resolution will affirm the commitment to include and empower women in economic development planning and international climate change policies and practices,” she said.
…The resolution calls on Congress to recognize the effects on women, and to use “gender-specific frameworks in developing policies to address climate change.”
Lastly, Rep. Lee has shown she doesn’t consider climate change to be a real problem that needs solving, but an excuse for social engineering. No one would be worrying about gender-specific frameworks during a real disaster. Except maybe in Hollywood…
Smarttinkerer Nebbishly – “Sir! I’ve developed an asteroid-destroying ray that will save the planet!”
GNEM – “Did any women assist you in building that ray?”
SN – “Uh…. no…?”
GNEM – “Were any women involved in the development and design stages?”
SN – Can’t say that there were…”
GNEM – “Did your mother at least bring coffee down to the basement for you?”
SN – “…no…”
GNEM – “Sorry, can’t let you use that device. H. Con. Res. 36 states that we need an integrated gender approach in climate change prevention policies.”
SN – “This isn’t climate change, this is nuclear space asteroids about to vaporize the Earth!”
“GNEM “That would change the climate rather drastically, wouldn’t you say?”
SN – “….”
GNEM – “How many poor and disadvantaged women have turned to prostitution and early marriage because you didn’t hire them to help with your Earth-saving contraption?”
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*There aren’t any.
Economics For The Citizen
In 2005, economist Walter Williams of George Mason University wrote ten short essays titled Economics For The Citizen, explaining basic economic concepts for those unfamiliar with them. These should be required reading for everyone. Especially politicians and other know-nothing busybodies who insist on telling people how to do their business. An excerpt –
The essence of exchange is the transfer of title. Here’s the essence of what happens when I buy a gallon of milk from my grocer. I tell him that I hold title to these three dollars and he holds title to the gallon of milk. Then, I offer: If you transfer your title to that gallon of milk, I will transfer title to these three dollars.
Whenever there’s voluntary exchange, the only clear conclusion that a third party can make is that both parties, in their opinion, perceived themselves as better off as a result of the exchange; otherwise, they wouldn’t have exchanged. I was free to keep my three dollars, and the grocer was free to keep his milk. If you think it’s obvious that both parties benefit from voluntary exchange, then how come we hear pronouncements about worker exploitation?
Say you offer me a wage of $2 an hour. I’m free to either accept or reject your offer. So what can be concluded if I’m seen working for you at $2 an hour? One clear conclusion is that I must have seen myself as being better off taking your offer than my next best alternative. All other alternatives were less valuable, or else why would I have accepted the $2 offer? How appropriate is it to say that you’re exploiting me when you’ve given me my best offer? Rather than using the term exploitation, you might say you wish I had more desirable alternatives.
While people might characterize $2 an hour as exploitation, they wouldn’t say the same about $50 an hour. Therefore, for the most part, when people use the term exploitation in reference to voluntary exchange, they simply disagree with the price. If we equate price disagreement with exploitation, then exploitation is everywhere. For example, I not only disagree with my salary, I also disagree with the prices of Gulfstream private jets.
By no means do I suggest that you purge your vocabulary of the term exploitation. It’s an emotionally valuable term to use to trick others, but in the process of tricking others, one need not trick himself.
Pass this along to any recent liberal arts graduates you might know.
Repeatedly Offending
Totally swiping from The Adaptive Curmudgeon again with this morally questionable but catchy libertarian tune. Hey, it’s not illegal.
King Solomon Had The Right Idea After All
From Reason.com –
Melissa Harris-Perry says that children belong to the community, not their parents.
No, really. I’m not paraphrasing, that’s what she said.
“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we have this private notion of children. ‘Your kid is yours, and totally your responsibility.’ We haven’t had a very collective notion of ‘these are our children.’ So part of it is to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.
“Once it’s everybody’s responsibility, and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments.”
There’s another video of her at Newsbusters where she dismisses a fertilized egg as nonhuman and opines thusly –
[T]he reality is that if this turns into a person, right, there are economic consequences, right? The cost to raise a child, $10,000 a year up to $20,000 a year. When you’re talking about what it actually costs to have this thing turn into a human, why not allow women to make the best choices that we can with as many resources and options instead of trying to come in and regulate this process?
