Letters I will never send, #3

Conorf, dude --

Really, must you persist in linking to the Roissysphere? Every time some serious-ish blogger links to them, I am tempted to wander back into the lions' den. I grant Roissy's a talented wordsmith, and that he is sort of compelling in roughly the same way that rubbernecking at five-car pile-ups on the interstate is compelling. That does not mean, though, that acting on the instinct to rubberneck at the blood and guts and gore is good for either of us.

Please don't get me wrong. You're one of the more consistently engaging young libertarian-ish writers my age out there. You're doing yeoman's work standing up against some of the more ridiculous Republican hackery that sullies our fair city. But if anything, that makes your continued fascination with the PUA imbeciles all the more frustrating.

I mean, I suppose there are insightful things to be said about them. Maybe they are trying to articulate a new vision of post-feminist masculinity. Or that they represent some kind of powerful new voice of human bio-diversity conservatism or something like that. I actually think that the second sentence is easier to dispose of than the first; I will start listening to Roissy on economic policy once he cracks an Econ 101 textbook for long enough to figure out why protectionist trade policies are ill-advised. Yes, even protectionist trade policies that are intended to revive masculinity. N.b. that I recommend Greg Mankiw for the purpose.

As far as the first, most of the most self-confident, fulfilled, manly men I have met are not falling for this particular nonsense. See, e.g., Will Wilkinson's stuff for additional insight along these lines.

Which brings me to the final point -- everything interesting to be said in response to those clowns has already been said. They're best left alone in their dark and dank corners of the Internet.

If you still feel the irrestible urge to gape at the psychologically mangled, might I recommend (re?)reading Dostoyevsky instead?

Oh, and while we're on the subject of that post -- I suppose I should confess a strange fascination with apostates. My instincts are exactly the reverse of Helen Rittelmeyer's here. I even feel a strange kinship of soul with apostates whom I think are wrong substantively. It's precisely because loyalty is so powerful -- and so instinctual -- that I am inclined to weigh apostates' opinions far more than those of people who stay loyal to one "team" all their careers. Or -- perhaps on the contrary -- because I am such an ornery reflexively contrarian INTJ type that I so easily empathize with heretics.

Anyways, keep on keeping on --

Yours in liberty,
Isabel Archer


*Please forgive the informal tone. We've met briefly -- I think at either Reason happy hour, or maybe it was AFF -- though I wouldn't expect you to remember it. Please understand that I may not have had multiple glasses of wine at the time, and also I was trying to get James Poulos's attention to tell him that I approved of his self-consciously 1940s-esque ensemble. S If that's not enough excuse for my presumptousness, we also have three Facebook friends in common.

**While I am being all teeny-bopperish, apparently Rittelmeyer and I have five Facebook friends in common, though I'm pretty sure we have never met.