Have Women Lost Their Civilizing Influence?

I stumbled across a provocative article entitled, Why Polygamy is Good for Women. I enjoy a good counterintuitive argument, so I dove in…

A lot of the knee-jerk reactions against polygyny are from people who can't add up. In a society with equal numbers of men and women, each man with four wives gives women the additional pick of three men […]

In the Sahel region of Africa, half of all women live in polygynous households. The other half have a good choice of men and a lot more bargaining power. (Tim Harford - Slate)

Could the same logic apply in the US? 

Large numbers of incarcerated males decrease the prospects for women. Add in that women as a cohort are more educated than men, and the disparity grows.

Most importantly, given shifting societal norms, does any of this even matter?

Women tightly guarding the gateway to carnal paradise has been the traditional means of putting respectable men in the marrying mood, but girl power has wrecked that.

In many circles, the girls compete with the guys to see who can be more promiscuous, to the detriment of themselves and their sisters, I think. It’s too easy to get free milk now, so only a fool buys the cow…

And with more and more girls willing to engage in public drunkenness, farting contests, and licentious vulgarities, crass behavior is no longer the exclusive domain of the male species.

Add to this the overall pornification of our society, and the female of the species has lost her mystique. Counterintuitively, psychologists believe this may explain why more men have retreated into internet porn and lap dances. Reality makes no sense so you gotta go hide somewhere, I guess.

What happens when your internal wiring is incompatible with the culture? 

I don’t know myself. I’ve been happily married for quite awhile, and God has blessed us with a pretty uncomplicated relationship. We simply and unselfishly try to make one another happy, and that’s important for a healthy marriage.

Driving home last week, I heard Dennis Prager discuss with callers what made their marriage a happy one. Almost every caller mentioned some variant of “doing something for or with my spouse that I really don’t want to do,” and much of it revolved around sex, with the man as the one wanting it when the wife was not particularly in the mood. It was a tie in with the question of why men cheat on their wives. 

Love as a Two-Sided Coin

Prager then presented a two-sided coin that sparked a lot of conversation:

For the women: Is it really so horrible to contribute 15 minutes to an activity that makes your spouse so happy and that may prevent him from sinning against you, your God, and your marriage?

For the Men: Is a few moments of adulterous pleasure really worth defiling your marriage, disrespecting your spouse, and offending your God?

Of course, the answer to both is, No. But we are irrational beings much of the time; and the whirling vortex of id, ego, emotions and sex leads to dark psychological chasms.

Let’s face it, were it not for sex, men would have no interest in women, and subsequently children. We men would abandon our towns and cities to roam the woods and mountains in armed bands, killing game, fighting, and brewing beer.

Idealizing women is not a condescension, and it is a shame that a small dedicated band of insurgents has succeeded in knocking themselves and their sisters from their pedestals.

Muslims Immigration: Even Open-Minded People Think it's a Bad Idea

This is a reprint from 2009.  I thought I'd run it since my last post on Islam in America got such a response.  As AOW concluded, immigration policy is something we can and must get control of.  Stop importing people who hate us and who have a history of spawning children who will grow up here and end up hating us... --Silverfiddle

** Unhinged DeviledEgg Rant Alert! ** 

If the thought of an "honor killing" on American soil doesn't disgust you and make you boil with patriotic rage, you're brain dead! 

I live in Europe, I've lived in North America, and I've lived in that armpit they call the Middle East. No contest which I think is better!

Close The Damned Gates!

Why the hell do Western nations continue to allow these troublemaking Muslims to immigrate? Look at a map.  Wherever there's trouble, angry turbaned men with beards are involved.

Our cultures are incompatible.  We enjoy pork bbq and beer, use toilet paper and refrain from female genital mutilation, for example.

Many Muslim immigrants refuse to assimilate, and the only way to have peace here in the West is to give in to their fleck spittled agitations at the expense of our cultural norms.  Not while I have breath in my body!  Better to close the gates!

ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF PEACE!!! DISAGREE AND I'LL KEEEEL YOU!!!

Unlike the DeviledEgg, foreign editor of The Australian Greg Sheridan is no xenophobe, but he declares, "Uncontrolled Muslim Influx a Threat to the West."

It is extremely difficult to talk honestly about Muslim immigration. All generalisations about it are subject to countless exceptions. Muslims are very different from each other.

