Maggie's Farm

A series of essays on modern motherhood at Boston Review, subtitled Stay-at-home mothering is bad for mothers, their kids, and women’s equality.

I read no article there about Apple Pie, but I may have missed it. The academic lingo is tough at first, but you can get the hang of it. Something called "Care Theory," which I think, in plain English, means not wanting to be a mom.

One of the essays is Time for Public Childcare. Surely that must be so moms are free - I mean liberated - from their annoying and demanding brats so they can golf and play tennis and be CEOs and have lunchtime affairs with the tennis pro.

A re-post from a couple of years ago:

Across the pond, Mediocracy is often thinking about the sorts of things that we puzzle over. In this case, the tendency of people to expect governments to perfect the world. One quote from his piece on "Freedom To" vs. "Approval Of":

Another point of confusion for some libertarians, as for most others with enthusiastic views about the right way to run the world, is the false dichotomy between 'everything is fine' and 'collective action is required'. It is in fact possible to hold a third position, namely that:
(a) the world is imperfect
(b) a legal framework which upholds private agreements is a good thing, because it helps to exploit the benefits of exchange (this principle is usually abbreviated into 'free markets')
(c) specific market failures may require collective action (defence is definitely one; education and medicine definitely aren't; other putative market failures are a matter for debate)
(d) apart from providing a safety net, trying to address any other imperfection by means of government action is to be avoided, if for no other reason than that it invariably involves some form of coercion.

There is a tremendous psychological pressure in contemporary society to jump from 'something less than ideal is happening' to 'the state must intervene'. In fact, it is more than a pressure, it has become an unconscious automatic connection.

Well, not an automatic connection for me. Despite all of the accumulated evidence to the contrary, many insist on that "hope" the hope that government can and will fix "it." And politicians are more than happy to exploit that, because accumulating power tends to be their "unconscious automatic connection."

I heard it yesterday from somebody at lunch: "Bush doesn't care that we're in a recession." I noted (to myself) that this nice Liberal lady was assuming 1. that how much Bush emotes matters and 2. that a President could control international markets if he only chose to do do. I elected to move on to other subjects.

I am not one for the notion of "hallowed ground" in general, but I understand that people can and do make sacred whatever they want to, for whatever reasons. I tend to find the idea of making places where people die "sacred" to be a pagan, superstitious notion.

Anyway, of course I agree with the Pres that Moslems have the right to freely worship and gather. It's legal. But that's not the point. We recently quoted somebody's shrewd comment that "'It's legal' isn't a defense; it's a confession."

The point is that Americans and especially New Yorkers are reacting to the stunningly in-your-face insensitivity of the siting of this mosque and "cultural center." It's the insensitivity verging on hostility that pisses people off. It's probably legal to site a strip joint next to a Baptist church too, but who would do it?

As I am wont to say, civilization is more about the soft rules than the hard rules. The mosque violates an obvious soft rule of civil behavior. Codes, not laws.The usual consequences of significant soft-rule violations are shunning, rejection, avoidance, or expressions of discontent or even contempt. "Virtual stocks," you might say.

Our condescending elites only worry about the soft rules when it fits their narrative du jour (eg BJs in the Oval Office are ok). Their knee-jerk reactions generally run against the sentiments and instincts of ordinary Americans (among which I am one). I find the Imam's choice to be insulting and contemptible. We Americans have welcomed him to his new adopted country, and are reasonable to expect respect, appreciation, and gratitude instead of self-serving legalisms.

It is reasonable to expect people who wish to be accepted as Americans to learn how to behave. I would, were I to move to another culture.

Image on top: the c. 600 Hagia Sophia, minus the minarets which were added by the Ottomans when they converted this remarkable and splendid ancient Christian basilica to a mosque.

That's a term which has come into fashion lately, and it deserves to. Counterfactuals are a specific variety of BS, as our commenter notes.

The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective. The key to it is its conditionality (If...,then...might have...); the past subjunctive, combined with its lack of factual content. For example, "You bozo - you left a burner on. You could have burned down the house." Well maybe - but it did not happen. Thus no fact.

(An "indicative conditional," by way of contrast, is a past conditional which is founded on a real, factual consequence which occurred. For example, "If you bozos hadn't left the gate open, the dog would not have run into the street." Indicative conditionals are also debatable, due to their speculative nature, ie, cum hoc ergo propter hoc. For example, in my case, almost every time I water the garden, it rains afterewards.)

Counterfactuals are often used (abused) to make emotional arguments. "If the stimulus had been 3 trillion dollars, our unemployment rate would be 4%."

Free Dictionary offers this:

adj

(Philosophy / Logic) expressing what has not happened but could, would, or might under differing conditions

n

(Philosophy / Logic) a conditional statement in which the first clause is a past tense subjunctive statement expressing something contrary to fact, as in if she had hurried she would have caught the bus.

"Are you a Ranger or a Hobbit?"

