SCOTUS itself has become embarrassingly illustrative of this problem. Imagine being a brilliant black female jurist and reading KJBs opinions, knowing she was picked to be, not a brilliant legal scholar, but your representative on the celebrity court?
Not sure how much longer she can bear the embarrassment of her fellow Supremes. Praying she receives an offer so lucrative she chooses to step down from the bench.
Biden could have selected an extremely well-qualified black woman for SCOTUS, Leonard Kruger who is now on the California Supreme Court. She was not chosen because she's a moderate liberal who put the law above ideology. Biden passed up a great opportunity for purely poltical reasons.
Speaking of which, how about the governor of Virginia saying she plans on raising "revenue" for the state by taxing gyms to supplement over-runs of state funded Healthcare programs?
Imagine the endless irony of obesity being the number one cause of death in America so we tax gyms to pay for healthcare.
There can be no better illustration of how retarded liberal governance has become.
Next they should have an add-on tax at grocery stores for organic vegetables to help pay for healthcare. You oay it at the register where they display all the impulse buy candies and snacks.
It is frankly confounding, how people picked because of their immutable characteristics do poorly in their jobs, but also use these immutable characteristics to solidify/codify their power in a system that allows them to do so because of their immutable characteristics.
tl;dr: grifters gonna grift when you give 'em the chance to grift.
I might substitute the word "explicitly" for "essentially" in your sentence. My recollection is that during his search for a SCOTUS justice commentators were saying that Biden was effectively eliminating 98% of the pool of lawyers as possible candidates, given that they were not black females.
Kind of funny. You may recall that Biden graduated in the bottom 10% of his law school class. In choosing this idiot he proved the notion that like attracts like.
That is exacly what's wrong with the preferential hiring model (other than the fact that they tend to suck at their jobs), they have such low standards (because they weren't hired for ability/competence) that they hire other B/C's who also clog the system.
And what does it say about the folks infesting the Biden admin truly think of black women, that she would be their pick? They are the most racist mofos in the west.
She was picked because of her WILLINGNESS to play the Woke Position, weaponizing the Law to enshrine Marxist interpretations whether it was the majority opinion or not.
Her opinions stand as historical markers, by design.
It will be up to us to cast the proper interpretations upon her "opinions" - as deviances from the norm with a call to vigilance that this not happen in the future.
But if you think about it might be a good thing so the average person can see her utter retardedness. Especially in relation to someone like Clarence Thomas or Alito.
I continually come back to George Carlin's quote on that subject, though: `Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.`
The one and only thing I was wrong about Covid was the sheer volume of people that gobbled it up. I genuinely thought it was playacting for the 2020 election and would break apart after that. That's the same populace that's expected to see through KJB.
Given the claim that only the best and brightest legal minds even get nominated to the SC, it must be disheartening for black women lawyers to realize that the assumption must be that KJB represents the pinnacle of qualification among them.
That is indeed the silver lining. Start pushing this too far, and people start realizing that the emperor has no clothes. It's why the mass media and the public health establishment suffered massive hits to their credibility over the past several years.
And the things we can do for ourselves that mean we do not need to use the hospitals and the surgeons.
I think the AI powered robotic surgeries are what they are planning for us all. I was supposed to have a Robotic Surgery for a hernia. I researched it and found at my age it should no be done. Hot wire scalpels nick organs, the blowing up of the abdomen can rip fat layers and muscles, Sepsis is a huge problem ( I know two people who had that and almost died), then, the General Anesthesia can cause huge problems including having to catheterize yourself every 6 hour for life, as has happened to one of my friends following a heart valve repair.
Promoting based on box checking is how you get an illiterate imbecile on the nation's most powerful court. But the good news is, that disaster has a long life ahead of her.
I doubt we will rid ourselves of the DEI menace before it takes us to the ground.
I used to watch Judge Napolitano and Celente during the lockdowns. When Jackson was nominated, Napolitano supported it saying she would be good on libertarian stances. Given his view, I thought maybe she will be fine. She has been a disaster. I stopped watching both Napolitano and Celente, the latter because I thought he became unhinged.
Judge Nap has been good on many things and I lack the expertise to debate him, but he’s had some weird takes; the one that surprised me first was Russiagate
I think we will see the EU break up back into their separate countries, That may allow a few to eject the invaders while the others will embrace them because they can do nothing. Then there may be wars between them again. At the rate they are going "green" they ma have to be fought with horses and ground troops with trench warfare again.
I agree. True lunatics and incompetents are running the UK. If that Nut Zero ejit Milliband becomes PM after the current Nut Job gets thrashed, last ones leaving turn off the lights. Sorry, they will already be off.
I think the best glimmer is the removal of US troops and facilities from Europe who did not step up to help ensure their own access to Mid East oil, and who denied our landings at military bases we either own or pay to use in Spain, Italy, and Germany. Adding the 25% tariffs on autos sold to the US may also get their attention. But only still a glimmer.
I noticed you didn't approach the fact that IQ threshold for diagnosing mental retardation (now intellectual disability - another euphemism) was lowered from below 85 to below 70-75 by the American Association on Mental Deficiency (AAMD) in 1973 to reduce "overdiagnosis" and address "racial/cultural" bias in tests.
Now that is a touchy one!...lol...;)
We literally changed the definition of retard so people like Ketanji Brown Jackson could get accepted to Harvard.
Here's the sad thing:
Federal/State funds for Special Education = $105 billion
Federal/State funds for Gifted/Talented = $1.5 billion
We can do both, but this dimunition over standards is...wait for it....retarded.
Retards. We invest in retards. forsake the smart kids, and do our dystopian best to ensure continued societal decay
What could be more important than identifying high IQ children and investing in their development for the betterment of society?
Imagine hating people for stuff like this, and we're just over here saying all the stuff that our grandma said was totally normal
A healthy socicty is not an organism subordinating every cell to the good of the whole. And neither is it a colony of insects, where the collective instinct acts like a dictator. That's why they love all things centralized.
this applies to any ideology which attempts to over-simplify reality
People are different.
A society composed of individuals of inadequate knowledge can only devolve.
We saw it during the scamdemic with petty tyrants, and in so many other things.
Once increasing pressures to perform at a level unattainable for them, and in fear of being discovered as incompetent, they begin direct attacks against anyone with greater talent or skill, removing them from appropriate positions playing an active role in degrading their social and professional adjustment. "Upwardly-adjusted" people therefore prefer heavy-handed totalitarian governments which protect their positions.
The other side of the coin is "downwardly-adjusting" talent....which actually is just as devastating to a healthy society.
Bottom line:
Whatever is qualitatively different and remains in a state of permanent evolution cannot be equal.
