God's Own Crunk

Excellent piece via Instapundit regarding why young Americans should be looking for work overseas – my thoughts will follow:

There’s a lot of alarmism in the media these days. Iran is going to start World War III. War between China and the US is inevitable. A bunch of rag-tag tribesmen in Pakistan are going to wrought nuclear annihilation on all of us. Drug runners in Mexico are going to chop your limbs off. Bizarrely named African rebels are going to drink your blood.

It’s time to get over the hype, move beyond the overblown cultural differences within the human species, and to get over, as Hitchens quotes Freud as saying, “the narcissism of the small difference.”

Living abroad has been one of the biggest personal growth experiences of my life. It’s given me the most unique and memorable experiences of my life. It’s made me smarter, wiser, more tolerant, and more empathetic. And I’m by no means unique in this regard. Just about any world traveler will tell you the same thing.

via Why Young Americans Should Work Overseas.

I highlight this part because the older I get, the more importance I’ve begun putting on travel, and not just business travel: more and more of my free time, money and thinking goes into where in the world I want to go next.

My passport is respectable but wouldn’t be mistaken for diplomat status. I’ve been to England, Ireland, Mexico, The Bahamas and, most recently, Utila Bay-Honduras. What I’ve learned from this travel is my temperament is best suited (so far) in the Western hemisphere close to the equator. Although I was in Utila, a tiny peaceful island with virtually no violent crime, I enjoyed the short time in Honduras on layovers. I found the people friendly, the food good and the experience liberating in many ways.

I’ll continue to go to Utila – I’d like to move there eventually – but Uruguay, Chile, Curacao, and a host of islands are on my radar over the next few years. My home is one filled with books, and my education is fairly broad. The more I live, though, the more I learn through travel. My work affords me the opportunity to travel all over America, which works perfectly – I go places I’d never spend vacation going, which frees up my vacation time to leave the country.

I enjoyed Ireland, but I doubt I go back unless I’m being paid. The Irish were lovely people and it’s a beautiful land, but Europe – at least the part that I was in – just didn’t do it for me. Of the European destinations I’d like to visit, Ibiza is the only one that’s a bucket-list item. I have friends by Amsterdam, so it would be stupid not to visit them at some point before they move back to the States – it’s all choices.

For the introverted me, though, there’s nothing better to get me out of my comfort zone than to get me in a different country and see how the other half live.

Step up:

When Americans think of Maine, they often think of rocky coasts, lobster and moose. But Maine also has a long and proud tradition of military service, a legacy of world-class manufacturing, and a high percentage of personal firearm ownership.

That’s why I invite manufacturers of firearms and related accessories—some of which are under siege in their home states by politicians pushing anti-gun legislation—to come to Maine. As a state that is fiercely protective of our right to bear arms, we will welcome you and your business.

When a Bangor daily newspaper in February tried to get the names, addresses and dates of birth of all Mainers with concealed-firearms permits, we leapt into action, drafting and passing a bill in 48 hours to temporarily shield the personal information. Democrats joined Republicans to swiftly enact this emergency legislation. (Legislation to permanently shield the information is in committee.)

via Paul LePage: Beretta, Colt and Magpul—Come to Maine – WSJ.com.

This essay, from a HS senior and published at WSJ, is making the rounds:

To those kids who by age 14 got their doctorate, cured a disease, or discovered a guilt-free brownie recipe: My parents make me watch your “60 Minutes” segments, and they’ve clipped your newspaper articles for me to read before bed. You make us mere mortals look bad. (Also, I am desperately jealous and willing to pay a lot to learn your secrets.)

To those claiming that I am bitter—you bet I am! An underachieving selfish teenager making excuses for her own failures? That too! To those of you disgusted by this, shocked that I take for granted the wonderful gifts I have been afforded, I say shhhh—”The Real Housewives” is on.

via Suzy Lee Weiss: To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me – WSJ.com.

Having gone through “two-a-days” for several years playing football, I offer this: disgruntled white kids applying to college and not getting accepted by The Bigs have no idea what hard work is.

See also: hauling hay.

Not that this was a difficult prediction. Ducks, barrels etc:

Whites are under-represented by race in mass shootings, as are Hispanics, when you look at percentage of total population. Don’t take my word for it, either; look at the stats kept by über-left-wing Mother Jones.

Over-represented are Asians, like Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, One L. Goh, Jeong Soo Paek, Jiverly Wong, Byran Koji Uyesugi and Gang Lu who are all East Asian, and West Asian/Arabs, such as Nidal Hassan, and Abdelkrim Belachheb, whom the sisters dishonestly label “white.”

