Polygamy and Child Molestation

"Where polygamy is practiced, rich and powerful men monopolize the available nubile women, leaving a large cohort of young men with no normal outlet for their impulses." - Rex May, aka Baloo the cartoonist.

I've been reading several articles recently claiming polygamy will sooner or later be legalized in the United States.

It won't. And that is very good thing.

One of the main reasons why it will not is that when one man can monopolize many women some of the remaining men will turn to sex with pubescent and pre-pubescent boys. If you do not believe this will happen all you have to do is look at the Islamic world.

If polygamy was legalized in the U.S. some men would start paying for young boys. They do already. There are unfortunately men out there (and women) who like sex with children, pre-pubescent and teenage boys. There is large industry in some of the poorer Asian countries serving these perverts.

The first time I ran across these practices was in James Michener's novel about Afghanistan, The Caravan, which had graphic depictions of the "dancing boys" that men would murder over. One man murdered another for a boy, then he paid for it by having his head sawed off with a rusty WWI bayonet.

It's bad enough that under polygamy 16-year-olds boys can be tossed out on their own (which happened in a polygamous Mormon community in the U.S., until the Feds closed it down) or that ultimately we would end up with an extremely stratified society with all wealth concentrated at the top, with those at the bottom having no wives or jobs, but the most horrifying just might be that the increase in the rape and traffic of young boys would be enormous.

These practices might take several decades to work their black magic, but work their black magic they will. It won't just be prostitution but sexual slavery. The Good, the True and the Beautiful this ain't!

You don't even need any thought experiments to figure these things out. All you have to do is look at history. You even need history, for that matter. Just look at the practices in parts of the world that have polygamy.

NAMBLA would love this development.

An Armed Man is a Powerful Man

I live in a state with open carry. Before that I lived in a state with concealed carry. Before that, one with no carry.

The open carry/concealed carry states has little crime. The no carry has a lot of crime.

There is crime in the carry states, including murder, but the murder tends to be idjits who know each other who do the killing. Which, now that I think about it...

When I say “powerful” I mean exactly that – powerful. And virtuous, since the word “virtue” means “the powers of man.” An armed man is a virtuous man.

Power really is important. When everyone has equal power when it comes to weapons, there isn't much crime. That is why pistols used to be called Equalizers – because the weakest woman was equal to the strongest man. There has to be a balance of power. When there is a balance of power it is best to be polite and cooperate more.

In fact, when everyone is armed, we have a pretty good illustration of Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation. Axelrod asked and then answered the question, “When, and under what conditions, does it pay to cooperate?” In a sentence, the answer is that cooperation is a rational response when two parties are in a prolonged game (relationship) with an indeterminable end.

If you have two parties, say two people, and if neither party can prevail against the other, and they know this, then cooperation is the best way to them to go. This is why strong countries generally don’t go to war against one another, and instead one strong country will attack a weaker. The strong country feels it has already won and therefore sees no reason to cooperate.

The same applies to people.

Here’s the rub: if people already believe they have won the game, there is no reason for them to cooperate. It doesn’t matter if they really have won the game or not; it only matters if they believe they have. People aren’t always rational; indeed, most of the time, they are not.

If criminals have guns and non-criminals don't, there is no reason for cooperation. Criminals not only think they've won but in fact have won. If criminals have guns and so do non-criminals do also, there will be more cooperation from criminals. If criminals don't have guns but non-criminals do, you will see a lot of cooperation from criminals, and crime will plummet.

Many powers should be spread equally among people, which means taking it away from the government. The power to protect your life, your liberty, and your property. You can't expect the police to save you, since there is that true but not-so-funny joke that when you have seconds to save your life, the police are only minutes away.

There is only one story that repeats itself ad infinitum, ad nauseum: the government appropriating power to itself until people will no longer tolerate it and get rid of it.

We're fortunate that in the United States we have the states to balance the Behemoth know as the federal government. They do bad things, but when the federal government gets too powerful the states revolt, which is why we are now seeing the states legalizing open and concealed carry, and decriminalizing marijuana.

I paraphrase here, but Robert Heinlein made the comment there are basically two kinds of people: those that want power over others, and those who don't.

