Dean Cook – Page 8

Who Is Responsible for Iran Shooting Down Ukraine Flight 752?

Last week, the Iranian regime shot down Ukrainian Flight 752 with two anti-aircraft missiles. (https://www.businessinsider.com/iran-ukraine-plane-crash-flight-752-timeline-unfolded-events-allegations-2020-1) It was but a footnote in a long history of brutal disregard for human life by a vicious theocratic dictatorship.

The week prior, an Iranian General was killed in Iraq by the United States. We can debate whether the Trump administration was wise or not wise to eliminate the Iranian General, but he was not a good man, and was known to be responsible for attacks on Americans. (https://www.businessinsider.com.au/trump-claims-us-killed-iranian-general-soleimani-to-stop-war-2020-1 ) He was a force-initiator.

Regardless of whether the Trump administration should have killed the Iranian General, and in the way that they did, I want to address a particularly perverse notion that is floating around out there: Some people on the far left are saying this is the fault of Donald Trump. They use the following sort of “logic” to arrive at this conclusion:

(1) Donald Trump killed an Iranian General in Iraq, where he was waging war against the United States.

(2) Iran had just retaliated for this with a missile strike, and they were nervous of an American counter-attack, so they got jumpy and shot down the commercial airline.

If we were examining any semi-rational western government’s actions in such a situation, we’d ask several tough questions, such as: Why didn’t Iran, which knew it was about to conduct a missile attack, ground commercial airline flights? Why didn’t it have systems in place to distinguish between commercial flights and non-commercial flights?

But, a “liberal” throws all of that out in her mind, because it would require her to actually examine the nature of the Iranian regime, which she prefers not to do. The “liberal” will fail to consider key aspects of reality about Iran:

(1) Iran is a theocratic dictatorship with a record of human rights abuses. It routinely machine guns people in the streets for protesting against the government.( https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/06/middleeast/iran-un-protest-deaths-intl/index.html )There is no evidence to suggest it would have any more concern for the passengers on a commercial flight than it does for unarmed people in the street.
(2) Iran sponsors international terrorism that targets civilians, and it has since the current regime took power in the 1970’s.( https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/02/politics/state-department-report-terrorism/index.html ) This makes Iran essentially an outlaw nation, and they know it. They’re highly paranoid as a result.

(3) A theocratic dictatorship, pretty much by definition, has no concern with the well-being of its people in the here and now. Their goal is to prepare the population for after they die, and will go to heaven. Human rights are irrelevant to this world view. The Iranian regime is what it would look like if Branch Davidians somehow took over the United States. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Branch-Davidian)

All of this adds up to an unstable, paranoid regime that will “shoot first and ask questions later”, because it isn’t really that concerned about the rights or welfare of its own people -or anyone else.

For a Western “liberal” to say it’s Donald Trump’s fault that Iran shot down Ukraine Flight 752, and killed a bunch of it’s own people is a statement of almost willful blindness.

The essence of the Iranian regime is the violation of the rights of other people in the pursuit of a supernatural “paradise” after they die. In fact, they believe they’ll go to that paradise if they kill the infidels.

I’ll leave you with an analogy. Imagine you encounter a mentally unstable homeless person at the bus stop. You momentarily make eye contact with that mentally ill person, and then they beat you senseless. Now imagine the police come and say: “Well, you shouldn’t have made eye contact with him.”

Even if your momentary gaze did precipitate the lunatic’s attack, it’s clear to everyone that the crazy person is just that -and anything could set him off.

The Iranian regime has a specific nature. Even if it didn’t murder anyone this, particular week, given enough time, that’s exactly what it will do.

Good Article on PG&E and the California Wildfires

The Wall Street Journal article “PG&E: Wired to Fail” by Russell Gold,
Rebecca Smith and Katherine Blunt, was, overall, a good, in-depth, article that lays out the relevant facts for why PG&E allowed its infrastructure to become so old that power lines fell and caused massive wildfires, killing many people.

It doesn’t do as good of a job explaining the significance of the facts that it cites, leaving it up to the reader to “put them together”. I thought I might synthesize the relevant facts from the article here, and draw the conclusions that the authors don’t explicitly draw.

The article notes that, at several points in the past, the state government of California mandated that PG&E switch to “green” sources of energy, mainly solar energy and wind.

“As regulators pushed for more renewable energy, the combination of high winds and sparks from a damaged San Diego Gas & Electric power line ignited what came to be called the Witch Fire in Southern California, killing two people, injuring 45 firefighters and destroying 1,140 homes.”

“For the past 15 years, PG&E has plotted a round trip from one bankruptcy to another. In between, it navigated the aftermath of a catastrophic natural-gas pipeline explosion and a series of increasingly demanding green-energy mandates from state regulators.”

“In April 2011, seven months after the San Bruno explosion, California’s new governor, Jerry Brown, signed legislation raising the percentage of state electricity that must come from renewables to 33% by 2020, up from the previous state goal of 20% by 2010.”

“In September 2018, Gov. Brown, months from leaving office, signed a bill that again raised the state’s renewable-energy target, this time to 60% by 2030.”

This is significant, because it causes the cost of power generation to go up. It’s simple Economics. If solar and wind were cheaper than other, more traditional, forms of power generation, then power companies would have already switched to them. (That would allow them to generate power at a lower cost, thereby increasing their profits.) The reason PG&E didn’t switch voluntarily, and had to be forced by the government to do so, is because there is a higher cost from producing with solar and wind.

