America Needs A Vision, Not A 12-Step Program for Racism

I found this post linked on another friend's Facebook page: Charlottesville UVA White Nationalist Rally Proves America Is Racist. Like many articles from a leftist perspective, it refers to America's fundamental character as racist.

This country was built on systemic racism
It's comforting to insist that racial hatred is not who Americans are...
So yes, racism absolutely is American...
We have a president with a long and clear history of racism: His family company was once investigated for refusing to rent property to black Americans.

The article is a condemnation of America as such on the basis that racists exist in America.  True but not particularly convincing.

It also indicates the election of president Trump as some kind of compelling evidence as if the election wasn't a reduction of the lesser of two very bad choices.  I feel the need to remind everyone that he was running against Clinton, one of the least electable and most polarizing "most-qualified" candidates the Democratic party has ever put forth.  

Sorry, I'm still not convinced that America was racist when we had two very bad choices.

Declaring America racist is a sort of declaration that the racists have already won and that we just have to admit it so that we can start to change like so many delusional alcoholics.  But only white people have to admit it apparently because they're the only delusional alcoholics.  

They need "Racists Anonymous".  The rest of us can just carry on.

Racist by What Measure?

What does it take to qualify?  An act of racism?  A dozen?  A single statue?

I don't have any criteria on which I can draw a line between a country that is racist and one that is not.  I suspect that means this is a meaningless concept designed to foist guilt and shame upon all of the people in the country until we all capitulate and submit to our Politically Correct Overseers.  Sorry, not all of us... just "white people".

Here's what I know.  The Declaration of Independence, America's philosophical document, makes to mention of an ethno-state.  It is not an identitarian document.

It declares that all mankind is equal endowed with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  There is nothing racist about it.  

What Federal, State, and Local governments do should always be held to this standard.  And the LEFT are as guilty as the RIGHT when it comes to giving up the core principles of the United States.

If the leftists want to call America Racist, they also have to accept their part of the blame for letting government run rampant in flagrant disregard to America's original principles.

None of these actions which disregard the principles diminishes the truth of them.  They are mere bits of dirt and disease in a long-lived organism with an immune system.

Mental Hygiene, An Individual Process

The article clearly thinks that delusional alcoholic racists (whites) need to confess their racism.  It's like some kind of weird alcoholics anonymous thing where in order to give up your addiction you have to confess your helplessness to it.  I don't get how that helps personally.

Here's what I see.  

Racism is a symptom sickness of the mind, but it's not the disease.  The core disease is irrationality: ideas that don't comport with reality.   Unless you're a doctor or a scientist making a study of disease, you don't make disease your primary focus.  For most of us, we merely focus on how to keep our health, which is to say, how to incorporate hygiene into our lives.

To make avoiding disease our primary focus is to give it undue attention.  The focus of every human being should be to organize one's own thinking and life so that one can thrive.

As pertains to healthy thinking, the analogy to hygiene is exact.  A good mental practice leads to clean thinking and a lack of practice leads to unclear thinking: mistaken notions, bad logic, and ideas that do not comport with reality (such as racism or any kind of supremacism).

There is no racial input into mental hygiene.  Every person of every race has to figure this out or pay the price, which is to act from bad ideas that don't comport with reality.

There is no way to prevent a person who is unwilling to be responsible for his/her own thinking from holding bad ideas.  The final arbiter is each person him or herself.  And thus, individual responsibility is a fundamental moral requirement of mental hygiene.

Vision vs. Virtue Signaling 

Here's the bottom line.  

Calling America Racist isn't going to change my behavior (or the behavior of anyone who is already rational) because I'm already doing the hard work of clear thinking.  (And, in any case, as I'm not white, the article already excluded me.)

Calling America Racist won't affect the actions of any supremacists (no matter what the color or ethnicity) because they are not moved by reason or facts as far as I can tell.  And they will certainly not be moved by poorly supported arguments of the wrong variety.

