It's not that I renounce libertarianism. I never had drug legalization as a cause that I would march for. The issue where we are least appreciated (markets vs. central planning) is the libertarian cause that I most support. When Cato folks point to marijuana legalization and say "See, we're winning," I want to gag.
Just a comment about the preggy brain. Richard’s theory is about the earlier maturation of the female brain.IQ differences mainly come from children and adolescents. These measurements are calibrated to be 100 for both sexes by adding more verbal questions (female advantage) or math/spatial questions (advantage male). However, since male brains mature longer the 4 points happen after most IQ tests like SAT take place. This also matches the high correlation with brain size; men’s brains are 10-15% larger after adjusting for body size.
Since this happens before pregnancy I’m afraid that the preggy effect is cumulative.
"Fuck in a brothel" is the surprise course in Helen Dale's multi-course meals. I'd be at the table anyway, but that palate cleanser (contaminator?) gives welcome frisson.
Pregnancy brain and exhaustion brain are very real. When my toddler only wakes me up twice in a night, I'm fairly bright. When I'm up 3-6 times in the night, I trip over common words, am clumsy, and struggle with arithmetic much more.
The other big, not-progressive-approved thing preventing outcome equality amongst the sexes is choice. I understand when the Professional Feminist types who prefer a career to motherhood/looking after their own children get confused by other women preferring the opposite, but I've also known women who opted to go part-time to be with the kids act shocked that they didn't progress in their careers. But then the progressive argument jumped ahead of "remove barriers" to "rebuild the system in my preferred image". If you can't be a part-time home-working CEO and make it to the PTA meetings, it must be an unfair world still in need of change.
Intellectually, I’m convinced by anarchism-capitalist ideas. But what many people miss there is that an anarchist-capitalist system probably looks very little like minarchism. Most people want a system to impose a more significant degree of public order than that. Anarchism-capitalism would likely provide what the market wants. But I make this mistake all the time. An anarchist-capitalism solution is always off the table, so I tend to default to a minarchist or libertarian perspective, even when evidence supports the idea that anarchism-capitalism would prohibit more.
Marijuana regulation is one such area. I wouldn’t pick a protective association that permitted its members to smoke marijuana in public or while driving. I’d have a conflict with my neighbor if they did. And so the market would likely result in something less libertarian than the current regime in recreational use states.
“I’ve long observed how not a few libertarians actually support similar things to the woke. They endorse ideas that vary from utopian to frankly crackpot—everything from open borders to prison abolition to legalising all drugs.”
This is true but it’s also true that some libertarians do not support these things--for libertarian reasons. Also, libertarians endorse legalizing drugs but other libertarian policies will “neutralize” some of these negative effects (e.g., if the streets are privatized then so much for open air drug markets and sleeping rough).
Aug 13, 2023·edited Aug 13, 2023Liked by Helen Dale
That Rufo reserves a bit of sympathy for the views of the other side is interesting. Kudos to him. There can’t be any meaningful and productive dialogue without some of that among people who hold different views, as the ongoing controversies and media kefuffles of recent years so conclusively attest. But be careful, sista, about where you tread in characterizing American race relations and development over the decades since the de jure civil rights gains of the 50s and 60s. You would bristle if some impudent Yank spoke out of turn about your point of origin, and for good reason.
Life’s rich pageant landed me in a biracial step family at 14, a few weeks before I started high school (1974). That private situation lasted about 3 years while I made my way through the large, integrated school down the block. An unusual set of circumstances had transformed the ‘All American City’ it served into a tenuously balanced racial melting pot. One of those circumstances was the recent legal demolition of restrictive housing covenants that prohibited the sale of homes to blacks and, in many cases, various other ethnic undesirables. So many of my new classmates were the sons and daughters of families that wanted to escape the ‘hood and had the means to do so. Among them were future MDs, cops, teachers, etc. who made a good account of themselves.
One of the big lies about race relations in the US is that substantial progress hasn’t happened. Take it from someone who knows better: it ain’t so.
Libertarianism is at its best when it argues people should be free so they can become their best selfs.
Libertarianism is at its worst when it argues they should be free to be their worst selves.
Over time the libertarian movement (especially the intellectual movement) has drifted more towards the latter (as has most of the country and intellectuals/progressives especially).
I still have a lot of respect for Hank Hill/ Mike Judge small L libertarianism but that comes with a heavy dose of personal responsibility and traditional middle class morality.