“CALIFORNIA REGULATORS kept up the pressure to meet the state’s aggressive renewable energy goals.

By 2012, PG&E was spending more than $1.2 billion a year to meet the targets, more than double what it spent in 2003, according to PG&E filings, and it was projected to top $2 billion by 2015. Mr. Peevey, the utilities commission head, addressed concern that Californians faced a “rate bomb” as the deals kicked in.”

The second fact that has to be understood about power utilities is that they are heavily regulated by the government in terms of what price they can charge. The supposed rationale for this is that since only a limited number of companies are allowed to operate as utilities, they are governmentaly enforced monopolies that must have their prices regulated. I won’t get “too deep into the weeds” on this point, but there is no reason, in principle, that different companies couldn’t all enter the power generation business. (Power lines can be laid almost without limit underground or even through the air, or people can move, if the power company in one area charges too much, to another city where the power company charges less.) What you should take away from this paragraph is this point: Power companies cannot just easily raise prices when their costs go up like like less regulated industries. They have to get permission from the government, usually some sort of board, which takes time and money, and there will be political pressure for the regulator to not let prices go up to reflect actual costs.

When you combine increasing costs to a power company from being forced to switch to “green energy sources” with the inability to fully pass that cost on to the consumers, the power company has to make up that difference somewhere. If it reduces profits, it reduces the number of people willing to invest in the power company, which reduces its ability to purchase new equipment, such as power lines. It means the company has to continue generating power with aging equipment. If it keeps profits high enough to keep investment coming in, it will have the same problem. It can’t simultaneously have: (1) higher production costs, (2) pay the same amount of profit to investors, and (3) keep prices the same to customers. Something has to give, and the “short term solution” is to stop spending money on the maintenance of equipment. But, the “long-run” eventually caught up with California:

“It proved to be especially challenging for a plodding utility undergoing management upheaval, heavily regulated and saddled with aging, neglected equipment.

Executives were so focused on the past and the future that the present sneaked up on them. PG&E’s electric lines, after years of deferred maintenance, were threatening drought-parched California. “

“PG&E’s Caribou-Palermo transmission line was built in 1921 through the Plumas National Forest. Part of a larger network that carried electricity from the Sierra Nevada to the Bay Area, it was so old that it had been considered a candidate for the National Register of Historic Places. PG&E had told federal regulators it planned to replace many of the towers and hardware on the line but postponed the work several times…

At about 6:15 a.m. on Nov. 8, 2018, an iron hook holding up a 115,000-volt line broke, dropping the live wire and sparking a blaze.

Thirty minutes later, what would come to be known as the Camp Fire was out of control. Officials ordered the evacuation of the nearby town of Paradise, home to 26,000 people. The town was soon burned to the ground. Within hours, the fire destroyed 13,983 homes and killed more people, 85, than any other California wildfire.”

What is the solution to this problem? It is two-fold.

First, California needs to withdraw state mandates on a switch to solar and wind, which will bring down the cost of power generation.

Second, California needs actual competition in electricity generation. This doesn’t mean just competition in generation, but distribution. In exchange for eliminating their current legal monopolies on generation and distribution, power companies would be free to charge whatever rate people are willing to pay them.

Of the two, the second is actually the most important. Even if the state mandates on the switch to renewables stayed in place, as long as the utilities can charge customers higher prices to reflect this, then it will not affect the ability of utilities to maintain and replace aging equipment. (I think both of my solutions should occur, since I think the concerns over “climate change” are either illusory, or overblown, but, that is a debate for another time.) The important point to recognize is that there is no free lunch. If the people of California want to reduce so-called “greenhouse gases”, then they need to be prepared to pay for it with higher utility rates. (Otherwise, they’ll continue to “pay for it” with forest fires.)

A Crow Possibly Solving a Problem Like a Human Being

Animal behavior interests me a great deal. I essentially see the human mind as “built on” an underlying “chassis” that reflects our species’ evolutionary development. So, there is a portion of the human brain that can be considered unique, and that makes us human, but there is also a lot of our brain structure that is the same as a chimpanzee’s or other other animal’s brain. This means that by learning something about animal behavior and the animal mind, we can learn something about ourselves.

This video on BBC involves a crow appearing to “solve” a complex-reasoning problem. After watching it, however, I question whether the conclusion that is being drawn is necessarily the correct one.

If the crow has done each of these individual things before to get a food reward, then he may just be doing each task randomly with the expectation of getting a food reward that doesn’t pay off?

The first seven tasks that he has associated with food reward result in nothing this time, but operant conditioning causes him to eventually do the eighth task that results in food reward. In other words, there may not be a mental connection in his mind between doing task 1 and doing task 8, like there would be for a human being.

A question I would like to ask whoever devised this experiment: Did the crow immediately know the correct order of tasks to perform? Even if he’s doing it in the right order from the start, that could be random, because he does the task that he can immediately perform simply because it’s physically available to him, not because he’s reasoning it out. (In which case, this is just a Rube Goldberg machine with a crow as one of its components.) It would seem more likely to suggest complex reasoning if the crow had never done any of the individual tasks before and he was able to figure it out.

“Joker” Movie Review (With Plot-Spoilers)

The movie is about Arthur Fleck, the man who will become Batman’s arch-nemesis. He is an entertainer, and aspiring standup comedian, who is barely getting by. He works as a clown, and lives with his mother in what appears to be 1970’s, or early 1980’s, New York. (The city was a fairly lawless place, with a lot of crime and violence.) Everyone is “mean” to Arthur Fleck, and that, eventually, “drives” him to kill, and transform into a super-villain.
The movie’s theme is that of our “post-modern” era: “I am justified in using physical force against people who hurt my feelings or offend me.”

