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The generational gap is a red herring, at least politically. It’s largely an artifact of racial differences by age cohort in the US:
Younger generations are less white than older generations. That’s why younger generations vote left and older generations vote right. White millennials vote like their grandparents do. Not like their grandparents did when they were younger, but like their grandparents do now. A similar pattern holds among blacks and Hispanics, though younger blacks really do appear to be less beholden to Democrat-by-default than their elders are.
Parenthetically, I suspect a broken dollar will strain these generational political affinities. When things are tight and the kids are not all right, does one-fourth of the entire federal budget still go to Social Security?
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Here in Japan, there is a surprising amount (anecdotally) of disapproval among young people of benefits for the elderly. I have many young people express the opinion that even though the elderly are retiring or retired their careers were during boom times and so they were able to make much more money than young people will be able to and should therefore continue to bear the financial burdens of society.
If we still had the demographics of 1980, Trump would have won. Trump was the candidate of heritage Americans.
Equally concerning is that the welfare and immigration policies of the last 60 years have had a dysgenic effect on the population. Technological advances depend on a small smart fraction of the population and with that fraction shrinking economic growth will soon end. Intelligent independent thinkers also spend little time on things like facebook or twitter and platforms like those are being inundated with younger less intelligent conformist types who then demand censorship of those who disagree with them. The owners of those companies are just giving their users what they want.
There probably won’t be any changes to Social Security in the near future since Boomers make up a large voting bloc. When their numbers start declining, the program will lose support since younger nonwhites won’t want to fund a program that benefits old white people they aren’t related to.
I'm pretty sure Biden would have lost, but I don't think Trump would have even come close to garnering a respectable tally in the 1980 crowd.
Peace.Replies: @Mark G., @songbird, @VinnyVette
The "heritage Americans" not currently involved in the meth trade all voted for Biden. A lot of people in the USA incorrectly self-identify as white.
Those who still don't want what they should want are a minority and can be ignored.
Heed the wisdom of SBPDL blogger Paul Kersey: democracy is nothing more than a racial headcount.
For the olds there’s also a gender imbalance at play.
You know, I have a serious problem with blaming social security for all of our budgetary problems.
When the issue is spending TENS OF TRILLIONS of dollars subsidizing and bailing out Wall Street and the super rich, the budget does not matter.
When the issue is spending a trillion dollars a year on pointless winless overseas wars that benefit only politically connected defense contractors and Israel, the budget does not matter.
When the issue is importing a hundred million and more impoverished third world refugees (yes really: including their US born descendants, post-1965 we are at 100 million and rising), the massive cost of the needed infrastructure investment and paying for their medical care and food etc. does not matter.
When the issue is sending our industrial base to communist China, and making the rich richer and hollowing out our own balance of payments, the budget does not matter.
It is only when the issue is paying social security to average working class Americans, that suddenly the budget deficit is the most important thing in the world.
I am an old-school Yankee. I pay my bills. But still, I find this selective outrage at budget deficits to be contemptible.
Equally concerning is that the welfare and immigration policies of the last 60 years have had a dysgenic effect on the population. Technological advances depend on a small smart fraction of the population and with that fraction shrinking economic growth will soon end. Intelligent independent thinkers also spend little time on things like facebook or twitter and platforms like those are being inundated with younger less intelligent conformist types who then demand censorship of those who disagree with them. The owners of those companies are just giving their users what they want.
There probably won't be any changes to Social Security in the near future since Boomers make up a large voting bloc. When their numbers start declining, the program will lose support since younger nonwhites won't want to fund a program that benefits old white people they aren't related to.Replies: @Talha, @JohnPlywood, @Gordo, @Sick of Orcs, @Twinkie
…they wouldn’t have thought twice about voting for a guy that had multiple affairs and the most recent one with a porn star.
I’m pretty sure Biden would have lost, but I don’t think Trump would have even come close to garnering a respectable tally in the 1980 crowd.
Peace.
Partly, I think this was an effect of cable TV. It peeled off viewers from broadcast TV and made them reach down lower. I don't think reality TV was a big thing in 1980. I don't think they would have aired a show like "The Apprentice", or had it on for several years.
And I think the porn industry has grown a lot too, from VHS and DVDs. I'm not sure that lady would have been a porn star back then. As to the affair itself, lots of presidents had affairs - probably harder to find one like Reagan, who was once told by a guy in his car that he could find him a woman, and then had the driver pull over, and told the guy to get out. (And I'm not even sure about his Hollywood days.)
Probably the bigger thing would be that Trump was married multiple times. The surface stuff gets through. Not that voters didn't care about affairs, IMO, but I don't think that stuff received as much coverage. JFK probably would have easily outdone Trump in that department.
1) A note about the Hispanic vote by age using the filters the results are as you stated however if scroll down to age by race you get slightly different results and a different looking graph
Hispanics 45-59: Biden 68-30
Hispanics 60 and over Biden 60-38
I’m not sure if this is the result of the weighing of the exit polls or if the 60-65 Hispanics they surveyed were unusually pro Trump. The weighing of exit polls mean the results have a fairly high error rate.
2) you’re right about the overall age gap being in large part a a result of the racial differences. This is a change from 2008 when there was a large age gap among white voters I don’t think many have noticed the change.
3) on a related note in 2008 whites 18-29 voted 54-44 for Obama this year White 30-44 largely the same group voted for Trump 51-41; in 2008 blacks 18-29 voted for Obama 95-4(!) this year blacks 30-44 voted for Biden 78-19; in 2008 Hispanics 18-29 voted for Obama 76-19, this year they voted for Biden 62-34.
Across racial groups early milliianals have swung about 15 points towards republicans as they’ve aged.
4) while the overall age gap among whites there are important age gaps within states and education levels young whites in Texas are much more Democratic than older whites.Young college grads are more democratic than older while the reverse is true of non-college grads. using the Foxnews/AP data it looks as though the white Hispanic gap in Nevada in entirely a product of the age rather than the other way around.
But even if I am wrong about that, and it is not the explanation, I don't know how much it really matters. Hard to see the Hispanic vote flipping at this point, and even if it does, Republicans probably won't be very different from the Dems. I think the Dems would have to become more aggressively pro-black for Hispanics to flip, and they were pretty aggressively pro-black this year. (as was Trump: maybe it was 4-D chess by Trump to make them up their pandering.) I don't know how much more room there is for the Dems to increase their pandering. Maybe, if they concentrated on reparations, their party would collapse.
I'm pretty sure Biden would have lost, but I don't think Trump would have even come close to garnering a respectable tally in the 1980 crowd.
Peace.Replies: @Mark G., @songbird, @VinnyVette
Yes, Americans of 1980 would have picked Trump over Biden but neither one would have ended up as their party nominee in that era if they had been running then. Conversely, neither a staunch conservative like Reagan or a moderate southerner like Carter could ever become the nominees of the Republican or Democrat parties of today. Carter Democrats would be Republicans now and someone like Reagan would be seen as beyond the pale and a hopelessly reactionary old fuddy duddy.
Equally concerning is that the welfare and immigration policies of the last 60 years have had a dysgenic effect on the population. Technological advances depend on a small smart fraction of the population and with that fraction shrinking economic growth will soon end. Intelligent independent thinkers also spend little time on things like facebook or twitter and platforms like those are being inundated with younger less intelligent conformist types who then demand censorship of those who disagree with them. The owners of those companies are just giving their users what they want.
There probably won't be any changes to Social Security in the near future since Boomers make up a large voting bloc. When their numbers start declining, the program will lose support since younger nonwhites won't want to fund a program that benefits old white people they aren't related to.Replies: @Talha, @JohnPlywood, @Gordo, @Sick of Orcs, @Twinkie
Baloney post. Trump was the candidate of Mexicans, delusional mixed-race people, struggling female business owners with small family sizes, methheads and off-white Nü-Americans (which would include Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump).
The “heritage Americans” not currently involved in the meth trade all voted for Biden. A lot of people in the USA incorrectly self-identify as white.
Equally concerning is that the welfare and immigration policies of the last 60 years have had a dysgenic effect on the population. Technological advances depend on a small smart fraction of the population and with that fraction shrinking economic growth will soon end. Intelligent independent thinkers also spend little time on things like facebook or twitter and platforms like those are being inundated with younger less intelligent conformist types who then demand censorship of those who disagree with them. The owners of those companies are just giving their users what they want.
There probably won't be any changes to Social Security in the near future since Boomers make up a large voting bloc. When their numbers start declining, the program will lose support since younger nonwhites won't want to fund a program that benefits old white people they aren't related to.Replies: @Talha, @JohnPlywood, @Gordo, @Sick of Orcs, @Twinkie
They tell people what they should want and then give it to them, like legacy media does.
Those who still don’t want what they should want are a minority and can be ignored.
Equally concerning is that the welfare and immigration policies of the last 60 years have had a dysgenic effect on the population. Technological advances depend on a small smart fraction of the population and with that fraction shrinking economic growth will soon end. Intelligent independent thinkers also spend little time on things like facebook or twitter and platforms like those are being inundated with younger less intelligent conformist types who then demand censorship of those who disagree with them. The owners of those companies are just giving their users what they want.
There probably won't be any changes to Social Security in the near future since Boomers make up a large voting bloc. When their numbers start declining, the program will lose support since younger nonwhites won't want to fund a program that benefits old white people they aren't related to.Replies: @Talha, @JohnPlywood, @Gordo, @Sick of Orcs, @Twinkie
Had Whites not been replaced, a dork like Romney would’ve won 2012 easily.
Heed the wisdom of SBPDL blogger Paul Kersey: democracy is nothing more than a racial headcount.
The young vote like their grandparent’s generation in general, but they vote less conservative than their own grandparents. That probably sounds contradictory, but because conservatives have more children, if the young voted like their grandparents they’d vote A LOT MORE conservative than their grandparent’s generation, since more of them are descended from conservative grandparents than liberal ones.
OFF TOPIC
Audacious Epigone:
https://thedonald.win/p/11Q8O2wesk/happening-calling-every-pede-to-/
Alleges votes were switched by using the raw data sources provided during the election (wrote a script and also released the script) – not independently audited, but you’re a numbers guy, so I figured you could either tear it up or give it a nod that it seems legit.
I'm pretty sure Biden would have lost, but I don't think Trump would have even come close to garnering a respectable tally in the 1980 crowd.
Peace.Replies: @Mark G., @songbird, @VinnyVette
In 1980, Trump would probably have been less of a celebrity. I think part of what make him famous was the growth of celebrity culture. Not that it hadn’t existed a long time before – Thomas Edison was a celebrity – but it had been gradually exacerbated, and lower figures (like Trump) had been made into celebrities, and many more people overall.
Partly, I think this was an effect of cable TV. It peeled off viewers from broadcast TV and made them reach down lower. I don’t think reality TV was a big thing in 1980. I don’t think they would have aired a show like “The Apprentice”, or had it on for several years.
And I think the porn industry has grown a lot too, from VHS and DVDs. I’m not sure that lady would have been a porn star back then. As to the affair itself, lots of presidents had affairs – probably harder to find one like Reagan, who was once told by a guy in his car that he could find him a woman, and then had the driver pull over, and told the guy to get out. (And I’m not even sure about his Hollywood days.)
Probably the bigger thing would be that Trump was married multiple times. The surface stuff gets through. Not that voters didn’t care about affairs, IMO, but I don’t think that stuff received as much coverage. JFK probably would have easily outdone Trump in that department.
“ does one-fourth of the entire federal budget still go to Social Security?”
Yes, well actually much more.
“Social Security will get cut in the future because aging” is a retarded libertarian meme I am disappointed to see so many people fall for.
There is absolutely nothing in the budget more popular than SS. And you think that will change when the population is OLDER than it is now?
The libertarians baited low-IQ George W Bush into thinking “Social Security Reform” and “Private Accounts” would be popular in 2005-2006. They got smashed for it, losing 5 senators, 31 House seats (8% popular vote swing) and 6 governors, 300+ state legislators.
We’ll cut anything and everything before SS. Easiest political prediction in the world to make.
The twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings who resent Social Security at the moment will suddenly decide that Social Security is not such a bad thing when they become forty-somethings and fifty-somethings. By the time they're sixty-somethings they'll be huge fans of SS.
Just as twenty-somethings don't give a damn about healthcare but once they become fifty-somethings healthcare starts to become a big issue for them.
I'm pretty sure Biden would have lost, but I don't think Trump would have even come close to garnering a respectable tally in the 1980 crowd.
Peace.Replies: @Mark G., @songbird, @VinnyVette
I doubt they would have voted for a child sniffing pedophile BIDEN. Most of those folks probably had affairs with ADULTS themselves… 1980 was post sexual revolution America, not the 50’s. reconciling the two, and considering Biden is brain dead… Trump!
When the issue is spending TENS OF TRILLIONS of dollars subsidizing and bailing out Wall Street and the super rich, the budget does not matter.
When the issue is spending a trillion dollars a year on pointless winless overseas wars that benefit only politically connected defense contractors and Israel, the budget does not matter.
When the issue is importing a hundred million and more impoverished third world refugees (yes really: including their US born descendants, post-1965 we are at 100 million and rising), the massive cost of the needed infrastructure investment and paying for their medical care and food etc. does not matter.
When the issue is sending our industrial base to communist China, and making the rich richer and hollowing out our own balance of payments, the budget does not matter.
It is only when the issue is paying social security to average working class Americans, that suddenly the budget deficit is the most important thing in the world.
I am an old-school Yankee. I pay my bills. But still, I find this selective outrage at budget deficits to be contemptible.Replies: @MarkU
You are so right. We have the same bullshit here in the UK.
Hispanics 45-59: Biden 68-30
Hispanics 60 and over Biden 60-38
I'm not sure if this is the result of the weighing of the exit polls or if the 60-65 Hispanics they surveyed were unusually pro Trump. The weighing of exit polls mean the results have a fairly high error rate.
2) you're right about the overall age gap being in large part a a result of the racial differences. This is a change from 2008 when there was a large age gap among white voters I don't think many have noticed the change.
3) on a related note in 2008 whites 18-29 voted 54-44 for Obama this year White 30-44 largely the same group voted for Trump 51-41; in 2008 blacks 18-29 voted for Obama 95-4(!) this year blacks 30-44 voted for Biden 78-19; in 2008 Hispanics 18-29 voted for Obama 76-19, this year they voted for Biden 62-34.
Across racial groups early milliianals have swung about 15 points towards republicans as they've aged.
4) while the overall age gap among whites there are important age gaps within states and education levels young whites in Texas are much more Democratic than older whites.Young college grads are more democratic than older while the reverse is true of non-college grads. using the Foxnews/AP data it looks as though the white Hispanic gap in Nevada in entirely a product of the age rather than the other way around.Replies: @songbird, @t
Older Hispanics are bound to be whiter. I think that might be the explanation for >60.
I’m surprised about this. I think one thing that is happening is the average age of the Hispanic youth voter cohort is probably moving up. Late twenties, compared to early twenties. More people living on their own. Maybe, thinking about families, or having them.
But even if I am wrong about that, and it is not the explanation, I don’t know how much it really matters. Hard to see the Hispanic vote flipping at this point, and even if it does, Republicans probably won’t be very different from the Dems. I think the Dems would have to become more aggressively pro-black for Hispanics to flip, and they were pretty aggressively pro-black this year. (as was Trump: maybe it was 4-D chess by Trump to make them up their pandering.) I don’t know how much more room there is for the Dems to increase their pandering. Maybe, if they concentrated on reparations, their party would collapse.
