mikelee999

(Note from MSK: Content deleted for hate speech and bigotry.)

(Note from MSK: Content deleted for hate speech and bigotry.)

(Note from MSK: Content deleted for hate speech and bigotry.)

(Note from MSK: Content deleted for hate speech and bigotry.)

Where I disagree with the essay that started this thread is mainly in issues of degrees. First, there are very few "moderate" Muslims. Second, the percentage of "extremist" Muslims is quite large. On the first point, let's not equivocate what we mean by "moderate Muslim." Do we mean A. a "go to church on Friday" kind of Muslim? Someone raised Muslim who is more or less observant more or less from fear of social or divine punishments? Yeah, he faces Mecca every morning at 4am, but if he had his druthers, he'd rather sleep in and then crack a beer and have bbq pork chops for lunch and forget about all this jihad drudgery. B. a radical (compared to other Muslims) who has thoughtfully rejected or reinterpreted most of the nastier aspects of his religion and is "working from within" for reform? There are a lot of A's out there, few B's. Mainstream Muslims, even lazy tepid ones, believe in things that most Americans wouldn't put up with from anyone else. Compare & contrast Muslims with the Aryan Nations guys up in Idaho. Would you have a member of the Aryan Nations church as a social friend? Well, isn't mainstream Islamic doctrine just as racist and sexist as what those Idaho yahoos preach? In many respects, it's actually worse. Mainstream Muslims have a lot more in commmon with members of the KKK than they do with you and me. Are 90% of Muslims likely to ever become bomb throwers? No. Were 90% of the German public likely to join the SS? No. Doesn't mean that anti-Semitism wasn't mainstream in Germany like...well, anti-Semitism is mainstream in Islam. Sure, plenty of Muslims are moderate in their fervor for anti-semitism, just as were most Germans. But it's pretty easy to whip them up or at least regiment them when they're needed for the cause. With regard to the second point, about how there are a lot more extremist Muslims than most nice people want to admit, 9-11 reset our moral disgust baseline with regard to Islam, and in the wrong direction. Nowadays, all we ask is that they stop blowing people up and we'll give them a gold star that says "moderate." Just eschew beheadings and we'll overlook the fact that mainstream Islam, including as practiced in most mosques in the USA, is a miserable, racist, sexist, intolerent, repressive, secretive, expansionist cult that sucks even worse than Scientology. Everyone would admit that's true if their cult didn't have a billion members. Nobody knows what percentage of Muslims are terrorist sympathizers. As far as I can tell, most are, though most aren't at the fervent end of the scale. Many outright lie about it. Many more deny it and then you get into a slightly extended conversation, and ah, here it comes now.... Check out the signs you see at any given Muslim student demonstration, like the ones recently at Berkeley. This is what they're willing to let you see in public. Or find that You Tube video of David Horowitz from about the same time (on Youtube, search david horowitz muslim student). As an aside, I'm proud to say that I've been callling out Muslims for 25 years now in public and occasionally in person. That Horowitz video was familiar to my own experiences. Muslims have all their talking points and doublespeak down, much like politicians. But most of them haven't been well-prepared for dealing with the next level of scrutiny. Many times I've used that same tactic Horowitz used: Try to corner them to unequivocally renounce evil. Only once have I seen anyone do so in private and they were too scared to go to the next level--announce that you believe this at your mosque next Friday. Make no mistake: lots of Muslims, if not a majority, sympathize with Palestinian bombings and fatwas against Rushdie and South Park. And those who don't don't dare say so in public because they know how nasty the mainstream of Islam is and what would happen to them if they did speak out. Now, maybe I have a skewed sample in skewering Muslims, since I don't harass a Muslim about his beliefs just because I know he's Muslim. He has to say something in front of me that's stupid and obnoxious. So, in case I've missed them, could someone please point me to some moderate Muslim web sites, you know where Muslims are telling other Muslims to knock it off with South Park and suicide bombs? Last point, now, I promise-- In its social and organizational dynamics, Islam is much more like organized crime than it is like Christian organized religions. It's a tangle of nasty factions competing for turf and offering "protection" and trying to achieve monopolies over various criminal enterprises. Muslims don't even believe in their own beliefs in the same sense that Christians do. Psychologically, Muslims treat their beliefs more like the code of Omerta than like doctrines. (This is one reason why Muslims don't go through contortions trying to reconcile contradictions in their sacred writings--the most recent trump the former, and that's that. There are very few fundamental, immutable rules or beliefs in Islam.) Muslims never got the Westphalia memo, and, like the mafia, they don't respect the legitimacy of Western social institutions and are always trying to corrupt and control them. A good way to think about Sunni vs Shia is to think of them like the Colombians vs the Sicilians. And Hamas and Hezbollah as Crips vs Bloods. The same goes for how they corrupt competing institutions. There's no difference morally or in effect between the French or BP or Bill Clinton getting millions from Muslim "states" than a senator from Nevada taking bribes from Michael Corleone in The Godfather. I'm ok with saying we're at war with Islam in the same sense that we are at war with the Mafia. It's important to keep the level of violence down to a dull roar and make sure they mostly kill each other. Now and then, they're going to go too far and you have to round up a bunch of them and shut down the speakeasy's. But I do agree that you have to be careful to limit the metaphor and understand that this war is going to be as long-fought and incomplete as the war against organized crime. This is not a pessimistic view. The pessimistic view is that the rise of Islam in Europe is inevitable, that Islam is some irresistable Vandal force and the West is hapless decadent Rome. Not hardly. Islam is a bunch of low-IQ, low-skill punks and thugs who got as lucky from having oil as Al Capone did from the government banning alcohol. They're far richer and more powerful than they deserve to be except for a lucky economic accident that gives them a huge stash of cash. I think you can expect the dynamics of the struggle with Islam to be similar, if writ larger. Extending the Mafia metaphor, a lot of people think that 9-11 was Islam's St Valentine's Day Massacre (which made the Chicago cops finally got fed up with Capone et. al. and start settling their hash). I disagree. We saw 9-11 as an overreach by one particular Muslim gang. So we rounded up a bunch of them and busted their heads as a warning to the rest. We have yet to realize that it's the whole Muslim gang ecosystem we have to disrupt. I'm really afraid that Iran and Pakistan will give us the Muslim equivalent of the Valentine's Day massacre eventually, and at that point we will really go Elliott Ness on them. No way will we let them take over the really good neighborhoods of the world. Total war is going way too far over the top. But I do like, "If they bring a knife, you bring a gun..."

