Black people often make bad decisions about their health. For instance, a slightly higher percentage of black men than white men smoke, despite the fact that black men are 34 percent more likely to get lung cancer. Most black women weigh too much: According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health, “African-American women have the highest rates of being overweight or obese compared to other groups in the U.S. About four out of five African-American women are overweight or obese.”
Black men are 30 percent more likely to die from heart disease than non-Hispanic white men, and they contract AIDS more than seven times as often. Black women are 2.5 times as likely to start prenatal care in the third trimester, or not to start it at all. As a group, African-Americans are 50 percent less likely to exercise. The death rate for African-Americans is higher than whites for heart diseases, stroke, diabetes, and homicide.
All of this imposes immense costs on society.
By now it should be clear that simply trying to educate black people is not enough. Therefore, the United States needs a multi-pronged, coordinated effort aimed at forcing black people to make better choices. African-Americans should be required to pay higher taxes for unhealthy foods. They should be encouraged, if not required, to engage in regular exercise. Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s regulatory czar, has proposed in his book Nudge a system of “libertarian paternalism” through which government incentives could encourage people to make the right choices. We should do this with black people by, for example, charging them more for snack foods, cigarettes, and other unhealthy products.
Not really, of course. No one should seriously make such a condescending and paternalistic argument. And anyone who did should be denounced as a bigot of the first order.
What’s interesting, though, is that many progressives think nothing of making the very same argument about Americans generally. With more and more frequency we are told Americans’ poor choices about their own health lead to higher costs for everybody — so the government must act. Hence the campaign against obesity. Hence proliferating proposals for higher taxes on soft drinks. Hence the drive to have the FDA regulate Americans’ salt intake. And so on.
[…]
It should be said that even at its most onerous, big government is a far cry from chattel slavery or the Black Codes. And the progessive of today who calls for more and more government would never express sentiments like those above about African-Americans.
But Americans in general? That’s a different story.
Ordinarily, I’d point out the special pleading involved in progressive policy to show a lack of consistency that bespeaks a rather convenient sliding scale of “fairness” as defined by the left.
But why bother, really? If you aren’t constrained by the tyranny of logic, categorical inconsistencies only hold weight insofar as they can be deployed either for or against a particular policy stance; which is why it is easy to point to numerous instances in which a supposed progressive ideal is completely ignored or supplanted by some nearly opposite ideal when circumstances demand (hence, eg,. the decrying of racial profiling in one instance, coupled with the celebration of race-based affirmative action in another; or the foregrounding of “diversity” for purposes of cosmetic difference on college campuses on one hand, coupled with outrage over the notion of courting intellectual diversity by attracting more conservative academics on the other; etc.).
In short, progressivism, inasmuch as it attempts to deconstruct Enlightenment paradigms, operates from the assertion that rhetoric trumps logic, and that truth is contingent — dependent solely for its “truthiness” on how many (and which type) of people agree to cast it as truth.
Which means, ultimately, that pointing out logical inconsistencies in progressivism is rather pointless to progressives, because to progressivism, inconsistency is itself a function of the kind of intellectual “pragmatism” they espouse.
After all, why surrender to the hobgoblin of small minds when it is so very liberating to simply will truth into being by the force of your claims and the tenor of your insistence and resolve?
So, like, meh.
It’s not about what’s true, it’s about what’s useful.
Oh, and RAAAAACIST!
“rhetoric trumps logic” reminded me of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, wherein a student of rhetoric destroys a teacher of Socratic rationality, by deploying a logical argument against the teacher, using the words of the text the teacher was using.
Pity this don’t work with progressives. They just yell RAAAAAACIST when someone does that to them.
Since I’m a grumpy old bugger, I suggest nobody knocks on my door peddling “libertarian paternalism”.
Of course, to be even more RAAAAACIST!, one might point out that the reasons behind, say, higher incidence of obesity, might just be because of the dependency class that has been created via welfare. If all one has to do is sit around all day, one is more likely to eat for entertainment. That would be true for any “race,” of course.
I condemn myself for my lack of empathy.
