Vox Day: Women should rely on daddy to choose their husbands

Our ol’ pal Theodore “Vox Day” Beale, who’s never encountered a form of misogyny he didn’t take to and spin as a means of preserving (his grotesque ideal of) society, has a suggestion for stripping women of their most basic autonomy:

Who Nose asks a pertinent question:

"If you want to understand why women are not permitted serve in Church leadership, and why human societies do not survive more than a few generations of young women being permitted to choose their own spouses"

It begs the question: Who ought to choose their spouses?

The Church?
The Father?
The Mother?
The State?

The question is further begged: What kind of law would need to be passed to enforce the choosing of a spouse.

Finally, another question is begged: What would you do with the 99% of women who responded to the suggestion or the law with, "F*ck Off"?

1. The Father, with the advice of the Mother.
2. No law is necessary. Simply informing their daughter that a woman who is capable of choosing her own spouse is clearly also capable of paying for her own college education and supporting her own lifestyle decisions will suffice for most parents. If a woman is independent enough to insist on paying her own way in order to pursue a career, she's probably not wife-and-mother material anyhow and would likely end up a reproductive dead end regardless the options she is afforded. We can always hope that instead of children, such a woman will contribute some revolutionary Powerpoint slideshows to society, produce a cure for cancer, or introduce some truly ground-breaking HR policies that will change the world for the better.
3. I would simply wish them the best of fortune in their future endeavors. But the number won't be anywhere nearly that high because women are, first and foremost, the practical sex.

Daily Blend: Monday, January 30, 2012

Excellent essay by Radley Balko on the chilling effect of the war over prescription painkillers on pain patients and the medical community.
(via @radleybalko)

Also, another excellent essay by Adam Gopnik on the U.S.’s vast prison state. (And meanwhile in the Netherlands …)
(via @ggreenwald)

Ed Brayton on the battle of government regulation vs. deregulation (and why the Libertarian idea of a self-correcting “free market” is folly).

Phil Plait rips into climate-change-denying articles in the Wall Street Journal and The Daily Mail.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: prescription painkillers • chronic pain • doctors • opioids • Oxycontin • Percocet • DEA • Drug Enforcement Administration • USA • United States • prison system • Netherlands • Ed Brayton • externalities • Libertarians • free market • regulation • deregulation • The Wall Street Journal • The Daily Mail • David Rose • Phil Plait

Daily Blend: Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Raquel Nelson

• Raquel Nelson [pictured], charged with vehicular homicide after 4-year-old son was killed by drunk driver, gets probation and offered new trial.
  (via @radleybalko)

• Woman tragically kills her infant son with crystal-meth-laced breast milk, so obviously, she’s now being treated facing jail.
  (via The Agitator)

• Little Rock, Arkansas high school ignores Black student with highest GPA, instead chooses two White students for valedictorian address.

• Radley Balko nails PZ Myers’s simple-minded animosity towards anything remotely libertarian.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Raquel Nelson • Jerry Guy • Maggie Wortman • crystal meth • Michael Acosta III • Kymberly Wimberly • McGehee Secondary School • valedictorians • racism • Radley Balko • PZ Myers • libertarians • Cato Institute

Why not abolishing slavery is (not) on par with not abolishing the government

Best libertarianism symbol I could find

It’s so easy to vilify libertarians these days. After all, everyone needs a favorite punching bag. But the truth is that the majority of libertarians, as far as I have been able to tell over time, are normal people like you and I who tend to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative and possess (what I would call) a healthy distrust of modern government. And that’s all just fine, if not even ideal. But then, every now and then – something that’s frightfully more common in the vast, open playground that is the Web – you come across the obligatory nutjob who does things like say that the reasons for abolishing slavery are the same that should be used in support of overthrowing the government, presumably in favor of some completely unregulated, anarchic society.

And no, that’s not some random example pulled out of my rear. It’s something currently being proposed and debated on Reddit:

Ten Reasons to Not Abolish Slavery

• 1. Some slavery is a necessary evil.^[1]

• 2. Slavery has always existed.^[2]

• 3. New slave owners would just take over.^[1]

• 4. Slaves cannot provide for themselves.^[4]

• 5. Slavery is good for the economy.^[5]

• 6. Freedom is less predictable than slavery.^[6]

• 7. Abolition would cause bloodshed.^[7]

• 8. Freed slaves would run amuck and cause great harm.^[8]

• 9. Abolition is foolish and utopian.^[9]

• 10. It is better to practice a form of limited slavery.^[10]