The West is committed to "democracy", and in a democracy what counts most is warm bodies. In every democratic or representative system, the vast majority of votes are simply proxies, so to maintain power, this is what the system rewards. You invest in your voter base (special ed students and parents) then harvest the votes on election day.
More politically astute, too. Pritzker knows low end votes heavily donkey, and the pachyderms are too afraid of their shadows to call it out and stand for what America used to be.
Absurd. Why bother spending so much money babysitting the useless? Just give them *literal* babysitters and focus on the people who stand even the slightest chance of actually being productive.
Not even slightly. But I'm willing to be wrong. Please, let me know what benefit they might actually provide to society in exchange for such disproportionate educational spending largesse. Though I'll grant that we may be speaking past one another, first define "Special Services" in terms of the IQ and capacity level you are referencing.
Though, FWIW, I concur that G&T programs are a waste. Mostly, I found them remedial busywork. I suppose they might ultimately benefit the low-end "smart kids", but generally, the instructors placed in charge of such programs are utterly incapable of keeping pace with the truly intelligent students they're notionally supposed to direct and shape.
Correct. I think you're referring to a 'representative democracy' a.k.a. a republic. This is as far as the human race has got with 'levelling the playing field'. I believe there are better (i.e. more productive) ways of running countries and that we'll all benefit if we ever get round to trying them.
Well in answer to one of your points, I could say my own country, Scotland, whose Enlightenment gave rise to the people who drafted the US Constitution.
I have substack on a new system of government - called panocracy. It's about 'direct democracy' as opposed to 'representative democracy'. Your detailed comments are welcome.
It should seem that the slowest and dumbest getting eaten would make for ever smarter and faster prey animals. Maybe it does and the predators also got smarter and faster. Apply that to humans and the DEI and equality argument fall apart - which is kind of the point of this whole article.
The Chinese invented it and wielded it against their own. Now they get to go global. Chinese 4th graders do multi-variable calculus while ours are being trained to hate the US, obsess over skin color, and have zero faith in the opposite sex, which they also cannot identify.
The CCP has been very open about using our foibles to assert their "innate" superiority. If we help them, how long do you think they would care about pronouns and letting their own children go hungry in favor of someone else's?
I graduated from a public high school in 1973. The graduating class of Waggener in Louisville, KY tied Exeter Academy that year with 26 National Merit Semi-finalists. The kids in our advanced program had been separated from other students as far back as elementary school. Forced busing to meet racial quotas commenced the next year, and as history records, that was all she wrote. Waggener soon became one of the lowest ranked schools in the state, riddled with violence, truancy, etc. The upshot was the increased enrollment in private schools, and more recently home schooling. So did the liberal federal judges and Democrats accomplish anything? Bottom line, race relations worse, education worse, school budgets through the roof, after school activities curtailed, parents uninterested, kids left to experiment with drugs and glued to cellphones. Yay!
And yet the AHA and others lowered the "ideal" threshold for BP, cholesterol and similar. Could those running (and being paid off by Big Pharma) these organizations be retarded themselves? 🤔
My husband teaches engineering at a smaller college. There are absolutely no barriers for women to take the engineering majors, and the faculty and administration do everything they can to encourage enrollment. But they can't move the needle of women in the engineering programs above 20%; for some programs (like electrical) it's much lower. It isn't about ability, it's about interest. When women are free to choose what they study, far more of them choose nursing, or biology as a prelude to medical school. Or any of the liberal arts over engineering. While some larger schools have managed to enroll a higher percentage of women, it's been at the expense of smaller schools - they have the resources to offer scholarships that entice the small percentage of women interested in engineering to enroll there. But overall, the US higher education system is not turning out more women engineers than they did 40 years ago, when I was in engineering school. And for anyone who says the schools are sexist or misogynistic, I say bulls**t. I experienced absolutely no sexism in the late '80s, and there is definitely none now.
There is strong evidence for this exact phenomenon - it's so well known in social sciences that it even has a formal name. It's called the "Gender-Equality Paradox". What researchers found was that the societies that were the most equal actually showed greater differentiation by gender for different occupations, not less. This, of course, went against the entire hypothesis that it was discrimination that was the driver of these differences in the first place.
It is indeed - the textbook example of this phenomenon are the countries in Scandinavia. They score the highest in the world on gender equality, but also have some of the highest differentiation by gender by occupation.
My son met his girlfriend their freshman year of college in engineering classes. She changed majors after the first year because the math got too difficult. She's a very good student, just not suited! She changed to counseling/psychology.
The crazy thing is is that a lot of people seem to really want to be oppressed. It’s part of their identity.
I had a good friend (who is black) who was really freaking out after George Floyd during the BLM era. She was telling me she was worried that one of her sons would be shot by a cop walking home from the bus stop. She seemed to believe that thousands of young black boys were shot by cops just for existing.
I went and pulled the numbers from the government website and showed her that the number of unarmed black men that were killed by police was something around 12, not thousands. Also, those were men committing crimes, not just walking down the street. She became very upset and actually fought me on this. She refused to accept the data.
I found this very odd because if I honestly believed that my children were in danger and you showed me evidence to the contrary, I would be relieved, not upset. Here I was showing her that her sons were not in the danger she thought they were and she was angry! At me!
The charitable interpretation of this is that she’s just so brainwashed that she doesn’t believe the data even though it’s coming from the very government that she supposedly trusts. The less charitable interpretation is that this was all a huge virtue signal to gain her victim points, mostly with white liberals, and the facts I was showing her was interfering with her performance.
And the other side of the coin is those same people will vigorously deny that blacks commit murder at a much higher rate than other groups. That’s just a racist talking point!
They know where murders are committed. They know that certain communities “suffer” from violence in their neighborhoods. Did they think white kids from the suburbs were sneaking into the inner cities, killing people, and then escaping without a trace?
You can argue about the causes, and what to do about it. But how can they deny the facts?
I provided all sorts of information but considering she’s a big government sort of person I figured that would be the one she would trust the most. She doesn’t trust any of it. She’s convinced that every month thousands of black people are shot dead just for walking down the street. Or at least she claims that’s what she believes. I’m not sure if she actually does.
A thoughtful piece, as we've come to expect. I'm old enough to remember a time when comedians made jokes about the differences between the sexes, and both men and women in the audience laughed rather than lawyered up. It's a relief to still find some of that humor here!
I enjoy reading Helen Andrews and consider her a serious thinker. I wonder what El Gato thinks about her claim that wokeism is essentially feminization. As our institutions become dominated by women we deviate from competition and objective truth and prioritize consensus, empathy and safety.
“…these groups that have grown accustomed to preference and privilege will revert to what they know: that if they do not get everything they want it must be discrimination.”
