But Now You Know

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1. Your side can say “people who oppose Obama are racist…people who say socialism is bad are now racist”, but a saner person cannot even mirror the words back in satire, without your shrieks of girlish horror.

   “My side”? Youre knocking down a straw man here. You haven’t made the least attempt to understand what “my” side might actually be. You’re just responding to a caricature of people “like me” that you have in your head. You don’t know what I have or haven’t said, or which “people” are mine. I don’t expect you to take the effort to get to know some random commenter on your blog, but the least you could do is respond to the actual content of my comment.

   You say that you’re just “mirroring the words back in satire,” but then you close by saying that “racism is at least as likely to be against whites as otherwise.” Which is it? Satire or reality?

   There is a fundamental difference between racism by whites against non-whites, and racism by non-whites against whites. Whites are, and have been for this country’s entire history, in positions of power over non-whites. This is not to say that there aren’t non-whites who have risen to positions of power (Obama, most famously and recently), but that the overall power structure of the country is dramatically weighted in favor of white-ness. Therefore, when a white person expresses racism against a non-white, it is backed up with the entire weight of that cultural imbalance. When a non-white expresses racism against a white, the power of that expression is similarly reduced. Equating the two seems to ignore the actual history that has occurred between the races. Non-whites and whites are not on equal footing in our society, and it’s just petulant for you to cry anti-white racism when whites are still reaping vast benefits from on-going anti-non-white (double-negative triple-word-score!) racism.

   Comment by Joshua | March 10, 2010 | Reply

   • Also, I apparently fail at using the Reply button.

     Comment by Joshua | March 10, 2010 | Reply

   • Oh come on, nobody outside of a whacky few extremists takes that silly “you have to be in power to be racist” argument seriously, any more.

     The overall power structure is in favor of people who know each other, not whites per se. And that’s actually a good thing. It is more efficient for people to hire and work with people they know, than to be having to try to guess about people they don’t. You should always hire a friend you KNOW can do the job, over someone equally qualified whom you do not know.

     The idiotic EEOC/AA laws and pressures actually sabotage that healthy business practice.

     Racism is always wrong and stupid. If anything, it is actually more evil in one who is proclaiming himself a victim of it. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are two really vulgar examples of that.

     Of course there are few people more racist than those Liberals who claim that blacks are disadvantaged and need special footing, treatment, exception, et cetera. There are more poor white people in the country than black. There is a higher percentage of poor blacks, but it’s racist to be tallying by race instead of ability, in the first place.

     If anything, blacks have an unfair ADVANTAGE in society today, because of racist laws treating them like lazy idiots. I scored nearly perfect in a civil service test, many years back, but had zero chance of getting offered a job, because of 100 points, blacks got a bonus 20, women got 10, disabled people got 10, or something like that. It boiled down to people scoring 65 points and beating me out.

     That was not only bigoted discrimination against me, but also against blacks, women, et cetera. A black man of a specific socio-economic grouping needs ZERO help competing against a white man of an equivalent group. Yet the test did not give you a bonus based on your parents’ household income or zip code, but simply on your race.

     Blacks, they appear to think, are too stupid/lazy to make it against a white man from the SAME background.

     Comment by kazvorpal | March 10, 2010 | Reply

     • Oh come on, nobody outside of a whacky few extremists takes that silly “you have to be in power to be racist” argument seriously, any more.

       On what are you basing this claim? I follow the blogs of a few professional sociologists, who present that definition as mainstream.

       The overall power structure is in favor of people who know each other, not whites per se.

       Yes, but it is usually whites who are in the most powerful, highest-paying positions, and usually non-whites who are in the least powerful, lowest-paying positions. So shifting the discussion from one of race, to one of social connections doesn’t change the reality that non-whites are consistently disempowered.

       Racism is always wrong.

       Oh look! A point on which we agree! ;-)

       Of course there are few people more racist than those Liberals who claim that blacks are disadvantaged and need special footing, treatment, exception, et cetera.

       I would say that nobody deserves “special treatment,” but I would also say that people in positions of privilege often view any erosion of their privilege as “special treatment” for a minority group, when in fact what is happening is a minuscule move towards actual balance. For example, the so-called “War Against Christmas.” As an atheist, I shudder when I hear Christians shriek about how Christmas is under threat. What it looks like to me is that Christmas is going from FRICKIN’ EVERYWHERE to JUST SLIGHTLY LESS THAN FRICKIN’ EVERYWHERE. But those who fail to recognize their position of privilege (Christians, in this case) see it as a minority (non-Christians) demanding “special treatment.”

