The Legality And Suitability of President Obama's Immigration Executive Actions

Introduction

On November 20, 2014, the President announced a series of executive actions in order to address our broken immigration system. This series of executive actions entails a broad array of initiatives, including expanding upon the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the establishment of the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) program, the expansion of usage of provisional waivers, and a series of initiatives which aim to improve, clarify and modernize immigrant/nonimmigrant programs and promote education and awareness of the naturalization process [1]. This series of initiatives have not yet been implemented. They also do not aim to permanently establish immigration law; rather, it is a temporary solution until a comprehensive reform is passed by Congress and signed by the President; as the President stated the night he announced his actions: "And to those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill" [2].

Nonetheless, the President's actions have stirred up much disapproval (as is to be expected), with people claiming the actions as unconstitutional and, as of the time I'm writing this article, a coalition of 17 states intending to "sue" the Obama administration [3][4]. Arguments against the President claim that his unilateral action is an unprecedented seizure of power, are unconstitutional, and are even contradictory, citing past times where the President stated he would not and could not constitutionally change immigration law. Others anticipate the legal, political and demographic consequences of the President's actions with reproachfulness. Just as many reflect on how few people approve of these initiatives. Ultimately, the President's actions have sparked much controversy, and people are trying to make sense of the whole ordeal, all the while keep up with the latest political retaliations.

I will address all of these concerns and accusations within the contents of this post, as well as provide my own take on the situation. Prior to doing so, however, I must organize this into something that will actually make sense to people who aren't familiar with the issue. This post will order as such:

"We've got some shit to clear up." - President Barack Obama, Dec. 3 [Joke]

1: The background and history preluding the President's actions.
2: The case for the legality and suitability behind the President's actions.
3: The details of the initiatives set forth by the President's actions
4: The misconceptions and arguments against the President's actions.
5: The predicted/suggested actions Republicans in Congress will/should take.

This post will not be comprehensive. It will be a summation of what I personally believe to be the most important points to bring up regarding the issue in a way that sheds light on the current situation and may help people come to their own conclusions. Likewise, this is not definitively the 'answer' to the issue. This is just my take, which will naturally have its own flaws and shortcomings. I do not expect to end any debate on this issue, and I hardly expect anyone to completely change their mind; however, I have seen many people slowly become more sympathetic to the President's initiatives after healing all the details that seem to elude the common public/media limelight. I anticipate this shall be no different, and am hoping to hear from people who have benefited from this post.

I welcome discussion and critique. Please remain cordial and read the Comment Guidelines before continuing.

Background And History

As of 2013, the Obama administration reached a record number of 438,421 undocumented immigrants deported [5]. Many see this as a good thing, but many bad as well. To me, this is a reflection of flawed immigration policy. It's a desperate effort to reconcile the growing number of undocumented immigrants in the United States, the public and political unrest in response, and the lack of any comprehensive immigration reform being passed by Congress. Buchanan would call it a "State of Emergency," and I might agree, but for different reasons. The Obama administration's record deportations has resulted in major constituency disappointment, with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus criticizing the administration's actions and the majority of the Hispanic electorate expressing disapproval [6][7]. While some people might not appreciate this sentiment, it is of political importance. Any President, Obama not excluded, must gain 36-40% of the Hispanic vote in order to win. By winning that segment, the President owes a lot of responsibility for catering to his Hispanic constituents. Not doing so would lead to a devastation of the Democratic Party's success in the next presidential election. I will touch up on why and how this applies to the Republican Party as well later on.

All things considered, immigration policy is a national issue. It is a source of division among the American public and represents a pressing issue regarding how we handle our international constituencies as well as the electorate at home. Playing the wrong cards can lead to a dramatic failure for the party held responsible by the public at large. That said, reform is urgent, and attempts have not succeeded in recent years.

It didn't work.

Consider the DREAM Act, which in all of its manifestations has been lingering around since as early as 2001. The aim of the DREAM Act was to give permanent residency to minors who were of good moral standing, had graduated from U.S. high schools and had lived in the United States for at least five years prior to its enactment [8]. There also existed provisions for temporary residency and other benefits for alternative qualifications such as serving in the military. Many renditions of the bill up until 2012 had been debated, altered, batted around the Senate and the House with one version of the bill being passed in the House in 2010 [9], but ultimately nothing being done; thus in response to the DREAM Act's failure, on June 15, 2012, the President announced that his administration would stop deporting young illegal aliens who fit the criteria that would have been applied by the act [10]. Exactly two months later, U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting applications under the DACA, which shares great similarities with the DREAM Act.

Complaints about this move were made by many who opposed the Obama administration's policies on immigration, and the criticisms were similar to what we see today with the issue in question. After the President stated that he would not try to change immigration law, many supposed that that's exactly what he did. Many thus claimed illegality, hypocrisy, attempts to circumvent the law-making process; the Arizona state governor even passed his own executive order in response [11]. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano sent out a memo to immigration, borders and customs officials stating to exercise their enforcement discretion on behalf of individuals who met the criteria set out by the DACA. The same exercise of selective enforcement is being used now to justify the President's executive actions.

We will get to this in the critique section; for now, it is only important to note that this up and back is not a recent phenomenon. Dissatisfaction with the Obama administration's immigration policy and means of implementing it are engrained in his presidency, and this comes from both the left and right. The legality of the DACA is not my concern, although this academic consensus (from personal experience and research) is that it was within the confines of the law. This post is only addressing the concerns of legality over the President's recent executive actions, which is the case I will make in the next segment.

Legality Of The President's Executive Actions

Break open the books!

Before we address the legal basis for the President's actions, I should first clarify on one point that I see many conservatives bringing up. Piecemeal quoting of the President has been passed around and even used to question (interrogate) the current Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson on the legality of the executive actions [12]. Johnson expressed his own skepticism of the quotes being used, and I can see why. The most common one in question is where President Obama stated to dissenters "I just took action to change the law." Many are interpreting this as the President's explicit admittance that, despite him saying before that he can't change the law, he did it anyway. This is not what this means. "Taking an action to change the law" is not the same as "changing the law," much in the same way that "taking an action to end world hunger" is not the same as "ending world hunger." The President fully acknowledged that what he is doing is not changing the law, but is instead providing an incentive for Congress to pass their own bill. This is a temporary solution - one that Republicans in Congress would be smart to revise or replace, and again I will explain why later on. For now, it just seemed important for me to get this semantic debate out of the way and get to the substantive part of the legal arguments.

So the question stands, are the President's actions legally defensible? My answer is yes. One can use both a theoretical yet pragmatic basis for this argument, or a literal, legal one. I will begin with presidential theory.