We normalized unwed mothers. That is expensive. My guess is the children will be the priority and that even Democrats would cut Social Security to keep the funds flowing to single mothers and their kids, formerly known as illegitimate children.
https://external-preview.redd.it/EOxlPYX7t6xus4waHmHPRMA_MzcFf-NF5QqPfyKfhs8.jpg?auto=webp&s=000e9d50aea7203c7a73422eb64b1a857aea8590Replies: @Twinkie, @Twinkie, @Jay Fink
Children can’t be illegitimate.
Hmmm. Where are the entitlements in the “federal spending” graph?
https://external-preview.redd.it/EOxlPYX7t6xus4waHmHPRMA_MzcFf-NF5QqPfyKfhs8.jpg?auto=webp&s=000e9d50aea7203c7a73422eb64b1a857aea8590Replies: @Twinkie, @Twinkie, @Jay Fink
Is this the “people (migrants) can’t be illegal” logic?
Hmmm. Where are the entitlements in the “federal spending” graph?
Equally concerning is that the welfare and immigration policies of the last 60 years have had a dysgenic effect on the population. Technological advances depend on a small smart fraction of the population and with that fraction shrinking economic growth will soon end. Intelligent independent thinkers also spend little time on things like facebook or twitter and platforms like those are being inundated with younger less intelligent conformist types who then demand censorship of those who disagree with them. The owners of those companies are just giving their users what they want.
There probably won't be any changes to Social Security in the near future since Boomers make up a large voting bloc. When their numbers start declining, the program will lose support since younger nonwhites won't want to fund a program that benefits old white people they aren't related to.Replies: @Talha, @JohnPlywood, @Gordo, @Sick of Orcs, @Twinkie
Comparisons like that aren’t very useful, because the white demographic back then and today are different, including in ideology. In 1980, many more whites were union members, for example. They were also much more likely to be married and have children, as another example. When you compound all these differences, you can’t simply say that they’d have voted just like whites today only in greater numbers. Trump is not Reagan. Politicians aren’t simply products of their racial demographics – they are also products of their time.
https://external-preview.redd.it/EOxlPYX7t6xus4waHmHPRMA_MzcFf-NF5QqPfyKfhs8.jpg?auto=webp&s=000e9d50aea7203c7a73422eb64b1a857aea8590Replies: @Twinkie, @Twinkie, @Jay Fink
The solution is for them to go back whence they came. What solution is there for an "illegitimate child," whose very existence is thereby deemed to be a problem.
In any event, your pie chart reinforces the point. The scaremongering about a budgetary apocalypse resulting from welfare spending has proven to be just that. Of course, to any extent there is a problem, the solution is less immigration not punitive crackdowns on single mothers and their children. For some reason, people like Jay Fink want to talk about single mothers instead of nation-busting mass immigration.Replies: @Twinkie
Yes, well actually much more.
“Social Security will get cut in the future because aging” is a retarded libertarian meme I am disappointed to see so many people fall for.
There is absolutely nothing in the budget more popular than SS. And you think that will change when the population is OLDER than it is now?
The libertarians baited low-IQ George W Bush into thinking “Social Security Reform” and “Private Accounts” would be popular in 2005-2006. They got smashed for it, losing 5 senators, 31 House seats (8% popular vote swing) and 6 governors, 300+ state legislators.
We’ll cut anything and everything before SS. Easiest political prediction in the world to make.Replies: @dfordoom, @songbird
Agreed.
The twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings who resent Social Security at the moment will suddenly decide that Social Security is not such a bad thing when they become forty-somethings and fifty-somethings. By the time they’re sixty-somethings they’ll be huge fans of SS.
Just as twenty-somethings don’t give a damn about healthcare but once they become fifty-somethings healthcare starts to become a big issue for them.
Thanks, you made my point more eloquently than me.
Trump is a product of the Twitter age.
Peace.
https://external-preview.redd.it/EOxlPYX7t6xus4waHmHPRMA_MzcFf-NF5QqPfyKfhs8.jpg?auto=webp&s=000e9d50aea7203c7a73422eb64b1a857aea8590Replies: @Twinkie, @Twinkie, @Jay Fink
“Children can’t be illegitimate.”
That’s what everyone thinks today. Few have an appreciation for how recent that idea is. Besides recency bias it’s an example of leftward drift. At one time only the far left would agree with that statement (“It takes a village”). Today most mainstream conservatives wouldn’t question it. It even appeals to some evangelicals as it discourages abortion.
Liberals haven't been wrong about everything. The sexual mores of the 1950s did need to be loosened up a little. The Sexual Revolution went too far but it wasn't entirely a bad thing. Whether the idea of recreational sex sounds appealing or emotionally unfulfilling to you it's not actually wicked.
Socially conservative values work for most people and should be encouraged. But not by coercion. And not by punishing children who had no choice in the matter of their birth.Replies: @Rosie, @Twinkie, @Talha
No. Migrants can be unlawfully present in the same way that a trespasser or home invader can be unlawfully present on your private property.
The solution is for them to go back whence they came. What solution is there for an “illegitimate child,” whose very existence is thereby deemed to be a problem.
In any event, your pie chart reinforces the point. The scaremongering about a budgetary apocalypse resulting from welfare spending has proven to be just that. Of course, to any extent there is a problem, the solution is less immigration not punitive crackdowns on single mothers and their children. For some reason, people like Jay Fink want to talk about single mothers instead of nation-busting mass immigration.
I think it’s actually you who suffers from a recency bias. The modern isolated nuclear family living in the suburbs is an aberration.
You keep inventing badly constructed arguments and offer up ahistorical “evidences” about bastardy and fornication, perhaps because of your own history. No matter how much you wish otherwise, they are bad for society and were recognized as such historically.Replies: @Rosie
Hispanics 45-59: Biden 68-30
Hispanics 60 and over Biden 60-38
I'm not sure if this is the result of the weighing of the exit polls or if the 60-65 Hispanics they surveyed were unusually pro Trump. The weighing of exit polls mean the results have a fairly high error rate.
2) you're right about the overall age gap being in large part a a result of the racial differences. This is a change from 2008 when there was a large age gap among white voters I don't think many have noticed the change.
3) on a related note in 2008 whites 18-29 voted 54-44 for Obama this year White 30-44 largely the same group voted for Trump 51-41; in 2008 blacks 18-29 voted for Obama 95-4(!) this year blacks 30-44 voted for Biden 78-19; in 2008 Hispanics 18-29 voted for Obama 76-19, this year they voted for Biden 62-34.
Across racial groups early milliianals have swung about 15 points towards republicans as they've aged.
4) while the overall age gap among whites there are important age gaps within states and education levels young whites in Texas are much more Democratic than older whites.Young college grads are more democratic than older while the reverse is true of non-college grads. using the Foxnews/AP data it looks as though the white Hispanic gap in Nevada in entirely a product of the age rather than the other way around.Replies: @songbird, @t
To correct myself there doesn’t appear to be much of an age difference in white college grads it’s white non-college grads where there is sharp age gap.
The solution is for them to go back whence they came. What solution is there for an "illegitimate child," whose very existence is thereby deemed to be a problem.
In any event, your pie chart reinforces the point. The scaremongering about a budgetary apocalypse resulting from welfare spending has proven to be just that. Of course, to any extent there is a problem, the solution is less immigration not punitive crackdowns on single mothers and their children. For some reason, people like Jay Fink want to talk about single mothers instead of nation-busting mass immigration.Replies: @Twinkie
The biological father and mother can marry and make the child legitimate.
Removing the stigma of illegitimacy from children was actually a good thing.
Liberals haven’t been wrong about everything. The sexual mores of the 1950s did need to be loosened up a little. The Sexual Revolution went too far but it wasn’t entirely a bad thing. Whether the idea of recreational sex sounds appealing or emotionally unfulfilling to you it’s not actually wicked.
Socially conservative values work for most people and should be encouraged. But not by coercion. And not by punishing children who had no choice in the matter of their birth.
If I say, don't go out of your way to make people like shit, is that an emotional argument? If so, what exactly is wrong with "emotional arguments"?Replies: @Twinkie, @dfordoom
I think blacks had lower bastardy rate in 1950 than whites do today in America (of course, whites of then had an even lower rate still). What’s wrong with no “gay marriage,” no transsexual agitation, much lower bastardy rate, fewer divorces, etc.? What exactly needed to be “loosened”?Replies: @Jatt Singhh, @AaronB, @dfordoom
“Men who kill women are increasingly using the “sex game gone wrong” excuse as a contemporary variation on the traditional crime of passion defence, research has found.
In one of the first academic studies into the issue, Prof Elizabeth Yardley, a criminologist at Birmingham City University, found that the normalisation of bondage, domination and sado-masochism (BDSM) across various media had generated a “culturally approved script” for men who kill women.”
https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/10/rough-sex-excuse-in-womens-deaths-is-variation-of-of-passion-study
Peace.
That’s not a choice the child can make. Therefore the child should not be stigmatised for whatever choices its parents make.
However, 'illegitimate' children become a burden on the community, and in modern times upon the state. Therefore, the state has a rational interest in disincentivizing children born out of wedlock.
My opinion is that divorce should be much more difficult. That won't change illegitimacy directly, but it will stigmatize people who conceive children out of wedlock. It is most unfortunate for children that unwed births have been normalized.
If we truly cared about children, we would impose a reasonable social cost on unwed mothers. As it stands today, the social venom is reserved entirely on 'deadbeat' dads.
The children are innocent. The parents, not so much. Can we at least agree on that?Replies: @iffen
That’s a transparent attempt at a diversion. From time immemorial, children born out of wedlock were illegitimate, meaning they were not entitled to inherit their biological father’s legacy nor the rights and privileges of his position (and usually not the mother’s parents’ either). Why? Because he was not a product of a socially sanctioned union, one that was consented to and approved by all concerned families – because a marriage isn’t simply a union of two peoples, it’s a union of two families and all that accrue to those families (rights, privileges, status, property, and even reputation and social respect).
You keep inventing badly constructed arguments and offer up ahistorical “evidences” about bastardy and fornication, perhaps because of your own history. No matter how much you wish otherwise, they are bad for society and were recognized as such historically.
So you are okay with “Dreamers” being allowed in the US? After all, they didn’t make the choice to illegally migrate – their parents made that choice.
You are obsessed with “stigma” about the issue – that’s an emotional argument. In reality, you get less of a behavior you stigmatize. If it’s considered shameful to take public money or have children out of wedlock, people tend to engage in such behaviors less. If it’s considered perfectly “legitimate” to receive productive people’s money taken by force, engage in fornication and have babies, or just cross the border and live and work in the U.S. (or hire such people), you get more of all such behaviors.
The answer is to blame those responsible for the illegal immigration. But the children of illegal migrants did not commit any offence. If you really hate Mexicans so much then by all means encourage the “Dreamers” to leave but since they themselves did nothing wrong you would need to offer them attractive reasons to leave. If you try to force them to leave most sane normal people will think you're being unreasonable (and probably driven by emotion).
If you're an illegal immigrant you are a criminal and should expect to face legal sanctions (such as deportation). If you assisted people to migrate illegally you are a criminal and should expect to face legal sanctions (such as jail).
If you're the child of an illegal immigrant you're an innocent party. If you grew up in the country to which your parents emigrated you should not expect to be rounded up and deported.
It's totally irrational to punish people for the sins of their parents.Replies: @Talha
You keep inventing badly constructed arguments and offer up ahistorical “evidences” about bastardy and fornication, perhaps because of your own history. No matter how much you wish otherwise, they are bad for society and were recognized as such historically.Replies: @Rosie
Twinkles, you disgust me.
Liberals haven't been wrong about everything. The sexual mores of the 1950s did need to be loosened up a little. The Sexual Revolution went too far but it wasn't entirely a bad thing. Whether the idea of recreational sex sounds appealing or emotionally unfulfilling to you it's not actually wicked.
Socially conservative values work for most people and should be encouraged. But not by coercion. And not by punishing children who had no choice in the matter of their birth.Replies: @Rosie, @Twinkie, @Talha
Doom, you are accused of making an “emotional argument.” What exactly is wrong with emotional arguments?
If I say, don’t go out of your way to make people like shit, is that an emotional argument? If so, what exactly is wrong with “emotional arguments”?
The entire dissident right is motivated almost entirely by emotion. The dissident right is almost entirely driven by negative emotions. Liberals are driven by a mixture of positive and negative emotions. Both sides usually end up being wrong but they both get to their respective destinations through emotion.
In most cases the people who most firmly believe they are rational are actually the most driven be emotion.
All ideologies are to some extent emotional responses to the problems faced by society.
It's always hysterically funny to be accused of making emotional arguments by a Christian.Replies: @Rosie, @Talha, @Twinkie
Your ad hominem and hysterics don’t change the facts of history. Note – if you can spare a moment from your fainting couch – that I didn’t write whether or not the historical conditions of women or bastards, for that matter, were good or justified. I simply countered the made-up “historical” non sequitur with what was factually true.
You are like all the “Woke” people these days: when an argument goes in the direction you don’t like (“ooops, I’m losing the debate”) – you make up false arguments, try to divert, and failing that, ascribe evil or immorality to your interlocutor.
I have profound sympathies for neglected, abandoned, and abused children, and am involved in and support a Catholic charity that assists them. But I don’t let my emotion blind me to the fact that when you direct public money to consequences of certain behaviors, you get more, not less, of the said behaviors.
Now if you are arguing that more fornication and bastardy are good for society, well, then there is no further need for a conversation and I’d rather let you wallow in your delusion.
By the way, no response to the solution I offered?
The biological father and mother can marry and make the child legitimate.
If I say, don't go out of your way to make people like shit, is that an emotional argument? If so, what exactly is wrong with "emotional arguments"?Replies: @Twinkie, @dfordoom
Emotions often overwhelm reason and lead to unwise choices. Would you like some examples?
That would be both a non sequitur and a straw man.
Liberals haven't been wrong about everything. The sexual mores of the 1950s did need to be loosened up a little. The Sexual Revolution went too far but it wasn't entirely a bad thing. Whether the idea of recreational sex sounds appealing or emotionally unfulfilling to you it's not actually wicked.
Socially conservative values work for most people and should be encouraged. But not by coercion. And not by punishing children who had no choice in the matter of their birth.Replies: @Rosie, @Twinkie, @Talha
Why? And what do you mean by “a little”?
I think blacks had lower bastardy rate in 1950 than whites do today in America (of course, whites of then had an even lower rate still). What’s wrong with no “gay marriage,” no transsexual agitation, much lower bastardy rate, fewer divorces, etc.? What exactly needed to be “loosened”?
https://quillette.com/2019/11/16/thorstein-veblens-theory-of-the-leisure-class-a-status-update/
Also, the education gap is higher when young and gender gap when old.
Old educated women vote the most; grandmothers.
Fun is the purpose of living, and so having a functioning society is subordinate to having a fun society. (In practice, you must balance the two.).
Forget this and focus on functionality too much, and you get widespread depression, anxiety, discontent, and eventually social breakdown as we are seeing today, which is eventually the fate of every Puritan society.