       Comment by Joshua | March 10, 2010 | Reply

       • To claim anything a “professional sociologist” says to be mainstream is pretty clueless authority worship. But it’s also pure fallacy, when other sociologists completely disagree.

         Racism is the belief that there is a qualitative difference between the races. That is all. Bureaucrats using class hate to fund their useless “research” can twist the words but are, if anything, circumstantial proof of what NOT to do, rather than a means of changing definitions.

         > Yes, but it is usually whites who are in the most powerful,
         > highest-paying positions, and usually non-whites who are
         > in the least powerful, lowest-paying positions.

         No, it is usually whites who are in the most powerful, highest-paying positions, and usually whites who are in the least powerful, lowest-paying positions.

         Whites are still the overwhelming majority of the country, and are the majority of the poor, as well.

         In fact, it’s pretty racist to not recognize this…against both blacks and whites.

         > I would say that nobody deserves “special treatment,” but I
         > would also say that people in positions of privilege often view
         > any erosion of their privilege as “special treatment” for a minority
         > group, when in fact what is happening is a minuscule move
         > towards actual balance.

         Except that’s not what’s happening. You avoided all of my points that support my position, and make your retorts meaningless.

         For example, it is racist to give BLACKS twenty percent on a civil service test, without regard to their socio-economic history.

         That is not an erosion of special privilege, but the CREATION of special privilege. It IS special treatment, and is racist, implying that BEING BLACK is the disadvantage, without regard for whether it’s a black man whose family has been wealthy Americans for a century, or a black man whose parents are royalty from Africa. Give twenty percent to all people from poor socio-economic backgrounds, and it’ll still be stupid, but only in the self-defeating inductive reasoning sense, at least that wouldn’t be racist.

         As for the “balance” thing, that’s petty nonsense. The way to have justice is to have equality before the law, only. Anything else is just more of the problem, no matter which way it goes. Making whites sit at the back of the bus would not have made things more “balanced”, any more than the militia taking over Rwanda and slaughtering/raping Tutsi civilians brings “balance” for the Tutsi militias having raped and slaughtered Hutu civilians when THEY were in control. And, likewise, “balancing” by giving all blacks (or even poor people without regard to race) some special advantage in society does not balance anything.

         Just as it’s true that if you redistributed all wealth equally among all Americans one time tomorrow, there would end up a similar distribution of poor and rich as now within a year, with a good correlation to who is NOW poor and rich, so these special privileges don’t magically “make up for” anything, and simply having a level legal field (not one imposed on private property owners) would allow those with special potential among the poor to “move on up”.

         > For example, the so-called “War Against Christmas.”
         > As an atheist, I shudder when I hear Christians shriek
         > about how Christmas is under threat. What it looks like
         > to me is that Christmas is going from FRICKIN’
         > EVERYWHERE to JUST SLIGHTLY LESS THAN FRICKIN’ EVERYWHERE.

         Speaking as a non-Christian, who cares if it’s everywhere? Leaves are everywhere in the spring, and I’m not a plant. I’m not some egomaniac who thinks it all has to be about me or mine.

         And this illustrates the sociopathic pettiness of way too many atheists. If you were in India, you wouldn’t get all upset because the Diwali or Pongal celebration was “everywhere”, nor would you demand it be “slightly less everywhere”. And if you would, then you’re just an equal-opportunity petty egocentric.

         And that’s all it is…people whining about Christmas being celebrated are like a child whining that the birthday boy is the center of the party, instead of himself.

         I am agnostic, not Christian. But I find it entirely reasonable that the Christians who comprise the overwhelming majority of Americans, plus anyone else who simply has enough sense to know a good time when they see it, celebrate the hell out of Christmas in public, everywhere. I actually hung Christian decorations on the outside of my house for Christmas the year I bought it, just as I’d have floated candle boats if I’d bought a house on the Ganges in India…it was a fun way to “mark” my new property ownership.