Most are reasonably successful. But a much bigger minority end up with social, political, extremist or other problems resulting from a lack of integration than is the case with any other cohort of immigrants in Western societies. A lack of honest discussion about this results in bad policy.

He goes on to recommend a book by Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West.

Jacob Laksin at City Journal recommends the book as well.

Polls show that some 70 percent of Britons believe that there are too many immigrants in their country. Majorities throughout Western Europe agree, and Muslim immigrants in particular are viewed with suspicion.

Europe is a Benignly Racist Continent
 
Despite the finger-wagging at America, many Europeans are fundamentally and unconsciously racist and insular. Here in Germany, people from the next village over are considered outsiders, fellow German speakers from Austria are treated as the enemy, and those who hail from farther afield have no hope of ever fitting in in the land of beer and bratwurst. 

Europeans are in a jam, trying to steer a course between the Charybdis of bigotry and the Scylla of cultural destruction. Worse, the entire continent is in denial. Muslims are to blame as well, especially when they display open contempt for their new home:

Yet the immigrants themselves are far from faultless. One of the immigration debate’s inconvenient truths is that Muslim immigrants have been so difficult to assimilate into European societies because they’re unwilling: many Muslims simply choose religious ties over national loyalties.

... 31 percent of British Muslims felt they had more in common with the people of Muslim nations than with their fellow Europeans.

I hope the US can learn the right lessons from Europe's immigration debacle. Reading Caldwell's book would be a good start, but cutting off all Muslim immigration is imperative.

I've got to stop now, that guy shouting from the tower is giving me a headache!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The DeviledEgg is prone to unhinged rants, childish outbursts, and fits of anger, but he's really a good egg once you get to know him. He is half German and half American and splits his time between the two countries. Western Hero is proud to add him to the team.

City Journal - Jacob Laksin
RCP - Greg Sheridan

Afghanistan is not Colombia

Neocons will happily watch others pay any price and bear any burden...

This article caught my eye…

Plan Afghanistan
Why the Colombia model -- even if it means drug war and armed rebellion -- is the best chance for U.S. success in Central Asia.

Strange though it may sound, success in Afghanistan would look a lot more like the success that has been achieved in Colombia over the last 10 years, rather than the success that we are hoping for in Iraq.  (FP – Plan Afghanistan)

The "Experts" are Wrong

Every now and then I stumble across “experts” discussing issues that I have unique insight into. This is one of them. I’ve deployed to Afghanistan and I’ve deployed to Colombia, so I know what I’m talking about here. To put it bluntly, Paul Wolfowitz and Michael O'Hanlon are full of shit and nobody in their right mind should listen to them.

Afghanistan is not Colombia, and what worked in Colombia will not work in Afghanistan, for a host of reasons.

The Colombian conflict, sparked by “El Bogotazo” back in 1948, eventually spawned the armed communist rebel organization known as FARC. Through all of the violence, Colombia has continued to be an intact country, and has a rich history of democratic republicanism going back to the early 1800’s.   Afghanistan has never been more than a loose confederation of heterogeneous peoples with little loyalty outside family and tribe.

Afghanistan’s many factions suffer from a paucity of shared institutions and values

Tribal rule and Sharia reign over this variegated patchwork of peoples. It is a Hobbesian nightmare of chaos and misery where life is nasty, brutish and short. In stark contrast, Colombia enjoys a tradition of western civilization, European jurisprudence and republican democracy that binds the country’s fairly homogenous population. The fact that Colombia has remained intact, and even thrived, as the FARC continues to melt deeper into the jungle, a whimpering shadow of its former self, makes these factors I mention self-evident.

Colombia has a serious government supported by patriotic citizens who are determined to defeat their common enemy

Indeed, with Colombia, we are aiding a central government fighting a rebel band that had lost the sympathy of the poor people they were supposedly fighting for. Even leftist sympathizers in other Latin American countries no longer give this ragtag band of kidnappers and drug dealers solidarity shout outs.

Unlike kleptocratic Afghanistan and its multifarious mistrustful factions, Colombia has enough honest politicians, judges, military and police willing to lay it on the line for the love of their nation, and the success they’ve enjoyed over the past 30 years in breaking the cartels and attriting FARC gives testament to that. Afghanistan is a sinkhole of corruption, with no one willing to give it up for a Greater Afghan Nation. Colombians do their own fighting; Afghan soldiers and policemen let us do their fighting for them, and shoot at us every chance they get.

