Thursday, August 16, 2012

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Al Holland, 59.

The good stuff:

1. David S. Bernstein argues that the GOP is the home of institutional sexism.

2. What to do when fact-checking isn't enough, from Garance Franke-Ruta. Not a solution, but worth reading.

3. And Dan Larison on the GOP ticket's national security and foreign policy credentials, or lack thereof.

3 comments:

  1. Bernstein also says that Democrats "still have a long way to go in overcoming their own longstanding institutional sexism."

    The institutional cause of the gender imbalance isn't the parties, but our Constitutional system itself. The Framers developed a system that would encourage aggressive power-seeking men to channel their energies towards democratic ends. They consciously created a system in which ambitious people can serve themselves by serving their country, rather than raising up personal armies to just take what they want. While there are certainly many women who fit this description, it's more commonly a male trait.

    Jonathan, can you lend your bro the Federalist Papers please?

    ReplyDelete
  2. More ranting from a paid up member of Democrats(Zanu-PF).

    The phrase "institutional sexism" is used because he's quite unable to point to actual evidence of sexism within the processes; the fact that they result in fewer women than men in senior positions is ipso facto evidence of discrimination. But as we all know, you have to be fanatical about politics to make it your career, and political fanatics (political bores to the rest of us) are much more likely to be men than women. Because the Republican party does not engage in discrimination against men, this means it ends up with elected representatives that skew male. This is not institutional sexism, it's simply different interests playing out through the system.

    Besides, given there are so many more Democrats than Republicans in the social sciences, will he denounce the universities as institutionally bigoted? Or indeed institutional sexism, considering that there are more female than male undergraduates? Will he denounce any institution when the disparate impact falls against whites, men, or heterosexuals?

    Of course not, because the only thing these people care about is Who/Whom.

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  3. Garance Franke-Ruta makes the fact-checking over the welfare proposals of the Obama HHS much more clear cut than in fact it is. See Mickey Kaus's piece at http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/10/nyt-proves-romney-right-over-welfare/
    In fact, Nevada was cited by HHS when it announced its plan to grant waivers on July 12. Nevada wanted to allow "those families hardest to employ to be exempted from the work requirements for six months while officials worked with them to stabilize their households."
    Clearly, that's a weakening of work requirements, and allows welfare checks to be sent to some poor families for 6 months without any work requirement.

    ReplyDelete

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