         Who gives a rat’s ass if you, or any other non-Christian, don’t have a direct belief-connection with the holiday? Nobody with an erg of sense, certainly. I don’t worry about the fact that I despise, am absolutely philosophically opposed to the whole execution of the French Revolution, if I happen to be in Quebec or France on Bastille day. I am not worried about my complete lack of ethnic or religious interest in Mardi Gras, when the city here engages in the second largest celebration thereof in the entire continent of North America.

         Why? Because I’m not some petty sociopath, who has issue with other people making a big deal out of something that doesn’t involve me.

         > But those who fail to recognize their position of privilege
         > (Christians, in this case) see it as a minority (non-Christians)
         > demanding “special treatment.”

         Success is not “privilege”, except to the petty, greed-oriented collectivist. Anything is most popular/common in a society has a right to be in that position, be it right-handed people, brunettes, stupid socialist Francophonic fans of the Reign of Terror, vice-obsessed people who turn religious holidays into a bacchanalian contradiction of the mores of their religion, or whatever.

         One of the reasons that you collectivists don’t grasp is that it is their CHOICE. If 80% of society chooses to celebrate Christmas, so that 80% of everything you see centers on that holiday for five weeks, that’s their CHOICE, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

         But you guys (collectivists, in this case Liberals) don’t actually believe in choice. Oh, you pay lip-service to it on isolated issues where you find it convenient, like killing babies or burning flags, but not as a consistent principle, and the specific things you pick turn out to be as antisocial as the irrational, faith-based “there is definitely no God” mindset, spread out among politics in general.

         Oh, and yes, you’re going to object that I don’t know you, but that’s a pretty hollow retort when my first impression, based on your petty, misinterpretive offense to obvious satire, was dead-on correct.

         Comment by kazvorpal | March 10, 2010 | Reply

         • To claim anything a “professional sociologist” says to be mainstream is pretty clueless authority worship.

           That’s like saying that anything a physicist says about quantum theory is authority worship. Sociologists study racism, among other things. Sociologists who study racism are authorities on the topic. Not the only authorities; not infallible; but authorities.

           But it’s also pure fallacy, when other sociologists completely disagree.

           So not all sociologists agree with each other. Surprise? You still haven’t supported your claim that the racism = prejudice + power idea is extremist and whacky. But let it go, because I can’t really support the idea that it’s mainstream either, so we’re just going to end up metaphorically hitting each other with nerf-bats.

           Suffice it to say that, regardless of what sociologists think, in my opinion, prejudice without power is fundamentally different than racism with. prejudice without power is impotent.

           Racism is the belief that there is a qualitative difference between the races.

           You’ve reduced racism to an idea or belief, but you seem to be ignoring the actual ways in which racism is acted out on minorities. That experience that you had, where a person was chosen over you for a job simply because of his or her race? Many minorities have that experience all the time. It’s their day-to-day life.

           I disagree that racism is, “the belief that there is a qualitative difference between the races.” Racism is the practical outcome of the subconscious or conscious preference for a certain race and against other races. Racism is, to me, primarily about outcomes and effects, and only secondarily about the ideological framework taht causes those outcomes and effects. For example, I can observe that an incredibly disproportionate percentage of the prison population is black. How do I explain that? Are black people simply disproportionately criminal, or is there some other (racist) factor at play that results in that outcome.

           No, it is usually whites who are in the most powerful, highest-paying positions, and usually whites who are in the least powerful, lowest-paying positions. Whites are still the overwhelming majority of the country, and are the majority of the poor, as well.

           I see your point about whites making up the majority of the poor, due to their making up the majority of the population as a whole. But whites have proportionately the lowest rate of poverty, which is what I’m trying to communicate.

           For example, it is racist to give BLACKS twenty percent on a civil service test, without regard to their socio-economic history.

           I don’t know how to respond to the example of the civil service test, because on the one hand, I agree with you that saying, “blacks get 20%, women get 15%, etc…” is a terrible way of addressing racism. And, further, I agree that race alone may not be the best way to determine who is most affected by racism, especially given the ephemeral nature of race. That being said, your arguments seem to amount to, “The things we’re doing to address racism are stupid and ineffective, so let’s go back to a world where white people (mostly men) dominate.” Which is awfully convenient if you happen to be a white man, which I am. So, on the one hand, I can acknowledge all the fallacies with the current ways we address racism, but on the other hand, I’m not comfortable saying, “Well, toss the whole thing, then,” because that would also fail to adequately address racism.