So let's be real okay?   The only thing the author of the cited article is achieving by calling America Racist is virtue signaling.  Like masturbating, virtue signaling is designed to feel good without achieving very much.

Dear Author: Grow the fuck up.

Wanna lead America to a better place?  Start with a vision that stands for all time like the principles in the Declaration for Independence.

This is America: All of mankind is equal under the law, endowed with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Governments are instituted among men to protect these rights.

America's Ethos Requires No Revisions

This was a reply I wrote to a Facebook friend in response to his post about My fellow white Americans. | I Am Begging My Mother Not To Read This Blog.  Since he has a public Facebook account, you can access the discussion directly if you're interested, but please do be polite. We do not believe in Mob Action here.  This is a place for Individuals of Integrity.

I'm pretty proud of this reply so that's why I'm capturing it on my own blog.  I'm pretty sure he'll say I missed his point.  Maybe I did.  I still like what I wrote.

It's interesting that what you associate with personal responsibility, victim-blame, is completely different than what I associate with personal responsibility. 

To me it means this: I am responsible for my actions and the content of my character. No one else's actions speak for me. And none of my actions speak for anyone else. I am part of no collective.

Easy or not we, as humans, each start out with some condition and we do our best from there. I don't think anyone truly has it easy. Some people are blessed with material well-being and get everything handed to them... the unlucky in that set also lack purpose in their lives. Maybe the absence struggle made them weak. I don't know. What I do know is that I don't take for granted that anyone had it easy and I admire people who do the best with what they have.

In a framework of personal responsibility, what matters is that you decide for yourself what your idea of being a good person is and you do your level best to deliver. It is your own job to be the steward of your character, no matter how shitty your circumstances. That's what personal responsibility is to me. And it doesn't mean you always have to be happy... it just means you give it all you've got.

Now... the person who wrote that article clearly hates America and thinks that it stands for racism and sexism and all that stuff. And yes, sure, these have been a part of the history of the United States but it is not in the **essential ethos** of the United States, which is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence. 

Consider this... at the time of the writing of the Declaration, women didn't have the vote and black people were slaves. Some people consider this to be evidence of the moral bankruptcy of the United States and clear signs of the hypocrisy of the "founding fathers". Sure, you could look at it like that.

But what I see is that the essential ethos of America, spelled out in the Declaration, projected forward beyond their present state in universal terms: all humans equal in the eyes of the law endowed with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

The clarity of that vision was so forward-thinking that not a single word of it has to be changed in order to remain consistent with women being able to vote and the abolishment of slavery and equal treatment of gays by the law. 

So, yes, America's history includes ugly acts. Are they America's essence?

I say no.

As it happens, I also think that the solution for racism and sexism and any other kind of irrationality has to be individual in nature.  So if personal responsibility isn't part of it, I don't think there's a way.

What is Needed is A Wholesale Rejection of Identity Politics

The last few days have been witness to disquieting noise representing two different aspects of the same unseeing groupthink: Identity Politics.

On one hand, you have the people on the left who only talk about America in terms of collectives and their victimhood or privilege. They hate American and openly declare it a country of sexism and racism.

On the other hand, in Charlottesville, the collectivists of the right held a gathering based on white identity, and also demonstrating their hatred of the principles of America by wishing government to favor their own identity in a white supremacist agenda.

What do these groups have in common?

  • They define an in-group and an out-group. And if you're in the out-group facts don't matter. There is no objective framework for innocent-until-proven-guilty. The only thing that matters is that you give anything that is remotely sympathetic to the out group.
  • They don't believe individual liberty. Both sides believe that the government has a right to enact force on some subset of the population justified by some collective.
  • They don't believe in personal responsibility. Not only can your actions result in your guilt, so can actions of other members of the designated out-group. For the most part there is no way out of the out-group, but you may get some leniency if you capitulate entirely and give up your rational convictions.
  • They have a callous disregard for fact as they use smear tactics to direct social harrasment against their detractors.