“I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first… There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.”
Zero Sum
So a woman was telling a couple of us about someone she knows who is pregnant, and the baby has something that would qualify it as “special needs” once born…
Her: She already has a couple special needs kids, she doesn’t think she can handle another one.
Me: Can’t she have the baby and give it up for adoption? There are couples who will take special needs children.
Her: She doesn’t think she can have the baby and then give it up to someone else.
Me: So she’d rather give it up to nobody?
That was pretty much the end of the conversation.
Clark Kent’s Broom Closet
Must be something in the water. More political news about comics…
Ender’s Game author – and board member of anti-gay marriage group The National Organization For Marriage – Orson Scott Card is writing for the new digital comic Adventures Of Superman. Gay marriage activists are rather upset, and have started a petition to have Card fired.
Zeus Comics in Dallas TX will boycott the print edition. As far as I know, Zeus Comics isn’t demanding Card be fired, only saying they will not be carrying the comic. Their choice, and I’m fine with it. A private business is perfectly entitled to carry or not carry what they choose. Just like how DC Comics, also a private company, is free to hire anyone they choose.
Regardless of all this, I somehow doubt Superman comics will suddenly be shot through with overt anti-gay marriage themes. Even if Card wanted to include them, DC Comics would put a stop to that with a quickness. Can’t rile the customer base.
Card wrote an essay in 2004 outlining his opposition to gay marriage. I agree with him.
Superman’s Pal, indeed
Gunning For Superman
Superman actor Dean Cain keeps his guns.
Even Superman sometimes faces someone tougher than he is.
Tip of the ….cape?… to Bookworm Room.
Flash Drive Bullets
So I was reading this post by Elusive Wapiti, where he discusses assault weapons bans and totalitarianism. Good post, go read it. It’s about digitally fabricating guns, and how efforts are already underway to outlaw it. As usual, the self-anointed Guardians of Society build a house on a foundation of sand – the best way to ensure the safety of law-abiding citizens is not to disarm them, leaving them at the mercy of the lawless. Rather, if everyone has access to a gun, and knows that everyone else around him could be carrying as well, the chances of assault drop dramatically. But there’s a lot more going on here than a statist power grab.
A group named Defense Distributed is designing digital blueprints for firearms for 3D printing. The goal is to create a file via 3D modeling which can be distributed, and a working gun printed for anyone who wants it.
They sum up their goals, and the potential impact –
Insofar as possible, we hope to facilitate a printable firearm creative commons. Our weapons project’s namesake, a “wiki” is likely the best platform for preserving and collaboratively producing knowledge related to 3D printable firearms for years to come.
…This project might change the way we think about gun control and consumption. How do governments behave if they must one day operate on the assumption that any and every citizen has near instant access to a firearm through the Internet? Let’s find out.
I like funny cat videos as much as anyone else, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of what the internet is capable of. Printable guns! Store ammo files on your flash drive. And that’s just the beginning. There may come a day when 3D printers are capable of producing organic structures – people could keep digital scans of their bodies – including MRIs – on file. If they suffer an accident, replacement parts could be printed out, such as a new heart. Or new lungs for smokers. Lose a few teeth in a bar fight? Dental records on your phone. Your body could be scanned at age 20 and kept on file until you’re 50 and take a trip to Posh de Leon’s Fountain Of Youth and Rejuvenation Spa.
Some people are not too happy about this, however. As National Review writes –
The idea of crowd-sourced plastic rifles and pistols being zapped into existence, Weird Science–style, in workshops and garages across the nation unnerves Representative Steve Israel (D., N.Y.) — so much so that he’s sponsoring an amendment to the Undectectable Firearms Act in order to regulate 3-D-printed gun components and establish penalties for their private fabrication. But as others have pointed out, such a law would be a nightmare to enforce.