This is why the entire MO of the Left is to divide the country into tribes and factions. Each one clamoring for “more” from government for their “pet cause”, and the Democrats are more than happy to oblige. It is their entire strategy to create “disunion”, even if it flies in the face of truth and/or reality. It’s a power play: divide and conquer.
And tragically, there are plenty of faux “aggrieved” parties of the willfully ignorant and greedy variety out there to keep that system humming.
I had a very typical-looking "liberal" female who studied "human resources" tell me that IQ tests are "mostly fake and don't tell anything."
I attempted to explain that while a test can have presentation biases for certain cultures, they have developed methodologies to reduce that problem and she just smiled a Backpfeifengesicht
and tardsplained that she'd studied it in college. As if no one else had, or as if argument from authority proved intellectual ability.
Social environment only, fortunately, but that was absolutely running through my brain. "That's sounds like cope from someone in the low median range."
Having recently driven through the midwest, staying at one poorly maintained and often not well cleaned motel after another (IYKYK), most of them 4- and 5-star, I'd just like to go on record as saying I would love to be in a society that promoted inn-competence.
It's been a very bitter thing since the beginning of civilization that we can't engineer utopia.
For any general principle the exceptions give fuel to the engineery types. This has to be fought as though it's a life-or-death struggle because it is, and I'll always scorn Summers for not having the guts to refuse to apologize for truth.
It's a terrible truth, too. Think of what it's like to be just smart enough to realize you can never be smart enough for the place to which you've been told you have the right to aspire and to push others artificially labeled "not worthy" aside in your climb.
I had too much experience for any lifetime of what happens when you turn not-very-bright women into public school teachers and most especially and most starkly black lady teachers. These gals make gangsters out of sweet little boys every day school is in session.
What happens when that type makes it through college and can't shine anywhere thereafter? We saw very clearly, with Michelle Robinson Obama. That chip on her shoulder grew and grew like--oh, I'd better not say that one.
There will always be the tragedies of the kid who with the right support and an iron will of his own who could do better and achieve more than what his capacities look like at the start, but that's life. You can't save every kitten though we feel so painfully in our hearts that we ought to try.
Anyway if we're truly wrenching things back now we'd better quadruple our efforts not to surrender even the least bit of ground in the struggle.
We are creative beings. We haven't engineered utopia, so far. That is not to say we can't or should not review the trends being enacted.
Just because we can't save every kitten doesn't mean the only other choice is to devolve into Hunger Games and reward only a handful of sociopaths. We can do better and we have, in isolated pockets we can examine and elevate in sane, correctable steps when one ideology doesn't hoard complete control. We can collectively learn both boundaries and compassion. It isn't that impossible.
In my view if everyone started with their own families and then to their neighbors and immediate communities and stopped indulging in the romance of imaginary virtue towards those furthest from us, we'd restore some healthy balance to the universe.
Agreed. We weren't built to carry the guilt of the entire world the way we do now. We can start with our own and not end there. Just because our culture has not found the balance doesn't mean there isn't one. The toxic compassion has been used for generations to dismantle this country from inside. What is not acknowledged is that this was possible as a "reaction" to the Reagan-era concentration of wealth at the top, invest in prisons not schools, and cut taxes for corporate/private wealth at the same time we cut spending for the infrastructure and education. When only the very wealthy and very poor get credentials, the middle class disappears. Here we are.
Pardon me but I think most of what you wrote is nonsense.
Balance dies when you scale up. "To make the world a better place" is the root of all evil.
How much "investing" in schools is necessary? No amount of money can fix what parents fail to do. Even an illiterate mother can "read" a picture book to her baby.
Many more people than currently are or even back then were need to be incarcerated though if we are brutally honest a great many of the incarcerated need to be executed, and earlier than after 40 years on death row. Brain miswiring can't be fixed and unfortunately, many many many people are dangerously miswired. We may pity the rabid creature infected not of its own choice but we nevertheless must cull it from society.
I don't care that some people make breathtaking amounts of money and want to keep most of it. Look up the percentages of what each income class pays in total taxes.
Why are people poor? There are plenty of reasons, some of their own doing and some not. Some people make terrible choices and never stop doing so. Some people need targeted assistance to overcome circumstances not of their own creation. Society needs to triage, not waste resources where they will always be flushed down the toilet.
A society is an organized group of living creatures. The creatures organize themselves into a society distinct from other near or far societies to ensure as much as possible survival and reproduction of its members.
The rest you can answer yourself from what I just wrote here, I think.
We can agree to disagree. Unlike some, I can do that. Also, I happen to agree that we can triage and make decisions. This further demonstrates for me how those who already believe we live in a meritocracy help to propel, for example, the creation of new billionaires during a contrived pandemic lockdown where people close ranks and bury their heads in the sand while our numbers diminish. Drawing the line too far right on the "worthy poor" vs. the "expendables" has helped the left draw the line too far left. Enjoy!
For God's sake. There's never been anyplace on earth that's pure anything. The principle is always muddied by too many variables to count, and sometimes there's a serious lack of the ability to look around corners when complaining about purported injustices and unfairness.
For example the theatrical outrage over legacy admissions to elite universities. Legacy families are the backbone and profitable well of philanthropy that funds all sorts of scholarships that enable them fancy places to let in all sorts of other kids too.
Me, I don't feel no hatred towards billionaires. Feudal barons ye shall always have with you. It's just science.
> It's been a very bitter thing since the beginning of civilization that we can't engineer utopia.
Particularly bitter to us engineers. :-/
> What happens when that type makes it through college and can't shine anywhere thereafter?
I experienced the same thing from the "smart" white and asian ladies in charge of the various "Gifted & Talented" programs I was sentenced to during my stay in my K-12 incarceration. I mean, I'm sure they *were* smart, relatively speaking, compared to *other* graduates of that set of programs, and of whom actually ended up as career teachers. They also invariably became incredibly vicious after discovering how far below me they were. Yes, I *do* realize how egotistical all of this sounds. Nevertheless, it is a true account of what befell me during my primary education.
I’ve often found myself very frustrated witnessing the feminist movement. On one hand, I have compassion for the talented women in centuries gone by who were born in the genius end of the bell curve, but in most cases, were forced to live a mind-numbing life in the middle. Or perhaps to use that genius as “the woman behind the man” but always with their light under a bushel. The smaller numbers of them allowed society to pretend they didn’t/couldn’t exist. For that group, I’m grateful that their equivalent peers today have more opportunities from which they can choose and use their intellectual gifts in truly fulfilling ways.