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Wet Blanket Committee (previously the Objectivist Bed-Wetters Club) for once again demonstrating the finely honed art of GOB (Gratuitous Objectivist Buzz-kill). I feel well and truly GOB-smacked. I asked people to nominate pop songs Rand might have liked and the first response was to offer a song she'd have hated. Isn't that ironic? Don'tcha think? Followed by general grey-poopon denigration of the few who actually tried to play the game lightheartedly. I'm going to go listen to Garbage. I do loves me some Shirley Manson. I'll crank "I'm Only Happy When It Rains" up to 11 and toast ya'll ya'll. Im only happy when it rains Im only happy when its complicated And though I know you cant appreciate it Im only happy when it rains You know I love it when the news is bad Why it feels so good to feel so sad Im only happy when it rains Pour your misery down Pour your misery down on me Im only happy when it rains I feel good when things are going wrong I only listen to the sad, sad songs Im only happy when it rains I only smile in the dark My only comfort is the night gone black I didnt accidentally tell you that Im only happy when it rains Youll get the message by the time Im through When I complain about me and you Im only happy when it rains Pour your misery down...pour your misery down You can keep me company As long as you dont care Im only happy when it rains You want to hear about my new obsession Im riding high upon a deep depression Im only happy when it rains...pour some misery down on me

Tonight I'm ripping and replacing speakers in our bedroom. I'm playing random tracks to get the sound balanced and I come across this, from Rod Stewart, an album called Human: I been lookin' in the mirror somethin's gettin' clearer Wonderin' who am I Just a chemical solution caught in evolution Only livin' to survive Or am I just another lifetime lookin' for a lifeline Cryin' when the sun don't shine Am I runnin' through the ghetto maybe I should let go Of all the dreams inside But who am I to reach so high And who am I to raise my eyes Want to live I want to die I can't do anything I'll tell you why I'm the one who took a walk on the moon And I made the seven wonders too There is nothin' that I cannot do Cause I am human There is nothing that I cannot be I'm the one who sailed the seven seas And I know that it is all in me Cause I am human The blood that's runnin' through my veins It tells me I'm the same as all the other ones gone by In the air that I am breathin', emotions that I'm feelin' Underneath the same blue sky And I know if I believe it, then I can achieve it Nothin's standin' in my way Then maybe history will make a place for me And I'll be livin' for that day But who am I to reach so high And who am I to raise my eyes Want to live I want to die I can't do anything I'll tell you why I'm the one who took a walk on the moon And I made the seven wonders too There is nothin' that I cannot do Cause I am human There is nothing that I cannot be I'm the one who sailed the seven seas And I know that it is all in me Cause I am human Not born to make mistakes, not born to fade away Not only livin' to survive Don't tell me I am nothin', know that I am somethin' Brother, don't ya realise I'm the one who took a walk on the moon And I made the seven wonders too There is nothin' that I cannot do Cause I am human There is nothing that I cannot be I'm the one who sailed the seven seas And I know that it is all in me Cause I am human This made me go listen to Chris De Burgh. Chris is a Christian mystic and I'm pretty sure his song The Getaway was Atlas Shrugged-inspired: The moon is on bright side, But we've thought of everything, Send the word to the prisoners Tonight, we getaway, When you hear signs of confusion, Come drifting through the door, Get your belongings together, Don't leave nothing behind, And hey boys tonight we getaway, To the other side, Head for the wall and getaway; We're sick and tired of hearing, That the world is gonna blow, So there's something we'll do to the leaders Before we go; Let's stick'em in a room together - Yeah!! - And make them fight it out, Until they see nothing from nothing Will leave nothing at all, And hey boys, tonight we getaway, To the other side, Head for the wall and getaway; And hey boys, tonight we getaway, To the other side, Head for the wall and getaway; Open the door - open the door - let me out - I wanna go - Das ist auch unsere welt, This is our world too, Oui c'est notre monde aussi, Hey boys, tonight we getaway, To the other side, Head for the wall and getaway; "We'll give you anything you say" Hey boys, tonight we getaway, To the other side, Head for the wall and getaway; "We'll miss you more than we can say" And, from Chris too, The Spirit of Man: I'm chasing a shadow, I can't see a thing, It's dipping and diving like a bird on the wing, And every time I get near it just seems to slip away; There's a fighter inside who will never give up, We are what we are and it's never enough, Write the words in the sand that this man will come again; You may run from the sea, and the words disappear, Oh you may fall to your knees, But the power is here, to survive; It's shining again, It's shining again - the spirit of man, It's shining again - the spirit of man; Ah remember the first day of man on the moon, The whole world was watching, a whole world in tune, It was hard to believe he was the same as me and you; Oh look back to the future and look down the years, It wasn't all battles and bad news and tears, We have brought to this place a desire to have a dream; We may reach for the stars, and fall from the sky, Oh in the darkest hour the spirit of man comes to life; It's shining again - the spirit of man, It's shining again - the spirit of man, It's shining again - the spirit of man; And we work - aha - for the good things that we can have, Yea we work - aha - for the family and home, Yea we work - aha - for the D-Mark and the dollar, Yea we work - aha - for the woman on the phone, Yea we work - aha - for that moment of elation, Yea we work - aha - for a chance to get away, And we work - aha - just to let imagination, Come inside and take me away; We may reach for the stars, and fall from the sky, Ooh in the darkest hour the spirit of man comes to life; It's shining again - the spirit of man, What do you wish you could have loaded on Ayn's iPod? Baby, we were born to run!