           That is not an erosion of special privilege, but the CREATION of special privilege. It IS special treatment, and is racist, implying that BEING BLACK is the disadvantage, without regard for whether it’s a black man whose family has been wealthy Americans for a century, or a black man whose parents are royalty from Africa.

           Simply being black is a disadvantage in all kinds of subtle ways that you’re not acknowledging. Yes, it’s about all kinds of factors, including socioeconomic class, but it’s also about Being Black. For example, Thomas Shapiro observes that houses in black neighborhoods appreciate at a lower rate than houses in white neighborhoods, which means that even if a black person and a white person start at the same socioeconomic level, their race will differentiate them over time.

           As for the “balance” thing, that’s petty nonsense. The way to have justice is to have equality before the law, only.

           Equality before the law is a desirable goal, but it has never been achieved in any culture of which I’m aware. If equality before the law is going to be how we “fix” racism, I don’t think we’ll ever do it.

           Anything else is just more of the problem, no matter which way it goes. Making whites sit at the back of the bus would not have made things more “balanced”

           I actually agree with you. I don’t support laws that arbitrarily hamstring the majority. I don’t support laws that promote an arbitrary minority. At the same time, I’m not comfortable simply ignoring the reality that lots of people are victims of racism, and that I feel bad about that and want to help them.

           Just as it’s true that if you redistributed all wealth equally among all Americans one time tomorrow, there would end up a similar distribution of poor and rich as now within a year, with a good correlation to who is NOW poor and rich

           This is really just total fantasy. You don’t know that’s how it would come out any more than I know that’s how it wouldn’t come out.

           I’m not some egomaniac who thinks it all has to be about me or mine.

           Righ, neither am I. Here are some examples of the things I’m talking about:

           1. Me saying, “I don’t celebrate Christmas,” when I’m wished a, “Merry Christmas.” Should be pretty inoffensive, huh?

           2. Christian outrage when Atheists put messages on signs or buses, just like Christians do all the time. Again: it’s not “all about me.” It’s just that “my” voice is joining the chorus that Christian voices still dominate. And Christians totally flip the fuck out.

           Why? Because I’m not some petty sociopath, who has issue with other people making a big deal out of something that doesn’t involve me.

           But it does involve me. It involves me when I am seen as immoral because I lack religion, and as a result, I am threatened with having DFCS take my children away and give them to my ex-spouse. It involves me when I am denied the ability to get an abortion largely because someone else’s religious beliefs require them to value my non-existent child’s bodily autonomy over my own. And again, just to be clear, I’m not saying that Christians shouldn’t be free to do whatever the hell they want with themselves, just that they shouldn’t complain when I do the same.

           Success is not “privilege”, except to the petty, greed-oriented collectivist. Anything is most popular/common in a society has a right to be in that position

           So, if something is common, then it has the right to be common. Isn’t that tautological? I mean, as a moral compass, it strikes me as pretty blunt. Do you have anything to say about the morality of the ways in which a thing becomes common, stays common, or shifts from a position of uncommonness to commonness?

           One of the reasons that you collectivists don’t grasp is that it is their CHOICE. If 80% of society chooses to celebrate Christmas, so that 80% of everything you see centers on that holiday for five weeks, that’s their CHOICE, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

           Yes. And if 1% of “us” decide to get abortions or change our gender or shoot up heroin, that’s “our” CHOICE, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

           Oh. Except there is. Heroin is illegal, abortion is only barely hanging in, and sex change, while legal, is reviled.

           So who’s paying “lip service” here? Your “majority rules” ideology says that it’s all right for the 80% to shit all over the 20%.

           Oh, and yes, you’re going to object that I don’t know you, but that’s a pretty hollow retort when my first impression, based on your petty, misinterpretive offense to obvious satire, was dead-on correct.

           Well, there’s not much to say in response to that.

           And, by the way, to get back on the original point: I read your comment about anti-white racism as an attempt at satire. I didn’t misinterpret it. I just disagreed and though it was in bad taste. Given the differing history of blacks and whites in the US, it’s just obtuse to claim that black hatred of whites is equivalent to white hatred of blacks.