Rufo is probably sincere, as I am, in acknowledging idealistic and admirable-if-misguided motives on the part of most critical theorists, but make no mistake, he is also ambitious and pragmatic. We need to sympathize in order to sway brainwashed adherents back to reality if only because there are so many of them! They are the majority at the managerial level in most of our institutions now. In my field of education, I know so many well meaning people (men and women) who are true CRT (aka Anti-Racist) believers, and they are generally very good people at heart. If you see that many people as evil, it leaves no chance for democracy or even a functioning society. Rufo wants to right the ship, and you can't do that by demonizing and rejecting half the people on it. I'm not sure if he's a Christian, but anyone who is has to believe in redemption. I hope his example will lead us toward common ground and unity as Americans.
For all our Tragedies now in view and only beginning here is our freedom now - we don’t have to give a damn about topping the grades or course....
> things change. There’s perhaps still a point to mouthing the platitudes Down Under but I don’t recommend it... here 🇺🇸 I’d counsel the young NO with the urgency of life or death.
It is.
BE LIKE HELEN. We can’t trust Liars anymore or tolerate lies, and the truth and courage are what we need.
PS also we’ll know we can trust you, something most healthy-
"Writing is not the federal parliament or a company’s board of directors. Improving its representativeness will not improve its quality qua literature. There is no guarantee that a novel written about racism by a black author will be better than one by a white author, because “better” in fiction is not a matter of who tells the story but how the story is told."
The more I read of Helen Dale, the more I love.
It's one thing for dreary Marxist racialism to infect philosophy and politics, those are more battlegrounds and are fertile fields for all kinds of nonsense—but trying to strap art onto some Procrustean bed to better showcase your ideology renders the work stillborn and suffocates real creativity.
Fuck the thought police! No segregation of the imagination!
In the Vape pipes 28% THC or I am verbally well informed perhaps 50%?
At those levels you are courting paranoia and schizophrenia and cancer etc...
Fine.
This sort of behavior across the board is why we can’t have universal healthcare, although the other big reasons are 1) we’re an inescapable and eternal Federation in North America from the Iroquois to the Internet* and all arrangements in between,
2) Government and Rule by Heist Film is practiced high and low and yes there’s a huge parasitic middle class, they watch FOX but they’re certainly not small government where their checks are concerned.
It's not that I renounce libertarianism. I never had drug legalization as a cause that I would march for. The issue where we are least appreciated (markets vs. central planning) is the libertarian cause that I most support. When Cato folks point to marijuana legalization and say "See, we're winning," I want to gag.
Excellent.
Just a comment about the preggy brain. Richard’s theory is about the earlier maturation of the female brain.IQ differences mainly come from children and adolescents. These measurements are calibrated to be 100 for both sexes by adding more verbal questions (female advantage) or math/spatial questions (advantage male). However, since male brains mature longer the 4 points happen after most IQ tests like SAT take place. This also matches the high correlation with brain size; men’s brains are 10-15% larger after adjusting for body size.
Since this happens before pregnancy I’m afraid that the preggy effect is cumulative.
we could all stand to be a little more charitable to our political enemies
of course I am one of the worst examples to follow re: this advice
but i am working on it
"Fuck in a brothel" is the surprise course in Helen Dale's multi-course meals. I'd be at the table anyway, but that palate cleanser (contaminator?) gives welcome frisson.
Jesus Christ, I'm snort-laughing.
Pregnancy brain and exhaustion brain are very real. When my toddler only wakes me up twice in a night, I'm fairly bright. When I'm up 3-6 times in the night, I trip over common words, am clumsy, and struggle with arithmetic much more.
The other big, not-progressive-approved thing preventing outcome equality amongst the sexes is choice. I understand when the Professional Feminist types who prefer a career to motherhood/looking after their own children get confused by other women preferring the opposite, but I've also known women who opted to go part-time to be with the kids act shocked that they didn't progress in their careers. But then the progressive argument jumped ahead of "remove barriers" to "rebuild the system in my preferred image". If you can't be a part-time home-working CEO and make it to the PTA meetings, it must be an unfair world still in need of change.
Intellectually, I’m convinced by anarchism-capitalist ideas. But what many people miss there is that an anarchist-capitalist system probably looks very little like minarchism. Most people want a system to impose a more significant degree of public order than that. Anarchism-capitalism would likely provide what the market wants. But I make this mistake all the time. An anarchist-capitalism solution is always off the table, so I tend to default to a minarchist or libertarian perspective, even when evidence supports the idea that anarchism-capitalism would prohibit more.
Marijuana regulation is one such area. I wouldn’t pick a protective association that permitted its members to smoke marijuana in public or while driving. I’d have a conflict with my neighbor if they did. And so the market would likely result in something less libertarian than the current regime in recreational use states.
How I deal with libertarian thought:
When encountering a libertarian text, perform a search and replace of libertarian with librarian. The result is hilarious.