Theoretical Justification

The history of the President's unilateral action in policy making is not recent. The President has always acted unilaterally; one only needs to look at the Louisiana Purchase, emancipation of slaves, Japanese internment, military desegregation, affirmative action or regulatory review to get the most well-known and understood examples of this [13]. The reason for this is that the unilateral powers of the presidency are not explicitly stated in the formal structure of the American government, which has led most people to associate the presidency with only the expressed powers granted to it by the Constitution. This lack of specification allows the President to act in ways that he assumes powers which are not explicitly granted to him, but are abdicated by the other branches of government in times where broad delegations of authority may be seen as preferable by lawmakers. Situations where this may happen include when their policy goals are consistent with the president's, when they are dependent on the experience/expertise of the administration, when they find it fashionable or preferable to shift responsibility and accountability to the executive, when Congress fails to come up with any specific preferences for policy action, when decent policy is impossible to design without assigning broad powers to the executive, or when certain policies require the speed, flexibility and secrecy that can only be found in unilateral presidential action in order to be successful.

The latter is exactly what we see, for example, when we look at presidential war powers. Congress, despite having made efforts in the past to provide clear outlines for presidential war powers and under what situations they require deference to Congressional authorization [14], has slowly abdicated powers greatly to the president. At the same time that House Speaker John Boehner is stating that the President should seek Congressional authorization before initiating military action against ISIS, Congress is failing to come to any agreement on authorization [15][16]. The reason is because Congress does not want such liabilities to be returned to them, and despite the claims by Republican leaders, they would rather him simply act on his own. Besides that point, the President has historically acted unilaterally in his exercise of war powers [17].

Why are war powers relevant to this discussion? This is part of a consistent tug-o'-war between the branches of government for unilateral power which is inherently a part of the checks and balances system. Unilateral presidential action can be considered a theoretically viable, legal and preferable course of action in current times. One might disagree with the current imperative, but it can be argued on this basis that the President's executive actions are justifiable in accordance with the way the institutional presidency operates. This is the theoretical argument. Now we will turn to the legal one.

Legal Justification

Here, we will return back to the concept of enforcement discretion. Enforcement discretion is the power of government officials to choose whether or how to punish an individual who has violated the law. Enforcement discretion is implemented most often for practical reasons. The most commonly used example of this is traffic violations, specifically speeding. Many people drive over the speed limit, and this goes to such an extent that police officers would find it impossible to ticket every individual who commits this particular traffic violation. Thus it behooves a police officer to only go after individuals who commit it to the most dangerous extent in the most extreme examples of reckless driving. Enforcement discretion exists in this way - where action is taken against some individuals and not others - or in such a way that enforcement of the law is only applied to some parts of it, but not others. In this case, we have millions of undocumented immigrants and a broken immigration system which cannot address the problem; thus, it may be reasonable for the DHS to exercise enforcement discretion in executive action. But is this legally justifiable? Again, the answer is (mostly) yes.

With the number of people in the United States, all immigration violations cannot be addressed or prosecuted with the limited resources available. In such situations, going by historical precedent dating back as early as 1975, the Secretary of Homeland Security may defer to enforcement discretion [18]. Said precedents were made in the context of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), but these powers were transferred to the DHS in the Homeland Security Act of 2002. As such, since these powers were transferred to the DHS - an executive agency - Congress also grants permission to the DHS to take discretionary action in the prosecution of the law, which is rooted in the President's constitutional duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" [19], which reflects a recognition that "faithful" execution of the law does not necessarily entail "act[ing] against each technical violation of the statute" that the agency is charged with enforcing [20], consistent with the conditions of enforcement discretion. In the absence of legislative direction by Congress, an agency's non-enforcement determination is "a special province of the Executive."

There are many legal conditions and precedents for the application of enforcement discretion and non-enforcement determination as it applies to immigration law, and clarifications on how deferred action differs from other enforcement discretion actions, but I won't get into that here. The DHS released a memorandum opinion on the matter to display the legal justification for the President's executive actions, which provides more detail [21]. Suffice it to say, however, that there exists clear legal justification for the Executive to implement enforcement discretion when treating immigration law. This justification covers the DHS's proposed policies to prioritize removal of certain groups of illegal aliens in the United States as well as its proposed deferred action program for parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents There was actually another proposed deferred action, which would extend eligibility to parents of DACA recipients; however, this deferred action differed from others and did not seem to pursue precedents set by Congress, thus the DHS did not find it permissible under enforcement discretion. They did retain their authority, however, to issue such eligibility on an ad hoc basis.

Executive Actions on Immigration

So now we know that the executive actions were legally justifiable. But what were they? The President's wording in his address to the American public didn't exactly clarify what the details were of the policy initiatives being set out. One thing I would like to comment on approvingly, however, is the President's use of Scripture, which conservatives criticized but were not overwhelmingly in agreement on to what extent they disliked it [22]. It was a bold move which got a lot of attention, both approving and disapproving, from the public, but it was a genius one. Ed Henry is right that it was political salesmanship; but unlike Henry, I'm not stating that as a bad thing. It reveals how meticulous Obama and his speech writers were in paying attention to the precise wording of his public statement. I give kudos to him for that.

Getting back on topic, what most people probably aren't familiar with are the specific actions set out by these initiatives. I'm going to cover those here, but if you want the same summary from a different source, please see the first link under "Sources" at the bottom.

The first initiative expands upon the population which is eligible for deportation relief under the DACA. It allows individuals born prior to June 15, 1981 to apply for DACA eligibility provided they meet all of the requirements. These requirements are that they must have had continuous residence in the United States since January 1, 2010 - an extension of the previous June 15, 2007, must not be an enforcement prior, either be the parent of a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident or be an individual who arrived in the U.S. prior to turning 16 years old, and there must not be present any factors which would make grant of deferred action inappropriate [23]. Applications are not being accepted yet and will not be for several months. This also encompasses the second initiative, which I will not detail separately to save time.

The third initiative expands the provisional waiver program of 2013 to sons and daughters of U.S. citizens or the spouses, sons or daughters of lawful permanent residents. It also plans to clarify the meaning of the "extreme hardship" standard required for a waiver, which has been somewhat ambiguous and problematic up until now. Said clarification has not been made yet, but it is suggested to consider factors such as "family ties to the United States and the country of removal, conditions in the country of removal, the age of the U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse or parent, the length of residence in the United States, relevant medical and mental health conditions, financial hardships, and educational hardships" [24].

The fourth initiative seeks to "modernize, improve and clarify immigrant and nonimmigrant programs to grow our economy and create jobs." I will also not review this initiative in full detail as it's rather long. The fifth and final initiative aims to promote the naturalization process by promoting citizenship education and public awareness for lawful permanent residents, allowing applicants to use credit cards to pay for the application fee, and assessing the potential for partial fee waivers in the next biennial fee study. In addition to these initiatives, the White House also notes that recent border crosses will be a deportation priority, and that you will not qualify if you commit fraud.

Out of context, but appropriate. He should be a lawmaker.

