Tut tut! Tutton our Moron Liberal Troll can't keep from humiliating himself

(In advance, I apologize to my friend Don Luskin for shamelessly using his writing style. You'll see.)

"Moron liberal" seems awfully redundant. In any case, last night Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll e-mailed me a bit of an accusation that I'm unable to respond to his previous e-mail. Click here to see the full history of how I've been verbally abusing him. As I always say, liberals deserve no mercy, on here as well as other blogs.

Despite Tutton's paranoia mixed with delusions of grandeur, I simply haven't had the chance to get around to his e-mail. I've bought a couple of new computers, not to mention booking plane tickets and finalizing other itineraries for an upcoming tropical vacation with a beautiful woman. So Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll had better think otherwise if he thinks he's a priority to me.

Subject: Sifflez tandis que vous travaillez!

I thought you were going to post my e-mail (a couple of weeks ago)? But it's OK; I'm sure every one of your 10 readers has figured out that it must have answered your uninformed insults in a manner too embarassing for your ego to bear, n'est-ce pas vrai?

Can't you whistle?

Considering Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll can't spell, he'd better cease trying to speak English. The subject, roughly translated, is "Whistle while you work." Before he fancied himself a German speaker, and now he thinks he can speak French. Who'd like to bet that he used Babelfish or the like, or maybe asked a friend? After all, as they say, hic puer est stultissimus omnium.

As a matter of fact, as I'm writing this paragraph, I still haven't read the e-mail to which he refers. Let's get to that now:

Since you call yourself "Der Eidelblogger", I assumed that you were a "wannabe Kraut", hence the sarcastic German comments.

This is the problem with moron liberals like Tutton. Their first error is to assume.

If you called yourself "Le Eidelbloggeur", I would have used sarcastic French.

A lingual absurdity, since my last name is German. Besides, I'd have shot myself before calling myself that. This blog has never refrained from France-bashing when possible.

Then again, absurdity is the norm from the liberal mind, especially from the mind of Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll.

Whatever the language, if you cannot see the difference between selling apples on the street corner and working in the mines, I am afraid you are hopeless. Saying "I make no value judgement" is the same as saying "It's OK by me".

Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll still doesn't understand the point. Will he ever understand that some societies are simply too poor for adults alone to feed the population, or is he too dulled by his 20th/21st century comfort?

Does Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll have such a problem with the English language that he didn't see how my father had a very real risk of starvation? My father missed meals more than once, because selling apples (and his mother's bathtub gin) went only so far. When he was old enough to work at a store, he labored every hour he could, for every dime he could earn. Now, if he had found an opportunity to work in a dangerous factory at the mere age of 11 years, you're damn right he'd have taken it. Those were desperate times, when a relatively rich nation found many of its people reduced to what we today would call Third World living -- a day-to-day struggle for the basic need of food, let alone shelter.

The liberals always like to say that they are personally against abortion, but they don't want to force their opinion on anyone.

No, that's not even a smidgen true. There are plenty of liberals who believe in the necessity of strict family planning, because they hold to this myth of planetary overpopulation. "Freedom of choice" is only their cover story, because such freedom never applies to your wallet, your house or with whom you transact commerce.

If everyone thought like that, slavery would still be legal in the US, and children would still be pulling carts in the tunnels.

Only a moron like Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll could mix a complete non-sequitur with absurd comparisons. The difference between slavery and child labor is simply that they are different: slavery is involuntary servitude, but child labor is voluntary, like it or not.

And for his information, slavery persisted in the United States because the federal government sanctioned it, ever since the Constitution was drafted in 1787. Let him mull that over a bit.

I pointed out,

And I'd like Tutton to point out anytime that children were doing such things. The sheer logic escapes him: a cart won't fit much at all if it must fit in a tunnel smaller than a grown man. A mine owner wasn't going to hire children when he needed the strength of grown men.

Well, Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll said,

I am happy now to point you to just a small portion of the massive amounts of documentation a person can find, if he cares to look.

And, yes, as I am sure you will note, Engels is quoted below. If the Brits and Americans had not addressed the most egregious forms of labor exploitation, the Communists would have taken over, but luckily good people saw the worst injustices and remedied them.

Good lord, for all the times that Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll claims he's not a liberal, he sounds like a Marxist. Just listen to him say it: "labor exploitation."

And he points to this, written by some liberal professor by the name of David Cody. The thing is, Cody hardly qualifies as an authority to cite, because he isn't a historian! He's a professor, but actually only an associate professor of American literature at Hartwick, a tiny liberal arts school in upstate New York.

