Context Clues

More reality check, with special focus on things you need to shut the hell up about until you go read up on the context.

• Turns out I was incorrect—apparently Protestant clergy has a higher rate of abuse than Catholic clergy, the same as the rate among rabbis. Admittedly the rate is about 2% even for them—but it's only 1-1.5% for priests. Why don't you hear about that?
  
  Why don't you hear that the rate of actual pedophilia, clinically defined, is much higher in Protestant than Catholic clergy, according to a study from Penn State (.2% to 1.7%, for priests, compared to 2-3% for Protestant clergy)?
  
  Why don't you hear that there are more allegations against Protestant churches, and that the majority of the accused are church volunteers, not clergy of any kind? Why don't you hear that Catholic officials have made far and away the most changes to their policies regarding abuse, while Protestant and Jewish leaders continue to cover it up? In that last case there's a legitimate fear of antisemitism, but nobody thinks the equally (at least!) legitimate fear of anti-Catholicism excuses the bishops.
  
  And here's a fun fact: the person most likely to molest any child is a relative. 38% of all abuse is at the hands of fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers, or mothers' boyfriends—all of whom are, by definition, not celibate.


• So it's a commonplace to think the English were the good guys in the Napoleonic War. Now, aside from the fact England has never been the good guy in any war between 1336 and 1913, here's a fact: in the 1798 Irish Rebellion, the English not only massacred thousands of innocent people, they became the only Western power since long before Rome to systematically use rape as a weapon of terror. In 1803, on the other hand, Napoleon made war-rape a death penalty crime.
  
  Now, Napoleon was probably wrong in trying to spread his system—political equality, the rule of law, other horrible things—by force, but personally, I'd have to say Russia was the closest thing to the hero of the story; they were at least standing for something more than a fad. Austria lost the right to be the hero, thanks to Marie Antoinette being the only one of Maria Theresa's children who wasn't a complete ass. As for Prussia...yeah, well, let's put it this way. The Prussians specifically refused to let the English march with them, for fear they'd turn the English against them, between the way they treated their troops and the way their troops treated civilians. And consider what the English were like!


• Libertarians...oy. Their arguments for legalizing drugs? First off, they invoke the "jus utendi et abutendi" idea from Roman law...even though America is a common law jurisdiction. Common law uses the much more civilized, rational idea that you only have the right to the proper use of anything; the community, in principle, always has the right to prevent you from abusing things. In practice, it can't intervene if doing so would infringe on your rights to other things, but there is no right of abuse, sorry. You don't like it, move to France.
  
  They also claim "you" own your own body. Kay...but then who's "you"? Body-self dualism is dreck, metaphysically speaking—the soul is merely the identity of the body, that which makes it what it is—and the kind of libertarian who makes that argument tends to be a materialist anyway. You're not allowed to make an argument from a metaphysical framework in which you don't believe. Do I go around making arguments based on the panta rhei of Heraclitus, or explain events by appeal to co-fatedness? No, because I'm not a pre-Socratic or a Stoic, and more to the point I'm not an idiot.


• Does anyone else find it fascinating how people who are absolutely convinced the Founding Fathers were racist imperialist evildoers will nonetheless thump the Constitution as hard as the most backwoods preacher-man ever thumped the Bible? Or that libertarians, who have a magazine called "Reason", appeal to the Founders' authority more blindly than anyone appeals to the authority of prophets or religious sages? And yet the founders never claimed divine guidance or inspiration, except rhetorically!
  
  Apropos of nothing, is there a porn mag called "Chastity"?


• So George Lucas said that a benevolent despot is the best kind of ruler, because he can get things done. And of course David Brin recommended sending Lucas and his entire family to the Gulag for repentance and reeducation—if I read him right, anyway. And then some guy tries to defend Lucas, but he, in his turn, said that "All he's saying is a benevolent despot would be the best, it's just too bad there aren't any."
  
  Huh. So, you're saying not a single person who can be described as a despot has even wanted to do good. Merely gaining that form of power instantly turns you, not merely fallible and corruptible, but actively, consciously malevolent—gaining absolute power makes you desire evil. "Benevolent" means "of good will," not "of good actions," genius.
  
  And hey, guess what, the only person here who knows any history can tell you, not only have many despots willed good, many of them have done it. The trouble with a despot is, "What to do when they don't do good, whether through malice or error? What do you do when they really don't want to do good?" And that's where the idea of placing limits on government comes in.


• Does anyone else notice the irony in how much of the caricature of the Middle Ages generally used in Anglo cultures is, basically, a vicious attack on Protestantism? Think about it: basically they simply say the medievals were fundamentalists and Puritans, and believed in aristocracy and the divine right of kings. Uh, I don't wanna use a Freudian term, here, but I believe that's called projection.
  
  If anything, the big flaw of the middle ages was their excess of political and social independence; only France even approached federalism. The biggest flaw of medieval Christianity—which interpreted Scripture according to four different senses, only one of which was literal—was being too lenient with human frailty, not being puritanical.


• So the idiots who do the "Answerman" column at Anime News Network apparently think all the same tropes are in play in Japan as in America. For instance, the creature who runs it now recently claimed that dojikko (clumsy girls) aren't a moe thing, but a cheap ploy to try and play with the trope of women always being dignified.
  
  Shit, who reads him his mail? There's no such trope in East Asia—in Confucianism, it's the guy who's always dignified! Men literally get the pedestal there, I'm not exaggerating; it's men who are the mysterious beings whose ways are inscrutable to mere mortals. "Man talk, you wouldn't understand" is the original idea in Asia; the concept that women are mysterious is largely a result of westernization.
  
  All the "mysterious, dignified woman" idea actually originated in a concerted effort to remind men that they're only half the human race, and women have lives and views of their own, and deserve respect. When did it start? The Middle Ages, of course. It got messed up when your precious Renaissance brought back the absolute patriarchy of pagan times, but it still managed to survive as a literary convention, and had some influence on the behavior of the suddenly-omnipotent-again men.