Paradoxically, not obsessing over functionality is a condition for having a functional society. Leaving enough room for fun - a lot - is the condition for having a functioning society.Replies: @dfordoom
Where the Sexual Revolution went wrong was that it coincided with a loss of confidence in all social norms (caused partly by Vietnam, partly by the Cold War, partly by the media) and we went from tolerating sexual dissenters to celebrating them. The excesses were driven to a large extent by the media. We went from "a little" (which was good) to "a lot" (which was not good). We ended up with absurdities like homosexual marriage and transsexual bathroom rights.
The answer to most problems is compromise. If you go too far in one direction you end up with stifling conformity and repression. Go too far in the other direction and you end up with chaos.
But nobody these days wants compromise. A civilised society cannot exist without compromise.Replies: @Twinkie
I think blacks had lower bastardy rate in 1950 than whites do today in America (of course, whites of then had an even lower rate still). What’s wrong with no “gay marriage,” no transsexual agitation, much lower bastardy rate, fewer divorces, etc.? What exactly needed to be “loosened”?Replies: @Jatt Singhh, @AaronB, @dfordoom
The stigma attached to virtue signaling.
https://quillette.com/2019/11/16/thorstein-veblens-theory-of-the-leisure-class-a-status-update/
Also, the education gap is higher when young and gender gap when old.
Old educated women vote the most; grandmothers.
“What solution is there for an “illegitimate child””
Harvard
Someone needs to do a little leg-work to break out the over-125 votes. Yes, there were some.
In the simplest form, stigma attaching to an illegitimate child is a thing of the past and will not come back anytime soon. However, the norms in place still expect two people who have a child to come together and form a family, and stigma still attaches to those who don’t. Whether this stigma will wither away is the question.
It’s like that with a lot of other social indicators such as obesity. This age of gluttony and fornication hasn’t hurt or changed the traditional norms of the upper and upper middle class Americans - it has led to the collapse of the lower socioeconomic stratum (in family formation, health, community, etc.).
To repeat, the upper classes telling the whole society “Do whatever feels good! We are all free!” while themselves still adhering to traditional behaviors has simply destroyed the vitality of the lower classes. One almost might be tempted to speculate that this was deliberate.Replies: @AaronB, @iffen, @nebulafox
It already has withered away among downscale Americans. That norm of a married couple with kids is increasingly an upscale one only.
It’s like that with a lot of other social indicators such as obesity. This age of gluttony and fornication hasn’t hurt or changed the traditional norms of the upper and upper middle class Americans – it has led to the collapse of the lower socioeconomic stratum (in family formation, health, community, etc.).
To repeat, the upper classes telling the whole society “Do whatever feels good! We are all free!” while themselves still adhering to traditional behaviors has simply destroyed the vitality of the lower classes. One almost might be tempted to speculate that this was deliberate.
The lower classes clung to the old Protesrant values of hard work, duty, sobriety, and no fun, and are now breaking under the strain, especially since there are no jobs available. If you're told your entire dignity and worth lie in your ability to produce, you will disintegrate when that isn't possible anymore.
You are acting as if in the small conservative towns and villages in the heartland, the agricultural areas, everyone embraced 60s libertinism. That's not true at all - these places are and remain conservative. No one in these places embrace values of have fun and do what you want, and that is perhaps the problem.
Meanwhile, the upper classes did loosen up considerably and did heed the message of the 60s and introduced a large element of fun and play in their lives. Consequently they did not despair as much as the lower classes. But the health of the upper classes os overstated. There is widespread depression and anxiety among them, because they also too much embrace the Puritan ethic of joyless hard work and duty.
The Puritan ethic is based on an obsession with survival at all costs. Everything in life must be directed towards survival, not enjoyment. But without enjoyment life is pointless.
What is needed is a shift in perspective away from the Puritan wthic - life as grim survival - and towards an ethic of life as enjoyment. In fact there is no problem with the lower classes, they just need a shift in perspective away from life as work.Replies: @Twinkie, @iffen
Just when I think I have a handle on my visceral hatred you give me rational grounds.
I think that limited capabilities and resources explain quite a bit of this. The UMC, even the "middle" MC, have options, resources and capabilities that allow them to recover from some of the bad decisions and behavior. The lower classes take one on the chin and many of them are done. We need to structure our society in a way that limits our ability to abuse ourselves while giving the illusion of free choice.Replies: @dfordoom
Yes, well actually much more.
“Social Security will get cut in the future because aging” is a retarded libertarian meme I am disappointed to see so many people fall for.
There is absolutely nothing in the budget more popular than SS. And you think that will change when the population is OLDER than it is now?
The libertarians baited low-IQ George W Bush into thinking “Social Security Reform” and “Private Accounts” would be popular in 2005-2006. They got smashed for it, losing 5 senators, 31 House seats (8% popular vote swing) and 6 governors, 300+ state legislators.
We’ll cut anything and everything before SS. Easiest political prediction in the world to make.Replies: @dfordoom, @songbird
I don’t attribute it to libertarians. Bush wasn’t a very libertarian-minded president. I attribute it to lobbying by the financial industry.
Agree, the child should not be stigmatized.
However, ‘illegitimate’ children become a burden on the community, and in modern times upon the state. Therefore, the state has a rational interest in disincentivizing children born out of wedlock.
My opinion is that divorce should be much more difficult. That won’t change illegitimacy directly, but it will stigmatize people who conceive children out of wedlock. It is most unfortunate for children that unwed births have been normalized.
If we truly cared about children, we would impose a reasonable social cost on unwed mothers. As it stands today, the social venom is reserved entirely on ‘deadbeat’ dads.
The children are innocent. The parents, not so much. Can we at least agree on that?
Bastardy bonds worked like a charm. It is crazy that we did away with them.
I wonder what the average IQ of the lower age cohorts in the US and other countries in the West is now. The predicted decline I think is trend where the entire population, or the entire adult population, is aggregated. That strikes me as silly, as younger people are more influential in a lot of ways. Geniuses and creative people usually make their biggest contribution in their 30s or 40s.
I think blacks had lower bastardy rate in 1950 than whites do today in America (of course, whites of then had an even lower rate still). What’s wrong with no “gay marriage,” no transsexual agitation, much lower bastardy rate, fewer divorces, etc.? What exactly needed to be “loosened”?Replies: @Jatt Singhh, @AaronB, @dfordoom
They didn’t leave enough room for fun. Fun is important and life affirming.
Fun is the purpose of living, and so having a functioning society is subordinate to having a fun society. (In practice, you must balance the two.).
Forget this and focus on functionality too much, and you get widespread depression, anxiety, discontent, and eventually social breakdown as we are seeing today, which is eventually the fate of every Puritan society.
Paradoxically, not obsessing over functionality is a condition for having a functional society. Leaving enough room for fun – a lot – is the condition for having a functioning society.
America in the 50s was always likely to swing wildly towards licentiousness. Puritans never learn.Replies: @Talha, @AaronB
It’s like that with a lot of other social indicators such as obesity. This age of gluttony and fornication hasn’t hurt or changed the traditional norms of the upper and upper middle class Americans - it has led to the collapse of the lower socioeconomic stratum (in family formation, health, community, etc.).
To repeat, the upper classes telling the whole society “Do whatever feels good! We are all free!” while themselves still adhering to traditional behaviors has simply destroyed the vitality of the lower classes. One almost might be tempted to speculate that this was deliberate.Replies: @AaronB, @iffen, @nebulafox
That’s not at all what is happening.
The lower classes clung to the old Protesrant values of hard work, duty, sobriety, and no fun, and are now breaking under the strain, especially since there are no jobs available. If you’re told your entire dignity and worth lie in your ability to produce, you will disintegrate when that isn’t possible anymore.
You are acting as if in the small conservative towns and villages in the heartland, the agricultural areas, everyone embraced 60s libertinism. That’s not true at all – these places are and remain conservative. No one in these places embrace values of have fun and do what you want, and that is perhaps the problem.
Meanwhile, the upper classes did loosen up considerably and did heed the message of the 60s and introduced a large element of fun and play in their lives. Consequently they did not despair as much as the lower classes. But the health of the upper classes os overstated. There is widespread depression and anxiety among them, because they also too much embrace the Puritan ethic of joyless hard work and duty.
The Puritan ethic is based on an obsession with survival at all costs. Everything in life must be directed towards survival, not enjoyment. But without enjoyment life is pointless.
What is needed is a shift in perspective away from the Puritan wthic – life as grim survival – and towards an ethic of life as enjoyment. In fact there is no problem with the lower classes, they just need a shift in perspective away from life as work.
It is always funny as hell to see people holding forth on the lower classes who haven't a clue.
Go back to collecting your moonbeams.Replies: @AaronB
I believe that this is a red herring, since hardly anyone proposes doing anything untoward to illegitimate children as such.
However, in my opinion, the breakdown of the American family is probably the single most destructive thing to happen to Americans in the history of the United States. We’d have been better off nuked.
The illiberal proposition is that man is born into this world with peculiar obligations for which he did not ask and yet which he cannot rightly lay aside. I affirm the illiberal proposition.
Several more paragraphs could be added, point by point; but since no one has asked for a lengthy reply and since little would be gained by making explicit that which ought to remain discreet (for you’re right: it’s not the illegitimate child’s fault), I’ll let it rest here.
Works for me as long as "the world" fulfills its obligations to the man who is born.
Which ain't (pardon my French) fucking happening now.
My hunch is that there is a great deal of truth in it, but it's complicated.
First of all, has the family actually broken down to the extent people assume? I'm not convinced. Just because a child is born out of wedlock doesn't mean they don't have a more or less traditional nuclear family home life. I suspect that some couples deliberately don't get married so that the mother can qualify for welfare benefits. Some call this fraud. I call it survival.
Even working class couples that don't need welfare may not see any point in getting married. There is no health insurance, no property, etc.
I suspect problems with the family are a symptom of the destruction of the economy over the past few decades.
Of course, I could be entirely wrong. I certainly am aware that religious belief is in free fall, and I am not certain that traditional marriage as we have known it in recent history is possible without religious belief. You often hear incels and other manosphere creeps asking why men should bother with marriage. Of course, there is no reason, except love, love of God, love of one's partner, and love of life.
Liberals haven't been wrong about everything. The sexual mores of the 1950s did need to be loosened up a little. The Sexual Revolution went too far but it wasn't entirely a bad thing. Whether the idea of recreational sex sounds appealing or emotionally unfulfilling to you it's not actually wicked.
Socially conservative values work for most people and should be encouraged. But not by coercion. And not by punishing children who had no choice in the matter of their birth.Replies: @Rosie, @Twinkie, @Talha
My, we have come a long way from the 50s!
“Men who kill women are increasingly using the “sex game gone wrong” excuse as a contemporary variation on the traditional crime of passion defence, research has found.
In one of the first academic studies into the issue, Prof Elizabeth Yardley, a criminologist at Birmingham City University, found that the normalisation of bondage, domination and sado-masochism (BDSM) across various media had generated a “culturally approved script” for men who kill women.”
https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/10/rough-sex-excuse-in-womens-deaths-is-variation-of-of-passion-study
Peace.
Mr. Epigone says:
The generational gap is a red herring, at least politically. It’s largely an artifact of racial differences by age cohort in the US:
I say:
BINGO and the White baby boomer boobs and all the other White geezer boobs born before 1965 just let it happen because they were bought off with massive government debt and private debt and multiple asset bubbles created by the privately-controlled Federal Reserve Bank.
I wrote this in August of 2019 about this plain fact of generational cohort racial distribution:
The WHITE percentage of the generational cohorts is the thing.
WHITES are being replaced at a rapid clip in European Christian nations.
The ruling classes of European Christian nations are dramatically changing the racial demographics of their nations so that Whites are being replaced.
So-called “diversity” simply means less White people.
The White genocide and White race replacement going on in the USA and Germany and many other European Christian nations is simply the evil immigration policy plots of the treasonous ruling classes in those nations.
https://www.unz.com/anepigone/the-closing-of-the-millennial-mind/#comment-3414640
It’s like that with a lot of other social indicators such as obesity. This age of gluttony and fornication hasn’t hurt or changed the traditional norms of the upper and upper middle class Americans - it has led to the collapse of the lower socioeconomic stratum (in family formation, health, community, etc.).
To repeat, the upper classes telling the whole society “Do whatever feels good! We are all free!” while themselves still adhering to traditional behaviors has simply destroyed the vitality of the lower classes. One almost might be tempted to speculate that this was deliberate.Replies: @AaronB, @iffen, @nebulafox
One almost might be tempted to speculate that this was deliberate.
Just when I think I have a handle on my visceral hatred you give me rational grounds.
I think that limited capabilities and resources explain quite a bit of this. The UMC, even the “middle” MC, have options, resources and capabilities that allow them to recover from some of the bad decisions and behavior. The lower classes take one on the chin and many of them are done. We need to structure our society in a way that limits our ability to abuse ourselves while giving the illusion of free choice.
It's always been the case. Go back a century or so. If you were working class or a peasant and you got a girl pregnant and didn't want to marry her there was a good chance her father would come after you with a shotgun or her brother would beat the living daylights out of you. If you were rich you just paid the girl off, and paid her family off.
Also money helps rich people to be more discreet about their degeneracy. If you're poor and you drink too much you end up on Skid Row. If you're rich you end up in a nice comfy sanitorium.
However, 'illegitimate' children become a burden on the community, and in modern times upon the state. Therefore, the state has a rational interest in disincentivizing children born out of wedlock.
My opinion is that divorce should be much more difficult. That won't change illegitimacy directly, but it will stigmatize people who conceive children out of wedlock. It is most unfortunate for children that unwed births have been normalized.
If we truly cared about children, we would impose a reasonable social cost on unwed mothers. As it stands today, the social venom is reserved entirely on 'deadbeat' dads.
The children are innocent. The parents, not so much. Can we at least agree on that?Replies: @iffen
we would impose a reasonable social cost on unwed mothers.
Bastardy bonds worked like a charm. It is crazy that we did away with them.
The illiberal proposition is that man is born into this world with peculiar obligations for which he did not ask and yet which he cannot rightly lay aside.
Works for me as long as “the world” fulfills its obligations to the man who is born.
Which ain’t (pardon my French) fucking happening now.
It’s like that with a lot of other social indicators such as obesity. This age of gluttony and fornication hasn’t hurt or changed the traditional norms of the upper and upper middle class Americans - it has led to the collapse of the lower socioeconomic stratum (in family formation, health, community, etc.).
To repeat, the upper classes telling the whole society “Do whatever feels good! We are all free!” while themselves still adhering to traditional behaviors has simply destroyed the vitality of the lower classes. One almost might be tempted to speculate that this was deliberate.Replies: @AaronB, @iffen, @nebulafox
“Always pay attention to what they do and not to what they say” is as good as a lesson as any to give to a young, neglected person with potential but little in the way of daily guidance.
The lower classes clung to the old Protesrant values of hard work, duty, sobriety, and no fun, and are now breaking under the strain, especially since there are no jobs available. If you're told your entire dignity and worth lie in your ability to produce, you will disintegrate when that isn't possible anymore.
You are acting as if in the small conservative towns and villages in the heartland, the agricultural areas, everyone embraced 60s libertinism. That's not true at all - these places are and remain conservative. No one in these places embrace values of have fun and do what you want, and that is perhaps the problem.
Meanwhile, the upper classes did loosen up considerably and did heed the message of the 60s and introduced a large element of fun and play in their lives. Consequently they did not despair as much as the lower classes. But the health of the upper classes os overstated. There is widespread depression and anxiety among them, because they also too much embrace the Puritan ethic of joyless hard work and duty.
