Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Lotuseaters Dot Com" channel.

  1. "There has always been more cooperation between men and women, than a 'battle of the sexes' view of history would indicate" Absolutely true. My parents and grandparents had very traditional marriages and households, and I never got the slightest idea that either my mother or grandmother were somehow out of the loop when it came to decision-making. They never got 100% their own way, which is what feminists are demanding now -- and neither did their husbands, as feminists are claiming now. Feminism is basically a lie that makes everyone unhappy.
    106
  2. Being judged by the content of their character is a losing proposition for these race hustlers.
    105
  3. If the Republicans were doing this, the word "Fascism" would be on the lips of every media pundit in the English-speaking world.
    86
  4. Batman doesn't represent order. Commissioner Gordon represents order. Batman is The Hero, navigating between order (the law) and chaos (crime) through vigilantism, which is a mix of order and chaos.
    52
  5. The majority can't be "far-right". Whatever the majority is, includes the Center.
    36
  6. "We shouldn't have children to take care of us when we're old" That is exactly what every imaginable retirement scheme depends on. If you're 80, and you need food, someone's child will be the one growing it for you. If you're 80, and you need medical attention, someone's child will be providing it for you. If you're 80, and you need your housing maintained, someone's child will be the one fixing it for you. If you did not contribute to the task of having and raising your own children, you are freeloading off of someone else's work. If you did not want to contribute to the task of having and raising your own children, you are shirking what will always be a critical duty.
    33
  7. "How many children benefit from learning cellular biology?" Having a passing knowledge of mRNA can help with evaluating whether products based on mRNA technology have merit or risks, and can assist on spotting careless (or fake) news stories on the subject.
    32
  8. "Matt Walsh has nothing to offer kids who are worried that they're different" - Everyone is different in some way, and everyone has struggles - There's a lot more to life than the voices in your pants, deliberately ignoring them opens up a whole lot of options you would otherwise ignore - People who "have a lot to offer" to you are frequently just pandering to you to use you, without having anything like your best interests at heart That'll do for a start.
    31
  9. "You'd think that an organization dedicated mental health would be immune to this sort of insanity" An organization that "determines" what is and isn't sane (as if there's no objective measures to that) is specifically targeted for its authority, by people who want to redefine sanity to suit their own mental problems.
    29
  10. Considering that redemption is possible in those who have some sense of right and wrong, I think there is a compelling "mad dog" argument for putting down people with insufficient sense of right and wrong to refrain from destroying others. Arkham should be a graveyard, not an asylum.
    19
  11. "I don't believe in Christianity, but I think it's best when other people do" Everyone has to do their bit, dear.
    18
  12. "We could talk about the wars of religion" You mean the wars of ambitious noble houses? Do you really think the Bourbons, Hapsburgs, or Vasas would have been any less ambitious or warlike, if Luther had never become a monk?
    15
  13. "I don't believe in Christianity, but I think it's best when other people do" Gibbon claimed: "All religions are equally true to their adherents, equally false to the philosophers, and equally useful to the magistrate", although looking at the difference between governments and cultures built within Christianity vs. other religions, one feels that Gibbon was missing something important.
    15
  14. Beethoven was as disillusioned revolutionary -- look at the controversy over the 3rd Symphony, "Eroica". He was egalitarian as well, having little patience for the two-tiered justice system that allowed aristocrats more access to courts -- see his experience with child custody.
    10
  15.  @michaelsorensen7567  It's approximately the same level of detail. You'd probably get it in the same class.
    9
  16. "It goes to crazytown" It was never going to go anywhere else, Peter.
    9
  17. "It's interesting that Constantine was adjudicating arguments between various church factions" To be fair, per St. Paul the purpose of government is to maintain order.
    9
  18. More Klavan on Lotus Eaters!
    9
  19. Christian emphasis on consideration for the physically weak, allows for much greater specialization and thus, prosperity. Think about minority cultures who use physical strength and aggression to discourage people from "acting white" -- i.e., doing well in school -- and consider how they have demonstrably wrecked their own economic prospects.
    8
  20. The legendary Royal Navy was overcome by a flock of small boats...
    8
  21. Divorce lawyers always have their own best interests in mind.
    7
  22. "How do you deal with neighborhoods that are collapsing and houses that can't be sold?" If a neighborhood is abandoned and the house purchase price falls below $10 or so (if they can't be sold within a year), then the state government should knock them down and let the land re-wild, or convert to farmland.
    7
  23. Except we have the best healthcare in the world, as well as the vast majority of the new cures and procedures. Do we have to pay for the non-recurring costs that go along with the research and development? Yes. Does that mean some people can't afford it, at first? Yes, unfortunately, but it's better than never coming up with anything new in the first place.
    7
  24.  @brendancoulter5761  Gibbon was just anti-Christian. Tom Holland in some ways is an upgrade who has seen the wisdom that Gibbon missed.
    7
  25. "You may prioritize rightly so your education, rightly so your career" Is it the right thing, though? Is it the right thing, if it means that your society will collapse? Is it the right thing, if whatever you hoped to accomplish with your career or your education has only a <10% chance of ever happening?
    6
  26. Sounds like the solution involves helping parents straighten things out between them.
    6
  27. "You never knew whether you were cooking for five or fifteen, must be a nightmare for the people cooking" Nah, you just cook a couple pounds of meat and a few pounds of pasta, expect leftovers, and sometimes the people who show up bring something too.
    5
  28. "Childless people should be treated as second-class citizens" No. It would be most appropriate for childless people to be denied tax-based retirement benefits, including health benefits. If the working-out of this policy resulted in the privatization of health care, schools, and daycare, that would be fair.