I'm not an Extremist and I don't like crowds... What can I do?

I don't think attending counter-protests is the answer. At best you make yourself an easy target for violence. At worse, you make the crowd of bigots look even bigger.

Rejecting Identity Politics

No... The first, most important, thing is to reject the identity politics game. We need to recognize that all of the intellectualizing from victimhood is an appeal to create government programs that treat different classes of people in different ways.

The bitter irony is that this both the collectivists of the left AND the right want this. They only differ in details based on their selected in-groups and out-groups.

We can stop talking about privilege. Among the subset of people willing to see, there is nothing more to learn. The most dishonest versions of privilege talk admonish people to apologize for shit they didn't do. Nearly all discussions of privilege are fuel for the white nationalists. First of all, White Nationalists don't care who thinks they need to apologize. Further, the intelligentsia of the left is guilty as hell of a bullshit moral shell game that amounts to whites bearing the revisionist sins of their ancestors which can never be absolved.

When you judge white people automatically racist no matter what they do, don't be surprised that they don't seem to notice or care that you're calling them racist. You've already proven that you have no objective criteria for this other than the color of their skin, which they can't help. They would be right to dismiss you for making senseless noise. (It's for this reason alone that I almost can't fault the white supremacists for beating the drums of collectivism. "Fight fire with fire" is one of the classic blunders.)

Getting Clear

Enough about other people... Back to what we can do. We can get clear. We want "Live and Let Live" based on "Individual Reponsibility" to be the primary moral criteria on which government enacts corrective force. If a person chooses by his/her own individual action to violate "Live and Let Live", only then should the law should have something to do.

Voting in Primaries

With that said, we as citizens need to vote in primaries. They are much more important than the general elections in regards to weeding out the crazy.

We must reject candidates who demonstrate identity/collective/race baiting tactics (whether democrat or republican). We want candidtes who believe in an Objective framework of law and of evidence. We want candidates who believe in a government blind to demographics rather than one that will act to favor any demographic.

Government, properly conceived.

The most important principle of keeping your government from comitting atrocities has been and shall ever be the recognition of the right of each person to their life, liberty, and property. Governments don't create rights, which are implicit in our nature as human beings. Governments, properly conceived, recognize rights and act to protect them.

I recently heard a podcast in which someone described the role of government as coming up with a framework where people who disagree violently can disagree without the violence. We can't fix everyone's bad ideas but we can keep the government focused on diminishing the impact of them when people decide to express themselves with action.

On Damore's Firing and "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber"

For those following the controversy at Google on Engineer Damore bringing into question diversity initiatives at Google:

Related Pieces of Writing - For and Against

My Thoughts:

I think Google has every right to disassociate with someone they don't want to work with anymore. This isn't a matter of rights as I see it because free association should be the primary principle here. No one should owe anyone else a living.

But I question whether Google's action is morally defensible. It smacks of the brand of social cowardice in which half-informed outrage leads to deplatforming of people of reason who are willing to talk about difficult things. Maybe it's the same, maybe it's not.

A question we need to ask ourselves is whether we want to live in a world where you have to pass an ideological litmus test in order to work together. I will grant you that an agreement to ban physical force from social interaction is an idea. And so, there are ideas that are non-negotiable. But that idea happens to be codified in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and enforced by the government.

From the outside, it looks like Damore was attempting discussing on attitudes toward hiring and diversity initiatives, which he argued, was a choice and one with consequences. Whether you ought to try to fix possibly discriminatory outcomes with discriminatory practices seems like a discussion worth having.

I suspect that over time some people some of the better minds on Google's Engineering team may choose other options. Google has demonstrated their attitude toward reasoned dissent when the issue is a sacred cow of sorts. When a company creates a hostile environment toward attempts at nuanced discussion, they can expect mostly narrow thinkers to remain among their ranks if other options are available.

On a long enough timescale, you reap what you sow.

When Splitting The Check: Terrorism and Tyranny

I have started reading an account of the war in Vietnam, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War".​ So far, an interesting read.