Everyone (well, most everyone) wants power over themselves (except maybe those natural-slave types). Power over yourself means confidence, competence and lack of fear. I'm reminded of the scene in Blade Runner where Roy Batty tells Rick Deckard: “Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it means to be a slave.”

When someone has complete power over you, then you are The Compleat Slave. If you agree with them having that power (which means your mind is warped), then you are the Uber-Compleat Slave. When no one has power over you, then you are free.

The worst and most abused power of all is political power. It is, as Hannah Arendt wrote, the power to turn someone into a corpse.

Now that I think about it, it'd be nice if we could all be Jedis.

The Coming Overthow of the U.S. FedGov by the Military

"...if we should have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then beware of the anger of the Legions!" - Marcus Flavinius, Centurion in the 2nd Cohort of the Augusta Legion.

You say you want a revolution? I don't. I don't believe in it. Revolution is like a cancer spreading throughout the body. It's chaos. It only destroys, contrary to the maniacal delusions of leftists who think we can start over after killing everyone and demolishing everything. To them then up springs the New Man! After, of course, a mountain of corpses and pyramids of skulls.

The 20th Century was the century of revolution in Germany, in China, in Russia, in Cambodia. The estimates of those murdered range from 177,000,000 to 200,000,000. Who counts peasants?

Instead, I believe in change at the top. It's the difference between cancer in the body and making some ideological changes in the brain.

Machiavelli, who is to political science what Descartes was to mathematics, made the comment that you can make radical changes at the top as long as things remain the same for the average person. The United States could have a dictator (as long as he called himself "President") and almost all people wouldn't much care, especially if their lives got better.

For various reasons I won't go into here, governments always become leftist, and that ultimately is why they fall. I will say leftists are always obsessed with power over others, and to paraphrase Robert Heinlein, there are those who want power over others, and then there are those who don't. I am the latter.

Leftists got where they are by lies and by their Gramsciam march through the institutions, and once ensconced at the top won't give up unless forceably removed. Like Satan, they walk to and fro and up and down the earth, fuck up everything, and have a good time doing it.

So who's to remove them? The right, of course. And the right is the military. A coup. Which means taking over that revolting, evil Black Thing known as the federal government.

I make the joke I should be Benign Dictator. I would devolve power back to the states after deporting the lowlifes at the top, imprisoning lots (then deportation) along with some judicious executions of say, oh, a few dozen traitors. Then I would spend my days drinking, gambling, smoking cigars and chasing women and in general living the life of James Bond, although I don't like martinis, shaken or stirred.

Since I'm not James Bond, and the chances of my being Benign Dictator are pretty much about a gazillion to one, I'll put my money on a military coup. Maybe I've been reading too much Jerry Pournelle.

There are people, ones who fancy themselves libertarians, who look forward to what Russell Kirk called Chaos and Old Night. They think we can then start over. Just like leftists, which is why I consider a lot of libertarians to be leftists.

The military could take over, keep the forms of the government, do some deporting (and a few of those judicious executions), avoid one of those generally ghastly revolutions, and after that is a great possibility things could get way better. I don't really think they would get way worse.

It's the same thing as getting some new ideas in your brain (and your brain runs your body) as compared to radical surgery to remove cancer throughout your entire body.

All this is why I don't think we're going to have some sort of radical revolution with civil war and blood running in the streets. Instead, things will get bad enough and alarming enough for the military to remove all the traitors in Congress (which is pretty much all of them), take over and straighten things out. A little blood, but not much. Much less than the oceans that leftists gleefully swim in.

Pournelle calls the military the Legions and they tend to take over when the government attempts to destroy them through over-extension in wars. Sound familiar these days? It does to me.

Ask yourself this: who do you trust more these days, the federal government or the military?

"...the security of all governments is dependent on mere personal loyalty. The U.S. Army could take over Washington tomorrow, if it wanted to. It certainly cannot be compelled to obey the President, the Supreme Court, the Congress, or anyone else." - Mencius Moldbug

Why Dowries Have Never Existed in the West but Probably Should - Now

Culturally the West has evolved to ideally be monogamous. I find that more than a little interesting, because romantic love only exists under monogamy. Can a man with 10 or 50 wives love any of them? I don't think he can. Can a women who is one of 20 wives love her husband? Again, I don't think so.