The movie isn’t anything particularly new on the cinematic landscape. The character seems like an amalgam of three characters I’ve seen before:

A loner who kills at random, living in the “sewer” that is 1970’s New York City. He becomes obsessed with a woman. (The Taxi Driver)
A strange fellow with an unhealthy relationship with his mother becomes a lunatic killer. (“Norman Bates” in Psycho)
A person who murders anyone who insults him. (Hannibal Lecter)

Arthur kills three times as part of his “transformation” into the Joker. These comprise the major scenes “mapping out” the movie and his development.

First Episode of Violence: Arthur kills some obnoxious “frat boys”. This is somewhat justified since they are beating him up, and were bullying a woman on the train. By the way, the scene was highly unrealistic. White upper-middle-class yuppies weren’t, as a rule, the ones attacking people on subways in 1970’s New York.

Second Episode of Violence: Arthur had previously discovered in a series of scenes that he was adopted and that his mother had allowed her criminally insane boyfriend to beat him so badly Arthur suffered brain damage as a result. (Throughout the movie, he has an uncontrollable laugh due to a neurological condition.) This was also not particularly realistic. In what Twentieth Century American city would a mentally ill woman be able to adopt, let alone keep, a child? Especially after he had suffered that kind of abuse from her boyfriend? This was sort of “blamed” on “the rich”, with references to unspecified “cuts in funding” for unspecified “government programs”. But, under laissez-faire capitalism, there would be courts and police to combat child-abuse like this.

The whole “anti-rich” aspect of the movie basically felt like an artistic “fig leaf” to me, anyway. It was just another way that people hurt the script-writer’s feelings, and justify, in his or her mind, acts of violence. (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the main character’s name in this movie is “Arthur”, as in, the *author* of this movie, who identifies with this character.)

Third Episode of Violence: Arthur murders the guy who got him fired from his clown job with a pair of scissors. Tellingly, in this third episode of violence, Arthur lets a dwarf character, another clown, go, saying: “You were always nice to me.”

The “lead up” to this third violent scene was this: Arthur got fired from his clown job after a gun fell out of his pants while he was entertaining children at a hospital. Arthur got the gun from a fellow clown who gave it to him. For some inexplicable reason, this minor character lies to their boss, and says Arthur tried to buy a gun off of him. Why wouldn’t he just keep quiet? If he gave Arthur an illegal gun, he’d have as much to loose as Arthur, so it’d be better to just say nothing, and hope that it never got back to their boss, or the police. Also, if he didn’t like Arthur, why give him a valuable gun free of charge like that? This minor character’s motives made no sense.

With respect to the obnoxious frat boys on the train, Arthur was *possibly* justified in using force. Even the murder of his mother is “understandable”, if not justified. He had discovered she had allowed him to become the victim of massive childhood abuse. But, by the time he gets around to his fourth, and final, “episode of violence”, involving a character played by Robert De Niro, his motive is clear: He kills people who hurt his feelings.

The “set up” for this scene occurred earlier in the movie. De Niro plays a “Late Show TV Host”, Murray Franklin. Arthur Fleck idolizes Franklin, who, in his deluded mind, is the father he never had. Midway through the movie, Franklin shows a recording of Arthur “bombing” during a standup routine, and makes fun of Arthur. (This was not particularly realistic. I doubt a major TV personality would engage in an unprovoked “attack” on a complete “nobody” like that.) Later, for some inexplicable reason, Franklin has Arthur on his TV show for an interview, where Arthur, now “transformed” into the Joker, comes on stage and confesses to killing the obnoxious frat boys on the subway.

This scene is where the overall “theme” of the Joker movie is revealed. Prior to blowing away De Niro’s character, Arthur says: “…comedy is subjective, the system decides what is right and what is wrong, just like it decides what is funny…” He also says “everyone is awful”. This translates to: My feelings are what matters, even to the exclusion of the lives of others.

As a “stand alone” movie, the “message” of “Joker” is terible, but also not particularly original. (I noted three movies above that it seems to draw heavily from, with similar characters and motives.) Its theme reflects our era, at least since the end of the Nineteenth Century: Feelings matter more than people’s rights. This “post modern” idea runs all the way from the National Socialism of 1930’s Germany, to the street thuggery of groups like “Antifa”, in cities like Portland, and on American university campuses, today. (These groups think that certain “hate speech” hurts their feelings, and justifies the use of force.)

What somewhat “artistically complicates” the “clear messaging” of “Joker” is that this is a character from a “wider” work(s) of art. It’s the villain from Batman. In that sense, it may not be “meant” to be a “stand alone movie”. It has the “feel” of a flashback scene from a wider work of fiction, where the motives of the “bad guy” are explained, but not necessarily condoned. For instance, it’s set in Bruce Wayne’s “past”, although he is only a minor character in this movie. But, with that said, I think a work of art has to be taken at “face value”, which means one should not “read into” it what *was not* said. In this, particular, movie, Arthur suffers no consequence for his viciousness, which is motivated entirely by his feelings. (The last scene is the Joker murdering his therapist and escaping.) It says: “Force in the service of my feelings is efficacious and justified”.

If someone knew *nothing* about the Batman franchise, and saw this movie, they’d judge the movie as another, by now fairly tired, artistic depravity study, where the villain “gets away with it”, because the writer thinks his feelings have primacy over reality.

