Can women be great leaders? Has there ever been one?

[publicduende]

Okay, but if we're taking the stance that all laws are biased because they are crafted by humans then you might as well say China's divorce law is biased too because it's partial to the homeowners instead of their spouses, regardless of gender. That sort of bias doesn't matter. Women haven't changed all that much since Jefferson's time. That's the whole point of this site. The thing that has changed is that Feminism has them trying to play male roles. Most of the time they just wind up as poor caricatures. In the case of Thatcher and Merkel and women in positions of power, political or otherwise, even if they do a great job it's a damn shame that they had to step up because the males weren't acting like men. It's a little hard to examine these things because the definition of "liberal" in America is different from around the world and even our own history before the 20th Century. There's a study by John Lott analyzing the effect of grant women voting rights in America; it concluded that it lead to increased government growth both at the state and federal level irrespective of other factors. Of course other factors play a role in all human decision making. The important thing is to try to isolate variables. Single women are more likely to be liberal than married ones for example. But overall I believe women tend towards liberalism and studies like Lott's support this. I make rhetorical arguments with my own explanations as to why this is (women value security over freedom, etc.).

Let me start from the bottom. If women valued security over freedom as you say, shouldn't be voting as far as possible for any paradigm of liberalism? They would probably be conservative (republican in your country), perhaps on a social-democratic slant. Let's not forget Hitler started as a social-democratic.

May well be true, that Thatcher and Merkel stood out for the lack of a better male alternative. I would personally think even higher of them if I had the absolute certainty that no positive action or no special treatment led to their rise and success in their own political arenas. As a matter of fact the Thatcher's choice was a Tory choice to give the party a fresh face, so that much active push I can acknowledge. After that, the Iron Lady remains the Iron Lady.

OK, John Lott's study correlates the presence of a higher proportion of female vote in the states where bills favouring government spending and taxes. You could find a myriad of reasons why that happens: perhaps their innate tendency towards protection and conservation (the "Yin" of Tao philosophy) led them to believe in a more prominent state over individual wealth and privilege. Or perhaps they were asked to vote that way, who knows... Lott's stats cover the 1870 to 1940 period, after which the level of education of women has grown considerably. If the survey were based on more recent data, perhaps the spectrum of female voting preferences would reflect more variety, in line with higher levels of knowledge and critical thinking.

Perhaps the women you're talking about, who veer towards liberalism, are those women who have developed themselves as proud and fiercely independent, by nature of nurture. I have never liked Condoleezza Rice and her stance on corporatism, war etc. Yet, if you look at her humble background, her African ancestry and the way she went all the way from piano child prodigy to a PhD by the time she was 26, her solid liberal/republican stance doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

It's not single women who tend to be more liberal, it's individuals (males and females) who have learned to be independent the hard way that ultimately express that individualism at the ballot box. In isolating variables, one has to look at the ones who most correlate with the fact in hand. If you run your statistics, I would say this latter cultural aspect, more than gender, is what plays to a higher extent.

[publicduende]

A woman can have a greater career than a "male" but only if that male is not truly a man. It is not the natural order of things.

I am curious to understand where you're finding ground for such statements. So a man who's a respected yet humble teacher will be automatically emasculated by having a high-flying career woman as a wife? There are many order of things, my young friend. In the order of absolute male pride, still common in quite a few traditional societies, the man must feel empowered, head and shoulder over the woman in the professional camp as well as many others. In the order of financial and material success, where culture is not considered as important as how big your house, how fat your bank account is, damned be the man (or woman) who pursues a career driven by intellectual or artistic self-development.

Finally, let's not forget the order of a loving couple, where the individual and what one feels for the other counts more than anything else. In this context, there can't be a better man than one who loves his family and his family more than he loves himself and his pride. And if that means staying at home with the children while lawyer wifey is providing for most of the family financial needs. So long the couple is in harmony about such choices, why should we judge them based on a scale that's different from theirs?

In full disclosure, the ground I have for such statements is my own personal experience. My father was a hard working lawyer who always ate dinner with my sister and I and took great care in raising us. My mother worked at home as a high ranking executive for a telephone company. She would go out shopping during the day, then work until late at night on conference calls and avoiding family while still being physically right there. My father told me not to marry someone like her. There are always exceptions. For example, let's say there's a Black or Hispanic child in a foster home. Would it be better if they were adopted by a white couple or a couple of their own ethnicity? The answer is the family that will be able to take care of them best, even if it is a white family. That doesn't mean race isn't important because these kids are already vulnerable to identity issues from losing biological parents. The real best answer is a family of their own race/ethnicity who will be able to take care of them well. I know about identity issues as well being mixed race.

