Our Way of Life

Political Correctness — The Revenge of Marxism

2006-06-18T19:00:00.000-07:00

Fjordman has an excellent essay here about PC, which I strongly recommend everyone read. Here is a comment I added at the bottom, but which is stand-alone, so I thought I would just post it here as well. Pessimistic? Yes, but I guess I am just in that mood.

Political correctness has both an exoteric and esoteric level to it. For the masses, there is the exoteric teaching of tolerance, equality, anti-racism, etc. At the esoteric level however, which no doubt includes a great deal of former/current communists and leftists, there is a great deal more realization of who the "bad" guys are, with no need for the propaganda-values. It never ceases to amaze me when people act perplexed by, or shout "hypocrite!" at, instances of PC discriminating against certain (or a certain) group(s). The talk of equality et al is just sugar to make the medicine go down easier; but real PC is discriminative and designed to persecute some over others.

At this time, PC is coercive, but only at the individual level. If you violate it, say at work, you will face consequences roughly proportional to your violation. There is nothing anything an individual can do about it, besides being a martyr. Any effective resistance must come in the collective, not at the individual level.

Can we wait out PC? I don't think we can, though I realize some people are hoping that we can.

PC doesn't have to convert us, it just has to keep us inert and paralyzed until the reinforcements arrive.

Right now, in the US where the situation is perhaps among the most progressed in the Western World, among recent births about 45% are from minority mothers (i.e. other than non-Hispanic white). When factoring in births to non-Hispanic white with a minority father, the figure is probably around ~47%. Also, if I am correct Arabs and a few others who we would normally consider "minorities" are counted as non-Hispanic white. Nor do these figures factor in people currently born in third world countries that will immigrate to the US in the next 20 years. In any case, this is what I mean by reinforcements. (Source: Link, US Department of Health and Human Services, 2004 preliminary data)

Once more for emphasis: PC doesn't have to convert us, it just has to keep us inert and paralyzed until the reinforcements arrive.

This is a very very depressing situation; frankly I don't know if all of the West is going to survive. Most Americans don't want violence--and I count myself first among that group. But in 20 years, what options are we going to have that we will want to pick from? My guess is that barring rather rapid change here, by the mid 2020's we are going to see emigration from the US into Canada, Alaska, Oz, and a few other places, by large numbers of Americans. America as we know it is going to become Brazil, North, I fear.

I think that Europe still has a chance; it at least has something to hold onto, namely a sense of history and identify, not to mention much better numbers.

Bad Eagle

2006-06-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

Dr Yeagley at Bad Eagle has been writing some superb material lately. I recommend giving it a read and passing it along to anyone you know who has not yet "seen the light". In the latest post, he discusses the growing trend of African "migration", Third World idiocy, and Kipling's view of the ultimately doomed fate of the "white man's burden".

Yet, such "migrations" are the most powerful testimony there is to the failure of the Third World, where people multiply mindlessly, carelessly, foolishly, and can't seem to reason from cause to effect. The concept of self-control does not exist, apparently. Having children is mistakenly associated with living, with advancing, with prosperity, or some such idiotic notion. They suffer daily and constantly from overpopulation and its attendant horrors, yet, no one seems to be able to communicate to them that a change of live values is obviously in order.

Liberals have incessantly tried to dignify the Mexican desperados and bandidos as "immigrants" or "migrants." Trespassing is a natural, evolutionary process. Demographic change is unavoidable. So now the Left must call the African suicidals "immigrants" and "migrants" too. The heart-breaking prospect of shoving your friends and relatives in a leaky boat, setting out to sea without chart or compass, is a noble, natural acti of migration.

Leftists must be murderers at heart. To encourage such suicide, to romanticize such destitution, for the sole purpose--not to help the lost--but to gain political power, is surely complicite to mass murder. These hordes of the lost are used by the lying liberals, plain and simply. These most misfortunate are so helpless they are literally casting themselves out to sea, in the hopes of being found and cared for. They care nothing for their lives. Life has not cared for them.

The problem is, many of them care nothing for anyone else's live, either. Cruelty is malignant. That's part of what's wrong with Wrong. It's spreads.

But the Third World is not some Frankenstein creation of the Christian west, bound about the neck like a haunting guilt piece. Rudyard Kipling already explained that in "The White Man's Burden" (1899). He made it clear that the white Christian duty was to bring light to the dark side, to redeem ignorant, to sacrifice all to uplift the fallen. But he also recognized that it was hopeless. It was merely the duty of the white Christian to work for the betterment of the darkies. It wasn't something that was to be expected to turn out well.

The Perfect Storm?

2006-05-25T18:41:00.000-07:00

It is quite surprising to watch the force of the current popular immigration opposition when one considers the state of the US economy. Obviously, the average American is no where near as aware of the problem of immigration and majority-inversion as he should be. None the less, the giant is waking in the American Street, and all this with little appreciable component of the message concerning employment or loss of jobs to immigrants. It is a tribute to the strength of the economy that Bush and Co can even speak of jobs "Americans are not willing to do".

What makes this so very interesting though is just what a perfect storm is awaiting us when the economy takes its next cyclic downturn. Consider the two forces that will be at work: First, there will be the millions of unemployed Americans feeling the effect of a borderless nation as they try to compete with the locust of the Third World. Secondly however, there will be the 20 million plus illegal, as well as countless "legal" Hispanics also running out of work. How will they react? Will they go home? Try to squeeze Americans out of jobs by intimidation? Will they form mass "protests" for government intervention, welfare, make-work projects? And what will happen if the millions of "family oriented", "freedom loving", immigrants take to the streets to do more than just peacefully protest?

When average Joe American starts to look around the ideological and political landscape for answers as to what went so terribly wrong, will we be ready? Will we have a concise, easy to understand message? The neo-cons had to their advantage the meme that "lack of freedom causes terrorism"--granted, it was false, but it was viral in pandemic proportions. Can we distil our message down to something that simple, while still keeping it as "non-offensive" as possible so as to not retard transmission? What might such a meme or set of memes be?

If we fail to create a virally transmittable message, chances are that this popular uprising will fall yet again into the hands of the same old gang. And this may be the last chance we get to set things straight here in the US.

Zach is Back

2006-05-21T13:23:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the lack of resent blogging as of late. Partly a product of a hectic schedule, but also a result of the inability to set in front of a computer for long during this spring weather--the lake is just so much more enticing.

Still, it is obvious that the pace of history is quickening. Things are now spinning at quite a rate: Bush's speech, illegal alien rallies, bills in congress for and against illegal immigration. Even more, suddenly everyone seems to be aware of the Hispanic problem. Everyone is talking about it, either explicitly or cryptically: men, women, the rich, the poor and the professional class. To a degree unimaginable even a year ago, people seem to be talking about the problem with surprising freeness.

How much optimism does this deserve? I am not quite sure. Saying there is a problem with illegal immigration or even mass immigration generally is a start, but it is a far step from fully admitting the vulnerability and importance of our shared core identity as Americans as being a fundamentally Northern European, particularly British, offshoot nation. Nor is there really any attempt to address the problem of why our society seems to have lost the will to exist, or what to do with our elite that are trying to constantly derail us. Nor is there much in the way of an attempt to express a positive identity and vision for our nation beyond just reacting to the latest outrages (illegal immigration, terrorism, etc). Nor is there the realization by most that one of the reasons for the illegal alien problem is the lack of Whites being organized politically the same way as blacks or Latinos or Jews.

In other words, we are making some progress at addressing the symptoms, but we still have a long, long way to go for a cure. Let us all hope for the best.

Most Britons Support BNP Policies

2006-04-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

An interesting article, from the Guardian, which reports on a poll showing that the majority of th e British now support the basic policies of the BNP.

A majority of people back the British National Party's policies, according to a new poll.

But the YouGov survey found that many people disown the policies once they are associated with the BNP.

The poll, commissioned by Sky News, comes ahead of local elections next week when there are fears the BNP could make an electoral breakthrough.

It found that 59% of people supported a halt to all further immigration to the UK - one of the BNP's main pledges - when they were not told of the far-right group's association with the policy.

Among those who were told that it was a BNP commitment, support for the policy was only 48%.

The BNP obviously has its share of issues, of which I don't have to mention. However, to the extent that they are essentially the sole supporters of common-sense action for the preservation of one of the most important of any Western countries, they must be applauded.

An Early Ray of Dawn?

2006-04-15T17:37:00.000-07:00

This article from the Telegraph has some very encouraging news regarding a growing popularity of the BNP with white British families. Perhaps it is more of a protest vote, but as long as the BNP can produce practical, realistic people to take office, and not one-issue candidates, I'm not sure why the move would not be permanent.

White working-class families feel so neglected by the Government and angered by immigration that they are deserting Labour and flocking to the British National Party, a minister admitted yesterday.

In a sensational claim, Margaret Hodge, one of Tony Blair's closest allies, said that eight out of 10 white people in her east London constituency of Barking are threatening to vote for the far-Right party in next month's local elections. Once traditional Labour supporters are angry at a lack of affordable housing - and blame immigration, and Labour, for the changes.

"They can't get a home for their children, they see black and ethnic minority communities moving in and they are angry," said Mrs Hodge, the employment minister. "When I knock on doors I say to people, 'are you tempted to vote BNP?' and many, many, many - eight out of 10 of the white families - say 'yes'. That's something we have never seen before, in all my years. Even when people voted BNP, they used to be ashamed to vote BNP. Now they are not." Mrs Hodge said the pace of ethnic change in her area had frightened people. "What has happened in Barking and Dagenham is the most rapid transformation of a community we have ever witnessed.

Now This is Getting Juicy

2006-04-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

Drudge is reporting major new "pro-illegal" marches across the country soon.

Lawrence Auster reports:

...guess who will be addressing the illegal aliens’ rally in Dallas? The president’s nephew, George P. Bush. America’s “royal” family isn’t subtle, is it?

Also worth reading is this article, via Auster, by James Pinkerton:

The immigration issue is turning. As Congress debates the issue—especially the bipartisan plan for a half-million new "guest workers" to enter America each year—a peaceful revolution is taking place in politics.

For perspective on the situation, we might turn to a past student of revolutionary change, Karl Marx. Marx was wrong about communism, but he understood the dynamics of political upheaval. So let's pull out The Communist Manifesto, written in 1848, and follow along:

When the struggle "nears the decisive hour," the ruling class suffers from "dissolution." After this breakup, "a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class." This was Marx's key insight into change: Yes, the revolution would come from below, but it would need help from those who understood the ruling class and its ways. Only the ruling-class breakaways, Marx suggested, would have the capacity for "comprehending the historical movement as a whole."
...

...finally, the ruling class is suffering dissolution; some members are even switching sides, joining the one-nation-building, border-securing revolution. Writing in the Post, centrist columnist Robert Samuelson declared that the guest-worker program, jointly championed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), was a "bad bargain" that would have the United States "importing poverty."

Either Americans are going to cower in fear from these mobs, or we are going to be forced more and more outside the box, politically, in redefining what is discussable in American (and Western) politics. Let's hope for the best.

Majority Rights

2006-03-25T18:11:00.000-08:00

Just (what started as) a quick post here; I apologies to the readers that I have for not being more active lately. Given a few more weeks I should be back to a more normal pace though.

As I wrote previously, I had been meaning to shake my blogging up a bit, thinking at the time to start a new, better blog: new blog name and domain name, new layout, that sort of thing, as well as perhaps a slightly different focus. As fortune would have it, it seems that something even better has caught up with me. Guestworker from MajorityRights.com recently invited me to participate on his group blog, a tremendous honor which I have accepted.

For those who are not familiar with MR, it is dedicated first and foremost to that great English tradition of intellectual freedom and tolerance; the range of views on MR are wide and at times conflicting, but always intelligent. One of the things that I especially like about MR is its focus on the Anglo-Saxon world and interests. As someone who is descendent mostly from plain, good old-fashion English settlers and frontiersmen, MR has come to represent a real intellectual and cultural "home" since when I started reading it nearly a year ago.

I don't recall the exact instant I realized it, but there was a point when I realized that I felt more "connected", more patriotically united, a stronger sense of duty, to fellow "Anglo-Saxon" people in, say, Australia, than I did to many of my fellow Americans (legal and otherwise), like the flood of Hispanics I encounter on my drive to work every day. Indeed, it is not an intellectually realizable feeling--but it is a very real one, like the one that one has for one's family.

My reason for writing this is merely to point out to my fellow Americans that it is possible to step beyond "Americanism" (in the modern, degressive sense) and to become a real person, that is, to shed the embryonic bond to the modern, deeply unfree, American collective; to go beyond the mind numbing and thought suppressing mantras of "equality", "democracy", "universalism", "proposition nation-ism", and such dogmas, and become a proper person (not to be confused with an "individual"), with a people, a history, and ultimately, a future. We are not, in fact, doomed to exist merely as self-destructing cogs in the mechanisms of a proposition masquerading as a nation. If freedom means anything, it must include the right to throw a wrench into the spinning gears of this madness.

As I watch America slipping farther and farther from both its ethnic, national origin and founding people, and away from anything that I recognize, my hope is that we can rekindle a certain sense of who we are and where we come from. I have no desire to see an Anglo-Saxon EU equivalent made up of English speaking nations; however now is the time to put our heads together and either hang together or hang apart, regardless of where we live, be it in the UK, Australia, Canada, the US, or elsewhere.

Now let's get busy.

Blind Men and the Beltway

2006-03-05T08:31:00.000-08:00

Katies Dad at American Kernal has a remarkable account of a discussion with a friend in the Beltway:

My friend consults to some prominent members of Congressman Tancredo's Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. She says that she constantly has to badger these members because special interests, particularly Big Agriculture, are refusing to pony up to those who supported Sensenbrenner's good bill.

I suggested to her that instead of recommending that congressmen ignore the desires of their constituencies, she should instead be imploring the reticent special interests to "think outside the box" and start promoting govermental incentives for alternatives to imported cheap labor.

"What?," she asked.

Well, if BigAg would start putting ideas on the table instead of simply being obstructionist, perhaps a win-win situation can be had. For instance, I suggested, why Isn't BigAg asking for tax incentives so that they can invest in the research and development into technical innovations that would do away with the need for hordes of stoop-laborers and replace them with more highly skilled (and paid) workers who would operate the new advanced machines that such incentives would surely lead to.

"Wow! I hadn't thought of that," she exclaimed. "I don't have an answer for that."

Well, of course you don't.

The interesting thing about this picture is that it illustrates the dangers and problems of a decentralized system, in this case one made up of atomized individuals pursuing what they believe to be their self interest, however with only very limited, local (in the mathematical sense) information.

Decentralized systems have certain benefits such as robustness and the lack of the information bandwidth constraints normally found in centralization. Decentralized systems also have disadvantages however; one of the biggest being the situation found by the proverbial blind men trying to describe an elephant by feel instead of sight. A good example of this is also that of a group of robots trying to navigate a maze; in a strictly decentralized sense, they would only have access to the information that they can detect locally, and thus have to take an essentially trial and error approach to the problem. With centralization or at least some form of hierarchy and information sharing, it becomes possible for each robot to benefit from the information of all the robots, so that the entire maze may be able to be constructed and solved analytically, thus giving the robots the correct path to follow the first time.

As the maze example illustrates, despite the robustness of decentralized systems, it is paradoxically quite easy to trick or confuse them.

On the other hand, strategy tends to belong to centralized, or hierarchal systems. The access to "big picture" or global information greatly facilitates forethought and the ability to anticipate those k + 1 changes.

One of the problems with atomized Western populations, where particularly for whites any form of group consciousness or collective self-interest is essentially prohibited, is that very quickly we arrive at the situation described above.

I might also note though that Islam seems to be fairly decentralized, as is the behavior of the Hispanic influx into the US. Both groups do however have the benefit of a strong sense of group consciousness which facilitates their ability to maximize not only their short term, personal self interest, but also their long term, collective interests.

Ultimate Choice

2006-03-03T18:01:00.000-08:00

Chris Brand at IQ & PC links to a remarkably interesting and thoughtful essay in the London Review of Books which I recommend reading:

...Genocide may be more difficult than it looks, but that does not mean that it is wrong. There are good arguments for it, the strongest of which come from just-war theory. If you accept that wars fought as a last resort by legitimate authority with the sole intention of responding to unprovoked aggression with proportionate force are justifiable, then there are circumstances in which you may find yourself supporting genocide. If your adversary is unshakeably committed to a total war involving every member of the population in a struggle that brooks no surrender (and in the modern period most states have been committed, at least rhetorically, to just such an undertaking), then it follows that the war must continue until all the enemy are either dead or incapacitated. If they insist on fighting, you have to keep on killing them, and if they all keep on fighting, you will end up having to kill the lot.

...

If feeling genocidal is a symptom of what Boehm terms ‘human egalitarian syndrome’, is our abhorrence of genocide then the effect of a growing revulsion towards egalitarianism? Most modern victims have been perceived to be in possession of some form of capital to which they had no right. Many have indeed been socially or economically more advantaged than their persecutors – the educated and people in middlemen occupations being particularly at risk. But indigenous peoples, as the illegitimate occupiers of immense tracts of land, also fall within this category. And citizenship itself, as a form of legal and social capital, can provoke the same genocidal impulse if held by those who appear not to merit it. In almost every case, genocide is the attempt to eliminate free-riders, the pests and parasites of society.

In contrast, having duties without rights appears to be the best defence against genocide. One sentence rarely found in the annals of human history is: ‘And then they killed all their servants.’ The Spartans used to carry out an annual raid against the Helots, just to remind them who was in charge. But despite having the right to do so, slave owners rarely slaughtered their slaves. Even the most bloodthirsty reactionaries do not call for the annihilation of the working class. And illegal immigrants are not rounded up and deported en masse, because they are usually hard at work doing something beneath the dignity of a citizen.

The Religion of Americanism

2006-02-12T11:55:00.000-08:00

From Jim Kalb at Turnabout I found this most interesting essay by John Rao, who looks at America and Americanism from a Catholic perspective. While one may not share all of his views or even his Catholic interests, much of the essay constitutes excellent critical thinking and observations which traditionalists should find good to read. Here are a few excerpts:

Thus, the United States presented a two-fold image of protecting “freedom” and ensuring “stability” at one and the same time. It created the impression of establishing what has become known as a “pluralist” society, where many ways of life are “respected”. In truth, however, the manifold organs of Anglo-Saxon society and the spirit of Anglo-Saxon culture were “moderating” and “integrating” this diversity out of existence, slowly, peacefully, but surely. It created the illusion of stability, since the purpose of “integration” was to ensure the continued dominance of native American ways. In truth, however, native Anglo-Saxon Americans themselves were pressured into a gradual transformation of their own traditions. Anything threatening the adoption of the new groups soon began to be discouraged and renounced as much as immigrant particularities. Unity took precedence over custom, habit and even adherence to what was believed to be the truth. While seeking to integrate, native Americans were being integrated as well. Integrated into what? Into a “pluralist” society which could only survive by missing bits and pieces of the ideas of all of its component parts and by bending the entirety to the construction of a grayish culture serving the least common denominator in human material needs. A process was begun which has ended with the “integration” into American life of groups espousing perversities and determining how their needs and interests might help improve the GNP. A process was begun which has ended in the glorification of the computer technician over the saint, media hype over substantive issues, and mass-produced hamburgers over the creations of the great composers.
...