When What Is Common is Inadvertently Reported

The Amber Guyger murder trial was quite prominent in both the local and national news. I would guess that it was so heavily reported because it tied in to the overall media narrative concerning black men being shot by cops as a major problem.

Whether the shooting was justified or not, and whether the jury arrived at the correct decision, I have no idea. I didn’t watch most of the trial because of time constraints. I generally operate on the assumption that I trust the court system to arrive at the correct conclusion, absent some evidence to the contrary in a specific case. So, I won’t comment on the verdict at this point.

After the verdict, I assumed news reporting would slowly fade on this subject, and the media would move on to something else. Then, something “unexpected” happened. One of the witnesses, Joshua brown, was found shot to death, an apparent homicide victim. (I use quotation marks on the word “unexpected”, because what happened is actually quite common.)

Joshua Brown was a State’s witness, and a neighbor of the decedent. Mr. Brown overheard parts of the confrontation between the Defendant, Ms. Guyger, and the decedent in the case. His testimony was generally not favorable for the Defense. My understanding is that he testified Ms. Guyger did not issue verbal commands to the decedent prior to using deadly force.

About a week after the trial, Mr. Brown, was, coincidentally, shot to death. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2019/10/08/dallas-police-name-three-suspects-joshua-brown-murder-investigation/

I suspected I knew what the race of whoever shot Mr. Brown would be, and it looks like I wasn’t wrong. Two of the three suspects in the shooting were black. The shooting appears to have arisen out of a dispute over drugs.

Normally, I doubt Mr. Brown’s death would have made the news. Why not? Because it happens all the time. It’s the same reason the news reports airplane crashes, but typically doesn’t report car wrecks. Car wrecks happen too often. It also doesn’t fit the narrative the media wants you to believe, which is that the number one concern for black people in America is police shootings, not homicides committed by other black people.

In some years, black people are the primary perpetrators of murder. They’re also the primary victims. The Bureau of Justice Statistics sets forth the percentage of homicides committed by blacks and the percentage of homicides committed by whites between 1980 and 2009. These figures can be found at page 12, Table 7 of “Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008”, where it said that of all homicides committed in the US, 45.3% of offenders were white and 52.5% were black. (See http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf, last accessed on 10-9-2019.)

So, Mr. Brown’s apparent homicide at the hands of other black people would normally not be a newsworthy event. It’s too frequent to merit much attention.

Interracial Rape Statistics

I have been trying to find what the statistics say on inter-racial rape for quite some time. It is very difficult, probably because most people know what the results will show.

Today I found an article from a University of Chicago paper from 1982 that summarized some previous studies on the amount of interracial rape, that is, black on white rape, or white on black rape. The article is called:

Gary D. LaFree, “Male Power and Female Victimization: Toward a Theory of Interracial Rape,” American Journal of Sociology 88, no. 2 (Sep., 1982): 311-328.

Each of the rows in the above table is a reference to a study measuring the amount of inter-racial rape, and the results of those studies. The Table is titled: “Table 1 Frequency of Interracial Rape By Year of Offense”, from Pg. 313 of the LaFree Article.

The figures are about like what I suspected. That is, the rates of black men raping white women were much higher than the rates of white men raping black women. One study in particular, was astounding to me. The fourth row down is a sample taken in Berkley, California, where it was found that 60.8% of all rapes were a black offender and white victim, from 1968 to 1970.

The article is also interesting because it accepts the fact that black men are raping white women at much higher rates as a given, and then presents two possible theories for why that would be. That suggests to me that, at least in 1982, the fact that black men raped white women at an unusually high level was a known fact, that nobody questioned.

Parenthetically, the two theories presented in the LaFree article are the “normative” theory, and the “conflict” theory. The “normative theory suggests that the amount of black on white rape had gone up since the time of desegregation because more white women were interacting with black men socially, creating greater opportunities for rape. The “conflict” theory suggested that black men rape white women more frequently as a form of revenge for supposed “white male power”. The article finds that the “conflict” theory is more supported by its findings.

I had to pay ten dollars for the article, which I found here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu. I consider it worth the $10.

From there, I found another article that appears to be freely available online:

“The Racial Pattering of Rape”, South, Scott J., Felson, Richard B., University of North Carolina Press, “Social Forces”, September 1990, 69(1):71-93.
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=635F7907F6F07771D7C4D815160167BC?doi=10.1.1.839.5948&rep=rep1&type=pdf

This article posits another theory for the much higher rate of black on white rape than white on black rape. It seems to say that it is due to increased opportunity of black rapists to rape white women in a less racially segregated society than in the past. The article notes that cities with higher rates of racial segregation have less black on white rape. This seems plausible to me, and suggests a definite solution for avoiding becoming the victim of a crime…but I’ll leave that for another time.

“Beto” likes guns just fine…when HE decides who to use them on

At the recent Democratic Debates, Robert “Beto” O’Rourke attempted to demonstrate his “no compromise” attitude on guns by saying: “Hell Yes, We’re Going To Take Your AR-15”

https://reason.com/2019/09/12/beto-orourke-hell-yes-were-going-to-take-your-ar-15/

What it demonstrated was his willingness to have the state initiate physical force.

He does not mean: “Hell yes, if you are a force-initiator, we’re going to take away your AR-15”

This could easily be done with a law that says: “It shall be unlawful to possess an AR-15 with the intent to commit a felony.”

But, this wouldn’t accomplish what O’Rourke wants, since most owners of AR-15’s would continue to legally hold them. The government would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they had the weapon for the purpose of committing a felony, which most AR-15 owners would never do.