I like the Beastie Boys. You like Kate Bush. We may fight for control of the playlist at a party, but we won't come to blows unless we think that morals are like tastes in music. I'll distinguish morals from ethics here, and start saying ethics, which is what Shermer is really talking about. Rand considered it immoral to eat macaroni and cheese if your systolic blood pressure was higher than your cholesterol. Shermer means ethics, which Rand, more or less, defined as morals that relate to how you treat other people. Ethics can't be derived from statements like water freeeze at 0 centigrade. What a news flash. Ethics are about conflict. Serious conflict. And goals. Serious goals. I'd like to see what ethical goals Shermer really would be willing to demote to mere tastes. The moral equality of all persons, regardless of race, religion or gender? The right to believe or not believe in whatever religion you wish? It's time we put the people who consider these kinds of things to be preferences to a test of the courage of their lack of convictions. Screw prove it. It's time we dare these people to eat it. Like on Survivor when they make them eat octopus testicles.

When I was 19, I was mortally offended by the post office. Roads pissed me off too. I wished the deaths of my enemies and almost all Americans were my enemies for having no problems with government roads or the post office. Bunch of looters they were. It took me a long while to realize that people who agreed with me weren't automatically good people and an unfortunately longer time to figure out that people who didn't agree with me could be way better people than me. I suspect this kind of juvenile dementia isn't idiosyncratic, but is characteristic of many young Objectivists, who share many of the psycho-epistemological characteristics of young Palestinian terrorists. (As have I.) I went "on strike" for a decade and still am not sure how much of that was "on principle" and how much "on not wanting to get a real job." I'm going to say 30/70, optimistically. After I stopped striking, life got a lot better and I worked a lot harder. Coincidence, probably. One of the things that Rand said that stuck in my craw was that it wasn't justified to violently seek the overthrow of the government as long as free speech was possible. She was so right. If you can't make your case while the government is letting you make your case, your case sucks. I love America. I'm plenty free here. I pay the government 60% or so of what I make and I can say what I want--even about the government--and do what I want without fear. Oh, but what if I didn't pay the 60%? They'd make me sorry. But as long as I pay it, I am safe and comfortable and I'm welcome to subvert the system to my 40% heart's content. That's a great deal. My employer restricts my freedom far more than my government and I can tell him to go to hell when I please too. I travel where I want when I want across 3000 miles of territory without a single government agent knowing, unless I cross a border claimed by another government. Oh, no, Bush is enslaving us! Really? Your mom enslaves you more. Maybe your problem is with your mom. Not only is America worth saving, it's worth building. Get over your puritanical Objectivist self and do something worthwhile to contribute. There is no excuse for going on strike in the USA. Rand's dystopia not only didn't happen, it's on the run. Push harder--it's getting better. Running away now is the sure sign of the pinhead rationalizing cowardice.

And it's time you should take if you're going to address these issues and be taken seriously. Should the law distinguish between adults and children? After all they are equally human. There are many other criteria besides whether your human or not that make a difference in how the law treats you. Yes, in the majority of cases, a woman who abandons her children is worse than a man who does. Again, I'll point out that I'm not talking here merely about what's legal or illegal. I'm talking about taking the measure of a person who would do such a thing, and examining their reasons, looking at the context. Women are, merely by the nature of pregnancy and birth, more intimately connected to their children than are men. Women typically have a bigger moral obligation to a child because they got pregnant and decided to deliver the child. Once again, keeping in mind that I am not limiting my comments to what should be legal or illegal, but to judgments about what is right and wrong, more or less valuable morally-- Yes, men have an extra obligation, by virtue of being bigger and stronger, to deal more effectively with physical threats than women do. In the same sense that someone who is more intelligent has an obligation to achieve more. Your life depends on the majority of men in your society accepting a role in protecting you. You are just so well-protected that not only don't you realize it, but I wouldn't be surprised if you think American men create more violence than they suppress. If you can find anywhere that I said a girl who's good at basketball is a bad girl, then you've at least won the point, since I agree with you. I typically do agree with blindingly obvious statements. I have no problem with girls playing basketball. I have no problem with girls competing with men and winning. I do have a problem with girls constantly trying to rig games they're not good at. That's very bad for society, honesty and the long term future of the human race. Case in point--the new Nike commercial with the bitchy women pretending to be fierce going on about their "skills." Name one sport the women mentioned in that commercial when talking about their "skillz" where women compete, much less dominate. We know what your position is--I'm asking you to defend it instead of just repeating it. And, the truth is that you just lost this debate by allowing an exception for "things like pregnancy." Mike Lee I hope that penguin doesn't fall behind the tellyvision set

Very eloquent and compelling post, Michael! I'd like to offer some ideas that may help to de-tangle these issues: First, not all violations of moral principle justify forcible intervention or punishment of the violater. This is an obvious point, but one worth listing here. Second, the seriousness of a moral violation is almost completely unrelated to forcible intervention against the violator is justifiable. Stealing a candy bare should be illegal. Saving a candy bar for yourself for the plane ride back from the Sudan, rather than offering it to a starving child, should not be illegal. Third, in many cases, morals aren't binary, with either you're acting morally or you're not. There are degrees. Objectivists get this when it comes to achievement. It's immoral to mooch off others when you are perfectly capable of supporting yourself. But there is nothing immoral about working just enough to pay your bills, but not achieving much more than that. However, working your butt off to make a serious contribution and do important work is more admirable than just getting by. The same analysis can apply to compassion and other virtues. Gotta run, so I'll leave obvious applications of these principles to the reader... Mike Lee Hit and Run

Stepping back just a little from the discussion of whether there's anything wrong with not having children, what about the consequences for Objectivism as a philosophy? I haven't done a serious survey, but I'll bet that Objectivists reproduce at a rate far lower than average for people living in their neighborhood. I'll also bet that it's not too controversial to say that Objectivists typically reproduce at lower than replacement rates. As this thread shows, it's pretty hard to come up with compelling philosophical reasons why having more children is something good Objectivists should start doing. If it's true that the average Objectivist does not reproduce at replacement rates, and it's true that having children is not a particularly rational act of self-interest for most people, then if everyone were to be converted to Objectivism, that would end the human race within a few generations. Is everyone OK with that outcome? Mike Lee

First, it's Ms. Rand to you, not Miss Rand, Mister. That's a joke. Second, Rand may have been a total beeyotch, but she wasn't an idiot. She understood the uncomfortable fact that genitalia matter. A lot. Especially to people who think that genitalia shouldn't matter. For purposes of this discussion, I don't care a tinker's dam for lesbians, gays, transsexuals and people who may have been dealt other ambiguous or mixed biological cards. Their peepees are as determinative to them as anyone's, even if they are getting multiple radio signals. I think it's nice that we, as an enlightened Western society, accommodate those who aren't biologically in the middle of the bell curve, and we should take advantage of their ability to decorate dinner parties, fix cars, arrange furniture, and look like Marilyn Monroe, but they're not the point of this discussion, ok? The truth is that men and women have different capabilities. The question is, do any of these capabilities have moral corollaries? I say yes, and because I have to go eat dinner, I will leave it at that. Mike Lee Am I the Only One Who Gets It?