Misconceptions And Arguments

Now that we have reviewed what the actions entail, we should address what misconceptions people have of them and the reasons people don't like them. These include issues of legal context and precedence, demographics, etc. Again, this will not be comprehensive nor exhaustive. I will only be rebutting the misconceptions and arguments I have personally heard and feel important to address.

Amnesty

A big one that I have to address constantly is the claim that the President is granting amnesty. The term "amnesty" has been applied to just about every action the President has taken in immigration policy. It just isn't the case.

Amnesty, by definition, is the pardoning of a group or class of individuals who have committed a crime and are subject to trial but have not yet been convicted. It can be described as "giving something for nothing," where the party in question goes without punishment and receives the pardon without taking any action on their own. This is, even admitted among conservative media, not what Obama's immigration initiatives are [25]. Setting aside the fact that the applicants must apply, pass background checks and meet other qualifications, they also have to pay an application fee of $465. This is inconsistent with what amnesty implies by definition. The term is used to describe immigration policy in order to invoke rejection and fear from the American public.

Executive Order

This misconception may not be intended, but I see consistent confusion among media outlets between the terms "executive action" and "executive order." This may not seem like an important point to cover, but there is a very clear distinction between the two.

An executive action is an opinion or nonbinding statement made by the President usually as a suggestion to Congress or his agencies to take action. Anything the President says can, in one way or another, be defined as an "executive action" of sorts, because it is just some proposal for action by the Executive. As stated, these are not legally binding, although it should be noted that the word of the President carries a great amount of weight even if it isn't de facto legally binding.

An executive order is different. An executive order is a legally binding mandate ordered by the President and published in Federal Register, which holds the weight of law. It can be repealed by the courts or Congress or by another president, but it is law until such repeal. As such, we can tell clearly by the difference between "executive action" and "executive order" whether or not the President has actually changed or created immigration law.

Executive Action is Inconsistent With Public Will

Some argue that the actions taken by the President are unjustifiable in the sense that the American public rejects it, and that the exercise of enforcement discretion in this scenario is not consistent with that of the public will. Firstly, I have not seen in any legal document that enforcement discretion must consider public approval, especially in the case of immigration law. I would be happy to hear from anyone who has such documentation.

That's not how it works, America. Well, not necessarily...

But the idea that this is inconsistent with the public will is ill informed to begin with. There aren't any clear numbers on the approval of the President's executive actions. Recent polls show that 48% and 38% of the public disapprove and approve of executive actions regarding immigration respectively, but these are divided among party lines [26]. 63% of Democrats support the President's executive actions, while only 11% of Republicans and 37% of Independents support it; but these numbers rise when informed of the substance of the initiatives. At the time of this poll, Hispanic approval of the President's executive actions (while the sample size was small) was at about 43%; however, recent data shows that President Obama's approval rating among Hispanics has risen to 68% in light of these recent initiatives [27]. The ultimate numbers for approval change from poll to poll [28], and so making any claim on these grounds is difficult.

The thing is, however, that it doesn't even matter. While it's important to consider public opinion in politics, especially in America, the President's executive actions can be seen as a response to years of inaction by Congress. The people may seem to prefer that the President negotiate with Congress on immigration reform, and so his actions may actually promote that and be consistent with public approval. All in all, however, this is a pragmatic issue and cannot be held back by considerations of whether or not the majority of Americans are on board with this. The institutional presidency warrants actions which may not be consistent with public opinion, and this cannot be helped in most cases, including this one.

Anchor Babies And Immigrant Youth

I personally love these two.

As is tradition, it is suggested by some that these recent actions the President has taken will increase the number of immigrants coming into the United States. The grounds for this are that the recent actions grant citizenship to parents of United States children, and thus further promote "anchor babies." Anchor babies are babies who are born in the United States to undocumented immigrants, intentionally so that the baby will automatically gain citizenship in accordance with the Constitution, and the parents will be automatically granted a pathway to citizenship.

The problem with this is that parents or guardians are only eligible, as stated earlier, if their child is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident who has continuously resided in the country since January 1, 2010. This eliminates any possibility for parents to have their children now, since they will not be eligible; in fact, they will be prioritized by the new executive actions. The same applies for young immigrants who come to the United States now after the President's statements have been made public.

One might make the counterargument that these immigrants will be given the impression that if they act now, the date will be extended again in the future and make them eligible. I will admit, at a visceral level this sounds plausible. Intuitively it makes sense that people will see this as a slippery slope, and in fact there may be some noise near the border (mostly by groups who would benefit from it, i.e. smugglers) that this will be the case; however, intellectually it would be hard to back up with evidence. Most people, in my experiences, do not consider these types of things when changing locations, even within the U.S. Most people are unfamiliar with how the law affects them, and so I do not see this (intellectually) as a huge possibility, although my gut feeling will always tell me there is some truth to the statement.

The President Has Set Legal Precedent

This will be the last argument I address in the post, although I encourage more (in moderation) in the comments section. Opponents of the President's executive actions argue that the President has now set a legal precedent, by acting under enforcement discretion, for the government to do anything it wants in enforcing the law, undermining the rule of law [29]. This is another slippery slope argument that I like to address, because it doesn't make any sense. As established, there are clear legal precedents in the context of immigration law and the execution of the law by the Executive that justify and provide legal basis for the President's actions. These do not apply universally to all aspects of the law, and does not suggest the undermining of the rule of law any more than does the traditional example of enforcement discretion of traffic violations. We have this discretion for a reason, and exercising it does not imply that pardons or excuses will be given to all people for all reasons.

What Should Republicans Do?

This is the most crucial question to be asked regarding the President's executive actions. What should Republicans do in response to the President's initiatives? It's a tough decision to make, and here is why.

As stated earlier, winning the presidency is contingent upon gaining 36-40% of the Hispanic vote. This means that no matter what, Republicans must pander to their Hispanic constituencies if they want to win the next presidential elections. This is problematic given the current state of affairs. In 2013, 89% of Hispanic voters supported a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants meeting certain requirements [30], but specifically 55% stated that deportation relief is their primary concern [31]. Republicans are now faced with the challenge of coming up with a comprehensive immigration reform to replace the President's executive actions.

But opposing "amnesty" hasn't stopped Republicans in the past, so why would it now? This is where the tangled web is woven. Consider what I think are the three primary reasons conservatives oppose granting citizenship to unauthorized immigrants:

1: Depression of wages.
2: It's not fair.
3: Change of voter demographics.

- John Boehner, circa right now -

All of them have their fair bases, but they've all been addressed, if not by past research then by the current actions. The immigrants who will be gaining a path to citizenship by these executive actions will have work visas, and thus will be eligible and probably will be working already in the United States. This will not have any drastic effects on the supply of labor as they will already have jobs (i.e. they were already in the work force). But what about the competition this poses? Well, immigrant competition does not constitute a significant portion of job competition [32]. Is it fair? Of course it is, since these immigrants have to wait months before applying, have to meet certain qualifications, are not likely to be committing crimes and will have to pay the application fee. The change of voter demographics? Well as shown, Hispanic/Latino support for the President didn't change until he addressed the issue of immigration, and so such action among Republicans should have the same effect, yes? Not quite, since for anything that Congress passes and the President signs, we know who will get credit.