Sure, I agree with what you're saying. How does this relate to the main topic, though? Perhaps you're hinting at the fact that your mother could have been a better mother if she had given up her unusual job situation in favour of a standard 9-5 job? Hm, I don't know her so I can't judge. Perhaps she loved what she was doing, she believed in her contribution to the household's stability (as you say, she was an executive, not a call centre analyst). Was she a loving, if not slightly absent, mother? It's hard to judge. Do you feel you would have been a better child with a considerably lower total household income and more of your mother next to you during your formative years?

I had myself a few conflicts over whether my parents took good care of me and my brother instead of focussing on their careers. In the end, I have learned that there are many ways a mother and a father can love their children. It's not fair for us to judge on our parents before we have had a chance to learn, first-hand, how hard it is to be a parent.

While I appreciate your dad's advice, I would complement it by saying you should marry the woman you love. That takes time...and lots of trials and errors...

[publicduende]

In a relationship, a man must aspire to have a greater career and/or achieve more in his life than his woman, for if his woman achieves more, it offsets the "balance" of the relationship and the woman loses respect for him.

If the man loses his woman's respect over something like that, it means the relationship was ill-balanced to start with, and perhaps ought never to have happened.

Not necessarily. All women, no matter the background, creed or ethnicity are inherently attracted to powerful, dominant men. This is the fallacy that many men, especially western men have, when dealing with females. They don't understand how to counteract the female psyche/female behavior because they've been conditioned to believe that a women ought to be "treated like a princess" and "she'll care for me if I don't have a dime".

We criticize women for having "entitlement complexes" but we never examine how the men of the world before us dealt with their women. They dealt with them harshly and treated them like children, and men of this era need to emulate their tactics.

Not necessarily (the sequel). If the dominant woman meets a man with other priorities in life than maximising his bank account size, the same kind or complementarity that leads to harmony occurs, albeit on reversed roles. This doesn't mean the woman is a man in disguise and the man is a beta, or a weakling. In a mature relationship, these are aspect that ought to be worked out far before the couple marries. Which is what I was trying to say.

[abcdavid01]

Do you feel you would have been a better child with a considerably lower total household income and more of your mother next to you during your formative years?

In a word, yes. Both of my parents were high earners already.

I had myself a few conflicts over whether my parents took good care of me and my brother instead of focussing on their careers. In the end, I have learned that there are many ways a mother and a father can love their children. It's not fair for us to judge on our parents before we have had a chance to learn, first-hand, how hard it is to be a parent.

Even if it is true, I think judgement is necessary in preparation of becoming a parent. My father made sure to pay attention to my sister and I because his own father was aloof. He judged his parents and developed his parenting style accordingly.

While I appreciate your dad's advice, I would complement it by saying you should marry the woman you love. That takes time...and lots of trials and errors...

I do not think love is the most important thing and neither have most societies throughout history. As a mixed race person, I think it would be selfish if I were to have kids with a black woman even if I loved her because I would be condemning my children to identity issues that are very hard to resolve.

[publicduende]

While I appreciate your dad's advice, I would complement it by saying you should marry the woman you love. That takes time...and lots of trials and errors...

I do not think love is the most important thing and neither have most societies throughout history. As a mixed race person, I think it would be selfish if I were to have kids with a black woman even if I loved her because I would be condemning my children to identity issues that are very hard to resolve.

Judging from this last sentence of yours, I am 101% sure you have never fallen in love. Nevermind, you're still very young. Yet, I would advise to never, ever put your rational mind or these kinds of half-baked eugenics considerations in front of what you really feel for a woman, be her black, yellow or a Green from Alpha Centauri.

[abcdavid01]

Okay, but if we're taking the stance that all laws are biased because they are crafted by humans then you might as well say China's divorce law is biased too because it's partial to the homeowners instead of their spouses, regardless of gender. That sort of bias doesn't matter. Women haven't changed all that much since Jefferson's time. That's the whole point of this site. The thing that has changed is that Feminism has them trying to play male roles. Most of the time they just wind up as poor caricatures. In the case of Thatcher and Merkel and women in positions of power, political or otherwise, even if they do a great job it's a damn shame that they had to step up because the males weren't acting like men. It's a little hard to examine these things because the definition of "liberal" in America is different from around the world and even our own history before the 20th Century. There's a study by John Lott analyzing the effect of grant women voting rights in America; it concluded that it lead to increased government growth both at the state and federal level irrespective of other factors. Of course other factors play a role in all human decision making. The important thing is to try to isolate variables. Single women are more likely to be liberal than married ones for example. But overall I believe women tend towards liberalism and studies like Lott's support this. I make rhetorical arguments with my own explanations as to why this is (women value security over freedom, etc.).

