The Problem is Always People, Not Systems

Louis Michael Seidman recently wrote a New York Times Opinion piece about we should give up on the Constitution.  I find it particular interesting to read, but fairly predictable.  I’m not really interested in dissecting his work piece by piece, but it occurs to me that there is a fundamental premise that Mr. Seidman (or Professor Seidman?) seems to miss.

Throughout the op-ed piece, he talks about how the system established by the Constitution is not working, yet he fails to recognize that human beings, especially those who aspire to be politicians, are prone to dominate.  While correctly pointing out that the history of our nation under the Constitution is one of people flaunting it for their own preferences or gain, he doesn’t seem to understand that it is because of man’s own desire for power is what drives men in power to override the will of the people they are supposed to represent.

The fact is, we must always be aware of the Libido Dominandi or “Lust to Dominate” that is inherent in all of us.  For many, it just happens to be a larger desire than most others.  In some cases, this manifests itself in a customer tormenting a barista at a Starbucks for not getting the temperature exactly at 140 degrees, even though the barista has science on her side due to having the thermometer.  But for a small percentage of us, there is a huge desire to either “fix” the rest of the dumb masses or to simply cash in the easy way by getting the dumb masses to vote for them.

This is the primary driving force behind many of the politicians you’ll meet today, even at the local levels.  They desire to fix us to meet their own tastes and desires or they simply are looking for an easy job.

While the Constitution does have some arguable flaws, if all the men who were elected to high office took their oath seriously, we wouldn’t see much of the large messes we are seeing today.  But men are not angels and so we always look for our own angles and advantages, especially when it comes to those in power.

There isn’t much that can be done to remedy this.  Changing human behavior is like changing the location of the moon.  It can be done, but it takes an enormous about time, energy, and resources.

A Woman Lectures Men And (Surprise) Gets It Wrong

Yesterday, I read this article about 7 things men can do to prevent abortions.  To be quite honest, I do have my problems with it, largely because it was written by a woman who obviously doesn’t understand men.  But let me first address here 7 points before I get into that:

