Ladies Tee Off From a Different Green, Pt. I

I have a friend who believes that every human being is born with the same potential for intelligence. Those who rise above the others are the ones who are encouraged to excel in particular areas- all nurture, no nature. This explains why men are better at math then women (as much as I hate it, I’ve seen it pretty much proved in the most equitable college classrooms you could imagine). Men were told as wee little creatures on the playground that boys were good with numbers, and girls were told that they were good at writing or painting or making paper-mache hand casts or whatever, so the boys memorized their multiplication tables early and the girls didn’t.

That seems all well and good, but what about the other, more gender-neutral academic disciplines, like philosophy, political science and literature? Media arts are coming  to be heavily populated by women (ceramics and photography in particular), and literature has plenty of published female voices, if not a whole lot of well-respected ones. But why aren’t there any female philosophers or popular sociologists? Is it just that there hasn’t been a precedent set yet? The closest thing I have to a major is philosophy, and I haven’t read a female yet. Jane Austen is the first on our curriculum, and God knows she’s hardly a revolutionary thinker on par with, say, Kant. Noted, my curriculum is chronological. Still, I can’t think of a single popular modern female philosopher, disregarding the ever-present Ayn Rand. Keeping her as the exception, what the hell?

I think women aren’t only disincentivized from being good at math, but expressing themselves intellectually at all. Women’s emotions- their intuition and “feminine mystique”- are the unique thing they have to offer a male-dominated academic and cultural canon, and unless that’s what they want to talk about, they apparently haven’t got much to say. This isn’t the fault of publishers and professors and consumers, though; none of them are even really trying.

I think that’s because the most recent wave of feminism has been about a woman’s happiness, not her objective achievement. Violent Acres has covered some of this, but the fact of the matter is that men have never done what made them happy, and that’s why they’ve come to achieve so much. They either did what they had to do to provide for their family (created financial infrastructure) or did what they thought was for the better rationality and self-awareness of mankind (philosophy). Naturally much of both things was also for self-aggrandizement. So where’s that “virtue” in women? Do we spend so much of our time trying to be the prettiest that being the best or cleverest is something we’ve never even considered?

Putting aside what’s better for humanity or scores more points for women in general, why is our self-interest directed towards doing the things that make us feel good, and not the things that make us feel proud? Men don’t shove chocolate down their throats or take bubble baths because those things don’t contribute anything to long-term goals. Have women grown so conditioned against the possibility of genuinely objective accomplishment that the little pleasures are all we can aspire to?

More on this later, I think.

Mortgages, Wall Street, and People Making Major Investment Decisions Who Haven’t the Slightest Idea How Big Money Works

The Erosion of Individual Responsibility

Ah, the old “but I have rights!” defense. My dear old Dad is awfully fond of Lou Dobbs, and as such I’ve been watching him and his news “team” of attractive, young, and well-lit lady assistants admonish the federal government for not bailing out the people hit hard by the mortgage crisis and “bailing out” Bear Stearns instead. If you asked anyone at Bear Stearns how they felt about being bailed out they’d probably wail like a wounded animal and try to shove a $700 pen into their jugular vein, but it’s much easier to vilify them then it is to vilify the poor bastards with second and third mortgages who thought buying a house would be a better investment decision then renting with a comparable amount of income.

Now I haven’t got much position to judge, as I’ve never taken out anything remotely resembling a mortgage, and my rent is cheap as hell since I live with four hippie roommates in the barrio. But I am clever enough to have realized that borrowing vast amounts of money from a rapidly dying industry with no safety net is nothing you can whine to the federal government about when it falls through. Helping banks out is important because it stabilizes the market and prevents billions upon billions of dollars being lost. Plus, it allows your mortgages to go to someone who might actually manage them properly. Bailing you out is not the stock market’s problem, and thus isn’t really the federal government’s either.

All that said, Lou Dobbs has all the subtlety of a cinderblock to the temple. If I had a dollar for every time he stared forlornly into the camera, framed by a “WAR on the Middle Class” graphic while a well-lit lady assistant nodded sagely in the background, I’d be able to buy people’s mortgages.

Universal Healthcare

A popular issue to hedge upon for young conservatives like myself is universal healthcare. You can be against the nanny state and unnecessary social programs all you like, but not wanting to win the international healthcare competition that’s apparently going on makes you uncivilized and classist. See, if we can hold our heads up in the face of the French, America has to win at everything- not just “highest number of motocross tracks per square mile” and “most bitching national bird,” but also “most coffee shops with free wi-fi” and “best sushi restaurants.” Apparently you would think “most aircraft carriers” and “98% of the human beings on earth would kill to be born here” make us win at being a country on their own, but I digress. My point is that best healthcare is not a ranking that I think a government is responsible for aspiring to, and that the fact that Sweden has beaten us in something probably means that that something is pretty lame. “But Liberty,” my hippie roommates are often heard to ask, “don’t you think that life is sacred? Don’t you think that even poor people deserve healthcare?”