So as the claptrap on this site goes:

That the shameful practice of child labor should have played an important role in the Industrial Revolution from its outset is not to be wondered at. The displaced working classes, from the seventeenth century on, took it for granted that a family would not be able to support itself if the children were not employed.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, entire families toiled in the fields and woods, risking starvation if they couldn't produce enough. Is "Dr." Cody (who is not a trained economic historian) really as much of a moron as Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll to think that the pre-industrial, agrarian West allowed children to play happily?

When they were in elementary school, my sister and her friends wrote some ridiculous tune about "little pioneer children" singing happy songs. "Pioneer children," living with their families in mainly in pre-industrial conditions, had to labor as soon as they could walk. School was unheard-of, because young children were needed to help milk cows, pull crops, draw water, gather wood, etc.

On the other hand, what industrialization does for economies is that it stabilizes output, allowing people to produce excesses that they can save and reinvest into ever-advancing technology. The reality is that at first, children will still have to work as economic forces adjust. They have to work, just like they did before, until the economy becomes progressively wealthy: eventually only teenagers and adults will have to work, and eventually they'll need to work fewer and fewer hours to support their families. As I've pointed out, this kind of productivity increase is thanks to technology, not because government decided we shouldn't work more than 40 hours a week. Government can legislate and regulate all it wants, but it has no power to help people produce the same amount in less time. I would presume Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll has heard of the term "blood from a turnip."

In Defoe's day he thought it admirable that in the vicinity of Halifax scarcely anybody above the age of 4 was idle.

This is a logical fallacy called "appeal to authority." Just because Daniel Defoe wrote books doesn't make him a great economist. Now, we're assuming that "Dr." Cody (who is not a trained economic historian) is telling the truth here, but if that's what Defoe really believed, he sounds more Keynesian than anything.

The children of the poor were forced by economic conditions to work, as Dickens, with his family in debtor's prison, worked at age 12 in the Blacking Factory.

The stupidity of "Dr." Cody's argument is that it ignores the reality that the poor in non-industrialized societies are, imagine that, also "forced by economic conditions to work."

In 1840 perhaps only twenty percent of the children of London had any schooling, a number which had risen by 1860, when perhaps half of the children between 5 and 15 were in some sort of school, if only a day school (of the sort in which Dickens's Pip finds himself in Great Expectations) or a Sunday school; the others were working.

Again, the stupidity of "Dr." Cody (who is not a trained economic historian) is that he ignores the reality that hardly any children in pre-industrialized societies could go to any school at all. Twenty percent was unheard-of, because children were needed to work lest the families starve. Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll just can't understand that last part, that in poor economies, if the parents alone work, the entire family won't have enough to eat.

Many of the more fortunate found employment as apprentices to respectable trades (in the building trade workers put in 64 hours a week in summer and 52 in winter) or as general servants — there were over 120,000 domestic servants in London alone at mid-century, who worked 80 hour weeks for one halfpence per hour — but many more were not so lucky.

"Dr." Cody (who is not a trained economic historian) would rather have them working in the countryside, hoping to scrape together a few potatoes and a small chance of a goose at Christmastime? Instead of 64 hours per week, he thinks it's a better life that they toil 80+ in the fields, starting before dark?

While 120,000 domestic servants sounds like a lot, London did have a population of over two-and-a-half million by 1850. These were also steady jobs where, though they may not have lived in luxury, guaranteed housing and food for the servants, as opposed to the real risk of starvation in the countryside.

Most prostitutes (and there were thousands in London alone) were between 15 and 22 years of age.

This is no different than non-industrialized societies. What does "Dr." Cody (who is not a trained economic historian) expect, that prostitutes would be elderly spinsters?

Many children worked 16 hour days under atrocious conditions, as their elders did. Ineffective parliamentary acts to regulate the work of workhouse children in factories and cotton mills to 12 hours per day had been passed as early as 1802 and 1819.

Atrocious conditions? Of course, because they were factories. Conditions weren't made intentionally bad, they simply were because of the nature of the work. What does "Dr." Cody (who is not a trained economic historian) expect, gilded machinery, marble floors, and beluga with Bollinger Grand Année?