    5
  29. It would also help if Atheists would stop shooting the front-line defenders of Western Civilization (Christians) in the back. Stop shooting holes in the boat, if you're crying that it's sinking.
    5
  30. If I could only be on streaming video for five minutes a week, I would watch Klavan's opening monologue and nothing else -- even if it didn't run the whole five minutes.
    5
  31. Guys, we figured out the balance of Welfare State and Free Market by trial and error. It's kind of what the Cold War is about. Both laissez-faire capitalism, and its antithesis communism, are at this point about equivalent to Monarchism -- a quaint historical idea. We have determined that the best way to use industrialization to produce and distribute goods, is the market-economic welfare state. Where is the current state of the dialectic? Well, it looks to me like Fukuyama's "liberty-minded democracy" is getting challenged by "authoritarian bureaucracy" both domestically and internationally. Brexit, populism, the powers of government officials during an epidemic, a new rivalry with China -- all of these are currently being debated. The sooner we understand that this is where the dialog truly is, the sooner we can develop a strategy to make sure that Authoritarian Bureaucracy does not win. The proper way to frame yesterday's question was, "How do we best use industrialization to produce and distribute goods?" Today's question ought to be, "How do we harness expertise in the service of a free people?"
    4
  32. “A Little Neglect May Breed Great Mischief” “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost, And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”
    4
  33. "In the 90's, atheism was something that was inflicted on me, not something I chose." That's a remarkable thing to say. We have "cradle atheists" now?
    4
  34.  @fatimahsharpe9113  There's some intellectual weight behind the original Reformers as well. Although, having a deliberate structure for good works is a good idea. And churches dripping with religious meaning, where every square foot includes some illumination of some aspect of faith, can help keep you in mind of how full the world is, of meaning. On the other hand, there's something to be said for Protestant simplicity and lack of distractions, or for filling the space with meaning by filling it with music. Christian art, architecture, design - it's fascinating.
    4
  35.  @Dev-ek6qm  Apparently an "identity" devoted to non-reproductive sex is hereditary though, according to today's conventional wisdom. Yeah, I think they're deeply stupid too.
    4
  36. "One culture can recognize what is valuable in another, and adopt those norms" Yes. This is one of the major themes in Herodotus, where he writes about interesting things that other Mediterranean cultures do, that are worth remarking on. He finds only one culture in his stories that has nothing to recommend it, which he remarks upon, as he passes on to other more useful matters.
    3
  37.  @Abyssal86  It was when I was in high school biology.
    3
  38. When judging Cicero's political skills, please consider that he died at the hands of his political enemies.
    3
  39. I don't always agree with him either, but I deeply respect his rationales for his ideas, even if I don't weight them the same as he does.
    3
  40. Find who is responsible for this. Find who they are connected to. Find who is funding them. Tell us who they are. We can speak out against them, but we need to know who to watch out for.
    3
  41.  @umiluv  Driving drunk doesn't guarantee you'll be involved in a fatal accident, either. Your attitude towards marriage is one of the reasons I just can't respect Libertarianism -- it seems just childishly stupid sometimes.
    3
  42.  @markzuckergecko621  Attempted murder is a crime that only comes into existence because a very specific other crime (murder) failed to happen. "But nothing happened, how can it be a crime?" is a silly defense. "Reckless endangerment" is the basis for criminalizing drunk driving. While we can argue about degree if you'd like, the same logical basis exists for criminalizing no-fault divorce when children are involved.
    3
  43. "Jimmy Stewart, Jack Kirby, even Elvis Presley answered their country's call and fought" It's fascinating to see what kind of difference that makes in their art -- compare the veteran JRR Tolkien, who lost close friends at the Somme, and the draft-dodging George Martin. The one who actually experienced the horror was the idealist, and the nihilistic coward died his thousand deaths by inflicting them on his characters.
    3
  44. Another quotable line from T'sao T'sao is, "Better that I should wrong the world, than the world should wrong me" which is a fairly thorough inversion of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". I have to wonder if this is Christian influence creeping in.
    3
  45. "The process of discovering the law through precedent seems to me the best way to go" - Either Sargon of Akkad or Edmund Burke. I'm not sure.
    3
  46. "The printing press wasn't dangerous" Pamphleteering had its fascinations and its risks.
    3
  47. Rationalism narrows your vision, and puts blinders on you. The Rationalist lens is tightly focused. You can gain much insight into the structure of how things work, abstracting in this way. Romanticism, on the other hand, takes all detail into account and nourishes human intuition with it. While this can lead to superstitions -- correlations without causations -- it avoids neglecting important factors, and takes into account how a combination of factors can override any given narrow concern. Looking at how convolutional neural nets work, and comparing that inexact model to how the human brain actually works, gives you a good notion of the mechanics here.
    3
  48.  @ThursonJames  Matt's more of a slow burn, and needs more than five minutes a week to appreciate. I absolutely admire what he's getting out there and doing in the wider world, though. SBG is going to be instrumental in getting our country back on track. I'm looking forward to it.
    3
  49. As far as I can tell, this was written AFTER the Second World War was over. As the war was going, he wrote the following: “I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus [Jeff Bezos?] (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.”
    3
  50. "Any college counselor is going to be highly biased on the transgender direction" In America, a therapist or psychologist can LOSE THEIR LICENSE if they do anything other than affirm a patient's transgender thoughts. The therapist who knows the details of the patient's life and troubles, who thinks that transition is nothing like the best path for their patient, is FORCED to remain silent.
    3