Let me start from the bottom. If women valued security over freedom as you say, shouldn't be voting as far as possible for any paradigm of liberalism? They would probably be conservative (republican in your country), perhaps on a social-democratic slant. Let's not forget Hitler started as a social-democratic.

May well be true, that Thatcher and Merkel stood out for the lack of a better male alternative. I would personally think even higher of them if I had the absolute certainty that no positive action or no special treatment led to their rise and success in their own political arenas. As a matter of fact the Thatcher's choice was a Tory choice to give the party a fresh face, so that much active push I can acknowledge. After that, the Iron Lady remains the Iron Lady.

OK, John Lott's study correlates the presence of a higher proportion of female vote in the states where bills favouring government spending and taxes. You could find a myriad of reasons why that happens: perhaps their innate tendency towards protection and conservation (the "Yin" of Tao philosophy) led them to believe in a more prominent state over individual wealth and privilege. Or perhaps they were asked to vote that way, who knows... Lott's stats cover the 1870 to 1940 period, after which the level of education of women has grown considerably. If the survey were based on more recent data, perhaps the spectrum of female voting preferences would reflect more variety, in line with higher levels of knowledge and critical thinking.

Perhaps the women you're talking about, who veer towards liberalism, are those women who have developed themselves as proud and fiercely independent, by nature of nurture. I have never liked Condoleezza Rice and her stance on corporatism, war etc. Yet, if you look at her humble background, her African ancestry and the way she went all the way from piano child prodigy to a PhD by the time she was 26, her solid liberal/republican stance doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

It's not single women who tend to be more liberal, it's individuals (males and females) who have learned to be independent the hard way that ultimately express that individualism at the ballot box. In isolating variables, one has to look at the ones who most correlate with the fact in hand. If you run your statistics, I would say this latter cultural aspect, more than gender, is what plays to a higher extent.

I don't know if it's a cultural issue? Conservatives in America are generally regarded as "patriots" who love capitalism and free markets and believe in things like secession. They like to think of themselves as "freedom fighters" like our Founding Fathers. They revere the Constitution as it was originally written. Liberals believe in the welfare state, which is security. They want to Amend the Constitution with Progressive legislation. That is what I mean and I would postulate most Americans mean by liberal and conservative, though as I said this is not the case internationally and throughout even our own history. Educated people do tend to favor liberalism. I believe that is because they overvalue the ability of intelligence towards running society and producing the best results. This is a fallacy called "Scientism" where the scientific method is misapplied. The economy for example is much closer to sciences like evolutionary theory and natural selection or chaos theory than physics or even rigid mathematics. Irrational actors who make up society cannot be controlled by rational means. It is for people like me to make the case for enlightened conservatism. A lot of conservatives, by nature of their beliefs being tradition-based, are not used to their beliefs being questioned. That is not to say that rationalism has no place, but traditionalism is what brought about productive societies in the first place. Rationalism is good for fixing errors and holding tradition to intellectual scrutiny, but it should not be used to throw out all traditions in a misguided attempt at creating utopianism. So I do what other conservatives have failed to do for centuries due to lack of need. I make an intellectual case for conservatism outside of "it has always been done this way."

[abcdavid01]

While I appreciate your dad's advice, I would complement it by saying you should marry the woman you love. That takes time...and lots of trials and errors...

I do not think love is the most important thing and neither have most societies throughout history. As a mixed race person, I think it would be selfish if I were to have kids with a black woman even if I loved her because I would be condemning my children to identity issues that are very hard to resolve.

Judging from this last sentence of yours, I am 101% sure you have never fallen in love. Nevermind, you're still very young. Yet, I would advise to never, ever put your rational mind or these kinds of half-baked eugenics considerations in front of what you really feel for a woman, be her black, yellow or a Green from Alpha Centauri.