The problem with liberals is that they ascribe malicious intentions to everything about the free market. The real reason the laws were ineffective isn't because the employers were evil and forced children to work long hours, but because the families needed the children to work. "Dr." Cody is not a trained economic historian, nor is Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll (obviously!), but you shouldn't have to be one to understand the simple reality that when a child brings home 75% of a paycheck and the family needed 100%, the family will starve if they don't break the law.

...(children as young as 3 had been put to work previously).

Now think about it: at age 3, what can a child really do? With what strength? Again, it's this stupidity that Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll demonstrated before, claiming that young children were used to haul coal through tunnels too small for grown men. Hauling what, a few coals at a time? Business owners and managers aren't stupid: they know what's profitable, and a tiny tunnel would never yield enough profit to break even. Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll said I was wrong but offered a non-sequitur as his "proof": the reality still remains that when it comes to physical labor, one strong adult can do far more output over time than several small children.

This act applied only to the textile industry, where children were put to work at the age of 5, and not to a host of other industries and occupations.

Who, besides Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll, is idiotic enough to think that a 5-year-old should go to school and be more of a burden on his starving family, rather than pulling a few levers to help feed them? Pulling levers and low-torque crankwheels is about such a young kid can do, though Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll and "Dr." Cody (who is not a trained economic historian) would have you think they were pushing huge carts and hauling large bales of cloth.

Iron and coal mines (where children, again, both boys and girls, began work at age 5, and generally died before they were 25)

Someone who is 25 years old is not a child, so it's a ludicrous implication that children were being sent to death sentences. The fact is that mines have always been dangerous work, but people have voluntarily done it to feed their families. Even today with all our safety equipment, we have miners who die in accidents when young.

...gas works, shipyards, construction, match factories, nail factories, and the business of chimney sweeping, for example (which Blake would use as an emblem of the destruction of the innocent), where the exploitation of child labor was more extensive, was to be enforced in all of England by a total of four inspectors. After further radical agitation, another act in 1847 limited both adults and children to ten hours of work daily.

There we go again, "exploitation." Who was being exploited? Families needed their children to work, bottom line.

Next, Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll pointed to an excerpt of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Here's how he quoted it to me in e-mail:

The transport of coal and iron-stone, on the other hand, is very hard labour, the stuff being shoved in large tubs
, without wheels, over the uneven floor of the mine; often over moist clay, or through water, and frequently up steep inclines and through paths so low-roofed that the workers are forced to creep on hands and knees. For this more wearing labour, therefore, older children and half-grown girls are employed. One man or two boys per tub are employed, according to circumstances; and, if two boys, one pushes and the other pulls. The loosening of the ore or coal, which is done by men or strong youths of sixteen years or more, is also very weary work. The usual working-day is eleven to twelve hours, often longer; in Scotland i t reaches fourteen hours, and double time is frequent, when all the employees are at work below ground twenty-four, and even thirty -six hours at a stretch. Set times for meals are almost unknown, so that these people eat when hunger and time permit.

Like other liberals, he resorted to the trick of selective quoting. His other mistake is to cite Engels' propaganda at all.

Now, Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll claimed previously that "Little children pulling carts through tunnels that grown men cannot fit through," but Engels himself said that the youngest children were manipulating doors for those doing the actual heavy work. Moreover, Engels contradicted himself in the same breath: "For this more wearing labour, therefore, older children and half-grown girls are employed. One man or two boys per tub are employed, according to circumstances; and, if two boys, one pushes and the other pulls." So which is it?

Note that even Engels admitted, "The standard of living of the miners is in general described as fairly good and their wages high in comparison with those of the agricultural labourers surrounding them (who, however, live at starvation rates), except in certain parts of Scotland and in the Irish mines, where great misery prevails." Nice, let Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll go right on proving my points for me! The point is that people will do what they must to survive.

Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll further blathered:

The 1842 Mines Act

No female was to be employed underground

No boy under 10 years old was to be employed underground.

Parish apprentices between the ages of 10 and 18 could continue to work in the mines.

There were no clauses relating to hours of work, and inspection could only take place on the basis of checking the 'condition of the workers'. Ironically, many women were annoyed that they could no longer earn the much needed money.

Exactly -- people were voluntarily working the hard, long hours, but the law forbade them. And God help a family if they happened to have all daughters, or a few sons early on when the husband and wife could barely support themselves.

So there we go. Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll proves he's as much of an economic and historical ignoramus as ever. At least he's also stopped claiming he's not a liberal, since his defense of government intervention has left no doubt that "nationalist" was merely a mask.