What O’Rourke wants is to remove this type of weapon from general circulation in the civilian world as a “prophylactic measure”. In other words, he thinks that by doing this, the number of murders in America will decrease. Never mind that the number of murders committee with so-called “assault weapons” is much smaller than the number of murders committed with handguns. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-data/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2010-2014.xls

So, what O’Rourke is actually saying is: “Hell yes, we are going to use the power of state force to deprive you of your property, even if you keep it for self-defense.”

In other words, he is saying: “The state can use physical force to deprive you of your values, and if you attempt to resist, the police will come to your house and attempt to arrest you. If you resist, you will be shot by the State.”

“Beto” wants to use the guns of government to kill anyone who wants to live.

“Give Me Freedom Or Give Me Death”

I am old enough to remember the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. (https://www.britannica.com/event/Tiananmen-Square-incident )

The student protestors were eventually wiped out by a brutal totalitarian dictatorship that is responsible for the death of millions of people.

In 1989 George HW Bush did almost nothing to stop it or to register any sort of protest. It was one of a large number of foreign policy blunders made by a president with few principles:

“Though President George H.W. Bush initially denounced the crackdown, suspended arms sales to China and announced some other sanctions, the administration decided early on that it wasn’t going to allow Tiananmen to become a turning point in U.S. policy. It became clear that the official response would be essentially to pretend that nothing had happened.” (https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-1989-the-u-s-decided-to-let-beijing-get-away-with-murder-11559311545)

Instead, our government continued on with “business as usual” with the vicious dictatorship of mainland China, which continued to steal our technology, our wealth, and our nation’s moral integrity. All the while, Red China continued to build itself up militarily, and now may be too big for us to easily defeat. We have created our own monster.

Then, we allowed Hong Kong to be handed over in 1997, ceding people, wealth, and territory to the Communist looters. They claimed it would be “one country, two systems”. But, it’s impossible to combine freedom with “a few controls”. In time, one or the other must give way:

“A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls—with no principles, rules, or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship.” (Ayn Rand, “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus”, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/mixed_economy.html.)

The Chinese government’s modus operandi with respect to Hong Kong has been: “One country, another slave-pen”.

But, the people of Hong Kong aren’t going to go quietly. With the advent of an extradition law that would allow the city-state’s residents to be tried on mainland China, thereby destroying any chance they might have of legitimate due process, Hong-Kongers decided they had had enough.

The student protestors, as well as the older residents of Hong Kong, have been admirably engaged in numerous protests, fighting for their lives and liberty. Some of the protestors even waive American flags, and British Union Jack flags, in reference to the common law system of government we all share. (See this video from a Hong Kong resident, at about two minutes in, were he says Hong Kong is under common law.)

America and Great Britain now have a chance to redeem themselves after they stood by silently and watched the student protestors of Tiananmen get slaughtered in 1989 and handed over H.K. without a shot being fired in 1997. Our governments should do everything they can to bring diplomatic and economic pressure to bear on the Chinese government, to honor its promise of a free Hong Kong. If there should be a repeat of Tiananmen Square, there should be serious economic and political consequences for Red China. I am no expert on diplomacy, or what is in the realm of the possible in foreign affairs, short of all out war. But, some things to consider would include:

(1) Instant recognition of Taiwan as an independent country by the United States, and a commitment by the United States to defend Taiwan militarily, if China should attempt to use force against that nation. Also, consider providing the Taiwanese with enough nuclear weapons to defend themselves against China.

(2) Encourage Japan to amend its constitution to allow for the creation of an army and navy, and provide the Japanese with nuclear weapons capable of reaching mainland China in the event of a conflict. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/anderscorr/2017/04/30/why-north-korea-cannot-have-nuclear-weapons-but-japan-and-south-korea-should/#4f2cca5d3943)

(3) Provide nuclear weapons and missile technology to India, already a nuclear power, so that they are capable of reaching Chinese targets.

(4) State that any attempt by China to annex islands or other territory in the Pacific will be considered an act of aggression. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-13748349)

(5) Massive Economic Sanctions On China, including prohibitively high tariffs on the import of all Chinese goods into the United States. Normally, I am for free trade, but China is a totalitarian state, and as such, an outlaw nation, as sure as any group of pirates or other gang would be. America should consider itself at war with any totalitarian nation, even if no shots are being fired due to other, practical, considerations. We should boycott all such countries economically, diplomatically, and morally. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/foreign_policy/3.html

This is our chance, as Americans, to stand with a people who stand with the spirit of Patrick Henry. Don’t let the people of Hong Kong go unheard.

Dissecting “Structural Racism”

I have heard terms like “systemic racism”, “structural racism”, and “institutional racism” thrown around, mostly by white, left-leaning college students, and I was curious to discover what these terms are supposed to mean. I found a paper, written by Keith Lawrence of the “Aspen Institute on Community Change”, and by Terry Keleher, of the “Applied Research Center at UC Berkeley”, called: “Chronic Disparity: Strong and Pervasive Evidence of Racial Inequalities POVERTY OUTCOMES Structural Racism” (A free version is available here: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf)

UC Berkeley certainly has “credibility” in my mind as standing for all things “leftist” in our society, so I was convinced the second author spoke for a large academic and political constituency. I’ve never heard of the “Aspen Institute on Community Change”, but The Huffington Post, another purveyor of leftist ideology, seems to know who he is. That’s good enough to convince me that these two authors speak for the majority of left-wing academics and journalists out there on the idea of “structural racism” and what it is supposed to mean.