Where the heck is everybody?
After all, why surrender to the hobgoblin of small minds when it is so very liberating to simply will truth into being by the force of your claims and the tenor of your insistence and resolve?
As I’ve recently discovered, it helps to have friends who’ll redefine the meaning of words at Urban Dictionary.
This comment by Ric Locke in the Buckleyization thread reminded me of the part about how the instructions for assembling a grill are put together.
Look at that it’s not bigoted to think generally.
It is paternalistic, though. And when you’re paternalistic against a particular race, it’s bigotry.
Good ol’ soupy. Slavery’s okay so long as everybody is enslaved!
Greetings:
I live in the San Francisco Bay area. Out here, there are plenty of Pacific Islander women who seem to be giving black women a run for their obesity money.
Clearly, we need a government program to educate people in the futility of government programs. Wait……….it’s arrived.
Substitute any other name for the citizens of a nation for “Americans” and see the bigotry emerge, showing it’s face that was hidden from sight by assumptions so common they have become invisible too.
They’re fat because they’re poor, silly.
Americans are fat, lazy, and stupid, geoffb. Just ask any progressive.
Insanity.
That’s what it is.
I always wondered how Hitler gained control. but no more wondering for this guy…
Why? On anything, why?
I loathe nishit the genocidal twatwaffle with the intensity of seven suns, but her inane blathering that Squid notes above serves as an objective object lesson in leftist idiocy. Meya and all 12 of her personalities too.
Except for when antiabortion laws lead to forced gestationeleven!
It is racist. Because low income correlates to skin color.
And goodness knows, we just can’t tolerate that kind of correlation. Best to just pretend it’s not there.
I’m sure there are.
Low income also correlates to lack of education. Which is just not funny.
I’d qualify for not finding Colbert’s routine funny, but that’s only because I don’t see Stephen Colbert.
Who?
Willing the World into Being. Sounds like good times.
For a while.
It’s vaguely similar to an epistemological stance maintaining one can know only that which one can make Mikey. Which in turn may be more common than we tend to notice.
Food stamps (now fancy plastic cards BECAUSE OF THE STIGMA!!eleventy11!1!) can be used to buy anything edible. I heard some black guy who owns a store in Buffalo (or somewhere) say that people come in all the time and buy stack and stacks o’ junk food with their food-stamp card. He wasn’t at all impressed.
Although if you people knew how to read, you’d notice that the article says that “lack people” have the obesity problem.
Sheez.
But…but….but…FOOD DESERTS!!!
soup : ‘Look at that it’s not bigoted to think generally.’
Oh yes it is , think Larry Summers , or that poor girl who had her email splashed across America. (The best part of the latter was the female dean who took the students personal email and inserted her own interpretation , that to be less intelligent is to be INFERIOR. typical leftist).
he next shocking item will be the discovery that poor nutrition is correlated with poor income. But as you note, some people may not be able to resist formulating this so as “to be even more RAAAAACIST!”
Of course, the truth of the matter is that you can eat healthy food on -even – foodstamps.
Dicentra,
A few years ago, I worked at a Circle K store who’s EBT machine was not functional. (In AZ, a special machine is used to process food stamp cards)
Every single person, without exception, when told they couldn’t use their EBT card, paid cash. They also tended to drive a better car than I did.
But…but….but…FOOD DESERTS!!!
I know Detroit – and they don’t have a single major grocery chain w/in its city limits. Because of theft. No one wants to be located there.
So, you get smaller, independent stores, and party stores (which take those fancy cards.) Why one is allowed to use food-aid at a party store- is beyond me.
I ax CK why conservatives are always hollering eugenicist…..that was a good answer.
so I’ll ax another expert.
so Jeff……why is academe painted blue in your opinion?
Of course. It’s a lovely shade of fantastic sophistry.
Isn’t it, noogie?
This makes fairly good sense too:
Compare and contrast.
soup agian : ‘why is academe painted blue in your opinion?’