I went to great lengths to point out that I was not speaking of legal enforcement. However, it is not patently obvious that law should be gender-blind. In fact, it would be nearly as remarkable for the law to make no distinctions between men and women as to make no distinctions between adults and children. Legal sex-based distinctions are far more the norm than sex-neutrality. I think the Hayekian burden of proof is on you to look at each of these distinctions and explain why they are irrational rather than to discard all of them out of hand. Your list of gender roles is, I'm sure you'd admit, incomplete. You might also admit it is biased toward the negative. I'd say it's also tendentious and that several of the roles you cite are actually rants against guys you've known. I added more roles to the list, and it's not at all clear that violating the roles I added isn't morally significant. It's not prima facie that there is a unisex list of equal moral obligations on both sexes. Women who abandon their children are viewed more harshly than men who do. Men who chicken out and run away from danger are viewed more harshly than women in the same circumstance. Why is that wrong? Along with being honest, let's be serious. The modern West is the best. Human beings in general have never before come close to the freedom, opportunity, achievement and security that Western civilization provides. In comparing the middle east (excluding the Western values state of Israel) to the West, you're comparing shit to ice cream, as if swirliness were the fundamental attribute. Thats out of context. Im talking about gender roles specifically, not all social expectations. Social expectations are not ipso facto wrong, but a great many of them are wrong. It's not out of context. It's pointing out how the amazing amazingness of Western civilization nurtures the individual of any sex, and reduces the harms of legacy expectations of all kinds. If you think that your life and potential is primarily determined by gender roles that says a lot more about you than it does about the power of gender roles. To clarify, you're arguing for a straw man (or woman). "Strongly influenced" is a lot different than "determined." Yes, there are girls who are better at basketball than boys, but if you take any 10 boys at random and any 10 girls at random, and make basketball teams, the girls will get whipped, unless they play naked. And you'd better start thinking more about what happens to women when men fail in their traditional roles. You have strong self-interest in this, even if men have done such a good job of guarding your borders that you don't get it. By coincidence, I'm reading Tom Clancy's "Without Remorse" which shows this way better than I could say it. And it's fun as hell. Being sex/gender-blind is the social engineering position. Think carefully: the burden of proof is on you. Mike Lee Hot chicks can say anything they want

Thanks for the list of gender roles. This is a pretty decent list (though I think that some of the roles you've listed are more a rant against some roles than actual roles in themselves). Rather than nitpick the list, I'd like to move the discussion to how such roles/rules are determined and enforced, and to the benefits in general of roles. In Western democracies, gender roles are only weakly, if at all, enforced by government. Yes, in the USA, only men get drafted and women are unduly enriched in marriage and divorce, but these are exceptional and avoidable inequities. In general, the West protects your right to reject social roles and rules far moe than it enforces them. I even know people who were raised Muslim who've successfully rejected their religion and roles because the West is so good at protecting and supporting people who wish to do so. I would count a rule/role as socially enforced if there is a high everyday likelihood that when you are expressing or violating it in public, you are going to receive overt or tacit approval or disapproval from random strangers. If you're a boy growing up in BFE, Louisiana, who wants to wear makeup, it may be easier for you if your parents move to San Francisco, where one day you may grow up to be police commissioner. But even in BFE, LA, you're likely to be allowed to grow up without being put in a white bag, buried to the waist and then stoned to death. So what I have to say below applies only to first world societies where we've mostly gotten the government out of the business of enforcing gender roles. There are far too many people who are ideologically-inclined who fail to keep context when comparing what is with what they think should be. They end up primarily expressing deep contempt for Western society's failings and neglecting appropriate gratitude--and even reverence--for how wonderful the West is compared to everything else. There are many Libertarians I've known who feel like they're being raped when they have to pay sales tax. I was one of them, when I was an adolescent. My take is that if you still feel this way past age 22, you're still an adolescent. I'm not saying this teenager shoe fits you, Studiodekadent, but it does fit the list of roles you cited. There are many other gender rules/roles you could have cited that are positive: Men should protect women from physical threats; women should be nurturing and loving to children, etc. There are also a large number of Western roles that apply to both sexes and that neutralize the power of the roles you've cited: Thou shalt grow up to fulfill your full potential; thou shalt be tolerant of other races and lifestyles, Thou shalt say Please and Thank You, for examples. There is a free market in gender roles in the USA today. There are many competing roles and expectations, and people are free to pick and choose which ones fit--and whose approval they are going to care about. In any big city, or even in a small town, a boy wearing makeup is likely to receive both approval and disapproval, though the ratios of approval to disapproval are likely to be different in different places. No, it's not perfect. It's sad for the little gay boy born to homophobic parents, but, keeping context again, not all that sad and no worse than the plight of the artistic kid born to dullards or the natural jock born to effete intellectuals. There is a widespread--nearly universal--assumption shared by feminist intellectuals that enforcing gender-neutral roles would be a wonderful thing. This assumption reminds me of the Marxist assumption that free markets are inherently exploitative and that supplanting them would lead naturally to utopian freedom and prosperity for everyone. I'm reminded, because the intellectual narcissism and failure to understand what they critique is exactly same in both feminism and Marxism. (And the totalitarian style displayed by feminists when they get control of a university is similar to that of Marxists when they get control of a country.) The great majority of people demanding gender-blindness aren't demanding that women be drafted or that women volunteer for the military and qualify for half the Navy SEAL spots. Or even that women drive half the trucks or be half the crew on every oil rig. Where is the feminist gender role expectation that women should start doing their equal share of the dirty, dangerous work that makes their mini-vans possible? In practice, this demand for gender-neutral roles has so far resulted in two things: First, the feminization of gender roles for men. For example, consider the momentum toward banning scorekeeping in children's sports. Or how boys aren't allowed out to play out of mommy's sight anymore, despite the fact that the dangers aren't really significantly greater than 50 years ago, just seen through a fear-filled feminized lens now. Secondly, there has been a devaluing and delegitimization of male virtues and roles. For example, women tend to undervalue or are often oblivious to the fact that all that stands between them and living in a state of perpetual rape is good, strong men ready to do violence to anyone who tries it. Only in comic books, science fiction and video games are women willing and able to handle such jobs. But rather than appreciate and defend what their lives depend upon, feminists instead scorn martial virtues as immature and outmoded. (By the way, women who disdain male competition and aggression are inviting the same rude shock that Marie Antoinette got. Women who shelter their sons from male roles are making it more likely that's exactly what their daughters are going to get. Marie Antoinette is archetypal as a pampered woman in denial about the barbarians at the gates, and thus an actual, if not ideal, role model for many upper-class American women.) Gender-neutrality has not been about liberation and choice, but about sewing a new straight jacket outlawing either sex from doing or valuing anything that is not within the reach or interests of the other. Its about the lowest common denominator. There is a strong case to be made that this feminization of our society is not an unqualified good or something that is even survivable. The bottom line here (what a male way of putting things!) is that women need to think much harder about the consequences of getting what they want when it comes to converging gender roles. Or they may end up standing shoulder to shoulder with their men--on the same chair squealing Eek! a mouse. Mike Lee Why can't a woman be more like a man? That's not a rhetorical question.

