Yes, Transgender rights, but what about the vulnerable ones?

About 20 years ago I was walking out of my downtown office for lunch and I spied two young black boys breaking into a newspaper machine for the quarters.  It was downtown at lunch and the sidewalks were filled with people. No one - including me - tried to stop them and hold them accountable. You see to do so in inner city St. Louis might get you called a 'racist' and who wants that trouble.  If they'd been white in the suburbs, sure we would have stopped them.  But these kids were clearly damaged by our indifference - no doubt they interpreted the impunity that they had and attempted more and more audacious and serious crimes until they ended up in jail or worse.  It is quite possible that middle class, white society, through its self righteous indifference, hated those boys to death.

We now have the great "Transgender Liberation".  Up until now if I had seen a person that looked like a man going into a women' bathroom or locker I would have personally gone up to them and told them to get the hell out and if they resisted found enough other men to throw them out.  I have no doubt any number of seriously Trans men went in unbeknownst to me and did no harm but if I had seen someone questionable there's no doubt what I would have done.  No more.  For to do so in today's rights environment would get me punished. Now the Transgender bathroom issue isn't really a big deal for my daughter or her friends - they're upper middle class and live in communities where there are lots of responsible and vigilant civic minded people who will keep the craziness to a minimum.  But I keep thinking about those doomed boys.  And their sisters in inner city schools where misogyny and sexual violence are already endemic.  The doomed boys no doubt will interpret the new regime as giving them another form of 'fun'. And the schools will struggle to fight against it, fearing - as we did - to be brought up on civil rights charges.

So once again we may end up with a situation where middle class, progressive, white society - through its self centered, self righteousness - finds a new way to hate poor boys and girls to death.

Sexual Predators are like wolves: they adapt.

I have friends who live in Jackson Hole.  The National Parks were being overrun by an elk herd that had grown to 20,000 animals.  So the Feds introduced a timber wolf pack from Canada. In a period of years the timber wolves reduced the Yellowstone and Grand Teton elk herd to 1,000 animals.  Then the timber wolves turned their attention to private Elk ranches.  The ranches, having barbed wire and electrified fences had thought their animals were safe.  But the wolves adapted to take advantage of the new situation.  Their tastes have also become more esoteric - they found it easy to kill the somewhat domesticated elk.  My friend posted a photo of 18 dead elk - only two had been eaten on at all - they had had the fetal elks ripped from their wombs.  It turns out that the modern timber wolf has adapted to the point where it likes baby meat....and kills for fun. My question is this:  if wild predators adapt to take advantage of the opportunities that changes in their environment offer, how much more will human sexual predators take advantage of the new rules on "Transgender" to do much more of that thing that they find so fun? And when they do, who will take responsibility for the decision to make their predation so much easier and more frequent?

Progressive Paradoxes

Here are some things Progressives believe that make no sense to me. It could be that my libertarian psyche simply can't conceive of them and so I solicit good Proggos to set me straight.  I recognize that there are probably many libertarian/conservative paradoxes as well but the paradox is that the true believer (moi) can't yank the beam out of his own eye, only the others side's.  I welcome anyone who wants to outline them for me.  Now without further ado: on with the paradox(es?, paradi? hmmm).

1. Progressives hold that the US is a particularly if not uniquely sinful nation - despoiling the environment, looting the third world and funneling wealth to plutocrats.  Yet they consider it axiomatic that the US government is the key to 'fundamentally transforming' America to heal us of our 'sin'.  Yet this government is derived from the degraded nation.  How can the product of degradation rescue that which has made it?

2. Progressives complain that capitalism concentrates too much wealth and power in the hands of a small elite, fostering Oligopoly and Monopoly.  Yet their solution to thousands of independent power centers holding too much power is to take that power and centralize it in a single Government monopoly that includes a monopoly on the use of force.  How does further concentrating wealth and power at the center "disperse" and "democratize" power?

3. Progressives argue that all cultures are valid and that it is inappropriate to 'privilege' western cultural norms over those of others.  They say everyone's culture should be respected and honored as a matter of course.  Except for one:  Traditional American Christian Culture. Progressives are utterly intolerant of the older, more traditional version of American culture that still has a large, perhaps even majority following.  How can Progressives respect cultures that are far more reactionary than traditional American Culture and not do the same for the culture that most of them grew up in?

4. Progressives hold that many private or quasi private services (healthcare, banking, etc.) should be managed and controlled if not owned by the state.  But that means that resource allocation and policy choices will be decided by as few as half of the between 30% and 60% of the electorate voting once every two years, most voting as a tribe in utter ignorance.  Even worse, this process excludes other critical stakeholders like immigrants and our continental neighbors from having any meaningful input into policies that affect them. Yet the same people that 'swing for the seats' with a few minutes of clueless voting every two years invest hundreds of times more effort and brain power shopping for their families. This shopping gives each of us, including our continental neighbors and immigrants, multiple opportunities to influence myriad power centers with their economic 'votes' every day.  Given the electorate's degraded and increasingly notional "control" over the US Government, why do Progressives call it "Democratic"? Why isn't the market which gives everyone a say multiple times a day more Democratic and egalitarian?

5. If it is illegal discrimination for a business to deny services and products available to the public to someone based upon race, gender, religion or sexual preference then how do Apple, Paypal and Bruce Springsteen get away with denying everyone in a conservative, Christian, heterosexual culture like North Carolina, or Indiana access to their services or custom?

6.  How is it that progressives like Apple and Paypal boycott US states for regularizing toilet rules while they do massive amounts of business and locate facilities in places like Singapore or India where homosexual and transexual behavior is outlawed? How can they persecute their fellow citizens who share their culture and are much closer to them even on issues where there are disagreements, while forgiving other cultures of much worse sins?

7. Politically elite Universities are the most 'progressive' places in the country.  Yet they explicitly skim off a cognitive elite and facilitate their intermarriage, creating a self sustaining and set apart caste of elites who share their university experience. They then privilege the already privileged offspring of these elites for admission if their parents have given large sums to these already fabulously rich institutions. How do progressives in these institutions justify the utterly reactionary results of their labors?

Like I said, I don't understand these things. Which is why I don't understand how the Democratic party can be called the "party of the people" because from where I sit it looks like they despise most of us. Indeed most of their efforts are dedicated to stripping us of our consumer sovereignty and the right to say and live as we like, replacing it with a faux "democracy" that privileges a centralized, credentialed elite that is increasingly autocratic, intolerant and objectively anti-American.