Ahk! The should-have-been-obvious third reasons Libertarians will never have much power.

   I recently wrote about two reasons Libertarians will never have much political power. I forget a third.

Right-wing populism in America has always amounted to white identity politics, which is why the only notable libertarian-leaning politicians to generate real excitement among conservative voters have risen to prominence through alliances with racist and nativist movements. Ron Paul's racist newsletters were not incidental to his later success, and it comes as little surprise that a man styling himself a "Southern Avenger" numbers among Rand Paul's top aides.

   One of the reasons I find this to be true is because libertarian ideas in regards to topics such as charity sound a lot better in theory than in practice and the practice of these ideas benefit those who are more well-to-do and harm those who are not. As people of color tend to be more worse off than white people, libertarian ideas tend to benefit white people. It is no surprise, then, that white supremacist groups can be found to be strong supporters of libertarian-leaning politicians such as the Pauls. But as the white population shrinks, so does the potential voting base. Now, there could come a tipping point to where libertarian ideas will no longer be as advantageous to whites over persons of color, at which time libertarian ideas could become more appealing to persons of color. I suspect that point is well off in the future at this point.

And now a second reasons Libertarians will never have much power

   Just wanted to provide some quick thoughts on Libertarians. They're just so funny sometimes.

   The first reason they'll never have much power is because many insist on calling the purity police. To those Libertarians, Ron and Rand Paul are not "True" Libertarians. While I'll agree that neither man fits the mold of what an ideal Libertarian would look like (besides the fact that both are actually members of the Republican party, but they are Republicans who espouse Libertarian concepts), how do these Libertarians (who apparently believe they themselves are pure enough) think they'll ever have a successful political party if they won't accept people into the party for not being pure enough? That's going to limit membership (maybe this is why the Pauls are Republicans?) and, frankly, there is strength in numbers.

   And now just yesterday I came across another potential pitfall. A good number of Libertarians probably don't like giving their information out to groups in the name of privacy. Would they be willing to go against this ideology for the sake of the party? Maybe. But if not, that's going to limit the party's ability to raise money and recruit volunteers if Libertarians are unwilling to give the party their contact information.

The baseball analogy - just because you aren't perfect doesn't mean further evaluation cannot be made.

   In a post from last year, I used an analogy of a broken clock being correct twice a day versus a working clock never being correct in regards to Ken Ham's silly comment that, "Evolutionary scientists have changed 'common knowledge' multiple times over the past century, yet the Bible has not changed." This really should not give the Bible any credibility, but it does in Ham's Bizarro-World where up is down and left is right.

   A similar argument I see used against science is that it occasionally gets things wrong, just like {name of field of study or occupation*} occasionally gets things wrong! An analogy I think can be applied to this argument is that of a hitter's batting average (in the sport of baseball...but this argument could be applied to other sports, such as a quarterback's completion percentage (American football) or a basketball player's shot or free throw percentage...basically anything that uses a percentage is best). Would anyone honestly claim that a batter that hits .350 is equal** to a batter that hits .150 all because both occasionally miss hitting the ball now and then? I would seriously hope not!

   Now, to be fully honest, science gets things wrong a lot. This is because science has a process for filtering out incorrect ideas. I don't know of any other system that has such a filter. This is what really makes science effective; it's not really about the percentages. The point, though, is how stupid it is to even bring up such points in the first place since the percentages are never even evaluated. Arguments like this are little but simple-minded dismissals of science.

* This can be many things...astrologists, clinical therapists...even faith healers or prayer could be inserted in here. Basically, this can be about anything that does not clearly use the scientific method. (I know, "clearly" is a very vague qualifier, but I must leave this quite vague because I have seen this argument so broadly used.)

** Well...OK, sometimes batters with worse batting averages are considered better if they hit a lot of home runs when they do hit the ball versus someone who hits often but typically only hits singles. This is essentially known as "slugging percentage." For the sake of argument, let's assume all else is equal.

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   Actually, I've had this post sitting in draft for quite some time. I realized this was still in draft when I heard about people defending "psychic" Sylvia Brown, in regards to her claim that Amanda Berry was dead, because "everyone makes mistakes. Even doctors, lawyers … Psychics." Yeah...because everyone is harping on Brown for not being 100% correct! (sarcasm)

Devil and Angel on the Shoulder - How it works in real life

   So a few weeks ago I was watching the morning news and their "Morning Buzz Question" was in regards to food stamps. One obviously Republican responder got to have his answer put up on the air in which he(?) made the remark that people on food stamps aren't supposed to be "feasting like Royalty." Yes, I'm quite sure the word "royalty" was even capitalized. The implication, if I must explain, is that people on food stamps are living the high life. This sounded remarkable like my coworker I ranted about last year. Not wanting to repeat essentially the same post again on how much a load of bullshit such a remark is, I was thinking of another way to tackle this type of thinking. The thought that came to me was that of the angel and devil on a person's shoulder trying to influence the actions of a person.