The Puritan ethic is based on an obsession with survival at all costs. Everything in life must be directed towards survival, not enjoyment. But without enjoyment life is pointless.
What is needed is a shift in perspective away from the Puritan wthic - life as grim survival - and towards an ethic of life as enjoyment. In fact there is no problem with the lower classes, they just need a shift in perspective away from life as work.Replies: @Twinkie, @iffen
You are either trolling or are what Razib Khan calls a “dumb animal.”
Go be disgusted by these.
The lower classes clung to the old Protesrant values of hard work, duty, sobriety, and no fun, and are now breaking under the strain, especially since there are no jobs available. If you're told your entire dignity and worth lie in your ability to produce, you will disintegrate when that isn't possible anymore.
You are acting as if in the small conservative towns and villages in the heartland, the agricultural areas, everyone embraced 60s libertinism. That's not true at all - these places are and remain conservative. No one in these places embrace values of have fun and do what you want, and that is perhaps the problem.
Meanwhile, the upper classes did loosen up considerably and did heed the message of the 60s and introduced a large element of fun and play in their lives. Consequently they did not despair as much as the lower classes. But the health of the upper classes os overstated. There is widespread depression and anxiety among them, because they also too much embrace the Puritan ethic of joyless hard work and duty.
The Puritan ethic is based on an obsession with survival at all costs. Everything in life must be directed towards survival, not enjoyment. But without enjoyment life is pointless.
What is needed is a shift in perspective away from the Puritan wthic - life as grim survival - and towards an ethic of life as enjoyment. In fact there is no problem with the lower classes, they just need a shift in perspective away from life as work.Replies: @Twinkie, @iffen
The lower classes clung to the old Protesrant values of hard work, duty, sobriety, and no fun
It is always funny as hell to see people holding forth on the lower classes who haven’t a clue.
Go back to collecting your moonbeams.
I have the greatest respect and appreciation for for the true lower class.Replies: @Twinkie
It is always funny as hell to see people holding forth on the lower classes who haven't a clue.
Go back to collecting your moonbeams.Replies: @AaronB
Actually, the “true” lower class converge with the aristocracy- the elite – in being free. It is the middle class, the bourgeoisie, that are enslaved and unfree, and a problem.
I have the greatest respect and appreciation for for the true lower class.
If I say, don't go out of your way to make people like shit, is that an emotional argument? If so, what exactly is wrong with "emotional arguments"?Replies: @Twinkie, @dfordoom
Everyone makes emotional arguments. Some people just don’t like to admit it. Conservatives, traditionalists and right-wingers in general rely on emotional arguments but they cling to the belief that only liberals argue emotionally. Many men like to think that men think rationally and women think emotionally but men are just as driven by emotion as women. Men and women are different and they make different kinds of emotional argument, but both still argue emotionally. Men and women make different kinds of emotional argument but both are equally valid (or sometimes equally invalid).
The entire dissident right is motivated almost entirely by emotion. The dissident right is almost entirely driven by negative emotions. Liberals are driven by a mixture of positive and negative emotions. Both sides usually end up being wrong but they both get to their respective destinations through emotion.
In most cases the people who most firmly believe they are rational are actually the most driven be emotion.
All ideologies are to some extent emotional responses to the problems faced by society.
It’s always hysterically funny to be accused of making emotional arguments by a Christian.
"We shall fight on the beaches..." and what not.There seems to be a lot of truth to Horeshoe Theory, but I think the Left has mastered this aspect of communication generally more effectively. Though this varies from place to place, country to country.I think this may be normal when you feel entirely cornered and on the edge of despair/despondence.Any ideology that cannot effectively appeal to a broad enough emotional need is living on borrowed time.
Peace.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
It's clear you were never infected by (never studied) the Oppressively Racist and Misogynist Tools of Mansplaining, also known to the said racists and misogynists as "math" and "science."
Here is a song for you! Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/wU0Pp2n6ooE
I think blacks had lower bastardy rate in 1950 than whites do today in America (of course, whites of then had an even lower rate still). What’s wrong with no “gay marriage,” no transsexual agitation, much lower bastardy rate, fewer divorces, etc.? What exactly needed to be “loosened”?Replies: @Jatt Singhh, @AaronB, @dfordoom
Because the sexual mores of the 1950s were based on a one-size-fits-all model. Yes, getting married and having kids is a very good thing for most people. It’s not for everybody. A reasonable compromise is to tolerate dissenters. If a minority wants to sleep around, or engage in homosexual or other deviant sexual activities, or live together without getting married, or even live in a ménage à trois, or watch dirty movies, let them. As long as they’re a minority and they’re discreet they do no harm to society. That’s what I mean by “a little”.
Where the Sexual Revolution went wrong was that it coincided with a loss of confidence in all social norms (caused partly by Vietnam, partly by the Cold War, partly by the media) and we went from tolerating sexual dissenters to celebrating them. The excesses were driven to a large extent by the media. We went from “a little” (which was good) to “a lot” (which was not good). We ended up with absurdities like homosexual marriage and transsexual bathroom rights.
The answer to most problems is compromise. If you go too far in one direction you end up with stifling conformity and repression. Go too far in the other direction and you end up with chaos.
But nobody these days wants compromise. A civilised society cannot exist without compromise.
And they were tolerated if they were discreet. Where do you get your vision of a "repressive" 1950's America, Hollywood films?So what's your solution, have a lottery for 5% of the slots for sexual degeneracy? In reality, we DID have a compromise. Homosexuals and other sexual deviants were tolerated, provided they were discrete and didn't cause scandal or cause harm to the general public. It's not the conservatives who broke this social norm."Hysterically funny"? You are amused easily like a dim-witted child.
Your reflexive anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-conservative sentiments are certainly hysterical.You argue like Rosie. No one "blamed" illegitimate children. Just like no one blames the "Dreamers." Their parents are responsible. What is it with you two and straw man arguments?Replies: @V. K. Ovelund, @dfordoom
If you weren’t so driven by emotion you’d be able to see that blaming them is illogical and irrational.
The answer is to blame those responsible for the illegal immigration. But the children of illegal migrants did not commit any offence. If you really hate Mexicans so much then by all means encourage the “Dreamers” to leave but since they themselves did nothing wrong you would need to offer them attractive reasons to leave. If you try to force them to leave most sane normal people will think you’re being unreasonable (and probably driven by emotion).
If you’re an illegal immigrant you are a criminal and should expect to face legal sanctions (such as deportation). If you assisted people to migrate illegally you are a criminal and should expect to face legal sanctions (such as jail).
If you’re the child of an illegal immigrant you’re an innocent party. If you grew up in the country to which your parents emigrated you should not expect to be rounded up and deported.
It’s totally irrational to punish people for the sins of their parents.
The entire dissident right is motivated almost entirely by emotion. The dissident right is almost entirely driven by negative emotions. Liberals are driven by a mixture of positive and negative emotions. Both sides usually end up being wrong but they both get to their respective destinations through emotion.
In most cases the people who most firmly believe they are rational are actually the most driven be emotion.
All ideologies are to some extent emotional responses to the problems faced by society.
It's always hysterically funny to be accused of making emotional arguments by a Christian.Replies: @Rosie, @Talha, @Twinkie
It is quite bizarre to see this kind of argument come from someone who calls himself a Christian. After all, the Bible tells us that the law is written on our hearts, such that even nonbelievers often act in accordance with the law because our knowledge of it is innate.
Now, in ancient times, the heart was the seat of both passions and intellect, you know, functioning as a whole, creating a complete human being with a conscience.
That Twinkles is insufferably self-righteous was already known, but here he takes it to a whole new level by attempting to justify the idea of “illegitimate children.”
Imma go ahead and say Jesus would definitely not be okay with that.
The entire dissident right is motivated almost entirely by emotion. The dissident right is almost entirely driven by negative emotions. Liberals are driven by a mixture of positive and negative emotions. Both sides usually end up being wrong but they both get to their respective destinations through emotion.
In most cases the people who most firmly believe they are rational are actually the most driven be emotion.
All ideologies are to some extent emotional responses to the problems faced by society.
It's always hysterically funny to be accused of making emotional arguments by a Christian.Replies: @Rosie, @Talha, @Twinkie
This, of course, is the whole point of the effective utilization of rhetoric.
“We shall fight on the beaches…” and what not.
There seems to be a lot of truth to Horeshoe Theory, but I think the Left has mastered this aspect of communication generally more effectively. Though this varies from place to place, country to country.
I think this may be normal when you feel entirely cornered and on the edge of despair/despondence.
Any ideology that cannot effectively appeal to a broad enough emotional need is living on borrowed time.
Peace.
Wokeism? We can hope.Replies: @dfordoom
Just when I think I have a handle on my visceral hatred you give me rational grounds.
I think that limited capabilities and resources explain quite a bit of this. The UMC, even the "middle" MC, have options, resources and capabilities that allow them to recover from some of the bad decisions and behavior. The lower classes take one on the chin and many of them are done. We need to structure our society in a way that limits our ability to abuse ourselves while giving the illusion of free choice.Replies: @dfordoom
Good point.
It’s always been the case. Go back a century or so. If you were working class or a peasant and you got a girl pregnant and didn’t want to marry her there was a good chance her father would come after you with a shotgun or her brother would beat the living daylights out of you. If you were rich you just paid the girl off, and paid her family off.
Also money helps rich people to be more discreet about their degeneracy. If you’re poor and you drink too much you end up on Skid Row. If you’re rich you end up in a nice comfy sanitorium.
This is one of those things that people say all the time, but never really support in any depth.
My hunch is that there is a great deal of truth in it, but it’s complicated.
First of all, has the family actually broken down to the extent people assume? I’m not convinced. Just because a child is born out of wedlock doesn’t mean they don’t have a more or less traditional nuclear family home life. I suspect that some couples deliberately don’t get married so that the mother can qualify for welfare benefits. Some call this fraud. I call it survival.
Even working class couples that don’t need welfare may not see any point in getting married. There is no health insurance, no property, etc.
I suspect problems with the family are a symptom of the destruction of the economy over the past few decades.
Of course, I could be entirely wrong. I certainly am aware that religious belief is in free fall, and I am not certain that traditional marriage as we have known it in recent history is possible without religious belief. You often hear incels and other manosphere creeps asking why men should bother with marriage. Of course, there is no reason, except love, love of God, love of one’s partner, and love of life.
Fun is the purpose of living, and so having a functioning society is subordinate to having a fun society. (In practice, you must balance the two.).
Forget this and focus on functionality too much, and you get widespread depression, anxiety, discontent, and eventually social breakdown as we are seeing today, which is eventually the fate of every Puritan society.
Paradoxically, not obsessing over functionality is a condition for having a functional society. Leaving enough room for fun - a lot - is the condition for having a functioning society.Replies: @dfordoom
I think Puritan societies are inherently unstable. They eventually swing to the opposite extreme. In England the psalm-singing Puritanism of the Commonwealth was followed by the licentiousness of the Restoration. The growing Puritanism of the Victorian era was followed by the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll (or sex, drugs and jazz) of the 1920s.
America in the 50s was always likely to swing wildly towards licentiousness. Puritans never learn.
https://twitter.com/IsmailRoyer/status/1325252550946328577
Peace.
In a sense, Western history is about trying to reach one extreme and exclude entirely an entire section of life. I blame Christian metaphysics with its radical and absolute division between good and evil and its injunction to us to become totally good.
But being too good is as bad as being evil. I am in favor of all muddling through and murky compromise over totalitarian adherence to abstract, self-righteous principle.
Look at Twinkie, in an excess of self-righteous goodness, being all harsh and unsparing towards human beings because of the "social good". A little muddle headed humanity would do him good.
America in the 50s was always likely to swing wildly towards licentiousness. Puritans never learn.Replies: @Talha, @AaronB
No kidding?
https://twitter.com/IsmailRoyer/status/1325252550946328577
Peace.
I have the greatest respect and appreciation for for the true lower class.Replies: @Twinkie
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a classic example of “virtue signaling.”
Its the unhappy middle, the strivey bourgeois, who are slaves to convention and do not understand the social game is just a game.
That is why you find more original characters- people unafraid to be who they truly are - among aristocrats and the down and out.
Anyways, there has always been a dysfunctional lower lower class - read Dickens or Jack Londons People Of The Abyss. I doubt much has changed with this group.
But the idea that the tough working lower class embraced 60s libertinism is just absurd. No one who has traveled through the small conservative towns of America can believe that.
If these people are suffering, it is because their values dont match a changed world. Raised as sober Protestants who define their worth by their ability to do hard work, as if they were machines, advances in technology have now made them redundant.
Keynes wrote a fascinating essay about a hundred years ago on how unprepared mankind is for the coming age of leisure he even then saw as just around the corner. He looked around him and saw that the high society women he knew who didn't have to work were desperately bored and miserable. He thought mankind evolved to spend most of the day finding and working for its food, and that the average person wouldn't cope well with leisure.
I submit that it's only the old Protestant perspective that makes the average person cope with leisure poorly. With the right perspective, lesire is a gift.
But we need to somehow deal with dull bourgeois people like you who lack imagination and want to inflict their boredom and misery on society - the Purirans obsessed with the functioning of society and dont understand the purpose of life is enjoyment, not functionality.Replies: @Twinkie, @Audacious Epigone
Where the Sexual Revolution went wrong was that it coincided with a loss of confidence in all social norms (caused partly by Vietnam, partly by the Cold War, partly by the media) and we went from tolerating sexual dissenters to celebrating them. The excesses were driven to a large extent by the media. We went from "a little" (which was good) to "a lot" (which was not good). We ended up with absurdities like homosexual marriage and transsexual bathroom rights.
The answer to most problems is compromise. If you go too far in one direction you end up with stifling conformity and repression. Go too far in the other direction and you end up with chaos.
But nobody these days wants compromise. A civilised society cannot exist without compromise.Replies: @Twinkie
You clearly don’t know your American history. I got news for you, clueless, there were minorities of those who did all these things in the 1950’s: “sleep around, or engage in homosexual or other deviant sexual activities, or live together without getting married, or even live in a ménage à trois, or watch dirty movies.”
And they were tolerated if they were discreet. Where do you get your vision of a “repressive” 1950’s America, Hollywood films?
So what’s your solution, have a lottery for 5% of the slots for sexual degeneracy? In reality, we DID have a compromise. Homosexuals and other sexual deviants were tolerated, provided they were discrete and didn’t cause scandal or cause harm to the general public. It’s not the conservatives who broke this social norm.
“Hysterically funny”? You are amused easily like a dim-witted child.
Your reflexive anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-conservative sentiments are certainly hysterical.
You argue like Rosie. No one “blamed” illegitimate children. Just like no one blames the “Dreamers.” Their parents are responsible. What is it with you two and straw man arguments?
As an example, one thing that was a problem in the past was blackmail. The degree of toleration extended to sexual dissenters was insufficient and made those people extremely vulnerable to blackmail. Loosening things up a little made blackmail less effective.
The 50s was not a nightmare era of repression. It was just a little bit too repressive. Some loosening up was desirable.
One thing that could not have been anticipated was that the political Left would abandon economic leftism and embrace capitalism, and would then go looking for new causes. The new causes that it found (environmentalism, feminism, sexual liberationism, etc) were disastrous. Nobody expected that to happen. The Left had never shown much interest in social libertarianism. But the new pro-capitalist Left needed causes to push.