Incorrect. I am almost 21 and I fell in love when I was 14. I was suffering severe social problems at the time. In one of my classes was a girl who also had social issues. She was a mute who failed an assignment because she refused to speak in front of the class. I had an empathy for her, but I never felt romantically for her until the last month of school. It changed when I went to the school dance. I locked eyes with her for a few seconds. The next morning, I woke up and I was in love. I knew because I literally could not think of anything else except for her for weeks. Even when I did begin to have other thoughts, which took days in itself, I felt guilty for not thinking of her. I would have failed school if it weren't the last month. I felt it in my abdomen too. Like my whole body had changed, so I know love has a chemical/biological basis. This was no mere crush; I had had crushes before and have had them since. This was the only time I was in love. Of course I was not really in love with her - we both had social issues and did not even speak to each other. Yet it was love, even if only love of an ideal manifested in her form. I always am bothered now whenever I hear people in movies say "I think I'm in love." If there is any uncertainty, it is not love, because as soon as I fell in love for the first time I knew. There was no way I couldn't. I felt it that profoundly; it was a physical condition.

[publicduende]

While I appreciate your dad's advice, I would complement it by saying you should marry the woman you love. That takes time...and lots of trials and errors...

I do not think love is the most important thing and neither have most societies throughout history. As a mixed race person, I think it would be selfish if I were to have kids with a black woman even if I loved her because I would be condemning my children to identity issues that are very hard to resolve.

Judging from this last sentence of yours, I am 101% sure you have never fallen in love. Nevermind, you're still very young. Yet, I would advise to never, ever put your rational mind or these kinds of half-baked eugenics considerations in front of what you really feel for a woman, be her black, yellow or a Green from Alpha Centauri.

Incorrect. I am almost 21 and I fell in love when I was 14. I was suffering severe social problems at the time. In one of my classes was a girl who also had social issues. She was a mute who failed an assignment because she refused to speak in front of the class. I had an empathy for her, but I never felt romantically for her until the last month of school. It changed when I went to the school dance. I locked eyes with her for a few seconds. The next morning, I woke up and I was in love. I knew because I literally could not think of anything else except for her for weeks. Even when I did begin to have other thoughts, which took days in itself, I felt guilty for not thinking of her. I would have failed school if it weren't the last month. I felt it in my abdomen too. Like my whole body had changed, so I know love has a chemical/biological basis. This was no mere crush; I had had crushes before and have had them since. This was the only time I was in love. Of course I was not really in love with her - we both had social issues and did not even speak to each other. Yet it was love, even if only love of an ideal manifested in her form. I always am bothered now whenever I hear people in movies say "I think I'm in love." If there is any uncertainty, it is not love, because as soon as I fell in love for the first time I knew. There was no way I couldn't. I felt it that profoundly; it was a physical condition.

A very cute story. Let's both agree that didn't count as a falling in love. I was probably incomplete. What I meant was: falling in love with a woman who reciprocates you to the fullest and both feel you're right for each other. Quite a few more constraints You're no longer 14 and, with the bulk of your social issues (hopefully) behind you, you can look forward to dating somebody and fall in love after seeing everything of her. Still...love is an irrational feeling, however rational and calculating the mind behind it is. If you really felt in love with a black woman, the thought of mixed race children that didn't fulfil the aesthetic expectations of a bunch of bullies or a society obsessed with the Barbie model, would really touch you. When the time comes, as a prospective father, you would probably be more concerned about working hard to ensure your kids have the best in life, and obviously ensure they grow up as confident young adults.

[abcdavid01]

If I were to fall in love with a woman of another race and bear children, I would make sure to find an environment that is accepting of them. America, despite promises, does not seem to be the place. I may marry without falling in love though. That is how marriage has been throughout history. With arranged marriages, love can come later. I'd just choose someone who makes sense logically and also someone I could feel myself falling in love with eventually. It's a gamble, but it is safer for social/economic reasons.

[Cornfed]

Do women make good leaders, Presidents or Prime Ministers?

Women can not be leaders because they are incapable of having original thoughts or an authentic worldview and merely do what the men in charge tell them. If a woman occupies an alleged leadership position, this indicates the position is a public relations gimmick and the real power lies elsewhere.

[publicduende]

Okay, but if we're taking the stance that all laws are biased because they are crafted by humans then you might as well say China's divorce law is biased too because it's partial to the homeowners instead of their spouses, regardless of gender. That sort of bias doesn't matter. Women haven't changed all that much since Jefferson's time. That's the whole point of this site. The thing that has changed is that Feminism has them trying to play male roles. Most of the time they just wind up as poor caricatures. In the case of Thatcher and Merkel and women in positions of power, political or otherwise, even if they do a great job it's a damn shame that they had to step up because the males weren't acting like men. It's a little hard to examine these things because the definition of "liberal" in America is different from around the world and even our own history before the 20th Century. There's a study by John Lott analyzing the effect of grant women voting rights in America; it concluded that it lead to increased government growth both at the state and federal level irrespective of other factors. Of course other factors play a role in all human decision making. The important thing is to try to isolate variables. Single women are more likely to be liberal than married ones for example. But overall I believe women tend towards liberalism and studies like Lott's support this. I make rhetorical arguments with my own explanations as to why this is (women value security over freedom, etc.).

