How To Save Your Daughters From A Shitty Life

Haley writes:

Meanwhile, guys feel like they’re at a job interview when they go on Christian Dates.  In the same thread at Boundless, Corwin aptly sums up the Christian Dating Problem from the male perspective:

I’ll be completely honest with you, I hate Christian dating, haven’t been on a date in well over a year, and have little interest in dating a Christian girl ever again because it often seems like first and second dates are more like a driver’s licence exam than a social evening. Did he show ability to take risks by asking me out in person? Nope, he used Facebook — two demerits. Did he show ability to provide by jumping up to pay for my $3 coffee? Nope, he was in the bathroom when I ordered, so I had to pay — three demerits. Did he show leadership by picking a venue conducive to conversation? Nope, he took me to a crowded place that he should’ve known would be too loud to talk deeply — six demerits…and that’s a fail for this dude’s godly husband potential.

Of course I’m exaggerating, but I really have found that the expectations and judgements that are made on Christian first dates are quite extreme. I really don’t think you can accurately assess anyone’s leadership or provider or parenting potential the first time you go out with them. No one is truly themselves on a first date either due to nerves or trying to be impressive, yet statement like “if he can’t lead a first date, he can’t lead your children” make it sound like it’s totally legit to give guys one high-pressure shot to prove who they are to women.

Christians love to talk about how “the world” is so messed up and “worldly” dating is so messed up – maybe they should look at the church, because as far as I can tell, it’s not any better inside the church.

I absolutely refuse to date Christian girls,* for the reasons described above.  For whatever reason, marriage is viewed as The Most Important Thing Ever So You Better Not Screw It Up Or Ever Dare Think Of Treating It Frivolously™, which makes for rather pressured—and unenjoyable—dating experiences.  Part of this stems from a weird corruption of the patriarchal tendencies of conservative evangelical groups.  Most evangelical families that I’ve known are mostly intact and have semi-authoritarian fathers who generally raise good Christian daughters.  However, fathers tend to offer little relationship advice to daughters, an generally leave their daughters to their own devices when it comes to mate selection.

To better get at what I’m trying to describe, it’s best to think of these fathers as the type of men who have no problem telling their daughters—in no uncertain terms—that they are not permitted to wear certain types of clothing, but suddenly become more deferential to their daughters when it comes to mate selection, as if the latter is somehow less important than the former.  As such, daughters—who still tend to defer to their fathers—are told to basically choose for themselves.  A more involved father might tell his daughter to look for certain characteristics in a man, but the general tendency for the daughters is turn their fathers’ principled advice into strict rules, which is then why girls end up having their own impossible checklists, and thus why Christian “dating” seems to feel so much pressure.

Fortunately, I have a solution to this problem:  have the dads arrange their daughters’ marriages.  Better yet, make sure the daughters are married off by eighteen or so, which will ensure that they will not have to waste their time with the bullshit known as a college “education.”

In the first place, the daughters’ efforts to please their dads is what leads them to create these long checklists describing the perfect Christian male.  Unfortunately, that guy died a couple millennia ago, and he wasn’t on the market either of the times he was alive.  What most dads (hopefully) have that most daughters do not is wisdom and perspective.  Most young guys are not likely to be perfectly successful by their mid-twenties.  They should certainly be heading that direction, but it will still be a while before they get there.  A lot of young women do not seem to understand this, and will thus pass over metaphorical diamonds in the rough, despite their penchant for shiny things.  An older man, though, should hopefully be good at spotting which guys are cads, and which guys will grow into the responsibilities of husbandry and fatherhood.

In the second place, a lot of female discontentment can be avoided if she doesn’t ride the proverbial carousel, which is why it is so important that women avoid college.  College is an open invitation to sexual buffets, and fathers would do well to have their daughters avoid the temptation, and the despair and vanity that succumbing to the temptation brings.  The rewards of a college education are nil:  you get a piece of paper that qualifies you for a soul-crushing job do menial make-work in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars in debt.  Why let your daughter aspire to that?  Especially when it puts her at a far greater risk for being pumped-and-dumped, and being used as nothing more than a sexual object by man-children whose greatest aspirations in life are hedonistic saturation and the avoidance of responsibility?