1. Make a personal commitment today to stop looking at pornography, stop engaging prostitutes and stop visiting strip clubs.  First of all, what do those activities have to do with abortion?  If men were the heartless sex hounds that we supposedly are, would we not just turn to actual women and impregnate them more frequently?  As a Christian man, I do agree that such activities are immoral, but at the same time, I also recognize a fundamental fact: men want sex.  If a husband or long-term boyfriend is caught engaging in any of these activities, I will say that his wife or girlfriend is not satisfying his needs.  This is actually the more likely scenario as sex addiction is rare and often confused for normal male desire by most women.
2. Make a personal commitment today to stand against sexual violence, rape and incest.  No sane man would support sexual violence, rape, or incest.  Even so, abortions performed in relation to rape or incest account for less than 5% of all abortions (I dare say it is probably less than 1% but I don’t have the exact figures).
3. If you are Christian and have strong views, read this Susan B. Anthony essay and make a commitment today to be a better type of Christian husband.  As a Christian husband, being one is actually easy and doesn’t require a lot of commitment.  In any case, men require respect from their wives, not just love.  Love is easy to come by, but we need to be respected.  This means that Christian wives will have to submit to their husbands and trust in their judgments.  A submissive Christian wife, however, is not a human doormat.  None of this matters in relation to the topic of the article, though, as most abortions do not occur between married couples or couples in long-term relationships.
4. Make a personal commitment today not to pressure a woman for sex of any kind when she says, "No," "I don't feel well" or "I'm tired."  Again, nothing to do with abortions as married couples or couples in long-term relationships tend not get abortions.  At the same time, part of being a submissive Christian wife is to fulfill your husband’s sexual needs regardless of how you feel.  If he truly loves you, he will be sensitive to your needs as well.  However, he is more willing to be a better husband provided his needs are fulfilled as well.  The measure of any good marriage is how often the couple have sex.  Women shouldn’t fear this as they can have sex much more often than men since most of the time we do all the work.  Lastly, if a wife has any problems downstairs that would make sex uncomfortable, keep in mind there are other ways to satisfy your husband sexually.  Again though, we find another issue that has nothing to do with abortion or the causes for it.  If you aren’t having sex, then there is no need for abortion, right?
5. Make a personal commitment today to know a woman for at least 6 months to one year before having intercourse with her.  I can agree with this as a Christian man.  However, as an unconventional Christian man, if your intention is to marry this women, then you need not set a time limit.  My mother was a little unnerved when my brother got his long-term girlfriend pregnant two months before their wedding.  I simply told my mother that they were, in fact, married and were just waiting on the ceremony.  This is the real reason why having frequent sex with multiple people is so damaging: it damages your chances of having a healthy relationship with a single person.  You are more likely to get divorced or split up if you have more and more sexual partners in the past.  This reason, however, is a valid one in regards to abortion.  Frequent hook-ups are the primary cause for abortions, coupled with a culture that encourages women to pursue a career over motherhood.
6. Make a personal commitment today not to take advantage of any woman who has been drinking or is impaired.  No sane man would do this either.  This sin is usually the result of loners who are unable to hook-up with women from the get go.  However, I think women, especially young college goers, should be avoiding parties where they will find themselves in that situation.  I don’t cross a busy interstate and blame the car that subsequently hits me, do I?  You have to recognize the dangers of being a women, seeing as how you are the physically weaker sex.  Also, often times when this does happen, the man himself has had as much to drink if not more than the women and his judgment is impaired as well.  It does not excuse his behavior, but getting drunk around drunk men is just a bad idea all around.
7. Make a personal commitment today to stop smooth-talking and lying to women to "get in." True ALPHA men do not need to lie to “get in.”  It is the BETA males who lie about themselves in order to hook-up and the failure of women to see through it.  As for smooth-talking, it works so why should men give it up?  How about women who go to the places where the smooth-talkers are?  They know full well that the point of those places is to get banged by a smooth-talking liar.  They just like the idea of being pursued by a suitable ALPHA male.

So we have three reasons that directly relate to the reasons why abortions occur and we have four that have absolutely nothing to do with it.  There would be less abortions if there was less promiscuity, not necessarily a disrespect for women in general.  As a Christian who is morally opposed to abortion, I have quite frankly given up on the political solution and now view it as a symptom of a corrupt and decadent society, not a root cause.  The root cause is a culture that encourages and celebrates promiscuity.  You want abortions to end?  That’s great but don’t expect Republicans to ban it, the courts to change the laws, or the pro-life groups to make any headway with any Congressional member.  Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the space between a proton and neutron in an Oxygen atom.  A better solution is to drive abortion clinics out of business by creating an environment where it becomes unthinkable.

Laura Trice, the author of the article, means well, but I  don’t think she is seeing this issue from anywhere else but her own solipsistic viewpoint.  While I have many disagreements with what she said, I think we would both agree that being against promiscuity and for healthy long-term relationships is the ultimate solution to abortion.   She just needs some focus, that’s all.

Personal Note:  I thought about blogging about what has been happening to me in the past two weeks, but I don’t think it merits a full blog entry.  Basically, two weeks ago I was laid off at my job.  The next day, I had three interviews and a job offer.  I’ve taken the offer and started working this week.  I am just starting to get back into the flow of things in my life, hence the lack of blog entries for the past couple of weeks from me.

Murderous Moocher

It appears that no good deed goes unpunished:

Police say a York County woman admitted to killing a 67-year-old family friend in Florida and leaving the woman’s body underneath a pile of Christmas presents in her own home.

Patty White, 40, has been arrested for allegedly killing 67-year-old Michele O’Dowd in her Jacksonville home Friday. Jacksonville police indicated to CBS Charlotte that while no charges have been filed to this point, the case against White will be a homicide case.

Jacksonville police said White stole two of O’Dowd’s charge cards following her death, attempting to take money out of her account from at least two area ATMs. Police added that O’Dowd let White, a family friend, stay with her when she fell on difficult times.