The paper provides the following definitions:

“Structural Racism in the U.S. is the normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics – historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal – that routinely advantage whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color.….Structural Racism encompasses the entire system of white supremacy, diffused and infused in all aspects of society, including our history, culture, politics, economics and our entire social fabric. Structural Racism is the most profound and pervasive form of racism – all other forms of racism (e.g. institutional, interpersonal, internalized, etc.) emerge from structural racism.”
(https://www.scribd.com/document/295254225/Definitions-of-Racism-Chronic-Disparity-Self-Assessment. Free version: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf )

The paper goes on to say that the primary way you know “structural racism” exists is the fact that there is “inequality” among the races. In other words, so long as there are a disproportionate number of black people who are poorer than white people, then there is “structural racism”. The paper says it’s difficult, if not impossible, to actually identify any *particular* government, social, or business policy that causes “structural racism”. It’s simply assumed that it must be there because black people are poorer than white people on average:

“The key indicators of structural racism are inequalities in power, access, opportunities, treatment, and policy impacts and outcomes, whether they are intentional or not. Structural racism is more difficult to locate in a particular institution because it involves the reinforcing effects of multiple institutions and cultural norms, past and present, continually producing new, and re-producing old forms of racism.”( https://www.scribd.com/document/295254225/Definitions-of-Racism-Chronic-Disparity-Self-Assessment. Free Version: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf )
Starting in the 1960s, “Jim Crow” laws were legally abolished in the South. Laws were also passed outlawing any form of “discrimination” based on skin color in housing, jobs, and other areas of public life. Additionally, the welfare state was massively expanded, with wealth transfers from whites to blacks. (See https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p70-141.pdf , Page 6: “Both the likelihood of receiving means-tested assistance and the length of benefit receipt differed among racial groups. In 2012, the average monthly participation rate for Blacks, 41.6 percent, was higher than that of Asians or Pacific Islanders at 17.8 percent and non-Hispanic Whites at 13.2 percent.”)

Despite all of these legal changes in the 1960’s, blacks, as a group, remain poorer than whites. (https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263.pdf) . Blacks also have a number problems associated with their demographic group. For instance, crime rates that are disproportionate to their percentage of the population, and heavy “black on black” crime- i.e., black criminals are mostly preying on other black people. In some years, more than fifty percent of the murders in the United States are black people being murdered by other black people, despite the fact that they are only about 13 percent of the American population. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21 (Think of the gangs in Chicago, and the almost ritualized murder that goes on there between black gang members, and you’ll see why this is the case. See Page 18 of: https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2011-Murder-Report.pdf )

There are also large numbers of black unwed single mothers raising children without a father. For instance, in 2017, according to the US Census, 6,229 thousand black children under 18 out of 13,232 black children were living in single mother households. While 11,603 thousand white children out of 53,291 thousand were living in single-mother homes. That is, 47 percent of black children were with single mothers, while 22 percent of white children were with single mothers. (See Table CH-2 and CH-3 at: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/families/children.html )

These dismal figures create a problem for black racial collectivists like Al Sharpton, and their “white progressive allies”: They need an explanation for why, despite the fact that there is no legalized race discrimination, and even laws prohibiting race discrimination in jobs, housing, employment, and other areas, blacks still are in a lower socio-economic class from whites. They also need to explain the large numbers of single black mothers raising fatherless children, and the disproportionate amount of black crime committed -mostly against other black people. This explanation has to place the blame somewhere other than the black people making bad choices. This rationalization needs to avoid looking at the attitudes, behaviors, and choices made by black people, and look outward, at the white majority.

Furthermore, they need an explanation that will dismiss the fact that most Americans appear to oppose any kind of racial discrimination, and generally regard judging people based on skin color to be wrong. In fact, they need to explain how the laws prohibiting race discrimination got passed in the first place. If Americans are mostly racist, why would a racist white majority pass laws that prohibit firing someone because of their skin color?

A system of philosophy with its origins in Marx, and probably other philosophers, can provide the rationalization needed. Marxism says that the bourgeoisie fundamentally didn’t think like the proletarians, and vice versa. These two groups could not use reason and persuasion with respect to each other, because the content of their minds, their ideas, were ultimately determined by their social class -by their “material circumstances”. This is why Marx viewed socialists who believed that there could be a peaceful transition to socialism as “utopians”. They didn’t recognize what Marx saw as “reality”. Marx, on the other hand, viewed his version of socialism as “scientific” -because he embraced the “class struggle” -which in practice meant eventual warfare between the proletarians and the bourgeoisie, until the bourgeoisie could be wiped out. Only then could socialism be achieved. For Marx, the bourgeoisie couldn’t help what they were, and couldn’t help but exploit the proletarians. Individual bourgeoisie might claim to be fighting for the proletarians, but, as a whole, they invariably exploited the proletarians because of the way their minds worked, which caused their thoughts and actions to be fundamentally at odds with the proletarians.