That's one of the reasons that the mild loosening up of sexual mores got out of control. Those on the Left who supported economic leftism were gradually pushed out and replaced by homosexual activists, radical feminists, radical environmentalists, etc. These new culture warriors had become very extreme even by the early 70s and they were surprised by how easily they won victories, which encouraged them to become more extreme. In fact it forced them to become more extreme in order to justify their continued existence.Replies: @Twinkie
What argument is that? It’s hard to tell since you don’t actually address the substance of my argument and simply engage in juvenile name-calling.
Just like that. More ad hominem.
Oh, you speak for God now, do you?
Let’s rewind the argument, shall we?
Another commenter: “… illegitimate children…”
You: “Children cannot be illegitimate!”
Me: Is this the same logic as “People (migrants) can’t be illegal”?
You: No, that’s different. There is a solution for that – illegal aliens can go back home. What’s the solution for illegitimate children?
Me: The biological parents can marry and make the children legitimate.
You (presumably blue-faced now): You disgust me! You are a fake Christian! You are insufferably self-righteous!
Rosie, do you need some Xanax?
The generational gap is a red herring, at least politically. It’s largely an artifact of racial differences by age cohort in the US:
I say:
BINGO and the White baby boomer boobs and all the other White geezer boobs born before 1965 just let it happen because they were bought off with massive government debt and private debt and multiple asset bubbles created by the privately-controlled Federal Reserve Bank.
I wrote this in August of 2019 about this plain fact of generational cohort racial distribution:
The WHITE percentage of the generational cohorts is the thing.
WHITES are being replaced at a rapid clip in European Christian nations.
The ruling classes of European Christian nations are dramatically changing the racial demographics of their nations so that Whites are being replaced.
So-called “diversity” simply means less White people.
The White genocide and White race replacement going on in the USA and Germany and many other European Christian nations is simply the evil immigration policy plots of the treasonous ruling classes in those nations.
https://www.unz.com/anepigone/the-closing-of-the-millennial-mind/#comment-3414640
https://twitter.com/katschaeffer/status/1164254356423806977?s=20Replies: @Jay Fink
I often talk about the Hispanic majority city I live in Washington State. You can see it on your map. The larger circle on the left. What’s interesting is that my county countinues to vote red no matter how Hispanic we get. Trump won by 10 points in this most recent election.
The answer is to blame those responsible for the illegal immigration. But the children of illegal migrants did not commit any offence. If you really hate Mexicans so much then by all means encourage the “Dreamers” to leave but since they themselves did nothing wrong you would need to offer them attractive reasons to leave. If you try to force them to leave most sane normal people will think you're being unreasonable (and probably driven by emotion).
If you're an illegal immigrant you are a criminal and should expect to face legal sanctions (such as deportation). If you assisted people to migrate illegally you are a criminal and should expect to face legal sanctions (such as jail).
If you're the child of an illegal immigrant you're an innocent party. If you grew up in the country to which your parents emigrated you should not expect to be rounded up and deported.
It's totally irrational to punish people for the sins of their parents.Replies: @Talha
I think this is one of those difficult questions for sure. And I certainly don’t know if there is a completely right answer.
Let me outline a scenario; let’s say you live in a big house with your family. That big house was provided by the generous income of your father, all of which was made through fraud and other criminal means.
Finally, your father gets caught and his house and assets are liquidated to pay back his victims. He gets sent to jail.
Now, you – as a little kid – did nothing wrong and you were just going about your life, living it up in your father’s mansion. Now, all of a sudden, you and your siblings are scraping by with your mother having to work two jobs to make ends meet. It kind of sucks that your life got interrupted and you no longer have access to everything you grew up with and you certainly feel you and your siblings are being punished (and I could certainly empathize with someone having their life turned upside down in a situation beyond their control), but the alternative would be to let you keep the house and assets that your father gained through criminal means. Would that be just?
Again, I don’t know if this scenario is necessarily analogous to the situation with illegal immigrants, but I wanted to throw it out there.
Peace.
It's sad, but the onus for restitution to his own family rests with him, not the public.
If the public looked out for his family, it would 1) harm the public and 2) not discourage such criminal activity (and may even encourage such transgressions in some cases).
And before you think of this criminal's children, think of the children of his victims first - how many other children whose parents did nothing wrong were impoverished and ended up tragically, because of his misdeeds? At least the criminal's family enjoyed some fat years thanks to the ill-gotten gain. What about the victims' children?
Our sympathies may not have priorities (we can be sympathetic to all victims), but legal remedies certainly do, as do public interests.Replies: @Talha
In the case of the children of illegal immigrants, let them stay and get jobs and start contributing to the society in which they grew up. In that case you're neither rewarding them (you're not giving them mansions) nor punishing them.
There are no perfect solutions. Just compromises.Replies: @Twinkie, @Talha
The entire dissident right is motivated almost entirely by emotion. The dissident right is almost entirely driven by negative emotions. Liberals are driven by a mixture of positive and negative emotions. Both sides usually end up being wrong but they both get to their respective destinations through emotion.
In most cases the people who most firmly believe they are rational are actually the most driven be emotion.
All ideologies are to some extent emotional responses to the problems faced by society.
It's always hysterically funny to be accused of making emotional arguments by a Christian.Replies: @Rosie, @Talha, @Twinkie
When in doubt, always project.
More straw man.
Yes, yes, yes, all feelings are “equally valid.” If black people FEEL discriminated, it’s because they are! We bad, bad racists. If black women think that white women’s hair is racist, all white women should shave off their hair in atonement to honor their “equally valid” feelings.
It’s clear you were never infected by (never studied) the Oppressively Racist and Misogynist Tools of Mansplaining, also known to the said racists and misogynists as “math” and “science.”
Here is a song for you! Enjoy!
The real criminal in that scenario is… the criminal. He victimized those he swindled, he victimized the public, and he victimized his own family members.
It’s sad, but the onus for restitution to his own family rests with him, not the public.
If the public looked out for his family, it would 1) harm the public and 2) not discourage such criminal activity (and may even encourage such transgressions in some cases).
And before you think of this criminal’s children, think of the children of his victims first – how many other children whose parents did nothing wrong were impoverished and ended up tragically, because of his misdeeds? At least the criminal’s family enjoyed some fat years thanks to the ill-gotten gain. What about the victims’ children?
Our sympathies may not have priorities (we can be sympathetic to all victims), but legal remedies certainly do, as do public interests.
Peace.Replies: @Twinkie
It's sad, but the onus for restitution to his own family rests with him, not the public.
If the public looked out for his family, it would 1) harm the public and 2) not discourage such criminal activity (and may even encourage such transgressions in some cases).
And before you think of this criminal's children, think of the children of his victims first - how many other children whose parents did nothing wrong were impoverished and ended up tragically, because of his misdeeds? At least the criminal's family enjoyed some fat years thanks to the ill-gotten gain. What about the victims' children?
Our sympathies may not have priorities (we can be sympathetic to all victims), but legal remedies certainly do, as do public interests.Replies: @Talha
This is how I see it as well. Now, again, the scenario I outlined may not completely fit with the illegal immigrant scenario or other scenarios (and I am certainly open to the argument that it is not a valid comparison), but I mentioned the above as a case study where one may not want punish the children of the criminal, but to not take action and avoiding doing something that necessarily punishes them (although unintentionally) would necessarily entail a harm to others and, as you mentioned, set a bad precedent in society.
Peace.
In public policy, there are many conflicting interests and not all (or even most) can be resolved in an emotionally satisfying way. That’s why clear-eyed empiricism is necessary to better society. The only exception would be when commonly agreed-to moral good is in direct conflict with the said betterment, e.g. “Abortion may be immoral or distasteful, but it kills off future blacks, and that means less crime!”
Peace.Replies: @Twinkie
The same logic of the law and public policy apply to many situations.
In public policy, there are many conflicting interests and not all (or even most) can be resolved in an emotionally satisfying way. That’s why clear-eyed empiricism is necessary to better society. The only exception would be when commonly agreed-to moral good is in direct conflict with the said betterment, e.g. “Abortion may be immoral or distasteful, but it kills off future blacks, and that means less crime!”
And they were tolerated if they were discreet. Where do you get your vision of a "repressive" 1950's America, Hollywood films?So what's your solution, have a lottery for 5% of the slots for sexual degeneracy? In reality, we DID have a compromise. Homosexuals and other sexual deviants were tolerated, provided they were discrete and didn't cause scandal or cause harm to the general public. It's not the conservatives who broke this social norm."Hysterically funny"? You are amused easily like a dim-witted child.
Your reflexive anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-conservative sentiments are certainly hysterical.You argue like Rosie. No one "blamed" illegitimate children. Just like no one blames the "Dreamers." Their parents are responsible. What is it with you two and straw man arguments?Replies: @V. K. Ovelund, @dfordoom
is no American but, unlike you and me, he may actually remember the 1950s. One need not agree, but I’d listen to him.
I do remember the 70s and 80s. They had their problems. Crime was allowed to get out of control. The drug culture got out of control. But in a lot of ways they were better eras. As far as sexual morality was concerned there was a reasonable balance - more libertarian than the 50s but much much less crazy and extreme than today. And there was free speech.
All that was needed was to crack down on crime and make a decision one way or the other about drugs - either crush the drug culture mercilessly or legalise them.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Twinkie
And they were tolerated if they were discreet. Where do you get your vision of a "repressive" 1950's America, Hollywood films?So what's your solution, have a lottery for 5% of the slots for sexual degeneracy? In reality, we DID have a compromise. Homosexuals and other sexual deviants were tolerated, provided they were discrete and didn't cause scandal or cause harm to the general public. It's not the conservatives who broke this social norm."Hysterically funny"? You are amused easily like a dim-witted child.
Your reflexive anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-conservative sentiments are certainly hysterical.You argue like Rosie. No one "blamed" illegitimate children. Just like no one blames the "Dreamers." Their parents are responsible. What is it with you two and straw man arguments?Replies: @V. K. Ovelund, @dfordoom
Yes, they were tolerated to a degree. I think it was a good thing to increase the level of toleration a little. A little. Not a lot, but a little.
As an example, one thing that was a problem in the past was blackmail. The degree of toleration extended to sexual dissenters was insufficient and made those people extremely vulnerable to blackmail. Loosening things up a little made blackmail less effective.
The 50s was not a nightmare era of repression. It was just a little bit too repressive. Some loosening up was desirable.
One thing that could not have been anticipated was that the political Left would abandon economic leftism and embrace capitalism, and would then go looking for new causes. The new causes that it found (environmentalism, feminism, sexual liberationism, etc) were disastrous. Nobody expected that to happen. The Left had never shown much interest in social libertarianism. But the new pro-capitalist Left needed causes to push.
That’s one of the reasons that the mild loosening up of sexual mores got out of control. Those on the Left who supported economic leftism were gradually pushed out and replaced by homosexual activists, radical feminists, radical environmentalists, etc. These new culture warriors had become very extreme even by the early 70s and they were surprised by how easily they won victories, which encouraged them to become more extreme. In fact it forced them to become more extreme in order to justify their continued existence.
So, your problem with the 1950’s morality was that it didn’t provide some fantasy level of deviance tolerance that could never exist in real life. Yeah, okay. Carry on with your anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-conservative ranting.Replies: @dfordoom
OK, a simple question. If the parents do not marry (something which the children have no control over) should the children be stigmatised. Yes or no?
Secondly, to the extent that there is a whiff of scandal or shame or distaste attached to an out of wedlock birth, the parents ought to make it right*, but if they don’t, the unfortunate child’s situation is on them, not the rest of society.
Refer to my discussion with Talha above. When parents screw up their children, and the state intervenes to “make it right,” you remove a major counter-incentive for parents to live up to their responsibilities and end up increasing the very ill you seek to remedy. This is what I refer to above - a choice between an emotion-driven decision-making and a rational one that betters society overall and long-term.
*Indeed this is usually what happened historically - there WERE fornication and out-of-wedlock births from time immemorial, but the biological parents were expected to do “the honorable thing” and marry and retroactively make things right for the child (and each other). Those who refused to do so were scandalized for the dishonor they brought to their families, to themselves, and, yes, to the innocent child (and sympathy often accrued to the child).
This leftist impulse to “Save everyone” and to make everyone feel good (‘equally valid”) is emotionally satisfying, but leads to the ruin of society.
As an example, one thing that was a problem in the past was blackmail. The degree of toleration extended to sexual dissenters was insufficient and made those people extremely vulnerable to blackmail. Loosening things up a little made blackmail less effective.
The 50s was not a nightmare era of repression. It was just a little bit too repressive. Some loosening up was desirable.
One thing that could not have been anticipated was that the political Left would abandon economic leftism and embrace capitalism, and would then go looking for new causes. The new causes that it found (environmentalism, feminism, sexual liberationism, etc) were disastrous. Nobody expected that to happen. The Left had never shown much interest in social libertarianism. But the new pro-capitalist Left needed causes to push.
That's one of the reasons that the mild loosening up of sexual mores got out of control. Those on the Left who supported economic leftism were gradually pushed out and replaced by homosexual activists, radical feminists, radical environmentalists, etc. These new culture warriors had become very extreme even by the early 70s and they were surprised by how easily they won victories, which encouraged them to become more extreme. In fact it forced them to become more extreme in order to justify their continued existence.Replies: @Twinkie
What like 3.374% more? Who is going to sit on the morality deviance dial and rotate it back and forth to get it just right, you?
Any situation that requires discretion is going to be prone to blackmail – that’s the very nature of something discreet.
So, your problem with the 1950’s morality was that it didn’t provide some fantasy level of deviance tolerance that could never exist in real life. Yeah, okay. Carry on with your anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-conservative ranting.
By the way, that was a joke.
I'm not anti-American. I don't care what Americans do as long as they don't try to impose their values or their culture on others. And as long as they don't bomb or invade other people's countries. And as long as they get their military bases out of my damned country. Is it a deal?Replies: @Twinkie
Maybe the answer is, as so often, a compromise. Let the children of the criminal get jobs and become useful members of society without suffering any other punishments. They should not get to enjoy their father’s ill-gotten fortune but they also should not be personally responsible for making restitution for crimes they themselves did not commit.
In the case of the children of illegal immigrants, let them stay and get jobs and start contributing to the society in which they grew up. In that case you’re neither rewarding them (you’re not giving them mansions) nor punishing them.
There are no perfect solutions. Just compromises.
Who exactly is suggesting that the children of criminals should be barred from employment?Replies: @dfordoom
First of all, nobody was suggesting anyone act like an asshole to the children (kindness is always a virtue toward the innocent). Since you are trying to play a gotcha game, I’m going to insist on you defining what you mean here by “stigmatize.”
Secondly, to the extent that there is a whiff of scandal or shame or distaste attached to an out of wedlock birth, the parents ought to make it right*, but if they don’t, the unfortunate child’s situation is on them, not the rest of society.
Refer to my discussion with Talha above. When parents screw up their children, and the state intervenes to “make it right,” you remove a major counter-incentive for parents to live up to their responsibilities and end up increasing the very ill you seek to remedy. This is what I refer to above – a choice between an emotion-driven decision-making and a rational one that betters society overall and long-term.