WTEV reports that O’Dowd’s body was discovered by her twin brother that same day.

“There is nothing worse than when you walk inside and find your own sister brutally murdered over a stupid debit card,” the brother told WTEV.

On Saturday, York police pulled over a car driven by White’s mother that White was riding in. When White interviewed with detectives, White confessed to murdering O’Dowd, according to a police report and a release.

York Police Chief Andy Robinson told CBS Charlotte that it is unlikely White will fight extradition back to Florida, where she will be charged. Robinson said that White should be heading to Florida sometime this week.

White is currently being held at the York County Detention Center.

What we have here is a microcosm of what happens when you take away a moocher’s source of income.  Patty White was probably a impulsive customer of many vices, such as alcohol, gambling, and recreational drug use.  In her 20s, she probably rode the man carousel and found that when she reach her mid-thirties, she was no longer desirable.  Subsequently, she began to just mooch off of friends rather than her various lovers.

Michele O’Dowd was probably just fulfilling what she perceived as her Christian duty to help those who are downtrodden.  Unfortunately, she forgot the very important lesson of keeping boundaries with those kind of people and she paid the ultimate price for her mistake.  I am not condemning Michele O’Dowd for her generosity or her heart, merely her foolish behavior with regards to Patty White.

While it does not say in the article, and most of what I have said so far can be taken for a grain of salt, I am guessing that Patty White asked Michele O’Dowd for money and that when she was refused what she believed was her due, she killed that women.  Her actions following the murder seem to indicate as much.

When moochers are denied their source of income, they react with violence.  Productive citizens usually go out and find another job.  But moochers only understand the concept of money, not the concept of the proper way to get it.  This is why you see the elderly believing such ridiculous lies as Republicans wanting to push them down the stairs.  They actually are so afraid of losing their welfare benefits, which are awarded to them for being old, that they will believe anything the looters tell them.

With such an irrational mindset, it is not hard to see them engaging in murder in order to get money.  It is unfortunate that this happened, but I won’t be surprised if it happens much more frequently in the future.

It’s Not the System; It’s the People Behind It

Have you ever seen the movie A Fish Called Wanda?  If you haven’t, there was a funny scene in there where Wanda tells off Otto about his apparent intellectual limitations.  Basically, Otto doesn’t like being called stupid (he’s actually a good weapons man) and states that stupid people don’t read philosophy.  Wanda retorts, citing several humorous examples, that just because you read philosophy doesn’t mean you understand it.  In other words, you can read all the books in the world but without the wisdom to understand what it is you are reading, you may as well be reading it in a foreign language that you don’t understand.

Human beings have limited intellectual capacity and usually have more reason to behave irrationally than rationally.  When you remove the consequences of losses, when you provide safety and security, people have little reason to act in their own best interests simply because their own best interests are taken care of.  While few people can recognize the situation and rise above the challenges, these are rare people indeed.  Most people are more content to barely skirt by and come to a point where they can enjoy life on their own terms, if possible.

So when I say that I don’t trust the government to act in the best interests of the people, I don’t mean the system of government we live under, but the people operating that system.  Think of government as the worst kind of corporation, the one that most Leftist Statists gripe about all the time.  If a private entity exacted money from you the way the government does, there would be Hell to pay.  If a private corporation (and by ‘private’ I mean one that gains profits independent of the government) were to travel the globe and bomb people in order to serve some kind of foreign interest, we’d all be rising up in revolt.  But still we remain passive because we believe that the government is acting in our best interests.

Think of the person you hate most in life.  Think of that person who annoys you to no end, who is completely unaware of his or her social awkwardness or has absolutely no social filter to speak of.   He or she could be mean-spirited, bigoted, or just plain stupid to a fault.  Now think of that person working as a government bureaucrat with the all important job of making your life better.  Do you honestly think that this person would fulfill the role to your benefit?

