Monthly Archives: March 2011

Kill the State, not marriage.

Posted on by

Let’s go back to basics. The role of the king is to keep the country at peace (by making it painful to invade and/or fighting his wars elsewhere), to ensure that the courts dispense fair justice, and to defend the people from the tyranny of parliament. The aristocracy generally are annoyed if the commoners interfere in their affairs, and this natural dynamic generally stopped Parliament from being too creative.

I’d argue that any attempt by the crown — and for the Americans, your president is an elected king — to move beyond these limited roles is non sustainable and detrimental to society. Which brings us to this quote which relates to the decline of marriage in England.

The moment marriage was annexed by the State and therefore became a political football and in particular used as a qualifier for favorable tax treatment, etc, it was done.Stick a fork in it.  For nothing would be able to stop the legal encroachment upon marriage and the widening of the definition of marriage to include a legal relationship between two women, or two men, or brothers and sisters, or even mere acquaintances…all want to get married to share in the goodies. And it is hard to deny someone a “civil right” such as marriage.The solution to the decline of marriage is to destroy it, at least as far as government is concerned.  Make marriage the province of those religious wingnuts who seem to care so much about it. Those communities of Believers can then administer this, the oldest civic institution in human history, in the way they used to before the State came along.

via The Elusive Wapiti: Marriage in the UK, By The Numbers.

For EW to be correct you need a community of believers that is (a) prepared to counsel and discipline each other and (b) sufficiently large enough to have momentum so that the punishments such as excommunication, shame and shunning will work, and (c) the state to stay within these roles.

The problem is that the State does not want to do that. The doors of our homes no longer exist as far as the State is concerned. It wants to control, to mould. Statists want children out of the home as soon as possible and parents frightened of being punished because they don’t comply with the rules that teachers (those most useful agents of state control) state must happen in all homes. The state does have an ideology, and it is fairly misandrist.

The state wants to regulate the age, gender and number of spouses you are allowed to have (or not have). And the state wants to regulate the division of property, child support and other matters in the case of divorce.

So…. as a believer, what should I do? Paul’s advice that it is better not to marry carries more weight now, because the laws relating to divorce are so stacked against one. But we do fall for each other, and marriage is not seen as wrong but for many is a blessing. Do we ignore the need for licences, and instead write prenuptial contracts and covenants? If you believe (as I do) that marriage should be a life-long covenant, what do we do when it fails?

What is clear… is that states or governments are ephemeral. What appears secure today may be gone tomorrow. It’s much better for the church to regulate these issues than any court.

Either let the state die or actively destroy it. The Church has survived worse. The more subtle damage is our tolerance of brazen disobedience within the clergy on these matters, for they reflect the feminist Zeitgeist of this ephemeral society.

More games for Dunedin

Posted on by

We didn’t progress beyond the semifinals in the Cricket World Cup. Sri Lanka played extremely well and have a very good chance of beating either Pakistan or India in the final.

However, it looks like the Dunedin Stadium will get a fair amount of use during the Rugby World Cup….

RNZ 2011 also announced that the new fully enclosed Otago Stadium in Dunedin, which is nearing completion, has met the criteria to be confirmed as a World Cup match venue.”The Otago Stadium operators have provided us with the assurances we need for us to now be confident that the new venue will be ready to deliver on its tournament obligations,” Snedden said.The rescheduled matches will see Argentina play England in Dunedin on September 10, Australia play Italy at Albany on September 11, England play Georgia in Dunedin on September 18, Argentina play Scotland in Wellington on September 25 and Australia play Russia at Nelson on October 1.

via Relocated Rugby World Cup match venues named | Stuff.co.nz.

I am trying to find a good excuse not to be in Dunedin during the Cup period :-) .

Lemons and Kirk.

Posted on by

Today at Kirk we did not look at the texts below We discussed why Jesus said that is food was doing the will of God. However, this occured in a context. Jesus had (when talking to the Samaritan woman) noted that she had been married 5 times, and was not cohabiting with another man. She was a casualty of the ideas of liberal divorce that existed in those days — and was so shunned by other women that she was going to the well at noon, the hottest part of the day when no one else would be there.

But she was not afraid, and she did not lie. Sometimes those who are shunned by polite society — the lemons — work for the good, and the leaders do not.

Jeremiah 6: 14 –15.

They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. They acted shamefully, they committed abomination; yet they were not ashamed, they did not know how to blush.

Mark 5:14 — 17

Then people came to see what it was that had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighbourhood

via Daily Lectionary Readings — Devotions and Readings — Mission and Ministry — GAMC.

These two passages are ones of condemnation. The first implies that we are soothing people in their bad choices, We are using the words of reconciliation when we should be asking for repentance. We are lying about our national finances. The politicians and leaders are afraid of trusting people with the truth, for they are afraid. And this fear makes them embrace what they know to be a lie.