Well, it’s a valid question, and one I’m not going to mock here (though I regret to say I have in the past). Important to remember is that no one is against healthcare- disregarding social darwinists and Christian Scientists and… let’s move on- much in the same way that no one is against puppies. I’m not particularly opposed to America having puppies, but I am opposed to having a cut of my paycheck go towards purchasing puppies for people who can’t afford them.

But healthcare isn’t puppies. The issue here is whether or not people have positive rights: the right to ________, not merely the right to be free from __________. Back in the Founding Fathers’ day, the right to __________ would have seemed absurd. The right to be free from economic oppression and tyranny seemed pretty obvious, as did the right to be free from being bayonetted by a pissy Brit. The right to, say, a certain amount of money per year isn’t what one could call a natural right, and thus isn’t one I think other people ought to be coerced into backing with their money.

But that argument doesn’t entirely solve our problem, either. While it seems as if, say, the right to a certain sum of money or a certain quality of life would be a categorically positive right, the right to life (of “life and liberty”) fame is a little bit trickier to define. Do I have the right not to be killed? Sure. Do I have the right to unpolluted natural resources and foodstuffs? Probably- certainly if I was mislead into believing that my natural resources and/or foodstuffs weren’t polluted, or the natural resources and/or foodstuffs were either my personal property or in the public domain.

But let’s take cancer for example. We have no idea what causes it in a particular case: we can identify risk factors, but rarely anything else. Maybe it was Uncle Bob’s pack-a-day habit that gave him lung cancer, and maybe it was the ‘ol coal mine up on the mountain. Either it was Uncle Bob’s fault or it wasn’t that he got cancer, but since he can’t afford healthcare, who’s left holding the ball? People who give a damn if Uncle Bob lives or dies, the man himself, the U.S. of A. or all three?

Let’s try not thinking about the U.S. as an individual entity, as I rarely think it’s appropriate except in foreign policy situation. Let’s think of it as a collection of three people- me, Uncle Bob, and Uncle Bob’s niece Jessica. I don’t know Bob or Jess, though I’m sure they’re perfectly nice people, and it doesn’t matter one whit to me whether Bob lives or dies. People die all the time- they die in Rwanda, in China, and in Detroit, and all three places are equally irrelevant to me. Just because Bob and I happen to have the same kind of passport doesn’t mean I’m inherently more responsible for protecting his life, as the only appeal you can make to the inherent value of life is a moral one- one that transcends states and laws and taxes.

See, a social contract is a contract entered into for the purposes of protection; in our case, protection from English troops and taxes and whoever else might want to mess with us for whatever reason. It is utterly outside my power to protect Bob from his own decisions and God’s whimsy, and as such I shouldn’t be responsible for the effects of either of them. If Jess chooses to support her Uncle, it’s merely because she loves him and doesn’t want him to die- I have neither of those compunctions, and if for some reason I did, I’d be glad to volunteer my money and time for a cause I believed in. But I shouldn’t be coerced into volunteering my money and time for a cause I couldn’t care less and probably don’t even know about, no matter how morally compelling it may or may not be, because you can’t legislate morality. Social contracts- republican governments- are utilitarian. If the government has the right to tell me how responsible I should feel and in fact become for Uncle Bob, they’ve also got the right to decide that I can’t marry a girl, and everyone thinks that’s pretty absurd.

To Begin

To cut down on the flailing and justifying and introducing that kicks off most blogs, I thought I’d jump right in with a discussion of the photograph I’ve chosen to represent it. Pictured above is “Fridgehenge” (also apparently known as “Stonefridge”), an art installation a few minutes out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Note by installation I don’t mean that it was paid for or permitted by the government; in fact, I’ve been told it was recently torn down for public safety.

I took that photograph myself, with a Canon Rebel that’s probably older than I am and a whole lotta awe. I haven’t seen Stonehenge, but I’ve seen pyramids and the Acropolis and what’s left of the Colossi of Memnon, and saw Fridgehenge the same way. There’s isn’t much unity or community left in this country, except around our traditions and nostalgia, and Fridgehenge was a great example of those things: something so bizarre and beautiful and completely manmade, like graffiti and snowmen, that you can’t help but fall a little bit in love.

I’m sorry it’s gone; a little irritated at a local government that couldn’t appreciate it enough to protect it and a lot more irritated at a local government that thought they had not only a right but a responsibility to tear it down. There might be plenty of idiots out there, but if you’re dumb enough to knock a refrigerator onto yourself and then sue the government you deserve to pay your own damn medical bills. That’s what tort reform is for; but it’s also about personal responsibility and freedom, which- with any luck- is going to be what I write about here.

But personal responsibility and freedom aren’t just about legal status and the government. They’re also about individuality; thinking for yourself, acting for yourself, and expressing yourself with a strong sense of the right and responsibility you have to do so. So, creators of Fridgehenge: God knows what you were on, but I salute you. I’ll do what I can to keep it going.