Bogota is a peaceful city; Kabul is not… 

I could go on and on, but you must see my point by now. The Colombian people have a unity of purpose and a shared love of country and respect for her institutions that is non-existent in Afghanistan.  Colombians have tired of the violence; Afghans worship death and would happily let the blood orgy continue without end.

Add to this that our troops were able to partner with Colombian troops in a way that has been impossible to do with the Afghans. Colombian and American cultures are not really that far apart, especially when the Americans are Hispanic or understand Hispanic culture. At a remote outpost in rural Colombia, I saw a Colombian Army platoon and their Puerto Rican National Guard partners bid one another a tearful goodbye after having worked together for over four months on a radar project.

A “Plan Colombia” for Afghanistan will never work. It is naïve and foolish to think otherwise.  We should run, not walk, from this rancid and failed project known as Afghanistan.

Foreign Policy – Plan Afghanistan
AP – 13 Americans Killed in Taliban Bombing

OWS: “Unsafe and Unsanitary”

"Over the last week it was apparent that neither the demonstrators nor the city could maintain safe or sanitary conditions, or control the ongoing vandalism," Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said in a statement. (Alertnet)

It was bound to happen…

Fights Erupt Among OWS Protesters

Rapes and assaults among the squatting socialists have overtaken loud drumming and gender inequality as the primary concern at Occupy Wall Street. Solidarity for solidarity’s sake ain’t workin’ out so well.

Defecators, urinaters and masturbators shut down Occupy Madison…

A neighboring hotel's staff alleged voiced concerns about having to recently escort hotel employees to and from bus stops late at night due to inappropriate behavior, such as public masturbation, from street protesters. (Cardinal)

Hell’s Kitchen

Liberal propaganda outlets deny it, but the kitchen staff at the squalid Wall Street camp is fed up with the moochers. The NY Post has direct quotes from some of the “Hell’s Kitchen” workers:

“We need to limit the amount of food we’re putting out” to curb the influx of derelicts, said Rafael Moreno, a kitchen volunteer. A security volunteer added that the cooks felt “overworked and underappreciated.” (NY Post)

Welcome to the 53%, you drumming dummies!

These unwashed Marxists and academia agitators are learning what responsible people who live in the real world already know: Open the door to bums, deviants and freeloaders, and soon the responsible working people will tire of carrying everyone else. An old lady way back when called this phenomenon, Atlas Shrugging, I think…

When you hoist the freak flag, don’t be surprised when the freaks show up

They are also seeing the downside of fluffing your ranks with false solidarity. Letting in anyone and everyone has its disadvantages. We’re not all good people. There are murderers, rapists and generally bad people among us, and any group must police its own ranks if it wants to maintain its legitimacy and safety.

This is why the tea partiers have not joined the anti-capitalist unwashed rabble collectively known as OWA.  

Free market triumph

Happy All Saints Eve

How do you like your bank fees?  Hidden or clearly stated?

Congress passed a law to “protect consumers” by banning credit card companies and banks from charging merchants a fee for each transaction.

Banks complied, and merchants pocketed the difference, saving the consumer nothing.

Next, Bank of America did the honest thing and announced a flat $5 per month fee for cardholders to make up for the revenue congress took from them.

Result: Consumer is $5 per month poorer and store owners are marginally richer. Thank you Dick Durban and Congress!

Now comes Chase, Citigroup and others saying they will not charge cardholders a fee, giving consumers a clear choice. Unlike government action, the free marketplace gives consumers more choices, as merchants compete for our dollars.

Thanks to the free market, a customer can now choose to do business with a bank that explicitly charges her the fee, or she can go with the bank that hides if from her.

Daily News Corner

A Civil Religion

Sharia Law in America...  

Some want to ban it, but that would be unconstitutional.  Churches, sports leagues, and all manner of civil organizations are entitled to their bylaws so long as they do not run afoul of our constitution or our laws.  Individual practices may be found illegal, but the government cannot place a wholesale ban on a religion.

The problem, of course, is that vast numbers of Mohammedans now enjoying the ease and comfort of living in the modern western world insist upon dragging with them abhorrent cultural practices that violate our societal norms and our laws.   That is what we should adamantly oppose.