George Bush's IQ is probably higher than yours. Certainly, it's higher than John Kerry's. Bush beat Kerry's score on his college boards (a good enough proxy for IQ score that MENSA accepts the scores as proof of high IQ), and Bush got slightly better grades in college than did Kerry. Bush gets brain freeze much more often than not when speaking in public or when talking his way through a minefield, but that does not equate with stupidity. I turned around on the subject of Bush's native intelligence several years ago after hearing him interviewed on some radio program where he was, for whatever reason, obviously completely at ease. He'd forgotten about the microphones and he seemed an entirely different person. A few weeks ago, I read the best defense of Bush's intelligence that's ever been written, by Bill Whittle: http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/2006_11.html (Scroll down to "Seeing the Unseen"--and for a good time, go read some of his other stuff too) What are all these super smart people doing? It's interesting that they're invisible to you. They're running big corporations (average Fortune 500 CEO IQ is above 150), writing complex software, and, yes, building weapons systems that, regardless of your politics, you must admit are technologically marvelous. They are responsible for nearly all the I don't want to go down the rathole of arguing about racial or ethnic IQ disparities. They exist, I don't know why, and it doesn't change the power of IQ in explaining and predicting human achievement. IQ matters--that's a brute, very important fact that, to borrow a phrase, we blank out at great peril. How many people have IQ's above 160? Not many, but they're predominantly male. It is possible to raise your own IQ a few points by mental exercise and active learning. If that kind of exercise is of interest to you, I suggest googling IQ standard deviation distribution and then doing the math.

But do I get a secret decoder ring? Mike Lee Who is an optometrist?

Could you give specific examples of these roles or rules? Are we talking about, for boys, "Thou shalt not play with Barbies" and for girls "Thou shalt not play with Tonkas?" It would be nice to have a list of top 10 gender roles/rules for both boys and girls. In anticipation of a reply, and to move the ball forward, I'd like to focus on what really determines "gender roles" and what determines the large statistical differences between what men and women do and accomplish (women really haven't accomplished much, compared to men, and feminism has become not much more than making excuses for that). It's all about high intelligence. Almost all of the super smart people in the world are men. The disparity in intelligence between men and women explains why men run everything in the same way that the disparity between humans and tigers explains why tigers are on the run. Yes, I'll gladly grant that the average woman is smarter than the average man. Neither the average woman nor the average man count for much in the big picture. Geniuses are what count. The more standard deviations you get away from average intelligence, the lower the ratio of women to men. That applies in both the smarter and dumber directions. There are a lot more male idiots than female idiots. The important thing is that the ratios aren't 2 to 1--they're more like 100 to 1 by the time you're decelerating below the 60's or accelerating above the 160's in IQ. I don't know why this is or how malleable it is. Maybe sending more women to junior college to major in Women's Studies and Feminist Literature will change it in a few years. Till then.... Here's the fundamental female gender role: to be what really really smart men will compete with each other to get. Ladies, if you blow that, you got nowhere to go. You're not smart enough to run the world. You better be smart enough to run the men who run the world. Mike Lee Girl's Best Friend

Mikey loves Lulu. And when she appeared on AI, she was one of the best coaches they've had. And she's one hot GILF. And I completely take your point that the original studio version of the song is way better. But I don't think you can blame this on modern singing. Great stars have been butchering their own hits in Vegas for 50 years. Whatever she did on AI, it wasn't modern singing, and it wasn't typical AI material. Everyone likes to say, at least, that AI is mediocre. That's crap. Frequently, there are amazing performances on that show. Last season, when Rod Stewart was the coach and they were doing standards, about 1/3 of the performances were absolutely world-class on hard material. On any given night on American Idol (once you're past the snicker phase of the show), you are going to hear at least a couple of vocals that knock your socks off. Those kids often outshine the pop stars who coach them. Last season, when that McPhee girl got down on her knees and did that KT Tunstall song, I suspended my hatred of her for a moment of pure lust, and she sang real good too. Chris Daughtry doesn't do my kind of music, but he's a much better singer than Eddie Vedder. This season, that Doolittle girl makes me happy every time she opens her mouth (she's my pick to win--my cynic wife says No). The beat box guy from Seattle is really really good too. AI would be a joke if their alumni weren't selling lots of records, but they are, and rightly so. I've only watched the last 2 seasons, but I really like AI. They are discovering stars who can sing at a high success percentage. And Simon Cowell is my hero. Mike Lee That wasn't horrible