So what is the Republicans' best course of action? I think the midterm elections offer some interesting predictions for this. Although the Republicans are traditionally a defensive, obstructionist party, especially when it comes to the Obama administration, inaction now will lead to complete loss of constituency support for the next elections. The new Republicans coming into the Senate, however, are mostly coming from states which voted for President Obama in 2012 [33]. Why is this the case? Because these states have large independent electorates. Pandering to the conservative electorate, then, will not do as much good as Republicans would want for these new Senators. They have to cater to their independent constituencies now, which means they will want to steer clear from any hard-right solutions to immigration reform, or the possibility of a government shutdown [34]. Likewise, with the new support Obama has from Hispanics, the will want to create legislation which can compete with President Obama's executive actions in appeal.

Conclusion

The conclusions to be drawn here are numerous. The President's executive actions are legally and practically defensible, and they offer some good (but temporary) solutions to our broken immigration system. Nonetheless, many will oppose these actions as being illegal, unconstitutional, monarchical, etc. The good news however is that we have some good pressure for the new Republican majority Congress to write up legislation to compete with President Obama and reaffirm Congressional debate and negotiations over this issue. Perhaps we will see an end to Congressional gridlock on immigration reform as a result of this. Perhaps not.

All I can say is that this will be very, very interesting to observe in the future.

Thank you all for reading, and I'll see you all next time!



Sources:

[1] Executive Actions on Immigration - USCIS

[2] Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on Immigration - Office of the Press Secretary

[3] Obama's Executive Action 'Not Constitutional' - CBN News

[4] Texas Leads 17 States Suing Obama Administration Over Immigration Action - CBS News

[5] U.S. deportations of immigrants reach record high in 2013 - Pew Research Center

[6] Under pressure, Obama calls for immigration-enforcement review - The Washington Post

[7] Americans split on deportations as Latinos press Obama on issue - Pew Research Center

[8] S.729 - Dream Act of 2009 - 111th Congress

[9] House OKs bill aimed at illegal youth immigrants - MSNBC

[10] Obama administration to stop deporting some young illegal immigrants - CNN

[11] Arizona Responds to Deferred Action Program by Blocking Privileges for DREAMers - National Law Review

[12] Jason Chaffetz Confronts DHS Secretary Johnson On Immigration: "Did Obama Change The Law?" - Real Clear Politics

[13] Unilateral Action and Presidential Power: A Theory - Moe & Howell

[14] War Powers Resolution - Yale Law School

[15] Boehner: 'I'd Bring The Congress Back' If Obama Asks For War Authorization - Huffington Post

[16] Congress in No Rush to Return for ISIS War Authorization - Roll Call

[17] "Generalissimo of the Nation:" War Making and the Presidency in the Early Republic - Adler

[18] Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion - Department of Homeland Security; see, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Operation Instructions § 103.1(a)(1)(ii)(1975)

[19] U.S. Constitution Article II § 3

[20] Heckler v Chaney, 470 U.S. 821, 831

[21] The Department of Homeland Security's Authority to Prioritize Removal of Certain Aliens Unlawfully Present in the United States and to Defer Removal of Others - Department of Homeland Security

[22] Bill O'Reilly Has To Call Bullsh*t On Ed Henry's Obama Immigration Speech Attack - The Daily Banter

[23] Five Things to Know About How President Obama's Executive Action Impacts Undocumented Immigrants - The White House Blog

[24] Expansion of the Provisional Waiver Program - Department of Homeland Security

[25] Megyn Kelly Admits Obama's Executive Action Isn't Amnesty, Fox News And Republicans Purposefully Lie - Addicting Info

[26] NBC/WSJ Poll: Nearly Half Oppose Executive Action on Immigration - NBC

[27] On heels of immigration executive action, Obama's approval rating among Latinos rises sharply - Fox News

[28] How Much Support Does Obama Have On Immigration? - Huffington Post

[29] Boehner: 'We Will Not Stand Idly By As President Undermines The Rule Of Law' - NPR

[30] Views of Current Immigration Policy Proposals - Pew Research Center

[31] Relief from Deportation or Pathway to Citizenship? - Pew Research Center

[32] Immigration, Offshoring And American Jobs - Ottaviano et al.

[33] Riding Wave of Discontent, G.O.P. Takes Senate - New York Times

[34] Who's Dreaming Now? Obama Opponents Do A Weapons Check On Immigration - NPR

Further Reading:

- Immigration Action Key Facts - DHS

- The difference between executive actions and executive orders.

Global Warming Denial: What Does it Take? A Case Study of Climate Change Denialists

Introduction

In the mid-1970s after the consensus dismissed the bullshit idea of "global cooling," serious concerns were raised about global climate change: its impact on the earth, and how we were (and still are) contributing to it. Vast research efforts were put into this issue, and now the international community is on board to combat the effects of global warming. The official consensus is now that global climate change is real, it's happening, and we're responsible for it.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently reported that this past October was the fifth month this year to reach record temperatures; and that unless we find some drastic decline in the temperature in November and December, 2014 will mark the hottest year on record. The effects will be catastrophic if global temperature means continue to increase as they have been. Some infectious diseases and parasitic insects will likely multiply at alarming rates from increasing heat, the sea levels will rise from the melting of the ice caps, and of course it will be very, very hot. The effects of global warming are numerous, and we're all ready to jump on board to help remove our carbon footprints and mitigate the effects of this dramatic rise on global temperatures. Or are we?

This blog has covered global warming denial in the past, and the results have been quite hilarious. Some denialists dispute the consensus over global warming, which has been addressed here. To summarize, there are numerous studies which all suggest that at least 90% of scientists agree that global warming is happening and that we're responsible for it. These studies all had different methodologies, but came to concordance on the conclusion. Denialists dispute the validity of these studies, but when the results have been replicated by multiple different methods, it's hard to argue that they're all wrong. Some also dispute based on the wording of the questions asked, suggesting that they're ambiguous and that even 'climate realists' would respond "yes" to most of the questions. This is, of course, a major semantics debate; and in the face of a semantics debate, it's helpful to apply Occam's razor and take the more parsimonious conclusion. The result is simple: the consensus on global climate change is solid.

Others will outright ignore the consensus and try to argue based on their knowledge, or what they've read online, that global warming isn't happening. Many of these arguments, as well, have been addressed on this blog. I won't go through a summary of those talking points, but I would highly recommend reading the linked post. Basically, scientific evidence is also not on the side of denialists (no surprise there).