   In this place I like to call reality, things don't seem to quite work this way. Rather than three parties involved, there are really only two, which involves the devil convincing the angel that a bad deed is actually for the better. These Republicans, it would seem, have their angelic side* that realizes it is wrong to not care about the poor. But their demonic side is concerned about #1. Need I say who #1 is? They don't want to have to dish out any money to take care of the poor. So they find "reasons" (read: excuses) for why their money not need be used to take care of the poor. In cases like this and in that earlier post, the "reason" is that the poor are doing just fine; better, even, then this probably middle-class Republican. Or at least that's the start of it. The other part is how they are doing compared to the amount of work they are thought to do. Because, though you can't tell from the comment here or in the previous post, there is a belief in conservative circles that people make money based on how hard they work. The harder you work, the more money you make. So if you're poor, you must be a lazy bum. Then if you're this lazy bum, you don't deserve to be "feasting like Royalty." The overall point is that these Republicans really have convinced themselves that they are people who care about the poor but it is the poor who are to blame for either not deserving care and/or receiving sufficient care as is. Never mind if these excuses are true or not, the important part is that the angelic side is satisfied.

   And now for part two of this post. I was recently given more motivation for this post from a coworker based on a discussion regarding capital punishment. It was a bit funny listening to his demonic side convincing his angelic side capital punishment is for the best. His main target was mass murderers and the arguments that demonic side used included the idea that these murders don't feel anything when they commit their crimes and that the world has limited resources. First, how does he know what these criminals feel? Is he a mind reader? I won't argue that this could indeed be the case for some people, but maybe some of these murderers have come up with justifications for why their victims deserved to die, much like my coworker was justifying why these murderers could be put to death. As for the limited resources, could that also not be a reason to actually put those people back out on the streets? So that they may off a bunch more people who are using those precious resources? I'm totally not serious, but I thought it would help to demonstrate how that's really a non sequitur.

   I see such rationalizing all over the place. Even the people who one would think are mean bigots are often nice people to those they aren't bigoted toward. They just have convinced themselves that their meanness is in the right, even if their reasoning is the highly delusional belief that their imaginary god friend also disapproves.

   It also goes beyond mere moral questions. I have another coworker that I feel a bit sad for. She's rather religious and a while ago she told me that she wants to have good reasons for her faith. My first thought was that she would then no longer have faith because religious faith is all about believing without good reasons. My second thought, though, was that she is fooling herself. She's not really looking for good reasons, she's just convincing herself that she is. The result, I imagine, will be that she accepts bad reasoning thinking that it is actually good reasoning, much like she seems to think the "You aborted Beethoven" argument against abortion is a good argument when she doesn't even fully accept the argument herself. At the time, I gave her credit for at least recognizing that it is proper to have good reasons for one's beliefs. In hindsight, I probably should have pointed out that I also don't believe she'll actually follow through on her claim.

* It could also be that these people recognize that others see not caring for the poor is wrong and they are simply playing to their audience. I really don't find this likely.

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   It should be noted that what I am talking about here is one of the ways in which people deal with cognitive dissonance. This post, I think, focuses on the method where people "focus on more supportive beliefs that outweigh the dissonant belief or behavior." Sadly, as I discuss in this post, those "more supportive beliefs" are based on lies and people lying to themselves to the point where they believe their own lies.

Failure to reason on the Day of Reason

   So, I hope everyone had a good National Day of Reason yesterday. No surprise, though, that some conservatives, like Penny Nance, lost their shit.

You know, the Age of Enlightenment and Reason gave way to moral relativism. And moral relativism is what led us all the way down the dark path to the Holocaust… Dark periods of history is what we arrive at when we leave God out of the equation.

   Actually, morality has been essentially relative throughout human history. Her morality is relative — relative to her religion. She just doesn't realize this because she believes her morality comes from a deity, and therefore she thinks it's absolute. But her deity doesn't actually exist, so her morality actually has come from other humans. And likely there are even parts of her morality she has derived herself and are therefore unique (and thus relative) to her. Another reality is the Enlightenment actually helped get away from relative morality by beginning to demand reason for morality. No longer was it acceptable to have rules merely because someone thought their deity said so. (OK, I would expect there to certainly have been people who demanded reason for rules/laws before the Enlightenment, but this period certainly represented a bigger push in this direction. We got the formation of this country out of this, as one example!) And then there's this:



   Which is not to say that Nazi Germany didn't have a relative morality, but it's the same relative morality that Penny Nance has — again, this is the type of relative morality where the people who hold this morality to be, not relative like it actually is, but absolute.