My opinion is because there seem to be many more Ward Churchills than Milton Friedmans in the academe, and further, if you try to name a building after Milton , you are considered beyond the pale for indulging ‘them’, ‘them’ being non-leftists who believe in markets and true capatalism (not the corporatism that the dems and pubs have foisted upon us).
#41 JHo:
And when it has been tried by humans it has resulted in some fairly stomach-turning events – forced sterilization being the least evil of those events.
Yep, Nishi. Every time a man is called a racist he fires back with a charge of eugenicist! Every single time.
Do you even read the drivel you write?
falsely impugning the motives of your ideological opponents is not the same as noting a philosophical continuity with fascist bastards.
but hey, if nishi’s out to promote herself by trying to redeem the title of ‘eugenicist,’ go right ahead. I’m sure it’ll go over well.
And no they weren’t being general.
The only way Larry Summers could have been more general is if he had included men in his discussion of why women are underrepresented in certain fields of study.
soup : ‘Their problem was a lack of thinking. And no they weren’t being general.’
No , there problem was having the AUDACITY to think. To q
soup : ‘Their problem was a lack of thinking. And no they weren’t being general.’
No , their problem was having the AUDACITY to think at all(and in particular, think about a subject that the left has shut down as total taboo. disgraceful for a house of ‘learning’ to do so). Further, they both were indeed talking about humans in general terms , Summers on why women in GENERAL tend to shy away from the hard sciences, also the female student, as to the POSSIBLE differnences in cognetive abilty between differing RACES (can one get much more GENERAL than that?).
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.
and a sign, I think, that a person is still mentally an adolescent is the tendency to want to try big, theoretical ideas because the results promised are just ever so keen when there is plenty of evidence that when the theory is tried the results are far different than those the theory promised.
Disasterously different results.
so I’ll ax another expert.
Why don’t you “ax” Urban Dictionary, which according to you is the internet’s Library of Alexandria?
Woody Allen added “Those who can’t teach, teach gym.” That was a few years before he decided Obama would be a good dictator for a few years. ‘Coz that always turns out well: El Presidente For A Few Years is such a popular title down South.
Isn’t that what Stalin’s people did to Trotsky?
so Jeff……why is academe painted blue in your opinion?
I won’t answer for Jeff, but for myself, it has a lot to do with the fact that college professors self-identify as liberals and progressives in proportions far out of whack with the rest of society. Hell, even the ones who identify as moderates generally come down on the liberal side when asked policy-specific questions.
A few years ago, there was a study covered here showing the marked prevalence of liberals and progressives in America’s universities, a prevalence that grows even more lopsided once you wander away from the “real” majors (the ones where you have to do math).
(ed note: in pulling up the link, I came across this Media Mutters critique of the study and its coverage. Their scathing conclusion can be paraphrased as “of course universities are bastions of liberal dogma, but this study can’t prove that conservatives are deliberately discriminated against.” Say what you want about Mr. Soros, but the man bankrolls some of our nation’s best subtle humor.)
So yeah, when 88% of the sociology department self-identifies as Democrat, 12% Other, and 0% Republican, you can forgive us for thinking that such places might lean a little to the blue side. You can also forgive us for thinking that the 12% Other is mostly Socialists and Greens.
Or you can use your motie arms to diddle yourself ’til you’re no longer capable of traditional orgasms, and then blame the engineers for allowing such a thing to happen. Your choice.
Awwwww….
Congress to Julius Genachowski: Fuck you and your Net Neutrality.
Ain’t bipartisanship sweet?
look at meeeee!!!!!!!!
look at meeeeee!!!!!!!!!!
silly jeffy…lulz..don’t you understand???
pancakes are painless…bananas aren’t weapons…
daddy doesn’t love me…lolzoooeeeeebang…nyuk…lol
Evan Sayet said the place in the university where conservatives are allowed is in the hard sciences: Either the chemicals react with each other or they don’t, and the failure to do so isn’t because of the white patriarchy discriminating against one of the chemicals. Either the bridge stays up through the 9.5 Richter quake or it falls; rewriting the plans in Swahili won’t change that fact.