And by the way, Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll can leave comments here to continue the discussion. (Note I don't address him directly, as he's that much beneath us.) His e-mail address is now going into my spam filter, as I get too much e-mail already, and I have no more time to waste on him. I have one e-mail account with over 1000 unread messages, and another with over 1500 unread messages. I'm just really busy these days and don't have the time to answer all the messages I get, although Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll should feel honored that I deigned to pick on him so ruthlessly. I haven't really ripped on liberals in a long time, so this was more for the fun of it, and presenting real economic history, and not because I think Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll is worth the time to refute.

He can deride me for not having a lot of blog readers, but as anyone with a single working synapse can deduce, my low readership is because I no longer blog that often. Furthermore, let's see him show the stats of his own blog. Oh, that's right, he doesn't have one.

Are liberals like Joseph Tutton always so weak-minded?

My friend and blogfather Don Luskin forwarded me an e-mail from some Tutton guy whose e-mails to me kept getting bounced. I couldn't have remembered for the life of me who this Tutton guy is, but he e-mailed Don a while back, and Don and I separately countered his China-bashing.

My Dear Mr. Luskin:

I hate to ask a favor, but I will -- would you please forward this to Eidelblogger. Sending to his address listed on his web site has given me a Postmaster message that it is permantly disabled. The address I sent it to was eidelblog@gmail.com.

Since he gave me the extreme insult of calling me a "liberal", for God's sake, I thought I must respond. I sent a copy to you, but Postmaster said it wasn't delivered to him. So, if you can, send it to is new address, if you have it. And, if you can't find an address for the loser, I would ask you to think about posting this reply on your site, so he might read it.

Peace (through strength), Joseph Tutton

Ah, my fault there. When I redid some colors for my blog a while back, I created an image file with "eidelblog" rather than "eidelbus" as I should have. Seriously, are liberals like Tutton really that clueless that they think I did that deliberately, so I couldn't be e-mailed? The simple truth of the matter is, and I say this almost with a blush, I didn't notice my mistake until now. Even when my friend jk said his e-mail to me bounced, I thought he had mistyped the address. I use an image file, not text, and it's not "mailto:" hyperlinked, to prevent spam.

And if all else fails, which jk figured, leave a comment so I can initiate an e-mail conversation. I require registration for comments, however. which helps cut down on spamIt's mainly because of spammers, but also anonymous NYPD cowards who were inundating me with the most vulgar things you ever read.

On a side note, I never did register eidelblog@gmail.com, and I figured I had better in case someone decides to start impersonating me. Curiously enough, Google says that "eidelblog" is unavailable, and a message just now got bounced back. So the ID isn't in use, but it can't be used for a new account: it truly is disabled. That's a nice touch for which I'll give Google a lot of credit, preventing a certain ID from being registered on Gmail because it's presumably the same as an existing ID on Blogger.

Well, here's the e-mail that Ranting Liberal Tutton wanted to send me. I think he's been breathing too many coal mine fumes, don't you think?

Meiner Lieber Eidelblogger:

"I make no value judgment either way..."

I did not see your "enlightened" response to my e-mail to Don Luskin when it first came out. But let me now express my appreciation to you for articulating the ueber Kapitolistischer

Is he trying to impress me or something, throwing in German words just because I call myself "Eidelblogger"? I don't speak more than a few words of German, if you can call that speaking. My father may have been half-German, but he was raised by his French mother and aunt and thus learned a bit of their ancestral tongue.

Tutton really presumes too much. I used to call myself "The Eidelblogger" simply as an English neologism, until Jack Yoest referred to me as "Der Eidelblogger." I liked the sound of it and changed my blog's masthead as appropriate.

opinion that it is indeed, not only acceptible, but good, to have children working in coal mines and other dangerous manufacturing scenarios. Man, I could not have asked for a better response.

In fact, I never said any such thing, and I wonder if it's Tutton's rabid paranoia at being called a "liberal" that prompted him to put words into my mouth.

What I originally said was here, and I've also blogged about child labor. I was perfect correct, not to mention truthful, in saying I make no value judgments either way. What I do observe is that some societies are so poor that adults alone cannot produce sufficient economic output to feed the family, so there is no choice but to have children participate. Throughout human history, it's been everything from herding sheep to farm chores to digging. In some developing countries today, it's making clothes and semiconductors. Nobody wants to see children, because it's the ideal that they can go to school and grow up happy, but no matter how much Tutton sticks his head in the sand, we can't avoid the reality that certain poor societies just can't afford to have only adults working. When two parents can't grow enough crops by themselves, or tend enough animals by themselves, to support several children. Poorer families already tend to be larger, and consider that more children in the Third World are reaching adulthood thanks to vaccinations and sanitation.

