"Islam is not a religion of terror! Judge Muslims on Islam, and not vice versa!"
Muslims are happy to use western values as long as it serves their purpose. They are all about democracy... until they get elected, and then democracy must end. They are all about religious tolerance... until they get into power, and then tolerance ends. They are all about not being judged by the actions of their brothers... it gives them the time they need to prepare a bomb.
We offered them refuge. We offered them opportunity. We offered them citizenship. And how was it returned?
Ron Paul Launches ‘Institute for Peace’
“If we have no more wars, we’ll have been successful.”
That is one of the lofty goals of a new “special project” called the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, which was launched on Wednesday afternoon in Washington, D.C., bearing the name of its chairman and founder, a former Republican presidential candidate and former Texas congressman.
The new group is under the auspices of Paul’s Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), which Paul started in 1976 as a non-profit educational organization. It will limit itself to questions of foreign policy and civil liberties, and will not focus on writing long white papers, the executive director, Daniel McAdams, said at a press conference at the Capitol Hill Club. Instead, it will seek to be more dynamic, providing analysis and opinion on its website in a way that draws people in and responds to the fast-moving media culture.
“I haven’t had any young people come up to me and say, ‘You know what? We need more war,’” Paul said, speaking to a crowd of reporters.
Actually, I believe two young people just did...
This is, and always has been, the fundamental flaw with Ron Paul's ideology: the belief that the world is full of laissez-faire libertarians who only go on the warpath when provoked by Americans. They have no goals or motivations of their own, and no inclination to use violence to get what they want.
India's Response To The Gold Sell Off: A Massive Buying Frenzy
China, India, and Russia are all buying. China and Australia are agreeing to cut out the dollar for trade. That's just the latest of several such arrangements. The dollar's losing its global status, little by little. Where will it go? Back home. Where it will compete with all the other dollars in a much smaller pond.
As I said, once you eliminate the premise that society has any say in the organization of marriage, and once supporting gay marriage is no longer a meaningful status indicator in the church of liberalism, you need to move on to something else, and that something else is polygamy.
Legalize Polygamy! No. I am not kidding.
The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less “correct” than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults. Though polygamists are a minority—a tiny minority, in fact—freedom has no value unless it extends to even the smallest and most marginalized groups among us. So let’s fight for marriage equality until it extends to every same-sex couple in the United States—and then let’s keep fighting. We’re not done yet.
Gotta' have a new fight.
And I can't help but notice - as with the case of gay marriage - that most of the arguments are identical to the arguments for no-fault divorce: it will help end abuse, children will be happier, how dare we stand in the way of valid choice, it's the feminist thing to do.
How did that work out for us? For women, children, men, society as a whole?
And of course, the author (a woman, of course) doesn't address the one critical issue: What are we supposed to do with all the men who get cut out of the marriage market when one alpha male is legally allowed to monopolize multiple women? She - quite tellingly - doesn't even pretend that the number of polygamous marriages will be balanced by an equal number of polygynous marriages. As Roissy so aptly put it, "5 minutes of alpha beats 5 years of beta". Polygamy allows women the social license to not have to make a choice. Which is very nice for them, but doesn't create the kind of wealthy, stable society with a broad middle class that monogamous families full of hard-working beta males do.
Oh, that didn't take long. We don't even have a decision yet, and the polygamists are already jumping on the moving bandwagon.
In Light Of High Court Arguments, What Does Gay Marriage Tells Us About Polygamy?
Turley said that polygamy is now where gay marriage was a decade ago, when Supreme Court decided Lawrence v. Texas, which stopped states from prohibiting sexual acts between same-sex couples. The implication is that polygamy will move forward in time.
"You cannot defend a new civil liberty, while denying it to others. I think there's a grander more magnificent trend that can see in the law and that is this right to be left alone," Turley said. "People have a right to establish their families as long as they don't harm others."
I don't expect it will take a whole decade. Once you establish that marriage is for personal satisfaction, and serves no social function, there are no barriers to legalizing polygamy. But of course, marriage isn't for personal satisfaction: it's for maximizing the productive potential of a culture. Idle hands are the devil's workshop. And no culture that allows polygamy builds or maintains a solid middle class.
Premise #1. Group selection happens. You can be the king of your tribe, but if you can't figure out how to get your people to work together, you can be beaten by the tribe across the river who manages to come in coordinated force. You will be killed, your wife raped, and your children sold into slavery.