   There was also this "gem":

You know, G. K. Chesterton said that the Doctrine of Original Sin is the only one which we have 3,000 years of empirical evidence to back up. Clearly, we need faith as a component and it’s just silly for us to say otherwise.

   I suspect I know what she's getting at; I've seen other Christians make a claim that essentially breaks down into a logical argument as follows:
If P, then Q. (If original sin is true, then humans will do horrible things.)
Q. (Humans do horrible things.)
Therefore, P. (Therefore, original sin is true.)

   I suspect, then, that Ms. Nance is claiming that what we actually have "3,000 years of empirical evidence to back up" is this fact that humans do horrible things. But this does not back up original sin. The logic is flawed as there could be other reasons beside P for why Q is true. Take this example:
If P, then Q. (If my dog eats my homework, I won't have homework to turn in.)
Q. (I have no homework to turn in.)
Therefore, P. (Therefore, my dog ate my homework.)

   It should be obvious that there could very well be other reasons why I don't have homework to turn in. Perhaps I didn't do it. Perhaps I did do it, but forgot it at home. It is possible that my dog did actually eat it, but not having homework is not proof of this. Likewise, the fact that humans do horrible things is not proof of original sin.

   Otherwise, I see that The Young Turks have also covered this with the focus on the comments about the Enlightenment. They cover some of the other flaws with the argument that are certainly worth mentioning, like the fact that life wasn't exactly peaches and cream prior to the Enlightenment. (Though, I will say I believe Cenk is off on his life expectancy ages. People, if they lived past infancy, tended to live to be older than 32. The reason life expectancy ages were so low was in part due to infant mortality bringing the average down. This is not to take infant mortality lightly, but rather to be clear on what I understand the facts to be, which do not match how Cenk presents them.)

Fighting lack of motivation/Laughing at WND

   So...wow! Only one post from April. That is a bit sad. I've had quite a few ideas going through my head, but I've been lacking the motivation to write. (Also, I have been focusing more on contributing to comment boards...places where people will actually read what I have to say.) I'm going to try to pick things up a bit this May, but...Spring Fever! I suspect I'll also be out training for marathons, duathlons, triathlons, and running events more. This just means I'll have to stay focused when I do write!

   Anyway, I've got some feminist and Right-Wing Nut Jobs related topics on my mind, starting today with a piece I noticed some other bloggers picked up from the World Net Nut Daily about how "Real women don't need feminism." So this one covers both! (I'll be adding my comments in red. Also, post includes sarcasm.)

“The Monstrous Regiment of Women” explains that feminists tell women not to submit to a husband [What's wrong with that?], avoid having children[Well, in my experience, it's been more like, "You don't have to have children if you don't want to," but go on...], listen to their “inner voice” [I've heard women tell other women this. Some of those women may consider* themselves to be feminists, but this doesn't mean that feminism itself is suggesting this.] and chase a career[Again, this is more saying that women can chase a career if they wish, not that they must!].

But the DVD’s voices say otherwise. They include Edinburgh University historian [1.] Sharon Adams, Jennie Chancey of Ladies Against Feminism [2.], cadet [3.] Jane Doe, former abortion provider Carol Everett [4.], homemaker Dana Feliciano, Buried Treasure Books writer [5.] Carmon Freidrich, “Domestic Tranquility” author [6.] F. Carolyn Graglia, John Knox biographer [7.] Rosalind Marshall, “Raising Maidens of Virtue” author [8.] Stacey McDonald, Schlafly [9.] and homemakers Denise Sproul and Kathleen Smith.

   Hmmm...I count up to potentially 9 women in this list of 12 women that may be women who have chased a career (everyone other than those marked as "homemakers." What's up with that?

The women show how feminism’s twisted and irrational teaching has led to disaster for American women, pushing many into a frustrating, isolated existence.

   Ah! They must be speaking from personal experience, I take it? Except...there are about 4 women (Adams, Chancey, Freidrich, and Schlafly) on this list who apparently still have careers. (Others I'd have to research. So they wrote a book** once upon a time. Are they still authors today?) By gosh, if feminism is so horrible in suggesting that women chase a career, why don't they quit*** their lines of work?