In the third place, marrying your daughters young enables them to release their sexual desire at its peak.  Women (and men) are strongly inclined to have sex at this age, and it seems far better if they have sex with their spouse than with some school acquaintance who doesn’t give a single damn about them.  From a more practical standpoint, it’s easier to marry them off when they’re getting ready to hit their peak in beauty instead of when they’re well past it.

In closing, I’d like to share an anecdote from my life.  My sister, who is eighteen months older than men, is currently single, and quite deep in college debt.  She cannot find a husband that meets her checklist, and is currently preparing to live the life of a cat lady.  To deal with her college debt, she’s going back to college to get a nursing degree, so she can join the Air Force and have her debt forgiven.  She is definitely past her prime in looks, and she was never particularly attractive to begin with.  As she’s gotten older and faced more sexual rejection, she’s become more bitter and kind of a bitch.  To comfort herself, she claims that guys don’t want to date her because they are intimidated by her spiritual-mindedness (i.e. piety).  She has a fairly miserable life, and it doesn’t look like it is going to get much better for her.  Part of me wonders if she would have been better off if my dad simply found a decent enough guy for her to marry and told her to marry him.  Maybe she was always going to be miserable; I don’t know.  But I have a hard time believing she’s better off being single and bitter.

Anyway, perhaps fathers should consider taking a more active role in their daughters’ lives, particularly when it comes to marriage.  I can’t think of a good reason for young women delaying marriage past the age of nineteen, and I can’t think of a good reason why fathers should not bring some perspective to the table when it comes time for marriage.  But maybe that’s just me.

* “Christian” here referring to those who are members of my particular denomination.

Whence Ruin?

Vox asks a simple question:

Why do women ruin everything, even for themselves?

This isn't a rhetorical question.  I'm genuinely curious to hear what reasons both men and women would posit to explain the oft-observed phenomenon of women actively ruining things, not only male-dominated organizations and pursuits, but even, as VP commenter AmyJ noted, female-dominated ones:

Women even ruin things meant for women. I've noticed on Pinterest, if someone makes even the slightest negative comment, there are calls for not just banning the commenter, but negative comments all together. The mantra seems to be "I shall not be offended or you will pay"

Is it jealousy combined with solipsism?  That doesn't seem to explain why most women who enjoy diverse interests pursue them in the first place.  Is it simply shortsightedness combined with illogic leading to a failure to grasp obvious consequences?  Is it some sort of Groucho Marx syndrome and being discontent with any club willing to accept them?

Personally, I think the better question is:  why is humanity in general so self-destructive?  The tendency towards “ruining everything” isn’t found strictly, or necessarily predominately, in women.  Men have a very healthy dose of self-destructive policies, as would be evidenced by the general behavior of predominately male-run democratic states from the beginning of the 20^th century onward.  A good portion of the current path of self-destruction that the united states are currently on can be attributed to a remarkably large number of men (like Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Greenspan, Bernanke, and Nixon, to get the list started).  Many companies and businesses have been driven to ruin by stupid and short-sighted men (think: Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, eg.)  Women are far from have a monopoly on ruinous and self-destructive behavior.

More to the point, the stupidest decision-making behavior I have ever been privy to observe occurred among a group of men who were the nominal leaders of a church I once attended.  Even though I was barely 20 at the time I placed membership with the church, I participated in the business meetings of the congregation (the church was small, having roughly 40 members, of which 7 were adult Christian males).  As can probably be guessed, the church had serious budget issues, and was constantly trying to find ways to avoid bankruptcy.  Within a couple of months of placing membership, I went through the budget item by item to figure out ways to reduce costs, increase savings, and have a more sustainable budget.  All but two of my 20+ proposals were voted down in meetings, and each of my proposals led to a lot of heated debates.  When drawing up my proposed budgets, I included projected balance sheets, and compared them to projections of the current budget.  As time went on, it became clear that my projections were correct, and that my proposals would have prevented a lot of problems.  A good number of my proposals ended up being implemented, but only after it was too late.  My last budgetary proposal, delivered nearly a year ago, of selling the church building remains currently rejected, but it will, I suspect, ultimately come to pass.