Generations of European observers, beginning with Alexis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America, have remarked upon the effectiveness with which American society, motivated by its Anglo-Saxon spirit, has quietly repressed the emergence of sharp differences of opinion, and channeled its population’s efforts into limited, peaceful, but indiscriminately vulgar material goals. Their commentaries have been supported by numerous American writers who have felt the obligation to “drop out” of this society in order to live as full human beings. I am speaking here of men of the Right, and not of liberals, whose “anti-Americanism” is itself a form of the same Americanist mentality. One is reminded, for example, of T.S. Eliot’s assertion that the thinking American often sought to “lose himself” somewhere outside the national mainstream, in places like New York City, in order to maintain at least the illusion of intellectual and spiritual survival. One can point to H.L. Mencken’s satirical essay, On Being An American, wherein he argues that there are only two grounds for an intelligent man to remain in the United States: either as a means of swindling an easy living, or to enjoy some cheap laughs at the expense of the vulgarity around him. The writings of many such men betray a common bitter theme. America has made the “thoughtful”, the “spiritual”, the “committed” appear to be the province of either the “insane” or the “treasonous”. It has required no secret police in order to achieve this goal. The work has been done gently and naturally, due to the character of an Anglo-Saxon influenced “soul” gone wild.

I believe that these critics have been correct in their assessment. The American obsession with avoiding controversy has ended by punishing the serious man. This is a regrettable phenomenon, since a human being—and a patriot—is not merely a prosperity machine, but also a thinker, a culture builder, and a dreamer of dreams. He needs to pay his respect, both alone and as part of a community, to higher things. As Isaiah says, “without a vision, the people perish”. A nation that allows little or no public scope for such important demands of the human personality is a defective “cradle” indeed. Still, the Anglo-Saxon desire for stability retains some insight into the importance of “home”, its needs, and the value of harmony therein. It sees that something resembling a “nation” is vital enough to men to require sacrifices to maintain it. It appears to admit the country as a structure distinct from the individual and the obvious framework for his development. The baggage that it gives to its citizens may be faulty and inadequate, but it does, at least, provide something onto which they can latch in order to work towards certain legitimate goals in life.

But America grew up under a second and more destructive influence. It developed underneath the tutelage of Puritan Protestantism. This was a teacher that understood so little about human nature that it inevitably poisoned everything that came into contact with it. Even when it tried to fill the void left by the abandonment of higher national purposes, it did so by crushing entirely the idea of the nation. It thus threatened the American with the prospect of having no “home” to love at all.
What lies at the basis of Puritanism? An emphasis upon the total depravity of man after Original Sin. How can man be saved according to its precepts? Only by an individual act of faith in God’s willingness to accept an intrinsically evil monster to live with Him eternally. Nothing that a man might do, good or bad, can, according to the Puritan dogma, affect the outcome of his personal saga.

The results of such an outlook are manifold. A dichotomy between the all-perfect God and totally wicked individuals allows no scope for the work of society in the divine plan. All men are like atoms in the face of their God, fundamentally alone in their approach to Him. “Atomism” is, perhaps, the most basic Puritan by-product. The presumption of communities and authorities like the Church, which claimed to lead men to God, became intolerable. Popes and bishops, seen in this light, must inevitably corrupt whatever functions they perform in this wicked world, and, hence, cannot be part of the divine plan. A “Church”, insofar as one must exist to perform symbolic functions and prayer meetings, thus becomes merely the instrument of a “democratic” congregation of atomistic believers.

...

Americanism promoted an atomism that sneered at true community life with its panoply of authorities and traditions as the worst of plagues. This atomism did not understand just how necessary community was to save men from madness. When this atomism infected country living, where such respect was often great and where it was perhaps most essential, it made rural existence intolerably lonely. It has now created the suburb. It has punished those who fled the structured community of the old city for the “freedom” of the outside world with the misery of lives spent on super highways and in soulless shopping malls. The drive towards individual space has led to the creation of vast tracts of “sameness” across the entire breadth of the land. Similarly, those who wished to remain in cities found themselves forced to apologize for their behavior with reference to “personal needs”, “unique life styles”, and an equally corrupt spirit of self-reliance. This “individualism” has been crowned by an insufferable and repulsive trendiness. If the suburbanite atomist is herd-like in his vulgarity, the city-dwelling atomist is machine-like in his obsession with pseudo-intellectual and cultural fads. Americanism is, to a large degree, responsible for their troubles, and Americanism is a principle of death; of life-long euthanasia.

...

Thirdly, Americanism destroys patriotism and the nation. Those who accept it and are truly interested in ideas will take its secularized Puritan elements seriously, and see it to be their patriotic duty to support anyone “hurt” by a United States which betrays its “mission” to set peoples free. They will, therefore, willingly aid outright enemies of the country in various parts of the globe and destroy its consistent friends, should they believe Pluralism to be invoked by the former and rejected by the latter. Despite horrendous strategic consequences, truly destructive to the concrete nation, American ideals and American purity must be honored! Meanwhile, Americans who understand something of what a nation truly means and who want to protect the United States and her legitimate self-interests in a traditional sense, are misled by Americanist influences into dangerous waters as well. Thus, for example, they presume that every other nation’s practical desires ought to bend to fit our own. For does not the United States, by definition, defend what is good? It might, on specific occasions. But even if it does, one must always recognize that there are also legitimate national differences which will last until the end of time, and it is precisely these distinctions which a true patriotic sense discerns and respects in other peoples. Sometimes, such Americans think that the only reason for our quarrel with the Soviet Union was our different political and social institutions—as though exaggerated Russian military power would have been a mere trifle without Marxism-Leninism! Americanism blinds them to the fact that nations fought wars before ideologies existed and will continue to do so should they ever disappear. And, finally, there are true patriots, who are also respectful of other nations’ integrity. They find, to their amazement, that the entire strength of the Americanist message is aimed against them and the expression of their real love of the land and concern for the independence of all nations. Why are they amazed? Because no one has pointed out the existence of Americanism to them.
The result is that Americanism makes us men without a country, just as it makes us men without an authoritative state, a network of real institutions with traditions and esprit de corps, men without a history. Americanism seeks to replace the nation with an ideology, patriotism with an ideological, fideisitic religion. But ideology cannot take the place of faith, the state, the city, the family and everything else of importance to national life. It cannot take the place of a real nation. And, hence, it leaves the American suspended in a limbo which the Americanist would have us believe is a model for the cosmos as a whole.

The Cult of Leadership

2006-01-31T17:36:00.000-08:00

For some reasons, I have come to hate the word “leadership”. With the State of the Union address, no doubt more people will be bandying it about. But what is leadership, and more importantly, what good is it? One can just as easily lead a pig to the slaughter, or a blind man into the ditch, it seems.

What the “vulgar masses” need, rather, is a sense of shame, something higher than themselves, something better than themselves, so that they can at least orient themselves towards the noble and away from the low.

My Return, As Such

2006-01-28T10:44:00.000-08:00

Hello to all those who still check this blog occasionally; I apologies for failing to post anything in the last 6 weeks. In reality I have been away from the blogsphere for the most part, busy with work, various adjustments and such.

During the time I have been gone however, I have been doing considerable thinking and observing, resulting in a growing evolution in thought. Right now I am trying to read and study more in the meta-political direction. I have bought both "Ride the Tiger" and "Revolt Against the Modern World" Julius Evola, for example, and will be reading them soon.

One of the conclusions that I have reached is the need to destroy popular democracy, as it exists today. Another is the need to reject equality and instead "celebrate" hierarchy, in the sense of class, nobility, etc. From chaos, order must emerge. It is a principle of nature that things should have structure; how high or flat that hierarchy is may depend on the degree to which a people can handle liberty and maintain order, however it is naive to believe that a people can ever become so virtuous as to not require structure.

Perhaps I will flesh these ideas out more in the future, but for now this is all I will say. I am not sure how much I will be posting in the near future, however I am expecting to start a new blog sometime later this year, when I feel that I can express more comprehensive ideas properly.

Blog Status

2005-12-15T20:28:00.000-08:00

It seems that I have now graduated from the university, after many, many years. I will be moving and starting a new job in the next few days, which combined with the holidays, etc, may prevent me from much or any blogging until the new year.

Those who have been kind enough to visit (and especially link) this blog over the last couple months should see a marked increase in posting quantity and quality, as I have been very busy in this last period.

I have some very good things planned which I intend to write. One thing in particular is the introduction and proof of an "extension" of capitalism to include some form of genetic/group interest, and show that it maximizes social welfare, just as a collection of self-interested individuals in an economic market maximize social welfare by their asymptotically stable self-interested behavior.

A happy Christmas to all!

Border Fence: A Monument to Shame

2005-12-15T15:55:00.000-08:00

From Reuters:

Mexican President Vicente Fox denounced as "disgraceful and shameful" on Wednesday a proposal to build a high-tech wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to stop illegal immigrants.

I agree that a border fence would be "shameful". I also believe that this is precisely why we need to build it. A border fence will remind generations of the absolute failure of our government to defend our border and interests. A border fence will stand as a monument to the shame and corruption, the backwardness and the lies, of Mexico.

Let's build this shameful fence, because some people need to feel shame.

Repeat the Mantra!

2005-12-14T08:38:00.000-08:00

I found this bit both remarkable and a sad statement of what the West has come to:

NSW Premier Morris Iemma has called on people not to renounce their Australian identity in the face of intimidation by Lebanese gangs - even if it means being bashed.

His advice came after victims of rioting in Sydney told how they were asked if they were Australian before being attacked by large groups of Middle Eastern men.
Mr Iemma said that if approached, people should say: "I'm Australian and this is Australia and this is a country that is here to be shared by all.

"(We are) Australian and proud of it and they're not going to - with baseball bats or with those kind of questions - change the response they get."

He said if he were approached by such a gang he would say he was "proudly Australian", even if it meant being attacked.

Naturally this "Australian identity" just so happens to be liberal multi-culturalism.

Auster on Religion

2005-12-12T19:28:00.000-08:00

Very interesting post, in which Auster's reply is very much in agreement with the conclusion that I have reached.

One of Auster's readers:

Furthermore, while the sense of urgency is higher than ever, I have found the warmth of traditional spirituality by its stress on timelessness, durability and eternal order. And I know this might sound absurd, but it is through a rediscovery of (Germanic) paganism that I have come to a deep traditionalist understanding of culture, civilization and the permanent things. The immense respect I have for J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis has allowed me to work out a harmonization of this paganism and the unmistakable qualities of Christianity. If there is a point to be made, it is that my personal evolution has led me to believe that the rediscovery, recognition and revaluation of all the roots of our civilization are crucial for the rebirth of the West. That includes the pagan, as becomes perfectly clear in Tolkien’s perfect and powerful synthesis of Western heritage. And it shows that combining these strengths can help put an end to the sickness of the West and the ever-growing threat that Islam poses.

Therefore, let us be fired by our heritage to shape a conservatism that bears no blind sides and remains ever wholesome.

He replies:

Nevertheless, a synthesis, or as you put it, a harmonization between these two religious/cultural roots is the way to go. After all, it was in the synthesis of the pagan/Germanic and the Christian/classical that Western culture was born in the first place. As I’ve written before, unlike with other religions such as Islam or Orthodox Judaism, no earthly society or people can base itself on Christianity alone, since the New Testament, which is about how to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, is not an adequate guide to the organization of earthly society and the sustainment of a culture. Therefore other sources in addition to the Christian are needed, which then work in tension with the Christian to create a larger whole, though of course Christianity must remain the spiritual center. To use Tolkien’s favorite word, Western culture is “doomed” to being multidimensional and multi-layered. Either it sustains its multi-layered essence, or it dies.

Tookie Williams Riot Possable?

2005-12-12T13:07:00.000-08:00

Schwarzenegger has denied Williams clemency, with many fearing violence in LA as a result. Could another case of urban unrest in the West be about to happen? The talk of violence may have always been just a ploy to get clemency, with the people on the street not terribly interested in the execution of a murderer. Let's hope for the best. Still, it is difficult to deny the trend of growing instability of the liberal/multi-cultural dream. Just in the last few months: London bombings (and Asian vs. Black riots that got little attention), French riots, New Orleans, Sydney riots, am I forgetting anything?

Cronulla

2005-12-11T23:14:00.000-08:00

I hope to blog about Cronulla tomorrow, but for now I could not resist posting the photo of (what appears to be) Australian super-cops. Too bad they seem to be MIA when the Middle Easterners start to act up. Here is a must read to get some background on the situation in the area:

AN EXAMPLE of the confrontations police nearly always experienced in Muslim-dominated areas when confronting even the most minor of crimes is an incident that occurred in 2001 in Auburn. Two uniformed officers stopped a motor vehicle containing three well known male offenders of Middle Eastern origin, on credible information via the police radio that indicated that the occupants of the vehicle had been involved in a series of break-and-enters. What occurred during the next few hours can only be described as frightening.

When searching the vehicle and finding stolen property from the break-and-enter, the police were physically threatened by the three occupants of the car, including references to tracking down where the officers lived, killing them and “fucking your girlfriends”. The two officers were intimidated to the point of retreating to their police car and calling for urgent assistance. When police back-up arrived, the three occupants called their associates via their mobile phones, which incidentally is the Middle Eastern radio network used to communicate amongst gangs. Within minutes as many as twenty associates arrived as well as another forty or so from the street where they had been stopped. As further police cars arrived, the Middle Eastern males became even more aggressive, throwing punches at police, pushing police over onto the ground, threatening them with violence and damaging police vehicles.

When the duty officer arrived, he immediately ordered all police back into their vehicles and they retreated from the scene. The stolen property was not recovered. No offender was arrested for assaulting police or damaging police vehicles.

But the humiliation did not end there. The group of Middle Eastern males then drove to the police station, where they intimidated the station staff, damaged property and virtually held a suburban police station hostage. The police were powerless. The duty officer ordered police not to confront the offenders but to call for back-up from nearby stations. Eventually the offenders left of their own volition. No action was taken against them.

But then who can blame the police; it must feel good to take some of that frustration out on whites who are not going to threaten to track them down and rape their girlfriends.

UPDATE: Lawrence Auster is quite worth reading on the subject.

The War on Christmas

2005-12-10T20:11:00.000-08:00

A number of bloggers and sites, including VDare, Steve Sailer, and Lawrence Auster have been noting the war on Christmas. Many have seen this as an assault on a Christian holiday, which I believe is at least mostly correct.

However, there is another angle which one can look at. In particular, Christmas is very strongly connected to folk and pagan traditions from Europe, and especially northern Europe. Many of these traditions, from mistletoe and Christmas trees to Christmas hams, have some meaning or origin dating back thousands of years. In other words, its not just that Christmas as a religious holiday is not "inclusive", but that it has strong ethnic, cultural, and historic elements from north Europe, making it even worse.

Can the idea of the war against Christmas be partly explained as part of a larger kulturkampf against and towards the ethnic majority make sense? Will we be renaming the days of the week next?

Liberalism as the Will to the Denial of Life, Part II

2005-12-09T22:06:00.000-08:00

In keeping with the post a couple back about liberalism as the will to death, I thought I would add a bit more.

So life is suffering, challenge, conflict, pain. However this is not a bad thing. We should embrace these things as we embrace life, because they are life. To struggle is to live; ultimately peace is found only in death.

I am not sure that modern, liberal man opposes life simply because he now feels that it intrinsically involves subjugation and unfairness. Rather, for all but the most zealots ideologs, we have come to realize that despite all the advances of modernity, life it is not, nor can or every will it be, utopia.

In a sense, we can see this when we look at Western countries which have almost uniformly devoted themselves to pleasure and self-satisfaction. The dropping birth rates, spiraling demographics and sapped vitality that has resulted are all from the same spring.

As I have noted before, we need an "ideology of strength", if you will, to counter the current weaknesses of our value system. Something like Theodore Roosevelt's "Strenuous Life", where individuals seek out the challenge, the struggle, as the end, not the means to an end. Our incentivized, capitalistic society has driven individuals to accept challenges, yes, but only as means to wealth, pleasure, etc, with duty and tradition being the ultimate casualty.

The Country Tribe

2005-12-08T22:46:00.000-08:00

I was setting at the barber's the other day, waiting to get my hair cut, and decided to pass the time by "reading" (it's really basically all pictures) Country Weekly, essentially the country music equivalent of People magazine. In case you have not noticed, many magazines today have (especially on the part of advertisers) a very high representation of "diverse" people in them; in many instances the ratio of minorities to whites seems to actually be far above what exists currently. However looking at this specific magazine something seemed a bit unusual, which I ultimately figured out was the fact that everyone in it was white, more or less. Only white people listen to country music, so this is what one should expect, right? However by "white", I do not mean to imply slightly white, or just kind of disproportionally white. In fact, it was so disproportional that I actually decided to take some statistics. I counted the number of non-whites in it, both those in content photos and in advertisements. Ultimately I found four blacks in the main content part, plus two more in tiny photos in the classified/end section, and one Latina, bringing the total to seven out of an estimated 200-300 total individuals in photographs, making the magazine between 96.5 and 98% majority ethnicity.

What does this say? There are, admittedly, a lot of ways one can interpret this. I don't think that most country listeners are by any means what one might consider "racist"; however it is difficult to deny that they are sensitive to having diversity forced on them, which is clear from the fact that the advertisers have figured out to not depict minorities as users of their products or models in their ads.

About 42 million Americans tune into a country station at least once a week. While far from a majority, this does represent a significant number of individual by any measure.

I think that this is a blow to the idea that few whites care about "tribal affiliations", that they are too altruistic, that they lack (at least rudimentary) group consciousness, or that they don't value homogeneity. These points may be true with respect to the cosmopolitan population, but clearly not for everyone.