On the other hand, like most societal pendulums, in order to bust through that cultural inertia, it had to swing too far and seemingly employ the Peter Principle in order to make up the numbers required to ram the doors. Ironically, in order to grant that select IQ group freedom of career choice, in some ways, it felt like that freedom ended up temporarily removed for many women. I can confirm that while attending a Catholic college prep high school in the late 80s, it wasn’t a question of if you would go to college, but which one and for how long. Of the 9 of us at my lunch table, I’m one of just two that stopped at a bachelor’s degree. As it happens, I’m also the only one who did not end up liberal/woke despite our shared conservative, suburban upbringing. As one who bowed to the feminist pressures to pursue a career, I’m grateful now to see women of any IQ feeling the freedom once again to stay home and raise a family if they choose. I guess only time will tell if we end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater in our effort to swing the pendulum back to a position more aligned with reality.
<i>"I have compassion for the talented women in centuries gone by who were born in the genius end of the bell curve, but in most cases, were forced to live a mind-numbing life in the middle."</i>
Up until very recently, that was true for everybody, not just women. If you were not independently wealthy or found a patron, you died in a hovel like everyone else.
It might indeed have been true for most, but given that women were not credited with intelligence or allowed independence throughout much of history, it was a damned sight harder to find a patron, especially one who wouldn't take advantage of them sexually.
Maybe. Hasn't been an option for really anyone up until about the last century or so. If you didn't inherit wealth, it was root hog or die.
Last phrase was somewhat slanderous don't you think? Based on any factual data? The Shelleys sure, but that didn't seem to be a forced sexual relationship. Percy doesn't strike me as the type.
And whom was I libelling? I base that comment on my own experience, and am very glad I had alternative options to those men who offered to be my patrons but turned out to be attaching strings to said offers.
I have an unusual top 1.5% IQ and it also took me 32 years to finish my first Bachelor's due to financial lack. There is an assumption that money follows intellect in a meritocracy, though the two are not automatically related.
You are correct that freedom is the ability to choose, including the choice to have families. Not all working women do so out of ego-driven societally-enforced values. Some of us need to eat food and live indoors, and hitching one's wagon to a male is not the tried-and-true path for all.
Bravo, gato malo! And thank you, Elon. And Tough shit , Obama...suck it up. The ice dam has broken and once again all that backed-up water heads for the sea. The ice age of ignorance has begun to thaw.
We’ve confounded the founders’ principle of political equality and free markets with the woke fantasies of genetic, gender & social equality and redistributive equity. Their system, when embraced honestly, simply creates a civilized environment for the laws of nature—especially for natural selection—to fully express.
Rather than favoring the domination of brute force in “a purely primitive state of nature,” the founders’ political equality creates an environment where the more subtle traits of intelligence & other talents are freed up to develop according to that same evolutionary principle. And it is a feature, not a bug, that the ensuing competitive environment encourages the abandonment of artificial cultural restraints and the embracing of raw natural inequality.
The results are 1) the jettisoning of artificial handicaps (sometimes of entire cultures, if they prove to be cultures of failure), and 2) massive inequality of development as natural individual potential increasingly becomes the only determining limitation.
Nevertheless, all members benefit in a society committed only to basic political equality & free markets. Skeptics should consider whether iPhone or HVAC are possible in a state of nature, nevermind whether available to the least intelligent and least talented members of the human race. And to those who think socialism in any of its forms would provide true “equity,” I would point out that AC was generally unavailable under the Soviet Union, that nearly no one in North Korea has an iPhone, and that the most innovative consumer goods companies have developed not in Keynesian Europe but in the most laissez-faire system on the planet: the United States of America.
Political equality leads to individual inequality because the free market richly rewards individual intelligence & talent when they are developed for the benefit of all.
SCOTUS itself has become embarrassingly illustrative of this problem. Imagine being a brilliant black female jurist and reading KJBs opinions, knowing she was picked to be, not a brilliant legal scholar, but your representative on the celebrity court?
The second order effect is that KJB's retardery has actually sometimes pushed Kagan and even Sotomayor to the right simply to avoid association.
Not sure how much longer she can bear the embarrassment of her fellow Supremes. Praying she receives an offer so lucrative she chooses to step down from the bench.
She could always try to get back on Broadway and get her SAG card.
Broadway is too competitive.
Was she on Broadway!!??!!
Can you imagine the eye rolling that must take place when SCOTUS meets?
Biden could have selected an extremely well-qualified black woman for SCOTUS, Leonard Kruger who is now on the California Supreme Court. She was not chosen because she's a moderate liberal who put the law above ideology. Biden passed up a great opportunity for purely poltical reasons.
Dick Minnis
removingthecataract.substack.com
And Biden essentially saying "non-black females need not apply"...
That is the definition of racism
Sexism too!
Speaking of which, how about the governor of Virginia saying she plans on raising "revenue" for the state by taxing gyms to supplement over-runs of state funded Healthcare programs?
Imagine the endless irony of obesity being the number one cause of death in America so we tax gyms to pay for healthcare.
There can be no better illustration of how retarded liberal governance has become.
It's emotional mindlessness with power.
She'd have a better case for using current revenues to subsidize GLP-1 sales...
Next they should have an add-on tax at grocery stores for organic vegetables to help pay for healthcare. You oay it at the register where they display all the impulse buy candies and snacks.
It is frankly confounding, how people picked because of their immutable characteristics do poorly in their jobs, but also use these immutable characteristics to solidify/codify their power in a system that allows them to do so because of their immutable characteristics.
tl;dr: grifters gonna grift when you give 'em the chance to grift.
I might substitute the word "explicitly" for "essentially" in your sentence. My recollection is that during his search for a SCOTUS justice commentators were saying that Biden was effectively eliminating 98% of the pool of lawyers as possible candidates, given that they were not black females.
Kind of funny. You may recall that Biden graduated in the bottom 10% of his law school class. In choosing this idiot he proved the notion that like attracts like.
Reinforcing the "B's" hire "C's" premise that the bad cat wrote about some time ago. Can't have the "new guy" showing me up . . . .
That is exacly what's wrong with the preferential hiring model (other than the fact that they tend to suck at their jobs), they have such low standards (because they weren't hired for ability/competence) that they hire other B/C's who also clog the system.
And what does it say about the folks infesting the Biden admin truly think of black women, that she would be their pick? They are the most racist mofos in the west.
She was picked because of her WILLINGNESS to play the Woke Position, weaponizing the Law to enshrine Marxist interpretations whether it was the majority opinion or not.
Her opinions stand as historical markers, by design.
It will be up to us to cast the proper interpretations upon her "opinions" - as deviances from the norm with a call to vigilance that this not happen in the future.
This Lemon will equal lemonade.
She knows it and is there for life.
Indeed.
But if you think about it might be a good thing so the average person can see her utter retardedness. Especially in relation to someone like Clarence Thomas or Alito.