It strikes me as particularly relevant at this time as we look at agendas and tactics in this country.​ The author of this book writes about the Prime Minister of South Vietnam, Diem:

The idea of having free elections, or making any accommodations, with Communists (whose method was terrorism, and whose aim was tyranny) was, Diem believed, an absurdity.

So first off, let's admit... the writing in this book would have benefitted from an editor. The sentence has 26 words, 4 commas, and one parenthetical. I would have made this two sentences with half as many commas and no parentheses.

However, in spite of the author's terrible writing, a suspicion against people who use tactics of terror and whose aim is tyranny is completely valid. One does not "make accommodation" with such people any more than one "splits the check down the middle" with a single male "friend" who likes to buy a few bottles of wine for the entire table.

When your ends are at odds, you do not cooperate and you do not compromise. There are two viable options: "Live and let live" or War. Anything in between is a sacrifice of the self-sufficient, the honest, the virtuous in favor of the the parasite, the liar, and the vicious.

​Where does the compromise lie between Bob, who believes in his right to live for his own sake, and his neighbor who believes Bob's earnings belong to the community and should be distributed as such?

We, who believe in voluntary social interaction, are obligated to reject compromise on fundamental principles. We do not make accommodations with such people. We don't split the check with them.

Long Range Thinking Combined with Rational Values

Today, I read:

How does Silicon Valley get Ayn Rand’s philosophy wrong?

There’s a misinterpretation of what she meant by selfishness. The classic way they get it wrong is simply believing that Ayn Rand says do whatever you feel like doing, don’t care about other people, just do whatever is good for you. And there’s no delving into what she means by “good for you.” Being selfish is really hard work. It means really thinking about “what are my #values, what are the most important things to me, how do I rank them, and how do I actually pursue them in a #rational, productive way?” Ayn Rand’s philosophy is very challenging.

Indeed... most people associate "selfishness" with short-ranged do what you want. But when you combine the question of "what is good for me" with the longest range possible, you're talking about a completely different outcome than whatever people imagine when they hear the word "selfishness".

Perhaps that makes it the wrong word for situations where nuance is in short supply (e.g. social media)?

Bonner Homes of Reston: Lirio Ct.

Of the homes I see in Reston that I like, most seem to have been made by an architect named Ken Bonner.

This weekend, another one came on the market on Lirio Ct. by South Lakes High School and Lake Thoreau.

Bear in mind that most were designed in the 1970s and the ones that have been remodeled to open up the interior space and to finish out the basements tend to have a better feel.  The 1970s design also seems to involve a severe drawback: no walk-in closets... a dealbreaker for some. 

The Bonner houses tend to be surrounded by mature trees and also feature large windows, many sliding doors facing the rear.  But the best feeling feature, in my opinion is the inclusion of high-up "transom" windows to bring in daylight while maintaining privacy.

I'd love to meet Ken Bonner and shake his hand some day.  I'd better get on that.  1970 was almost 50 years ago.

From Al-Quran Book 2: Al-Baquarah - Muslim Defined

I have started a micro-practice of morning reading from the quran.  I am reading from a copy of English Translation of the Meaning of Al-Qur'an: The Guidance for Mankind: Muhammad Farooq-i-Azam Malik, which was gifted to me from a dear friend.

Just a section or two at a time.  Unrushed.

I am presently in Book 2, which is named Al-Baquarah which makes a lot of references to old testament stories of Moses.  

Being someone who isn't well read in the old testament, I'm not familiar enough with other versions of these stories to understand the full context of what is going on... i.e. what purpose the text is meant to serve. 

There is enough polemic present that I can speculate with some confidence that the words can be used to connect to the tradition of the god of Abraham (that the god of Muhammad, Allah, is the same god is the same god as the god of Abraham) but also to draw fundamental distinctions and achieve a radical departure from Judaism.