Actually polygamy has never been needed in the West. The West also evolved to be free market, which means wealth for everyone who wants it. And the free market is why polygamy has never been legal.

Here's an example: America, compared to the rest of the world, was enormously wealthy. Why? It was founded on political and economic freedom, which the rest of the world wasn't.

We are no longer so much free market. Wages stopped going up in 1973, due to various reasons, but all of them involve government interference in the economy. Had wages continued to go up as they should have, the average yearly wage would be about $100,000.

Everyone who has crunched the numbers has come up with that figure: $100,000 a year.

When a man makes $100,000 a year, there is no need for a dowry. I think that's why they have never existed in the West. The closest was a woman's Hope Chest, which generally contained such things as linen.

Recently men's wages and women's have passed each other going in the opposite direction. Women's up, men's down. There are various reasons for this, but again all of them involve government interference in the economy. Look at Affirmative Action, for example, which means "White Men Need Not Apply."

For that matter, the jobs of most "educated" women (they're not educated, just schooled) are make-work.

Because men in the past made so much money (so much one man could support a wife and several kids on one salary), it also evolved that men asked the woman out, paid her way, supported her after they got married.

Those days are long gone, again, because of government interference.

Let's apply some basic supply and demand to all of this.

Since men did the asking out, the paying and the supporting, women were considered to be of high value. The men were also demonstrating they were of high value. So, many people had high self-respect because they considered themselves of high value, assigned high value to others, and others assigned high value to them. Mostly, it was a win-win situation.

That is no longer the case for both men and women.

Women who make a lot of money (many of whom have unpleasant personalities but delude themselves they are "strong" and "independent") are now considered low value by men. Yet they consider themselves high-value - in their minds. Since they cannot find men who make more money than they do, they consider most men low-value.

Let's return to dowries. When there is a shortage of men (perceived shortage, that is) dowries exist. When there is a perceived shortage of women, there are bride prices. It is evolved in the West that men paid bride prices - asking them out, paying their way, supporting them.

Bride prices can no longer be paid, although women still think they should be.

Since there is now a perceived shortage of men ("Where have all the good men gone?") it should now evolve that women pay dowries to men. Especially since educated women are now making much more than men.

This dowry should legally be non-refundable and whatever the man spends it on belongs to him under all circumstances, including divorce. If the house is in his name, it's his house. In a divorce, the children should go to him and she should have to pay "palimony."

Since women won't pay dowries they end up spinsters with cats, denying their responsibility for their predicament and blaming all their problems on men.

As outrageous as this sounds, look at what would happen. Since the average educated women would have to pay a man tens of thousands of dollars to get married, she would be a lot more careful who she married.

If she knew she'd lose kids and money to him, and had to give him money until the kids were grown, she'd be a lot more prudent (one of the Four Cardinal Virtues) in picking a man to marry.

Of course, women would be outraged at this idea, because many of them have been raised with the notion they are supposed to have all the advantages of a man and woman and none of the responsibilities.

Now we can avoid all of this by getting the government out of the economy, allowing society to repair itself.

Dowries, best of all, would force immature women to grow up.

I find all of it rather amusing. I wonder how things will evolve in the ten years? Well, maybe not evolve. "Mutate" might be a better word.

Conspiracists are Ghouls and Vampires

"You are not to say, 'It is a conspiracy!' in regard to all that this people call a conspiracy, And you are not to fear what they fear or be in dread of it." -Isaiah 8:12

"The art of magic is the art of tricking the human brain into constructing a false narrative of reality." -Mencius Moldbug

I've always dismissed conspiracists as narcissistic fools who divide everyone into "Me good; you bad." I was more amused by their delusions than anything else.

When I say "conspiracists" I don't mean three people getting together to kill Jimmy Hoffa. I mean the nuts who think everything is a conspiracy. They are the kinds of people who cherry-pick the "facts," make some up, then put them together into a mangled story that no one with any analytical ability - or even common sense - could accept.