Given the evidence, it's fairly obvious that denialists of Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) don't have a leg to stand on. Why, then, do they persist? What does it take to convince a denialist?

Extreme Weather

Many scientists up until now have believed that with enough droughts, floods, heat waves and other examples of extreme weather, climate change "skeptics" (quotes because I don't like this warm, fuzzy term being used for such persistent denialists) will come to terms with reality and start addressing it appropriately. This isn't without evidence [Hamilton & Keim, 2007; Egan & Mullan, 2012], and seems reasonable enough - both studies have displayed that there is a correlation between regional weather experiences and political orientation concerning global climate change. It makes sense that if someone is getting the worst of something, they are more likely to support a theory which addresses their concerns.

As recent research shows, however, this hypothesis is not very robust and has mixed support. Moreover, it is only one piece of the puzzle. The winter of 2012 was the fourth warmest winter on record going back to 1895; and yet when asked whether or not they attribute this to climate change, only 35% of respondents said yes [McCright et al., 2014]. Granted, the study does find that individual experiences with weather anomalies has a significant effect on perceived warming; however, it still shows that even direct consequences of global warming aren't enough to convince some people. How about that? Climate change denialists are Monty Python's Black Knights.

Political Party

Although intuitive, the study by McCright et al. clarifies that there is an association between political party identification and climate change denial. This is not the first time the lead study author has established said association [McCright et al., 2011], but it raises an important question of politicization of climate change and how it affects people's perceptions of the issue.

We should all be familiar with the efforts by Bush aides to quash research and publication thereof concerning climate change. This was a major strike for party politics in science - governmental influence can be non-transparent in some scenarios, and the officials we have in government may be influencing the publication of important scientific research. Publication bias is definitely not an unheard of phenomenon, but I believe most Americans like to think that "the system" is not so corrupt. Perhaps it is. Certainly McCright thinks so: his research and examination of conservative anti-reflexivity and its impact on climate science and policy speaks for itself [McCright & Dunlap, 2010].

Don't think that conservatives are exclusive in science denialism, however. While conservatives are more likely to take a stance against global warming, liberals are more traditionally associated with anti-GMO sentiments [Lewandowsky et al., 2013], although this connection is not too strong. I can support that conclusion, however. Regardless, it stands to be said that conservativism and free-market ideology serve as good predictors for rejection of science.

Denialism can come from within the scientific community as well. Naomi Oreskes, who is well known for her study which contributed to the establishment of public knowledge of a scientific consensus on climate change [Oreskes, 2004], wrote a book, one that I would highly recommend, with Erik Conway on the political underpinnings and implications of research on several key and contentious issues in historic scientific discourse entitled Merchants of Doubt. The authors draw attention to seven issues - acid rain, smoking, secondhand smoking, the ozone hole, global warming, the Strategic Defensive Initiative, and the banning of DDT - and clarifies the scientific consensus on all of them, as well as pinpointing which small groups of scientists have been largely responsible for the unfounded charges against the consensus, which science reporters and internet bloggers had uncritically repeated.

Internet

I and my coauthor share the concerns raised by Oreskes and Conway regarding science reporting and internet blogging of scientific research, which has become very weak and uncritical in recent years; though I can't argue from experience that it has ever been too strong. Needless to say, the internet may play an even more crucial role in the public's perception of climate change that one may think.

This gets into a research topic that is of personal interest to me. I've always been interested in the ideological implications of internet filter bubbles and how web pandering to people of specific interests serves to uphold the biases and preconceptions they may have on an issue. Not everyone is familiar with filter bubbles, so let me provide two examples of how a filter bubble works: both of which are very real.

Let's use the example of hypothetical person A (HPA) and hypothetical person B (HPB). HPA (who I have modeled after myself) is very fascinated with international politics and loves to look at the historical context which led up to certain key events in American history, such as 9/11. Perhaps he has read a few books on the issue, such as The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. When he looks up "9/11" on Google, then, his first results will most likely be the Wikipedia page and a few books and articles on the situation, or maybe recent news articles regarding the issue.

HPB (who I have modeled over an old administrator of mine) is a libertarian, possibly a conspiracy nut, and despises the American government. He likes to look for all the disgusting things America has done - some of them being true, such as the atrocities at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay. He's also interested in the evidence that the planes which crashed into the Twin Towers could not have caused the destruction they did, or at least in the same manner. There had to be bombs, and someone had to plant those bombs. Thus when he searches "9/11" on Google, his first result may be from Loose Change.

Let me give the other example: very recently, I wanted to look up my internet download/upload rate and see if it's comparable, or at least adequate, to modern standards. I typed into Google "is X mbps a good download rate," expecting a solid response from someone on a torrent website I've visited before. To my incredible surprise, the very first result was a thread in Stormfront. Why? Because I've also been involved in the debates over race that Lex has gotten herself into, and so despite absolutely clearing all of my search history and browser cookies/preferences, that was the result I got. When I used a web proxy, however, and searched the same thing, the Stormfront thread did not appear.

This is how filter bubbles can affect the results of your research, where you may think you're looking into something objectively, but in reality your search engine is pandering to your interests and giving you things it thinks you will like. While there is little research in this arena as far as I'm aware of, I think this is a very real cause of concern for scientific research and public engagement in the scientific discourse. The internet may be playing a dangerous role in inhibiting discussion and polarizing political and social players - or at least, a more dangerous role than we already know to be the case. While not covered heavily, I believe this can also explain part of the reason individuals persist in climate change denial, and many other types of pseudoscience, such as water fluoridation.

I gave a lot of attention to this section, but it's important to mention and make people aware of what they're potentially subjecting themselves to when they research things online. It's not very often you can extend topics of such specification beyond their initial scope like this.

Education

This is perhaps the biggest issue regarding climate change denial. One cornerstone paper in Nature displayed that conservatives who are more scientifically or mathematically literate are even less likely than their liberal counterparts to accept global warming [Kahan et al., 2011]. This suggests that education cannot, by itself, mitigate climate change denial when political polarization is an overwhelming variable in the mixture. That being said, new research does have some interesting statements to make, both about ideology and about education.

Since it seems to be the case that science literacy can intensify polarization, as shown by the Kahan study, a better case may be to examine adolescents, perceived as a more receptive audience. Testing the level of climate literacy in teenagers, it was found that individuals with more individualistic worldviews were 16.1% less likely than communitarians to accept global warming at initial stages [Stevenson et al., 2014]. At low levels of literacy, individualists were even less likely to accept global warming - 24.1% less likely than communitarians; however, at high levels of literacy, the gap essentially closes, and the effect of climate literacy and education has a much more positive effect on individualists than communitarians. These results seem to suggest that while polarization may be an overwhelming factor in adults, early intervention and science education for adolescents and younger, equally receptive audiences can mitigate climate change denial.

Of course, it seems intuitive that educating people would help, right? Then there are those who would call it "indoctrination," but...