           Comment by Joshua | March 11, 2010 | Reply

           • > That’s like saying that anything a physicist says about quantum theory is authority worship.

             No, because sociology is not a hard science. It’s barely a soft science. It’s often more of a political activity, as happens with economics.

             > Sociologists study racism, among other things.
             > Sociologists who study racism are authorities on the topic.
             > Not the only authorities; not infallible; but authorities.

             Because of the lack of agreement among them, claims made that DO lack agreement are not authoritative.

             And because it’s not a science, they cannot be authoritative even if they do grow to be conventional wisdom among themselves…and this is a great example of something that is MILES from it, in fact a minority (no pun intended) position.

             > Suffice it to say that, regardless of what sociologists think,
             > in my opinion, prejudice without power is fundamentally
             > different than racism with. prejudice without power is impotent.

             If that were the case, then it’d be blacks (for example) who are the real badguys. The entire legal system, today, is set up to favor them. A company can be “black run” and have 100% black employees, and with rare exceptions will not only not be prosecuted, but actually defended by the state. I should know, a black associate of mine called me in as a consultant, and I was eagerly accepted on paper by his boss, but he was literally told they wouldn’t use me because I’m white, when I talked to the boss on the phone and he realized I was. And this was a government contractor.

             Likewise, when I owned my own ISP, and one of my partners was black, we seriously discussed ways to make him appear the majority partner (no pun intended) because we could then get an easy, government-backed business loan that I could not otherwise obtain. Note that he came from a wealthier background than I.

             And that’s not even addressing horrifically racist, but ostensibly pro-black things like Affirmative Action.

             > That experience that you had, where a person was chosen over you for a
             > job simply because of his or her race? Many minorities have that experience
             > all the time. It’s their day-to-day life.

             That’s your guilt-ridden white Liberal (the group of humans many blacks despise more than Klansmen) ivory-tower impression of black life, that in fact is mostly fantasy. There have been times in my life that I had more black friends and business associates than white, and all but the most “they’re out to get me” paranoid of them laughed at that idea.

             As they said, what it comes down to is that some irresponsible people do blame every single failure in their lives on racism they ASSume to be present, but that it’s that very irresponsibility that causes their lives to snowball into failure.

             Guys like you facilitate that…which is one of about ten reasons the rest do despise your ilk more than the more open racists.

             > Are black people simply disproportionately criminal,
             > or is there some other (racist) factor at play that results in that outcome.

             Again, the very kind of pro-irresponsibility nonsense they despise.

             Any individual who would be an equal member of society, allowed adult freedom and responsibility, MUST be held responsible for all of his actions, not told “oh, it’s probably because of external factors, it’s not entirely your own fault”.

             If you’re going to absolve them of responsibility, one at a time or as a group of individuals, then you must also strip them of adult societal member status.

             > I see your point about whites making up the majority of the poor,
             > due to their making up the majority of the population as a whole.
             > But whites have proportionately the lowest rate of poverty,
             > which is what I’m trying to communicate.

             But, even from your collectivist viewpoint if you were to be the first ever socialist to apply your principles consistently, that the majority of poor people are white is more important, because it’s the disadvantage, collectively, that’s the biggest problem. People from systemically poor families all have equivalent disadvantage, are all being equally wronged, and for you to focus on a small subset of them by race is bigoted, against both subsets.

             > And, further, I agree that race alone may not be the best way to
             > determine who is most affected by racism, especially given the
             > ephemeral nature of race.

             No, it is CLEARLY not the best way, not even a valid way at all, and my criticism stands, in view of you mitigating your supposed understanding of this with that and the subsequent qualifier. You are still racist for this belief, if anything you’re making it worse.

             That an Old Money black man or prince from Swaziland gets special “help” because BLACKS are unable to fend for themselves on equal ground is grotesque racism, not MAYBE racism and not simply confusing because Obama and Tiger Woods aren’t really black.

             > That being said, your arguments seem to amount to,
             > “The things we’re doing to address racism are stupid
             > and ineffective, so let’s go back to a world where white
             > people (mostly men) dominate.”

             No, I’m not stupid enough to think that false dichotomy is the only pair of options, and everything I’ve said has indicated this.

             Obviously, the only just society is one in which all are treated equally under the law, as has been recognized for centuries. Part of the statistical success of “whites” was because of coercive laws, and those were wrong. The only redress needed is to end them and make the law truly colorblind. That is not “going back”, but moving forward.