One of the interesting things about this group is that they tend to represent one of the most homogeneous groups of "old stock", Anglo-Saxon/Celtic Americans that one can find. Another interesting aspect of country music is the general tendency towards the support of traditional institutions--marriage, family, religion, and country--something that we traditionalist conservatives in common with them. However the anti-intellectual tendency of the Jacksonian class has, I believe, prevented the kind of intellectual development and ideological promotion which we could all find common ground (and a mass following) in. This group may be overwhelmingly "Republican" conservitive right now, but that could change, just as was the case for the Democrats who they used to overwhelmingly support a few decades ago. A natural cynicism towards big business, international trade, and globalism, as well as peace keeping missions abroad and multiculturalism domestically, the "country crowd" is a disaster waiting to happen for the Republican party. By far the most Jacksonian and militant, battle trained and hardened, well armed and geographically dispersed across the countryside, in addition to having the moral authority of most closely representing the people and culture that founded America, this group has a formidable force multiplier advantage which I am sure keeps certain groups awake at night worrying.

I found particularly interesting an article written by Jeff Bates, a country singer, who went to his home town in the deep south to help clean up after the hurricane Katrina. He wrote a song about the type of people there (i.e. white folks), called "Good People", and was careful to point out in the article that they did not behave like those in New Orleans, which (in his words, from what I remember) 'stole, murdered and raped'.

I hope to blog more on this topic soon, but for now I leave you with the last lines from "Good People". Does it sound a bit tribalistic?

GOOD PEOPLE they ain’t bad
GOOD PEOPLE give you the shirt off their back
Never steer you wrong,
Go outta their way to make you feel at home
Raise hell stand up let me hear ya if you’re one of us
GOOD PEOPLE

Liberalism as the Will to the Denial of Life

2005-12-08T20:32:00.000-08:00

From Jim Kalb at his blog, who is touching on something that I have been thinking about:

Thus, the Left wants to destroy the heritage of the past, and so assert that the past must be negated. Liberals, on the other hand, simply deny that the heritage of the past should be asserted. (If you want an example, liberal anti-anti-communism is an obvious one.)

So far as I can tell, liberals and the Left act that way because they basically don’t like existence. When something exists it excludes things, and can’t be made into something else, and that seems intolerant, obstinate and even aggressive. The Left therefore wants to destroy whatever exists, because existence means limits, while liberals hope whatever exists will go away if they just stop supporting it.

I think that the above is at least part of what Nietzsche was getting at:

To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one’s will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organization). As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF SOCIETY, it would immediately disclose what it really is—namely, a Will to the DENIAL of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation...

Liberalism wants to die, but it is afraid to pull the trigger. Is mass immigration the equivalent of suicide by cop?

I'm a Citizenist, Circa 1965

2005-12-03T00:16:00.000-08:00

I have been enjoying reading Steve Sailer's articles on his idea of citizenism at VDare. I have tried to delay any reaction because I wanted to be sure that I fully understand what he is saying, and not misconstrue it. I am still not sure what an implemented version would look like, but based on my current understanding, I thought I would join in and add my bit.

First, let me say that the basic idea behind citizenism, that the government should fundamentally look after the interests of it's citizens rather than outsiders, is beyond true and desirable; it is only sad that such common sense even has to be explicitly expressed as a new and novel idea, and it suggest how far the West is on the path towards disaster.

That said, that issue of citizenism does raise some questions. These ultimately have an effect on where I personally feel conformable with the idea. I really don't like labels, and perhaps this only goes farther to prove that, but with some conditions and constraints (primarily intended to prevent citizenism from self-contradicting) I think I might be able to tolerate the label.

In particular, there is the question of how citizenism is a function of time. Assuming static conditions and some kind of equilibrium, it is easy enough to say that a country should look after its citizens first. However given massive immigration fluxes and non-stable demographics, it begs the question of with respect to when someone is a citizenist. In other words, why be a citizenist with respect to the current citizens which make up the country at a particular point in time? Why not be a citizenist with respect to the individuals who will be citizens in five years? Or who were five years previous?

If I become a citizenist today, but a friend becomes one in five years after millions more in mass immigration, are we both equally citizenists? How can this be, since the set of "valid citizens" which I might recognize would be only a subset of my friend's set of "valid citizens"?

That was just the setup. The almost infinitely bigger problem is not the question of being a citizenist with respect to a future date, but rather with how we recognize the legitimacy of the government's actions allowing recent mass immigration, legal or illegal. If, and to the extent which this immigration has been contrary to the best interest of the then-current citizens of the country, how can a good citizenist actually accept the legitimacy of these individuals as fellow citizens? This is the first contradiction which I see that an unbounded or unconstrained understanding of citizenism can lead to.

The second problem is even more fundamental and abstract than the first, which basically assumed that we were given a set of "citizens" and might only discount some (or many) who came recently and who were undesirable (for the citizens). However there is nothing in the definition of citizenism (that is, that the state should look after the interests of its citizens first) which really defines how we create that set of citizens. In particular, the definition assumes that we can look after the interests of the citizens; this however can easily lead to a second contradiction. In particular, what happens when the set of citizens can be broken up in to more than one differentiable set with (significantly) different and mutually exclusive interests? I realize that there will always be some level of mutually exclusive interests in any group; however the question is one of degree and if the differences are group (rather than randomly distributed) dependant, and if they can be feasibly avoided by selection of the set of citizens (class conflict, for example, can not be avoided save at the price of a functioning economy). A good example of this mutually exclusive and conflicting interest is that of "citizens" who are immigrants, say from south of the border, who support mass immigration of co-ethnics, since as good citizenists they know that this co-ethnic immigration is good for them and their interests. Since they are citizens, remember, their support of mass immigration (for their co-ethnics) seems to meet the definition of citizenism. (Conversely, non-immigrant citizens who oppose this immigration would also be meeting the definition of citizism, but both cases show that there is not, nor can there ever be, any 'looking after the common good of all the citizens' when there is mutually exclusive interests or a lack of any "common good" to begin with.)

As I have said before, my idea of the perfect America is not one which has to be "snow white"; I have no particular problem with a certain amount of "diversity", as long as it is stable, sustainable, and not going to have an effect on the demographic or cultural nature of the country. However, these conditions do have to be met in full, not partially. That said, I think I could tolerate the idea of being called a "citizenist", given the conditions that (precisely because I support the fundamental axiom of citizenism) I view post 1965 immigration as generally illegitimate, and that the set of citizens is defined so as to exclude elements which a) belong to a different differential subset and b) execute or express a self-interest which conflicts with the preservation of America, its ideas, and its dominant NW European heritage. Thus, "citizenist, circa 1965".

Back

2005-12-02T15:35:00.000-08:00

I apologies to my regular readers (such that exist) for my lack of recent blogging. In the next few weeks I will be finishing the semester, moving, and starting a new job, so things are a bit busy here. None the less, I am going to try to post more regularly, and at least by the end of the month everything should be back to the regular pace.

I could not resist a bit of satirical creativity on the following piece however. Via Instapundit, BlackProf.com had a post about the blacks interviewed on Barbara Walter's "The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2005" show recently. The following is that post, with some editing on my part; specifically, I just changed some words, like black to white and some names got switched (some of it still does not make any sense, but so what). Presto, for your amusement, I present:

Barbara Walter's 7 Most Fascinating Crackers of 2005

Walter’s annual 10 Most Fascinating People of the Year aired last night. Three are black, but we always knew European-Americans are disproportionately fascinating, right?

Teri Hatcher - ubiquitous, overexposed - was an obvious choice and a boring interview. It was fun, though, to hear Baba Wawa say "Wanda, the ugly girl."

Camilla, described as "perhaps the most powerful woman in the world," was too powerful to be interviewed by Walters. We got to see a montage of her reviewing troops, meeting with Heads of State, playing the piano. Then a great shot of Camilla's marriage surrounded by the kind of Old White People everyone should be lucky enough to have in their family. The juxtaposition of those images stirred my usual conflicting feelings about Camilla: disdain for her foreign policy and pride in the white girl from England.

Baba offered Lance Armstrong a chance to apologize for saying George Bush didn’t care about white people, but Lance has no regrets. Best line of the entire program - Walters asked Armstrong to finish this sentence: "Lance Armstrong is ....". And Lance said "White." Looking even more pleased with himself than usual, Armstrong smiled his supremely self-confident smile and said it was the first word that popped into his mind. Barbara was speechless.

Next came the most bizarre line in the show: Walters said something like "One of the most popular and influential people in the European American community is actually a black lawyer - Johnnie L. Cochran Jr, who was O.J. Simpson's defense lawyer." I almost spit out my catfish. I have lots of conversations with the whites, and not one has ever indicated how popular and influential Cochran is. At any rate, we learned he attends a white church and dates a white woman, who has white children. There was even a picture. Fascinating, indeed.

Complete Versus Incomplete Religions

2005-11-23T17:19:00.000-08:00

In continuing with yesterday's post, I thought I would make a couple points of comparison/contrasts within the Abrahamic religions which might further drive the point home.

In particular, one of the things which really stand out when comparing Christianity, Judaism*, and Islam is that the last two are both "big angry god" religions. Both religions have a clearly defined "in-group" and "out-group" boundary, with little or no moral duty owed to outsiders. Both have historically engaged in what can be legitimately called genocide, in which these actions were not just allowed, but altogether commended as righteous.

Neither Judaism or Islam are religions which require that its members sacrifice their interest for the well-being of outsiders, broadly speaking. Quite the opposite, sacrificing the good (the insiders and their interest) for the evil (who just so happen to be the outsiders) is seen as sin altogether.

Christianity on the other hand does, to be fair, have some awareness of "in-group" and "out-group", but is generally universalist in applying values. The New Testament is quite mild reading compared to either the Old Testament or the Koran. The basic thrust of Christianity (at least with regarding to dealing with others) seems to be "be nice to people". As such, it is incredibly venerable to exploitation of altruism.

Many have noted that Islam (and if one wishes to be fair, at least historic Judaism) does not seem to accommodate itself well to the separation of church and state. I would argue that both these religions are "complete" social organizing systems, in that they are stable with regard to the exploitation of altruism. Christianity, on the other hand, is incomplete in that it needs a "hard shell" like a turtle to deal with the broader world, since always "be[ing] nice to people" is generally a good strategy for getting one's DNA taken out of the gene pool early. It seems that for much of the post-Roman period, chivalry and the balance of power between the Catholic Church and the feudal nobility “completed” the system, in that it provided an external, outwardly-looking system which was not for the most part susceptible to exploitation though altruism. Now, with the system of nobility replaced by absolute equality and democracy, society seems to be slipping back to the proto-communism/communalism of early Christianity, where property was held in common, etc.

* Regarding Judaism, I realize that it is not monolithic at this point, and one may argue about its definition. Today’s Judaism, as I understand it, often includes elements of witchcraft/occult which obviously differentiate it from the Old Testament definition. Still, I think that the Old Testament provides the best definition since a) it is the original and b) people in exile or who are small in number will not necessarily express their religion to its full extend since they depend on good relations with their neighbors. If there were 300 million Jews instead of Arab Muslims, would Judaism (re)turn to a more violent nature? In this case, my guess is that the Semitic nature (i.e. tribal, long in holding grudges, etc) has a fundamentally effect on shaping the implementation of a religion. Equally so, the natural tendency of people from Northern Europe towards altruism has probably exaggerated some elements of Christianity (for example, is Scandinavia really that far from communalism?).

Our Western Theocracy

2005-11-22T16:14:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the greatest danger to Western civilization today is the mistaken assumption that we have secular governments.

The problem is that we have mistaken form for function. Yes, the ADL may crucify any who dare use (Christian) religious symbols in a governmental setting, but they fully expect one to be Christ-like while being nailed down. This is the paradox. The problem here, you see, is one of values, not form.

Since at least the "Christian Socialist" movement of the 1800's, with the spread of democracy there has been an obliteration of the separation between the VALUES of "the people" (I prefer to not say "the state"), the values of power and the values of the INDIVIDUAL, the values of weakness. I mean no dishonor to Christianity, but am merely making a fair and honest appraisement when I say that it is an "ideology of weakness"; it says so itself.

Christianity is not a sufficient basis for organizing a civilization politically. Even its beginnings depended on the strong Roman state to provide order and security. "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" seems to have been forgotten. This, however, is not a question of theology, but rather ideology.

When we speak of separation of church and state, we must focus on values. Use of religious symbols in the public square are perfectly fine, perhaps even desirable, in reflecting the character of the people. However these symbols are only form. We must, absolutely must, return to a truly "secular" system of government VALUES in which "sympathy" is not manipulated or praised, where unselfishness is not unduly rewarded, where weakness and victimhood is not exalted as priesthood, where absolute equality is not seen as natural or necessarily even desirable, where decisions are made based on rational self-interest, not altruistic zeal or self-denial. We must, in other words, replace the "ideology of weakness" with an "ideology of strength".

The self-sacrifice, the "Will to the DENIAL of life" as Nietzsche called it, that we are seeing in Western Civilization is not a sign that the system is broken; quite the opposite, it is merely the destination which our values have brought us to.

America--Getting Better all the Time

2005-11-22T13:27:00.000-08:00

Here is an interesting story:

Toll collectors at San Francisco's landmark Golden Gate Bridge have been issued body armor to guard against armed bandits.

"We did a review of safety procedures and added this tool to the toll box for collectors," bridge authority spokeswoman Mary Currie said Tuesday. "This is really the right thing to do."

The "bullet resistant" protective vests have been bought for all 42 toll collectors at a total cost of 21,000 dollars, Currie said.

Fjordman, Islam and Europe

2005-11-21T09:42:00.000-08:00

Right now I am quite busy, as one might be able to tell from my lack of posting; however Fjordman is down to his last week of blogging, so go check him out and add your input to his posts about Islam and Europe.

Prepared for Slavery

2005-11-18T11:54:00.000-08:00

I found this bit by Nietzsche to be very interesting.

Whether we call it “civilization,” or “humanising,” or "progress,” which now distinguishes the European, whether we call it simply, without praise or blame, by the political formula the DEMOCRATIC movement in Europe—behind all the moral and political foregrounds pointed to by such formulas, an immense PHYSIOLOGICAL PROCESS goes on, which is ever extending the process of the assimilation of Europeans, their increasing detachment from the conditions under which, climatically and hereditarily, united races originate, their increasing independence of every definite milieu, that for centuries would fain inscribe itself with equal demands on soul and body,—that is to say, the slow emergence of an essentially SUPER-NATIONAL and nomadic species of man, who possesses, physiologically speaking, a maximum of the art and power of adaptation as his typical distinction. This process of the EVOLVING EUROPEAN, which can be retarded in its TEMPO by great relapses, but will perhaps just gain and grow thereby in vehemence and depth—the still-raging storm and stress of "national sentiment” pertains to it, and also the anarchism which is appearing at present—this process will probably arrive at results on which its naive propagators and panegyrists, the apostles of “modern ideas,” would least care to reckon. The same new conditions under which on an average a levelling and mediocrising of man will take place—a useful, industrious, variously serviceable, and clever gregarious man—are in the highest degree suitable to give rise to exceptional men of the most dangerous and attractive qualities. For, while the capacity for adaptation, which is every day trying changing conditions, and begins a new work with every generation, almost with every decade, makes the POWERFULNESS of the type impossible; while the collective impression of such future Europeans will probably be that of numerous, talkative, weak-willed, and very handy workmen who REQUIRE a master, a commander, as they require their daily bread; while, therefore, the democratising of Europe will tend to the production of a type prepared for SLAVERY in the most subtle sense of the term: the STRONG man will necessarily in individual and exceptional cases, become stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever been before—owing to the unprejudicedness of his schooling, owing to the immense variety of practice, art, and disguise. I meant to say that the democratising of Europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing of TYRANTS—taking the word in all its meanings, even in its most spiritual sense.

The following is quite profound; I would like to comment more on it when I get more time, but for now I believe that what he said is so obvious as to not require any commentary.

To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one’s will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organization). As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF SOCIETY, it would immediately disclose what it really is—namely, a Will to the DENIAL of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;—but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the organization within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal—it takes place in every healthy aristocracy—must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organization, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendancy— not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it LIVES, and because life IS precisely Will to Power. On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter, people now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of society in which “the exploiting character” is to be absent—that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions. "Exploitation” does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function, it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life—Granting that as a theory this is a novelty—as a reality it is the FUNDAMENTAL FACT of all history let us be so far honest towards ourselves!

In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I found certain traits recurring regularly together, and connected with one another, until finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical distinction was brought to light. There is MASTER-MORALITY and SLAVE-MORALITY,—I would at once add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilizations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation of the two moralities, but one finds still oftener the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes their close juxtaposition—even in the same man, within one soul. The distinctions of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly conscious of being different from the ruled—or among the ruled class, the slaves and dependents of all sorts. In the first case, when it is the rulers who determine the conception “good,” it is the exalted, proud disposition which is regarded as the distinguishing feature, and that which determines the order of rank. The noble type of man separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposition displays itself he despises them. Let it at once be noted that in this first kind of morality the antithesis “good" and “bad” means practically the same as “noble” and "despicable”,—the antithesis “good” and “EVIL” is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the self- abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused, the mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars:—it is a fundamental belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful. “We truthful ones"—the nobility in ancient Greece called themselves. It is obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first applied to MEN; and were only derivatively and at a later period applied to ACTIONS; it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historians of morals start with questions like, “Why have sympathetic actions been praised?” The noble type of man regards HIMSELF as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: “What is injurious to me is injurious in itself;” he knows that it is he himself only who confers honour on things; he is a CREATOR OF VALUES. He honours whatever he recognizes in himself: such morality equals self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness of a wealth which would fain give and bestow:—the noble man also helps the unfortunate, but not—or scarcely—out of pity, but rather from an impulse generated by the super-abundance of power. The noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and hard. “Wotan placed a hard heart in my breast,” says an old Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightly expressed from the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud of not being made for sympathy; the hero of the Saga therefore adds warningly: “He who has not a hard heart when young, will never have one.” The noble and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality which sees precisely in sympathy, or in acting for the good of others, or in DESINTERESSEMENT, the characteristic of the moral; faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards "selflessness,” belong as definitely to noble morality, as do a careless scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the "warm heart."—It is the powerful who KNOW how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention. The profound reverence for age and for tradition—all law rests on this double reverence,— the belief and prejudice in favour of ancestors and unfavourable to newcomers, is typical in the morality of the powerful; and if, reversely, men of “modern ideas” believe almost instinctively in "progress” and the “future,” and are more and more lacking in respect for old age, the ignoble origin of these “ideas” has complacently betrayed itself thereby. A morality of the ruling class, however, is more especially foreign and irritating to present-day taste in the sternness of its principle that one has duties only to one’s equals; that one may act towards beings of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as seems good to one, or “as the heart desires,” and in any case “beyond good and evil”: it is here that sympathy and similar sentiments can have a place. The ability and obligation to exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge—both only within the circle of equals,— artfulness in retaliation, RAFFINEMENT of the idea in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies (as outlets for the emotions of envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance—in fact, in order to be a good FRIEND): all these are typical characteristics of the noble morality, which, as has been pointed out, is not the morality of "modern ideas,” and is therefore at present difficult to realize, and also to unearth and disclose.—It is otherwise with the second type of morality, SLAVE-MORALITY. Supposing that the abused, the oppressed, the suffering, the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves should moralize, what will be the common element in their moral estimates? Probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation of man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man, together with his situation. The slave has an unfavourable eye for the virtues of the powerful; he has a skepticism and distrust, a REFINEMENT of distrust of everything “good” that is there honoured—he would fain persuade himself that the very happiness there is not genuine. On the other hand, THOSE qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light; it is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attain to honour; for here these are the most useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of existence. Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility. Here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis “good” and “evil”:—power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of being despised. According to slave-morality, therefore, the “evil” man arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely the “good” man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is regarded as the despicable being. The contrast attains its maximum when, in accordance with the logical consequences of slave-morality, a shade of depreciation—it may be slight and well-intentioned—at last attaches itself to the “good” man of this morality; because, according to the servile mode of thought, the good man must in any case be the SAFE man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, un bonhomme. Everywhere that slave- morality gains the ascendancy, language shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the words “good” and “stupid."- -A last fundamental difference: the desire for FREEDOM, the instinct for happiness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty belong as necessarily to slave-morals and morality, as artifice and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regular symptoms of an aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating.— Hence we can understand without further detail why love AS A PASSION—it is our European specialty—must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber,” to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself.