As a software developer, I’ve gained a lot of experience in designing software systems.  Most of the designs are awesome and flawless in their theoretical applications.  But once we’ve implemented them, there is always something that goes wrong.  It could be a logic error, a design flaw we missed, or just a limitation we never thought we’d reach.  Once system I worked on involved processing electronic documents as fast and as efficiently as possible.  And yet, our clients always managed to provide us with that one document that could break the system.

The point is that no matter how perfect the system appears on paper, at the the end of the day there is always the human factor to totally screw it up.  Just about every government program, even the ones that involve death and destruction, were started with the best of intentions.  The people who were elected or hired to operate these programs by and large started out with the best of ambitions.  They wanted to help people, to make things turn out for the better in this world.  They wanted to make our lives a little better than it has been.  But if you ever had a sit down with a politician who has been in the game for decades and I guarantee you’ll see either a cynical or corrupt human being devoid of that ambition with few exception.  More than likely, you’ll see both.  This is because they’ve come to realize that all their optimism doesn’t mean a damn thing when it comes to application of their ideals.

In the end, most people who live in the safety and security of government will react violently when that is threatened.  We’ve been seeing it now for the past few years due to the economic contraction that is taking place.  Between the Greeks to the Cheeseheads, government workers and beneficiaries are suddenly finding out that they may have to get real jobs for a change.  From the top to the bottom, everyone just wants to get by and screw the rest of us.

I wish I could say that there was a system that could fix this, that there was that perfect, Utopian society, a kind of city on the hill that was just over the horizon.  But there isn’t.  Whether you are anarchist, capitalist, corporatist, or Socialist, it really doesn’t matter.  Human beings are what they are and there will always the shrewd tyrant who makes his or her way through to a position of leadership.  And all the while there will be a large group of people who will gleefully implement the tyrant’s immoral acts all the while protesting that they were just doing their jobs when confronted with their crimes.

The best we can do is to eat, drink, and find enjoyment in our work whatever that may be.  This comes from the hand of God, after all (if you believe in Him that is).

Ordinary People

There is no limit to the evil that man can do.  We often view the world’s tyrants as the most evil men and women who have ever walked the Earth.  In this day and age, most people in Western civilization look at Adolf Hitler as the ultimate representation of evil.  He did commit a blatant act of genocide and he certainly was a very wicked man.

But Hitler alone could not have accomplished everything he is remembered for.  Indeed, there were thousands upon millions of people who were either actively assisting his cause or passively allowing it to go on.  The same can be said for all the other murderous tyrants who have existed throughout history.  For every murderous thug in leadership, there is no shortage of ordinary people who are all too willing to kill for their leader.

Human beings, by and large, crave to be lead.  There is a deep need in all of us for someone to tell us what to do with our lives.  And there is never any shortage of wicked men who seek to lead people in a manner that runs counter to their own best interests.  The sad fact is, there are very few true individuals in this world, at least from where I stand.  A true individual is someone who does not submit to any human authority.  Do you honestly think that most people are capable of being a true individual?  While I have hope that people can overcome their baser instincts, I’m not holding my breath.

It was ordinary people, with families and normal childhoods and rational moral values who marched the Jews into the gas chambers.  It was skilled craftsmen who built the damn things and they knew exactly what they were going to be used for.  I still recall the conversation that Randal had with Dante in Clerks about the ‘innocent’ contractors working on doomed Deathstar in The Return of the Jedi.  What was interesting about that conversation was that a contractor who was in the store spoke up and told them that those people knew exactly what they were doing and were not innocent.  He proceeded to tell them a story about how he turned down a good job due to his own moral values.

So when someone says that the TSA agents are doing their jobs and that their orders are merely wrong, tell them that they’re idiots.  If the orders are bad, any sane person could easily turn them down.  But people believe that they are not responsible for their actions when they are handed down by higher authorities.  If anything, the Milgram experiment proved that (and it continues to do so today).   Milgram himself summed up the terrible truth of human nature quite well:

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

That’s right.  In order for tyranny to reign, all that is required is not for good men to do nothing, but for ordinary people to do their jobs.  In other words, Statism will never be overcome so long as people continue to abdicate their own responsibility in tyranny.