             And it’s all blacks need, because they ARE equal, and are perfectly capable of competing with whites with the playing field level, rather than their own position boosted to make individual starting points APPEAR level. Bill Gates was born in to a wealthy family, but Steve Jobs was born relatively poor. Blacks have the same ability to succeed without regard to family as whites.

             > Simply being black is a disadvantage in all kinds
             > of subtle ways that you’re not acknowledging.

             That is a racist statement. My business partner from my ISP is, economically at least, far more successful than I am, now. We once lived in the second-poorest part of Baltimore, in apartments next to each other where you had to pay rent weekly, because people vanished (and too often from worse reasons than simply skipping out) too often to wait a month. Initially, I outperformed him economically, at least in a statistical sense, ending up owning a business and helping him get a breakthrough job after I sold that company…but who got the job and referred the other guy was almost certainly coincidence, and since then he started his own business that outperformed the one I had. Our overall success rates have had to do with a combination of random chance and which of us had the better ideas and/or worked harder. Race did not come into it significantly. As far as I know, he never did exploit Big Brotherment’s special favors given to him on the racist grounds to which you subscribe.

             > Yes, it’s about all kinds of factors, including socioeconomic class,
             > but it’s also about Being Black.

             That is racist, and untrue. The one thing “sociologists” have commented on that at all agrees with your claim is that there is cultural trait among some blacks and hispanics where they obsess with their race as identity, while whites think of themselves as individuals, identifying by their name, not their meaningless skin color.

             Of course the most ridiculous sociologists have tried to say this makes whites bad…how dare they not take responsibility for their heritage. But even they say this is an (unfair) advantage whites have, if you read between the lines.

             > For example, Thomas Shapiro observes that houses in black
             > neighborhoods appreciate at a lower rate than houses in
             > white neighborhoods, which means that even if a black person
             > and a white person start at the same socioeconomic level,
             > their race will differentiate them over time.

             And my black neighbor, when I moved to Florissant, MO, would say that means the opposite of what you, racist that you are, think it does.

             See, I lived in DC, and was moving halfway across the country, but didn’t feel like flying out and hand-picking a place. So I got a townhouse in what had been one of the nicest suburbs of St Louis, ten years earlier. I didn’t realize that the Florissant politicians had decided to destroy their city for their own empowerment, by focusing on Section 8 housing and similar programs.

             As I’m moving in, my neighbor is moving out. I ask him why. He says the neighborhood had “turned too ghetto”. The people moving in were destroying the neighborhood’s quality. They would leave trash everywhere, have loud parties in the middle of the night, drive ridiculous automobiles that were either junk heaps with ten thousand dollar speakers, or looked like a low-riding clown car. They would SPRAY PAINT GRAFFITI ON THEIR OWN HOUSES. They were also violent and dangerous.

             This wasn’t about being “black”. The neighborhood had previously contained quite a few successful black families…it was GOOD flight, not white flight.

             The racist Section 8 program was promoting BAD PEOPLE beyond where they would get, on their own. It promotes people not based on ability, but on race, so that some were good people who’d have gotten ahead anyway, and others were bad people who literally were no longer getting what they deserved.

             So “black neighborhoods” appreciate at lower rates because racists like you rob them of being populated on merit. They DESERVE, at that point, to appreciate more slowly. It’s not about Being Black; it’s about your racism against blacks ruining black neighborhoods by promoting thugs and gangsters.

             > At the same time, I’m not comfortable simply ignoring the reality that
             > lots of people are victims of racism, and that I feel bad about that
             > and want to help them.

             The problem is that you have a meaningless, ivory-tower impression of what’s going on, and a destructive guilt, and the racism to accept those things despite all the evidence against them, and that’s why so many blacks despise your ilk.

             They know, when they’re suffering thuggery in their neighborhood and its value is plummeting that you’re blissfully imagining the programs you support, that helped cause it, are somehow good things.

             > 1. Me saying, “I don’t celebrate Christmas,” when I’m
             > wished a, “Merry Christmas.” Should be pretty inoffensive, huh?

             No, it’s a secondary example of why Vox Day correctly stated that the credo of atheists seems to be “I’m atheist because I’m an asshole”.