A Threat to One Religion is a Threat to All Religions

Those who would outlaw Islam (as if that were possible) must realize that a threat to one religion is a threat to all.  So the duty of a constitutional conservative or libertarian is to stand for the right of Muslims to practice their faith so long as it is done within the bounds of our constitution.

A Civil Religion

Our founding fathers consciously chose to put no religion above another, but to instead foster a civil religion, perhaps in the spirit Jean Jaques Rousseau.  I doubt he played much of a role in the philosophical development of the founders, but he expresses the non-sectarian zeitgeist of the age.

"Tolerance should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of citizenship."  -- Jean Jaques Rousseau

In his chapter on Civil Religion, Rousseau put all religions into one of three categories:

• "The true theism, what may be called natural divine right or law."  This is religion at its most elemental; man worshiping God without intervening pastors, altars and dogmas.  It is the God upon which our country was founded.
• State Religions, including theocracies. Think the Pantheons of Rome, Greece, Iran, and the ancient Israelites.
• Religions which conflict with the state. He placed Roman Catholicism in this category. He described such religions as one "which gives men two codes of legislation, two rulers, and two countries, renders them subject to contradictory duties, and makes it impossible for them to be faithful both to religion and to citizenship."

He praised the adherents of "Mahomet" for having crafted a religion in their own lands of the second category, where there is no contradiction between political and religious morality.  How things have changed since 1762!  Muslims have burst the bounds of their own homogeneous societies and have now displaced Catholics as the disturbing influence pitting the pious ululating hordes against the western states that invited them in. 

The philosopher also recognizes the salutary effects of personal morality on society: "it matters very much to the community that each citizen should have a religion."   And it's no business of the state "provided they are good citizens in this life."

The US Constitution:  A Civil Profession of Faith

There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject.

Theological Intolerance is Incompatible with a Free Society

By theological intolerance, he means being intolerant of those who do not share your religion.  This quote is best understood by imagining it coming from an intolerant religious bigot:

It is impossible to live at peace with those we regard as damned; to love them would be to hate God who punishes them: we positively must either reclaim or torment them.

Rousseau then explains why...

Wherever theological intolerance is admitted, it must inevitably have some civil effect; and as soon as it has such an effect, the Sovereign is no longer Sovereign even in the temporal sphere: thenceforce priests are the real masters, and kings only their ministers.  

This is the standard to which we must hold every American.  Muslim, Christian, Atheist.  It matters not what your faith is, so long as it's practice does not violate our civil religion. 

(Rousseau - Social Contract, Book IV, Chapter 8, Civil Religion)

College: It's Not Just For Smart People!

Philosophy Major

Red diaper rash ranters are marching on Wall Street and squalling for free stuff.  Among their list of demands is "free college education."

Graduates from prestigious universities with advanced degrees in Lesbian Dance and Ethnic Studies are shocked and outraged to find they are unemployable.  And they want you and I to pay off their substantial and ill-considered student loans.

They should be marching on the colleges and universities that screwed them.  They should be occupying the offices of the counselors who steered them away from math and science and instead put them on the path that leads to angry activism, unemployment lines and the crash of unwarranted self-esteem.

Higher education is ripping us off, according to the Mercury News:

Nationally, college is getting less affordable every year... Overall, tuition increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2006, while median family income increased 147 percent and the consumer price index 106 percent, the study found.

When is Congress going to drag college administrators before its pompous committees and demand Big Education stop gouging the consumer?

Finally, here's a link to a hilarious look at the 10 Most Worthless College Degrees.

The article counts them down from 10 to 1. Here are a few excerpts:

9. Philosophy:
Why It Won’t Help You Get a Job: This isn’t ancient Greece: No one is going to pay you money, or allow you to sodomize their attractive son, in exchange for your knowledge of existence. Never has there been an employer who’s said “Man, we’re having all kinds of problems, I wish we had someone on our team who could reference and draw conclusions from the story of Siddhartha that would pull up our fourth quarter numbers ...

4. English Lit:
Why It Won’t Help You Get a Job: If someone can spend a weekend with a box of Cliff’s Notes and have only a slightly less conversational knowledge of what you spent 4 years studying, you probably don’t have the most employer friendly degree. ...