Liberate France

2005-11-17T22:31:00.000-08:00

At No Pasaran, there is a very interesting post which is worth checking out here regarding the situation in France. One may question the legitimacy of the email that the post translates, but it is certainly worth keeping an eye on.

Here is part:

I received a telephone call this evening telling me very clearly that me or my family would not be protected if our identities had been suddenly revealed. The personal information communicated to me in detail by an unexpected "interlocutor", which makes me believe the threat to be authentic. I drew the conclusion that it was a "final warning."
I was also told that as long as I continue my "activities," I would not be able to find a job I have a wife and two children, and I can’t take that kind of financial or personal risk. I have to consider the well being of my family.

Our enemies are sufficiently powerful to dominate the media, to prevent the publication of book, or to censure people by other means, including social elimination, all within the powers of the State of Emergency. I have two girls. It’s clear that I can’t risk their well being. The MEDEF [association of businesses], the trade unions, and the elites all play into this. I don’t have any illusions about my fate in France and I need to work to sustain my family.

The Bi-Stable West

2005-11-16T19:26:00.000-08:00

I posted the following in reply to Bjørn Stærk over at Fjordman's blog. I thought I would re-post here as I have not written much lately being how the semester is nearing the end. I recommend you go read Fjordman's post and the comments to get the context of the following.

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Fjordman is largely just linearly extrapolating the situation out, you are correct about that. He is not assuming any real feedback in which the majority or politicians anticipate the situation and react to avoid the worst case scenario. Humans are good at trying to predict or anticipate the future so that they can plan and avoid bad scenarios. This means that linear extrapolations rarely come true when they are undesirable, since most people can figure it out before hand and react. However this mechanism requires that people actually look ahead and not be in denial. There is however legitimate concern about this, since we have seen it before as in the case leading up to WWII when many people, especially in countries which had significant resources to deal with the problem, preferred instead to go for "peace at any price".

In other words, there is the paradox that the future is rarely as bad as we imagine it, but only because we imagine it (I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out why the left prefers to discourage thinking about the future or consequences, and likes to demonize jeremiads). When people start rationalizing that "it will all work out in the end" so to speak, because somebody else will worry about it, it is free-riding (this is basically what the peacenik crowd does). When enough people start to have that kind of attitude, or are in just plain denial, then the mechanism fails completely.

In any case, as I noted, humans are good at anticipating and prediction, despite complexity and emergent behavior. Why is this? Well one reason is that there are strategies for dealing with uncertainty and complexity, such as encapselment. Without the ability to organize, simplify, and encapsule, we would not have the ability to create either advanced societies or complex physical systems. That these exist is a self-evident rebuttal. The fact is that as important as complexity theory is, it is no reason for throwing up one's hands.

One way of thinking into the future is with contingency planning, where one thinks about things that might happens, and then develops different solutions/plans/models based on these different cases and assumptions. For example, in the cases of the large Muslim population in Scandinavia (note I am not talking about all of Europe or the world -- encapsulement!) there are some key factors which may or may not change:

- demographics
- assimilation or lack there of and value differences
- average IQ and education level
- trend towards radicalization
- public awareness or apathy

Depending on how these factors trend in the next 10-20 years, we could be looking at very different scenarios. For example, good assimilation, away from radicalism, poor education, and general public apathy may result in a scenario where there is some public grumbling about the immigrant's social and economic contributions, a general poor economy as average incomes drop, etc, but no fundamental drivers for real social unrest.

However not all of these factors are equally likely, or change on the same time scale. We have fairly good estimations on the demographics I think. IQ and education are not likely to make huge changes between a second and third generation of immigrants. Public awareness is probably by far the most volatile. That leaves the question of assimilation and radicalization which both seem to be trending the wrong way to a serious degree. Do you have any reason to believe this is going to change? Personally I doubt that they will.

When given a certain set of these fundamental conditions or assumptions as above, we can apply a few simple rules of self-interest and generally come up with a fairly sound result. This is, after all, fundamentally what economics does, except economics is primarily restricted to the bounded case where power is money, not where power is power, be it resource control, violence, state coercion, etc.

A few simple rules that I try to go by are that 1) groups tend to follow their own interest over the long term 2) different groups tend to have different and conflicting interests 3) resource scarcity tends to create or increase group cohesion and clashes (for example when power comes up for grab in cases of demographic or majority inversion).

You seem to be implicitly doing this to some degree when you said:

I agree that there will be some sort of conflict between European values and Islamic values, and that Islamist terrorism will play a part in our future. That's basically just acknowledging the trends we see today, no real predictions are involved. But the outcome or size or form of that conflict is unknown. It's simply beyond us, and the least we should expect from anyone making such predictions is that they base them on some limited understanding of social dynamics.

This brings us back to the fact that humans spend quite a lot of their time and effort on reducing uncertainty in their environment. The fact that we can't passively predict the future does not mean that we can't devise strategies (such as Steve Sailers buyout plan) which do significantly reduce our potential risk exposure.

There is another side to this. You are right about not being able to fully know what size or form the conflict might take. But society and particularly liberal democracy is only so stable. At some point, at some level of uncertainty, it will essentially either collapse or cease to function in any meaningful way. When that happens there is a new race to the bottom, an attempt at finding a new stable strategy/order, a power equilibrium, etc.

Thus there is not likely to be a great deal of anything in the middle for any length of time. The linear region, where things are "a little broke", where there is some terrorism, etc, can only last so long. Our developed societies and complex orders can't handle that much uncertainty for too long, and more to the point, neither can most people handle the sociological strain of too much uncertainty. Our desire to create order, to reduce uncertainty kicks in invariably. Now what form this might take, either in perhaps surrender or something else, may be unknown. But fundamentally, Western civilization at this point is bi-stable. There is only so much uncertainty and internal disruption that our societies can take before something breaks.

Predictive Failure

2005-11-15T20:39:00.000-08:00

One of the interesting things about the situation in France right now is that, as best I can tell, nobody in the neocon camp seems to be suggesting solving the problem by bring democracy to the French Muslims. I guess a lack of democracy causes car bombs, but car burning is somehow different.

Theodore Roosevelt

2005-11-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any- price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Holding the Gates

2005-11-12T12:11:00.000-08:00

Steve Sailer notes that whites are being disproportionally killed in the current war. Perhaps the only worse situation would be having the military be disproportionally controlled by minority-underclass members in the forward fighting roles.

We do face the problem that many of the whites which join the military are fighting for a country has largely stopped looking out for them and their interests in the political arena. In fact, there is almost the sense that we have an army of slaves, in that white men have taken on almost a kind of second-class citizenship, all but barred from expressing their group interests or identity. However they keep joining, and they must keep joining, because if they don't, we may find the billion dollar weapons our tax dollars have paid for are manned by a group of people with very different interests and outlooks than ours, and who can not be trusted to respect our rights.

Four Points

2005-11-12T10:42:00.000-08:00

When debating with those who are advocating, or at least apologizing for, some form of multi-culturalism or assimilation/open border program, here are what to me seems to be four key weaknesses which can be exploited. I don't pretend to believe that this will have any effect on the true believers, but among those who are well meaning but confused individuals, perhaps people one knows or meets every day, these points might be useful in causing them to question their current view.

Risk - As mentioned in the previous post, how much risk one is willing to assume is largely going to determine the feasible solution. Force people to explicitly state the risk they are comfortable with. This is a no-brainer really, given the massive danger we face, especially if you have some solid statistical facts or arguments which expose the risks to the otherwise unaware.

Unstated Assumptions - There are a lot of unstated assumptions that are quite crazy when they are exposed. For example, in the assimilation argument, there is the assumption that people either want to assimilate or they can be forced to assimilate. But how can we really "force" people to assimilate, at least in a free country? Re-education camps? Lynch mobs? Basically we have to assume that people either want to assimilate, or they will do so with a very low level of coercion. Is this assumption correct? Likely?

Another unstated assumption is what constitutes "assimilation". I think that Clarence Thomas is an assimilated black man. I doubt that there are many underclass members would fit this definition however. If the definition of assimilation is cast too wide, the concept is tautological. If too narrow, it is hopeless. Force people to express what they believe assimilation is.

Empiricism - Where is the proof? For example, is there one country south of the border that we would like to emulate? If not, then why assume that the presence of a massive Latino subpopulation in the US will not introduce many of these undesirable traits? Where have we seen robust proof that highly diverse countries are stable and desirable over the long term? Where has there ever been a black or Mestizo county with a strong, stable middle class? Why, other than blind faith (or ignorance) or ideological fanaticism should we believe that the West can beat history now?

Full Ethical Costs - This is a big one. Most discussions about minorities today focuses strictly on the effects, good or bad, on and among minorities; there is no attempt to express the costs to the majority population. While this may seem obvious to those of us who focus on this issue and are keenly aware of the broader costs of social do-good programs, it may not be fully obvious to others. Those that feel they are being altruistic by allowing illegal peasants to come here to work need to be forced to face the fact that they are also putting Americans out of jobs, destroying neighborhoods and communities, bankrupting hospitals, ransacking schools, etc.

Risk Aversion and Strategy

2005-11-12T10:09:00.000-08:00

One point about dealing with the Third World underclass in the West generally, be it Muslims in Europe or illegals et al in the US, is that how one proposes to deal with the problem is largely going to be based on how much risk one is willing to assume, even though this is rarely stated as such.

In reality, we fact a continuum of solutions. At one extreme is the "assimilation/open borders" proposition, which is some combination of hoping for the best and just not caring. Of course, this is something of a one shot deal, since after some point, there is not going to be much turning back. On the other extreme, if one wishes to absolutely minimize risk, there is the option of rounding up all groups with questionable loyalties/ties/contributions to the West and expunging them. In the middle, there is a range of solutions: Steve Sailers "buyout" proposal, the hope that if immigration is stopped, those already in the West can be assimilated, etc.

I think that it might be prudent if everyone on this issue would be more explicit about risks. If the multi-cultural Republicans wish to promote their "Hail Mary pass" solutions to the West's Third World underclass problem, they need to be forced to admit the extremely high risk to the West's values, prosperity, safety, and ultimately its continued existence.

More broadly, I think that it is key to refocus the issue (as much as possible) on the question of how much risk one is willing to assume. Once a person is clear about their risk threshold, the feasible solutions will fall into place. On the other hand, the current focus on which solutions (usually limited to picking either multi-culturalism or assimilation) are "moral", nice, politically correct, or polite is just designed to enforce artificial constraints on the solution space and manipulate individuals into not considering their true interests.

How about a Constitutional Republic Party?

2005-11-10T17:47:00.000-08:00

Katie's Dad from the excellent blog American Kernel, writes in the comments bellow:

France, from what I understand, is a cleft society (Huntington) with two splits. America's leaders have put us on course to not have two but at least three minority pluralities in less than 50 years.

I foresee a society split three ways that cannot be managed by the two current political parties. We need to start laying the foundation of new a conservative party, primarly made up of white Americans, and figure out what it needs to stand for in order to marginalize the other two blocs.

It is very likely that neither major party that runs the show today will exist in 20, 30 or 40 years. There isn't a single person in this nation's leadership that has any strong intellectually moral sense to read the freaking tea leaves.

There is one way that a (at least temporary) third party might be able to emerge, if conservatives could show enough solidarity and discipline to execute the plan.

Let's say that we can get together 10-20% of the voting public, who are both conservative and politically informed/active. Obviously, there is little that they can do to actually win any election in a three way race, except in rare instances. However, this new party, let's call it the "Constitutional Republic Party", would be able to destroy any chance of Republican victory anywhere save for the most lopsided, gerrymandered districts.

They say that in negotiations the party with the least to loose is the one with the most leverage. The explicit goal of the CRP would be put a viable candidate into any election with a chance that the Republican could win, and that all CRP supporters would vote for the CRP candidate with the understanding that the candidate would remain running to scuttle the Republican candidate unless the GOP entered pre-election negotiations with the CRP.

The demands from the GOP would be few and simple, but firm, such as stopping illegal immigration (they would be, at least initially, essentially populist). In exchange for most of the CRP candidates pulling out before the election, the GOP would also agree to pull out say 5-15% of it's candidates in races where CRP candidates could get a good shot at a 2 way race against liberal democrats. There would be the understanding that the CRP would generally "form a majority" with the GOP like in the parliamentary system, as long as GOP candidates did not renege on their previous agreements.

Of course, this is largely what we have right now, except that it is not explicit and it is not working. The real conservative wing of the Republican party does from time to time essentially avoid going to the polls. It forms an internal interest group in the party which requires attention and the occasional reward. The Republicans know that without the conservative wing of the party, they have no hope of majority status. But right now everything is so far out of wack that the current mechanism is not working. There does, in my view, need to be much more serious, radical changes and goals set, and this is going to be much easier to do with a small external party than inside a larger, inert one. Right now, many of the things that need to be said by true political leaders can't be said and remain a "respectable" member of the Republican party. But in the long term, if these things are said and the internal contradictions of both parties are laid open, the Republican party (or at least the multi-cultural wing) will collapse under its own weight.

Buyout Price

2005-11-09T09:46:00.000-08:00

Steve Sailer has an excellent piece on VDare which I hope everyone has read. I have been quite busy with school, so I have not had much to add to this discussion these last few days (see ParaPundit for more), however I just thought I would throw this in.

Steve proposes a buyout price of $25,000 as a starting figure. While I have no idea what the total costs of the French underclass is, La Griffe du Lion however suggests that the price we pay in redistribution to our blacks and Hispanics is a considerable sum:

...La Griffe du Lion models the effect of affirmative action on the income of whites, blacks and Hispanics. It is shown that on average a black worker between the ages of 25 and 64 earns an extra $9,400 a year because of affirmative action. Hispanics also benefit to the tune of almost $4,000 a year. However, being a zero-sum game, white workers pay an average of about $1,900 annually to foot the bill.

Thus, if we add up the cost over those 39 working years, the total comes to $366,600 for blacks, and $156,000 for Hispanics. If we assume that the cost of the French North African underclass falls between these two extremes, let's say at $250,000, this is going to be an order of magnitude higher than the original suggested. Of course, it would be best to pay the lowest price possible. However the point is that the French could probably go much higher and still benefit from the transaction.

Assimilation, a False Hope

2005-11-06T09:28:00.000-08:00

Looking at the Paris, or at this point really the French, riots, many people are making the automatic response of suggesting that there must be greater efforts to assimilate the immigrant underclass. This poises an interesting and troubling problem; I won't say that it is a paradox or contradiction, but it is something that most people either have not, or don't wish to, think about.

Specifically, what we are seeing right now is a struggle for self-determination. The French want to be French, and the Muslims want to be Muslims, but they can't be equally free in the same territory given the difference in worldviews. Naturally the French expect the Muslims to assimilate, and thus solve the problem. The Muslims may think the same thing, that the French should just convert to Islam and save them a lot of work.

In 50 years or so, many have estimated that the Muslim population will form the majority in France. Once 50% + 1 is reached though, which pole is then defined as the one that people should assimilate to?

It would seem that once a Muslim majority is reached in France or any other country, the deeply morally-relativistic idea of "assimilation" will then require that the former majority assimilate to the customs of the new majority, will it not? The assimilation argument fails to properly factor in any true sense of patriotism, love of place, kin, etc. As such, it is nothing but a rationalization for the larger group to demand the smaller group concede, until power changes hands at least.

Assimilation cannot, and will not, preserve the West, because it is a morally bankrupt argument.

Paris Riots

2005-11-03T18:49:00.000-08:00

The ongoing riots in Paris are now in their 7th or 8th night it seems. This was all rather predictable of course. What we are seeing right now is the often repeated case of underclass people(s) in Western countries venting their anger and frustration; they are humiliated at our success and their failure, and they want what we have, even if they don't have any idea of how to get it on their own. More to the point, they want us to give them something, but they don't even know what it is. Money? Of course, and lots of it. But now they say they want "respect", whatever that is supposed to mean. And they will want something new tomorrow, of course.

One of the cruel aspects of multi-culturalism is the way that it takes low-functioning Third-Worlders and puts them next to people in developed, highly complex and ordered Western countries. This invariably shames them, showing them what they don't have, and never can be. Of course there are exceptions, individuals who rise above the challenges and do well, but this only adds to the immigrant underclass's self-serving rationalizations by "proving" that they are equally capable and thus only held back by racism, discrimination, the government, the locals, or whatever.

My guess is that the situation in Paris will get a little worse, then die out or be put down, for now at least. While the situation is bad, it is not quite as apocalyptic as some might suggest. What everyone should be watching for is the next big one. Regardless of if France shows strength or weakness, it will still draw Islamic radicals. If Muslims feel "humiliated" (and they always do) then fighters must avenge the dishonor. If France shows weakness, then Allah has blessed their efforts, and they must further pound the infidels. Either way, these people and others are going to regroup and try to inflict real, serious damage next time.

Right now, the thugs are just that: low IQ thugs running around breaking things. But in the future, look for foreign fighters and terrorists to come to the region, terrorist cells to organize, weapons to be brought in, bomb labs set up. The most important thing right now for the Islamists/thugs/terrorists is to get a base of operation, some place where they have control or at least restrict the police from entering.