And the church? We must not just be quietists — together to preserve. We must reach out to those around us. We must (in the true sense of the word) be Catholic, allowing those who are not acting in ways that benefit themselves into our fellowship, praying for our leaders, and working for good.

In doing this, we will get the reaction that Jesus got. If we stand in courage and power, we will be yelled at to be quiet. If we are not silent, we will be asked to leave. For the fear of the people of seeing our lives will drive us out of what is generally considered polite society. (This has always happened, as a cursory study of Church History will show).

The irony is that the Kirk is a hospital for lemons — the weak, disabled, broken. It is not a place of wordily power. (In fact, when the Church is seduced by power, it loses its effectiveness). Let us rejoice in the ealing that God sometimes gives, and lest us not lie about the habits of action and thought that lead to destruction.

Are men trying to adapt?

Posted on by

This is quite interesting. Young men are being rational in part. They are aware that the generations ahead of them intend to work until they are into their 70s. They are also aware that they are at the bottom of the pecking order … all things being equal the job goes to a Maori, or a minority (except Chinese) or a women, then white (and Chinese) men.

Men have no illusions about jobs. They want to be patriarchs.

A new Colmar Brunton survey of nearly 500 ’20-somethings’ has found priorities for young men and women seem to be challenging traditional stereotypes.

Females rated getting paid, getting a work compliment and getting a pay rise more highly on a scale of 1-7 than men did.

When asked to list a number of priorities for the next two to three years and for before they reach 35, they put “being recognised as a leader” or “expertise in their field” at the top of both categories.

Men listed having children as their top short-term priority while they wanted to buy a new car before they reached 35.

Colmar Brunton’s youth insights director and leader of the study, Spencer Willis, said while young men were also interested in work, the statistics showed they were far more eager to get married and have children than their female counterparts.

Mr Willis said the reversing roles trend had been building for five to 10 years but the gap between the two genders was now bigger, prompting warnings that “the friction between the male desire for fatherhood and the female priorities could be challenging” in the future.

He even went as far as to question whether the reversing roles could be responsible for the “cougar syndrome”.

“You’ve got a group of young women who are driven in their career – and have been bloody good at it and hugely successful. The next thing you know their classmates from university, these young males were pining for parenthood and settling down at 25-30 years of age, have achieved that and those guys are no longer available. Is there a correlation between that?”

via Men want kids women just want a pay rise – Life & Style – NZ Herald News.

The problem men is facing is two fold.

  • Most women are not interested in having kids early. They are playing the field. They do not want to settle down.
  • In the event of marrying, there is still a high chance you will not have day to day care of your children and you may have difficulties getting access.

The second issue is changing. Men now win about half the custody battles that come to court (in New Zealand, where the law was rewritten to exclude gender bias).

What men are doing is meeting and mating with the women who like kids in their early teens and 20s. The generation of cougars is finding that their male classmates are marrying women 5 — 10 years younger. And… if they want a long term relationship, the cougar is looking at  a man who is in his late 40s and 50s, who now not infrequently is raising the kids from the previous divorce.

Men are adapting. I think the natural conservatism of women have left them sitting in the toxic, life destroying pond of career and hedonism exemplified by a certain quartet of (now aging) US beauties let by Sara Jessica Parker.

On being cool… or connected.

Posted on by

This was from a comment at Mala Fide. On male suicide, and why it is increasing.

Except in NZ: where it went way, way up for young men in the 1990s and has now halved. For whites. But not for Maori. For in our society, Maori men have much fewer options consistent with their culture.

For those who don’t read on the Manosphere — game is about redefining oneself as cool, remote, and not dependant on any relationship you are in. It is about making yourself a better, more attractive man (to women) and then using those skills to woo and keep one (or in the main Author’s case, many) women besotted with you. However, the commentator K destroys this image with these words.

Game is a borderline monastic pursuit. The Game mentality of being detached from the outcome of events and being in the moment is literally a Zen teaching.

Ultimately this pain that men suffer is from unfulfilled desire, and Game is about not feeling this desire. Not all men, in fact probably very few men, are going to be able to attain the kind of Inner Game that is going to alleviate their suffering. For many, even if they do attain it, it isn’t an acquisition of their goal, or a fulfillment of long held emotional needs, but an abandonment of them. Few people are going to be able to do that, especially after a lifetime of damage and constant contrary signals being sent.

That’s what one of your linked articles says, or is trying to say about forgiveness. You can’t harbor bitterness or anger. You just let your wife, and old life go. It’s not something you have any control over. Be like water, flow around the obstacles in your life. It’s a good philosophy, but it is a hard one. Not everyone is cut out to be a monk, and some are only cut out to be part-time monks.

via Modern Men and Suicide….