My father, not even a teenager, could work to support his family during the Great Depression. How will Tutton explain that his beliefs applied in the 1930s would have condemned my father to literal starvation? It's just another way that modern liberalism insists on saving you from saving yourself, even if it kills you.

It wasn't government that stopped child labor. No matter what people want government to do, government cannot make people produce more than they are already capable, no more than it can decree water to be less wet. The reason, the only reason, that the United States and developed countries don't have child labor is that we don't need it, thanks to technology. Parents in the United States generally can earn enough to feed their families. Parents in Zimbabwe generally cannot, and if a child has an opportunity to work somewhere to earn money so the family can afford to eat, the logical choice is not to send the child to school.

But, you were mistaken in saying that I am a "Liberal". I was cured of that disease a long time ago. I am a Nationalist. But, Gott sei' dank', I am not a Socialist.

Is he capitalizing words, thinking he's speaking German? Regardless, one can be a nationalist (big or small N) and still a liberal. Larouchers are liberal, but they're as "nationalist" as any classic fascist. On the other end of the political spectrum, one can be a nationalist and still a socialist, just like Lenin and all his successors.

Liberals believe in government control of the economy, but maybe Tutton really isn't. I'm starting to wonder, especially with all the German words he's throwing around and now his self-professed "nationalist" ideology, if he's a modern Nazi a la Pat Buchanan.

What is your excuse for wanting children in the mines? Whose kinder, sag' mir?

Once more, I never said I wanted children in the mines. In an ideal world, not even adults would have to work in such dangerous places.

In Tennessee, as well as Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, und alles, the whites from Scotland and Germany, Czech und Poland worked along side the black Schwarzeneggers in the god-awful hells of the coal mines of Appalachia. East Tennessee fought for the Union of this Country. Not for any goddamned union organization. If you had any idea of how many people died for indiv idual freedom, you would be slower to accuse someone of being a "liberal" because they oppose slave labor in China. But thanks for expressing the slave-owner mentality so well. N'mie wieder, liebchen. Versteche'?

Talk about your non sequiturs! Two different ethnic groups worked together, half of Tennessee aligned with the North during the Civil War instead of fighting for unions, people died for what they mistakenly thought was "individual freedom" (the Civil War was not fought over freedom, but over the federal government's authority), and ergo, Tutton says, I'm like a slave owner because I recognize some societies are really poor and need children to pitch in.

Tutton has a warped notion of "individual freedom," which he tacitly defines as what meets the limits of his acceptance. True "individual freedom" is my right to transact peacefully with another willing party, harming no others, no matter what Tutton or others say. This is whether I'm running an energy company that ships coal from Tennessee to Tallahassee, or buying goods that were made in a factory in Shanghai. Don has always been right to emphasize that we can't defend the ideals of liberty by pointing out that they're more economically efficient: our defense must be on the grounds that they are the moral choice.

Liberals would say that "moral" is to have laws preventing children from working. No, that's fantasy. "Moral" is not preventing children from picking up a shovel or scythe to help feed their families.

Tutton, the wannabe Kraut, still can't read

He e-mailed me the following:

I did not see your "enlightened" response to my e-mail to Don Luskin when it first came out. But let me now express my appreciation to you for articulating the ueber Kapitolistischer opinion that it is indeed, not only acceptible, but good, to have children working in coal mines and other dangerous manufacturing scenarios.

Tutton had better stick to the German that he likes to speak, because he certainly can't understand English. What part of "I make no value judgment either way" does he not understand? Good lord. A child could read what I wrote before and then reiterated, and nowhere did I say it was "good." Nor did I say it was "bad," either, because it's not the role of real economics to make value judgments.

That being said, my challenge still stands: let Tutton defend his beliefs, when his way of "protecting the children" would have condemned my father to starvation.

Man, I could not have asked for a better response. But, you were mistaken in saying that I am a "Liberal". I was cured of that disease a long time ago. I am a Nationalist. But, Gott sei' dank', I am not a Socialist.

So he claims, but like a good liberal, he wants government intervention. Mussolini was a fascist, but having been a "socialist" once upon a time, he could still sincerely argue for the necessity of state intervention into the economy.