Gender/Race

The "while male" effect describes how men tend to judge risks lower than women, and whites judge risks lower than blacks [Finucane et al., 2010]. I'm not too well read on this particular aspect and its contributions to climate change denial, but the evidence seems to suggest there is some association. The aforementioned study by Stevenson et al. did find a significant difference in global warming acceptance between males and females, whites and non-whites; non-whites and females were more likely to accept global warming than whites and males, thus invoking the "white male" effect. There is no solid explanation for these things - Finucane et al. suggests a complex interaction between the two factors. At an initial glance, I could say that one confounding variable would be (of course) political ideology, since non-whites and females are more likely to be liberal than whites and males. The answer, however, is not clear.

Conclusion

There are a multitude of reasons behind climate change denial and why it persists against the scientific consensus. Political party and the internet, in my opinion, play the biggest roles in the issue. As far as "what does it take," I think the most prospective mitigation effort would have to be science education at an early age. I recall very limited environmental science education from my early years in public primary school, and even more limited in parochial secondary school, and so am fortunate that I was not convinced at my younger ages that ACC was a hoax. I know others, however, who were not so fortunate.

There was a book I used to read a lot when I was very little, If You Give a Pig a Pancake. I think the action-consequences relationship between pigs and pancakes, and all of the related stories I read of the same syntax, describes the associations I reviewed in this article fairly well. I would have entitled this post If You Give a Denialist an Evidence, but the flow wouldn't have been good (not just because of the horrible grammar), and it also wouldn't have fit into the "Global Warming Denial" series, nor would it have revealed what I would be covering in the post itself. All my readers who got through this post in its entirety, however, may call it whatever they please.

Thank you all for reading, and I'll see you all next time!



Sources:

Egan, P., & Mullin, M. (2012). Turning Personal Experience into Political Attitudes: The Effect of Local Weather on Americans’ Perceptions about Global Warming. The Journal of Politics, 74 (03), 796-809 DOI: 10.1017/S0022381612000448

Finucane, M., Slovic, P., Mertz, C., Flynn, J., & Satterfield, T. (2000). Gender, race, and perceived risk: The 'white male' effect. Health, Risk & Society, 2 (2), 159-172 DOI: 10.1080/713670162

Hamilton, L., & Keim, B. (2009). Regional variation in perceptions about climate change. International Journal of Climatology, 29 (15), 2348-2352 DOI: 10.1002/joc.1930

Kahan, D., Peters, E., Wittlin, M., Slovic, P., Ouellette, L., Braman, D., & Mandel, G. (2012). The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Nature Climate Change, 2 (10), 732-735 DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1547

Lewandowsky, S., Gignac, G., & Oberauer, K. (2013). The Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science. PLoS ONE, 8 (10) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0075637

McCright, A., & Dunlap, R. (2010). Anti-reflexivity: The American Conservative Movement's Success in Undermining Climate Science and Policy. Theory, Culture & Society, 27 (2-3), 100-133 DOI: 10.1177/0263276409356001

McCright, A., & Dunlap, R. (2011). The Politicization of Climate Change And Polarization in The American Public's Views of Global Warming, 2001-2010. Sociological Quarterly, 52 (2), 155-194 DOI: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.2011.01198.x

McCright, A., Dunlap, R., & Xiao, C. (2014). The impacts of temperature anomalies and political orientation on perceived winter warming. Nature Climate Change, 4 (12), 1077-1081 DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2443

Oreskes, N. (2004). Beyond The Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. Science, 306 (5702), 1686-1686 DOI: 10.1126/science.1103618

Stevenson, K., Peterson, M., Bondell, H., Moore, S., & Carrier, S. (2014). Overcoming skepticism with education: interacting influences of worldview and climate change knowledge on perceived climate change risk among adolescents. Climatic Change, 126 (3-4), 293-304 DOI: 10.1007/s10584-014-1228-7

Masculinity/Femininity And The "Return Of Kings" (ROK) Complex: An Anthropological Perspective

I know, I'm sorry, I'll get to some topics that people are asking for eventually. I have several in my queue that I want to get published some time soon, but the large majority of them are going to be covered by Nick who, as I'm sure many of you have noticed, is MIA. I promise to keep things interesting, though, until that time comes; that is, I'm going to try (at least in this post) to give the attitude he may have, had he done this himself.

This is actually on behalf of a new friend of mine who will go unnamed for personal reasons. He's unfamiliar with typical Western culture and is confused easily by the way we approach issues, topics and ideas in general. Not so recently, he dug through my search history (I know, right?) and found a website that I'm pretty sure is going to inadvertently mentally scar him. This website is none other than Return Of Kings.

I have more game than Roosh V.

Return Of Kings (ROK), in my own words, is a misogynistic website filled with misogynistic people who have fringe, uninformed ideas of the way society (and people) operate. I'm fairly certain most of the stories told on that website are made up, or at least exaggerated, but that's beside the point. Its central focus rests on the concepts of masculinity and femininity, which they use as universal terms which only have one meaning. It's run by a guy who goes by the moniker "Roosh V," who has been dubbed the internet's most infamous misogynist. When I say misogynist, I mean the traditional definition of the word (not the meaningless semantics that surround its modern use): woman-hater.

Nothing particularly new or interesting here, so let's get to the point: what did my friend see that confused him so much? Well, it was this:

"Return Of Kings is a blog for heterosexual, masculine men. It’s meant for a small but vocal collection of men in America today who believe men should be masculine and women should be feminine."

He didn't understand what it meant for men to be masculine or women to be feminine; that is, he didn't realize that men could be anything but masculine, or women to be anything but feminine. I knew instantly what he was confused about: the difference between "sex" and "gender" in our culture (and all others), and how those roles can sometimes not be coincident with one another. For those of you unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, it's easily summed up in this way: sex refers to the biological differences between males and females, while gender refers to the interpretations and expectations of them prescribed by society. What ROK means by "men should be masculine" or "women should be feminine" is that the sexes of humans should maintain their "traditional" gender roles, which have been prescribed to them by their biological predispositions (or so ROK says). This is an issue that has been addressed exhaustively by people from many disciplines, but most recognizably by feminists.

I should be honest here: I'm not a feminist. I think that the goals of feminism, as it was originally intended, have long been achieved. I believe that the prejudices and discriminatory institutions/practices which may disenfranchise underprivileged groups are contingent upon complex social structures which hardly anyone actually understands (if you even understood that sentence, you're on the right track), and thus the remaining facets of the social movement are just about politics and shouting (or "critical analysis," cue laugh track). These kinds of topics normally aren't a huge focus of mine, because I'm not interested in them; quite frankly, I agree with the rest of the world that ROK should continue to be ignored, and that their idiocy is recognized by the majority of sensible people. It should really end at that.