"I think I offended a group of very fine, upstanding law students." A tough talk, quite entertaining.

Of course, nobody expects you to take a job in which the demands do not meet your wishes. That's just called "a bad fit." When people complain about legal work hours, they should consider doctors' hours, Wall St. hours, the hours of an infantryman in Afghanistan, or the hours of an entrepreneur, by way of comparison. One quote from the piece:

Nothing world-changing has happened within the limited confines of the nine-to-five work week.  Nobody can wake up in the morning and say, “I’m dedicating myself and my family to my fellow man, but only so long as I keep exactly the kind of balance that would make my therapist proud.”  Eight hours per day can help make one happy (maybe), but is happiness the point?  Do we even know in any given day, week, or month what will make us happy over the medium to long term?  We think we do, but I know many, many people who get exactly what they want . . . and then find out it wasn’t as great as they thought it would be.

Discussions about what "caused" the Civil War never end. From Wilson Quarterly, A century and a half after the first state seceded from the Union, a lively debate over what caused the Civil War continues. A quote:

Whether or not they owned slaves, Southerners almost universally professed the doctrine known then and now as states’ rights, grounded in the federal system as originally understood, at least by the followers of Thomas Jefferson. When the South lost, states’ rights lost with it, and the unquestionable supremacy of the central government has been with us ever since. That abstract phrase “states’ rights” as used before the Civil War immediately prompts the question, states’ rights to what? “The right to own slaves,” McPherson explains, “the right to take this property into the territories; freedom from the coercive powers of a centralized government.”

States' rights were and are about lots more than slavery. It's a historical tragedy that slavery and Jim Crow ended up being the poster children for states' rights. The war was a mighty tragedy too.

Laura Ingraham speaking to Howard Fineman, via Driscoll's The MSM Sure Grades on a Curve:

How is it though with all these smart people at Newsweek – I went around the block with Evan Thomas about this as well. How did you all think that a guy who basically went from the Harvard Law Review, to some community leafleting, organizing, whatever you want to call it, to a short stint, a few lectures about constitutional law at [the University of] Chicago, very short stopover in the state Senate, and a very short stopover in the U.S. Senate. How does that add up to experience to run the biggest economy and the biggest military in the world? And why wasn’t Newsweek, instead of doing these celebrified covers of Michelle and Barack as historic, and celebrity culture, and all this love-love-love-love-love, why wasn’t – Why weren’t those questions asked before this election took place? Because to me, those were the questions to ask. . It wasn’t about personality. It was about experience and outlook.

and note this bit:

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt gathered the NBC reporters together in early 2009 and scolded them for reporting negatively on Barack Obama. GE owns 80% of NBC Universal.

I read that America's saving rate is rising, and that people are paying off their personal debt - and that retail business is terrible.

Are you buying stuff and spending money, or restraining yourself these days?

Let us know, in the comments.

From Robert J. Smith, a leader in private conservation (h/t, SDA)

Re my Bias Against Beauty post, a case in point from yesterday's news.

Red-blooded American fellows are challenged by this sort of charming person, regardless of what the lesbian feminazis might say.

A new report claims a bias against female beauty in a number of jobs. I am not surprised.

I always advise young associates to avoid regular work with sexy females, unless the associate is on the make. The distraction can be too much for a fellow to handle, the chemistry can be too exothermic, and familiarity can quickly turn to grievous consequences after a couple of cocktails.

For a serene and honorable life, I advise working with fat women with a wart on their nose - preferably with a hair growing out of the wart.

This strategy has always worked for me. I have a libidinous nature and a dirty mind, so it matters.

The big cheerful news of today is 131,000 jobs lost, and slowing economic expansion. Says the WSJ:

"It still feels like a recession," Jay Feldman, economist at Credit Suisse, wrote in a note. He pointed out that private jobs are still down 0.3% compared with 13 months ago, when the economy started to grow again. By contrast, private jobs were up by 3.5% on average in the job market recoveries of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

I visited my dentist this afternoon, and he admitted to me that business was terrible. People are putting everything off.

I wasn't surprised by that, but he told me something interesting: the dentists are offering Botox, lip plumping, and wrinkle injections now (Juvaderm, collagen, etc). He said they take a several-day course on weekends, take an exam, get a certificate, then have their receptionist ask "Would you like to consider some of our new services?"

"You can get a brand new smile."

He told me they do it for half of what the dermatologists charge around here for the same thing (the latter of which is around $1000 for a basic Botox routine).

Yes, "It still feels like a recession."

The only thing about this lengthy recession ( an ongoing recession for which, at this point, I blame federal government policies and plans) which brings a smile is the significant deflation in the price of good hand-made cigars.

Why is this? Why is desiring Constitutional government anti-black and anti-brown people? (toon is h/t Lucianne)

My view is that the assumption that people with more skin pigmentation cannot make a decent life in America without government hand-outs and special favors is insulting, condescending, racist - and simply untrue.