The utter lack of imagination among bureaucrats and progressive types (but I repeat myself) is stupefying. Not only do they not have the capacity to remotely visualize the possibilities such technology offers, but they make heavy-handed, short-sighted attempts at regulating or even outlawing it –
In an effort to outflank the likes of DD, a zealous government could move to mandate that manufacturers design 3-D printers to leave secret, unique watermarks on every object fabricated, as the Secret Service convinced manufacturers of color laser printers to do in an effort to catch currency counterfeiters. But technological control begets technological revolt: The secret laser-printer codes were discovered and revealed by a digital-rights group in 2005, and their existence prompted a public outcry. Besides, what good is a watermark when a 3-D assembler can assemble another 3-D assembler? [emphasis mine]
Seriously. It’s like filing off the serial numbers, but better. Make a new assembler. Or two. Or three. Destroy the original. Start a black market selling illegal, untraceable 3D printers along with all the other cool things you’re designing. Pair this up with an alternative currency like Bitcoin (I noticed one of the people on DD’s “About” page has some experience with it) and who knows what could happen? This could spark a tectonic shift in economic systems.
It looks like they’re running all this super-ultra-high-tech with Windows XP, which cracks me up.
Pranking will become a High Art
All Life Is Not Equal
This Salon piece by Mary Elizabeth Williams is one of the most vile pieces of self-righteous garbage I’ve ever seen – So what if abortion ends life?
Of all the diabolically clever moves the anti-choice lobby has ever pulled, surely one of the greatest has been its consistent co-opting of the word “life.” Life! Who wants to argue with that? Who wants be on the side of … not-life? [ellipsis in original]
…Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.
She writes that pro-choicers tend to fall into illogical contradictions around “the life question” (her words). She misses the contradiction in saying a fetus is a life and then condemning anyone who would oppose destroying that life by claiming they have co-opted the concept of life that she defined herself. I suppose she resents anyone holding her to her own words. She continues about these illogical contradictions with this –
I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of “scraping out a bunch of cells” and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of “the baby” and “this kid.” I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born.
… It seems absurd to suggest that the only thing that makes us fully human is the short ride out of some lady’s vagina.
That is a key component of the pro-life argument. They question why it’s a baby when the mother intends to carry it to term, but just a clump of cells when the mother doesn’t want to keep it. Williams has firmly and unequivocally stated that a fetus in utero is a life. I’m not sure why a hardcore supporter of abortion would go to so much effort to define a fetus as a human life. So how does she get out of the corner she’s backed herself into?
Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. …a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides.
That’s it. All life is not equal. A fetus does not have the same rights as the mother the woman in whose body the fetus is taking up space. A bit of verbal sleight-of-hand there. “Mother” sounds too emotionally charged, so make it a woman whose personal space is being encroached on.
She ends with this –
I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time — even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.
As the Anchoress astutely observes –
A point of order, please: One may certainly sacrifice one’s own life for another. That is what makes it a sacrifice. Sacrificing “another’s” life is not a sacrifice, unless that other person actually (like Jesus Christ or a soldier who has volunteered to serve, or a mother like this one) says, “yes, I will be sacrificed for the sake of others.”
Absent that permission, though, it’s not a sacrifice. It’s just an expedient, and wasteful killing.
In fact, the notion that someone else’s life is “worth sacrificing” for the furtherance of one’s own situation — the mindset that can advance that thinking — is precisely one that deserves the name “diabolical.”
The Bookworm Room follows this line of thought to its inevitable end, in a post about euthanasia –
The writer’s approach to human beings — we must sacrifice innocent lives for the greater good — has the same stark utilitarian logic found in the heartless and soulless socialist state that readily puts humans on a death pathway because they’re too expensive to care for.
All life is not equal. Per Williams, some must be sacrificed for the greater good. But whose greater good? Who decides which of us have greater rights than others?
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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
– The Declaration of Independence
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The quote from the Anchoress includes a link to another post of hers, about Chiara and Enrico Petrillo. They had already lost two children. She became pregnant with a third, but soon developed cancer. She declined treatment because of the risk to her pregnancy. She died soon after her son was born. Her husband said [emphasis mine] –
Chiara’s husband, Enrico, said he experienced “a story of love on the cross.” Speaking to Vatican Radio, he said that they learned from their three children that there is no difference in a life that lasts 30 minutes or 100 years.
nightskyradio 