Premise #2. All societies and forms of social organization are not equal. Some are more efficient than others. The obvious example here is socialism vs. capitalism. Insert satellite photos of North Korea & South Korea here. Same basic genetic stock, same basic natural resources, two entirely different forms of social organization.
Premise #3. Marriage is an efficiency generator. Monogamous marriage provides an incentive for beta-males to work hard. It offers them an achievable reward - a wife and children, a chance to pass on their genes - and a reason to work hard to provide for them. We have plenty of opportunities to compare, with polygamous cultures both overseas (much of the mideast) and right here in our own backyard. (The FLDS.) While it's very nice to be an alpha at the top, these are not highly successful or productive cultures. We are in the process of watching another form of failure in Japan (herbivore men) and China (where wives are simply not available due to sex-selection rather than alphas hoarding.)
The institution of marriage in the U.S. has already taken some serious hits with the legalization of no-fault divorce, and the de-stigmatization of bastardy. Single parenthood (particularly single-motherhood) is one of the single best predictors of poverty. (The line to apologize to Dan Quayle forms to the left.) And it's telling how many of the arguments for gay marriage are identical to the arguments for no-fault divorce and single-motherhood: appeals to edge cases and argument from incredulity. "How could that ever affect your marriage if someone else wants to get divorced?"
What they miss is that social institutions like marriage are as much for the benefit of the lower classes as the higher, if not more. They're for the half of the population with an IQ under 100, for those with low time-horizons and little desire to intellectually analyze their reasons for doing things. The shotgun wedding may seem crude, but it worked for many, many years. It may not have made individuals all that happy, but it got the important job of providing some measure of stability and support for the next generation done. Something that is not happening today. We've done this experiment, the results are in, and no longer a topic for debate. The traditionalists were right. While the upper classes still get married (and get divorced relatively rarely) it has been almost completely destroyed for the lower classes. Want to know why income inequality is increasing? This is a major reason.
Gay marriage puts another nail in the coffin of the traditional model of marriage that gave the West such an advantage over other cultures. In fact, it cedes the very idea of marriage as a social institution. It's now just a matter of two people being happy.
Soon it won't even be two people. Mark my words: after gay marriage passes (and it will) the progressives will need another cause to use to display their membership in the club. The natural next step is polygamy. Which is absolutely toxic. It will be normalized too, almost certainly in my lifetime. The only good news here is that the culture that rediscovers the benefits of monogamous marriage will have a tremendous advantage, and will ultimately rise to the top. But that may take several generations, and won't happen in my lifetime.
“If amnesty goes through, America becomes California and no Republican will ever win another national election. I can see why Democrats would want amnesty, but why on earth are Marco Rubio and these endless Bushes supporting it? Even Shemp and Zippo Bush are supporting amnesty for illegals.”
Claims she's now a single issue voter on the topic of amnesty. And hammers it again and again. To applause. I don't really care that it's Ann Coulter, I care that it's the person introducing the keynote speaker at CPAC. The rank & file are no longer frightened of the Republican Elite, who are just as much a part of the Wannabe Aristocracy as the Democrats. This is a turning point for the Republican Party. Among other things, this speech may mark the end of the Bush dynasty. And good riddance.
That's less revenue for the State of Colorado, and more for Arizona. It's also fewer 2nd Amendment supporters voting in Colorado... and more voting in Arizona. The two will continue to diverge politically as this sorting process plays out.
And it will only get worse from here. They're going down the same road as California. The remaining productive taxpayers will be milked until they give up and leave.
I suspect this will become another application of "One Law For Me, Another For Thee". You are not supposed to discriminate based on "irrelevancies". Big Business and Big Government most certainly will. Business already is. Target has already been caught identifying pregnant women through buying patterns. Advertisers are always looking for a better way to reach customers. (As a spam filterer, I was using the same methods to stop certain kinds of advertising.) It's only a matter of time until law enforcement adopts the same techniques. Although I suspect this will not be used to enhance safety, but as a way to enforce anarcho-tyranny. It will be a good way to enhance revenues by finding generally productive citizens who fear a criminal record and can afford to pay fines.
Individuals will need to level the playing field on their own. Pay attention to conventional wisdom. Revel in anecdote. Play your hunches. Most importantly, believe your lyin' eyes. If this seems retrograde, consider what every hunter knows: that dumb animals often outwit sportsmen equipped with the latest technology. They don't do it by developing better logical arguments, they do it by integrating a lifetime of experience. We have access to both forms of cognition. Those who reject their animal instincts are basically handing an advantage to Big Business and Big Government.