Guard the Borders Blogburst

2005-10-31T20:59:00.000-08:00

I have not mentioned the Guard the Borders Blogburst lately, but I want to remind everyone to go check it out. Since blogger won't let me include javascript in a post, I have had to include the list of bloggers in GBB on the right side column. Just scroll down to see them.

I will have more on GBB & the border tomorrow.

Transaction Costs, Social Norms, and Multi-culturalism

2005-10-30T18:42:00.000-08:00

A while back, I was walking into a store when I witnessed a small (and these days, perhaps rare) instance of social norms being enforced. As a stressed mother and her probably 10 year old son were exiting the store, the boy did one of these hyperactive, thoughtless things that kids do at that age, when he purposely knocked over a trash can that was setting in front of the store. I don't think that the mother, who was ahead of him, even noticed; but a middle-aged white fellow right behind them did, and he did not hesitate to tell the kid to go set the can back up. Naturally the kid was shocked and did what he was told. The mother seemed happy with this as well. Of course, this is but one small, trivial incident, but it illustrates a practical instance of community members, strangers, expecting and demanding minimal standards of conduct from each other.

What struck me though, was the fact that I knew that this would have almost certainly never have happened had the mother and boy been black, or had they been Hispanic and the man Asian, etc, whatever combination one wishes to make up will work. After all, what would you do in that situation? Who wants to get into a confrontation because the mother feels you are picking on her son? If accused of racism, what can you do to prove your innocence?

Maintaining social norms and community standards though the decentralized mechanism of citizens putting pressure on others to conform to them is an important part of maintaining good order in a community. Naturally, citizens have an incentive to help enforce these rules, since they benefit from them; after all, what happens if the kid who knocked over the trash can today vandalizes your or my property when he is a few years older? However, the benefit any one person gets from helping to enforce these standards is quite small. The odds of this kid ever doing anything to anyone's property, much less yours or mine, is still small.

In theory, everyone will still help to support these social norms and community standards, since they benefit. The problem comes when you factor in transaction costs.The potential "transaction cost" which you might face if you do what the middle-aged man above did could range from the mother thanking you, to her pulling a gun from her purse and shooting you. More realistically, the question of transaction costs is one of what the mean or expected reaction or transaction cost will be. The more like us the mother is, the lower the transaction cost we can expect: normally it might range from positive to slight negative feedback. On the other hand, if the mother was black and you white, we all know that the transaction cost is likely to be much higher.

From basic economics, and really just common sense, we know that for someone to rationally take action, the expected benefit most be greater (or at least equal) than the expected cost (which is in this case is essentially just the transaction cost). Where that decision point will exist in practice is an open question, but with a sufficient large transaction cost, we can safely say that the individual benefit of standing up for social norms will be negative. This is of course what happens in practice, as communities blessed with too much diversity often lose their sense of cohesion and spiral towards the bottom, unconstrained and unchecked as people stop caring. This is one of the practical problems of any multi-cultural society, and one which conservatives who value social norms and community standards and involvement should be highly concerned about.

Also, this suggests that we may be facing a new wave of community destruction as a large, new minority group (Hispanics) further complicate communities in many cities, and a three-way split emerges between black, white and brown.

Food Storage and Thinking Ahead

2005-10-29T12:49:00.000-07:00

I found this very interesting paper, which deals with the how the differences we see between northern populations and more southern people might have come about. One point particularly stuck out, regarding the need to developed long-term planning skills for the purpose of storing food to avoid starvation in the cold months:

Binford (1980) has documented two empirical regularities in the behavior of hunter- gathers which may be of evolutionary significance. One is that there is a systematic relationship between the extent to which societies store food and the effective temperatures where they live. Those in colder climates do more food storage, presumedly due to the problem of "over-wintering." in colder climates. He reports that food storage is practiced only (with exceptions) in societies whose growing seasons are less than about 200 days.

Although Binford didn't deal with the intelligence required for the different strategies, the intellectual requirements of strategies do appear to differ. High intelligence has a greater benefit in climates where food storage is useful. First of all, intelligence increases the likelihood that the required storage techniques, such as drying, will be discovered. Secondly, successful use of storage involves looking ahead to the period of shortage, and postponing some consumption in order to store the food. Success with a food storage strategy requires ability to delay the gratification of eating available food. The ability to delay gratification appears to increase with intelligence. In experiments where children were forced to choose between a small candy bar now or a larger one later, the ability to delay the gratification increased with chronological age (and presumably with intelligence as measured by mental age) and also with IQ (Mischel and Metzer 1962). With intelligence contributing to the ability to delay gratification, the genes for intelligence would be more strongly selected for in climates where survival of cold winters necessitated food storage.

Once scarcity starts, it is necessary to ration the stored food. Mastery of the arithmetic needed is facilitated by intelligence. More complex social rules, such as eating only food stored by your family, may be required to facilitate storage. Higher intelligence appears to be needed in a society storing food than in one where hunter-gathers find sufficient food for the day and eat it soon afterwards.

I found this interesting particularly because I have been thinking lately about the problem of planning horizons and Third World/underclass behavior.

Specifically, many of the types of things that are common among both Third World peoples and much of the underclass in the West is the tendency to have a very short planning horizon, if one at all. When we look at many of the poor decisions that these people make, they make much more sense when you consider only the cost/benefit analysis for the immediate future. Stealing cars, becoming a drug dealer, seizing properties from the rich, or electing a Marxist candidate all look like a good investment if one only considers the (claimed) benefits in the first few minutes, days, or weeks ahead. None of these types of things make any sense in the long term, of course. But if you can't see the long term, then how would you know?

If, as the paper suggests, long term thinking and planning is a genetic adaptation for cold climates, then it is not clear how we can expect to "assimilate" Third World people into planning farther ahead, especially in a materialistic, democratic country which promises everybody everything, right now. Nor does this bode well for the idea that the world can be converted to enlightened, Anglo-Saxon democracy. The problem with many places, such as South America, is not so much that the people are stupid or can't get the government they want, as that the government they want right now will be a disaster in a few months, at which point they will want another short term fix, etc. The "mañana complex" sums it up perfectly. Why worry about tomorrow? Enjoy today!

A Separate Peace

2005-10-28T21:02:00.000-07:00

Via Fjordman, I found this excellent article which put into words what I have been feeling for some time now, in words far better than I could have. I was far more suppressed though, when I realized it was written by Peggy Noonan, and published in the Opinion Journal of all places. What she says is just so grim...and true I fear.

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."

...

Do people fear the wheels are coming off the trolley? Is this fear widespread? A few weeks ago I was reading Christopher Lawford's lovely, candid and affectionate remembrance of growing up in a particular time and place with a particular family, the Kennedys, circa roughly 1950-2000. It's called "Symptoms of Withdrawal." At the end he quotes his Uncle Teddy. Christopher, Ted Kennedy and a few family members had gathered one night and were having a drink in Mr. Lawford's mother's apartment in Manhattan. Teddy was expansive. If he hadn't gone into politics he would have been an opera singer, he told them, and visited small Italian villages and had pasta every day for lunch. "Singing at la Scala in front of three thousand people throwing flowers at you. Then going out for dinner and having more pasta." Everyone was laughing. Then, writes Mr. Lawford, Teddy "took a long, slow gulp of his vodka and tonic, thought for a moment, and changed tack. 'I'm glad I'm not going to be around when you guys are my age.' I asked him why, and he said, 'Because when you guys are my age, the whole thing is going to fall apart.' "

Mr. Lawford continued, "The statement hung there, suspended in the realm of 'maybe we shouldn't go there.' Nobody wanted to touch it. After a few moments of heavy silence, my uncle moved on."

Lawford thought his uncle might be referring to their family--that it might "fall apart." But reading, one gets the strong impression Teddy Kennedy was not talking about his family but about . . . the whole ball of wax, the impossible nature of everything, the realities so daunting it seems the very system is off the tracks.

...

If I am right that trolley thoughts are out there, and even prevalent, how are people dealing with it on a daily basis?

I think those who haven't noticed we're living in a troubling time continue to operate each day with classic and constitutional American optimism intact. I think some of those who have a sense we're in trouble are going through the motions, dealing with their own daily challenges.

And some--well, I will mention and end with America's elites. Our recent debate about elites has had to do with whether opposition to Harriet Miers is elitist, but I don't think that's our elites' problem.

This is. Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."

You're a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you're an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you're a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you're making your life a little fortress. That's what I think a lot of the elites are up to.

Not all of course. There are a lot of people--I know them and so do you--trying to do work that helps, that will turn it around, that can make it better, that can save lives. They're trying to keep the boat afloat. Or, I should say, get the trolley back on the tracks.

That's what I think is going on with our elites. There are two groups. One has made a separate peace, and one is trying to keep the boat afloat. I suspect those in the latter group privately, in a place so private they don't even express it to themselves, wonder if they'll go down with the ship. Or into bad territory with the trolley.

Changing Demographics

2005-10-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

I have been rather busy lately, due to projects and other things. I noticed that the statistics for unwed births for 2004 are now out though, so I thought I would make a quick post.

In the statistics, available here, blacks are of course by far the most likely to have children out of wedlock. Hispanics, famed for having great traditional family values, are not doing much better though.

Percent of Illegitimacy By Group
White: 24.5%
Black: 69.2%
Hispanic: 46.4%

How can this be when there is a surplus of (illegal) Hispanic men in this country? Also, given the anchor baby loophole in the law, why would any unwed Hispanic women have a problem finding a husband (regardless of who the father was) given the incentive to exploit the loophole? If anything, my guess is that over the long term, Hispanic illegitimacy is only going to increase as they become even more "settled in".

Another interesting, and disturbing fact: births to white women are now accounting for only 55.9%, yes 55.9%, of total births, down from 56.8% in the previous year.

Look at the above graph from this previous post, to get an idea of what effect this change might have on the political leaning of the country. Note, 55.9% corresponds to about the 7th bar. (Refer back to the original post(s) for background on what the graph represents.)

UPDATE: Note, for what it is worth, 55.9% does not factor in the number of births in other countries of individuals who will move here in the future. Hence, the generation being born now will in 20 or 30 years probably actually be considerably less "white" than the raw birth rates would suggest.

Cutting Dead Weight

2005-10-24T14:19:00.000-07:00

I found this interesting plot of Bush's disapproval rating over at American Patrol and drew some lines on it which visually approximates the linear trends. It seems that after every major event, his disapproval rating increases about 2% per month. I have also added the main events that were happening when each major rebound happened. 9/11, the Iraq war, finding Saddam, and then the Iraq election seem to have been the only things which have won him any significant boost in popularity.

Broadly speaking though, I don't think the man is really advancing the conservative cause, even at best. At worst he is going to sink us all, and particularly Republican candidates in the 06 election. It is not hard to see why the administration is talking about Syria now that public approval is tanking.

The Germanic-Sphere

2005-10-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

I started looking at the transparency data that Steve Sailer pointed out a few days ago. One thing I could not help but notice though, was that almost all the top countries spoke some Germanic language. Among the top twenty, you will note that only two (Finland and France) speak non-Germanic languages, while two (Singapore and Hong King) have a major percentage of English speakers. (To be fair, Finland also has a Swedish speaking sub-population, but it is quite small.)

The major Anglo-Saxon countries all did quite well in the list. What is worth noting however, and one aspect which some might be inclined to gloss over because of the politically incorrectness of the fact, is that other Nordic nations also seemed to do about equally well. In fact what is so interesting is the diversity of the Germanic national/language groups which are included: from Iceland, who's language is essentially that of the Vikings, to Luxembourg, which speaks a high Germanic language know as Luxembourgish, to the UK and the whole Anglo-Sphere which speaks its language.

As Americans, I think it is important that we remember that our identity is like an onion in that it has many layers. We are of course Americans first; secondly, members of the Anglo-Saxon world; third, members what I will call the Germanic-Sphere. Then we are Europeans/Westerners. Finally, and only then, are we all members of some big global family/village/whatever.

UPDATE: Another point to note is that most of these countries are Protestant. I think though that Protestantism is rather more of an effect than a cause in this case, in that Protestantism is really a distinctly Germanic/Nordic religion. If you look at where the Protestant Reformation succeeded, you will see that it was essentially the Germanic-Sphere (obviously, not all the Germanic countries, or Germany for that matter, fully made the switch). Protestantism stopped rather solidly when it reached the French in the west, and Slavic Europe in the east. It was only the relatively protected pocket of Northern Europe that provided a safe haven for Protestantism.

UPDATE2: Here is the map with the rankings added. Note that Luxembourg was too small to mark. Also note that in the original data, three rankings were ties, so even though the UK shows up as 12 on the graph above, it is really a 11, etc.

Ideology as a Ground for Nationhood?

2005-10-21T11:28:00.000-07:00

Here is a very interesting article which relates the problems that Israel is having integrating Ethiopian Jews. For those who believe that shared ideas or ideology can form a sufficient ground for a stable nation, this should serve as a warning.

One agency official told the Forward that there are many signs pointing to the "sad reality" that Israel is failing to integrate many members of the 100,000-person Ethiopian community, including rising rates in poverty and in juvenile crime.

The alarming statistics and rash of political controversies stand in stark contrast to the euphoria that surrounded the airlifts in 1984 and 1985 — dubbed Operation Moses — which brought the first wave of 8,000 Ethiopians to Israel. Operation Solomon, which brought another 14,000 Ethiopians in May 1991, also was cheered. Israelis again celebrated the notion that Zionism was a color-blind ideology committed to bringing to Israel Jews of all races. But in the decade-and-a-half since, with the arrival of tens of thousands of more immigrants and the mounting evidence of absorption failures, the sense of universal support for Ethiopian immigration has been destroyed.

Increasingly, Ethiopian activists and their allies claim that they have been met with racism and discrimination.

"The problem is not only the public's image of Ethiopian immigrants but also the government's attitude toward them," one of the Ethiopian community's political leaders said last week. The leader, who asked not to be identified, told the Forward, "Right now, all we get is a very unpleasant experience of racism and discrimination by government and local officials."

...

The mounting problems drew national attention last month when Yitzhak Bokovza, mayor of the Israeli town Or Yehuda, refused to admit 42 Ethiopian children into class at the start of the school year.

The media also seized on an incident last month in which Ethiopian students in a Haifa high school were attacked by their fellow students — all veteran Russian immigrants — during recess. A similar incident took place in Arad last year. And in the beginning of 2005, two Ethiopian girls were attacked without provocation in a Tel Aviv dance club by other Israeli girls. Both of the Ethiopians ended up in the hospital with serious injuries.

This bit though has to make you laugh though:

Bokovza is highly critical of the Israeli government, which, he said, has failed to devise a plan for the "controlled absorption of immigrants." This had lead to the creation of "ghettos," as large numbers of Ethiopians settle in the same cities.

According to Bokovza, about 1.5% of Or Yehuda residents are Ethiopian — about the same as the percentage of Ethiopians in the entire Israeli population.

"If this situation continues, in two years they will be 4%" in Or Yehuda, he said.

The White Man's Burden

2005-10-19T18:02:00.000-07:00

A recent paper by Jonathan Huebner titled "A possible declining trend for worldwide innovation" and published this month in Technological Forecasting & Social Change, has been causing a stir among certain circles. Some love the prospects of gloom and doom, while others are offended that anyone would suggest that technology might not be carrying us forward to some kind of science fiction future. From the paper (sorry, no link):

For the purposes of this paper, the rate of innovation is defined as the number of important technological developments per year divided by the world population. This result represents the innovation of an average person in developing new technologies each year. In a simplified model of the history of technology, in which the population remains constant, the rate of innovation is nearly zero at the dawn of civilization and then gradually starts to accelerate. Halfway to the technological limit, the rate of innovation reaches a maximum value and then starts to decline. As the technological limit is approached, the rate of innovation approaches zero, but it never reaches zero, sothat the rate of innovation follows a bell curve.

...

The number of technology events per year comes from a list of 8583 important events in the history of science and technology compiled by Bunch and Hellemans...
An unexpected aspect of Fig. 1 is that the rate of innovation reached a peak in the 19th century and then declined throughout the 20th century even with
higher levels of education, major advances in science and the invention of the computer. This means that it was harder for the average person to develop a new technology in the 20th century than in the 19th century. There were more innovations during the 20th century than the 19th century, but the proportional
increase in world population was greater. One of the most famous and prolific inventors of all time was Thomas Edison, and he lived from 1847 to 1931 during the golden age of innovation.

Along with the paper was presented this graph which shows the rate of innovation by the author's estimation (I have no reason to believe that the data is incorrect, though some will probably try to quibble with it):

What really caught my attention though, and is a point which I believe is a major flaw, was that the rate of innovation was taken with respect to the global population. The problem however, is that this assumes that everyone is equally capable of making significant innovations. In reality, First World people are far more likely to be making these innovations, so we should really control for the size of First World countries. There has been a significant growth of the Third World over the course of the last few generations, which seems, and I believe the following graph will show, was responsible for at least part of the sudden drop in innovation in the last few decades.

First, let me explain how I came up with the above graph. The original data I got by simply copying/estimating the data points for the range from 1905-1999 off of the graph. Not exact, but it should be +/- 0.5 units. The second plot is controlled so that the ratio of the First World population versus Third World remains the same. I estimated this using this UN population data, where I assumed that North America and Europe represent the First World, and everything else is not. The third plot takes into account the fact that there has been considerable immigration into the West; I chose 15% as an arbitrary estimation of the average percentage of people living in the West which are of Third World origin and have arriving in the last century, and assumed that this immigrant population was exponentially increasing (in other words, 0% in 1905, 15% in 1999, with most of the increase in the last few decades). Now please note, these are essentially back-of-the-envelope style estimates; I am not a social scientists, nor am I interested in a few percent plus or minus. My main point for making the above estimates was to get a feel for what the data looked like.

The details out of the way now, it is very interesting to look at the graph and the rate of innovation for the last century. While the original data does tend to make it look like innovation has taken a nose-dive in the last couple decades, when adjusted to maintain the ratio of Western to Non-Western people, innovation seems to have remained quite stable during this period.

A couple points. First, I realize this does not "prove" that Westerners are responsible for all/much/or a disproportional amount of ground-breaking innovation. However I think that intuitively we find the argument that innovation per person (in the West) has significantly decreased recently as a somewhat improbable.