Let me start from the bottom. If women valued security over freedom as you say, shouldn't be voting as far as possible for any paradigm of liberalism? They would probably be conservative (republican in your country), perhaps on a social-democratic slant. Let's not forget Hitler started as a social-democratic.

May well be true, that Thatcher and Merkel stood out for the lack of a better male alternative. I would personally think even higher of them if I had the absolute certainty that no positive action or no special treatment led to their rise and success in their own political arenas. As a matter of fact the Thatcher's choice was a Tory choice to give the party a fresh face, so that much active push I can acknowledge. After that, the Iron Lady remains the Iron Lady.

OK, John Lott's study correlates the presence of a higher proportion of female vote in the states where bills favouring government spending and taxes. You could find a myriad of reasons why that happens: perhaps their innate tendency towards protection and conservation (the "Yin" of Tao philosophy) led them to believe in a more prominent state over individual wealth and privilege. Or perhaps they were asked to vote that way, who knows... Lott's stats cover the 1870 to 1940 period, after which the level of education of women has grown considerably. If the survey were based on more recent data, perhaps the spectrum of female voting preferences would reflect more variety, in line with higher levels of knowledge and critical thinking.

Perhaps the women you're talking about, who veer towards liberalism, are those women who have developed themselves as proud and fiercely independent, by nature of nurture. I have never liked Condoleezza Rice and her stance on corporatism, war etc. Yet, if you look at her humble background, her African ancestry and the way she went all the way from piano child prodigy to a PhD by the time she was 26, her solid liberal/republican stance doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

It's not single women who tend to be more liberal, it's individuals (males and females) who have learned to be independent the hard way that ultimately express that individualism at the ballot box. In isolating variables, one has to look at the ones who most correlate with the fact in hand. If you run your statistics, I would say this latter cultural aspect, more than gender, is what plays to a higher extent.

I don't know if it's a cultural issue? Conservatives in America are generally regarded as "patriots" who love capitalism and free markets and believe in things like secession. They like to think of themselves as "freedom fighters" like our Founding Fathers. They revere the Constitution as it was originally written. Liberals believe in the welfare state, which is security. They want to Amend the Constitution with Progressive legislation. That is what I mean and I would postulate most Americans mean by liberal and conservative, though as I said this is not the case internationally and throughout even our own history. Educated people do tend to favor liberalism. I believe that is because they overvalue the ability of intelligence towards running society and producing the best results. This is a fallacy called "Scientism" where the scientific method is misapplied. The economy for example is much closer to sciences like evolutionary theory and natural selection or chaos theory than physics or even rigid mathematics. Irrational actors who make up society cannot be controlled by rational means. It is for people like me to make the case for enlightened conservatism. A lot of conservatives, by nature of their beliefs being tradition-based, are not used to their beliefs being questioned. That is not to say that rationalism has no place, but traditionalism is what brought about productive societies in the first place. Rationalism is good for fixing errors and holding tradition to intellectual scrutiny, but it should not be used to throw out all traditions in a misguided attempt at creating utopianism. So I do what other conservatives have failed to do for centuries due to lack of need. I make an intellectual case for conservatism outside of "it has always been done this way."

Oh, you're right. That's interesting. From the Wikipedia entry of Liberalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism) I quote: According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "In the United States liberalism is associated with the welfare-state policies of the New Deal program of the Democratic administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whereas in Europe it is more commonly associated with a commitment to limited government and laissez-faire economic policies."

We Europeans have always associated the (a-la-European) liberalism bred into US society as an ethical and moral heritage of the Calvinist ideas your founding fathers and first settlers (Puritans, Huguenots etc.) imported from Britain, the Netherlands, etc. Fast forward to the modern times, to us Ron Paul is a liberal and what Roosevelt (and Hitler) enacted were social democratic, if populist, policies.

OK, now I understand better. So let's say Condoleezza Rice is a conservative Republican, religious overtones and all.