Worse yet, I was the youngest man of the whole bunch.  The men I dealt with, with the exception of the Minister, Kevin, whom I still hold in high regard, were all a bunch of spineless fools.  They destroyed the finances of the congregation they claimed to serve, reneged on their employment contract with the minister, and largely refused to deal with any sort of problem, both financial and spiritual, until it had metastasized.  Their old age did not bring them to wisdom, but to a paralyzing fear of change and the unknown.  They were completely incapable of dealing with the problems before them, and had no business considering or calling themselves church leaders, or taking on the role thereof.

Thus, it should be clear why I think the question as to why women ruin everything is misguided.  The problem, ultimately, is not female nature, but human nature.  Ultimately, mankind is generally a self-destructive lot, which is why mankind never achieves a permanent plateau of success.  There is a lot of ruin in a nation, among both its males and females alike, and only God truly knows why this is yet the case.

Spot the Problem

A woman writes Dan Savage for relationship advice:

I turn to you now for advice. Five months ago, I married the man of my dreams. He was driven, hardworking, loving, and happy. We had amazing, cosmic, and connected sex, and we enjoyed pleasing each other. We have been together for a little over a year. I realize now that it was WAY too soon to get married, but I let my romantic side get the best of me, and so here we are. We are miserable. Now when it comes to sex, it’s the furthest thing from my mind. When it does happen, it’s very one-sided. I rarely get off, and if I do, it’s on my own after he finishes because “it’s too much work” to get me off. That’s problem one.

Problem two is that on our wedding night, he broke his foot and couldn’t work as a result. After his foot healed, he quit his job. He told me he “didn’t want to do that kind of work anymore.” So now I work an exhausting full-time job, support both of us on a salary barely big enough for one, and come home every day to a filthy apartment. Here’s what my husband does all day: plays video games and jerks off to porn. Every time I broach the subject of him getting a job or picking up after himself, all hell breaks loose. I have brought up marriage counseling, because lately neither of us is the best at respectfully communicating, and his response is “You can go, but I’m not going.” I thought about withholding sex until he finds a job, but I don’t know how big of a threat that poses as we have sex MAYBE once a week as it is. I would appreciate any advice you have for making this work, as I am not ready to give up.

A couple of thoughts occur to me:

One, I find it interesting and a little amusing that the woman ranks the lack of sexual satisfaction as a more pressing concern than the fact that her husband has devolved into a worthless piece of shit, and a pitiful excuse for a male.  I would venture to conclude that women find sex to be quite important, contra the meme of female sexual frigidity.  This might also explain why jobless, loser alphas can still score hotties:  as long as the sex is good, character deficiencies can be rationalized away.  My guess is that women will be less concerned about male promiscuity when choosing a mate than men.

Two, gaming and porn use are not attractive to women.  Virtual reality may be interesting to the more neutered young males of modern society, but they do not inspire the tingles.  Especially when one is playing videos games and watching porn instead of doing something productive, like having a job or, in the absence of a job, taking care of the house.  Getting upset at having any form of responsibility doesn’t engender attraction, either, apparently.

Three, not all women are heartless bitches.  It seems to be a meme, albeit a rather cartoonish one, that all women are the devil incarnate, sent straight from the bowels of hell to destroy men in the pursuit of short-sighted, selfish gold-digging.  There are certainly some decidedly evil women in this world, but it must also be remembered that a) agood number of men are pure shit and b) not all, and perhaps not even most, women are like that.  It’s nice to see that there are apparently some women who are still committed enough to their marital vows to try to make things work even when doing so seems insurmountably difficult.