Secondly, the type of innovation that Huebner is trying to track is not necessarily innovation in the colloquial sense, but rather really outside the box type innovations. This is where it gets tricky, and some will object. The reason I did not, and don't believe that one should, account for Asian growth is that generally speaking, Asians do very poorly in this type of innovation. As someone who is in engineering at the graduate level, I see a lot of east Asians which are talented at math or detailed oriented technology. In my view, Asians are very good at working the bugs out of systems, fine tuning, and iteratively improving things which are already fairly well defined. In fact, a lot of good Asian engineering is famous for this, especially from Japan, where their quality control is excellent. That said, Asian culture is a Borrower Culture. True ground-breaking innovation is exceedingly rare (though it has happened, as in the case of gun power and the compass). One reason is probably the fact that Asia tends to be culturally conservative and risk adverse, so innovation is not tried as often.

Another reason, which is probably much closer to a compelling explanation, is that ground-breaking innovation is often a very "holistic" process where new ideas are synthesized, with ideas or information pulled from perhaps many different directions and domain areas. This is essentially the opposite of the incremental, iterative, highly technical approach where advancements are made by many small improvements, working bugs and kinks out of current ideas. The later approach prizes the specialized, technical mind because there is little disadvantage to missing the forest for the trees. This is where Asian brains do well. The former approach happens far less often however, but is where most of the big ideas come from in the first place. This approach favors the well rounded mind, because while looking at the trees it is also important to see the forest. This is were Asian brains suffer, because their mental abilities are not equally distributed among functional areas (as I recall their IQ tend to be highest in math-ish and spatial tasks, while being below whites in the other areas).

The main point of this post was not if Asians can innovate or not however, the above is just to justify why I don't find the population growth in Asia worth considering as a significant factor.

If we really want to look at who is doing the ground-breaking innovation today, there is no reason to take my word for it. Let's just look at the names of some of the people doing hard science who have won Nobel Prizes:

Physics

2005 Roy J. Glauber, John L. Hall, Theodor W. Hänsch

2004 David J. Gross, H. David Politzer, Frank Wilczek

2003 Alexei A. Abrikosov, Vitaly L. Ginzburg, Anthony J. Leggett

2002 Raymond Davis Jr., Masatoshi Koshiba, Riccardo Giacconi

2001 Eric A. Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle, Carl E. Wieman

2000 Zhores I. Alferov, Herbert Kroemer, Jack S. Kilby

1999 Gerardus 't Hooft, Martinus J.G. Veltman

1998 Robert B. Laughlin, Horst L. Störmer, Daniel C. Tsui

1997 Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, William D. Phillips

1996 David M. Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff, Robert C. Richardson

Chemistry

2005 Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs, Richard R. Schrock

2004 Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko, Irwin Rose

2003 Peter Agre, Roderick MacKinnon

2002 John B. Fenn, Koichi Tanaka, Kurt Wüthrich

2001 William S. Knowles, Ryoji Noyori, K. Barry Sharpless

2000 Alan Heeger, Alan G. MacDiarmid, Hideki Shirakawa

1999 Ahmed Zewail

1998 Walter Kohn, John Pople

1997 Paul D. Boyer, John E. Walker, Jens C. Skou

1996 Robert F. Curl Jr., Sir Harold Kroto, Richard E. Smalley

Medicine

2005 Barry J. Marshall, J. Robin Warren

2004 Richard Axel, Linda B. Buck

2003 Paul C. Lauterbur, Sir Peter Mansfield

2002 Sydney Brenner, H. Robert Horvitz, John E. Sulston

2001 Leland H. Hartwell, Tim Hunt, Sir Paul Nurse

2000 Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard, Eric R. Kandel

1999 Günter Blobel

1998 Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro, Ferid Murad

1997 Stanley B. Prusiner

1996 Peter C. Doherty, Rolf M. Zinkernagel

One thought worth thinking about is that while the world is becoming more filled with people, the percentage of innovators is decreasing, suggesting that we may be coming up with more problems and less people to fix them.

Since modern economic advancement is built on the back of innovation, this also suggests that global and utopianistic capitalism, where growth is maintained for everyone, is not just unrealistic, but quite naive. In fact, protecting the wealth we create from others may be a more pertinent priority.

This also may give some perspective into why most non-Western people tend away from Capitalism, believing instead in a zero-sum game of economics: because for them, it is. Cultures which lack innovation are cultures where the net wealth per person is essentially static, all else being equal. These people will not support capitalism over the long run because it is not in their interest to do so, and it is perhaps ethnocentric to believe otherwise.

Conservatism Lite

2005-10-19T16:10:00.000-07:00

Via View from the Right, Robert Bork has an excellent essay in the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal which chastises Bush for his failures to govern in a appreciably conservative sense:

...this nomination has split the fragile conservative coalition on social issues into those appalled by the administration's cynicism and those still anxious, for a variety of reasons, to support or at least placate the president. Anger is growing between the two groups. The supporters should rethink. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aside, George W. Bush has not governed as a conservative (amnesty for illegal immigrants, reckless spending that will ultimately undo his tax cuts, signing a campaign finance bill even while maintaining its unconstitutionality). This George Bush, like his father, is showing himself to be indifferent, if not actively hostile, to conservative values. He appears embittered by conservative opposition to his nomination, which raises the possibility that if Ms. Miers is not confirmed, the next nominee will be even less acceptable to those asking for a restrained court. That, ironically, is the best argument for her confirmation. But it is not good enough.

Crime and Immigration in Denmark

2005-10-17T16:05:00.000-07:00

Mikkel from Enough! has produced this excellent graph which shows the crime stats from natives, immigrants, and immigrant descendants in Denmark, as reported by a recent government study. Particularly interesting are the charges per 1000 of Western versus non-Western immigrants. The rate of crime by the second generation of non-Westerners is especially interesting and disturbing, as they have by far the highest crime rate among those below about 30.

This brings up one of the biggest concerns I have with the idea that we can efficiently assimilate massive numbers of non-Westerns or nominal Westerners like those from south of the border. The question which I would like to see answered, is if we can assimilate a group of individuals, what prevents them from unassimilating?

In fact, unassimilating seems to be the best description of what is happening with many non-Westerns and especially Muslims in the West right now. The crime increase in the second generation from the study above is just one reflection of this. The problem is not limited to Muslims however, as many other ethnic groups can and do develop institutions, such as La Raza, which serve to separate them from the majority and create new cultural identities.

Is this to suggest that we should not encourage people to assimilate? Not really; assimilation seems to be the best thing going right now. However, we have to realize that assimilation acts on an individual or generation; it does not mean that future generations will choose to remain assimilated. Put another way, if we are going to have large non-Western populations among us, then we must accept the fact that "assimilation" is a continuous process, as each generation decides if to become or remain assimilated, or to seek some kind of "cultural identity".

Time Delayed Systems and Fear of Outsiders

2005-10-14T22:07:00.000-07:00

I thought I might point out one additional point about the previous post, which some might not find immediately obvious, but which is quite interesting. As I noted before, I believe that we can reasonably estimate that the current population composition is moving about 1-2 (closer to 2) bars to the right every decade in the graph below. Also note that the difference between the current composition of the House (approximately 20% minority), and the national as a whole, is about two bars apart. In other words, the political response seems to be delayed by about a decade or slightly more. So we have the politics in 2005 of the ethnic composition of the nation in the early 1990's. Likewise, we probably won't feel the full effects of the currently much greater minority population until the late 2010's.

This may provide one clue as to why immigration control has been such a major problem. Typically, from an engineering perspective, controlling systems with some kind of a significant input-output time delay (perhaps milliseconds instead of years however), is problematic. From a political perspective, there is a weak correlation between allowing mass immigration (illegal or otherwise) and seeing political consequences in the near term. Not only is it difficult for average voters, who don't think about this topic too much, to see, but there is also little reason for politicians who are focused on the short term to worry about something that far into the future either.

From an evolutionary perspective, this might also explain why "us" versus "them" thinking, racism, fear of outsiders, etc, is so strongly engrained and biologically intrinsic. Like our fear of fire or heights, fear of mass population influxes are perhaps one of those things which can be very hard to learn about in an individual generation (given the high probability of death or ceasing to exist as a group involved in these types of "learning experiences"), hence the need for an intrinsic fear.

In other words, this fear of outsiders creates artificial and generally irrational, but instant, negative feedback and friction between groups, so that the situation is avoided where a transient influx of another population might end in a less favorable situation for the original population, once the new inter-group equilibrium is reached.

For example, consider a group of hunter-gatherers living in a large valley. Some climate change combined with regional advancements in farming in the rich valley soil triples the population the valley can provide for. Soon after this change, a highland tribe moves into the valley, perhaps even welcomed or recruited due to an agreement to pay some small tax to the original tribe. Since there are no shortages, both pre-adapted tribes ignore one another, despite the fact that one is living on the other's "territory". Over time however, the population of the valley again exceeds what it can support, and war between the tribes breaks out. Once this new stable population limit is reached, the original tribe is in a considerably less desirable position than before, having lost half the valley. Hence, the delay between a decision and the consequences happens too late to make the necessary changes.

The tribe in the other valley over however, which was less welcoming and did not share their valley, live (in greater numbers) to pass their genes on to future generations, hence creating this (again, often irrational, at least in the short term) fear of outsiders due to the evolutionary mechanism.

Guesstimating Changes in US Politics Based on Greater Immigration and Minority Governance

2005-10-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

The previous two posts have provided some very interesting results for where minorities tend to rate on immigration and tax issues. Taking it a step farther however, what can we estimate the effects would be of greater immigration or minority governance?

I have prepared the following graph, which provides some interesting things to think about. The top portion represents the percentage of minorities in the house, while the lower portion represents the mean immigration rating of congress as a while, given the above composition. Note that increments of minority Representatives were made in terms of a 15% increase relative to the number of majority Representatives (and then normalized), so that if minorities in the House and the general population were to increase at the same rate, it would mean an influx of another 30 million minorities per increment; this corresponds essentially in my estimation to 6-8 years of combined US legal and illegal immigration at the current rate (estimates for illegal are difficult to know, and increasing, so this number will probably grow smaller over time). In other words, move the the left 1-2 bars each decade. When combined with the greater birth rates of minorities, this should be a safe estimation over the long term.

I estimated the mean immigration score of the House as a whole, based on the percentage of minorities (again, Asians were not included due to their small size). This estimation was linear, assuming that the minority mean would remain unchanged regardless of size. This assumption is almost undoubtedly false; the larger the minority participation (and thus the size of the far left), what is "acceptable" on the far-left is likely to change, thus many might move even farther to the left. This would primarily effect what the ratings in the rating system represent however, since it is a relative, not absolute, measurement of left/right. Those that represent the far left would still score a four, in other words, though a conservative with a score of 2 today might have a score of 1 instead, assuming he voted the same way. This would tend to move the "center" farther to the left, however it is possible that to compensate, whites might start voting even farther to the right, combined with a reduction of their standard deviation. In other words, it is very difficult to really project what would happen. The estimates above are still very interesting however.

One of the most interesting things to note about the graph above is that minorities are considerably under-represented in the House, meaning the House does not really represent the national mean. If percentages were closer to the national average, we would see a significant shift to the left. Also, even given the current percentage of minorities in congress, the combined mean is still moved to the left by about 25% relative to the majority population. If minorities reached equal participation in congress, the shift to the left relative to the majority population would approach 50%.

UPDATE: I made a small change to the rate of immigration increase, from 5-6 to 6-8 years, to be a bit more conservative. From The American Resistance, here is an illegal immigration counter and associated documentation on how they are arriving at their numbers, which provides for interesting reading and makes an excellent resource.

More on Voting Patterns of Representatives by Group

2005-10-13T17:44:00.001-07:00

Here are a couple more charts which break down the composition of each rating tier by group. The only note that I would add is that "minority" used here consists only of blacks, Hispanics, and Jews; I did not bother to include the three or four Asians serving in the House.

Remember, the lower the rating, the more conservative the rating is. Four represents essentially far left Democrats and socialists.

Immigration rating breakdown.

Tax rating breakdown.

Voting Patterns of Representatives by Group

2005-10-10T19:38:00.000-07:00

I have come upon some very interesting data which ranks Representatives in the House on immigration control and taxation, grouped by race and ethnicity. The data has been pulled and compiled by Geoff Beck, who has done some of his own analysis on it. The sources he used were the Americans for Better Immigration ratings for immigration, and the National Tax Payer's Union from 2003 for the tax ratings. In the rating system that I used, 0 is good from a conservative point of view, and 4 is the worst possible ranking. In cases where there were no results, I did not count them in the analysis.

Some basic statistical results are given below with a few comments. First however, the raw numbers are given:

Immigration, Mean
Euros 1.6450
Blacks 3.6154
Hispanics 3.5833
Jews 3.5385

Immigration, Standard Deviation
Euros 1.3579
Blacks 0.5436
Hispanics 0.8805
Jews 0.7060

Tax, Mean
Euros 2.1981
Blacks 3.7647
Hispanics 3.3333
Jews 3.7500

Tax, Standard Deviation
Euros 1.2200
Blacks 0.4960
Hispanics 1.1672
Jews 0.6757

Now for the graphs.

The most striking result was the mean immigration results of minorities versus Euros, which are given in the graph below:

We can see that the rating for minorities is right at about double that of Euros. Among the minority groups, there is almost no difference in mean rating.

Now given below are the mean and standard deviation for groups on both issues.

One thing that the standard deviation tells is the degree of variance or intellectual diversity within groups. Groups with higher standard deviation have a wider range of views, and those with less could be described as having more "groupthink". Another way of thinking about it is how tightly the data clusters around the mean.

On both issues, it is very clear that Euros are much more intellectually diverse. Surprisingly, Hispanics have the secondly highest standard deviation, which is probably at least partly explained by the differences within the Hispanic community, in terms of national origin, income, racial component, and length of time in the US. Another explanation is that Hispanics are a new and growing demographic which still have not "settled" into a stable voting pattern yet. As blacks and Jews show however, over time their standard deviation will be expected to drop. Also, one point which should be noted is that even though their standard deviation is higher than other minority groups, the mean is still very liberal, so even though they are more loosely clustered than other minorities, they are still at a very different place than Euros.

Below is a ranked graph of individuals by group and their immigration rating:

And for taxation rating:

In both of the above figures one interesting point to note is that most minorities are stuck to the absolutely most liberal rating like flies to a molasses jar. It is difficult to know where their "natural" position would be if they had not saturated out in the rating system and been more limited by the range of "acceptable" politics in America. One thing that can be comfortably said is that most minority Representatives don't feel comfortable in the mainstream of American politics, nor do "acceptable" politics appear to offer them the breadth of options for what they might otherwise advocate.

These results are very interesting, and I hope to have more comments soon when I have more time. There are plenty of caveats I could add, sample size, elected representatives possibly not reflecting the views of members of their own group, etc, however I assume that the intelligent reader is smart enough to know the drill. Also, if you have any other ideas for interesting statistical analysis on the data, drop me an email (the data I have only has group, state, and ratings attached however, so please don't expect me to collect party or male/female information).

We're all Living in Amerika

2005-10-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

There has been some back-and-forth lately between a few multi-cultural Republicans and some of us more traditionalists types. One thing which tends to come up is the definition of "America", what it is about, what is "patriotism", and who is "American". This is a sensitive topic, and I don't wish to call people "non-American" or whatever in the same way that some multi-cultural Republicans have called us traditionalist types unpatriotic.

However the version of America that some today hold is essentially a liberal construct that has been developed in the last 40 years; it is a make-believe place, plastic, certainly unnatural. This America has no memory, actually thinks pop culture is culture, and is incapable of valuing beauty or anything which is intangible, unless it can be put in terms of dollars and cents; a citizenry of mercenaries if you will. This is the world where diversity is strength, up is down, wrong is right, political correctness represents tolerance, and Islam is a religion of peace.

In this America, being American is defined in a minimalist fashion. Come over, buy some Nikes, watch some MTV, learn some English (maybe), show your love for the almighty Dollar, and you are basically in the club.

But if you think that much of what you see around you is really exclusive to America, and that anyone expressing affinity with Starbucks is authentically American, then you haven't been listening to your Rammstein:

Wir bilden einen lieben Reigen
Ich werde euch die Richtung zeigen
Nach Afrika kommt Santa Claus
Und vor Paris steht Mickey Maus

We're all living in Amerika
Amerika ist wunderbar
We're all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

We're all living in Amerika
Coca-Cola, Wonderbra
We're all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

If one wishes to define America in a minimal sense, then who in the world isn't American? Much of what we think of as being "American" culture is really just the product of transnational corporations. A huge number of young people in Europe today can speak decent English. Whatever differences we have with Europe, and whatever ignorance they have about traditional America, there is still a tremendous amount of similarities between us, in terms of history, culture, values, etc. When you contrast them with people who have lived here for years, even decades, and perhaps still have not learned English, who have very different outlooks, who are perhaps non-Western or Third-World and yet still cling to their enclave and either don't or can't assimilate, it becomes very difficult to know what, if anything, being "American" in this new sense really means.

This is not to say that Europeans or those who bother to learn English are necessarily "Americans waiting to happen" either. How to define the term or where to set the limit is difficult to say. But where do we set the absolute minimum limit? When do we admit that just tapping onto the global grid, just living within the boundaries of America, just enjoying prosperity and materialism, is not a sufficient basis if we are to have a stable nation?

Gilchrist Goes to General Election

2005-10-07T18:28:00.000-07:00

Jim Gilchrist, despite entering the race late, made a remarkable showing on election day for the vacated seat of Rep Cox in California. He did poorly in the absentee ballots, which were cast early:

Early/Absentee vote:

Campbell 52%
Brewer 15%
Young 10%
Gilchrist 6%

However, in the few weeks that Jim had to promote his message, he made stunning progress:

Election Day vote:

Campbell 37%
Gilchrist 27%
Brewer 19%
Young 7%

With about 10 weeks left to campaign, Jim has an excellent opportunity to get his message out this time for the general election.

What Sovereign Nation?

2005-10-06T12:03:00.000-07:00

Via American Patrol, from this article:

A recent Mexican Independence Day assembly at Larkin High may have taken cultural sensitivity one step too far, a Larkin parent said this week.

Robert Bedard said his son was reprimanded when he declined to stand for the Mexican National Anthem during a ceremony at the west Elgin school last month.

His 17-year-old son, a senior in the process of enlisting, feared honoring another nation’s anthem might jeopardize his military status. Sitting down cost him a trip to the office.

Gilchrist

2005-10-03T20:53:00.000-07:00

The special election in California which Jim Gilchrist is running in is going to be starting here in a few hours. Lets hope for the best!

Not Too Far Off

2005-10-03T18:24:00.000-07:00

Via View from the Right, this cartoon is not too far off the mark it seems.

How to Reverse Illegal Immigration: Trade Countries!

2005-10-02T18:56:00.000-07:00

Seeing how Latino activists like Josue Sierra, who as I noted in the update to the post a few back seems to feel that his goal is to create a Latino majority in our country, how about we all just switch places? In this thought experiment, everything south of the border will be where us "Anglos" go, and the Latinos will in turn all come to North America, seeing as how much they love it (more than we do apparently).