* This is not to say that they are not feminists. I say this more to mean that I'll just take them for their word at this time since I am not going to, nor can I, evaluate the truth of such a claim.

** On another hand, if having a career is so horrible, why list these women's accomplishments as authors at all?

*** Of course, this has been a criticism of Schlafly for years...well before I was even born. Then again, according to Wikipedia, "Schlafly told Time magazine in 1978, 'I have cancelled speeches whenever my husband thought that I had been away from home too much.'" Well, I guess that means her husband allowed her to chase a career and as long as she came home at his bidding, then that was A-OK! It would seem that they should have qualified that earlier statement to say "chase a career without their husband's consent."

The "You aborted Beethoven" argument, and other discussions

   I got into a bit of a conversation with a Catholic on abortion and she presented an argument about how Frederick Douglass could have been aborted and implied that it would have been horrible had that happened. I have heard a similar argument before back in 2006 when an abortion ban was on the ballot in South Dakota. Then, it was about Beethoven, and went similar to this:

Doctor 1: "I want your opinion about terminating a pregnancy. The father was syphilitic, the mother had tuberculosis. Of the four children born, the first was blind, the second died, the third was deaf and dumb, the fourth also had tuberculosis. What would you have done?"
Doctor 2: "I would have terminated the pregnancy."
Doctor 1: "Then you would have murdered Beethoven."

   This argument is deeply flawed, and I have four points to discuss on this argument. Before that, however, there is one minor flaw to address. The Beethoven story is untrue. As for Douglass, due to how slaves were often bred as though they were cattle, I find it hard to believe that there would have been much of a chance that he would have been aborted. What cattle farmer is going to help a cow abort a pregnancy? If the cow can't survive the pregnancy, sad day for the cow. Likewise, I suspect it would be a sad day for the female slave if she could not survive pregnancy. Now, I say this is a minor flaw because the truth of the set-up story does not take away from the argument. However, whenever someone lies* (or repeats a lie they heard from someone else) in order to make their point, I tend to find that to be a sign that their point is flawed and the lie is needed to help conceal the flaws.

1. It's post hoc — While this is not to be confused with the logical fallacy with a similar name, it is using end results to either criticize or praise a decision where these end results cannot be known at the time the decision has to be made. In other words, the argument is using the advantage of hindsight. (This is also known as "Monday morning quarterbacking" and is the idea behind the idiom "Hindsight is (always) 20/20.") The argument need to be adjusted to remove this hindsight. It seems that the argument can be generically viewed like "Something very positive could come out of this, therefore this should be done." This adjustment will become important for the third point.
   
2. It contains selection bias — Perhaps the most obvious flaw is that these arguments contain an extreme positive, using people who are famous as the examples. Sometimes ordinary people are used (when I have seen this, the example is the person presenting the argument hirself). But never are infamous people used, except as a counter argument. The first time I heard the counter, it may have even used the same set-up as the Beethoven claim, but instead of Beethoven, it ended up being Hitler. On this note, I tend to find it to be another sign that an argument is flawed when it invokes famous people for no apparent reason It's a good sign that the argument won't be nearly as convincing if you flip the script. A good argument really should be able to handle both extremes. (This is not to say that "pro-lifers" anti-choicers themselves won't stay consistent on the argument — I suspect many would and do — but rather that it won't be as persuasive to anyone who is undecided.)
   
3. It is a quiverfull argument (inconsistent application) — If the goal is to produce people who could possibly make an important difference in the world, then why stop with existing pregnancies?** (I'd like to hear a really good explanation for why not.) It's general probability that the more often you play a game, the more likely it is that you will eventually win (unless the game is such that it is impossible to win, of course). My brother and I are both engineers as well as the only two offspring my parents produced. What if they would not have stopped at two? Maybe if they would have produced twenty children, perhaps they could have contributed a combination of engineers and scientists amounting to twenty. What if one of those twenty would have found a cure for cancer? Now that discovery has been delayed because they didn't have those twenty children! (To be somewhat fair, Catholics do tend to encourage people to have multiple children, but they do not encourage people to have as many children as possible.)
   Update: Since posting this, the woman with whom I had this discussion has talked how she doesn't want to get married yet and doesn't want to have kids yet, although she is nearing 30 years of age. That just shows me how much more she doesn't believe her own argument than previously expected. /Update.
   
• Objection to #3: If a family has more children than they can afford, this will hurt the chances their children have at becoming successful — That general rule about probability is just that: general; it does not apply in all cases. Raising children is one of those cases as raising children costs money. Having lots of children, then, costs lots of money. Have too many children, and you won't be able to provide them with the resources they need to blossom. In regards to quiverfull families, I have heard that quite often the older children essentially raise the younger children themselves. If they're busy raising children, how are they going to have time to dedicate to their studies? Not to mention, it may very well be more difficult to afford college. But arguing that it is OK to not have children for financial reasons is a pro-choice argument!
  