No David. Economy is an eminently social science, that relies on analysis of human actitivies on the market and (extremely!) simple laws based on supply and demand of goods and their proxies (eg. money). It's only in the 80s that bankers decided to replace the edifice of economic policy with the monstrosity of finance and financial engineering. Using high-pitch academics, computers and mathematical models as proofs, they have had the pretense to redefine finance, and then even economy itself, as a quantitative science, revolving around chaotic yet ultimately predictable patterns, which could be tamed to maximise benefit (= profits for the few). The results of such hubris and intellectual dishonesty are before everybody's eyes. I secretly wish it won't take a full blown global economic collapse for the path of excess to lead to the tower of wisdom again. I don't have much hope though.

Look, I could even agree with you with the importance of "tradition" and "restoration" in the collective discourse on policy, social progress, moral etc. Then the biggest contradiction is exactly what you said in the same paragraph. A lot of conservatives, by nature of their beliefs being tradition-based, are not used to their beliefs being questioned. This is the risk of being a grassroot conservative: you would lose the objective ground on which much of your beliefs lie. Not only you would end up believing in dogmas rather than facts, you would also lose the critical tools needed to tell the difference. A simple example: I'm all for solid education to moral and ethical values in schoolchidren. There are universal moral and ethical values that are held dearest by virtually any religion and spiritual philosophy known to man. In order to teach an objectively good thing, do we really need to piggyback the entire superstructure of Christian religion, which is mostly based on faith dogmas and not facts? Why didn't Republican detect a shade of hypocrisy when Bush publicly announced to the world is "war or Evil", associated to Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism? Wouldn't just saying that classify his thought as Christian fundamentalist? Where were the objective facts to justify a war to Afghanistan and then Iraq?

Such are the dangers of being a conservative. Better be open to change, open to progress, open to a continuous reassessment of one's own belief system in the light of new evidence, new ideas. This is not scientism, this is the scientific method. There's been way too much pain in the world because of the confusion between what's good for mankind and what "was said" to be good for mankind.

[publicduende]

So a man who's a respected yet humble teacher will be automatically emasculated by having a high-flying career woman as a wife?

Yes, which is why the ZOG's policy of giving bogus careers to women while impoverishing talented men is so effective at destroying relationships and society.

You just can't change the broken record, can you? Nobody gives a bogus high-flying career to a person (man or woman) without a shroud or merit, and real skills. Can't you just give up on the paranoia that women only have it easy and do nothing, while men are the hard-working, talented heroes? If anything, evidence points to the contrary: it's women who, generally, have to fight against more odds than men to reach a comparable level of success, regardless of profession.

[Cornfed]

You just can't change the broken record, can you? Nobody gives a bogus high-flying career to a person (man or woman) without a shroud or merit, and real skills.

Of course they do. If you look at what people actually do for a living, most jobs are now of no real value to society, and most of these valueless jobs are given to women.

[abcdavid01]

Okay, but if we're taking the stance that all laws are biased because they are crafted by humans then you might as well say China's divorce law is biased too because it's partial to the homeowners instead of their spouses, regardless of gender. That sort of bias doesn't matter. Women haven't changed all that much since Jefferson's time. That's the whole point of this site. The thing that has changed is that Feminism has them trying to play male roles. Most of the time they just wind up as poor caricatures. In the case of Thatcher and Merkel and women in positions of power, political or otherwise, even if they do a great job it's a damn shame that they had to step up because the males weren't acting like men. It's a little hard to examine these things because the definition of "liberal" in America is different from around the world and even our own history before the 20th Century. There's a study by John Lott analyzing the effect of grant women voting rights in America; it concluded that it lead to increased government growth both at the state and federal level irrespective of other factors. Of course other factors play a role in all human decision making. The important thing is to try to isolate variables. Single women are more likely to be liberal than married ones for example. But overall I believe women tend towards liberalism and studies like Lott's support this. I make rhetorical arguments with my own explanations as to why this is (women value security over freedom, etc.).

Let me start from the bottom. If women valued security over freedom as you say, shouldn't be voting as far as possible for any paradigm of liberalism? They would probably be conservative (republican in your country), perhaps on a social-democratic slant. Let's not forget Hitler started as a social-democratic.

May well be true, that Thatcher and Merkel stood out for the lack of a better male alternative. I would personally think even higher of them if I had the absolute certainty that no positive action or no special treatment led to their rise and success in their own political arenas. As a matter of fact the Thatcher's choice was a Tory choice to give the party a fresh face, so that much active push I can acknowledge. After that, the Iron Lady remains the Iron Lady.