The New Slavery

Forbes:

Then last week I received a report from consulting firm McKinsey, done together with student website Chegg, which is making that pit in my stomach deeper. In October and November of last year McKinsey surveyed 4,900 former Chegg customers, a mix of young people who went to private, public, vocational and for-profit institutions. The findings are truly sobering. Nearly half of grads from four-year colleges are working in jobs that don’t require a four-year degree. A striking sub-fact: grads from public universities are 11% more likely to feel overqualified than those who went to private schools. I would have thought it would be the other way around.  The study cites a Bureau of Labor Statistics number that underlines the McKinsey findings: 48% of employed U.S. college grads are in jobs that require less than a four-year degree.

Even more chilling than those numbers is a figure I read some time ago that I can’t get out of my head: In 2011, 1.5 million, or 53.6% of college grads under age 25 were out of work or underemployed, according to a 2012 Associated Press story that used an analysis of the U.S. government’s 2011 Current Population Survey data by Northeastern University researchers, plus material from Drexel University economist  Paul Harrington, and analysis from liberal Washington, D.C. think tank, the Economic Policy Institute. [Emphasis added.]

It’s not a shock to anyone who reads this blog that college is a scam.  But more than that, college and its attendant debt are nothing more than a form of slavery, wherein people sell themselves into a form of slavery for the privilege of what has now become a meaningless status symbol.  Now that everyone has a bachelor’s degree, there is little point in proclaiming that you, too, have a bachelor’s degree.  All that is left, then, is debt and a meaningless piece of lambskin-esque paper.

The Scary Part

Is the general reaction to this story:

The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

Organizations were singled out because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.

In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

"That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review," Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.

"The IRS would like to apologize for that," she added.

The scariest part of this whole mess is that the IRS admitted that it was corrupt.  Normally, government corruption is a given, even in early eighteenth century America.  No one’s surprised to discover that there might be some sort of corruption in the government because that pretty much goes without saying.  However, all but the most despicable governments will avoid offending the citizenry’s sensibilities, and will thus refrain from admitting to corruption unless it’s accompanied by swift and decisive punitive measures.

In this case, the punishment for government corruption is … a handful of resignations.  This time through, the IRS, aka the agency that will destroy your life if you accidentally misplace a decimal point, intentionally targets non-profit political agencies that are generally concerned about the federal government being a little too power-hungry and large.  When caught, the IRS admits what it does, then offers a half-hearted apology and a couple of resignations.  This same organization would be decidedly less that content with an apology in the event that you make an honest mistake, let alone intentionally cheat on your taxes.  No apology is good enough for the IRS; the IRS demands restitution and then some at a minimum, and might even require jail time.  But when they intentionally harass you, you should be content with an apology.

Anyhow, the scariest part in this whole affair is the response of US citizens.  Most seem to be content with an apology, though some conservatives appear to be demanding restitution for those groups who were targeted.  Personally, though, I don’t see how anyone is content with the fact that the IRS agents that intentionally targeted “hostile” political groups are still alive.

In all seriousness, every person involved in this scandal should be strung up on the Jefferson memorial for all the world, to stand as a warning to other IRS agents not to abuse their power.  Furthermore, this incident should serve as a decisive argument that IRS needs to be abolished.  It is clearly nothing more than a politically abusive arm of the current regime, and does absolutely nothing to ensure fairness or justice; instead, it plays political favorites, and radically undermines the entire concept of rule of law.  Thus, the IRS should be abolished, all IRS employees should be fired and barred from working for the federal government in the future, and all those directly involved in this scandal should either put to death or serve life sentences in federal maximum security prisons.  Accepting anything less is a demand for tyranny.

The Problem of Responsibility

Free Northerner:

Society needs responsible men and men need responsibility. The obvious solution is for society to start giving young men responsibility, full responsibility. Give him his own part of life to have dominion over; give him a domain.