Is Tutton a wannabe Calvinist, also, that he unnecessarily brings God into the equation? God had nothing to do with his political choice, and the boss upstairs is probably tired of people giving him thanks for such silly things. God, devils and people may have influence, but ultimately a man makes his own choices about what to believe.

Since you say you do not understand German,

In economics, it's called "opportunity cost." Right now I'm learning a bit of Tagalog, when six months ago I did want to learn German and visit Heidelberg someday (part of my father's family came from there in the mid-19th century).

let me explain what I said. Nationalist is one thing. Socialist is another. National Socialist is NAZI.

Does anyone not chuckle how he claims the two are different, then cites the example where the two came together? Nationalists come in all wavelengths of the political spectrum, but whether "socalist" or "fascist," their common denominator is allegiance to the state.

It's no wonder Tutton likes to throw German around. With that, his self-professed nationalism, and his hatred of being called "liberal," he'd have fit right in in 1930s Munich.

Wacht auf! (Wake up.) Never again, lover. Do you understand? Ask your grandmother. Your grandfather left for a reason. Children weeding the garden is one thing. Little children pulling carts through tunnels that grown men cannot fit through, for 20 hours a day, in the mines, is a different thing -- ganz verschiedene, Phillipenischer. Ask the old ones.

And I'd like Tutton to point out anytime that children were doing such things. The sheer logic escapes him: a cart won't fit much at all if it must fit in a tunnel smaller than a grown man. A mine owner wasn't going to hire children when he needed the strength of grown men.

Notice how Tutton makes assumptions about me, which is a common liberal trait. None of my grandparents are alive, and my paternal ones were born here in the United States. They never "left" anywhere. My paternal grandmother was French and has been dead for decades (you can imagine when she was born, since my father was born in 1918 as the youngest of three). My paternal grandfather was German, but he abandoned the family, and I have no idea what happened to him.

But as I've said about father, he spent his childhood selling apples on the streets of Schenectady during the Depression. If he didn't count as an "old one," nobody does.

I would wish you peace, but you have no strength, and you clearly have no children,

I'd wish him peace, but strength of intellect and an ounce of brain before anything else. And if he has any kinder, I feel pity for them.

Like father, like daughter -- and the Tuttons are both morons

There's a single fundamental problem with liberals: they breed. A second problem that some liberals have experienced: you may dare to make personal attacks against me, but rest assured, I will finish things.

Case in point: since Tutton our liberal "But I'm not a liberal!" troll couldn't face me any longer, so he had his inbred daughter bother me with the following ridiculous correspondence. She didn't even just e-mail me; she went through all the trouble to find me on Facebook and bother me there. I rarely log in there and frankly don't have the time, between old friends finding me and all the event invites, to keep repeating myself.

So she wrote:

I read your blog debate with my father... Joseph Tutton... Are you people kidding me??

I replied:

To whom do you refer by "people"? I presume you're pointing to me and others who believe as I do.

You're still young with many things to see, and many other situations to consider. For the last two weeks, I've been in the Third World, which I didn't need to understand certain things. If children here didn't work alongside their parents, if they didn't toil in the fields or try to sell worthless trinkets to tourists, they'd have a happy life of leisure that would be cut quite short by simple starvation. That's just the way poor societies are.

Child labor isn't desirable because we all want our children to be in the ideal state of playing, laughing and school lessons, but I merely point out that reality for some economies dictates otherwise. The West doesn't need child labor like poor countries, because Western economies can afford it. What governments dictate about child labor is meaningless, because legislation must always give way to economic reality. That's what your father has trouble comprehending.

Please feel free to continue the discussion on my blog.

And as if we needed more proof that liberals are inherently stupid, she replied:

I really don't care... maybe you should have stayed in the Third World and sold trinkets and helped their society instead of coming back here complaining about how the rest of American's suck. Instead you waste your time and others by spending hours on blogs and insulting others who you really know nothing about. What do you think it looks like when you go to Third World countries where people are starving to death and you are severely overweight? If you think I am even slightly interessted in commenting on your blog you are really out of your mind. I have no desire to give you anymore ammunition for your sad little life and your stupid little blog.
Kindess Regards...

That was from a week ago or so. As I said, I don't log in there that often.

My reply yesterday:

What a marvelously unintelligent response. I can see you have no concept of international trade, and it would do no good for me to explain that "the poor" cannot prosper by trading only with other poor. They prosper by trading with "the rich."