 

Word Origins: Muslim

There is a section in Al-Baqarah 2:[75 -77] where the word "believers" is disambiguated (or indicated as translated) by the word (Muslims) in parentheses.  This may indicate an arabic literal from the untranslated original text.

After seeing this, I felt curious and started rooting around the interwebs for original senses of the word "Muslim".  To the Bat-Google!

C17: from Arabic, literally: one who surrenders

muslim. (n.d.). Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. Retrieved July 10, 2017 from Dictionary.com website http://www.dictionary.com/browse/muslim

Muslim (n.) 

1610s, from Arabic muslim "one who submits" (to the faith), from root of aslama "he resigned." Related to Islam. From 1777 as an adjective.

muslim. (n.d.). Online Etymology Dictionary.

 

DIY Door Lock Actuator Change - 2005 Honda CR-V

This morning I changed the Drivers Rear door lock actuator, which stopped working during the winter.

I Bought This Part

72155-S5A-003 - Actuator Assy., Door Lock

I Used These Tools

I Watched These Videos

I had to combine info from two youtube vids to get all the info I need. One is how to remove the rear door panel. The other covers how to replace the front door lock actuator. I had to improvise a few things because the layout isn't exactly the same but the connectors are substantially similar and there are a lot fewer cables.

https://www.1aauto.com?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=videodesc&utm_term=jTVAywRmK1A 1A Auto shows you how to remove or replace the interior door panel trim on your vehicle. You need to remove the door panel for a number of different repairs, for example door handles, window regulators, power window motors, door locks and more.

Replacement of the drivers door lock actuator on a 2002 to 2006 Honda CRV. If you have any questions feel free to ask. Like and Subscribe if you like the content! Thanks!

I Learned These Things

During the course of this work, I had to stop my work and run to the hardware store to buy the #3 phillips screwdriver listed above.  It cost $7.  I had to do this because one of the huge screws holding the lock assembly to the door started stripping when I was using a #2 to loosen it.  

My big takeaway from this effort is that using the right size screwdriver can avoid a lot of trouble.

And an additional bit of wisdom I can offer is to work in the shade.  Because the sun just adds pressure when you're trying to turn a stuck screw.  I did myself the favor of using shady parking in a nearby park to finish the work after I got back from the hardware store.

 

Farewell to Ellie, The Afghan Hound

Dearest Camel,

I hope you've had an amazing life and I'm glad I got to enjoy some of it with you.

Sorry I didn't get to say goodbye in person. Facetime just isn't the same.

You'll always be my favoritest pooch ever. So long. See you in my dreams.

-F

PS - now you get to ask me instead: "why the long face?"

News Flash: The Republicans Do Not Believe in A Free Market

Scarcity can be a product of reality or a product of market conditions. One of the things that eliminates scarcity better than anything else is the profit motive. This drives more players into a market.

Now a person who thinks of systems as fundamentally static sees the high prices as a fixed given but once scarcity is gone, the prices start to shift. A more crowded market can see benefits from innovation (more value for the same price or less cost) and competition (similar values for less cost). 

The chief thing that prevents scarcity from being addressed is government licensing and regulation. I will argue, without supporting it thoroughly here, that no market monopoly has ever been maintained without a shift in regulation/licensing to prevent new competition on the part of governments.

What existed before the ACA was not a free market and what the Republicans propose isn't one either. For historical perspective see the podcast I have linked in A History of Strangled Health Care in the United States.

Argue that the Republicans are wrong all you want but they are not now and have never (during my lifetime) been for a free market in medicine (or just about anything else). They are consistently about cutting taxes, increasing government spending, and pandering to the Christians.

A History of Strangled Health Care in the United States

Take this in for a moment and see how you feel about it:

A free market in medical care has not existed in America for about a century.

Isn't the problem more recent than that? One struggles to imagine it. But one doesn't have to. A recent EconTalk guest, Christy Ford Chapin, lays it out in a discussion rich with historical perspective. In discussion with the host, Russ Roberts, she lays out a historical narrative of an American Medical Association that uses its licensing power to destroy the market in medicine except for individual practictioners doing fee for service care without insurance.