Also over-represented are black mass murders like Omar S. Thornton, Maurice Clemmons, Charles Lee Thornton, William D. Baker, Arthur Wise, Clifton McCree, Nathan Dunlap, Colin Ferguson, and we’re not even including the DC Snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, because they are arguably serial killers instead.

While white mass murderers are given considerable airtime, black mass murderers are ignored by the mass media as quickly as they possibly can… including the racist Washington Post.

via WaPost op-ed blames whites for mass shootings; fact remains minorities are over-represented for ALL murder types, including mass murder « Bob Owens.

Related: Chateau Hartiste had this to offer. 

Kurt Schlichter writes:

The key to defeating this residual cultural affinity is twofold. First, conservatives need to avoid feeding old stereotypes with boneheaded maneuvers like making idiotic pronouncements about rape and writing jerktastic articles about how being a gay conservative is the result of a Marxist conspiracy. Remember, these young people grew up being taught to be tolerant. They’ll be tolerant of anyone – including hardcore Christians – who are themselves tolerant. We don’t have to accept anything we consider immoral – we just have to not be jerks about it.

Second, conservatives need to emphasize the pro-freedom agenda that both demographics share. Millenials have no desire to be dictated to about their snack options or hellfired by some drone either. Nor do they want to get arrested for jailbreaking their iPhone or sued for a $100,000 for downloading the latest terrible Mumford & Sons song. And for the few who have found jobs in the Obama economy, the tax bite on their pay stubs is just as unwelcome.

Call it the Coalition of the Unwilling to Be Bossed Around.

A pro-liberty coalition is a huge threat to the progressive project, as it steals from the progressive base while building on the conservative one. But we need to understand that we may be called on to give in order to get. The young demographic has huge doubts about the drug war and is largely pro-gay rights and gay marriage. Of course, they need to accept the fact that they don’t get to be little dictators either – the Boy Scouts get to choose their membership and doctors who understand the Hippocratic oath as excluding killing their unborn patients get to exercise their conscience.

via Conservatives Must Build a ‘Bite Me’ Coalition – Kurt Schlichter – [page].

I like Kurt’s sentiment here. As he no doubt knows, it has two unfortunate flaws: Social Conservatism enjoys its own little nanny-statisms, and the Millenials – thanks to a lifetime of Progressive education in the public schools – don’t have the intellectual grounding to link nanny state nuisances like soda pop- and transfat-bans with the larger loss of public liberty. Plus, a vast swath of said generation has been raised to feel, not to think.

I hope Schlichter’s right and my view is one generated by a lifetime of cynicism of watching “progressive-creep” continue to snowball, but I doubt it. Just as you don’t win Hispanic votes by legalizing Hispanic illegals, the socially conservative base of the GOP will not abide overtures to the homosecks agenda. I’ve given up on the former as a writing-on-the-wall situation, and I’m agnostic on the latter.

Sadly, the best thing to turn millenials Conservative will be a whole lotta misery. Guess what, we’re in luck: that generation hasn’t seen anything yet.

Masculinity and heroism:

It doesn’t. Er, but where are the girlfriends who threw themselves into the path of bullets to save their boyfriends?

via Instapundit » Blog Archive » JESSICA WAKEMAN: “Why does masculinity have to have anything to do with heroic behavior?” It doe….

Although this has been all over the place, this comes from Wizbang:

Fortunately, here we have one prominent African American standing up for his rights and properly noting that the main reason the Second Amendment was created by our founding fathers was to prevent government from becoming a tyranny on the people.

Ice-T wasn’t the only rapper to come to the defense of the Second Amendment. In the wake of the incident in Colorado, Big Boi of OUTKAST also announced his support of the freedom to bear arms.

via Ice-T: Guns the ‘Last Form of Defense Against Tyranny’ | Wizbang.

Although I haven’t yet coined a term for it, I’ve long been a part of a growing number of law/order Conservatives who don’t view the police as a unified good thing, or, being less polite, I don’t view police favorably, period.

The example I’ve used before is the changing perception I have personally of the Rodney King beating over the course of two decades, but flavoring it is, naturally, interactions I’ve had with the police on a more personal level (I’ve spent one night in jail, fwiw).