*Indeed this is usually what happened historically – there WERE fornication and out-of-wedlock births from time immemorial, but the biological parents were expected to do “the honorable thing” and marry and retroactively make things right for the child (and each other). Those who refused to do so were scandalized for the dishonor they brought to their families, to themselves, and, yes, to the innocent child (and sympathy often accrued to the child).
This leftist impulse to “Save everyone” and to make everyone feel good (‘equally valid”) is emotionally satisfying, but leads to the ruin of society.
In the case of the children of illegal immigrants, let them stay and get jobs and start contributing to the society in which they grew up. In that case you're neither rewarding them (you're not giving them mansions) nor punishing them.
There are no perfect solutions. Just compromises.Replies: @Twinkie, @Talha
No one suggested that. Stop making up straw men. Otherwise you are just trolling.
Who exactly is suggesting that the children of criminals should be barred from employment?
Just as it would be crazy to punish the children of illegal immigrants. Or the children of unwed mothers.
It's tricky to balance the needs of the individual and the needs of society. Where there's a conflict I guess I tend to come down on the side of the individual. There's no perfect or easy solution. Either the individual or society ends up losing out to some extent. You try to find a reasonable compromise.
So, your problem with the 1950’s morality was that it didn’t provide some fantasy level of deviance tolerance that could never exist in real life. Yeah, okay. Carry on with your anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-conservative ranting.Replies: @dfordoom
I’m not anti-Christian. I believe Christians should be tolerated as long as they’re discreet. As long as they stay in the closet. I’m OK with Christians as long as they don’t practise their religion in the street and frighten the horses.
By the way, that was a joke.
I’m not anti-American. I don’t care what Americans do as long as they don’t try to impose their values or their culture on others. And as long as they don’t bomb or invade other people’s countries. And as long as they get their military bases out of my damned country. Is it a deal?
By the way, that was a joke.
I'm not anti-American. I don't care what Americans do as long as they don't try to impose their values or their culture on others. And as long as they don't bomb or invade other people's countries. And as long as they get their military bases out of my damned country. Is it a deal?Replies: @Twinkie
What country is that, Australia?
If so, believe me, if I were the God-Emperor of America, I’d love to grant you your wish and bid you good luck with the Chinese in the region.
Indeed I’d withdraw all U.S. forces globally, except perhaps the UK and Japan, and I’d be okay with withdrawing from those countries as well if the people of those countries wanted.
Maybe you prefer the Japanese had won in the Pacific, so could enjoy the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere instead of the e-vil American influence.
Who exactly is suggesting that the children of criminals should be barred from employment?Replies: @dfordoom
No-one is. That was my point. It would be crazy to punish them.
Just as it would be crazy to punish the children of illegal immigrants. Or the children of unwed mothers.
It’s tricky to balance the needs of the individual and the needs of society. Where there’s a conflict I guess I tend to come down on the side of the individual. There’s no perfect or easy solution. Either the individual or society ends up losing out to some extent. You try to find a reasonable compromise.
Maybe you just like resorting to silly irrelevancies. The war with Japan ended 75 years ago, or hadn’t you heard? It was in all the papers.
There is an old idea that the top and the bottom are relatively free from society’s conventions, in that they see through them and don’t take them too seriously.
Its the unhappy middle, the strivey bourgeois, who are slaves to convention and do not understand the social game is just a game.
That is why you find more original characters- people unafraid to be who they truly are – among aristocrats and the down and out.
Anyways, there has always been a dysfunctional lower lower class – read Dickens or Jack Londons People Of The Abyss. I doubt much has changed with this group.
But the idea that the tough working lower class embraced 60s libertinism is just absurd. No one who has traveled through the small conservative towns of America can believe that.
If these people are suffering, it is because their values dont match a changed world. Raised as sober Protestants who define their worth by their ability to do hard work, as if they were machines, advances in technology have now made them redundant.
Keynes wrote a fascinating essay about a hundred years ago on how unprepared mankind is for the coming age of leisure he even then saw as just around the corner. He looked around him and saw that the high society women he knew who didn’t have to work were desperately bored and miserable. He thought mankind evolved to spend most of the day finding and working for its food, and that the average person wouldn’t cope well with leisure.
I submit that it’s only the old Protestant perspective that makes the average person cope with leisure poorly. With the right perspective, lesire is a gift.
But we need to somehow deal with dull bourgeois people like you who lack imagination and want to inflict their boredom and misery on society – the Purirans obsessed with the functioning of society and dont understand the purpose of life is enjoyment, not functionality.
I would venture to guess that you have no progeny.
I suppose I could recommend Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” but I fear it’s pearls before swine.Replies: @AaronB
America in the 50s was always likely to swing wildly towards licentiousness. Puritans never learn.Replies: @Talha, @AaronB
I agree. Extremes lead to extremes. I don’t understand why we can’t learn our lesson already.
In a sense, Western history is about trying to reach one extreme and exclude entirely an entire section of life. I blame Christian metaphysics with its radical and absolute division between good and evil and its injunction to us to become totally good.
But being too good is as bad as being evil. I am in favor of all muddling through and murky compromise over totalitarian adherence to abstract, self-righteous principle.
Look at Twinkie, in an excess of self-righteous goodness, being all harsh and unsparing towards human beings because of the “social good”. A little muddle headed humanity would do him good.
In the case of the children of illegal immigrants, let them stay and get jobs and start contributing to the society in which they grew up. In that case you're neither rewarding them (you're not giving them mansions) nor punishing them.
There are no perfect solutions. Just compromises.Replies: @Twinkie, @Talha
Well, yes – I only suggested in the case study that they would lose what they had been used to having, which is from their father’s criminal fortune. This would still be punishing them to an extent because they would have their home and other things taken away. At that point, they would have no more personal obligation to the victims.
This makes sense to me, at least. But I think I should recuse myself to a degree from this since I am a child of an immigrant who came to a country, so I may be admittedly biased. We came legally, but the legality of it was not really in my hands as much as it was in my father’s.
I think one way in which the illegal immigrant case and my example do not fit together is by defining who exactly the victims are. In the case with the father who had made a fortune through fraud, you have a specific set of victims and a definable set of violations or quantifiable set of damage that was done. These victims are the ones being granted justice by taking away the assets of the criminal father.
With illegal immigrants, who are the victims? Well, unless they commit some sort of specific crime against an individual, I guess the tax payers collectively (to a degree at the federal level and to a degree at the local level) would really be the victims in this case. And if that is the case, the tax payers can simply decide as a group if most of them want to simply overlook the monetary misuse of their funds that was committed…or not.
Then one more consideration would be that punishments are meant as deterrents for others to prevent them from committing the specific crimes. Here I see a lot of inconsistency where many want to penalize and punish the random immigrant that doesn’t have much and completely ignore businesses and such that have hiring practices that take advantage of these types of people and encourage them to cross the border. In the case of this preventative justice, it seems you should do it in a way to deter the violation holistically.
“The people before you were destroyed because they used to inflict the legal punishments on the poor and forgive the rich…” – reported in Bukhari
Peace.
Being a citizen is akin to having a fractional ownership in a company, only it’s a country. When non-owners from the outside use illegal methods to steal some shares and then give them to their children, you wouldn’t tug at an emotional string to not take back the stolen shares (“But those criminals’ children were innocent! Let them keep those few shares!”).That’s an argument to punish the fencers as well, not to decline to prosecute the thieves. Of course all involved should be punished. Illegal migrants should be deported and their future entry barred; businesses and their owners should be vigorously punished.
And, yes, letting the children of criminals benefit from the crimes encourages other criminals.Replies: @Talha, @Reg Cæsar
Pot. Kettle.
Um, no, you are rewarding them – US residency and citizenship are valuable to those not entitled to them. It’s not an issue of giving a mansion. That’s a stupid, emotional argument on that troll’s part. Using your earlier analogy, that’s like the criminal buying his children a small condo with his criminal conduct and then pleading, “Well, it’s not a mansion. Can’t you let my children have what they already have? It’s just a small condo.”
And not just the tax payers, but all present and future citizens whose votes and decision-making powers would be diluted.
Being a citizen is akin to having a fractional ownership in a company, only it’s a country. When non-owners from the outside use illegal methods to steal some shares and then give them to their children, you wouldn’t tug at an emotional string to not take back the stolen shares (“But those criminals’ children were innocent! Let them keep those few shares!”).
That’s an argument to punish the fencers as well, not to decline to prosecute the thieves. Of course all involved should be punished. Illegal migrants should be deported and their future entry barred; businesses and their owners should be vigorously punished.
And, yes, letting the children of criminals benefit from the crimes encourages other criminals.
Peace.Replies: @Twinkie, @Audacious Epigone
So what's wrongly called "amnesty" is actually an unearned gift equivalent to, if not a mansion, at least a McMansion. With a giant garage door greeting visitors.
https://activerain-store.s3.amazonaws.com/image_store/uploads/8/6/6/0/7/ar136028762170668.JPG
Being a citizen is akin to having a fractional ownership in a company, only it’s a country. When non-owners from the outside use illegal methods to steal some shares and then give them to their children, you wouldn’t tug at an emotional string to not take back the stolen shares (“But those criminals’ children were innocent! Let them keep those few shares!”).That’s an argument to punish the fencers as well, not to decline to prosecute the thieves. Of course all involved should be punished. Illegal migrants should be deported and their future entry barred; businesses and their owners should be vigorously punished.
And, yes, letting the children of criminals benefit from the crimes encourages other criminals.Replies: @Talha, @Reg Cæsar
This is a very interesting point here, in thinking along the lines of a stock in a company whose shares are diluted. I think this should certainly be taken into consideration in the equation.
My guess is that if people made a more vigorous argument along these lines (which I don’t hear as much as the deportation argument), there may be more support and a quicker resolution. The fact of the matter is that folks are less likely to empathize with a rich guy who made his fortune partially by exploiting some desperate and poor guy than the poor guy.
Peace.
Peace.Replies: @Twinkie, @Audacious Epigone
Are you kidding? Anti-immigration (and even pro-legal immigration) people talk about it all the time. That’s what all the hubbub was about E-Verify (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Verify), because businesses were claiming, as a defense, that they had no easy ways of determining who was and was not a legal resident/employee.
But if the children of the illegal immigrants get jobs and pay taxes that argument collapses.
Peace.Replies: @dfordoom, @Twinkie
Also a good point, except for whatever they potentially benefited from before their status changed and before they could start contributing…but maybe that’s being too detailed.
Peace.
Much of the extreme right-wing hostility to the "dreamers" is based on fears that if given citizenship they'll vote Democrat.Replies: @Talha
Or if he stole shares of a business and gave them to his children (citizenship as fractional ownership in a country), can they resist re-possession of the ill-gotten gain by claiming that they are paying taxes on the their share of the profits (or that they are contributing to the company in some form)?
Of course not.
We have a legal concept called “the fruit of the poisonous tree” (used in reference to illegally-obtained evidence), a similar concept applies to ill-gotten gains from illegal conduct, no matter how badly we feel for the children of the guilty.
Peace.Replies: @dfordoom, @Twinkie
You get into complicated arguments about whether immigrants are a net economic benefit or not in the long term.
Much of the extreme right-wing hostility to the “dreamers” is based on fears that if given citizenship they’ll vote Democrat.
Peace.
Much of the extreme right-wing hostility to the "dreamers" is based on fears that if given citizenship they'll vote Democrat.Replies: @Talha
No, I think the extreme right-wing hostility is more based on racial issues, including greater chances of race-mixing and what not. I think the argument of they-will-vote-Democrat is a more broad concern and more mainstream.
Peace.
1964.
Being a citizen is akin to having a fractional ownership in a company, only it’s a country. When non-owners from the outside use illegal methods to steal some shares and then give them to their children, you wouldn’t tug at an emotional string to not take back the stolen shares (“But those criminals’ children were innocent! Let them keep those few shares!”).That’s an argument to punish the fencers as well, not to decline to prosecute the thieves. Of course all involved should be punished. Illegal migrants should be deported and their future entry barred; businesses and their owners should be vigorously punished.
And, yes, letting the children of criminals benefit from the crimes encourages other criminals.Replies: @Talha, @Reg Cæsar
Randall Burns of Vdare once posited that citizenship itself has monetary value. I think he suggested it was around a quarter million dollars. Simple residency probably accounts for over 90% of that figure.
So what’s wrongly called “amnesty” is actually an unearned gift equivalent to, if not a mansion, at least a McMansion. With a giant garage door greeting visitors.
https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thevietnamconflict2shortvers-150428131724-conversion-gate02/95/the-vietnam-conflict2shortvers-21-638.jpg?cb=1430245178Replies: @iffen
Because we “earned it” you @##*&^&^%%$$^&*(*&*(^*&^
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqf1lfQjnv4&t=11s
Yes.
Its the unhappy middle, the strivey bourgeois, who are slaves to convention and do not understand the social game is just a game.
That is why you find more original characters- people unafraid to be who they truly are - among aristocrats and the down and out.
Anyways, there has always been a dysfunctional lower lower class - read Dickens or Jack Londons People Of The Abyss. I doubt much has changed with this group.
But the idea that the tough working lower class embraced 60s libertinism is just absurd. No one who has traveled through the small conservative towns of America can believe that.
If these people are suffering, it is because their values dont match a changed world. Raised as sober Protestants who define their worth by their ability to do hard work, as if they were machines, advances in technology have now made them redundant.
Keynes wrote a fascinating essay about a hundred years ago on how unprepared mankind is for the coming age of leisure he even then saw as just around the corner. He looked around him and saw that the high society women he knew who didn't have to work were desperately bored and miserable. He thought mankind evolved to spend most of the day finding and working for its food, and that the average person wouldn't cope well with leisure.
I submit that it's only the old Protestant perspective that makes the average person cope with leisure poorly. With the right perspective, lesire is a gift.
But we need to somehow deal with dull bourgeois people like you who lack imagination and want to inflict their boredom and misery on society - the Purirans obsessed with the functioning of society and dont understand the purpose of life is enjoyment, not functionality.Replies: @Twinkie, @Audacious Epigone
Because you are shallow, you confuse fun with fulfillment, let alone moral purpose in life.
I would venture to guess that you have no progeny.
I suppose I could recommend Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” but I fear it’s pearls before swine.
The Pleasure Principle is our sheer pleasure at being alive in the world, the Reality Principle is our need to survive in the face of death.
Society may be a partnership between the living, the dead, and the unborn, but what is the point of any of their lives if it is blighted by an obsessive preoccupation with the Reality Principle?
Taking life seriously - obsessing about survival is what makes life serious and grim - is shallow. It is to not see through the world, as all the world's sages have done.
Your own Lord Jesus bids you become as little children and not pay too much attention to economic necessities like clothing and shelter, and not plan too much for the future. The clearest indication that paradise is regained by not letting our lives be dominated by the Reality Principle.
Was Jesus shallow?Replies: @Twinkie
Peace.Replies: @dfordoom, @Twinkie
Yes. Think of it this way from the earlier example. The criminal fathers steals and sets up a legitimate business from the ill-gotten proceeds and gives it to his children. Do you buy the defense from the children – upon the state trying to confiscate the business – “Hey, we are paying taxes for the business! We are contributing to society!”
Or if he stole shares of a business and gave them to his children (citizenship as fractional ownership in a country), can they resist re-possession of the ill-gotten gain by claiming that they are paying taxes on the their share of the profits (or that they are contributing to the company in some form)?
Of course not.