Paraphrase: "Men should be masculine." - Cher

Someone accused me on my last post of writing specifically to apply social constructionism and "cultural determinism" to these topics; so I've figured out a way to tie this into my anthropological/psychological interests, namely by just examining their About page. Not only do I get the satisfaction of knowing that they're idiots, but I also get the joy of being able to incorporate an otherwise uninteresting topic (for me, personally) into something unique and cool. I don't think anyone else has taken the approach I'm about to take, and so this should be pretty exciting for some of you. For the rest of you, well... try anyway.

So here's what I actually figured out: the About page is, no duh, a representation of the premises the website is founded on. Rebut their premises, and you have dismissed their conclusions and insulted their ideas of masculinity and being douchebags. I don't feel like just saying that they're dumb -- I feel like explaining why they're dumb, rationally, so that other people can recognize their idiocy as well without sharing the kind of innate reactions I have to individuals/groups with behaviour similar to that of ROK. I'm going to do a point-by-point refutation of the seven premises that ROK is founded upon, and hopefully make a few people angry. Most importantly for me, however, I'm going to explain to my friend (who will, hopefully, read this post in its entirety) why none of what ROK says makes any sense given the knowledge we have, and why he may have been confused in the first place.

With that, let's begin.

1. Men and women are genetically different, both physically and mentally. Sex roles evolved in all mammals. Humans are not exempt.

This is not wrong at its face: the sexes naturally have their own physical/mental differences due to the fact that, as the nature of being male or female demands, they differ genetically. The error is in omission, or at the very least implication. Presumably, what they mean is that the sex roles found in humans (I will warn now that this is dependent on cultural context) are a result of genetic differences, and the physical/mental differences in males and females are genetic in origin. This is not the case. We hardly understand the nature of sex differences in many areas (as my last post shows), and so don't understand the origin of those differences, whether they be environmental, genetic, or a complex combination of the two. What's even more interesting is their admission that sex roles evolve in mammals. In fact they do, but these roles are not consistent with each other, and we often find "role reversal" among many species of mammals that is counter intuitive to what most people think, as many people believe that sex roles are the result of just having a sex chromosome.

Nobody denies sexual dimorphism.

Usually, one replies to these arguments by arguing Bateman's principle, which has generally been accepted as being true. It's important to note that Bateman's original experiment was flawed methodologically, although his conclusion appears to be true for most mammals, and the traditional argument that when sex roles are reversed in a species, so are other factors like reproductive success (RS) variance is not always the case. But is it true for humans? Not entirely sure, as reliable information is limited and human populations are quite diverse; however, analysis of what data is available brings some questions to Bateman's principles as applied to humans. This study has been batted around as both supporting and opposing Bateman's conclusions, but such debates should be suspect to scrutiny due to the fact that there were only 18 populations examined in the study. At present, as stated, we're not sure what the nature is of many complexities in the human species in terms of sex/gender differences. It is vital to remember, though, that the extent that culture plays a role in our species is unprecedented in any other species of mammal, and so the consequences are very possibly not what we'd expect.

2. Men will opt out of monogamy and reproduction if there are no incentives to engage in them.

This is a peculiar claim. I'd venture to guess that the reason they included "if there are no incentives to engage in them" is that the people at ROK see monogamous marriage (i.e. to them, dedication to a woman) as a sign of weakness or inferiority in men, and so if they find themselves in this position, they can say "I had a logical reason to do this for my own benefit."

The reason it's peculiar, however, is that it's at odds with reality. While the majority of societies in the world do practice polygamy (about 83% of sampled societies), most people practice monogamy due to increasing industrialization and the fact that industrialized cultures have greater populations than pre-industrialized cultures. What I find funny about the argument, however, is that if we're speaking in terms of RS variance or just evolution, what incentive could be greater than having more children? Then I get confused, because it says they'll opt out of reproduction as well, which is antithetical to Bateman's principles and, well, evolution, which is (according to them) the cause of the differences between men and women that they so desperately want to preserve and declare. Maybe this is bad writing on the owner's part, but I think it's more likely that this is a result of stupidity.

Getting back to the argument, it could be countered that the "incentive" (or rather, the pressure) for more people to practice monogamy is industrialization; that is, to keep up with the status quo, men are practicing monogamy at "unnatural" levels. But societies change -- if we go back far enough, all of our ancestors were hunter-gatherers (H/G). These changes don't just occur as preemptive self-pressures from the future status quo, but as responses to many different pressures as a result of cultural adaptation, a unique phenomenon mostly exclusive to humans. It could be argued that this is "bad," but to what standard do we hold this to be true? Because it's assumed to be biological? This is an appeal to nature, as what's "natural" isn't always the best, and what's biological isn't necessarily the prevailing pressure on how we behave and think.

What's even more interesting about this is that our origins aren't even polygamous. Many H/G cultures did and do exhibit monogamy. This is because marriage systems only make sense in the context of culture, not as part of some evolutionary preference in our species.

3. Past traditions and rituals that evolved alongside humanity served a net benefit to the family unit.

Of course, but this is a universal statement for a multifaceted phenomenon. The structure of a family unit changes from culture to culture, from consanguineous to nuclear to polygamous to extended families dominating whatever given society, and so "traditions and rituals" (as vague as that is, but I'll go with it) "evolved" alongside human cultures in a way that these complex social systems make sense when combined together. Here, it's assumed that "traditions and rituals" holds no ambiguity and makes sense even when not given a particular time or space in which those traditions and rituals were found, but this is consistent with the assumed universality of all of the claims made on ROK as the basis for their beliefs. This one isn't too interesting, so let's move on.

4. Testosterone is the biological cause for masculinity. Environmental changes that reduce the hormone’s concentration in men will cause them to be weaker and more feminine.

Here we get into the definition of masculinity. I can't make any assumptions based just on what I see here, but what I can say for sure is that "masculinity" changes, again, from culture to culture and has no set definition. Presumably what they mean is that their definition of "masculine" is the right one, and so that is the basis for their claims. Circulating testosterone levels are higher in males than in females and do result in the enhancement of sex traits, and to this extent I might agree with this premise. The difficulty to be found here, however, is the burning question: what is masculinity?

Notice how most of these effects are non-behavioural.

Testosterone can be linked to a suite of traits, including muscle growth and efficiency, alcoholism and aggression (although the evidence for the latter is up for scrutiny); yet I wouldn't start calling a man less "masculine" for not being an alcoholic or being able to control his temper. This is because masculinity is up for interpretation, and testosterone is not the only thing which influences this trait. For example, one might consider it gay for men to be hugging and kissing in a bar, yet this is quite common in Spain and Italy after a celebration or a winning football game. It might be considered feminine for men to be shy and timid, avoiding direct eye contact in America, but this is the norm in Japan. Gender roles are culturally constructed, and so to say that hormones cause men to be "masculine" is only one perspective. It would be more accurate to say "testosterone is important in the expression of sex traits in males and females, and some attributes of those traits, such as increased muscle or more hair, are considered 'masculine' in American society." There are no universal claims to be made here, however.