Am I a racist for saying this? America has tons more white folks on the various government doles than folks of color. I'd like to see them all get their act together, regardless of pigmentation. America is the least color-conscious nation on the planet. Nobody here cares about that, anymore (except for the race-mongers who still try to make careers out of it).

Douglass at Am Thinker spells out the details. It is rather amusing. Krugman was once an economist, but has been a political hack for years. One quote from the piece:

Paul Krugman has spent his career as a pundit advocating that government bureaucrats and political process replace markets. He knows that there is a large literature that says that this is a bad idea. That literature is transparently relevant to Krugman's only policy proposal. And yet Krugman has not read it...and admits that he has not read it, without embarrassment.

By July, Krugman had lost his "Battle of the Blog." On July 23, Latrina commented, "Who is this Sean from Florida? He takes everything that [the] Professor [says] and shreds it, piece by piece. He shouldn't be allowed to post his comments on this blog since he seems to be winning all the debates. We progressives need to stick together and embellish our talking points without someone from the outside pointing out fallacies in our ideology."

Students Who Don't Study - Evidence shows that college students put in less and less time on coursework but receive higher grades.

Allitt begins:

American discussions of education often veer over into utopian fantasy, and one of the commonest delusions is that nearly every young person wants to be educated. The reality is quite different. 

Nearly every young person wants the qualifications that offer access to well paid work, and will do as much as it takes to get them.  But most youngsters do not care deeply about education for its own sake, especially if getting it requires long hours of solitary, disciplined study.  Learning is hard, often joyless, and for centuries was understood to be so alien to youngsters’ inclinations that it had to be reinforced with frequent beatings. 

Now we indulge the idea that not just basic literacy but a high level of formal education is for everyone, and that they will appreciate it.

The Volt: G.M.’s Electric Lemon.

Can somebody tell me how this piece of expensive and useless crap is supposed to save the world?

Where do people think electricity comes from? Thor?

Photo is a Yugo, not a Volt. But you knew that.

Washington Rebel found a remarkable rant from Takuan Seiyo in Brussels Journal: Shotgun Marriage In Europe. One quote:

... to return a Western democracy to its rightful owners requires a majority of votes. Such a majority can no longer obtain for any political platform that would tackle even the top three major problems that bedevil the West: bankrupting socialism, nonwhite immigration, and implanted Islam. Not to mention the next dozen grave problems: irredeemable debt, the tyranny of the metastized State, the Looters’ coalition’s chokehold, sham global economy, fraudulent financial capitalism, minoritarian tyranny, shattered social capital, barbaric mass culture, nihilism, democracy turned idiocracy, breakdown of sexual norms and results (i.e. no babies), and falsehoods and self-hate careening through the land like a band of headless horsemen.

A quote from his interview:

You know what that rally was? The "me first" rally. "Pay me my raise first. Pay me my free health benefits first. Pay me my pension first. And everybody else in New Jersey, get to the back of the line."  Well, you know what? I'm not going to sit by and allow that to go unnoticed, so we'll shine a bright light on it, and we'll see how the people react. But I think we are seeing how the people of New Jersey are reacting, and that's how you make it politically palatable in other states in the country. Just shine a bright light on greed and self-interest."

It's the right time to take on the greed of government unions. Somebody's got to do it before every Dem state goes bankrupt. As I always say, the marriage between government unions and the Dem party is an intrinsically corrupt conspiracy against the people.

It's good to hear Tom Sowell say it: How Smart Are We? Elites may have more brilliance, but they can’t have as much experience as the people whose decisions they preempt.

One quote:

One of the ideas that has proved to be almost impervious to evidence is the idea that wise and far-sighted people need to take control, and plan economic and social policies so that there will be a rational and just order, rather than chaos resulting from things being allowed to take their own course. It sounds so logical and plausible that demanding hard evidence would seem almost like nit-picking.

"Things taking their own course" means, of course, people exercising free choice.

Some of us here have been accused of being elites ourselves. If I am in that category somehow, put me in the subgroup that has no interest in controlling anybody but myself. Just that is difficult enough, and often impossible.

From a review of Fischer's Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character:

...Made in America is not simply an entertaining narrative history. It is also an argument, or rather a set of arguments, about character and culture. The first is that "modernity" entailed less wrenching and negative change than most today believe. In the realm of culture and society, continuity -- or the intensification of already apparent patterns -- was the rule. Fischer writes, for example, that his is "not one more account of how American character was corrupted by rising individualism, egoism or selfishness." Instead, Americans "remained by Western standards remarkably committed to family, church, community, job and nation." Second, like Potter, Fischer sees abundance as the engine of American history: not simply economic wealth, in his telling, but an ever-increasing stock of security, health, social opportunities, political freedoms, and self-mastery. Third and most significant, he declares a Tocquevillian "voluntarism" -- a highly socialized individualism that led Americans to join groups and build communities -- to be the substrate of national character, the key trait that binds Americans together.