However, I now think these people are ghouls and vampires. Why? Because they feed on death and destruction and misery. Without it, they couldn't conjure their lunatic beliefs. What would they do with themselves without catastrophes to give meaning to their tedious lives?

Here's take this picture as an example of just how sick are the souls of conspiracists.

This is the runner in the Boston Marathon who had his legs blown off.

The conspiracists think this is a fake picture. They claim that the leg bone sticking out of the guy is fake and that it fell off while he was being taken away in a wheelchair. A woman who claimed this in a video was laughing the entire time.

They think the entire picture is staged. In other words, everyone in this picture is an actor. When the bomb went off, everyone lay down, threw fake blood around, and moaned and groaned and put on their act.

Imagine if that man without his legs is your son, or the woman is your daughter. Now imagine some conspiracist walking up to you and saying, "Admit it. Your son lost his legs a long time ago and is being paid to put on this act. How much was he paid? Did you get paid, too?"

How would you feel almost losing your son and knowing his legs are gone? And some demented, morally blind conspiracist accuses you and him of faking the whole thing?

And if you're a conspiracist wouldn't you suddenly cease to be a conspiracist? At least when it happens to you and your own? Think of the cognitive dissonance you'd suffer! It'd hurt, wouldn't it?

The only thing conspiracists can do is impose already-manufactured beliefs on reality. They don't have the imagination and empathy to put themselves in the place of those they abuse and insult. After all, those they attack are evil people who've done awful things, so they deserve whatever happens to them, right?

Conspiracists' brains are playing tricks on them. They see the Truth, refuse to believe it, then create Lies which they find more emotionally satisfying. It's right out of Orwell: Lies are Truth.

I used to wonder why Isaiah condemned believers in conspiracies over 2000 years ago. I now think believing in impossible conspiracies is a sickness of the soul, one that revels in death and destruction and takes sadistic pleasure in mocking the dead and wounded. It's a pathetic condition to be stuck in, and I'm grateful that I'm not.

"Conspiracism is a particular narrative form of scapegoating that frames demonized enemies as part of a vast insidious plot against the common good, while it valorizes the scapegoater as a hero for sounding the alarm." - Berlet and Lyons

Smart & Lazy vs. Stupid & Active

A dozen or so years ago I ran across the old military classification of Smart vs. Stupid and Lazy vs. Active.

The top posts were to go to Smart & Lazy, because they figured out the most efficient ways to do things. Never to be allowed in the military were Stupid & Active, because they got everyone killed.

The bulk of soldiers were Stupid & Lazy, because they did the bare minimum to get by but didn't cause any trouble. Smart & Active made good officers, but again, the top promotions went to Smart & Lazy.

I found that simple classification to be very accurate on judging people.

There are more advanced tests, such as the MBTI and the Enneagram, but they are more for self-knowledge and in order to use them to understand someone else, they have to take the test and you have to know the results. That is a problem.

However, what I found to be more accurate is to refine Smart/Lazy/Stupid/Active to Smart & Stupid and Introverted & Extroverted.

The dumbest people in the world are the Stupid & Extroverted. They are the ones who fill the prisons and commit almost all crime. They are impulsive, i.e,. they act before they think. That's one of the big reasons they get into such trouble. They're too stupid to see cause and effect in their own lives. They're the kind of people who can't even learn from their own mistakes.

Next up are the Smart & Extroverted. Remember I mentioned they were never to be given the top positions? There is a good reason for that. They can't handle them.

Many politicians are Smart & Extroverted, and they are the ones who are always trying to do Good Things ("The road to Hell is paved with good intentions"). They start wars and screw up the economy. They're why democracy doesn't work and always fails. By the way, some politicians are Stupid & Extroverted, such as one who thought islands could tip over and another who thought when "assault weapons" were out of bullets they couldn't be fired anymore - ever.

The we have Stupid and Introverted. They're the ones who do just enough to get by. I've never seen much of a problem with them. I don't think anybody really has.

I am the Smart & Introverted, and we are, again, the ones who should rule. Mostly because we don't want to, and power has no allure for us.