Black racial collectivists and their white “allies” take this idea, and simply racialize it. The white majority takes the place of the bourgeoisie. Now, it is the whites, who have a system and method of thinking that is fundamentally different and at odds with blacks, who are the new “proletarians”. This paper on “structural racism” supports this idea. It says that “racism” is defined as “…race prejudice plus power.” (Page 13: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf )

What is “power” according to this paper?:

“The People’s Institute defines power as ‘having legitimate access to systems sanctioned by the authority of the state.’ (Chisom and Washington, op. cit., p. 36.) Other definitions which you might find useful are: 000 Power is the ability to define reality and to convince other people that it/s their definition. (Definition by Dr. Wade Nobles)…” (See Page 21: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf)
Notice this second definition, in particular. Reality isn’t simply something separate and apart from the observer. It is somehow “plastic” or “malleable”, depending on the mind that observes it. This is a Marxist notion:

“Karl Marx later provided the most succinct statement of the collectivist view of the primacy of social interaction in the preface to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: ‘It is not men’s consciousness,’ he wrote, ‘which determines their being, but their social being which determines their consciousness.’” https://www.britannica.com/topic/collectivism

For Marx it was one’s “social being”, i.e., whether he was proletarian or bourgeois, that determined “his consciousness” The content of his mind, his ideas had less to do with an independent reality, and more to do with the group he was born into. (I have written on the before: http://deancook.net/2018/08/16/karl-marx-polylogism-and-utopian-socialism-how-fundamental-philosophy-drives-history/ )

Given this Neo-Marxist view of “power” as being “…the ability to define reality and to convince other people that it/s their definition….”, the fact that there are whites, even a majority of whites, who oppose judging people in hiring and jobs based on the color of their skin, and even pass laws to outlaw it, doesn’t matter. Whites, by their invariable method of thinking, based in the nature of the “white mind”, institute social structures that “systematically” oppress black people. This is their explanation for how, today, there can be no legalized discrimination based on skin color, and how most whites express a desire that there be no such legalized discrimination, and yet blacks are still economically behind whites.

Pointing to lower average IQ scores among blacks than whites as an alternative reason for the disparity is seen as “systematic racism”. The black racial collectivists and their white apologists basically say the tests are “rigged” in favor of white people, even if the white people are all acting in good faith to create fair tests. (And “fair” is another “white idea” anyway.) They believe that IQ tests reflect the nature of the white mind, which is fundamentally different from the black mind. IQ is a “Euro-centric concept”. To the black racial collectivist, the fact that IQ tests have been shown to correlate with job success and achievement simply reflects the white majority’s ability to somehow “rig reality” to promote their race over the black race. (https://www.aei.org/society-and-culture/the-bell-curve-explained-introduction/)

The subjects of history, economics, science, and every other field, reflects “Euro-centricm” because the white mind is fundamentally not the same as the black mind. “Reason” is just another system for whites to, mostly unknowingly and unwittingly, exploit blacks. Hence, the funding for “black studies programs” at universities, where they can supposedly find this “black logic” that is fundamentally different from “white logic”.

This is why blacks who study in school, work hard, and obey the law are “acting white”. They are trying to adopt a system and method of thinking that is essential to the “white mind”, but not the “black mind”. Page 5 of the paper says this: “The acceptance by persons of color of Eurocentric values.” ( http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf)

How do they explain high levels of black on black murder compared to white on white murder, and high levels of black men abandoning their children to be raised by single mothers? According to the purveyors of “structural racism”, the reason for all of this is “internalized systemic racism” of black people by their “white oppressors”:

“INTERNAUZED RACISM: (1) The poison of racism seeping into the psyches of people of color, until people of color believe about themselves what whites believe about them — that they are inferior to whites; (2) The behavior of one person of color toward another that stems from this psychic poisoning. Often called ‘inter-racial hostility;’…” (Page 5: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf )

In other words, the fact that a black man murders another black man isn’t really his fault. It’s the fault of the whites who made him that way, and the white oppressors can’t even help the way that they are:

“A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States…” (Page 5: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf )

What is the purpose of this way of thinking? If backs and whites fundamentally think differently, by their very nature, then how can they communicate at all? How could there be any sort of dialogue or understanding between blacks and whites? I think for “race pimps” like the authors of this paper, it’s just a con game -a way of absolving individual black people of their own responsibility for where they are in life, and shifting the blame to whites, who will then feel guilty and provide more welfare and legal benefits to blacks. Hence, the push for things like “reparations”, today.

But, it’s a very dangerous game they’re playing. At some point, a sufficient number of people with this sort of “polylogist thinking” will draw the obvious conclusion from it. If blacks and whites fundamentally cannot reason or dialogue with each other, then only one method is left: Physical force. In fact, the authors of this paper seem to advocate the use of physical force by black people when they speak of what it means to be an “anti-racist”:

“(As applied to people of color), some use the term anti-racist. Others use synonyms such as freedom fighter, activist, warrior, liberation fighter, political prisoner, prisoner of war, sister, brother, etc.” (Page 6: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf )

Notice how most of the metaphors used here are that of people engaged in a violent struggle or war. This is because, on some level, racial collectivists, just like Marxists, believe in a “class struggle” that can only be resolved with violence. They use the language of warfare to describe themselves, because it is a war to them. This is why you can expect to see more things like the 2016 shooting of white cops in Dallas by a black racial collectivist.

These ideas have come to dominate our universities, our media, and our cultural institutions. This means the level of violence between the races will continue to escalate. In the end, the racial collectivists will get their desired race war, if we don’t repudiate ideas like “structural racism”.

The “Hot Button Issue” of Abortion

I wanted to write a little about this because I rarely do. I am also hoping that I can bring a somewhat “nuanced” viewpoint to a discussion that tends to be driven by pure emotion. Right off the bat, I will state that I do think there should generally be some legal right to terminate a pregnancy, with a recognition that there may be some legal “line drawing”, which I think reasonable parties can disagree on. If you disagree with me, please at least hear me out.