The whole post is worth reading, but I want to focus on this part in particular.  The problem of this modern time is that everyone demands that men be responsible, but they do not give him the freedom attendant with responsibility.  Running your own business is a crushing task in this modern age, thanks to taxes, mandatory health insurance, and the myriad costs associated with regulatory compliance (hence, as Vox notes, the decline of entrepreneurship).  Entering into a civil union is fraught with financial risk. Raising children to have any sort of independence and competence basically requires homeschooling and decoupling from modern culture, and is generally frowned on by the state.  Any man that wishes to take on any sort of real responsibility faces the strong possibility of jail time for violating any number of trivial offenses, not to mention the possibility of economic ruin in the event of making one minor mistake.

Of course, there is always the option to enjoy the pretense of responsibility by taking on a grinding, parasitic corporate job and slaving away at the sort of relationship that is passed off as husbandry and fatherhood.  In this version of life, you spend the bulk of your days at the office doing meaningless “work” to give lots of money to your wife and kids so that they can engage in petty status games.  This is the essence of feminine behavior, which is why women tend to be drawn to fields that require lots of petty paperwork.

Obviously, acting like a woman is not something a good number of men want to do, and so the calls for “manning up,” which are actually calls for men to take on the pretense of responsibility, remain unheeded.  Unfortunately, in ignoring the calls to take on the pretense of responsibility, men are starting to ignore the calls to take on actual responsibility.

In many ways, it’s difficult to blame young men for not wanting to make their own way in the world.  Thanks to nigh-unstoppable creep of government regulation and storm-trooper heavy-handedness, it’s difficult for any man to make decisions for himself without worrying whether he’ll end up facing massive fines or jail time.  Nonetheless, the responsibility that all men face—to be spiritual leaders and providers of their own families—remains fully intact, and the mere fact that it is more difficult to accomplish this call does not negate its existence or men’s amenability to it.  Just because it might be more difficult than ever to make your own way in the world does not mean that you have a free pass to spend the rest of your life in your parents’ basement playing video games.  It means you need to work hard.

If this sounds difficult and unpleasant, it’s because it is.  But responsibility remains a reward unto itself.  Therefore, it is up to each male to decide whether he will shirk his duty, or whether he will be a man.  Hopefully enough males will decide to be men, and perhaps we can have a masculine revolution.

Here Comes Gun Control

By executive order:

A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Final Rule published today in the Federal Register and a news release issued Friday by the Department of Health and Human Services, followed up with a notice to be published tomorrow, are two developments all but ignored by the mainstream press even though Vice President Joe Biden announced last week that the administration would be using executive orders to advance “gun control” goals following a Senate battle that could not muster the votes to do so legislatively.

The Importation of Defense Articles and Defense Services -- U.S. Munitions Import List references executive orders, amends ATF regulations and clarifies Attorney General authority “to designate defense articles and defense services as part of the statutory USML for purposes of permanent import controls,” among other clauses specified in heavy legalese requiring commensurate analysis to identify just what the administration’s intentions are. Among the speculations of what this could enable are concerns that importing and International Traffic in Arms Regulations may go forward to reflect key elements within the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.

This can’t really be stopped, save by an assassin’s bullet, but the measure is rather toothless, in the sense of making it impossible for people to get guns.  Some people will find it more expensive or more time-consuming to acquire guns in some instances, but people will still have guns, for the most part.  Revoking people’s right to bear arms is going to be tricky, to say the least, if not downright impossible.  I imagine that gun confiscation will also be impossible given how few guns are registered, or even in the possession/ownership of the original purchaser.  Keeping guns from the government will be fairly easy, with a little bit of preparation.  So, while another round of gun control sucks, it’s not the end of the world, nor is it anywhere close to a complete confiscation.

