Monthly Archives: March 2016

I believe in believing

Long after my literal belief in the Bible waned, Ive gained deep appreciation of what Christianity does for society. I believe in believing.

> What books would I recommend for an elaboration of my praise of Christianity’s role in society?

Fukuyama’s Trust and Origin of Political Order.
Duchesne’s Uniqueness of Western Civilization.

None of these books is about Christianity. They’re about the problem that Christianity solves, namely Trust, and how it plays out in the development (or lack thereof) of civilization.

And then I guess I’d also read about IQ, perhaps Nicholas Wade: A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History.

This last bit to help overcome the bias that most people have. Namely the bias that most people are similar to them.

Talented guys like you may not appreciate life at the bottom — life for people who do not and cannot understand the world, who’ve failed at everything they’ve attempted, who feel scorned and ridiculed, who are extremely afraid, who seem to live their whole lives one mistake away from catastrophe.

These are the people that function on impulse, habit, and ritual.

Think of those people.

So you have Islam, which sanctifies violence. You can still have redemption if you dedicate your life to smiting heretics. And you have Christianity where punishment is prohibited and forgiveness is required. If you behave well, you will be redeemed in the after life.

You also have communism (a secular religion) where your failures are blamed on the capitalist class, and people are rallied to destroy enemies.

CBO Misses Its Obamacare Projection by 24 Million People

Three years ago, on the eve of Obamacare’s implementation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that President Obama’s centerpiece legislation would result in an average of 201 million people having private health insurance in any given month of 2016. Now that 2016 is here, the CBO says that just 177 million people, on average, will have private health insurance in any given month of this year—a shortfall of 24 million people.

Indeed, based on the CBO’s own numbers, it seems possible that Obamacare has actually reduced the number of people with private health insurance. In 2013, the CBO projected that, without Obamacare, 186 million people would be covered by private health insurance in 2016—160 million on employer-based plans, 26 million on individually purchased plans. The CBO now says that, with Obamacare, 177 million people will be covered by private health insurance in 2016—155 million on employer-based plans, 12 million on plans bought through Obamacare’s government-run exchanges, and 9 million on other individually purchased plans (plus a rounding error of 1 million).

In other words, it would appear that a net 9 million people have lost their private health plans, thanks to Obamacare—with a net 5 million people having lost employer-based plans and a net 4 million people having lost individually purchased plans.

None of this is to say that fewer people have “coverage” under Obamacare—it’s just not private coverage. In 2013, the CBO projected that 34 million people would be on Medicaid or CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program) in 2016. The CBO now says that 68 million people will be on Medicaid or CHIP in 2016—double its earlier estimate. It turns out that Obamacare is pretty much a giant Medicaid expansion.

To be clear, the CBO—which has very generously labeled Obamacare’s direct subsidies to insurance companies as “tax credits,” even though sending money to insurers doesn’t lower anyone’s taxes—isn’t openly declaring that Obamacare has reduced the number of people with private health insurance or that it has doubled the number of people on Medicaid or CHIP. Rather, the CBO maintains that Obamacare has actually increased the number of people with private health insurance by 9 million and has increased the number of people on Medicaid or CHIP by (just) 13 million. But it would seem that the only reason the CBO can make these claims is that it has moved the goalposts.

www.weeklystandard.com/article/2001732

Al Maarri on the Prophets

“Do not suppose the statements of the prophets to be true; they are all fabrications. Men lived comfortably till they came and spoiled life. The sacred books are only such a set of idle tales as any age could have and indeed did actually produce.”

— أبو العلاء المعري

Al Maarri was a blind Arabic philosopher circa 1000 AD.

QUESTIONS FROM THE LEFT (From FB)

QUESTIONS FROM THE LEFT

> The right wing movements of Europe and America benefit from Islamic extremists.

Agree.

> Islamic extremists benefit from right wing movements in Europe and America.

Disagree. Look at a history of Islamic conquest. It is what they do. The Levant and N Africa used to represent 2/3 of Christendom. Iran was Zoorastrian. Research why the Hindu Kush Mountains are called the Hindu Kush Mountains. In the earliest days of Islam, the Kharijite sect was already committing massive acts of random violence against innocent people as a means of proselytizing.

> And the real enemy of both is western liberal inclusive democracy, or multiculturalism, or as you like to label everything cultural Marxism. Do you disagree?

No. This is a very convenient framing for those intellectually and politically invested in a particular version of society (version of reality!). Unfortunately, it is untrue.

It’s a big topic to address all of this, but here are two points:

– Inclusive democracy. Once gov’t becomes the re-distributor of wealth and arbiter of morality mal incentives topple this happy myth. People vote their tribe and vote their reproductive strategy. So you have a huge majority of minorities and single women voting left. While a modest majority of whites and single men voting right.

It may be impolite to point that out, but 1) it’s reality, 2) I’m making proposals to reduce conflict while you’re making proposals which will increase conflict. You and I are in conflict because an over-reaching gov’t forces us to impose our beliefs on each other.

Inclusive democracy is incompatible with a heterogeneous society. It also seem a bit intellectually low-brow to believe a society that has only existed for about a generation is the “end of history” (ie. Fukuyama’s idea that we’ve arrived at the correct political order). Very presumptuous.

– Multiculturalism. Literal Multiculturalism would mean the preservation of cultures, not their destruction and ridicule. What’s worse, is that its advocates don’t promote a uniform destruction, but have narrowly aimed their ideology at Western Civilization.

Everything that’s European, Christian, Male, or Hetersexual gets smashed with the twin hammers of “privilege” and “tolerate-everything-else.” Everything that’s African, Hispanic, Muslim, Female, and Homosexual is surrounded by a wall of political correctness so severe that you can’t even criticize mass, organized rapes in the center of what used to be civilization.

So no. Radical Islam is not an opponent of the multi-cult. It’s the weapon of the multi-cult.

I love other cultures. I’ve traveled as a tourist to Israel, Jordan, Latin America, East Africa, South East Asia, and plan to do so again.

I don’t want any culture destroyed, but because I include European cultures in that statement, I open myself to accusations of racism.

The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness

Is this Black comedy?

They couch the precipitous decline of women’s happiness in feminist language — a “gender gap in happiness” — as if more poison would make things better.

—“By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women’s declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging — one with higher subjective well-being for men. “—

www.nber.org/papers/w14969

A veteran’s moral outrage at bellicose politicians

I think it’s difficult for us to admit that people willing to conduct violence in exchange for money and status are plentiful. So while I applaud the appeal to moral outrage on behalf of the trigger pullers, it alone isn’t enough.

At my alma mater, Stanford, a curriculum which used to address questions like “what is justice” in its Western Civilization requirement was put on the chopping block in the name of a broader and much shallower curriculum full of cultural relativism.

But at the same time, exposing the cowardice and hypocrisy of politicians is ALWAYS a good idea.

www.cbsnews.com/news/the-vast-divide-between-america-and-its-military/

When Communists Realize they are Not the Majority

“In most communist movements, there comes a moment when they realize that they are not the majority. Post WWII France and the Bolshevik election failures come to mind.

Something similar keeps happening in America which is why American communists re-brand so often.”

I’m thinking of how BLM and anti-Trump antics have only increased his popularity.