TC, comments, stats

I try to keep the tracking statistics for this place up and available. Sitemeter, however, is very sensitive to where its code is and moving away from the default theme structure (which I have done) has led to this falling over. Again. So I have added Statcounter, and the stats are linked on the blogroll.

TC generally has comments closed. The authors can open comments on posts, but the default setup is that you cannot comment there. Now, Elspeth, who is one of the main authors, suggests the following.

You should blog and link to us whenever you have a thought about something where comments are closed.

Well, yeah. I don’t comment on every post at TC, but when they fit in with what I am trying to say I quote. And to help get conversations going, the comment time has gone up to 21 days. Again, if anyone wants to comment on older stuff than that, link to it on one of the posts here. Comments are open but spam filtered: you can link and you can install media.

On media, the photos I’m using are mine: the Youtube videos, obviously, are not. As far as i am concerned, anything published here comes under copyleft — there is a copyright sign on the blog for a reason. If you do post or link, like youtube does, to anything that is copyright and I get a protest I will take it down.

Now for a grab bag of things you should read.

• Vanessa has defended beauty.
• Elspeth has reviewed Charles Murray on Education
• Alcest has discussed Liberalism’s worship of Barbarism.

• The Internet Monk has the latest Christian Blog rankings.   Which includes this wonderful comment from Sarah

I thought it was the 6th point of Calvinism that all Calvinists were required to have at least 3 blogs (5 if they are good Calvinists). That might explain the over-saturation.

I have two: but then I’m a bad Calvinist.

• ElectricAngel argues that the Culture War is not one way: we can fight back.
• Susan Walsh has her cold cure: Matzo Ball Soup.
• Norton Utilities — don’t use it, use a rational OS instead — has blocked various manosphere sites. They do not know about the Streisland Effect.
• Shining Pearls describes that most stupid breed of white knights — the Booblet Brigade.
• Moonbattery manages to show how the elite follow their ideology regardless of the effectAn.

Rather than do anything about the stagnant economy, the ticking time bomb of debt, or Iran’s rush to acquire nuclear weapons, the sick joke we are asked to regard as a president has turned his attention to promoting openly homosexual scoutmasters in the Boy Scouts, evidently in hopes that the conservative values–promoting BSA will be crippled by the same public relations disaster that hit the Catholic Church after the priesthood was infiltrated by homosexuals

• And describes the death of the electric car.
• Gareth Morgan is a green freak who wants us to kill our moggies. Yeah, right. Mine keep the local rat population down — yes, they kill birds, but rats would get more eggs if the cats were not outside. Besides, I have a small bit of native forest that the birds inhabit. But Lucia Maria describes the kind of neighbour all cat owners fear.
• Lucia Maria pointed this out, but in case Stuff takes it down the select committee on homosexual marriage has people on it who have a clear bias. And if you say what they do not want to hear, you will get a rough welcome.

Labour MP Louisa Wall’s Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill is before the select committee, which will report to Parliament on February 28. If passed, it could see gay marriage legal by May next year.

The committee has received more than 20,000 submissions on the bill and has held numerous hearings since December.

Carroll, a Catholic design student from Wellington, appeared in front of the committee on December 10. She says those to appear before her were all in support of the bill, and were treated well, but when her name was called the mood changed.

“The heavy air was charged with emotion and I am still astounded that I managed to walk towards that table and chair despite apprehension and feeling sick at heart at my different treatment and the apparent hostility,” she said.

She said in the middle of her speech, acting chair Chris Auchinvole got up to get a drink, and when she finished her speech with the words of Martin Luther King Jr, Hague was “unsavoury and menacing” to her, calling her homophobic.

“The whole experience was very strange. There was a lack of common courtesy and respect,” she said.

Auchinvole said it was common for committee members to get drinks and go to the toilet during submissions as long as a quorum was maintained and that Carroll had already made a written submission to which she was speaking.

Auchinvole said appearing before a select committee “can be an intimidating experience if you were too sensitive” but members went to great lengths to make people feel relaxed.

He said Carroll was “very direct” and “passionate” in delivering her submission.

“Lots of people were emotional but it’s an emotional topic,” he said.

Hague, who is gay, said he felt all submitters – especially individuals – had been treated with respect. He said he would be concerned if an 18-year-old felt bullied, but he didn’t think that was the case. However, he admitted he did express exasperation when she began talking about “virtue”.

“That makes my hackles rise . . . I find it offensive,” he said.

“Even more outrageous is her quoting Martin Luther King at the end. I am certain that my feelings would have been obvious at the time: co-opting words from the leader of the American civil rights movement, whose widow has been a vocal advocate of marriage equality, to deny civil rights to others is going to stir strong reactions.”

To a certain extent, this is expected. The current meme that the elite is pushing is that Christians are intolerant, and homophobic. Besides, Kevin, if you know anything about the US Black Church, you would know that they are very conservative when it comes to homosexuality — to the point of missing errors that they need to correct. You are being specious. And a bully.

• This is old, but important. You need to pencil in having children. Penelope Trunk, of Brazen Careerist, has some advice on how to find the appropriate man.  To quote Grerp:

Children are a lot of work and can be a lot of worry, but they are a great blessing.  A society that sees children as a curse or an encumbrance to be avoided at all costs is very sick.  People are meant to have families, to be a part of families.  Look past the Cosmo propaganda and pencil having children into your life calendar.  You may need to erase some of space set aside for partying, getting another degree, and traveling but those, while enjoyable, are of limited life value.  Look at the female characters in Bridesmaids or He’s Just Not That Into You.  They were written by women screenwriters for women audiences, and not one of them seems happy.

In the end, we are all moral agents, and we are all responsible. We cannot give anyone a pass because of hormones, gender, natural inclination or desire. We have to all be disciplined, despite the argument to the contrary. SSM has some words on this.

So, whose fault is it when women sleep around if it isn’t their own fault?  Women experience a sharp increase in sex drive during the days surrounding ovulation, provided they are not using hormone birth control.  If she’s married, no problem; her husband gets to be the beneficiary of her increased interest in sexual activity.  If she isn’t married and there is a relatively dominant male in the vicinity, just how much ability and responsibility does she have to regulate her own behavior?

There are a large number of verses about sexual immorality in the Bible but let us just consider two:

1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God

1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

Obviously we can see that, since it is God’s will, it must be possible to abstain from sexual immorality and that when tempted, God will provide the way of escape.  But I wonder…were these verses meant to cover the current situation of females spending years and years as free agents?  In Bible times, a girl married in her teens, going straight from her father’s home to her husband’s.  There were no opportunities to encounter alpha males on spring break in a sunny locale while drinking tequila (or for the Christian girl, to encounter native alphas while on a “missions” trip).  Is a twenty-year-old woman who is ovulating and has a drink or two in her really able to exercise moral agency in that situation?

And if she is not, then what moral responsibility does she have?

I would argue that women are responsible for their behaviour, as are men. We all  know what is right or wrong — part of the great effort the left has in their propaganda is that they have to argue that their methods are correct and we should ignore our conscience — from recruiting people into the Cheka to the current institutionalized injustice of the human rights tribunals or family courts.  They have too tactics — to take away our moral agency by saying that we could not help ourselves and screaming at those who disagree with them.

This is the tactics of the bully. The are but two responses: stand up to them (most bullies fold if you contront them) or leave the game. Our society may be reaching that tipping point where the righteous disengage. Pray that this does not happen, for following that a society is on the path to destruction.