This makes sense. Because to Game, one must not really connect. The scary thing about being intimate is that you will feel the emotions of the other. You may emphasise, you may love, but they are there.

What the Church Fathers would say is that you choose not to be ruled by them. You are not owned by your partner. You are owned by God. The difference between this (and the Zen-like disavowal of that level of connection) is profound.

However, both are better than being ruled by the irrationality of the moment by moment emotions in a relationship. And the antinomian parts of the feminist movement (where the rules are just to keep the boys down) deny this. For those creatures see intimacy as a play around power. They cannot see the joy. They cannot therefore love, and are to be pitied.

A good start

Posted on by

Mike Adams wants to eliminate from the univerisity all majors ending in the term “studies”. He is a brave man. However, he does not go far enough.

In the past, I’ve gotten myself in hot water for suggesting that the African American Center, LGBTQIA Center, Women’s Center, and El Centro Hispano be shut down in order to ease our current state budget crisis. But, today, I propose that we go further by eliminating all academic majors and minors ending with the word “studies.”

This is not meant to be prejudicial – although, having little else to do, the Arrogant American Centers will try to make it so. Let it be known that I propose eliminating more than just Arrogant American and Hyphenated American Studies. I also want to do away with Communication Studies, Environmental Studies, Liberal Studies, Women’s Studies, and Gay and Lesbian Studies. And I want the cuts to be implemented across our sixteen-campus system.

via Rigor Please – Page 1 – Mike Adams – Townhall Conservative.

We also need to eliminate all boutique commissions and departments. The Ministry for Women, the Arts, Maori Affairs (Te Puni Kokari), Disabilities. The Mental Health Commission. The Families Commission. The Human Rights Commission. For it is not the role of the government to have its own advocacy services, or to produce a series of star chambers or to tell me what to think, or how to act.

The government is to keep the peace, honour the Queen, and preserve the Nation. So… Roger does not go far enough. We need to remove those unaccountable quasi bureaucracies that insist that the hyphenated issues take precedence over the common good.

TINA lives

Posted on by

Over the last few weeks I have had to deal with various s local difficult events. A number of people have been left with no possessions or security after an earthquake. There is pressure on all state funded agencies (and that includes health, education and welfare in New Zealand) to cut their budget by a significant percentage. The money for extras is going or gone.

The current state in New Zealand is not great.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) to the Minister of Finance: What are some of the likely impacts on the Government’s finances of the Christchurch earthquake?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): First of all, as the weeks go by we are getting better information about the costs of the earthquake, but a couple of things are clear already. The first is that the earthquake is likely to delay slightly the New Zealand Government’s return to Budget surplus, and, secondly, that meeting the Government’s share of the immediate earthquake costs will require quite a substantial front-loading of Crown debt in the next year or two—that is, to meet costs such as the wage support package, the rescue and recovery costs, and transitional housing. It means the Government will have to borrow more over the next couple of years. Therefore, it is important that we put in place a plan to get our debt back to acceptable levels.

David Bennett: What will be the impact on likely fiscal deficits and net Crown debt as the Government meets the immediate costs of the earthquake?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: When the Prime Minister delivered his Prime Minister’s statement earlier in the year, he said that the Government intended to get back to Budget surplus in 2014-15. Now, with the effect of the earthquake and the need to borrow to fund those costs, the surplus is more likely to occur in 2015-16. It looks as though our deficit before gains and losses could be more than 8 percent of GDP, which amounts to around $16 billion. In December we announced a revised forecast of $11 billion, which is likely to increase. Net Crown debt is also likely to rise, from around the forecast 28 percent of GDP in 2014 to around 30 percent.

We have been hit with about 20 billion of funding for the Earthquake commission (which covers the first 100K damage in a disaster). The commission had been paying out for an earthquake in September — which dropped its reserves to 15 billion. Then in February a more damaging earthquake hit the same city.

The opposition (Labour is named honestly. It is the political arm of the union movement) is arguing strongly for a tax increase and a decrease in value added tax (GST). They are also arguing for increased subsidies to their clients — teachers (particularly oearly childhood teachers), nurses and other state employees.

But there is no money  As Eric Raymond says, there is no alternative.

Political persuasion matters most when when policy options are relatively open and unconstrained by objective conditions that politics cannot alter. It matters less when policy options are more constrained, and not at all when there are no choices left.The political system I have been criticizing all my adult life is fast approaching the point of “no choices left”. And not just in the U.S., either; the same problems of political overcommitment and structural insolvency are playing out in advanced nations all over the planet.Politics as we know it has had a structural problem for a long time; the self-destructive interest-group scramble that Mancur Olson identified in The Logic of Collective Action continually makes parasitic demands beyond the capacity of the underlying economy to supply, and the difference has to be papered over by massive government borrowing.This is all very well until, as Margaret Thatcher put it about socialism, “you run out of other peoples’ money.” The system is reaching that point now.

via Armed and Dangerous » Blog Archive » Politics as usual is over.