5. A woman’s value significantly depends on her fertility and beauty. A man’s value significantly depends on his resources, intellect, and character.

This seems contradictory to the "men will opt out of reproduction" claim, unless of course "beauty" is the incentive to marry and reproduce... but then what is beauty? There are different standards of beauty around the world, again: probably the most well known example of this is the 'peculiar' tradition of women of the Kayan tribe in Thailand to add gold rings to their neck when they're young and keep adding to stretch out their necks. Another example might be self-scarring in the Karo tribe of Ethiopia, which is seen as a beautiful trait for women. This same habit of self-scarring is seen among the Nuer of southern Sudan, only it is also seen as a sign of maturity and masculinity among the men (the boys receive gaar on their foreheads to enter manhood, while the women have their skin plucked to create bumps on their skin).

So we see that beauty has different definitions; but whatever the case may be, is it true that fertility and beauty are what women are valued for universally? This is not so. Women in many horticultural societies with bride-wealth systems of marriage exchange are seen as valuable purely for the fact that once they are married off, they receive wealth from the groom, and this wealth is shared with their brothers so that they are able to marry. A woman's value in these cultures, then, is dependent on their ability to get their brothers married as well. A woman's wealth is her value in systems where the marriage exchange is through a dowry, as (although this is unintended) her wealth is then transferred to the husband's possession (unless the woman is smart enough to bury it, or something).

So, a woman's beauty is subjective, her fertility should be irrelevant according to ROK, and neither of these are necessary/sufficient conditions for her to be seen as valuable. What of men? Is their value dependent on their resources, intellect and character?

"Beauty" to the Nuer.

Notice how these three traits enable the man much more leniency than the woman. ROK sets strict standards for beauty and denounces many things which may be seen as beautiful to other people from other cultures or backgrounds, such as piercings or tattoos. Their fertility is not up for interpretation. A man's character, intellect and resources, however, are all up for interpretation, with the former probably having the strictest conditions of the three. What makes a man intelligent? I doubt they ask for a man's IQ upon meeting him, or expect women to do so. I also doubt that their only condition for intellect is "think like us" (though this wouldn't surprise me). What is "character," too? Confidence? Is that it? Who knows? I certainly don't, but I can say quite easily that a man's value can be dependent on other things as well.

Consider the Nuer again. A man's value in their culture is the beauty, strength and health of his cattle, which he worships as being his connection to God. Could this be considered a resource? Perhaps, but you could say then that everything is a resource: beauty is a resource if used correctly, as are power tools. Resource is a vague term, and so if this is the standard of value for men, men have a lot of leeway; and coming from ROK, it's not hard to see why this may be the case.

6. Elimination of traditional sex roles and the promotion of unlimited mating choice in women unleashes their promiscuity and other negative behaviors that block family formation.

We've already discussed how the family unit is also a cultural construct, but what of this claim that if "traditional sex roles" are eliminated, and unlimited mating choice is promoted, that women will become promiscuous? This is also not so, but this is by their own admission. As we've seen, a woman's value is dependent on her beauty and her fertility. If, then, a woman is "ugly" and infertile, she can try to be as promiscuous as she wants and violate all the traditional sex roles that they want her to have; her desires will not come to fruition, and "true men" will shun her as being low in worth and not appropriate for marriage. Also, what family formation do they see as being desirable? Presumably not one contingent on monogamy, but then what is their standard for the family unit? Polygamous marriage and subsequent creation of an "odd" family unit in America, for example, would be antithetical to personal liberties and individualization which marks industrialized societies.

Let's get past that, though. Do women become promiscuous if sex roles are destroyed and unlimited mating choices are granted to them? Apparently not, as the fertility rate (according to them) drops when these things occur, as we will see in their final premise. In addition, as one of the articles reveal, they find this perfectly acceptable and go out of their way to benefit from such behaviour.

So their arguments are contradictory, we get that, but I know that someone is going to say "contraception!" So, assuming contraception is available to all women, and they meet the qualifications again, does their promiscuity increase? Again, it is not so. If this were the case, we should expect that women who are more promiscuous would use more contraceptives to counter their behaviour, but this isn't the case. Women who use contraceptives are no more likely to engage in promiscuous behaviour than their counterparts. At every facet of this argument, it falls apart. Now, for the final point.

7. Socialism, feminism, cultural Marxism, and social justice warriorism aim to destroy the family unit, decrease the fertility rate, and impoverish the state through large welfare entitlements.

I wanted to make a post about this in the past, but since it has come up here, I'll just state the facts. First off, the concept of "cultural Marxism" is a joke. Secondly, there's no connection between socialism and fertility (otherwise the United States TFR would be skyrocketing, and Sweden's TFR would be plummeting, but they're comparable). There's also no connection between feminism and fertility (otherwise Japan's TFR would be skyrocketing, and America's TFR would be plummeting, but America's TFR is higher than Japan's). We've already gone over the family unit, and socialist nations are by far not the most impoverished states in the world. Fertility rates are dropping because of economic downfall, higher rates of education, government policy actions (i.e. China, India), etc. This is not too interesting to talk about since the data is out there and readily available. It's just wrong.

Fertility rate by country. No signs of socialist interference here.

We're finally done. For those of you who kept up with all of this, good job. Now it's time to talk about the Return Of Kings Complex. As we've observed ROK seems to set standards that are much more lenient on men than on women, and do so without any backing. They are also contradictory in their stances, and so will say that one thing (feminism) causes fertility rates to fall, but will also cause promiscuity to rise. We know this to not be the case. Another example was that they claim promiscuous behaviour is bad and destroys the family unit, and yet they indulge in it.

So what are their motivations? Why is it that they make so many contradictory claims, and are so strong about how they think men and women should behave, when they have little-to-no support for their views? Let's consider a combination of things they believe:

1: Women will be promiscuous if given certain pressures, and this is bad; however, they're okay with it.
2: Men will not engage in monogamy unless given incentive to, yet the family unit (presumably the nuclear one) needs to be preserved.
3: Feminism is causing the destruction of the family unit and the fertility rate.
4: Women are only valuable because of their fertility and beauty, nothing else.

What can be inferred from each of these beliefs?

1: Women shouldn't be promiscuous, but men should be promiscuous and thus it's okay to be promiscuous with women who are promiscuous, so long as they're beautiful.
2: Men will naturally want more than one wife, but the family unit is being destroyed by women.
3: Empowering women and bringing them up in society causes the destruction of fertility rates and the family unit.
4: Women are not valued for anything besides how useful and appealing they are to men.

The motivation? No shit, they just really don't like women (but love them) and really love men (but they're not gay) and want men to be in charge (they like it like that). The conclusion?

The folks over at ROK are bisexual misanthropes who like to take it doggy style. This is the ROK Complex.

Thank you all very much for reading.



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