We have a legal concept called “the fruit of the poisonous tree” (used in reference to illegally-obtained evidence), a similar concept applies to ill-gotten gains from illegal conduct, no matter how badly we feel for the children of the guilty.
I would venture to guess that you have no progeny.
I suppose I could recommend Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” but I fear it’s pearls before swine.Replies: @AaronB
The distinction I was making was between what Freud called the Pleasure Principle and the Reality Principle, to put it simply.
The Pleasure Principle is our sheer pleasure at being alive in the world, the Reality Principle is our need to survive in the face of death.
Society may be a partnership between the living, the dead, and the unborn, but what is the point of any of their lives if it is blighted by an obsessive preoccupation with the Reality Principle?
Taking life seriously – obsessing about survival is what makes life serious and grim – is shallow. It is to not see through the world, as all the world’s sages have done.
Your own Lord Jesus bids you become as little children and not pay too much attention to economic necessities like clothing and shelter, and not plan too much for the future. The clearest indication that paradise is regained by not letting our lives be dominated by the Reality Principle.
Was Jesus shallow?
Raising children is often not fun. At times it’s downright excruciating. Yet it’s is profoundly fulfilling and is immeasurably more important than my “need to survive.”Don’t misquote Christ. And don’t engage in a stupid straw man and projection. I am not motivated by “economic necessities.”
You don’t have children, do you?Replies: @AaronB, @AaronB
I understand the thinking behind this. I understand the notion that stigmatising the children will discourage fornication. I understand the thinking but I can’t agree with it. It’s fundamentally irrational and it’s too brutal. It’s the kind of thinking that explains why social conservatism lost the culture war. It made social conservatives look vindictive and vengeful.
Hence the latter strike people as “brutal” or “mean,” while the former are seen as “nicer.”Replies: @dfordoom
Hey, I’m not that old. You make me sound as old as Joe Biden!
I do remember the 70s and 80s. They had their problems. Crime was allowed to get out of control. The drug culture got out of control. But in a lot of ways they were better eras. As far as sexual morality was concerned there was a reasonable balance – more libertarian than the 50s but much much less crazy and extreme than today. And there was free speech.
All that was needed was to crack down on crime and make a decision one way or the other about drugs – either crush the drug culture mercilessly or legalise them.
That was the first election so-called “boomers” voted in– and only in two states. (Which split– Georgia and Kentucky.) But they learned very young about the “third rail” their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had set up for them.
I do remember the 70s and 80s. They had their problems. Crime was allowed to get out of control. The drug culture got out of control. But in a lot of ways they were better eras. As far as sexual morality was concerned there was a reasonable balance - more libertarian than the 50s but much much less crazy and extreme than today. And there was free speech.
All that was needed was to crack down on crime and make a decision one way or the other about drugs - either crush the drug culture mercilessly or legalise them.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Twinkie
I see you’ve read your Machiavelli.
The Pleasure Principle is our sheer pleasure at being alive in the world, the Reality Principle is our need to survive in the face of death.
Society may be a partnership between the living, the dead, and the unborn, but what is the point of any of their lives if it is blighted by an obsessive preoccupation with the Reality Principle?
Taking life seriously - obsessing about survival is what makes life serious and grim - is shallow. It is to not see through the world, as all the world's sages have done.
Your own Lord Jesus bids you become as little children and not pay too much attention to economic necessities like clothing and shelter, and not plan too much for the future. The clearest indication that paradise is regained by not letting our lives be dominated by the Reality Principle.
Was Jesus shallow?Replies: @Twinkie
That’s a false dichotomy.
Raising children is often not fun. At times it’s downright excruciating. Yet it’s is profoundly fulfilling and is immeasurably more important than my “need to survive.”
Don’t misquote Christ. And don’t engage in a stupid straw man and projection. I am not motivated by “economic necessities.”
You don’t have children, do you?
Youre equating fun with comfort, but thats a very different thing.
One should have kids because overall its delightful to have kids. And one should want ones kids to find life delightful and to delight in their delight.
There is an attitude that says, no, you shouldn't enjoy life but rather work hard, amass wealth, and live a very restrained and sober life. And that society should be harsh to anyone who doesn't contribute to this sober and joyless social order. Its obvious what's at the bottom of this attitude is a preoccupation with survival, not just oneself but ones family and humanity. Its anxiety about survival.
But whats the point of surviving if you aren't enjoying yourself? What's the point of bringing kids into the world who wont enjoy themselves?
So this kind of Protestant/Puritan obsessing over survival ends up undermining life and paradoxically leads to social breakdown in the long run.
People aren't having kids today because our society doesn't stress that it can be a delightful and enjoyable process despite the hardship, but tends to regard child rearing from the Protestant point of view as a sober and thankless task. That its expensive and time consuming and dirty is stressed, not that it can be ecstasy - but only if done right. Plus, people live today under a general pall of depression and anxiety that is a direct result of Protestant/Puritan ethics, which stress the Reality Principle over the Pleasure Principle.
I don't- yet - have kids. Will I? I'm thinking about it. I enjoy my friends and families kids and can see how done right, raising kids can be immensely enjoyable.
But I dont think there is any necessity to have kids and I dont think anyone is better or worse for having or not having kids. Heck, I dont even think there is any need for the hunan race to survive. Probably most people would enjoy it if done right, but not necessarily under current conditions.
And that's the point. As a society we are collapsing under the weight of living too long under the Reality Principle.Replies: @Twinkie, @Audacious Epigone
Here is Jesus, who understood a thing or two about how to live and what makes a healthy society. Its funny that right wing Christians are made so uncomfortable by this part of Jesus message.Replies: @iffen
Well, you asked for a yes or no answer. There’s not much room for nuance in yes or no.
I may be inadvertently irrational, but hope that I am not brutal, vindictive or vengeful. Actually, once we have gotten the mere yes or no out of the way, I can’t disagree with a single point of your position. Your position makes good sense to me.
I do remember the 70s and 80s. They had their problems. Crime was allowed to get out of control. The drug culture got out of control. But in a lot of ways they were better eras. As far as sexual morality was concerned there was a reasonable balance - more libertarian than the 50s but much much less crazy and extreme than today. And there was free speech.
All that was needed was to crack down on crime and make a decision one way or the other about drugs - either crush the drug culture mercilessly or legalise them.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Twinkie
Hmm, I thought you weren’t into absolutes or extremes and were into “compromises.”
I personally loathe and detest the drug culture but I'm not sure there was a viable solution.
Yes, because the left corrupted and turned people into juveniles more interested in immediate pleasure and easy emotional gratification over enduring and profound truths.
Hence the latter strike people as “brutal” or “mean,” while the former are seen as “nicer.”
I suspect that there were quite a few factors involved in turning people into juveniles obsessed with immediate pleasure and emotional gratification. Don't you think the process was already well advanced before the Left made its turn towards social libertarianism.
I'd also mention that some of the blame has to be laid at the feet of the political Right - a result of the Right's embrace of greed at the expense of principle.In a political struggle it's not necessarily an advantage to be seen as mean and brutal.
Also, not everybody agrees on what constitute enduring and profound truths. Enduring and profound truths are often just opinion, or ideology.Replies: @Twinkie
The compromise on the drug war led to a lot of corruption, especially police corruption. A short ruthless war on drugs, or legalisation, might have avoided this. But there was only a narrow window of opportunity. By the end of the 60s it was probably too late. Other compromises don’t usually lead to the scale of corruption that drugs led to.
I personally loathe and detest the drug culture but I’m not sure there was a viable solution.
Hence the latter strike people as “brutal” or “mean,” while the former are seen as “nicer.”Replies: @dfordoom
Was it really the Left that did that? Are you sure that consumerism (created by capitalism) didn’t have anything to do with it? Or the growth of mass media during the first half of the 20th century? Are you quite sure that things like television had nothing to do with it? Or advertising?
I suspect that there were quite a few factors involved in turning people into juveniles obsessed with immediate pleasure and emotional gratification. Don’t you think the process was already well advanced before the Left made its turn towards social libertarianism.
I’d also mention that some of the blame has to be laid at the feet of the political Right – a result of the Right’s embrace of greed at the expense of principle.
In a political struggle it’s not necessarily an advantage to be seen as mean and brutal.
Also, not everybody agrees on what constitute enduring and profound truths. Enduring and profound truths are often just opinion, or ideology.
I suspect that there were quite a few factors involved in turning people into juveniles obsessed with immediate pleasure and emotional gratification. Don't you think the process was already well advanced before the Left made its turn towards social libertarianism.
I'd also mention that some of the blame has to be laid at the feet of the political Right - a result of the Right's embrace of greed at the expense of principle.In a political struggle it's not necessarily an advantage to be seen as mean and brutal.
Also, not everybody agrees on what constitute enduring and profound truths. Enduring and profound truths are often just opinion, or ideology.Replies: @Twinkie
Thank you for demonstrating my point.
Raising children is often not fun. At times it’s downright excruciating. Yet it’s is profoundly fulfilling and is immeasurably more important than my “need to survive.”Don’t misquote Christ. And don’t engage in a stupid straw man and projection. I am not motivated by “economic necessities.”
You don’t have children, do you?Replies: @AaronB, @AaronB
Difficult experiences can overall be fun. I like spending time out in nature where I often endure hardship. I used to love travelling in rough conditions in third world countries. Thats my idea of fun.
Youre equating fun with comfort, but thats a very different thing.
One should have kids because overall its delightful to have kids. And one should want ones kids to find life delightful and to delight in their delight.
There is an attitude that says, no, you shouldn’t enjoy life but rather work hard, amass wealth, and live a very restrained and sober life. And that society should be harsh to anyone who doesn’t contribute to this sober and joyless social order. Its obvious what’s at the bottom of this attitude is a preoccupation with survival, not just oneself but ones family and humanity. Its anxiety about survival.
But whats the point of surviving if you aren’t enjoying yourself? What’s the point of bringing kids into the world who wont enjoy themselves?
So this kind of Protestant/Puritan obsessing over survival ends up undermining life and paradoxically leads to social breakdown in the long run.
People aren’t having kids today because our society doesn’t stress that it can be a delightful and enjoyable process despite the hardship, but tends to regard child rearing from the Protestant point of view as a sober and thankless task. That its expensive and time consuming and dirty is stressed, not that it can be ecstasy – but only if done right. Plus, people live today under a general pall of depression and anxiety that is a direct result of Protestant/Puritan ethics, which stress the Reality Principle over the Pleasure Principle.
I don’t- yet – have kids. Will I? I’m thinking about it. I enjoy my friends and families kids and can see how done right, raising kids can be immensely enjoyable.
But I dont think there is any necessity to have kids and I dont think anyone is better or worse for having or not having kids. Heck, I dont even think there is any need for the hunan race to survive. Probably most people would enjoy it if done right, but not necessarily under current conditions.
And that’s the point. As a society we are collapsing under the weight of living too long under the Reality Principle.
You basically have no clue what parenting is about and seem to draw all your salient ideas about it from sitcoms.This is a most ridiculous and unintelligent straw man of what you would like to attribute to me or others like me. It’s like you read nothing of what I actually wrote and have an imaginary, very shallow version of what you think I wrote in your mind. Your materialism is a projection that demonstrates a complete unawareness of the moral and spiritual underpinnings of what I write.
And I am a Catholic.Replies: @AaronB
Raising children is often not fun. At times it’s downright excruciating. Yet it’s is profoundly fulfilling and is immeasurably more important than my “need to survive.”Don’t misquote Christ. And don’t engage in a stupid straw man and projection. I am not motivated by “economic necessities.”
You don’t have children, do you?Replies: @AaronB, @AaronB
And BTW, how am I misquoting Jesus?
Here is Jesus, who understood a thing or two about how to live and what makes a healthy society. Its funny that right wing Christians are made so uncomfortable by this part of Jesus message.
You seem to ignore this partReplies: @Twinkie
Here is Jesus, who understood a thing or two about how to live and what makes a healthy society. Its funny that right wing Christians are made so uncomfortable by this part of Jesus message.Replies: @iffen
and all these things will be given to you as well.
You seem to ignore this part
God wants us to know, love, and serve Him in this world, but he doesn’t want us be foolish or be a burden upon others. Hence Proverbs 6:6-8:And 2 Thessalonians 3:7-10Replies: @AaronB
Audacious Epigone:https://thedonald.win/p/11Q8O2wesk/happening-calling-every-pede-to-/Alleges votes were switched by using the raw data sources provided during the election (wrote a script and also released the script) - not independently audited, but you're a numbers guy, so I figured you could either tear it up or give it a nod that it seems legit.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
We’d have to rerun the whole thing to understand if it is correct or not, right? That’s outside my skill set–but not yours!
Youre equating fun with comfort, but thats a very different thing.
One should have kids because overall its delightful to have kids. And one should want ones kids to find life delightful and to delight in their delight.
There is an attitude that says, no, you shouldn't enjoy life but rather work hard, amass wealth, and live a very restrained and sober life. And that society should be harsh to anyone who doesn't contribute to this sober and joyless social order. Its obvious what's at the bottom of this attitude is a preoccupation with survival, not just oneself but ones family and humanity. Its anxiety about survival.
But whats the point of surviving if you aren't enjoying yourself? What's the point of bringing kids into the world who wont enjoy themselves?
So this kind of Protestant/Puritan obsessing over survival ends up undermining life and paradoxically leads to social breakdown in the long run.
People aren't having kids today because our society doesn't stress that it can be a delightful and enjoyable process despite the hardship, but tends to regard child rearing from the Protestant point of view as a sober and thankless task. That its expensive and time consuming and dirty is stressed, not that it can be ecstasy - but only if done right. Plus, people live today under a general pall of depression and anxiety that is a direct result of Protestant/Puritan ethics, which stress the Reality Principle over the Pleasure Principle.
I don't- yet - have kids. Will I? I'm thinking about it. I enjoy my friends and families kids and can see how done right, raising kids can be immensely enjoyable.
But I dont think there is any necessity to have kids and I dont think anyone is better or worse for having or not having kids. Heck, I dont even think there is any need for the hunan race to survive. Probably most people would enjoy it if done right, but not necessarily under current conditions.
And that's the point. As a society we are collapsing under the weight of living too long under the Reality Principle.Replies: @Twinkie, @Audacious Epigone
You seem to be getting your idea of child rearing out of Nickelodeon. In reality, child rearing is often sacrifice and pain. And sacrifice and pain are not fun even though one might gladly bear them out of love. Survey after survey have shown that people with children express “worse quality of life” than those without, yet people keep having them.
You basically have no clue what parenting is about and seem to draw all your salient ideas about it from sitcoms.
This is a most ridiculous and unintelligent straw man of what you would like to attribute to me or others like me. It’s like you read nothing of what I actually wrote and have an imaginary, very shallow version of what you think I wrote in your mind. Your materialism is a projection that demonstrates a complete unawareness of the moral and spiritual underpinnings of what I write.
And I am a Catholic.
As I said, hardship can be fun. If you're having kids out of love despite the hardship, then that love is more fun for you than the hardship.
You keep on confusing fun with comfort, and I keep on explaining to you there are many kinds of fun. I spend immense amounts of time around large families - you are vastly overstating the hardship, and with the right attitude, raising a family is actually a fun adventure. Few things in my life are more fun than taking my nieces and nephews, or my friends kids, on adventurous hikes in the wild. The wonder and curiosity are a delight to behold. The sense of adventure kids bring to exploring the woods is a pleasure to be around. Just playing with rambunctious kids on a field in a local park on a sunny Saturday is one of life's great experiences.