There will always be problems between the Extroverted and Introverted. The smarter Introverts understand the Extroverts a lot better than Extroverts understand the Introverts. No Extrovert is ever going to understand an intelligent, imaginative Introvert wandering in the evening figuring things out (and getting so absorbed they fall into ditches, as the famous Scottish economist Adam Smith did).

A good movie about the conflict between Introverts and Extroverts is The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Jim Carrey plays an Introvert (although his schizoid portrayal is more what people think an introvert is, rather than what they really are) and Kate Winslet plays a ditzy scattered Extrovert. They ultimately don't get along, because they don't know what they are. The words Introvert and Extrovert are never used in the movie. If they knew what they were they would have gotten along a lot better.

You can also see the difference between Smart Introverts and Stupid Extroverts in the movie, Idiocracy.

As for the conflicts between men and women, there are far more smart men than women (there are twice as many men with IQs above 120 than women). There are far more many extroverted women than men.

The inevitable conclusion? There are an awful of Stupid Extroverted women out there! That's what causes a lot of the problems are between men and women. (I've heard these Stupid Extroverted women referred to as Manic Pixie Dream Girls.)

Since these women often turn into catastrophes in their personal lives, they have to be ruled by men, because when they gain any kind of power they get busy trying to improve things but instead screw them up. They're not smart enough to realize what they are doing and instead rationalize it.

I have found most of the complaints against women in the Manosphere are against Stupid Extroverted Women. Unfortunately, many of the men don't know what the problem is. They think all women are like that, which is why they come up with inaccurate concepts such as "rationalization hamsters." Which, again, applies to Stupid Extroverted Women. Not Smart Introverted Ones.

If You Don't Have One You Don't Have Any of Them

The Four Cardinal Virtues, that is.

People think the Four Cardinal Virtues are religious, but they're not. Plato first listed them in his Republic, and that was well over 2000 years ago, long before Christianity.

All four are interrelated, so if you don't have one you don't have any.

They are: Bravery, Prudence, Justice, and Self-Control.

Not only the Greeks but the Romans thought about these things. Cicero wrote this: "Virtue may be defined as a habit of mind in harmony with reason and the order of nature. It has four parts: wisdom (prudentiam), justice, courage, temperance."

They're also in the Bible. The deuterocanonical book "Wisdom of Solomon" reads, "She [Wisdom] teaches temperance, and prudence, and justice, and fortitude, which are such things as men can have nothing more profitable in life."

I repeat this: "nothing more profitable in life."

To illustrate the Four Cardinal Virtues, look at the opposites.

I know two women who will say anything that pops into their heads to both men and women. It's not bravery. It's recklessness.

Both are impulsive, which isn't surprising. That's why there exists the saying, "reckless and impulsive." What's the opposite of reckless and impulsive? Prudence and self-control.

You can make the argument that bravery is not quite the opposite of recklessness, but just a degree of it. The Greeks made the argument that too much bravery is recklessness. This is why all the virtues are interrelated.

One of the women I know is a coward. If she decides she is not interested in a guy, she'll just dump him without a word to him. Reckless, impulsive, and cowardly - the opposite of self-control, prudence and bravery. Not surprisingly, her life is a catastrophe. Not surprisingly, the lives of both women are a catastrophe.

One of them had her business go under because she wouldn't give the people what they ordered. That's what Justice is - giving people their due.

Of course, I've seen the same thing among men. One I know quite well is what the more ignorant in the Manosphere call an "Alpha" - wealthy, good-looking, lots of women.

He's not an "Alpha." He's a cad. He has spent his life laying women. He lied to them, cheated on them, manipulated them.

I found him to be cowardly, reckless and impulsive. So has his best friend. He has little self-control. In other words, he lacked all four of the Four Cardinal Virtues. And he has ruined his life. He once told me if he had to do it over, he would have been a high-school coach instead of a doctor.

The Four Cardinal Virtues are about having a happy, successful life, based on confidence and competence. They are good practical wisdom, which is the only kind of "wisdom" worth anything.

Incidentally, "virtue" means "the powers of Man" and "cardinal" means "hinge," because it's the hinge for a life of well-being.

Unfortunately the Four Cardinal Virtues aren't taught anymore, not in school, not in the home, not in the churches. It's almost as if none of them want people to develop critical thinking skills.