I continually come back to George Carlin's quote on that subject, though: `Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.`
The one and only thing I was wrong about Covid was the sheer volume of people that gobbled it up. I genuinely thought it was playacting for the 2020 election and would break apart after that. That's the same populace that's expected to see through KJB.
Given the claim that only the best and brightest legal minds even get nominated to the SC, it must be disheartening for black women lawyers to realize that the assumption must be that KJB represents the pinnacle of qualification among them.
I think it's important to point out to black female lawyers that Democrats think KJB not only represents them, but is the very *best* of them.
The BEE has so much fun with her, and Matt T and others. She is a walking talking trove of idiocy and is the very best argument against DEI.
So i think she serves a valuable purpose.
As long as there remains only one of her.
Every court needs a jester.
That is indeed the silver lining. Start pushing this too far, and people start realizing that the emperor has no clothes. It's why the mass media and the public health establishment suffered massive hits to their credibility over the past several years.
Indeed I would be outraged. Maybe history will look back on her and realize she was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
As Anne Hathaway likes to say, “Inshallah.”
Now, apply that concept to your heart or neurosurgeon.
It’s terrifying and I think everyone should get well versed in medical tourism.
And the things we can do for ourselves that mean we do not need to use the hospitals and the surgeons.
I think the AI powered robotic surgeries are what they are planning for us all. I was supposed to have a Robotic Surgery for a hernia. I researched it and found at my age it should no be done. Hot wire scalpels nick organs, the blowing up of the abdomen can rip fat layers and muscles, Sepsis is a huge problem ( I know two people who had that and almost died), then, the General Anesthesia can cause huge problems including having to catheterize yourself every 6 hour for life, as has happened to one of my friends following a heart valve repair.
Yeah, I have a lot to say about all this. I mean, I built my career around it.
Yikes!
Or pilot or structural engineer...
Promoting based on box checking is how you get an illiterate imbecile on the nation's most powerful court. But the good news is, that disaster has a long life ahead of her.
I doubt we will rid ourselves of the DEI menace before it takes us to the ground.
I used to watch Judge Napolitano and Celente during the lockdowns. When Jackson was nominated, Napolitano supported it saying she would be good on libertarian stances. Given his view, I thought maybe she will be fine. She has been a disaster. I stopped watching both Napolitano and Celente, the latter because I thought he became unhinged.
Judge Nap has been good on many things and I lack the expertise to debate him, but he’s had some weird takes; the one that surprised me first was Russiagate
makes you wonder why they didn't appoint that brilliant black female jurist...couldn't find her, or they needed the wrong decisions.
My guess is they didn’t want someone too smart.
Rewarding incompetence will end itself. Only question is when - not if.
And how much damage it will do to all of us before it is ended.
agree. What a freaking mess.
Theeeese people, I tell you, Theeeese people.....
They are responsible for turning 3/4 of the planet into an insane asylum.
I'm feeling rather pessimistic. I'd wager it ends all of us before it is ended.
Have faith Grasshopper!
just look at the EU now and watch to see if they can even pull out out of their death spiral anymore.
No chance.
Who do you think is the next wave of 3rd world immigrants they're welcoming into their societies?
3rd world immigrants the initial 3rd world immigrants were supposedly trying to "escape".
I think we will see the EU break up back into their separate countries, That may allow a few to eject the invaders while the others will embrace them because they can do nothing. Then there may be wars between them again. At the rate they are going "green" they ma have to be fought with horses and ground troops with trench warfare again.
I agree. True lunatics and incompetents are running the UK. If that Nut Zero ejit Milliband becomes PM after the current Nut Job gets thrashed, last ones leaving turn off the lights. Sorry, they will already be off.
Like toward the end of the Roman Empire. Each horrible new wave of barbarians were running from the wave behind them.
no. They can not.
One thousand very small bad decisions, it is an actual living breathing beast now
100%
Is there even a glimmer of a saviour coming that would lead them back to prosperity?
A mere hint of sanity returning to policies and government?
Discussion about immigration policy?
I think the best glimmer is the removal of US troops and facilities from Europe who did not step up to help ensure their own access to Mid East oil, and who denied our landings at military bases we either own or pay to use in Spain, Italy, and Germany. Adding the 25% tariffs on autos sold to the US may also get their attention. But only still a glimmer.
And, unfortunately, end a lot of good things before it ends itself…
I noticed you didn't approach the fact that IQ threshold for diagnosing mental retardation (now intellectual disability - another euphemism) was lowered from below 85 to below 70-75 by the American Association on Mental Deficiency (AAMD) in 1973 to reduce "overdiagnosis" and address "racial/cultural" bias in tests.
Now that is a touchy one!...lol...;)
We literally changed the definition of retard so people like Ketanji Brown Jackson could get accepted to Harvard.
Here's the sad thing:
Federal/State funds for Special Education = $105 billion
Federal/State funds for Gifted/Talented = $1.5 billion
We can do both, but this dimunition over standards is...wait for it....retarded.
Retards. We invest in retards. forsake the smart kids, and do our dystopian best to ensure continued societal decay
What could be more important than identifying high IQ children and investing in their development for the betterment of society?
Imagine hating people for stuff like this, and we're just over here saying all the stuff that our grandma said was totally normal
And then consider which part of this Bell Curve we are importing illegally or via some suicidal empathy driven TPS ruling.
Exactly. Its on purpose.
A healthy socicty is not an organism subordinating every cell to the good of the whole. And neither is it a colony of insects, where the collective instinct acts like a dictator. That's why they love all things centralized.
this applies to any ideology which attempts to over-simplify reality
People are different.
A society composed of individuals of inadequate knowledge can only devolve.
We saw it during the scamdemic with petty tyrants, and in so many other things.
Once increasing pressures to perform at a level unattainable for them, and in fear of being discovered as incompetent, they begin direct attacks against anyone with greater talent or skill, removing them from appropriate positions playing an active role in degrading their social and professional adjustment. "Upwardly-adjusted" people therefore prefer heavy-handed totalitarian governments which protect their positions.
The other side of the coin is "downwardly-adjusting" talent....which actually is just as devastating to a healthy society.
Bottom line:
Whatever is qualitatively different and remains in a state of permanent evolution cannot be equal.
Yes it’s on purpose 100%
The West is committed to "democracy", and in a democracy what counts most is warm bodies. In every democratic or representative system, the vast majority of votes are simply proxies, so to maintain power, this is what the system rewards. You invest in your voter base (special ed students and parents) then harvest the votes on election day.
No doubt.
11% of Chicago's High School students are proficient in reading...
Monday they're let out of school to protest.
Democrat indoctrination camp. Everything the Democrats touch is destroyed.
In Chicago, it's easier to skew the bell curve to the lower end than the upper end.