“I’ve long observed how not a few libertarians actually support similar things to the woke. They endorse ideas that vary from utopian to frankly crackpot—everything from open borders to prison abolition to legalising all drugs.”
This is true but it’s also true that some libertarians do not support these things--for libertarian reasons. Also, libertarians endorse legalizing drugs but other libertarian policies will “neutralize” some of these negative effects (e.g., if the streets are privatized then so much for open air drug markets and sleeping rough).
That Rufo reserves a bit of sympathy for the views of the other side is interesting. Kudos to him. There can’t be any meaningful and productive dialogue without some of that among people who hold different views, as the ongoing controversies and media kefuffles of recent years so conclusively attest. But be careful, sista, about where you tread in characterizing American race relations and development over the decades since the de jure civil rights gains of the 50s and 60s. You would bristle if some impudent Yank spoke out of turn about your point of origin, and for good reason.
Life’s rich pageant landed me in a biracial step family at 14, a few weeks before I started high school (1974). That private situation lasted about 3 years while I made my way through the large, integrated school down the block. An unusual set of circumstances had transformed the ‘All American City’ it served into a tenuously balanced racial melting pot. One of those circumstances was the recent legal demolition of restrictive housing covenants that prohibited the sale of homes to blacks and, in many cases, various other ethnic undesirables. So many of my new classmates were the sons and daughters of families that wanted to escape the ‘hood and had the means to do so. Among them were future MDs, cops, teachers, etc. who made a good account of themselves.
One of the big lies about race relations in the US is that substantial progress hasn’t happened. Take it from someone who knows better: it ain’t so.
Libertarianism is at its best when it argues people should be free so they can become their best selfs.
Libertarianism is at its worst when it argues they should be free to be their worst selves.
Over time the libertarian movement (especially the intellectual movement) has drifted more towards the latter (as has most of the country and intellectuals/progressives especially).
I still have a lot of respect for Hank Hill/ Mike Judge small L libertarianism but that comes with a heavy dose of personal responsibility and traditional middle class morality.
Rufo is probably sincere, as I am, in acknowledging idealistic and admirable-if-misguided motives on the part of most critical theorists, but make no mistake, he is also ambitious and pragmatic. We need to sympathize in order to sway brainwashed adherents back to reality if only because there are so many of them! They are the majority at the managerial level in most of our institutions now. In my field of education, I know so many well meaning people (men and women) who are true CRT (aka Anti-Racist) believers, and they are generally very good people at heart. If you see that many people as evil, it leaves no chance for democracy or even a functioning society. Rufo wants to right the ship, and you can't do that by demonizing and rejecting half the people on it. I'm not sure if he's a Christian, but anyone who is has to believe in redemption. I hope his example will lead us toward common ground and unity as Americans.
I very much admire your candor and courage here HD.
May I ask how much RDX you are using in the Vest you’ve strapped on? Professional Curiosity.
🤣
For all our Tragedies now in view and only beginning here is our freedom now - we don’t have to give a damn about topping the grades or course....
> things change. There’s perhaps still a point to mouthing the platitudes Down Under but I don’t recommend it... here 🇺🇸 I’d counsel the young NO with the urgency of life or death.
It is.
BE LIKE HELEN. We can’t trust Liars anymore or tolerate lies, and the truth and courage are what we need.
PS also we’ll know we can trust you, something most healthy-
"Writing is not the federal parliament or a company’s board of directors. Improving its representativeness will not improve its quality qua literature. There is no guarantee that a novel written about racism by a black author will be better than one by a white author, because “better” in fiction is not a matter of who tells the story but how the story is told."
The more I read of Helen Dale, the more I love.
It's one thing for dreary Marxist racialism to infect philosophy and politics, those are more battlegrounds and are fertile fields for all kinds of nonsense—but trying to strap art onto some Procrustean bed to better showcase your ideology renders the work stillborn and suffocates real creativity.
Fuck the thought police! No segregation of the imagination!
Legal THC; in the USA...
The weed the 60s smoked about 2% THC.
By the 80s 5% THC
By the 2020s 20-25% THC
In the Vape pipes 28% THC or I am verbally well informed perhaps 50%?
At those levels you are courting paranoia and schizophrenia and cancer etc...
Fine.
This sort of behavior across the board is why we can’t have universal healthcare, although the other big reasons are 1) we’re an inescapable and eternal Federation in North America from the Iroquois to the Internet* and all arrangements in between,
2) Government and Rule by Heist Film is practiced high and low and yes there’s a huge parasitic middle class, they watch FOX but they’re certainly not small government where their checks are concerned.