The story evolves as the AMA, fearing government socialization in the aftermath of the Great Depression and WWII, seek to expand coverage to prevent the socialization of their trade. They enter into a faustian bargain with insurance companies and you land where we are today.

For those who have been frustrated with the state of medicine and the fragmentation among specialists of the medical trade, you will find an interesting and informative discussion.

Enjoy.

Historian Christy Ford Chapin of University of Maryland Baltimore County and Johns Hopkins and author of Ensuring America's Health talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about her book--a history of how America's health care system came to be dominated by insurance companies or government agencies paying doctors per procedure. Chapin explains how this system emerged from efforts by the American Medical Association to stop various reform efforts over the decades. Chapin argues that different models might have emerged that would lead to a more effective health care system.

Christy Ford Chapin on the Evolution of the American Health Care System | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty

Peak Bullshit: Turns Out The Dalai Lama is a Hateful Figure

Apparently, even privileged fucks from China can exploit inclusivity and diversity to shut people down. You know... hateful people like the Dalai fucking Lama.

Now I don't agree with the Lama or his ethos, but come on... he mostly talks about dealing with your own garbage and tending to yourself.

If you needed any more evidence that Social Justice is morally bankrupt exploitation of feeling over fact (and feeling over the exercise of individual judgment), there you have it. Calls for diversity and inclusivity, with rare exception, imply an abandonment of reason, which is the only bullshit detector you have.

Our relationship with our own faculties of reason come down to practice. It's use it or lose it. Either we call things as we see them or we're the next mark for whomever figures out how to push our buttons.

But, if our commitment to the truth is strong enough and we form convictions based on our long-term practice of clear thinking, we can be like the immovable stone in the river... the manipulations will flow around us like so much water.

We don't need to fix the world or anyone else's flawed notions. But we do need to look upon the world call bullshit when we see a steaming pile of it.  We are at peak bullshit right now (or hopefully heading toward it).  You've never needed your reason more.

There Are Four Lights!

From "Chain of Command - Part 2", a season 6 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation

Joe Rogan Experience #877 - Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and tenured professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos http://www.selfauthoring.com/ 100% off the Future Authoring Program code: "ChangeYourself" - The offer is extended until the end of December 7th

I've only checked out the episodes of Rogan that friends have said I have to listen to except for this one, which I have listened to with no recommendation.

Rogan has proven himself to be a really smart and knowledgable host who can hang with nearly anyone, at their level. This one has an amalgam of philsophy, psychology, and mythology and it's pretty dense at times but it's a great discussion about the cancerous effects of Postmodernist philosophy and its war against clear thinking and elevation of feeling over fact.

Peterson has decided to take a vocal stand against recent legislation in Toronto in regards to gender pronouns and I first became aware of him from Sam Harris's podcast but this conversation flows a lot better than the ones between Harris and Peterson.

This is a 3-hour chat. It is profound and worth your time.

Venezuela, Trump, and Sanders

In response to a long-time work friend on the Bookface:

Venezuela is an interesting Ghost of Christmas Future for societies which do not make banishment of force against any individual (tautologically, the smallest minority you can create) its highest priority.

When, instead of protecting rights, government acts as the violator in the name of "equitable distribution of revenues", the government violations of individual rights will not likely stop at force against the rich and wealthy.

You are correct about the current president. He is a danger to us all. However, this may also have proven true of a President Bernie Sanders as well. That is the important idea to consider.

Neither the Democrats or the Republicans are principled about using force to protect rights rather than to violate them. Nor do they have clear principles about what is or is not a right. The will of the majority does not create natural laws.

Going back to your original thought... I will try to appreciate this day. It is easy for me to get there mentally because my parents left behind everything they owned to escape the Viet Cong and come here. And today I celebrate the life of my paternal grandfather. Much love.