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, when a woman accused him of being drunk: "And you, madam, are ugly. But at least I can lose more weight." My fiancée is a more beautiful, kinder and more intelligent person than you could ever dream of being.

Feel free to continue on my blog. Please don't bother me anymore here, I'm really far too busy. But I know you're just a coward and fear defending yourself in public.

Regards to you and your idiot father. Like father, like daughter, eh?

As I wrote a long time ago, "A poor person does not prosper by trading only with other poor; a poor person prospers by continually creating things of value that "the rich" can buy, and then trading with other poor." In a later post I added,

Some new technology was created with the common man in mind, like Henry Ford's Model T, yet it's usually the case that the preceding technology, which led to if not facilitated building the new, required "catering to the rich" capitalism before it. And capitalism is based on free markets: the freedom of every producer and every consumer to engage, or elect not to engage, in peaceful and voluntary transactions with other peaceful individuals of their choosing. It's not just the freedom of "the rich" to spend their greater wealth. It's the freedom of everyone else to provide goods and services to "the rich" so they can earn higher incomes, and that won't happen if the rich are taxed down to everyone else's level.

So it's far better for me, for Filipinos, and for the global economy as a whole if I stay right here and earn many times more wealth for myself (which itself is a small fraction of the countless billions of dollars of new wealth, not transferred wealth, my employer creates as a whole) than your typical Filipino. The young and universally ignorant Adria probably won't understand that when she . No doubt she doesn't appreciate how her job as a clothing "sales rep" depends on global trade, and "the poor" of Third World countries making the textiles and sewing the fabrics.

I have no need to defend myself against her ludicrous personal attacks, as she has no basis to make them in the first place. Chalk it up to her cowardice in defending her undefendable arguments ("I have no desire to give you anymore ammunition"), and her likely jealousy of my incredibly beautiful fiancée. I know I'm a lucky guy, but I may live my whole life and never realize just how much, to be with someone so beautiful inside and outside.

On the other hand, the conversations with the Tuttons give me all I need to evaluate them and their rudimentary philosophies. I should consider myself doubly lucky, since I didn't wind up with some pasty-faced, redneck moron like Ms. Tutton, a self-described "conservative" who supports the flip-flopping GOP socialist Mitt Romney. Triply lucky? After looking at her picture and listening to her babble, is it any wonder her relationship status is "single"? Think about it, guys: not only would you have to kiss that, which you'd think evolution could have weeded out by now, but you'd have to listen to inane, Hillary Clinton-shrill pillow talk all night long! That's more frightening than the dream I had the other night, in which I couldn't find my fiancée, and I was subsequently arranged to marry some black girl whose butt was like two beach balls put together.

I should consider myself further lucky that I'm going to marry someone who understands real economics, including that some societies just cannot survive unless children work. Will the Tutton ignoramuses ever understand that recognizing that poor societies need children to help economically isn't saying children should work? For the millionth time, it's only saying that the parents alone aren't enough to feed the family. Somewhat similarly, St. Paul talked all the time about God's grace through Christ Jesus, but he was also careful to explain that it didn't mean the necessity of sin. It would be better if we didn't need God's grace, but the fact is that humans inevitably sin and thus make grace necessary.

Regarding my former status as overweight, and she's going by the months-old pictures I have on my Facebook profile, my larger body mass (particularly when relative to the typical Filipino) is simply a product of my relatively greater prosperity. That's all there is to it. Why should I feel bad that I'm doing better than the poor across the world? But like a good socialist, and like her father she is one though she'll deny that till Judgment Day, she thinks people should feel bad for having more than others. I hardly feel that way to have more than "poor" people, whether they're Filipinos or Africans or Americans, and I shouldn't. I work hard for what I have and shouldn't have any negative feelings whatsoever about it. However, after seeing how poor people live, I can feel more appreciative of what I have. Actually, I should say "what God lets me have," but I've already talked enough theology for today.