This Doesn’t Engender Much Sympathy

The Guardian has one of those annoyingly Luddite human interest stories:

The three women, who trained at a church typing school in 1995, worked in local government offices but lost their jobs when computers were introduced and they did not know how to use them. So they set up their own small business in the bus station, charging between 200 and 300 Rwandan francs (20-30p) for each page. A page takes about two minutes to type and a good day will see them getting about 20 customers each.

Based in a bustling alleyway between the Nyabugogo bus station and the main road outside, they work rain or shine – with a large umbrella sheltering them from either extreme.

"We write all kinds of things," Mukankwiro said. "The most common things are project proposals, applications for jobs, CVs, judicial letters, that sort of thing. But sometimes we do write love letters for people. It's usually men who come and they are embarrassed at first but we tell them they need to stop it and just tell us what to write. Then we just get on with it."

She particularly enjoys typing works of fiction. "I also like it when people ask us to type up the plays they have written. They are always fun to read. I enjoy those a lot."

Her colleague, Marie Gorette Nimukuze, 35, said the work was strictly private and the typists would never reveal customers' secrets. "It's very confidential what we do, we never tell people what we've written. When people ask us to write letters there is a trust there and we don't break it."

But the march of technology will not leave them in peace. Just behind their office, a computer shop has opened, offering internet and printing services.

"Computers are really taking away our business," said Nimukuze. "More and more people are learning how to use computers so in the future they won't need us any more."

Naturally, the implicit spin is that technology is destroying something romantically retro, and seems to be nothing more than some sort of bait for curmudgeons.  You can basically feel sympathy for these women right up until you ask yourself the logical question:  why haven’t they purchased laptops?

Granted, they’d need more capital to run computers and printers than typewriters and ribbons, but given the market trends and the increasing ubiquity of technology in that corner of the world, holding on to a low-tech paradigm doesn’t actually make much sense from a business perspective.  Thus, it seems a little ludicrous to feel sorry for people who are facing a problem with an obvious and relatively affordable solution.

Whatever Happened To The Presumption of Innocence?

Apparently the IRS believes it can read your email without first getting a warrant:

The Internal Revenue Service doesn't believe it needs a search warrant to read your e-mail.

Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers say that Americans enjoy "generally no privacy" in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications -- meaning that they can be perused without obtaining a search warrant signed by a judge.

The presumption of innocence is fundamental to common law, of which the US is supposed to be an adherent.  As I’ve noted before, the presumption of innocence should preclude the government from acting in any way to search for and/or prevent crimes from occurring.  Really, the government should only seek to redress crimes that have already occurred.  As such, the IRS has no business monitoring emails without a warrant.

Of course, the federal tax code is so complex that it’s likely that everyone at some point in their lives has violated it.  And once you work from that understanding, it becomes a little more clear as to why the IRS thinks that it has a right to monitor online communication without a warrant.  We’re all criminals now.

Standing on Shoulders

Robert Higgs has a lament:

There are now many more libertarians in the world than there were fifty years ago. Libertarian writing has increased greatly, and the readership of libertarian literature has increased substantially, especially since the development and widespread adoption of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Yet, it seems to me, we no longer have libertarians of the same stature as the giants of the past two or three generations. Where today are the libertarians comparable to Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, James Buchanan, and Thomas Szasz?

To make use of a metaphor, once a foundation is laid, you start building a house.  Mises, Hayek and the rest have all laid important groundwork in the realm of libertarian economic analysis.  Now that the groundwork is laid, though, it’s time to move on.  Most people who build on this foundation, then, are going to focus on the details of niche subjects, as seen through this particular lens, few are going to add popular, foundational work.  And that’s okay.

Ultimately, once a broad paradigm is established, you can only add depth to it.  This happens in every branch of science, both physical and social, and ultimately ends when a paradigm exhausts itself.  It has happened before, and will happen again.  Therefore, there is little need to bemoan the absence of intellectual giants in the realm of libertarian economic analysis.  The foundation is laid, and all that’s left is the detail work.