More politically astute, too. Pritzker knows low end votes heavily donkey, and the pachyderms are too afraid of their shadows to call it out and stand for what America used to be.
This 11% outcome was baked in the cake. Dog is on the right track. John Taylor Gatto has addressed all of this.
I think we agree more than you think.
I just think we can walk and chew gum.
But I trust your experience and think your comment is well thought out.
> Special services are under funded
Absurd. Why bother spending so much money babysitting the useless? Just give them *literal* babysitters and focus on the people who stand even the slightest chance of actually being productive.
Not even slightly. But I'm willing to be wrong. Please, let me know what benefit they might actually provide to society in exchange for such disproportionate educational spending largesse. Though I'll grant that we may be speaking past one another, first define "Special Services" in terms of the IQ and capacity level you are referencing.
Though, FWIW, I concur that G&T programs are a waste. Mostly, I found them remedial busywork. I suppose they might ultimately benefit the low-end "smart kids", but generally, the instructors placed in charge of such programs are utterly incapable of keeping pace with the truly intelligent students they're notionally supposed to direct and shape.
Correct. I think you're referring to a 'representative democracy' a.k.a. a republic. This is as far as the human race has got with 'levelling the playing field'. I believe there are better (i.e. more productive) ways of running countries and that we'll all benefit if we ever get round to trying them.
Let us know when you come up with it.
There have been over 300 countries since the American Revolution with every conceivable form of governance.
Name one that has benefited mankind more than America.
And there are several that have essentially copied our constitution.
We are more than a Constitutional Federal Republic; we are a "people", not a document.
And that's the difference.
Well in answer to one of your points, I could say my own country, Scotland, whose Enlightenment gave rise to the people who drafted the US Constitution.
I have substack on a new system of government - called panocracy. It's about 'direct democracy' as opposed to 'representative democracy'. Your detailed comments are welcome.
> > since the American Revolution
> I could say my own country, Scotland
Apparently I need to put more study into history, as I was entirely unaware that Scotland post-dated 1776.
Also note how the democRats always use the term "our democracy" that is code for republicans and other parties need not be included.
How else could you get Somalis into government?
Well i think nearly 50% of Somalis are married to either a 1st or 2nd cousin.
We are not letting the best a brightest in.
I wonder how the pioneers would've done if they had that IQ?
Become fertilizer.
Or food.
Still ends up as fertilizer.
Yup. There's a reason predators are smarter than prey.
It should seem that the slowest and dumbest getting eaten would make for ever smarter and faster prey animals. Maybe it does and the predators also got smarter and faster. Apply that to humans and the DEI and equality argument fall apart - which is kind of the point of this whole article.
The fetal anomalies are real and on the rise RG . These genetic companies have testing down to 8 weeks now .
Please remember that these people are being utlized by others for the others' purposes. This cannot end well for the Somalis.
This is not an excuse for the corruption they have committed in the Name of their God.
Importing Somalis was as stupid as importing Kudzu or Japanese Knotweed. They multiply tenaciously and are near impossible to be rid of.
And during this period of cultural suicide in the West, the Chinese laugh all the way to the bank.
Did you happen to see Putin talking about exactly this yesterday?
He was actually defending Western Civilization
No (gotta link?). Probably a subject that is visited daily the Putinsphere I should imagine. Happy Cinco de Mayo, BTW!
https://x.com/i/status/2051534914299011359
He’s right
The Chinese practically invented the suppression of intellectual and social dissent, so I don't think the effect is quite what you think.
The Chinese invented it and wielded it against their own. Now they get to go global. Chinese 4th graders do multi-variable calculus while ours are being trained to hate the US, obsess over skin color, and have zero faith in the opposite sex, which they also cannot identify.
The CCP has been very open about using our foibles to assert their "innate" superiority. If we help them, how long do you think they would care about pronouns and letting their own children go hungry in favor of someone else's?
I graduated from a public high school in 1973. The graduating class of Waggener in Louisville, KY tied Exeter Academy that year with 26 National Merit Semi-finalists. The kids in our advanced program had been separated from other students as far back as elementary school. Forced busing to meet racial quotas commenced the next year, and as history records, that was all she wrote. Waggener soon became one of the lowest ranked schools in the state, riddled with violence, truancy, etc. The upshot was the increased enrollment in private schools, and more recently home schooling. So did the liberal federal judges and Democrats accomplish anything? Bottom line, race relations worse, education worse, school budgets through the roof, after school activities curtailed, parents uninterested, kids left to experiment with drugs and glued to cellphones. Yay!
Yes. So predictable.
Even the blacks hated the busing
Dunno why. They've done *so much* with the opportunity. Just look at how they've thrived in the wake of equal access to schools!
"What could be more important than identifying high IQ children and investing in their development for the betterment of society?"
The left has been busy eliminating the gifted children programs in the schools.
And yet the AHA and others lowered the "ideal" threshold for BP, cholesterol and similar. Could those running (and being paid off by Big Pharma) these organizations be retarded themselves? 🤔
My husband teaches engineering at a smaller college. There are absolutely no barriers for women to take the engineering majors, and the faculty and administration do everything they can to encourage enrollment. But they can't move the needle of women in the engineering programs above 20%; for some programs (like electrical) it's much lower. It isn't about ability, it's about interest. When women are free to choose what they study, far more of them choose nursing, or biology as a prelude to medical school. Or any of the liberal arts over engineering. While some larger schools have managed to enroll a higher percentage of women, it's been at the expense of smaller schools - they have the resources to offer scholarships that entice the small percentage of women interested in engineering to enroll there. But overall, the US higher education system is not turning out more women engineers than they did 40 years ago, when I was in engineering school. And for anyone who says the schools are sexist or misogynistic, I say bulls**t. I experienced absolutely no sexism in the late '80s, and there is definitely none now.
There is strong evidence for this exact phenomenon - it's so well known in social sciences that it even has a formal name. It's called the "Gender-Equality Paradox". What researchers found was that the societies that were the most equal actually showed greater differentiation by gender for different occupations, not less. This, of course, went against the entire hypothesis that it was discrimination that was the driver of these differences in the first place.
Thank you for pointing this out. I believe it is more evident in certain countries.
It is indeed - the textbook example of this phenomenon are the countries in Scandinavia. They score the highest in the world on gender equality, but also have some of the highest differentiation by gender by occupation.
My son met his girlfriend their freshman year of college in engineering classes. She changed majors after the first year because the math got too difficult. She's a very good student, just not suited! She changed to counseling/psychology.
Same thing in three of the four trades programs I've been through at the local trades school.
Welding, Machining, EMS, and Truck Driving.
Take a guess as to which one had significant female representation.
The crazy thing is is that a lot of people seem to really want to be oppressed. It’s part of their identity.