RANT ALERT: If you keep reading you can't say you weren't warned. Why is the iPod crap? It is certainly a thing of beauty. I'd never even seen one till about 18 months ago, and as soon as I saw it, I knew what it was. Georgeous design, it feels great in your hand, clever interface. It is truly a triumph of form over function. Can't change the battery yourself. Why? They didn't want to ruin the sleek lines with a battery door. No extra battery for you on an international flight. And what a bitch to hard boot. (My first iPod exposure was because my stepson's girlfriend's iPod had locked up. I had to do a Google search to figure out how to reboot the gd thing.) Limited feature and menu set. Why? They didn't want to confuse stupid people. Doesn't work like a hard drive when you plug it into a computer. Why? DRM considerations. I have a Creative Muvo2FM. It has a 5 GB micro-drive in it. It looks like a little crackerjack toy. I've used it an hour or more every day for about 3 years now, and it's going strong. Extra batteries are teeny and can be changed in a second. It has an FM radio, unlike an iPod. I often listen to the radio on airplanes, just to flip off the FAA, and to hear what public radio sounds like in Nebraska (the same as everywhere, by the way). When I jack the Muvo into my computer it appears as a hard drive. I've copied entire install flats to it rather than having to burn a DVD. I've even copied DVDs to it. When I want to reload music, I use simple copy commands rather than having to use someone's idiotic idea of a sync application. I think it cost me $80 after rebate. I know that most people could care less about these features, and I completely understand why most people like iPods better. I wouldn't trade my Muvo for an iPod, even to get 6x the storage. Oh, and another thing: iPods don't play .WMAs. I just finished ripping all my music to nearly a terabyte of .FLAC files. Then I converted them to .WMA for my wife's Zune (a somewhat, but not dramatically better, music/movie player than the iPod). WMA is way better than MP3 for a portable music player in terms of sound quality per mb. I also simultaneously ripped everything to VBR MP3, a little better quality than the WMAs, admittedly, and it took 130 MB. Bottom line: a 30GB Zune can hold a lot more music than a 30GB iPod, and the Zune plays both Mp3s and WMAs. AC3? Don't even get me started on AC3...Which brings me to why Sony sucks. iPods I just don't consider optimal. Sony is the devil. There is a Sony 5 disc SACD/DVD player sitting in my bedroom, unplugged since I got a Squeezebox for the bedroom. It will soon move into my office, when I clear some space and when I figure out how to rip 6 channel .WAV files in Audtion so I can put all my SACDs on the Squeezebox. There is a Sony Dream Machine clock radio in the bathroom, and most days I listen to Adam Carolla in the shower on it. When she was about 7, my daughter broke my first Sony CD changer a week after we bought it for $399 by pushing in the tray manually instead of using the right button. The manual had warned about this. Voiding the warranty, I took it apart to fix it and was delighted at the precision and tight tolerances of the mechanism. Of course, designing a CD tray that can't be loaded by pushing on it is sucky and typical of Sony. I can't count the number of Walkmans and Discmans I've owned. I've got an MD player around here somewhere. With a good external stero microphone, it's awesome for live recordings, except that effing Sony won't let me download them except in analog, which doesn't matter much for quality really, but means you have to do it in real time, meaning it takes forever. There's a USB external Sony drive sitting over my head and under a newer Philips drive that has done me yeoman service for several years now in violating silly copyright rights supported by Sony. All the above is to establish my bona fides as an experienced Sony consumer. More often than not their stuff breaks faster than most other brands. They enforce silly restrictions (the MD player) and strange design choices (the buttons are not where you'd expect). The manufacturing is topnotch, but with mediocre components. Fit and finish are great, but real world experience is not. Another example: my travel speakers are Sony, about the size of a paperback book, and able to fill a hotel room with decent sound. But I have to take the battery cover off when I use them without batteries or else the bass port design makes them buzz like they're blown. I loaned them to a friend and she was about to buy me new ones because she thought she'd ruined them, because I forgot to warn her. Sony is clever and lazy. And they're the devil, as I will now prove with these simple exhibits: 1. Betamax vs VHS; SACD vs DVD/A, and soon, Blu-Ray vs. DVD-HD. Any standard Sony gets behind is doomed. Why? Because Sony is greedy and arrogant and sure they're right no matter what, and not in good Objectivist way either. I didn't mention before my Sony betamax. Smaller tapes, higher quality, and they rested on their laurels and let VHS run past them on tape length and eventually quality. Let's face it, form factor-wise, VHS tapes are one of the ugliest, unwieldiest things ever made. And Sony still managed to lose. SACD. For those unfamiliar with SACD (Super Audio CD), it was to be the next leap (or at least hop) forward in sound quality after regular CDs. 6-channel sound, higher bitrates and all that jazz. SACDs are created on DVD media. So you can do dual layer. This means you can make an SACD that plays in a regular CD player and in an SACD player. You can play the disc in your car and then take it home, pop it into the surround system and get your socks blown off. Sony, to prevent piracy, committed to doing single-layer SACDs. As the biggest producer and booster of the format, this meant that their discs couldn't be played in a car stereo, couldn't be ripped to your iPod--could only be played in $1000+ (until recently) DVD players. SACD is truly glorious. It can make you want to listen to Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" again and again, that's how good it is. Ella and Louie--oh.my.god. Sony, in their infinite arrogance, did everything they could to betamax SACD, and they've succeeded. By worrying about whether someone who paid $25 to get Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell on SACD might share the old CD layer version with their friends, they've effectively killed yet another great format. There's still some slight debate over whether SACD or DVD/A sounds better. Buy DualDiscs is my advice--That's a DVD/A disc where one side plays in your car and the other in your home theater. Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD. The jury is still out, but my verdict is in. Sony will intercourse the canine again. Current HD-DVDs are better quality, and Blu-Ray DRM is far more annoying and intrusive. They reserve the right to disable your player if they think you've played copy-protection-cracked discs in it. Eff them both. Unless you have a 12 foot diagonal screen, the difference between standard DVD and these new Hi-Def police state DVDs isn't that much. 2. Rootkits. A rootkit is a virus on your computer that attacks at such a low level that there's hardly any way to defend against it. It's the Manchurian Candidate of viruses. It's a huge threat to all systems. If Al Quaeda ever gets anyone smart enough to do a good rootkit, o.m.g. On hundreds of Sony CDs, if you tried to play them in your computer, they would install a rootkit. The Sysinternals heroes busted Sony on this, because they were developing anti-rootkit tools and couldn't figure out how their test computers kept getting infected, until they realized that the common denominator was they were listening to Sony label music while working. It was a pretty big geek scandal, but most other people were as bored and baffled as by why Michael Milkin got sent to jail for peddling junky prostate bonds. Trust me, it's a big deal. Here's what you need to know: Sony did the moral equivalent of installing a webcam in your bathroom. They'll say, we weren't going to look unless we heard somebody say "Eff Sony!" Oops, the sound of your toilet flushing sounds just like "Eff Sony!" they're listening! I haven't bought a Sony product since the rootkit thing. That was the final straw. I keep using the Sony things I've still got that still work. I may be crazy, but I'm cheap. I wrote them a letter. To make my letter better, I went through my CDs and DVDs and figured out that my boycott costs them about $1000 a year, going forward from the last couple of years. Anyhow, if you're picking a movie in a video store, and you can't decide, look and see whether one is Sony, and pick the other one. I'm not asking people to take on undue hardship to defeat the devil, just to let it be the deciding factor when you can't otherwise decide. Even Satan listens to consumer preference. Mike Lee We are the world