Biological evidence seems to show that a fetus does not have a rational capacity. In fact, it may be that even a newborn infant does not have a rational capacity, which develops some time after birth. This is because the cerebral cortex appears to be underdeveloped, even at birth. This feature of the human brain is responsible for most of what we think makes us human. It also appears to be the physical structure involved in what philosophers would call “the rational faculty”. The reason for this late development of the cerebral cortex has to do with how the fetal body and brain develops, which follows the path of evolution. For instance, human fetuses have gills and a tail at a very early stage. Since the cerebral cortex developed last in the our pre-human ancestors, it makes since this feature comes about last. It’s also necessary to keep brain size fairly small so thet the baby can pass through the mother’s birth canal. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100712154422.htm

The fact that a cerebral cortex is not fully developed even at birth is significant to me because rights are based in the fact that human beings can deal with each other on the basis of reason and persuasion, making the use of physical force against each other unnecessary:

“The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind…” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand.)

However, the point at which a baby develops a rational faculty in biology is probably not fully understood, and I will move forward with the rest of my argument on this issue without reference to whether a baby or a fetus has a sufficiently developed cerebral cortex or not. My argument for some legal right to abortion for some period of time during pregnancy doesn’t stand or fall on the issue of when the cerebral cortex is sufficiently developed.

How are rights violated? Rights are violated by other’s use of force to deprive you of a value against your will.

“Man’s rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.” (The Virtue of Selfishness, “The Nature of Government”, Ayn Rand)

This does not mean that force can never be used. It just means the times that force can be used are limited to those in which you are not trying to deprive another person of a value. For instance, force can be used in retaliation or self-defense.

Of special note in this context, is that there are times a person can use force against others, and it isn’t just when they are defending themselves or using retaliatory force.

There are at least two types force you can use to protect yourself:

1. Self-defense from intentional murder or other crime.
2. Use of force to prevent an unintentional collision with another person. For instance, if you use force to stop someone who has tripped from falling into you and knocking you over.

My position is that terminating a pregnancy is like this second type of use of force. It’s not force used in self defense. It is force used to stop the purely reflexive act of a fetus in attaching itself to a mother’s body during pregnancy, or the act of removing it once it has reflexively attached itself to the mother’s body.

Why would a woman need to terminate a pregnancy? All pregnancies are inherently risky for a woman. Women still die in child birth in the first world.

If she becomes pregnant and decides that she doesn’t want to take that risk, then she cannot reason with the fetus to explain why she wants it to detach itself from her body. It’s a purely reflexive act, regardless of how developed a fetus’ brain is.

Abortion is analogous to self-defense. The minimum of force is being used to detach the fetus, similar to how the minimum of force is used to prevent someone from killing you.

Does it matter that the mother chose to have sex, while In the above scenario of someone tripping and falling into you, you didn’t choose to have someone fall on you?

I would note that this would still justify abortion in the cases of rape. Since a woman who is raped didn’t choose to have sex in that scenario, my analogy is “spot on”.

At this point we are dancing around whether the fetus has any rights. What are rights? Why do we need them? This is where I and a religious advocate of rights part ways. We have fundamentally different definitions of “rights” and their basis.

Rights imply an autonomous actor who needs to take action to gain the values necessary for living. A fetus, by its very nature is physically attached to the mother. Choice doesn’t play a role in its existence.

If the mother could somehow transfer the fetus to an artificial womb, with no health danger to the mother, that would be something to consider, but we don’t have that technology yet. That means, for now, abortion is the only option for a woman who doesn’t want to risk her health with a pregnancy.

Parenthetically, I think a woman shouldn’t be able to force a man who isn’t her husband to pay child support. If a woman wants the father of her child to pay for her child, she should enter into a contract with him. I also think a man should have no right to see a child or be a part of its life without a contract with the mother. This “contract” is basically what marriage is about -or should be under an ideal political system. (That, and the sharing of one’s finances and property with the other person.)

At this point the more wild-eyed will go with the ‘reductio ad absurdum ‘ argument: “If abortion is okay, then you must think killing newborn babies is okay, since they cannot take care of themselves and there is a health-cost imposed on the mother by that too. Furthermore, maybe science will show that the rational faculty doesn’t fully develop until age 2.”

My response is: 1) the baby is detached, biologically, from the mother after birth. 2) Given that fact of biological detachment, it makes sense to “draw the line”, legally, there and presume a baby is capable of rational thought, even if such capacity may not still arise for some time. These are the minimum criteria I hold for an organism being accorded individual rights: 1, A biologically distinct organism, that, 2, has a rational faculty or capacity of some sort, necessitating that you can deal with it on the basis of reason and persuasion, unlike the lower animals that you can only deal with by means of force.

Should the “line” for when abortion is legal be drawn somewhere before birth? Say, at seven months, or even six? Should some regulation of the types of abortions, or when abortions are allowed prior to 9 months, be in place? I am willing to entertain those sorts of arguments. (Assuming no unusually high level of health threat to the mother, or some massive birth defect is discovered, after the general prohibition date, in which case there should be a judicial exception of some sort.)

Would I personally want my wife or girlfriend to have an abortion? Assuming that: One, she hadn’t been raped, two, she had no unusually high level of health risk, and, three, the fetus had no birth defects, then I wouldn’t want her to do it. I’d ask her not to, and try to talk her out of it. But, at the end of the day, I recognize it’s not my body, it’s not my health risk, and it’s not my decision.