But that’s an uphill battle to say the least.  There is nothing that people resist more than the realization that they are, or have great potential for, evil.

All Right, I’m On To You Government

So today I found this interesting video:

I had a similar incident yesterday when a traffic light at a major intersection went out.  Instead of people on the main road just blazing through the intersection, they were stopping and treating the situation like a four way stop.  It was actually quite amazing to see it because they really didn’t have to.  I mean the traffic signals weren’t blinking, they were totally dead.

It appears I was wrong about people.  They can behave rationally if the circumstances are right.  What usually happens is that people will act in their own self-interest when their property is on the line.  In this case, it was their cars and their lives.  It just goes to show that if you take away all these pointless rules, people will deal with each other in a beneficial way on their own.

Just more proof that the government is and always has been optional.

The 'Low-Church' Political Class

Vox Day wrote a great article this week where he delves into the types of people who join the police force. This is one of those things that got me thinking as well: what kind of people get employed by the government?

I'm talking about all the various government jobs that are out there. I'm fairly certain that if there is a job in the private sector, there is probably something equivalent in the government. I know I could be a software developer in some government agency somewhere. In fact, I'm fairly certain that I would make more money, get better benefits, and maybe even have a security clearance to find out what Sandy Berger did steal from the National Archives.

So why don't I do it? Well, the reason is simple: I got into software development because it is the profession I like doing and because I despise government work. From what I've heard, most Federal workers don't do much of anything. While I may be a more productive blogger (or porn-viewer), I would still find myself feeling like I'm wasting my life on the taxpayer's dime. I'll take wasting my time on my company's client's dime, thank you very much. At least they willing gave us money in return for the product my company produces.

I believe this is the main thing that separates many in the private workforce from the government worker: those in the private sector love what they do for a living and are probably less likely to view it as a job with which to get by. I know that there are many people who view their job as just a job in the private sector and there are many people who love their job in the government (watch out for those people).

I remember when my wife and I went to get our marriage license (now, I hated having to do it, but it's what I had to do in order to get married). The courthouse clerk who handled our paperwork was probably the most impressive bureaucrat I've ever met. He was well dressed, unlike everyone else who looked like they had just come from the street, memorized everything, knew where everything was, and was probably just as old as I was. This was a man who loved his job as a courthouse clerk. I was quite impressed with him, needless to say.

But I don't think most people ever join government employment because they love the work. More than likely they do it for two major reasons: they want to get paid well or they like to bully people and no one else was hiring. From the Post Office to the military, I'm sure you find your fair share of people with a host of mental illnesses running things in the government. These are not people who you want running a hamburger stand. I know that politicians are bad, but think about the kinds of people who gleefully carry out their 'orders' without questioning their own conscience.

Have we considered that maybe, just maybe, most government workers have suppressed that little voice in their head that says, "Hey, that's a bad idea", when they are on the job? Maybe these people suffer from a mental illness, maybe they don't, but I do know no sane person would do half the things that the government does on a regular basis.

It is high time that those of us in the productive sector started looking down on the government worker as nothing more than an authoritarian moocher. Now I know that's asking for trouble, but if we keep on letting them walk over us, they will continue to bully the common man. There are enough laws on the books that allow bureaucrats to do just about anything they want and get away with it. Mark my words, until we start tackling these things head on, no amount of voting will resolve anything.

The political class, as it is being called these days, doesn't include just the 'elected' leaders, but the hundreds of thousands of people who 'work' for the government. It is high time we held them accountable as well.

Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

The implications of some of the ideas in this article may seem immoral, contrary to our ideals, or offensive. We state them because they are true, supported by documented scientific evidence. Like it or not, human nature is simply not politically correct.

Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn't sexist, and blonds are more attractive.


Via


"Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature" Gets Midlife Crisis Wrong