Sadly, even in the hard sciences, we have public funding of research causing science to be skewed, such as in Climategate.
Becareful or someone might accuse you of being a racist.
BTW, Law and Order is over. Ace had this post of the Jewyest Law and Order Episodes. Funny. Then again I heard some blogger laughed at the wrong parts because he did not get Dick Wolfe’s intent.
it conjures nightmarish images of the all-powerful, de-humanizing state
Oh, come now.
THAT kind of thing never happens.
No, she didn’t use the words “inferior” or “superior”. That’s the dean and you doing that.
The comment didn’t come out of nowhere. It was a response to a conversation about the fact of blacks as a group scoring substantially lower in IQ tests, despite the best efforts to remove all social biases in those tests.
I can’t categorically reject the notion that whites are genetically not as good at basketball as blacks. I can, however reject the opposing view, because the NBA has powerful incentives to find the best talent with which to win games.
why is academe painted blue in your opinion?
Because Leftism and Progressivism (L&P) flatter them. They tell them that IF ONLY they and theirs were in charge, the world would be freed of all its ills.
JUST LIKE THE UNIVERSITY! Which is an idyllic setting that the academics themselves created, by force of their own innate goodness and superiority, which in its turn is evidenced by the fact that they are academics.
L&P also don’t require humility from its adherents, telling them that their own genius is sufficient to save mankind, and WHAT A RUSH THAT IS! Especially when you’ve been Freed From The Dead Hand Of The Past, aka bourgeoise morality, the Constitution, the rule of law, and all that foolish Xtian superstition.
IT’S LIBERATING I TELL YOU BUT ONLY SUITABLE FOR A CHOSEN FEW WHO WILL CERTAINLY NOT NOT NOT BE THE MOST SOCIOPATHIC AND SADISTIC AMONG US AT LEAST NOT THIS TIME.
‘why is academe painted blue in your opinion?’
That’s easy, [Faux] Liberals require their own Churches.
Rugs.
It looks rather more like Obama has paid a lot to turn himself into a rug to be walked all over.
You’ve been knocking them out of the park, dicentra. Bravo.
Wow!
Nishitty, enjoy it while you can.
You are the poster child for leftist arrogance. You will be drowned in the next election, just like the 200,000 + who died in the tsunami a few years ago.
There is nothing more amusing than a leftist twat who has no clue about the real world, or how economics actually work.
“Gimme, Gimme, Gimme” says Nitshit and it’s ilk.
Right, you moron. That’s how the real world works
Is Joe Biden your daddy, maybe?
All that was required was that the ones that got in from the 60’s New Left would always select, for tenure, for grad slots, those whose political views were to the far left while all others selected for various other reasons. Rinse, repeat, over 40 years and you change the landscape.
Academe was only the first to be so conquered but was essential for the “Long March” through all the other institutions.
Short answer? Academia likes new ideas that sound cool. Whether they work isn’t a factor.
In the real world shit has to work.
The TTP’s Societal Evolution.
Bingo. Academia is painted blue because the operative mantra is “Conservatives need not apply”.
Barton Barton Barton, so glad you could make it. You know Richard St. Claire and Poppy Connahan?
Just say no, if not Hell No.
Look, he doesn’t want a bunch of people telling him he’s got a socialist mop and he’s holding it wrong.
the communist mop is a michelle my bele
well….i was hoping jeff would answer.
guess not.
here feets, im jus’ the last of the american grrls.
<3
i’m watching “patton” the cartoonist made him a nazi for dressing down a coward
#55: And still someone is cutting the grass and clearing the snow. And waking me up while they do so.
Why can’t these…peasants…be quieter?
[…] (only this plague was entirely preventable), but after reading there, you may want to click over to Jeff G. at Protein Wisdom, who, to my mind, is talking about exactly the same thing described in the last few paragraphs […]
“why is academe painted blue in your opinion?”
The FACT of the matter is academe is blue because government fills their rice bowls by force. They are blue out of plain self-interest and–dare I?–selfishness.
Meanies, too
Killing threads isn’t really my intention.
And yet, bravo, sir!