I especially like stuff that most people think is crap but it really isn't. Like the Howard Stern Show and the Adam Carolla Show and the Tom Leykis Show. Each of them has had huge ideological impact on America, all of them for the good. I like Crystal Gayle, back when Allan Reynolds was producing her. That is some of the most sublime, soulful country music ever created. I love Taco Bell. Half of their stuff is really good and the other half is really good crap. My brother likes crappy Mexican restaurants that he thinks are better than Taco Bell. A while back, I coerced him to go to Taco Bell because the kids were getting defcon4 cranky and there was no Los Margaritas in sight. He was like, damn! If you haven't made a run for the border in a while, the steak grilled stuffed burrito rocks. And I always palm a pocket full of fire sauce packets. I have a glass pasta holder full of them in case TB doesn't have enough next time I go. Next post: I hate stuff that is crap but people think it's great. First on my list: iPods and Sony.'' P.S. for the poster confused by the final paragraph of my post that initiated this thread: Mac Davis was a B-movie actor who got famous in the early 70's for being in football comedies and writing wonderfully crappy country songs. He also had his own TV variety show at the same time Sonny & Cher and Donny & Marie were getting similar shows. His biggest hit for himself was "Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me." Another hit was "One Hell of a Woman." Segue: Mac Davis wrote a song called "Watching Scotty Grow" which was covered by Elvis but the biggest hit version was Bobby Goldsboro's. Bobby Goldsboro made a career of singing songs about only 2 subjects: (1) the bliss of ordinary family life (e.g, Watching Scotty Grow), and (2) male nobility in the face of romantic disaster. His biggest hit was "Honey" which combined both his major themes into a gloriously crappy masterpiece about a man mourning his frisky-like-a-cute-little-puppy wife. "Summer, the First Time" is a deeply dramatic romantic song about a little kid getting knocked off his bicycle and diddled by a horny housewife. Segue: Kind of like in the Mary Kay Latourneau case, only a one-afternoon stand instead of a passionate september-february romance that has stood the test of time. Mary Kay Latourneau was a Seattle schoolteacher who had an affair with a 12 year old boy in her class. His name is even harder to spell than hers, so I won't even try. (Disclosure: I went to grade school with MKL's brother at a little whackjob Christian fundie school near Washington DC. I am so freaking bummed I never met her, though she probably wouldn't have liked my Aryan average looks since she's pretty obviously hot for islanders with unpronounceable names. Her father was a bigtime GOP conservative congressman from California, John Schmitz--she got him back, but good!). Anyhow, after MKL got knocked up (She's Having My Baby! -- how could I have forgotten Paul Anka in this thread?!), it all went public and she went to jail. Every time they let her out the cops would follow her and catch her smooching with Island Boy in some steamed up car. Even after IB was an adult, MKL and IB were under court order to knock it the eff off before we turn a hose on you, and they refused. If they put MKL in a half-way house, IB would climb through the window and knock her up again. A year or two ago, all legal remedies to remedy this depravity expired and MKL and her IB-toy tied the knot and are living in secluded bliss. By the way, she was kind of a hottie, a real hottie, not like that plastic blonde chick schoolteacher on the motorcycle in Florida who got away with banging boys for no reason last year. In this candy-assed, politically correct, x-rated is ok as long as you're zoned for it culture, MKL is a predator, despite the fact that her putative prey kept leaping back into her arms. MKL and IB are serious sexual outlaws and deserve our respect and applause. She's my final example of someone everyone thinks is crap that isn't. Mike Lee Wild Thing!

I tivo American Idol. I think the Navy guy with the ears is cool, but he won't win unless we put a lot more troops in Iraq with text messaging on their cell phones. I hope Sligh and Sundance go almost all the way, and then tour together. They can't win, but they kick butt. I was really annoyed that the blonde bluesy girl got voted off and Princess BJ got to stay. My wife was annoyed that Sanjaya survived. She thinks his hair is ridiculous and that his sister could beat him up. On 24 this week, Jack Bauer tortured somebody again, this time a Russian embassy official. I enjoyed watching this guy get tuned up a lot more than when Jack settled his sibling rivalry issues with that mouthy guy from ER who always made the nurses cry. Lately, I've been listening to a lot of ABBA while watching Bill O'Reilly with the sound turned down. If something interesting comes across the screen like sex but not with illegal immigrants, I switch over the sound. Bill is where I first learned about Princess BJ. Thanks, Bills, both Clinton and O'Reilly, for raising everyone's BJ consciousness. We owe you, man. Bobby Goldsboro and Mac Davis. Has anyone ever seen them together? Summer, The First Time. I remember riding my bike up and down the block, hoping some bored housewife would suddenly Summer of '42 me. Mary Kay Latourneau, where were you when I needed you most? You're one hell of a woman. Mike Lee Smells like Teen Spirit to me