• Human Factories — I talked to my brother about this and he went so far as to suggest we need to harvest sperm and eggs from people and then mix and match them and (I guess) we'd grow them in a lab. (Not sure if we quite have the technology for this quite yet, but then we should get working on it!) One of the problems with the natural, quiverfull approach is that there isn't going to be a lot of genetic diversity between the children. This solves that problem.
     Of course this wouldn't be very practical — How are all these children going to be fed?! — but I doubt many "pro-life" people are going to be rejecting this idea due to practicality; more likely they'll object over scientists "playing God." (Also, this idea could always be implemented up to the point of where it is "practical;" and I'm putting that in quotes because what is practical is going to be somewhat subjective. The point, though, is that practicality can only be used as an argument for not implementing an idea but never as an argument against the idea as a whole.)
  
  • We can take this even further yet! Being that practicality is an issue with this, the population impacts can be reduced by only using select people as breeding stock. Or/and genetic modification could be used (but then you end up with the wrath of Khan)!
    
4. It overlooks the impact of abortion on potential future offspring — I have heard, and this should come as little surprise to anyone, that people usually plan to have a certain number of children. My parents, for example, decided to only have two. So let's create a hypothetical. What if a woman who was planning to have two children would have had an abortion before having that second child? Would she have changed her mind on how many children she was going to have? Not likely. She would likely still go on to get pregnant again and have the second child. But notice what else could happen here. If she does not have the abortion, that pregnancy would result in the second child (and she won't have any more children!). What if it is this later child (the one conceived after the abortion) that ends up doing something great in the world? In this case, the abortion was necessary for this to happen! The bigger point, though, is that abortion has little impact on the number of children that are born. People aren't going to suddenly have more children if you outlaw abortion. (The main exception would be if they had as many children as they wanted, but then got pregnant again.) So this argument that something good could result by not aborting a pregnancy ends up being nearly cancelled out by essentially the same argument that something good could have resulted from the pregnancies that now won't happen because an abortion didn't.
   

* This should go without saying, but it's one thing to make up a hypothetical situation. It's another to make up a story and attempt to pass it off as though it really happened.

** It is known in psychology that humans form beliefs first and then find arguments to support these beliefs (Michael Shermer wrote about this in his book, The Believing Brain). This is backwards from how things should be — beliefs should be formed from supporting arguments. Based on the inconsistent application,*** it appears that this argument was formed incorrectly to support the belief. In other words, it's not an argument against abortion; it's an argument for maintaining the belief that abortion is wrong. I must point out that forming an argument to support an already held belief does not necessarily mean that the argument could not lead to the belief. But when an argument is inconsistently applied, this signals that the person presenting the argument is not convinced by hirs own argument. If ze is not convinced by hirs argument, why should ze think this should convince anyone else? This, more than any other reason, is why I do not buy into the argument.

*** See also: "The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion" and, for a good political example, Rick Santorum.

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   There are some other observations from that night's discussions that bothered me a bit, but I'll keep these shorter.

• I think I had heard her suggest that getting an abortion damages the uterus. I was wondering if she was going to next suggest, being that this conversation was started by a conversation about rape, that rape victims have "ways to try to shut that whole thing down." Her remark, much like Todd Akin's is essentially false. Abortion is safer than pregnancy itself. And, as with Akin's remarks, I've heard this bullshit before. (UPDATE: Another, perhaps more common, bullshit health claim regarding abortion is that abortions dramatically increase the risk of breast cancer.)
  
• There was also some implied Islamophobia. I caught part of a discussion about how Europeans are not having many children and how this has essentially lead to a void (my words, not hers) that is being filled by immigrants. The tone of voice suggested that this was not desirable. But why? Shouldn't she, being so-called "pro-life", be happy that there is at least some group of people out there that is willing to produce lots of offspring? The only way I see this making sense is if they are the Wrong Type of People. I see this as the most likely reason because I know many of those immigrants are followers of Islam and that Muslims are not very trusted. I grant that much of that mistrust is reasonable — a recent incident at University College London is evidence as to why — but I quite enjoy how "pro-life" people abandon their supposed principals when other conflicts of interest arise. (What also bothers me is how much alike Muslims are to Christians. Yet, Christians don't seem to like Muslims...my guess is simply because they are the Wrong Religion!)