It was a sobering thing to see a man on a sidewalk of Cebu City, which we explored for a bit during a three-hour layover, as he scavenged larger pieces of cardboard (which here in the U.S. we wouldn't have a second thought about throwing away when we buy a new computer or home appliance). He looked anywhere from 30 to 40, probably closer to 30 with his skin weather-beaten from being in the sun all day, every day. His little girl, maybe 3 or 4 but possibly older and malnourished, was with him, jumping around and "playing" as he used a plastic cord to strap the cardboard to the back of his bicycle. It was a pitiable sight, but you know what? Reducing myself by moving there, to make a few hundred pesos a day myself, will not do a damn bit of good for him, for me or for the world economy. Foreign aid, by definition the redistribution of wealth from one government to another (and inevitably a transfer from one nation's poor to another nation's rich), likewise won't do him a bit of good. What will help, eventually, is international trade. I stay here in New York and keep producing as much as I can, economically speaking, and hopefully someday he can produce something that someone somewhere in the world will want. Then that person may produce something someone elsewhere in the world will want, and in time the chain will lead to me. That is how the world prospers, not by imposing our labor standards on the Third World. The Third World is too grounded in the economic reality of survival at any cost, because despite what its governments may decree, it still can't afford our enlightened ideals of "children shouldn't work" and "no one should have to work more than 40 hours a week."

Oh, and tell me how I felt about my appearance when walking around Philippine malls, garnering a lot of attention from all the pretty Filipinas. My mother and aunt told me I'd stand out as a "gwapo," solidly built guy, especially with my lighter complexion and walking with an American swagger. Pretty uncomfortable, actually, considering I was always with my fiancée. Urp. One afternoon I was going to wear just jeans and a long-sleeved striped sport shirt, and she wanted me to change my shirt to a plain polo so I wouldn't look "too nice" -- for an obvious reason. But I don't mind, because there's only one girl for me now. Actually, there's always been only one; it just took me a number of years to find her.

This is what makes my heart heavy

Four weeks ago, the lesser of my two PCs blew a power supply (and possibly more) during the night. There was a lightning storm, and I wonder if that's what caused a small scorch on one outlet of that computer's surge protector. The computer no longer would turn on, and borrowing the power supply from the other computer yielded iffy results: the motherboard was getting power, but it wasn't POSTing, and the CPU fan spun only sporadically. Rather than spend money on an outdated computer, I decided it was time for a new system and bought a Dell. Wonderful machine, but Dell's been having supply problems. The first delay, I was told, was caused by supply problems with my video card. The second was because of high demand for LCD screens, for laptop screens and LCD monitors, and I had ordered a 22" widescreen.

Vista seems ok so far, but it requires incredibly hardware to look pretty. I've turned most of the effects off. My favorite Microsoft OS is still Windows 2000, which required a lot of HD space but ran smoothly. XP and Vista feel so bloated, particularly with dialogue boxes and applying new configurations. When they work for several seconds to pull up dialogue boxes that 2000 pulled up quickly, you wonder what else isn't running efficiently.

But I now have a big gripe with Vista and XP, which apparently "lost" a lot of files. I had networked the new Dell with its working predecessor and copied most of my files over, using Explorer on the new PC to browse folders on the old system, select files and folders, indicate a copy, then paste onto the new machine. However, Explorer had problems with the files in one particular folder, telling me it couldn't access them. The folder was shared, and oddly enough, the two subdirectories copied over just fine. So I told Explorer to skip the first several troubled files, checked the box to do the same for the rest of the conflicts, and figured I'd get back to things later. This Saturday, I checked out the old computer and discovered, to my horror, that in that folder on my old computer, the only files remaining were the two subdirectories and their contents! In other words, of that folder on my old computer, the only remains of the folder were what had copied over to my new PC. All the files in the main directory were gone. I have no idea what happened, except that Vista went nuts and somehow had XP on the old machine delete all files in the directory. If anyone's heard of something like this, please let me know.

A couple of recovery utilities (Pandora and Undelete Plus) recovered some of the lost files, but only some. I'd rebooted the computer a few times as part of changing network settings, and whenever I restarted Mozilla, SessionSaver would refresh the cache as part of restoring all my saved windows. So, a lot of my lost files were impossible to restore, because the disk space was already overwritten. Tonight I plugged in the hard drive from my defunct computer, but I can't find the duplicate of that folder. I had made CD backups some time ago, but now I can't find them. Yes, it's ultimately my fault alone for not having readily accessible backups, and I'm the first to preach about making backups often, but it's nonetheless upsetting. These were the high-res originals of pictures I had taken over the last couple of years, especially Central Park and the last two company holiday parties.

Anyway, it's been a busy weekend. Don't worry, Tutton, I haven't forgotten about you. Your e-mail is still sitting untouched in my inbox, and sometime tomorrow (i.e. later today, because of the late hours I keep) I'll get around to reading it. But don't be a coward, Kraut-Wannabe: feel free to continue the "discussion" in comments. You know I'll post your e-mails regardless.