TINA (There is no alternative) was well known in New Zealand. We have faced down bankruptcy before. At that time, we privatised most of our state departments and bought in swingeing cuts in middle class subsidies. Over the last two decades, these have been gradually rebuilt.

If’s fairly clear that the current government — that faces an election in November — is not going to increase spending any more than it has to for the clean up in Christchurch. This could lead to there defeat. But there is no alternative. TINA has woken from a 20 year sleep. And TINA is annoyed. All her good work is undone. She is irritated with New Zealand, but she is furious with the unions of Wisconsin.

Statistics trackers in WordPress.

Posted on by

I’ve been playing with statistics trackers over the last few days for the blog. Requirements.

  • Must work with current stable version of WordPress (3.1).
  • Has to be light. I live in New Zealand on the end of a DSL line. The server is somewhere in the USA.
  • Must be accurate and give me fun graphics — like maps.
  • Must be compatible with the dashboard.
  • I don’t want to subscribe to anything for this…. because I don’t want to share the data. With anyone.

WP Slimstat is now up and running. Let’s see how that works out over the next month or so.

Fisking for Alte.

Posted on by

I just linked to Alte’s first decent flame war. The comment she got deserves its own post. For preserved in this… is almost every logical error one can make. This is a classic example of how not to win an argument.

Alte, you belligerent, vituperative, mendacious, slovenly WHORE.

Ad hominem argument with a fair amount of projection.

How DARE YOU marginalize the troubles of innocent, forever pure, loving, caring, strong, empowered, feminine, blessed women who wouldn’t hurt a FLY?

An example of the use of “Shut up”. She dares because she thinks. It does not matter what the person is (ad hominem again — the discussion is around if their ideas are true, right and just. You can be saintly in your life and speak error, or he a horror and speak truth).

How dare you write on your own blog how a married woman being hit by her husband is less traumatizing than being hit by a stranger? Don’t you know that a wife being hit by her man who is ALWAYS a misogynistic, oppressive, domineering tyrant is always traumatized more than being hit by a stranger, whom she does not know and is probably more likely to kill her than her husband?

No. He could be hitting you to defend himself (/sarc)  Intra relationship aggression is as common among women as men. Extra points, though, for rampant misandry leaking through the prose.

And traumatic events do not always lead to being traumatised. In an disaster around 5% of those who experience it will end up with significant disability (unless they are offered therapy, when the risk will go up). Men and women can survive some fairly difficult forms of aggression and assault.

How DARE YOU. What if the husband, while beating his innocent, loving, caring and blissful wife decides to RAPE HIS WIFE?

Change of topic and arguing to extremes.

ARE YOU SAYING THAT SUCH WOMYN DO NOT DESERVE SYMPATHY? YOU CALLOUS BITCH. YOU HIDE BEHIND YOUR CATHOLIC PIETY AND RELIGIOUS FANATICISM WHILE PURPORTING TO BE SO MUCH SMARTER THAN THE FEMINISTA WOMEN. HOWEVER ALTE, WE ALL KNOW YOU ARE INTELLECTUALLY INFERIOR AND INCAPABLE OF FORMULATING CORRECT OPINIONS THAT ARE OBJECTIVELY CORRECT.

Sympathy is not a right one can earn. Women is spelt incorrectly. Use of stereotypes around Catholicism.

You Catholics are always molesting children. Pope Benedict is evil. All you Catholics are are misogynistic oppressors who seek to deny womyn their basic rights like entering the priesthood. Bitch. You Catholics are more dangerous than Calvinists. Fuck you moralists, fuck you.

You deserve all of the criticism and scorn you get.

P.S., I hate you.

Love,

Daegus.

via My first haters! « Traditional Catholicism.

Daegue here shows more hatred than Calvin (who called the Pope an Antichrist — in my view a correct description of the Borgia then holding the Papal See — but wrote his theological books in French to persuade the laity to cross the Tiber.

Classic splitting at the end “I hate you… Love”. Daegus, if you fracking hate her, say it. If you love her, then act that way and cut the level of vitriol down. The one piece of wisdom you showed was using a pseudonym. If one of my friends (of either gender) said that their beloved had written this… my response would be…

“What the frack are you doing with that person and when are you going to dump her? She will hurt you!”

Now, if you want to argue clearly and consistently, produce data — with links. I will read the citations and tell you what I think of the papers.

Oh, and I don’t care how many degrees you have. I’ve got a collection as well, and in the end they are meaningless in the search for truth and wisdom.