OK, John Lott's study correlates the presence of a higher proportion of female vote in the states where bills favouring government spending and taxes. You could find a myriad of reasons why that happens: perhaps their innate tendency towards protection and conservation (the "Yin" of Tao philosophy) led them to believe in a more prominent state over individual wealth and privilege. Or perhaps they were asked to vote that way, who knows... Lott's stats cover the 1870 to 1940 period, after which the level of education of women has grown considerably. If the survey were based on more recent data, perhaps the spectrum of female voting preferences would reflect more variety, in line with higher levels of knowledge and critical thinking.

Perhaps the women you're talking about, who veer towards liberalism, are those women who have developed themselves as proud and fiercely independent, by nature of nurture. I have never liked Condoleezza Rice and her stance on corporatism, war etc. Yet, if you look at her humble background, her African ancestry and the way she went all the way from piano child prodigy to a PhD by the time she was 26, her solid liberal/republican stance doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

It's not single women who tend to be more liberal, it's individuals (males and females) who have learned to be independent the hard way that ultimately express that individualism at the ballot box. In isolating variables, one has to look at the ones who most correlate with the fact in hand. If you run your statistics, I would say this latter cultural aspect, more than gender, is what plays to a higher extent.

I don't know if it's a cultural issue? Conservatives in America are generally regarded as "patriots" who love capitalism and free markets and believe in things like secession. They like to think of themselves as "freedom fighters" like our Founding Fathers. They revere the Constitution as it was originally written. Liberals believe in the welfare state, which is security. They want to Amend the Constitution with Progressive legislation. That is what I mean and I would postulate most Americans mean by liberal and conservative, though as I said this is not the case internationally and throughout even our own history. Educated people do tend to favor liberalism. I believe that is because they overvalue the ability of intelligence towards running society and producing the best results. This is a fallacy called "Scientism" where the scientific method is misapplied. The economy for example is much closer to sciences like evolutionary theory and natural selection or chaos theory than physics or even rigid mathematics. Irrational actors who make up society cannot be controlled by rational means. It is for people like me to make the case for enlightened conservatism. A lot of conservatives, by nature of their beliefs being tradition-based, are not used to their beliefs being questioned. That is not to say that rationalism has no place, but traditionalism is what brought about productive societies in the first place. Rationalism is good for fixing errors and holding tradition to intellectual scrutiny, but it should not be used to throw out all traditions in a misguided attempt at creating utopianism. So I do what other conservatives have failed to do for centuries due to lack of need. I make an intellectual case for conservatism outside of "it has always been done this way."

Oh, you're right. That's interesting. From the Wikipedia entry of Liberalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism) I quote: According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "In the United States liberalism is associated with the welfare-state policies of the New Deal program of the Democratic administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whereas in Europe it is more commonly associated with a commitment to limited government and laissez-faire economic policies."

We Europeans have always associated the (a-la-European) liberalism bred into US society as an ethical and moral heritage of the Calvinist ideas your founding fathers and first settlers (Puritans, Huguenots etc.) imported from Britain, the Netherlands, etc. Fast forward to the modern times, to us Ron Paul is a liberal and what Roosevelt (and Hitler) enacted were social democratic, if populist, policies.

OK, now I understand better. So let's say Condoleezza Rice is a conservative Republican, religious overtones and all.

No David. Economy is an eminently social science, that relies on analysis of human actitivies on the market and (extremely!) simple laws based on supply and demand of goods and their proxies (eg. money). It's only in the 80s that bankers decided to replace the edifice of economic policy with the monstrosity of finance and financial engineering. Using high-pitch academics, computers and mathematical models as proofs, they have had the pretense to redefine finance, and then even economy itself, as a quantitative science, revolving around chaotic yet ultimately predictable patterns, which could be tamed to maximise benefit (= profits for the few). The results of such hubris and intellectual dishonesty are before everybody's eyes. I secretly wish it won't take a full blown global economic collapse for the path of excess to lead to the tower of wisdom again. I don't have much hope though.

Look, I could even agree with you with the importance of "tradition" and "restoration" in the collective discourse on policy, social progress, moral etc. Then the biggest contradiction is exactly what you said in the same paragraph. A lot of conservatives, by nature of their beliefs being tradition-based, are not used to their beliefs being questioned. This is the risk of being a grassroot conservative: you would lose the objective ground on which much of your beliefs lie. Not only you would end up believing in dogmas rather than facts, you would also lose the critical tools needed to tell the difference. A simple example: I'm all for solid education to moral and ethical values in schoolchidren. There are universal moral and ethical values that are held dearest by virtually any religion and spiritual philosophy known to man. In order to teach an objectively good thing, do we really need to piggyback the entire superstructure of Christian religion, which is mostly based on faith dogmas and not facts? Why didn't Republican detect a shade of hypocrisy when Bush publicly announced to the world is "war or Evil", associated to Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism? Wouldn't just saying that classify his thought as Christian fundamentalist? Where were the objective facts to justify a war to Afghanistan and then Iraq?

