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Annoying Gender Disparities

Women and Men Are Equal

By 

August 16, 2017

Google fired software engineer James Damore for writing a 10-page memo critical of the company’s diversity policy. The memo violated the company’s code of conduct by “advancing harmful gender stereotypes” by suggesting that biological factors were part of the cause for the male/female gap in the tech industry.

I shall make the case that Google’s actions were totally justified. Other than differences in certain physical attributes such as genitalia, capacity to give birth and the presence of functional mammary glands, males and females are identical in every other respect. Any remaining male/female differences are a direct result of oppression, discrimination and victimization by the larger society. To examine just one aspect of female victimization, let’s examine the majors of female college students compared to their male counterparts.

According to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, there are significant sex differences in college majors. For example, though women and men are equally represented in the population at large, women make up only 17 percent of engineering degrees conferred compared to 83 percent conferred to men. How can such a gross disparity be explained? I recommend an investigation to discover whether colleges are steering women away from higher-paying fields such as engineering and into lower-paying fields such as education and social sciences. Seventy-seven percent of education majors are women and so are 64 percent of social sciences majors.

One wonders how such a disparity among equals can exist. I have personally visited George Mason University’s Volgenau School of Engineering. There are no signs forbidding women from becoming an engineering major. But just because there are no visible prohibitions doesn’t mean there is no evil plot against women. A number of years ago, I took a tour of UC Berkeley College of Engineering. Not only did I observe a paucity of women but also, because of the racial appearances of the students in some of the classes, I could have easily been in Asia. Colleges have the power to ensure that there are just as many female as male engineering majors. They can mandate that fewer female freshmen major in social sciences and education and instead major in engineering. To balance this all out they can disallow large numbers of men from majoring in engineering and instead force them to major in education or the social sciences.

Although Damore’s memo was seen by Google as “advancing harmful gender stereotypes,” at least he didn’t make any suggestion of male/female IQ differences. Doing so would have led not only to his firing but being ordered to leave the state of California. A number of studies show that male IQ has greater variance than female IQ. In other words, female IQs show less variance and cluster toward the middle. Males IQs have more variance and therefore occupy the extreme high and low ends on the intelligence scale. That boils down to the fact that there are more male than female geniuses. But on the down side there are more male than female morons. Since men run the IQ tests and probably rig it against women, the claim that there are more male geniuses could be bogus.

Kay S. Hymowitz’s City Journal (summer 2011) article, “Why the Gender Gap Won’t Go Away. Ever,” shows that female doctors earn only 64 percent of what male doctors earn. But it turns out that only 16 percent of surgeons are women, whereas 50 percent of pediatricians are women. Even though surgeons have put in many more years of education and training than pediatricians and earn higher pay, should their salaries be equalized? Alternatively, medical schools might force more female medical students to become surgeons and force male students to become pediatricians to promote wage equality.

You say, “Are you serious, Williams? Or are you making light of the Google firing of James Damore?” My vision is that Damore has the right to say whatever he wishes about the company’s racist and sexist diversity policy, and Google has the right to fire him for saying it.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

Esav Trump

Attack Venezuela? Trump Can’t be Serious!

By 

Ron Paul Institute

August 15, 2017

There is something unsettling about how President Trump has surrounded himself with generals. From his defense secretary to his national security advisor to his White House chief of staff, Trump looks to senior military officers to fill key positions that have been customarily filled by civilians. He’s surrounded by generals and threatens war at the drop of a hat.

President Trump began last week by threatening “fire and fury” on North Korea. He continued through the week claiming, falsely, that Iran is violating the terms of the nuclear deal. He finally ended the week by threatening a US military attack on Venezuela.

He told reporters on Friday that, “We have many options for Venezuela including a possible military option if necessary. …We have troops all over the world in places that are very, very far away. Venezuela is not very far away and the people are suffering, and they are dying.”

Venezuela’s defense minister called Trump’s threat “an act of craziness.”

Even more worrisome, when Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro tried to call President Trump for clarification he was refused. The White House stated that discussions with the Venezuelan president could only take place once democracy was restored in the country. Does that mean President Trump is moving toward declaring Maduro no longer the legitimate president of Venezuela? Is Trump taking a page from Obama’s failed regime change policy for Syria and declaring that “Maduro must go”?

The current unrest in Venezuela is related to the economic shortcomings of that country’s centrally-planned economy. The 20th century has shown us very clearly that state control over an economy leads to mismanagement, mal-investment, massive shortages, and finally economic collapse. That is why those of us who advocate free market economics constantly warn that US government intervention in our own economy is leading us toward a similar financial crisis.