I had a good friend (who is black) who was really freaking out after George Floyd during the BLM era. She was telling me she was worried that one of her sons would be shot by a cop walking home from the bus stop. She seemed to believe that thousands of young black boys were shot by cops just for existing.
I went and pulled the numbers from the government website and showed her that the number of unarmed black men that were killed by police was something around 12, not thousands. Also, those were men committing crimes, not just walking down the street. She became very upset and actually fought me on this. She refused to accept the data.
I found this very odd because if I honestly believed that my children were in danger and you showed me evidence to the contrary, I would be relieved, not upset. Here I was showing her that her sons were not in the danger she thought they were and she was angry! At me!
The charitable interpretation of this is that she’s just so brainwashed that she doesn’t believe the data even though it’s coming from the very government that she supposedly trusts. The less charitable interpretation is that this was all a huge virtue signal to gain her victim points, mostly with white liberals, and the facts I was showing her was interfering with her performance.
Either way it was perplexing to me.
And the other side of the coin is those same people will vigorously deny that blacks commit murder at a much higher rate than other groups. That’s just a racist talking point!
They know where murders are committed. They know that certain communities “suffer” from violence in their neighborhoods. Did they think white kids from the suburbs were sneaking into the inner cities, killing people, and then escaping without a trace?
You can argue about the causes, and what to do about it. But how can they deny the facts?
And you are mad at her for not trusting a government website? Of course she doesn’t! Maybe find another source than the government??
I provided all sorts of information but considering she’s a big government sort of person I figured that would be the one she would trust the most. She doesn’t trust any of it. She’s convinced that every month thousands of black people are shot dead just for walking down the street. Or at least she claims that’s what she believes. I’m not sure if she actually does.
Well, a potentially uncomfortable fact is that one doesn't have to believe it to milk it.
Not saying that's your friend, but that doesn't change that the fact remains.
A thoughtful piece, as we've come to expect. I'm old enough to remember a time when comedians made jokes about the differences between the sexes, and both men and women in the audience laughed rather than lawyered up. It's a relief to still find some of that humor here!
I enjoy reading Helen Andrews and consider her a serious thinker. I wonder what El Gato thinks about her claim that wokeism is essentially feminization. As our institutions become dominated by women we deviate from competition and objective truth and prioritize consensus, empathy and safety.
Rush Limbaugh had it right. He called it the chickification of America by the feminazís.
“…these groups that have grown accustomed to preference and privilege will revert to what they know: that if they do not get everything they want it must be discrimination.”
This is why the entire MO of the Left is to divide the country into tribes and factions. Each one clamoring for “more” from government for their “pet cause”, and the Democrats are more than happy to oblige. It is their entire strategy to create “disunion”, even if it flies in the face of truth and/or reality. It’s a power play: divide and conquer.
And tragically, there are plenty of faux “aggrieved” parties of the willfully ignorant and greedy variety out there to keep that system humming.
I had a very typical-looking "liberal" female who studied "human resources" tell me that IQ tests are "mostly fake and don't tell anything."
I attempted to explain that while a test can have presentation biases for certain cultures, they have developed methodologies to reduce that problem and she just smiled a Backpfeifengesicht
and tardsplained that she'd studied it in college. As if no one else had, or as if argument from authority proved intellectual ability.
I’ve known the type: “I went to college and I’m s-m-r-t. To them I say: yes you went there, but did you learn anything?
They are not capable of learing (sic).
And when you sized her up and said, "You know, I'll bet you're a 90" she spluttered and choked and wrote you up as a disciplinary problem 😉
Social environment only, fortunately, but that was absolutely running through my brain. "That's sounds like cope from someone in the low median range."
Having recently driven through the midwest, staying at one poorly maintained and often not well cleaned motel after another (IYKYK), most of them 4- and 5-star, I'd just like to go on record as saying I would love to be in a society that promoted inn-competence.
It's been a very bitter thing since the beginning of civilization that we can't engineer utopia.
For any general principle the exceptions give fuel to the engineery types. This has to be fought as though it's a life-or-death struggle because it is, and I'll always scorn Summers for not having the guts to refuse to apologize for truth.
It's a terrible truth, too. Think of what it's like to be just smart enough to realize you can never be smart enough for the place to which you've been told you have the right to aspire and to push others artificially labeled "not worthy" aside in your climb.
I had too much experience for any lifetime of what happens when you turn not-very-bright women into public school teachers and most especially and most starkly black lady teachers. These gals make gangsters out of sweet little boys every day school is in session.
What happens when that type makes it through college and can't shine anywhere thereafter? We saw very clearly, with Michelle Robinson Obama. That chip on her shoulder grew and grew like--oh, I'd better not say that one.
There will always be the tragedies of the kid who with the right support and an iron will of his own who could do better and achieve more than what his capacities look like at the start, but that's life. You can't save every kitten though we feel so painfully in our hearts that we ought to try.
Anyway if we're truly wrenching things back now we'd better quadruple our efforts not to surrender even the least bit of ground in the struggle.
We are creative beings. We haven't engineered utopia, so far. That is not to say we can't or should not review the trends being enacted.
Just because we can't save every kitten doesn't mean the only other choice is to devolve into Hunger Games and reward only a handful of sociopaths. We can do better and we have, in isolated pockets we can examine and elevate in sane, correctable steps when one ideology doesn't hoard complete control. We can collectively learn both boundaries and compassion. It isn't that impossible.
In my view if everyone started with their own families and then to their neighbors and immediate communities and stopped indulging in the romance of imaginary virtue towards those furthest from us, we'd restore some healthy balance to the universe.
Agreed. We weren't built to carry the guilt of the entire world the way we do now. We can start with our own and not end there. Just because our culture has not found the balance doesn't mean there isn't one. The toxic compassion has been used for generations to dismantle this country from inside. What is not acknowledged is that this was possible as a "reaction" to the Reagan-era concentration of wealth at the top, invest in prisons not schools, and cut taxes for corporate/private wealth at the same time we cut spending for the infrastructure and education. When only the very wealthy and very poor get credentials, the middle class disappears. Here we are.
Pardon me but I think most of what you wrote is nonsense.
Balance dies when you scale up. "To make the world a better place" is the root of all evil.
How much "investing" in schools is necessary? No amount of money can fix what parents fail to do. Even an illiterate mother can "read" a picture book to her baby.
Many more people than currently are or even back then were need to be incarcerated though if we are brutally honest a great many of the incarcerated need to be executed, and earlier than after 40 years on death row. Brain miswiring can't be fixed and unfortunately, many many many people are dangerously miswired. We may pity the rabid creature infected not of its own choice but we nevertheless must cull it from society.