Andrew, I mean this in the nicest tough love way: Anyone who can use the word "hegemony" correctly in a sentence can get a decent job unless there's something wrong with you that no correction by society could ever fix. There are millions of people dumber than you, less talented than you who are doing better than you. Think hard about that. Many many people who don't have your intelligence or sensitivity and discernment are whupping your ass. They do hard things you refuse to do, and that's why they're beating you. You're not oppressed. You're unwanted. Thinking you're oppressed is a way to avoid admitting you're unwanted. You have a lot to offer. Get busy and stop being a self-righteous pain in the ass. Shut up and realize that most people really do know more than you do. You may have a high IQ, but you're really not that bright. Humility, dude. Mike Lee Career counseling the inconcounsalable

Well, when has Lenny ever thought anything was too much? I'll give him this: he doesn't put up with any of that sissy "moderation in all things" crap. More decades ago than I am comfortable remembering, I had a brief flirtation with Scientology, mostly bookish, but I thought some of their psychological theories were really interesting. Since then, of course, I've ruminated on what the hell was wrong with me, and come up with this explanation. There is a certain kind of person (and I am one of them, and Lenny is too) that get a lot of pleasure out of classifying and categorizing everything. Not that things don't need classification and categorization, but that people of my ilk do it for the tingle not just for the candle. At its most abstract, we construct matrices. We define dimensions and characteristics and look for the patterns and interactions. The problem is, once we make our matrix, if we forget to label a row or a column with a thing, we act like that thing doesn't exist. We get entranced with the inner beauty of our matrix and, without realizing it, come to demand that reality conform or else. Perhaps the only cure, or palliative, is to get old enough to have been entranced by lots of different matrices, and to have to have had to juggle them enough to have it brought home that beauty really is not truth. I dare say that 90% of followers of Objectivism are more entranced by its beauty than convinced of its truth. And if there's one thing we know about Objectivism, unless we're still drooling and going "ooh, pretty..." is that it's been completely wrong in predicting the actual societal consequences of ideas. Your electricity is still on, Amtrak hasn't gone kaboom in a tunnel--yet, and most things work better now than they ever did. You have to be complete idiot to think that everyday life in America is anything like Rand expected. Rand's dystopian vision of the inevitability of decay in Atlas Shrugged didn't happen. Despite all the rap music, right-wingers, college campus speech codes and OSHA regulations, we are an amazing culture, prosperous and free and winning, lurching and stumbling our way toward the best of all possible worlds that have idiots in them. Some of those idiots are the rank and file Objectivists who are as afraid of George Bush and the Christian Southern Leadership Baptist Rights Council Conference Committee as they are of Muslims who go every Friday night to Duct Tape 101: How to Keep the Bomb from Falling Off. Jump up on a chair and shriek eeeek! you DIMbulbs. Mike Lee Being pissed is no substitute for being right

Bear with me, this is going to take a minute.... A few years ago, I married into a Southern, Bible-belt/thumping family. They're so conservative, they think Phyllis Schlafly is hot. Gay marriage is the legitimation of abomination. Prayer belongs in schools, said in unison next to the 10 Commandments plaque. My new stepson got married in a small church in a smaller town in Kentucky. The guy who did all the food and who did the American Idol serious contestant impression at the wedding was openly and flamboyantly (for Kentucky) gay. Other openly gay couples were in attendance, and were treated warmly, and not in that Southern "Bless your heart!" way either. They were part of the community. Racially, it was 90% white, but the other 10% was a real rainbow coalition, including a mixed-race couple or few. Nobody could stop snapping pictures of the 7-year-old black ring-bearer and the 6-year old little blonde flower girl hugging each other. I'm sure there were some sourpusses grousing about the degeneration of decent standards, but they didn't do it overtly. I talked to a lot of people, and I'm the kind of person people know they can say mean stuff to too, and I couldn't elicit one single banjo-pickin' comment all day. My in-laws think I'm going to hell and they treat me very well. They pray for me non-stop. We had one frank talk and since then they cheerfully tolerate my infidelity and I've learned to respect their piety. I mean, seriously respect it, not tolerate it. They are very good people, kind and charitable and involved in a way that makes Mayberry RFD look like Detroit. I think their faith is bunk, but it really is at the center of their lives and organizes and motivates them. Their opinions appall me and their actions inspire me. Here I am, so much more morally sophisticated than they are, proving that sophistication carries you only so far. I live in Seattle, where we all know we're smarter, better, faster, stronger than those benighted troglodytes in the tornado states. Since moving here, my wife, a Vanderbilt graduate, has had to deal with more than one "Bless your heart!" moment from the liberal ladies who lunch too munch. Except that here in Seattle "Bless your heart!" is replaced with an interrogatory charmlessness and gracelessness that nobody in the South could ever muster. I'm learning the real meaning of provincial while watching my wife elegantly slice and dice these self-inured graduates of Wymyn's/Environmental/Fluffer Studies programs. The liberal ladies don't even know they've been sliced or diced because my wife's Southern shigawire is so delicate that the lurching lunching ladies coalesce back into harpy form unaware that their bodies were momentarily like their minds, a random collection of floating pig parts held together by nothing but inertia. Here's my point: I'm not surprised the Right is going for Guiliani. Unlike the whackjob luftmenschen who form the fund-raising core of the Democrats, the Right is mostly composed of people who have served in the military, built successful businesses, raised families and learned something about how the world works and the trade-offs it forces on you. They may not like it, but they deal with it. Most of the Democrat base are a bunch of jackoffing jackasses who've never done a thing but demand things. People on the right recognize a fellow traveler in Rudy. He's not full of shit, and that's what really counts if you want to win the conservative base. This is why McCain's resume can't save him. This post could come back to haunt me, but I don't think so. I've been to right-wing territory a lot the last few years, and I like them way more than I ever thought I could. They don't care if Guiliani got once, twice, three times a lady--kick Islamist butt is what they care about. Bottom line: Democrats and Leftists are a far bigger threat to real freedom than guys who love NASCAR and wouldn't think twice about taking a swing at a cop if he got out of line. Mike Lee Christianist atheist