             If I am in India, and someone wishes me a happy Diwali (my knowledge of sankrit doesn’t tell me how they’d actually phrase it in modern Hindi, but bear with me), I am not going to say “I don’t celebrate Diwali”. Why? Because I’m not an asshole. I don’t say it to people celebrating Bastille Day, either. Well, actually, I might take a moment to go into how evil the French Revolution was…but that’s because I’m a curmudgeon. Another word for that would be “asshole”.

             As I said, and you somehow failed to quote, I not only am fine with people around me overwhelmingly celebrating stuff I don’t “believe in”, but I actually celebrate them anyway, if I’m in their midst, because really the point of celebration is FUN, and social bonding of a type you collectivists should be able to grasp even more than I do.

             I’ll float candles, wear Guy Fawkes masks (OK, I actually am on board with that one), bribe women to show me their breasts for ten cents of beads (suddenly I feel like a primitivist Catholic, not making my case here), WHATEVER the popular local celebration is. Because I have at least a basic social awareness.

             > 2. Christian outrage when Atheists put messages on signs or buses,
             > just like Christians do all the time. Again: it’s not “all about me.”
             > It’s just that “my” voice is joining the chorus that Christian voices
             > still dominate. And Christians totally flip the fuck out.

             It’s because the faux-atheists are not posting the same KIND of thing.

             Take the walking Darwin fish. It’s a direct attack on and corruption of a revered religious symbol. It’s akin to a White Separatist making white-ized parodies of black cultural icons and then posting them around town.

             A quote by some atheist that simply gives an objective, secular reason for people to choose to be good, is not going to get nearly as much objection. Of course there’s always some asshole who will object, but that’s the subset of Christians who are as socially crippled as almost all of the loudest atheists.

             > But it does involve me. It involves me when I am seen as immoral
             > because I lack religion,

             You know, those bus stickers could address that, instead of appearing immoral by simply attacking and belittling another culture…as I said, bus stickers that quote MORAL ideas with a secular perspective would be much better-received.

             > and as a result, I am threatened with having DFCS take
             > my children away and give them to my ex-spouse.

             That’s a silly example. That’s not about religious discrimination, but about how utterly evil our judicial system is, in this case the way that ANYTHING can be proposed as a custody violation. YOU could propose that your wife is TOO religious, if she happened to be very devout, and get about as far as she did, which means you’d scare her wrongfully and then fail, just like she did you.

             > It involves me when I am denied the ability to get an abortion largely
             > because someone else’s religious beliefs

             Bullshit. Theists believe that murder of adults is a sin, does that mean the law against you killing your ex is a religious discrimination?

             There are atheist and Objectivist organizations dedicated to opposing abortion…a nice demonstration that atheists do NOT have to be immoral, by the way…because there are purely objective, rational reasons to oppose it.

             > require them to value my
             > non-existent child’s bodily autonomy over my own.

             I didn’t realize you hate science, I thought that was the domain of your political enemies.

             Your child, if you are pregnant, absolutely does exist. Any biologist can tell you that the unborn baby of a placental mammal IS a separate living individual…unless he’s depending on special funding that requires he say otherwise. But that’s a small subset.

             If you want to murder your baby, it’s absolutely necessary that you be free to do so, I agree about that…but I will not cooperate with your sociopathic conscience-dodges of dehumanizing the baby so you can feel better about your sheer selfishness.

             What’s more, if you were to run down a pedestrian while you were drunk driving, HIS bodily autonomy would take precedence over yours, and so it should, because your risk-taking placed another human being in a position of need.

             The same is true if you (or I) have sex, and create a baby. We are responsible for having placed that human being in a position of need.

             The solution isn’t to kill the pedestrian, to make your life more convenient than if you must labor to pay off her hospital bills.

             > So, if something is common, then it has the
             > right to be common. Isn’t that tautological?

             No, your ilk would have it that anything common must (unless you like it, at which point you prove unprincipled and cite Majority Rule) be punished, and uncommon things (as long as you preferred those, anyway) be promoted to artificial equality with it through coercion.

             > I mean, as a moral compass, it strikes me as pretty blunt.
             > Do you have anything to say about the morality of the ways
             > in which a thing becomes common, stays common, or shifts
             > from a position of uncommonness to commonness?