Such are the dangers of being a conservative. Better be open to change, open to progress, open to a continuous reassessment of one's own belief system in the light of new evidence, new ideas. This is not scientism, this is the scientific method. There's been way too much pain in the world because of the confusion between what's good for mankind and what "was said" to be good for mankind.

I agree with you on economics. It is a social science. Using mathematical models that way is a hubris called "econometricism" versus "praxeology" which is the study of human action. Interestingly enough, the word "Economics" isn't apt to describe the real system. Aristotle meant economics to mean management of the household. What we refer to as an economy is really an interaction of a large number of personal economies. A much better term for "economy" is "catallaxy" or "catallactics" which means the science of exchange.

I got into politics because of Ron Paul. I just refer to myself as a conservative because people here in America have a better understanding of what I mean. I don't need to go into lengthy explanations. This is why Ron Paul ran as a Republican; his ideas are closer than those on the left. I really think libertarians are just more logically consistent Republicans. Hayek wrote an essay, "Why I Am Not a Conservative" where he said conservatism is only as good as what it conserves. I suppose I am a libertarian with traditional "social conservative" beliefs. Bush was of course a hypocrite on many levels. Capitalism requires constant innovation, so I am not conservative in that sense.

I am not sure the scientific method is necessarily always good even in science though. Like I said earlier, in complex systems it is impossible to really isolate variables. Only someone with omnipotence, a "God," could do so. Complex systems means sciences like chaos theory or large environmental or biological systems. This includes economics too. The best measurements like GDP can do is a rough estimate. The problem with the scientific method is that it discounts potentially viable theories because they don't adhere to the system. Many holistic medicines have a tested effectiveness across centuries, but because they exist in Eastern Cultures and Western Culture developed the scientific method, holistic medicine isn't taken seriously. Karl Popper and his student Paul Feyerabend, both Philosophers of Science, wrote on this extensively. They advocated "epistemological anarchy" for fear of science becoming an autocratic enterprise resistant to innovation.

I recommend Hayek's book "The Fatal Conceit." It talks about the role of tradition in creating morality and religion as the means of doing so. Even if the explanation (a belief in God) is irrational, the cultures who practiced certain traditions were better able to survive than cultures who did not. This is a kind of societal natural selection that's separate from biological selection. Humans differ from animals in that we have abstract thoughts. Even so, it is very hard for us and our language is composed of metaphors for physical action. We personify abstractions because it is the only way we can comprehend them. Usually this takes the form of a deity, but it can also take the form of a "Societal Body." This is very dangerous, fascist thinking. A lot of supposedly secular constructs in our society are religions of their own. They use the same logic and spark the same human instincts as religion. This is what "The Fatal Conceit" talks about.

To answer the original question, I think women can be great leaders. I just think when it happens it is an exception and I prefer to play it safe rather than let fascism, of which feminism is a large part, infect society. Democracy is overrated. We don't let minors vote and frankly I think the U.S. voting age is too low. The minimum age for election to the presidency is 35, so that should be the minimum voting age. I don't care if I'd be personally disenfranchised. Kids aged 18 have for the most part only experienced school and do not have careers or their own lives independent of their parents. Public schools in the U.S. are particularly bad because for the most part they don't teach politics at all or if they do, they are indoctrination factories. I went through the public school system and graduated completely ignorant of politics. I had to study politics on my own, in preparation for voting, but I am sure many of my peers are just clueless. That's how Obama can capture the youth vote by hanging out with rap stars and paying their student loans with fake printed money. If there was a better system to select competent, exceptional women to be leaders based on things like fidelity to the law, I would be okay with that. But when women as a whole have instincts to vote against freedom, this is a failure of democracy that Thomas Jefferson even warned us of.

[publicduende]

You just can't change the broken record, can you? Nobody gives a bogus high-flying career to a person (man or woman) without a shroud or merit, and real skills.

Of course they do. If you look at what people actually do for a living, most jobs are now of no real value to society, and most of these valueless jobs are given to women.

OK look, I asked you what you do for a living and/or what your skills are and you didn't answer me. Fine. Can I at least ask you, as a proxy question, what job would you do to feel fully empowered and validated as a man?