As for the tough times, they just aren't that tough. I see what parents have to deal with, and with the right attitude, its just no big deal. This whole mythology about how tough raising kids is the problem. Other cultures and past eras didn't think this way.
Yet for some reason, you want to be very dour about raising a family, and regard it as a sacrifice. Evidently this makes you feel like a bigger man, but I am suggesting this attitude blights your own life, and is the Protestant derived attitude that blights the lives of many.
I am not a materialist. I think the old opposition between matter and spirit don't make sense anymore, and I see the material world as in some sense an illusion which allows me to regard it with a level of detachment that leads to freedom of spirit and joy, as I am not caught up in its turmoil. It is not an attitude of stoic apathy that stands aloof but of joyous liberation that need mot fear involvement. I would submit uour attitude of attachment, of taking yourself snd the eorld seriously, is actually true materialism.
You seem to ignore this partReplies: @Twinkie
Christ is also not “impractical” – note He doesn’t say “seek ONLY his kingdom,” He says “first.”
God wants us to know, love, and serve Him in this world, but he doesn’t want us be foolish or be a burden upon others. Hence Proverbs 6:6-8:
And 2 Thessalonians 3:7-10
Christianity contains some stuff that advocates hard work, but none are more authoritative than Jesus' own words in the Sermon On The Mount.
Here, in clear and rousing words, Jesus says one should not pay excessive attention to economic necessities or social utility. He is clearly against what is now praised as future time orientation. Jesus does not think an overly prudent and calculating life is praiseworthy. Jesus is advocating a much more carefree and heedless life than is today thought praiseworthy in rich countries.
Of course, Jesus recognizes you need certain things to survive, he is just opposing that overly prudent and calculating kind of life dominated by economic considerations, or considerations of social utility, that is praised so much in rich countries today.
You say you are Catholic, but your attitude is characteristically Protestant in this respect.
You basically have no clue what parenting is about and seem to draw all your salient ideas about it from sitcoms.This is a most ridiculous and unintelligent straw man of what you would like to attribute to me or others like me. It’s like you read nothing of what I actually wrote and have an imaginary, very shallow version of what you think I wrote in your mind. Your materialism is a projection that demonstrates a complete unawareness of the moral and spiritual underpinnings of what I write.
And I am a Catholic.Replies: @AaronB
Climbing a mountain in a blizzard is also much worse “quality of life” than sitting in a warm bath with a glass of wine on a winters night – yet some men prefer the mountain. (Both are great experiences).
As I said, hardship can be fun. If you’re having kids out of love despite the hardship, then that love is more fun for you than the hardship.
You keep on confusing fun with comfort, and I keep on explaining to you there are many kinds of fun. I spend immense amounts of time around large families – you are vastly overstating the hardship, and with the right attitude, raising a family is actually a fun adventure. Few things in my life are more fun than taking my nieces and nephews, or my friends kids, on adventurous hikes in the wild. The wonder and curiosity are a delight to behold. The sense of adventure kids bring to exploring the woods is a pleasure to be around. Just playing with rambunctious kids on a field in a local park on a sunny Saturday is one of life’s great experiences.
As for the tough times, they just aren’t that tough. I see what parents have to deal with, and with the right attitude, its just no big deal. This whole mythology about how tough raising kids is the problem. Other cultures and past eras didn’t think this way.
Yet for some reason, you want to be very dour about raising a family, and regard it as a sacrifice. Evidently this makes you feel like a bigger man, but I am suggesting this attitude blights your own life, and is the Protestant derived attitude that blights the lives of many.
I am not a materialist. I think the old opposition between matter and spirit don’t make sense anymore, and I see the material world as in some sense an illusion which allows me to regard it with a level of detachment that leads to freedom of spirit and joy, as I am not caught up in its turmoil. It is not an attitude of stoic apathy that stands aloof but of joyous liberation that need mot fear involvement. I would submit uour attitude of attachment, of taking yourself snd the eorld seriously, is actually true materialism.
God wants us to know, love, and serve Him in this world, but he doesn’t want us be foolish or be a burden upon others. Hence Proverbs 6:6-8:And 2 Thessalonians 3:7-10Replies: @AaronB
Proverbs also says all is vanity, and you should not take anything in this world seriously 🙂 Or is that Ecclesiastes?
Christianity contains some stuff that advocates hard work, but none are more authoritative than Jesus’ own words in the Sermon On The Mount.
Here, in clear and rousing words, Jesus says one should not pay excessive attention to economic necessities or social utility. He is clearly against what is now praised as future time orientation. Jesus does not think an overly prudent and calculating life is praiseworthy. Jesus is advocating a much more carefree and heedless life than is today thought praiseworthy in rich countries.
Of course, Jesus recognizes you need certain things to survive, he is just opposing that overly prudent and calculating kind of life dominated by economic considerations, or considerations of social utility, that is praised so much in rich countries today.
You say you are Catholic, but your attitude is characteristically Protestant in this respect.
"We shall fight on the beaches..." and what not.There seems to be a lot of truth to Horeshoe Theory, but I think the Left has mastered this aspect of communication generally more effectively. Though this varies from place to place, country to country.I think this may be normal when you feel entirely cornered and on the edge of despair/despondence.Any ideology that cannot effectively appeal to a broad enough emotional need is living on borrowed time.
Peace.Replies: @Audacious Epigone
Any ideology that cannot effectively appeal to a broad enough emotional need is living on borrowed time.
Wokeism? We can hope.
Even worse, it offers its adherents the opportunity to feel morally superior to people whom they already hate and fear.
Its the unhappy middle, the strivey bourgeois, who are slaves to convention and do not understand the social game is just a game.
That is why you find more original characters- people unafraid to be who they truly are - among aristocrats and the down and out.
Anyways, there has always been a dysfunctional lower lower class - read Dickens or Jack Londons People Of The Abyss. I doubt much has changed with this group.
But the idea that the tough working lower class embraced 60s libertinism is just absurd. No one who has traveled through the small conservative towns of America can believe that.
If these people are suffering, it is because their values dont match a changed world. Raised as sober Protestants who define their worth by their ability to do hard work, as if they were machines, advances in technology have now made them redundant.
Keynes wrote a fascinating essay about a hundred years ago on how unprepared mankind is for the coming age of leisure he even then saw as just around the corner. He looked around him and saw that the high society women he knew who didn't have to work were desperately bored and miserable. He thought mankind evolved to spend most of the day finding and working for its food, and that the average person wouldn't cope well with leisure.
I submit that it's only the old Protestant perspective that makes the average person cope with leisure poorly. With the right perspective, lesire is a gift.
But we need to somehow deal with dull bourgeois people like you who lack imagination and want to inflict their boredom and misery on society - the Purirans obsessed with the functioning of society and dont understand the purpose of life is enjoyment, not functionality.Replies: @Twinkie, @Audacious Epigone
For what it’s worth, the data is pretty clear that religious conservatives have better mental health than secular leftists do.
Secular leftists often claim to be suffering from mental health issues because it's fashionable and because it's a useful propaganda weapon. "Trump is so evil he's affecting my mental health." "Racism is affecting my mental health." "Homophobia is affecting my mental health."
On the other hand religious conservatives do not like admitting to having mental health issues. And it offers them no propaganda advantages.
Peace.Replies: @Twinkie, @Audacious Epigone
Polling consistently shows strong support for punishing companies who knowingly employ illegal aliens–stronger than just about any other kind of restrictionism measure. It doesn’t happen beyond the symbolic meat-packing raid once in a blue moon because that’s what the Chamber of Commerce buys politicians for.
Wokeism? We can hope.Replies: @dfordoom
The problem is that Wokeism does satisfy strong emotional needs. It makes people feel both virtuous and morally superior. That’s a heady emotional brew.
Even worse, it offers its adherents the opportunity to feel morally superior to people whom they already hate and fear.
Better mental health is a concept that cannot easily be defined.
Secular leftists often claim to be suffering from mental health issues because it’s fashionable and because it’s a useful propaganda weapon. “Trump is so evil he’s affecting my mental health.” “Racism is affecting my mental health.” “Homophobia is affecting my mental health.”
On the other hand religious conservatives do not like admitting to having mental health issues. And it offers them no propaganda advantages.
Youre equating fun with comfort, but thats a very different thing.
One should have kids because overall its delightful to have kids. And one should want ones kids to find life delightful and to delight in their delight.
There is an attitude that says, no, you shouldn't enjoy life but rather work hard, amass wealth, and live a very restrained and sober life. And that society should be harsh to anyone who doesn't contribute to this sober and joyless social order. Its obvious what's at the bottom of this attitude is a preoccupation with survival, not just oneself but ones family and humanity. Its anxiety about survival.
But whats the point of surviving if you aren't enjoying yourself? What's the point of bringing kids into the world who wont enjoy themselves?
So this kind of Protestant/Puritan obsessing over survival ends up undermining life and paradoxically leads to social breakdown in the long run.
People aren't having kids today because our society doesn't stress that it can be a delightful and enjoyable process despite the hardship, but tends to regard child rearing from the Protestant point of view as a sober and thankless task. That its expensive and time consuming and dirty is stressed, not that it can be ecstasy - but only if done right. Plus, people live today under a general pall of depression and anxiety that is a direct result of Protestant/Puritan ethics, which stress the Reality Principle over the Pleasure Principle.
I don't- yet - have kids. Will I? I'm thinking about it. I enjoy my friends and families kids and can see how done right, raising kids can be immensely enjoyable.
But I dont think there is any necessity to have kids and I dont think anyone is better or worse for having or not having kids. Heck, I dont even think there is any need for the hunan race to survive. Probably most people would enjoy it if done right, but not necessarily under current conditions.
And that's the point. As a society we are collapsing under the weight of living too long under the Reality Principle.Replies: @Twinkie, @Audacious Epigone
If your life formula leads to the extinction of the species, it’s probably not the right formula.
AaronB is already on record as being indifferent to whether the human species survives or not.
But I am getting at something more subtle.
What I am at pains to show is what might be called a paradox. Being excessively concerned with survival leads to anhedonia, so actually has negative survival value.
Whereas, not being excessively concerned with survival leads to loss of anxiety and releasing of all that energy into living, and joy.
So that so called "useless" things - art, poetry, play, and fun- actually have immense survival value. They make life worth living, whereas an excessive focus on organizing society around social utility - the quest to survive at all costs - leads to death. I think there is a direct line between Puritanism and today's social breakdown under the anhedonia and anxiety it led to.
A person like Twinkie, who has contempt for mere fun, and focuses on social utility, lives not for anything positive, but under the fear of death. He lives to avoid death, not joy in life.
The paradox I am describing appears in many areas in life.
Take dating. Trying too hard to get the girl, results inevitably in failure. It is only by not trying excessively that you stand a chance. Nor can this ve faked. You must genuinely give up caring too much.
Take athletics. Caring too much about outcome leads to anxiety and failure. Only by mlt caring how you perform can you perform at your best.
The catch is, you cant fake it. Faking it is self defeating because it means you care. As shocking as it is to our modern sensibilities, only those who don't care if they get, shall get. This is the meaning of the Biblical phrase, only those who already have, shall receive.
You simply can't care excessively about your life if you are to have a good life. You must accept death to live. Jesus, and all the sages, knew this. You gain your life by surrendering.
Life is only worth living if there is no compulsion to live, to return to your original renark, and a policy should be viewed by its ability to make life worth living, not solely by its utility.
The danger today is that if western civilisation collapses it may drag every other civilisation down with it. In fact western civilisation already is dragging down every other civilisation.
And great powers come and go. Sweden was once a great power. So was Poland. So was Spain. The Mongol Empire. Babylon. All gone, or mere shells of what they once were. Shelley summed it up pretty well in his sonnet Ozymandias.
What they all have in common is that they all thought they were eternal.
No-on has yet found the right formula.Replies: @iffen
If your life formula leads to the extinction of the species, it’s probably not the right formula.
AaronB is already on record as being indifferent to whether the human species survives or not.
First of all, I would disagree with that. Why must the species survive? The species should survive as long the game is worth the candle. As long as its fun. I do nor understand why there should be a compulsion to survive. This seems an attitude born of fear rather than joy in living. Not having enjoyed life, you look to the future. We all know anyways the species will not survive – the sun will die.
But I am getting at something more subtle.
What I am at pains to show is what might be called a paradox. Being excessively concerned with survival leads to anhedonia, so actually has negative survival value.
Whereas, not being excessively concerned with survival leads to loss of anxiety and releasing of all that energy into living, and joy.
So that so called “useless” things – art, poetry, play, and fun- actually have immense survival value. They make life worth living, whereas an excessive focus on organizing society around social utility – the quest to survive at all costs – leads to death. I think there is a direct line between Puritanism and today’s social breakdown under the anhedonia and anxiety it led to.
A person like Twinkie, who has contempt for mere fun, and focuses on social utility, lives not for anything positive, but under the fear of death. He lives to avoid death, not joy in life.
The paradox I am describing appears in many areas in life.
Take dating. Trying too hard to get the girl, results inevitably in failure. It is only by not trying excessively that you stand a chance. Nor can this ve faked. You must genuinely give up caring too much.
Take athletics. Caring too much about outcome leads to anxiety and failure. Only by mlt caring how you perform can you perform at your best.
The catch is, you cant fake it. Faking it is self defeating because it means you care. As shocking as it is to our modern sensibilities, only those who don’t care if they get, shall get. This is the meaning of the Biblical phrase, only those who already have, shall receive.
You simply can’t care excessively about your life if you are to have a good life. You must accept death to live. Jesus, and all the sages, knew this. You gain your life by surrendering.
Life is only worth living if there is no compulsion to live, to return to your original renark, and a policy should be viewed by its ability to make life worth living, not solely by its utility.
The species is in no danger of extinction. It’s currently existing societies and even civilisations that may not survive. No civilisation lasts forever. Even very long-lived civilisations (ancient Egypt, imperial China) eventually collapsed. Civilisation seems to be inherently unstable. I’m not sure that human nature has ever adapted itself to civilisation.
The danger today is that if western civilisation collapses it may drag every other civilisation down with it. In fact western civilisation already is dragging down every other civilisation.
And great powers come and go. Sweden was once a great power. So was Poland. So was Spain. The Mongol Empire. Babylon. All gone, or mere shells of what they once were. Shelley summed it up pretty well in his sonnet Ozymandias.
What they all have in common is that they all thought they were eternal.
No-on has yet found the right formula.
Right. The nuclear winter will balance the effects of the global warming catastrophe, and my grandkids will enjoy their nice little spot on the beach bequeathed to them by their grandfather who had to make do with being on the edge of the coastal plain.
More than one hominid species has gone extinct.
The danger today is that if western civilisation collapses it may drag every other civilisation down with it. In fact western civilisation already is dragging down every other civilisation.
And great powers come and go. Sweden was once a great power. So was Poland. So was Spain. The Mongol Empire. Babylon. All gone, or mere shells of what they once were. Shelley summed it up pretty well in his sonnet Ozymandias.
What they all have in common is that they all thought they were eternal.
No-on has yet found the right formula.Replies: @iffen
The species is in no danger of extinction.
Right. The nuclear winter will balance the effects of the global warming catastrophe, and my grandkids will enjoy their nice little spot on the beach bequeathed to them by their grandfather who had to make do with being on the edge of the coastal plain.
More than one hominid species has gone extinct.