I don't care that some people make breathtaking amounts of money and want to keep most of it. Look up the percentages of what each income class pays in total taxes.
Why are people poor? There are plenty of reasons, some of their own doing and some not. Some people make terrible choices and never stop doing so. Some people need targeted assistance to overcome circumstances not of their own creation. Society needs to triage, not waste resources where they will always be flushed down the toilet.
Etc.
With you pretty much right to the end. You make the normative moral claim of what society should do.
Honest question. Why is it society's job to "right" "wrongs"?
It's not the job of society to right wrongs.
A society is an organized group of living creatures. The creatures organize themselves into a society distinct from other near or far societies to ensure as much as possible survival and reproduction of its members.
The rest you can answer yourself from what I just wrote here, I think.
We can agree to disagree. Unlike some, I can do that. Also, I happen to agree that we can triage and make decisions. This further demonstrates for me how those who already believe we live in a meritocracy help to propel, for example, the creation of new billionaires during a contrived pandemic lockdown where people close ranks and bury their heads in the sand while our numbers diminish. Drawing the line too far right on the "worthy poor" vs. the "expendables" has helped the left draw the line too far left. Enjoy!
For God's sake. There's never been anyplace on earth that's pure anything. The principle is always muddied by too many variables to count, and sometimes there's a serious lack of the ability to look around corners when complaining about purported injustices and unfairness.
For example the theatrical outrage over legacy admissions to elite universities. Legacy families are the backbone and profitable well of philanthropy that funds all sorts of scholarships that enable them fancy places to let in all sorts of other kids too.
Me, I don't feel no hatred towards billionaires. Feudal barons ye shall always have with you. It's just science.
> It's been a very bitter thing since the beginning of civilization that we can't engineer utopia.
Particularly bitter to us engineers. :-/
> What happens when that type makes it through college and can't shine anywhere thereafter?
I experienced the same thing from the "smart" white and asian ladies in charge of the various "Gifted & Talented" programs I was sentenced to during my stay in my K-12 incarceration. I mean, I'm sure they *were* smart, relatively speaking, compared to *other* graduates of that set of programs, and of whom actually ended up as career teachers. They also invariably became incredibly vicious after discovering how far below me they were. Yes, I *do* realize how egotistical all of this sounds. Nevertheless, it is a true account of what befell me during my primary education.
Not egotistical at all. It's terrible to be the intelligent captive of morons.
I’ve often found myself very frustrated witnessing the feminist movement. On one hand, I have compassion for the talented women in centuries gone by who were born in the genius end of the bell curve, but in most cases, were forced to live a mind-numbing life in the middle. Or perhaps to use that genius as “the woman behind the man” but always with their light under a bushel. The smaller numbers of them allowed society to pretend they didn’t/couldn’t exist. For that group, I’m grateful that their equivalent peers today have more opportunities from which they can choose and use their intellectual gifts in truly fulfilling ways.
On the other hand, like most societal pendulums, in order to bust through that cultural inertia, it had to swing too far and seemingly employ the Peter Principle in order to make up the numbers required to ram the doors. Ironically, in order to grant that select IQ group freedom of career choice, in some ways, it felt like that freedom ended up temporarily removed for many women. I can confirm that while attending a Catholic college prep high school in the late 80s, it wasn’t a question of if you would go to college, but which one and for how long. Of the 9 of us at my lunch table, I’m one of just two that stopped at a bachelor’s degree. As it happens, I’m also the only one who did not end up liberal/woke despite our shared conservative, suburban upbringing. As one who bowed to the feminist pressures to pursue a career, I’m grateful now to see women of any IQ feeling the freedom once again to stay home and raise a family if they choose. I guess only time will tell if we end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater in our effort to swing the pendulum back to a position more aligned with reality.
<i>"I have compassion for the talented women in centuries gone by who were born in the genius end of the bell curve, but in most cases, were forced to live a mind-numbing life in the middle."</i>
Up until very recently, that was true for everybody, not just women. If you were not independently wealthy or found a patron, you died in a hovel like everyone else.
It might indeed have been true for most, but given that women were not credited with intelligence or allowed independence throughout much of history, it was a damned sight harder to find a patron, especially one who wouldn't take advantage of them sexually.
Maybe. Hasn't been an option for really anyone up until about the last century or so. If you didn't inherit wealth, it was root hog or die.
Last phrase was somewhat slanderous don't you think? Based on any factual data? The Shelleys sure, but that didn't seem to be a forced sexual relationship. Percy doesn't strike me as the type.
Thomas More?
And whom was I libelling? I base that comment on my own experience, and am very glad I had alternative options to those men who offered to be my patrons but turned out to be attaching strings to said offers.
I have an unusual top 1.5% IQ and it also took me 32 years to finish my first Bachelor's due to financial lack. There is an assumption that money follows intellect in a meritocracy, though the two are not automatically related.
You are correct that freedom is the ability to choose, including the choice to have families. Not all working women do so out of ego-driven societally-enforced values. Some of us need to eat food and live indoors, and hitching one's wagon to a male is not the tried-and-true path for all.
Bravo, gato malo! And thank you, Elon. And Tough shit , Obama...suck it up. The ice dam has broken and once again all that backed-up water heads for the sea. The ice age of ignorance has begun to thaw.
Another great piece. I'm going to have to spend more time on substack and X...
We’ve confounded the founders’ principle of political equality and free markets with the woke fantasies of genetic, gender & social equality and redistributive equity. Their system, when embraced honestly, simply creates a civilized environment for the laws of nature—especially for natural selection—to fully express.
Rather than favoring the domination of brute force in “a purely primitive state of nature,” the founders’ political equality creates an environment where the more subtle traits of intelligence & other talents are freed up to develop according to that same evolutionary principle. And it is a feature, not a bug, that the ensuing competitive environment encourages the abandonment of artificial cultural restraints and the embracing of raw natural inequality.
The results are 1) the jettisoning of artificial handicaps (sometimes of entire cultures, if they prove to be cultures of failure), and 2) massive inequality of development as natural individual potential increasingly becomes the only determining limitation.
Nevertheless, all members benefit in a society committed only to basic political equality & free markets. Skeptics should consider whether iPhone or HVAC are possible in a state of nature, nevermind whether available to the least intelligent and least talented members of the human race. And to those who think socialism in any of its forms would provide true “equity,” I would point out that AC was generally unavailable under the Soviet Union, that nearly no one in North Korea has an iPhone, and that the most innovative consumer goods companies have developed not in Keynesian Europe but in the most laissez-faire system on the planet: the United States of America.
Political equality leads to individual inequality because the free market richly rewards individual intelligence & talent when they are developed for the benefit of all.
Well said!
They never give up. If they don’t rearm and re-attack on this fallacious field they will find another. The left never rests