But there is another factor in the unrest in Venezuela. For many years the United States government, through the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy, and US government funded NGOs, have been trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government. They almost succeeded in 2002, when then-president Hugo Chavez was briefly driven from office. Washington has spent millions trying to manipulate Venezuela’s elections and overturn the results. US policy is to create unrest and then use that unrest as a pretext for US intervention. Military officers play an important role in defending the United States. Their job is to fight and win wars. But the White House is becoming the war house and the president seems to see war as a first solution rather than a last resort. His threats of military action against a Venezuela that neither threatens nor could threaten the United States suggests a shocking lack of judgment.

Congress should take President Trump’s threats seriously. In the 1980s, when President Reagan was determined to overthrow the Nicaraguan government using a proxy army, Congress passed a series of amendments, named after their author, Rep. Edward Boland (D-MA), to prohibit the president from using funds it appropriated to do so. Congress should make it clear in a similar manner that absent a Venezuelan attack on the United States, President Trump would be committing a serious crime in ignoring the Constitution were he to follow through with his threats. Maybe they should call it the “We’re Not The World’s Policeman” act.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

‘Every Government Would Be a Totalitarian System If They Could Get Away with It’

Simply Because it Can

By Moshe Feiglin

How is it that one million citizens of Israel have a police file?

Is every eighth citizen here a criminal?

The answer is simple.

Every state and governing authority will take liberties for itself at the expense of its citizens if they will allow it. And in Israel, the citizens allow it.

The police have filed every eighth citizen in Israel as a criminal.

Simply because it can.

In the absence of a culture of liberty, enslavement filters slowly down. It is almost always accompanied by the claim that liberty must be taken from you for your own good, for your security. It will convince you with claims that nothing bad could ever happen to you. After all, you are not a criminal. So why should you be listed as such with the police?

Criminal registration, biometric registration, criminalization of smokers, criminalization of customers of prostitution, administrative detention – there are a plethora of ways. But the goal is plain and simple:

More liberty for the state,
Less liberty for the individual.

More state,
Less individual.

More enslavement,
Less identity.

The Neocon Confidence Trick

Hey Bill Kristol, Consider Rebranding as “Alt-Left!”

By 

August 10, 2017

NeverTrumper Bill Kristol, a staunch Republican neoconservative who self-styled as a conservative for decades, particularly during the Bush II years, now calls for his fellow NeverTrumpers to “rebrand” as “liberals.”

The significance of this can’t be overstated, for Kristol, a figure whose ideology is of a piece with that of the Republican Party of which his was an especially audible voice for much of this young century, has vindicated what some of us have been saying for quite some:

The GOP is not, as it insists, “conservative.”

It is neoconservative.

And between neoconservatism and classical or traditional conservatism, there is a difference not merely in degree, but in kind.

Bill’s own father, Irving, was explicit on this score.  In contrast to traditional conservatives, he wrote, neoconservatives embrace “the welfare state.”  They enthusiastically endorse “social security, unemployment insurance, some form of national health insurance [i.e. “universal healthcare” or “socialized medicine”], some kind of family assistance plan, etc.”

Nor, Irving Kristol continued, will neoconservatives hesitate “to interfere with the market for overriding social purposes.”

Neocons do not want to “destroy the welfare-state [.]”  Quite the contrary, they seek to “reconstruct” the welfare-state “along more economical and humane lines.”

Neoconservative Nathan Glazer goes so far as to suggest that neocons are essentially socialists.  “It’s very hard for us,” for neocons and socialists, “to define what it is that divides us, in any centrally principled way.”  While they may disagree over policies, there doesn’t appear to be any “principles that separate us [.]”

In his book on this subject, neoconservative Douglas Murray underscores the immensity of the divide between traditional conservatism and his ideology of choice.  He explains, rightly, that “socially, economically, and philosophically,” neoconservatism differs in kind from conservatism.  The former, Murray says, is “revolutionary.”

The Bill Kristols of the world decided to rebrand once before when they immigrated from the Democrat Party, their original home.  In the late 1960’s, the Party of the Jack Ass began drifting too far to the left for their taste.  The fortunes of “conservatism” as a label were rising just as those of “liberalism” were beginning to experience a reversal.

It was time to cash in.

As if overnight, these anti-communist liberal Democrats became “conservatives.”

Those of their critics who objected to this attempt to hijack conservatism as a concept and burgeoning post-World War II political movement would be dismissed, purged. Critics would be demonized as “racists,” “anti-Semites,” and, in short, “extremists.”

However successful these smear campaigns against their enemies proved to be—and they were indeed successful much more often than not—they could not alter the reality that neoconservatives were and remain soft (and not always so soft) leftist liberals.  In light of this thesis, the last couple of decades begin to make more sense, putting the lie to the notion that the neocons’ home, the Republican Party, was ever a vehicle for true conservatism.

That, scandalously, Republicans have failed to keep their pledge to repeal Obamacare may have something to do with their animosity toward President Trump.  There is, though, another reason to account for their infidelity:

Republicans don’t mind Obamacare.

Continue reading…

From Lewrockwell.com, here.