What would we expect to see result? My guess is that in a generation there would be entrepreneurial software developers and engineers living in $3M houses in the Amazon rainforest, contrasting with North America becoming a huge (although Spanish/Portuguese speaking) innercity neighborhood. Us dull, work-alcoholic, uptight "Anglos" working our 50 hour weeks in lush little Caribbean islands and tropical costal cities. Them "just going with the flow" in Alaska, -50 F.

And of course, there would be the illegal aliens crossing "our northern border" by the millions. Still.

We Need a Fence

2005-10-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

WeNeedAFence.com is a new group which is promoting the idea of building a state-of-the-art fence on our southern border. Go to their site, donate, watch the video, and spread the word.

Vie American Patrol, you can also watch a Lou Dobbs clip about them here.

Federal Hate Crimes Law?

2005-10-02T17:39:00.000-07:00

The Republican-majority House has approved an amendment which would make "hate crimes" a federal offence. Vie Let Freedom Ring:

Rep. Conyers offered an amendment to H.R. 3132, The Children's Safety Act of 2005 that Federal Hate Crimes. If included in the final bill, this would create a Federal offense for violence motivated by the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or disability of the victim.

The final vote for adding the amendment was 223 to 199.

Looking Bad

2005-10-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

The recent photo of Bush that the Drudge Report linked to this morning shows the President looking rather poor. He looks dull and attenuated, perhaps a sign of a lack of sleep, too much stress. I realize that the recent accusations that Bush has been hitting the bottle again are cheap shots, but judging from how he looks, its not quote so improbable (thought I still doubt it).

Bush is under a lot of pressure, a lot of stress, it goes without saying. Sadly, given how poorly Bush has served almost any and all conservative goals, it is difficult to say if the country is better served by an energized President, or a disfunctioning, burnt-out one who can't do as much damage.

Those of us real conservatives who wish to turn the ship around had better make hay while the sun shines. Let's hope that the political goals of the Minuteman Project are successful, and that Bush either caves in to their demands (unlikely), or does something stupid which sets up the stage for a back-lash.

Saying What Needs to be Said

2005-10-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

Katie's Dad is on fire over at American Kernel, fisking a multi-cultural Republican. He says some things that need to be said, and then said again, and then yet again. Responding to Josue Sierra from the Latino Issue blog about his post titled "Compassion Regarding Immigrants Called Political Correctness" Katie's Dad says (ouch!):

...yes JMS, you are soft...just like so many of those who fled Cuba instead of fighting for freedom. I know that's going to seem harsh to you, but having lived as a derogatorilly-labeled "Anglo" in Miami, I can testify only to what I experienced first-hand to be fact. There's a lot of talk from you folks, but no action. The whining of those who spring from your easily corruptible culture now falls on increasingly irritated, deaf ears outside Miami-Dade. If one quarter of Miami's "refugees" had the cojones to stay and fight, you wouldn't have Castro to complain about today. That's not to say ya'll wouldn't be jawboning sorrowfully at El Centro Vasco about some other corrupt regime you let come in to replace Fidel's.

When Sierra brings out the "country of immigrants" line:

Dependence on this trite "nation of immigrants" fallacy is the hallmark of a either died-in-the-wool multiculturalist or someone who really doesn't understand American history. Clearly, your position is based on the silly idea that the people who founded this nation were "immigrants." They were colonists and settlers. The term "immigrant" was created by Americans to describe those who came to our nation after our freedom had been earned. Don't insult me with your misindoctrinated notions about "the American way."

Another point which I have not thought of, but which is very insightful, regarding "diversity" and social stability:

Until the ruinous policies foisted upon America's unsuspecting, long-term European-origin-majority in 1965, this nation's "diversity" was extremely narrow. It is reasonable to argue that from a macro-protestant-centric perspective, we were not diverse at all. Nearly all of us whose ancestors arrived prior to 1965 originated from places that today are trying to forge a European Union based upon its innate cultural similarities. It is questionable they can succeed. Heck, about a third of all American immigrants prior to the McCarran-Walter bill repatriated themselves to their European homelands - mostly because they could not really "become Americans." And you expect that "a more diverse people" is workable at a time when almost nobody leaves?

As a descendant of a long line of hardy pioneers myself, I especially agree with KD's final words:

Intentionally or not, you disrespect my colonist ancestors who suffered greatly to create this nation with your wishful, fallacious insistance that "immigrants" made this nation. I find your point of view to be incredibly insulting.

Go read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: Josue Sierra responds to KD's post over at his blog (to be fair, the comment system does not really have any login, so I am assuming in good faith that the commenter was really Sierra):

Wow! How sad. To each it's own. Your ignorance is evident, though perhaps you have your own following. Best of luck to you, when Latinos become a majority.

Hmm, yes amigo, keep rubbing it in everyone's face why don't you? At least he is honest about his intentions. This is the party of Lincoln and Regan, if you can believe it.

Help Jim Gilchrist Win!

2005-10-01T13:46:00.000-07:00

There are now three days left to the primary where we all are hoping Jim Gilchrist will win a chance to go to the next round. If you have not donated, yet have thought about it, now is the time to do so. Jim Gilchrist has solid, conservative values, and deserves to go to Washington. See this post here (PDF) which gives a view of his versus some of his opponent's views on conservative issues.

Spread the word, post about it on your blog, etc, let's get this brave and deserving individual into congress!

JimgilGhrist.com

Listen to Congressman Tom Tancredo's endorsement here.

Bennett

2005-09-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

There is something of a storm growing over the bizarre statement William Bennett recently made about aborting all black babies. Lawrence Auster has an interesting take on the subject, which seems quite possible:

Here’s my theory of why he did it. On racial matters, Bennett, a member of the neocon camp, is a strict liberal, constantly invoking Martin Luther King, and also expressing withering contempt for immigration reformers as un-American. Now one thing that is true about liberals is that they ruthlessly suppress in themselves all rational thought about racial realities and race differences. Because they refuse to let the rational part of their mind deal with race, the only part of their mind that can deal with race is the irrational part. And that’s what happened here. Bennett had suppressed his true thoughts about race differences in crime, and so, unexpectedly, without their having gone through proper channels, they just popped out, in a highly offensive and foolish form.

This fits with the general idea that it is liberals who are the real racists, by which I mean people with irrational negative views about other races. By contrast, traditionalists and race realists deal with race issues with the rational part of their brain. They have assimilated and integrated these matters into their conscious thought processes and can talk intelligently and morally about them. Traditionalists are not inwardly divided between an anti-racist Superego and a racist Id, as liberals are.

Third World Immigration and Australia

2005-09-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

I have been rather distracted these last few days, but I wanted to suggest everyone read this excellent article by Andrew Fraser.

The most revolutionary, by far, of these radical changes has been the decision to open Australia to mass Third World immigration. Since the end of World War II a strange alliance of Communists, Christian churches, ethnic lobbies and other pressure groups working through the corporate sector and within the centralised apparatus of state power has set out deliberately to flood the Anglo-Australian homeland with a polyglot mass of Third World immigrants.

Guard the Borders Blogburst

2005-09-26T18:50:00.000-07:00

I have been falling behind in not writing about this sooner, but Euphoric Reality is hosting/promoting the Guard the Borders Blogburst, which I recommend everyone who blogs about the border join.

I can't get Blogger to allow me to post the JavaScript required to include the blogroll of GBB bloggers in this post, so for now check the full list out over at Euphoric Reality.

Fred on Looting and New Orleans

2005-09-26T18:48:00.000-07:00

Here is an excellent article from over at Fred on Everything:

Yet it happens time and again. There was Los Angeles, burned in 1992. There have been Cincinnati, Miami, Seattle, Washington DC, Chicago, Detroit, Crown Heights, Watts, Newark, on and on and on. When the law loses its grip, the looting begins.

...

Writers speaking of the looting in New Orleans regularly say that poverty causes looting, and that as a society we should do something about it. But why are blacks poor, and what could society do that it has not already tried? Blacks are always poor, in Africa, in Haiti and Jamaica, in New Orleans. It is a global pattern. Would that it were not, but it is. No one knows what to do about it.

With the inevitability of gravitation, commentators attribute the incompatibility with what we think of as civilization to oppression or neglect by whites. Oh? In Washington, the mayor is usually black, along with a majority of the city council and school board. The principals are black, as are most of the teachers, almost all of the students, and their parents. The funding per student is high. Yet the schools are horrifically bad.

Washington could have any schools it wanted: It is hard to imagine anyone denying blacks better textbooks or forbidding the assignment of more homework. I conclude that they do have the schools they want. Perhaps they don’t want schools at all.

...

What will happen if, or when, the economy weakens under rising Asian competition, if good jobs are shipped to India and gasoline hits unheard of prices and the standard of living falls hard? Under the imposed amity of today there lurks powerful resentment on both sides. Prosperity has held things together. A flourishing nation can afford affirmative action. But when prosperity goes so will the amity. I can think of no solution other than a passport and a Euro account.

Globalism, Reflected in a Mirror

2005-09-24T19:46:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Auster has been doing some excellent blogging about the problems facing the UK, especially London, as it is increasingly plagued by Third-Worldization and Islamification. As he notes, this does not have to be our destiny:

The doom of Britain is not a material, determined event. It is the outcome of thoughts and choices in the mind and soul of the British. They have abandoned themselves spiritually (and by spiritual I don’t necessarily mean God, I mean a transcendent sense of their historic being as a people and a nation), and so are allowing themselves to be dispossessed materially as well. If they find themselves spiritually again, they can re-take possession of their Island and their destiny.

The great piling of foreign and Third-World peoples into Western countries has been a rather recent and modern event, directly resulting from globalism and the advances that have made it possible. Fast, safe, and cheap transportation between distant locations, easy communication, atomized communities, ideologies like multi-culturalism which promote enclaves of foreign cultures, and so many other things have enabled this great migration to take place, without which it would never have happened.

There is a duality to this however, one which liberalism does not like to mention. For the longest time, while exploiting modernity and the accent of globalism to further their goals though population relocation, liberalism has pretended that any push-back against this phenomenon would put us right back at 1939. We are to believe that either we go along with liberalism, multi-culturalism, and the slow suffocation of Western Civilization, or we will find society digging large holes in the ground and filling them up with the bodies of these newly imported individuals.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

We find ourselves in this situation largely because of the rapid advances of technology and changes in society which have been cynically manipulated by leftists before society could adjust to these changes and establish a new equilibrium. However--and this is the key point--just as changes in technology and society have made it possible to facilitate this mass migration, so too technology can reverse the problem.

Consider for example how advances in transportation and logistics make it possible for literally countless millions of individuals to fly each year, or how for a few dollars, a package can be reliably sent across the country and delivered, all in a few days.

No, the question of repatriating Britain's illegal aliens, its migrants, its false refugees, its unassimilated and unassimilatable Islamic component, is hardly a question of debating genocide. The reality is that not only is repatriation possible, but it is perfectly feasible (and obviously, desirable) to do so in an efficient, human and ethical manner. Further, given the cost of these groups to the UK, and the cost of living differences of their home countries, it is quite possible that this could be an entirely mutually beneficial transaction for both parties.

Despite what liberals might want us to believe, given even a small amount of public will, we can use today's logistics to easily return say, Radical Islamist X, his wives, children and their possessions to Pakistan or Egypt without so much as cracking the good china. Add to this a stipend consisting of essentially what UK taxpayers would have spent anyway, and not only are Britons citizens better off, but X and his families are nicely positioned to settle in, perhaps even open a McDonalds franchise. By all means, let the parting be as amiable as possible; they can be given a gift basket with a little Union Jack and everything, even be allowed to keep the hotel towels, just so long as everyone realizes that it was never meant to be. "Sorry, old chap, it just didn't work out, but better we all recognize this sooner than later."

Another aspect where modernity, specifically multi-culturalism, has made this both feasible and rather easy, is that by never really separating from their home culture, any culture shock would be minimal. Quite the opposite, the culture shock would likely be much smaller for many of these Islamists once relocated that it would if they were to remain in the UK.

I don't mean to deny that there would be significant challenges involved in repatriating Third-World or unassimilatable individuals. Certainly the public will is not yet there, though it is rather inevitable in my view. Nor would much of this be a good job for the government to do; there are plenty of companies which are much more suited to running the logistics in an efficient and cost effective manner. Obviously getting people to leave peacefully would be one of the biggest challenges, but with sufficient incentives (both positive and negative) most would see the writing on the wall. Certainly by the time radical Islamists are running around shooting at police and proclaiming their enclave as an infidel-free zone, any possibility of the public changing its mind is quite over.

There might also be the issue that some have pieces of paper or records which show they have become citizens. But once citizenship becomes a matter of what a piece of paper says, well, citizenship becomes merely another piece of paper. Certainly the concept of citizenship entirely decoupled from shared history or ancestors, nationality, ideas, values, or even a minimal shared interest, is a weak social construct, and a very unnatural one at that. The situation is best compared to that of an individual issuing his own currency. The currency may have some value as long as others agree to recognize it, but it has no intrinsic value. As soon as others cease to agree to accept it, it is valueless because it not based on anything of actual worth.

In the same way, the "citizenship" of say, a radical Islamic cleric who not only has no shared similarities with most Britons, but even more so, professes his disloyalty and hate for these same people, is only a "citizen" as long as Britons agree to this social construct, and while the government can force or coerce others to recognize this piece of paper or government record. Certainly however, from a historical perspective, the accepting of dislike individuals with different self or group interests onto your family/tribe/nation is both entirely unnatural and unstable.

The key point of this post however, is that just as modernity has made these rapid, destructive and unnatural changes to Western societies possible, so too can it make reversing the problem both feasible and humane. I don't deny that this is an issue which deserves considerable public debate before action is taken, but there should be debate and a realistic appraisal of options, which is precisely what the liberals wish us to believe do not or should not exist. Repatriating these individuals does not doom us to repeating some tribal slaughter or ethnic cleansing of the past. Instead, this is about simply undoing mistakes in a manner that is responsible toward all parties.

Let's face it, someone will have to accept the costs of these Islamists and Third-Worlders. Ideally, it would fall on the heads of those liberals who promoted the mass migration, but this is not realistically possible. Instead, the question will have to be publicly asked and debated, who should bare the costs, those who came here to benefit or even to wreck havoc, or the native population? There is only one ethical answer to this question.

Misundercalculations

2005-09-23T21:47:00.000-07:00

I posted recently about the possibility that the perfect storm is brewing, both figuratively and literally, against Bush's open-border initiative. As many may already be aware, Bush seems to be desiring to push his amnesty program this fall with the support of big business and Hispanic organizations. Katrina seems to have thrown the administration's agenda off course temporarily, and Rita looks set to do the same. At least the next week is going to be spent by the media obsessing over Rita and it's aftermath. Come October first, we can expect to see the Minuteman project out in full force, manning both the southern and portions of the northern border.

Looking at the politics of the situation, time seems to be running out for Bush and his trans-national friends. The chances to head-off the Minutemen and their press storm are running out. Certainly the Minutemen will be able to get up and running before the administration has a chance to re-focus the agenda from Rita to a "guest worker" program. The best they may be able to do is co-opt the growing furry over the border by trying to sell their "solution" as a fix rather than a big business/ethnic lobby giveaway. Since Delay seems to have made clear that enforcement must come before any "guest worker" program in the House, it is unlikely that the administration will be able to pull a fast one on us.

Another aspect where the clock is ticking is the upcoming congressional election in 2006. Party discipline may hold for a little while longer, but before long many in congress are going to be looking at this popular revolt and considering how to maximize their chances to get reelected. As I have predicted before, there is likely going to be a significant split this fall or winter as congressional Republicans realize that Bush's lifeboat is really more of a sinking cast iron bathtub. Even Bush stopped talking about his open-border initiative during the run-up to the 2004 election; does he really expect that congressmen think they will gain politically from voting for it?

My guess is that the open-border coalition which the administration built over the summer was designed to be used to counter the Minuteman Project, ideally to saturate the press with favorable "guest worker" noise right before the October campaign, and thus hopefully blunt the grassroots effort. Personally, I think that these two large Hurricanes were not in anybody's plans, and have thrown the Bush camp into a seriously weakened position. Let's hope Rove is kept pre-occupied for the foreseeable future.

Police Looting

2005-09-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

Here is a remarkable CNN video about police looting in New Orleans. Watch the NOPD's spokesman invent bold-face lies about what some of its officers are doing. Remarkable.

The Times they are A-Changin'

2005-09-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

I have a rather busy week or ten days ahead, projects, traveling to another city for an interview, etc, so I may not be as active on this blog as I would like during this period. I do have plans to have a very important essay coming up for this blog however, which I hope will be a significant advancement in the discussion of political correctness, or will at least provide some new insights. There was one incident today however which I wanted to write about before I forget.

While running some errands today, I had just gotten off the elevator after an undergraduate who looked to be the anti-red-neck: well (and metro-sexually) dressed, likely upper-middle class in background, and by any guess probably the touchy-feely liberal type. I reached the office I was going to while our metro-sexual friend continued down the hall to where about 8-10 other white undergraduates were setting waiting for class. What happened next was surprising, as he greeted his fellow classmates as "my fellow minorities", which they apparently found both a funny and astute observation. They followed with some more politically incorrect joking along the same vein, which I couldn't quote make out in entirety other than when somebody cried out "I can't believe I just said that!". Nothing was especially cruel or hateful mind you, it was just the awareness that was shocking. Since when could you refer to whites in a group, as a group, among a bunch of acquaintances you probably don't know very well?

Of course, it is easy to dismiss this as nothing, and perhaps in the big scheme of things it is, but I would argue that there is much more going on here than meets the surface. I have written before on this blog about the growing awareness on campuses, especially among young white males, that political correctness is aimed primarily at us. This instance, if dissected, revels several interesting things going on. First, an implicit or explicit group identity is referred to, perhaps as a joke, but referred to none the less. Secondly, this was done rather publicly, and not only was there little or no opposition that I could detect, the other members of the group appeared to join in. Third, by referring to whites as a minority (one assumes they were waiting for a class with a large number of minorities/foreign students in it), there was clearly at least a subconscious, instinctive concern being raised about the changing demographics of our country.

None of this was especially ideologically well defined I am sure; as I have mentioned before, this growing realization or consciousness is largely ad-hoc in that there is no real theoretical or abstract thinking behind it (yet). And interestingly from my (albeit finite) experience, the phenomenon is at least as strong among nominal Democrats, suggesting that this is no red-neck conspiracy either. What to make of this in its entirety, I don't yet know. I do believe however that increasingly among the young "intellectual class" there is a growing refusal of the riches of Egypt for the hope of the Promised Land. All that I can say with any certainty is that just as when our Founding Fathers expressed the natural rights and traditions of Englishmen in terms of the ideas of the Enlightenment, so too we must re-express these eternal and ancestral rights that form a part of our heritage in the ideas of today, be that genetics, evolutionary psychology, bio-politics, or any number of new and powerful tools that await our use. We can only fail if we don't try.