What escapes people in most countries who see a schizophrenic thing going on with Americans and our relation to guns is the subdural relationship that the American individual has to/with the State – it’s amicable, it’s respectful, but it’s not reverent. Thanks to our founding and its roots, we see officers of the State as a necessary part of keeping peace, but when peace-keeping evolves into law enforcement, the necessity of the 2nd Amendment becomes all the more crucial.

Two decades ago, Ice-T produced a song called ‘Cop Killer’ and Conservatives were outraged by the idea that anyone would title anything … that. Two decades later, Ice-T states in a few lines the reason for the 2nd Amendment more eloquently than most NRA members probably could. Funny how things change, funny how nothing changes.

Anyone who thinks our right to bear arms has any relation to hunting animals or shooting skeet is grossly misinformed – that right is there so that the vox populi can, for lack of a better phrase, watch the watchers. Some would say that our forefathers didn’t fight the British with free speech, and others refer to colddeadhands, but whatever your persuasion, the 2nd Amendment doesn’t exist for reasons of sport or hunger, it exists purely out of the necessity of liberty – liberty is the end-game, but possessing the weapons of the State is the insurance.

Bill Quick has the link, and since I don’t do the Amazon affiliate thing, I’ll direct you to him. Although I don’t do much self-promotion, it’s also a good way to remind you that you can buy my fictional, hedonistic odyssey, Free Love for Sale, here. It’s 99-cents, or if you own a Kindle and are an Amazon Prime member, you can read it for free.

So there’s that. Readers are leaders, yo.

The worst part about disbelief is the company one keeps, and in America – Hitchens gone – that company is the stereotypical smug, progressive know-it-all that everyone, his friends included – hate. I don’t believe what I don’t believe, but I’d wager that it’s a testament to that skepticism that most of the assholes who think like I do are aren’t worth shooting.

With that said, well, here’s an excerpt, but do read the whole thing – best essay you’ve not read today:

I’m not of course doing justice to Hayes’ book here; if I could it would have been a blog post not a book. But this critique of the meritocratic ideal from the left speaks also to the populism of the right; indeed, while Hayes loathes what he understands of the ideology and political program of the Tea Party as much as any left intellectual in America, he has far more emotional sympathy for its hatred of the überclass than many writers on his side of the spectrum.

There’s much to be said about this subject, and regular readers of these essays will see many ways in which Hayes and I worry about some of the same things, if often from a different point of view. But rather than get into all that today, there’s another point I’d like to make. This has to do with another dimension of today’s American meritocracy that I think is deeply problematic: atheism.

via Is Meritocracy A Sham? | Via Meadia.

So my question to readers is, “How do you live like a king in a world full of princesses?” Please share your tips, wisdom and ideas on how to live well, despite the obstacles.

via Dr. Helen » How to Live Like a King In a World Full of Princesses.

The comments at this link are pretty damn good – whether married, single, wanting to be married, confirmed bachelor (bingo!), a lot of common threads.

Hard to see a question ‘how do you live like a king?’ of a man who goes by, er, King B, so my advice is pretty simple – some of it I’ve followed, some of it I’ve not, but I knew I was making a mistake when neglecting to follow it.

1. Work like you’re not guaranteed a job, and avoid people who avoid working.
2. If she’s older than 28 and going to school while not working full time, avoid her and all the issues and debt she is carrying. It’s one thing to go to night school for an MBA or a JD while working 50 hours a week. It’s another thing to be around 30 and never have held a full-time, professional job.
3. A woman is not going to make you substantially happier than you already are. If you were miserable before you met her, you’ll be miserable again soon enough.
4. Upon hitting 30, if you can’t resist American women, you should be shooting for women who have 75 percent of your years ie if you’re 36, you shouldn’t date a woman much older or younger than 27. I’m not really looking to date anyone right now, but the few women who currently have my attention are 26-29. If I ever decide that I want to be married, I will probably spend a couple months in Eastern Europe looking for a wife.
5. Fair or not, starting a relationship with an American woman in her mid-30s is probably going to end in disaster, and I say that as someone whose closest friends are American women in their mid-30s.
6. Don’t get involved with women who want to be treated like royalty – queen, princess, whatever. Also, if the phrase ‘if you can’t handle me at my worst you don’t deserve me at my best’ is uttered, run – don’t walk – from this psychotic narcissist.
7. Learn Game. Even if you’re an introverted mess, you’ll at least begin to understand certain aspects of American female behavior, how to counteract it and, most importantly, how to spot the warning signs of the princess in hiding.

Many of my readers are married to American women, and the ones I know who read are in happy marriages, so what do I know? Still, a pretty interesting discussion.