Sunday, April 09, 2017

Democrats aren't the party of science: Jonah Goldberg

Democrats aren't the party of science: Jonah Goldberg:
"Clinton is peddling stale, corporate feminism as settled science.
As fate would have it, Hillary Clinton spoke at the Hillary Rodham Clinton Awards for Advancing Women in Peace and Security, where she emphasized the importance of peace, of women and of women in peace.
...But she also got in what was seen as a partisan shot at the Trump administration.
At one point she began a sentence by saying, “Studies show…” and then interrupted herself: “here I go again talking about research, evidence and facts."
The crowd laughed, cheered and loudly applauded for a while, proving that there’s nothing like working out your best material with a friendly audience.
Clinton laughed at her supposedly very funny joke, too.
She also said, "Before anybody jumps to any conclusions, I will state clearly: Women are not inherently more peaceful than men. 
Image result for hillary women cartoonThat is a stereotype. That belongs in the alternative reality."
But here’s what I think is funny.
Clinton’s wrong.
She’s the one peddling an alternative reality.
Yeah, there’s a stereotype that women are inherently more peaceful than men — but, as a generalization (which is what stereotypes are) it’s true.
This is an evidence-based conclusion backed by a great many studies.
In 2015, according to the FBI, 7,549 men were arrested for murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Only 984 women were.
Men were four times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes and ten times more likely to be arrested for illegal possession of a weapon.
It’s not just in America. Disproportionate male aggression is a human universal, appearing all over the world and across thousands of years.
Interestingly, one of the things that is most likely to make men less violent is getting married, proving that Clinton is right when she says that women have a pacifying effect...
What’s annoying about Clinton’s cheap partisan preening isn’t simply that she’s wrong (and I suspect she knows it).
It’s that she is perpetuating an infuriating tendency of liberals today to claim science is always on their side.
There’s a decidedly undemocratic flavor to this kind of argument.
Patrick Moynihan famously said that everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts.
Liberals want to turn that on its head and claim that their opinions are facts and anyone who disagrees isn’t merely voicing a bad opinion but it somehow living in alternative reality or “denying” science. It’s the secular version of claiming that God is on your side.
Clinton is peddling stale, corporate feminism as settled science in part because she’s pandering to a friendly audience, but also because she’s too lazy to shed her own alternate reality."

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