             Stupid things become commonly popular through coercion.

             The nudity taboo, for example.

             But the solution is not to force everyone to be naked, in order to “balance it out”.

             The solution is simply to make the law neutral. No hand up is needed for nudists.

             > Yes. And if 1% of “us” decide to get abortions or change our
             > gender or shoot up heroin, that’s “our” CHOICE, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

             No, shooting up with heroin is absolutely idiotic…which is a sort of “wrong.

             But it absolutely is your natural right to do stupid things. Any law violating your natural rights is wrong, and creates an unstable society.

             Of course this does not apply to abortion:

             Abortion violates the natural rights of someone whose life you’ve placed in danger.

             Sadly, it needs to be legal, because the situation exists where prohibition would do more harm than good, same as why Jefferson (who spent his professional career fighting slavery, to free slaves) refused to try to ban slavery when he was president. When we have an effectively foolproof way to avoid unwanted pregnancy, then society will be advanced enough to ban abortion, the same way that it was only when technology made chattel slavery uneconomical that we could afford to ban that.

             > Oh. Except there is. Heroin is illegal, abortion is only
             > barely hanging in, and sex change, while legal, is reviled.

             There is absolutely nothing legally wrong with people reviling ANYTHING they choose to.

             Heroin needs to be legal, even though (or, in a sense, BECAUSE) it is stupid to use it.

             And, more than the silly, no-real-world-experience worries about racism, your laughable belief that abortion is hanging by a thread shows that you’re gullible and insulated from reality.

             Abortion is SOLELY a tool for tricking fools into blindly voting for a party that violates their every principle, in BOTH parties.

             Neither one has the slightest intent to change the status-quo.

             Are you unaware that Republicans appointed a majority of the Supreme Court justices who are pro-Roe?

             Did you know John McCain specifically promised that he would NEVER overturn Roe v Wade, publicly and on record?

             Did you know that the Democrat running the Senate is pro-life?

             The whole thing is a bait and switch scam. It ensures that you will blindly vote for, say, a Bill Clinton who has violated every Liberal ideal. Or that a Republican will blindly vote for a George Bush who has violated every Conservative principle. Clinton was horrific on the very race nonsense you believe in, and all of the feminist idiocy you probably subscribe to, yet if you were old enough you probably voted for him, to “Save abortion” from absolutely no threat at all. Just like blacks voted for him blindly because of “the black church burnings”, without bothering to find out that there were more WHITE church burnings than black, in the same region, during the same period.

             Terrorism, abortion, race…these are tools to sucker the sheeple into blindly supporting corrupt politicians that, if they took a moment to pay attention, they would despise even more than their opponents.

             Comment by kazvorpal | March 11, 2010 | Reply

             • I feel like you’re talking to me from bizarro-land. I agree with some of the things you’re saying, but others seem completely backwards. I think I’m pretty much done with this thread for now.

               Comment by Joshua | March 12, 2010 | Reply

         • If you are interested in hearing more of my thoughts on the Christmas issue, I wrote a blog post about it here:

           http://jackbootedliberal.com/2009/12/merry-christmas/

           Comment by Joshua | March 11, 2010 | Reply

   • Kaz,

     Discussing this post with my girlfriend, she pointed out that sociologists have summed up my point as, “racism equals prejudice plus power.” Minorities in America can, in general, be prejudiced, but they cannot generally be racist, because they usually lack a position of power.

     There are, as always, exceptions.

     Comment by Joshua | March 10, 2010 | Reply

     • Whoops. I missed that you had responded above.

       Comment by Joshua | March 10, 2010 | Reply

2. Maybe they’re just racist against white people…

   This is just offensively obtuse. If it was intended to be clever, it failed. Racism is alive and well in America, and it’s not against white people.

   Comment by Joshua | March 9, 2010 | Reply

   • I can guess, without looking, that you’re a Liberal/socialist:

     You are instantly outraged by a stupidly literal interpretation of a comment that would, otherwise, illustrate the hypocrisy of your own position.

     Your side can say “people who oppose Obama are racist…people who say socialism is bad are now racist”, but a saner person cannot even mirror the words back in satire, without your shrieks of girlish horror.

     And, by the way, racism is at least as likely to be against whites as otherwise.

     Comment by kazvorpal | March 10, 2010 | Reply

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