Frame It

2005-09-21T18:49:00.000-07:00

This is an excellent chart which everyone should print out and keep as a handy reference. It will go a long ways in explaining many aspects of society. I will probably refer back to it often, but I just re-found it and wanted to share. Article here.

Playing Grown-Up

2005-09-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Rita is going to be providing an interesting opportunity for comparison and contrast in the response of the state governments. At this point we still don't know much about how it will turn out of course, but so far the response of Texas has been sharply contrasting to that of Louisiana.

Although Galveston police don't plan to drag reluctant residents off the island, city officials reassured residents no one who wants to leave would be left behind. Sharon Strain, head of the Galveston Housing Authority, said anyone who can't make it to the buses would be picked up.

"We've got more bus space than people and I'm not going to send them off empty,'' said City Manager Steve LeBlanc. "We are going to hold empty buses until the bitter end."

Evacuating the frail has become a top priority. Clear Lake Regional Hospital and Mainland Medical Center began evacuating patients today, along with the Isle's only hospital, the University of Texas Medical Branch Galveston.

This morning UTMB Galveston was evacuating 450 patients by helicopter and ambulance. Plans call for adult patients to go to the Univeristy of Texas Health Center at Tyler and children to go to Children's Hospital of Austin.

This is all very strange, if we are to believe the liberals and the multi-cultural right. Louisiana was blessed with diversity in leadership, in the form of both a female governor and a young black mayor for New Orleans. Surly with the blessing that these normally repressed groups bring to our fair land, one would expect things to be exactly the opposite, with the white man's oligarchy in Texas mired hopelessly in cronyism and groupthink as the killer storm approaches.

One of the things about the disaster of Katrina that was hard to miss was the feeling that the leadership both in NO and of the state was playing grown-up. To them, this wasn't a real life or death event, instead it was like playing cop or mommy; they were living in their own little make-believe world. After all, they had watched the white man's oligarchy enough to see there was nothing to leadership. Anyway, it was there turn to run the show, so who are you to criticize them? Their make-believe world did not last long however, ultimately leaving them even more child-like as they screamed and thrashed about, blaming everyone but themselves and demanding someone come and clean up their mess.

In all of this, we can clearly see the hand of political correctness which has cut its path of destruction across our society in true hurricane-like fashion. Words like discipline, accountability, and responsibility are precisely what is required to run a tight operation in an emergency situation like Katrina or Rita, however these are not very PC. After all, the leadership in Katrina was new and improved Humanity 2.0; anything that might hurt anybody's feelings just wasn't allowed.

All this covers up much of what is behind the white man's supposed oligarchy that makes it so efficient (generally). First among the keys to success is competition; real competition, where nobody gets to make excuses and if you fail, there is always somebody else who wants your place. One of PC's favorite sins is to be harsh, to fail to be understanding; however this is precisely how the outside world, reality, is.

There are of course women and minorities that are on an equal plane in the white man's world; however the problem with political correctness is that it is so hungry for a "desirable" candidate that it looks past qualifications or merit, even to the point of denial of faults or failures. In the grown-up world however, this is a recipe for disaster.

Disloyal Party Members: To the Gulag!

2005-09-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

From Jim Gilchrist's site:

Attendees at the state convention of the California GOP were shocked and dismayed to learn that operatives of candidate John Campbell had attempted to move a resolution that threatened with “expulsion from the California Republican Party” any member of the state GOP who “supports, advocates, or assists in any way” the campaign of Congressional candidate “Minuteman” Jim Gilchrist.

Phil Paule, who works closely with advisors of the Campbell campaign, introduced a draft resolution to the Rules Committee against Gilchrist that would have effectually made the State Chairman of the California Republican Party a “Grand Inquisitor” of political conformity.

Also listen to Jim on the Terry Anderson Show here.

Like Locust to the Corn

2005-09-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

Vie American Patrol, here is a recent account from an Austin, TX parade:

Near the end of the melee, one of my Hispanic friends walked over to me and began pointing out people wearing shirts promoting the author of the Plan of San Diego. Another friend who has taken Latin-American studies pointed out another shirt directly mentioning the Plan of San Diego.

Folks, every time I think I know everything about Texas history, I learn how ignorant I am. I asked my friends what the Plan of San Diego was and they told me that it was a plan in Northern Mexico and throughout the Southwest hatched in 1915 that called for the genocide of all white males over 16.

I’ve known my friends for many years, but I couldn’t believe them. I got home and spent three hours on the Internet at the University of Texas’ historical website, at other universities’ websites in Mexico and Illinois, and on the website of the Hispanic Historical Society.

What I learned chilled me. They didn’t just write up a plan, they acted upon it, killing at least 21 white males in South Texas in cold-blooded murder. We’re talking helter-skelter, Charlie Manson-type cold-blooded murder of random white ranchers and farmers: cornering people and hacking them up.

American Patrol also reminds us of the quote by Presidential Medal of Freedom recepiant Mario Obledo who a few years ago said:

California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doen't like it should leave.

Compared to advocating genocide, that statement sounds quite mild today.

What is most frustrating about both of these instances however is just how large of lies they are. These Third World Hispanics don't want their own country or state; they already have it south of the border, and it is a veritable hell hole.

No, this is about something different. As much as white-flight may be politically incorrect to talk about, it is certainly less so than its unmentionable cousin "minority tag-along". From a previous post:

One of the results of a politically correct, multicultural (PC/MC) society is to radically reinvent society into a form of bondage or coerced association between a collection of productive individuals on one hand, and parasitic individuals or groups on the other.

...

For some, the thought of calling the parasitic elements of society "parasitic" may seem cruel or hard-hearted; however there is no other word which better describes the situation. It is certainly true that if some individuals take, then some productive individuals somewhere else must in turn give. In this way, there is a clear hierarchy of dependence, but it is only a one-way dependency. It should be obvious that these parasitic elements of society benefit from a system that they neither created, nor could ever create if left to their own devices. Further, it is certainly right to call this state of affairs unjust, for that is what it is.

When California becomes mired in crime and corruption, when the coders and engineers leave Silicone Valley, when the people in the city by the bay find they are surrounded by not so "gentile people" anymore, when this "New Mexico" is achieved, what then? Perhaps Colorado or Washington will become the new California or Texas to be beset upon?

Like locust to the corn, like fire to the ripe field, these raiders know no fullness or end.

Gilchrist for Congress: 15 Days Left

2005-09-19T15:34:00.000-07:00

I have put up Jim Gilchrist's banner on the right sidebar. I strongly believe that he is a very good person to send to Congress, both on his own merits, and to send a message to our political leaders.

Please do your part. We hear a lot about patriotism, but if there was ever an opportunity where such a small price could pay such huge dividends, this is it. Consider doing one or more of the following:

Donate! Jim obviously does not have the backing of big business or other deep pockets.

Put one of his banners on your site. Get them here.

Volunteer if you live in the area, or if you have friends in the area, encourage them to do so.

Talk it up. Spread the word, post about it on your blog, tell anyone you know who is concerned about the border, etc. Encourage others to donate and spread the word too.

UPDATE: I posted this yesterday, but I may move it up again periodically for the next couple of weeks. 15 days left!

Friends of the Border Patrol versus Third World Enrichment

2005-09-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

Here is some more news about the recent violence against the FBP which will break anyone's heart who believes in and loves America as the land of the free:

The organizer of an anti-illegal immigration group that has attempted to launch a border-watch effort over the weekend said he may take his operation underground, it was reported today.

Andy Ramirez, organizer of Friends of the Border Patrol, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that he was worried about his and participants' safety after a run-in with protestors during a training session Saturday.

"We're not scared," Ramirez told the newspaper. "If it means that we put our people out there quietly, then that's how we do it."

Ramirez says his plans to stage civilian border patrols have not been canceled despite the low turn out of only 25 participants at the training session at the Mission Valley Resort Hotel.

Some participants have told the Union-Tribune other prospective participants were scared away after a confrontation with a small crowd of protestors at the Scottish Rite center, where sign-ups were held Saturday morning.

Where did we go so wrong? As Americans, we were taught that we had certain rights, certain inaliable rights, that could not be infringed upon. What difference does it make if the government is going around attacking people who they disagree with, or if it is violent "residents"?

NRA to the Rescue

2005-09-19T08:32:00.000-07:00

Vie Michelle Malkin, the NRA is looking into the shameful issue of gun confiscation in New Orleans.

On Monday, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, and NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox slammed New Orleans authorities for this incredible action.

“What we’ve seen in Louisiana-the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of disaster-is exactly the kind of situation where the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves, ” LaPierre said. “For state, local, or federal government to disarm these good people in their own homes using the threat of imminent deadly force, is unthinkable.”

“The NRA will not stand by while guns are confiscated from law-abiding people who’re trying to defend themselves,” Cox said. “We’re exploring every legal option available to protect the rights of lawful people in New Orleans.”

...

If you have personally had a gun confiscated in Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina hit, please call (888) 414-6333. Be prepared to leave only your name and immediate contact information so we can get back to you. Once again, we are seeking contact information from actual victims of gun confiscation in Louisiana only.

Also see this previous post, about the importance of practicing the Second Amendment.

National Policy Institute

2005-09-18T21:11:00.000-07:00

I am very happy and proud to have discovered a new think tank organization which has just opened its doors in Washington, DC. The National Policy Institute is a organization which we have been needing for some time, poised to fill a void with responsible, academic quality information and publications. They are just getting their site online, but more publications will be coming soon it looks like. Look at the organization and consider if it might be something you would like to donate to.

Some Things Never Change

2005-09-18T20:12:00.000-07:00

I was reading this article about the envisioned potential expansion of the ability of the military to operate on US soil, and it reminded me of something that I was reading last night from Tacitus' account of the German people about two thousand years ago:

They choose their kings by birth, their generals for merit. These kings have not unlimited or arbitrary power, and the generals do more by example than by authority. If they are energetic, if they are conspicuous, if they fight in the front, they lead because they are admired.

It is interesting in several aspects. First, we see a President Bush, a President Clinton X 2, a President Bush X 2, and now many Democrats are hoping for a President Clinton. Monarchy anyone?

Secondly however, is that one of the outcomes of New Orleans is that for perhaps the first time (at least in over a century) we are looking at the military as a prime source of domestic order and authority. Certainly with the combination of increasing ethnic instability and distrusted public officials, the military (which I believe is the single most trusted institution in the country, reportedly as I recall with about 80% approval) has grown in power and sway. While still a crazy though, the idea that a military coup could take place in America, given the right circumstances, no longer seems quite as ridiculous.

I can't help but wonder if we are not moving backwards, though ironically I would worry much less about a military government than Jesse Jackson running the show "democratically".

Hey, General Franks seems like a nice guy...

Smelling Blood in the Water?

2005-09-18T19:44:00.000-07:00

Drudge reports that Clinton is "turning" on Bush. From this article:

Former US president Bill Clinton sharply criticized George W. Bush for the Iraq War and the handling of Hurricane Katrina, and voiced alarm at the swelling US budget deficit.

Breaking with tradition under which US presidents mute criticisms of their successors, Clinton said the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq "virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction."

As I wrote in a previous post today, Bush is defiantly looking weak. He has pulled out of some tough situations before, and Clinton's duplicity may yet hurt him and the Democratic party. However it is interesting to see someone with Clinton's political instincts sensing the weakness right now, as opposed to earlier (i.e. the presidential election) or waiting till at least the congressional elections. This is no time for Bush and the Republicans to be disappointing their conservative base, or giving hand-outs to big business and the open-border lobby.

Many conservatives will be inclined at this point to complain about how it is all the fault of a negative media, and this is no doubt true to a certain degree. However many of Bush's wounds are self-inflicted. In politics, "what have you done for me lately" is always the question of the hour. Let's look at a few areas where Bush and the Republican congress could have shown some leadership and action:

Spending
Illegal immigration
Protecting the border from terrorist and WMD crossing
Radical Islam state-side
Public education
Affirmative action
Competent global diplomacy
Having public communication skills
More...

Where has the media been on these issue? With few exceptions, the media will not even touch most of these issues, so we know that leftist media is not really to blame. Who is then?

If conservatives want improvement, they are going to have to express their disappointment, and even more so, withhold their support. With a year to go before the mid-term elections, now is as good a time to do it as any. Perhaps if enough bloggers and pundits give Bush and Co. the cold shoulder, they will wake up before it is too late.

UPDATE: ShrinkWrapped has another theory why Clinton is doing what he is doing, specifically, that he fears that there is going to be dirt coming out against his administration concerning perhaps the Able Danger story, and he wants to be on the offensive rather than defensive. Not a bad theory really.

Of course, you could combine the two: Clinton could have been waiting for an opportunity to attack Bush when he is weak, while working with him when he was strong. This is classic Sun Tzu:

When ten to the enemy's one, surround him.
When five times his strength attack him.
If double his strength, engage him.
If equally matched, be capable of dividing him.
If less in number, be capable of defending yourself.
And, if in all respects unfavorable, be capable of eluding him.

A Country Boy Can Survive

2005-09-18T16:10:00.000-07:00

Steve Sailer posts this bit from the AP, which I thought was remarkably hilarious:

The Wal-Mart store in uptown New Orleans, built within the last year, survived the storm but was destroyed by looters. "They took everything -- all the electronics, the food, the bikes," said John Stonaker, a Wal-Mart security officer. "The only thing left are the country-and-western CDs."

Yes that's right people, the racist media just took pictures of black people looting and cut all the honkys out. Sure...

Ok, I am going to stop before I get myself into trouble.

UPDATE: Ok, more trouble.

Bill "pink/grey" Whittle has this to say...

Tribes. Pink. Grey. Green, red, yellow, pink. Rainbows! Rainbows...I love gay people. Rainbows everywhere. I have a dream. I see a light. Light everywhere. A thousand points of light!

A thousand points of light!

Light everywhere. A thousand points of light...

UPDATE 2: Ok, it was gray tribe, not blue. Well anyway, don't drink and blog I guess.

Katrina, Bush, and the Defeated of the Spanish Armada: Could History Repeated Itself?

2005-09-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

I think that we are all familiar with the story of the almost miraculous defeat of the Spanish Armada, a critical junction in history and especially that of the Anglo-Saxon world. I have started to wonder however, if history might be repeating itself in some blessed way, if the wind may be turning to favor our sails and thus save America from the dark future the leftists would have in store for us.

What am I talking about? Well there are a number of events coming together which may produce the perfect storm against the open-border advocates. Chief among them is the October Minuteman Project border watch, which will once again put the issue of border control front and center in the public mind. Without the proper political environment and dynamics however, the efforts of these patriotic citizens would be seriously hampered, as leftists and multi-cultural Republicans work together to defeat the broad will of the American people once again.

We are probably all aware of the plan that the White House has been developing for this fall to combine open-border activists, Hispanic organizations, and big business donors to launch a massive campaign to sell some kind of amnesty program (sorry, "guest worker program") which Bush has made clear that he wants congress to pass this year. Yet no matter how treacherously many of our leaders and elites have behaved, a storm seem to be developing both literally and figuratively. A combination of events, from growing public awareness of the problem of illegal immigration, to Katrina and the tragedy/farce that was New Orleans, to the continued peace keeping operations in Iraq, to the London Bombings, are forcing Americans to think about where the country is headed, and about the credibility of our leadership.

Vie Real Clear Politics, the poll numbers for support of Bush and congress are falling to record lows. Bush has what I assume is the lowest approval rating of his career, at 41.9% (avg), which if falls much lower will probably be a sign of irrevocable damage among the base. Our hope is probably found more in Congress than with world-citizen Bush however, and here is where numbers really start to hurt (and motivate). As a whole, Congress has an approval rating of 33.3% (avg) which is rather low by any standard. Worse still, a generic congressional ballot poll gives the Democrats a 7.3% (avg) advantage over Republicans, which has to make incumbents in many districts quite nervous. One of the worst, yet perhaps most honest signs however, is the fact that on the "is the country headed in the right direction" question, Americans who are normally optimistic to a fault give yes 30.3% (avg), versus 64.7% (avg) for no.

The reality of the situation that is developing is that voters are going to be in no mood to hear about the latest open-border initiative; instead, they want solutions, and not solutions which are supposedly going to make the problems better sometime in the far future. The American public is increasingly in a bad mood, ready to finally quite taking the abuse and neglect of the political leadership.

As I have mentioned before, congress seems to be very bi-stable, in that they are either going in one direction or the other, but they rarely dally around in between. There is a strong herd/flock mentality, in that each wants to be the first on a new trend or popular cause (once it is clear it is actually popular of course), and the first to leave one that is growing stale. In this way, I believe that the Tancredos and Coburns can greatly amplify their principled and normally marginalized positions, as they lead the way to solving some of America's worst problems.

On of the great tragedies of the current political climate is that the American people really don't have very many options with regard to how they can vote when they get fed up with the current regime. As bad as the mainstream Republican party has become, the Democratic party is completely unsuitable for governing. However it is quite possible that many may turn to the Democratic party, third parties, or simply stay home in 2006 to express their dissatisfaction. Increasingly, any national politician which wishes to get elected to Congress on the Republican ticket is going to have some tough decisions to make.

If I were to make a prediction, I would predict that soon, probably this fall or winter at least, we are going to see a major shift in the Republican party and between Congress and the White House. The only way that many in congress are going to survive the potential nuclear winter of the mid-term congressional elections will be if they can make Bush out as the multi-cultural "conservative" of the Republican party, a veritable Hillary if you will, and define themselves against him. The message is going to have to be populist, and the core Republican platform will probably have to be re-evaluated for the sake of expediency. Free trade, border control, the environment and over-population, energy dependency and (increasing) the size of the military are just a few of the issues that likely could be hit upon. The results may not be the rise of some principled arch-conservatism of days past that some may imagine (sorry folks, times change), but instead should be aimed at building common ground with middle-class Democrats which share concerns about illegal immigration, US jobs, schools, and explicitly or implicitly anti-white practices and policies (I know a lot of Democrats which fit this category, so don't even thinking about laughing). However if we do not turn around the immigration/demographic situation in this country soon, all our conservative dreams of government are going to be permanently lost as we are suffocated by the leftist's "bread and circuses" program of resource re-allocation and vote buying.

None can tell the future, and there is certainly no reason to slack up or believe that things are going to be fine. However I have recently come to believe that we should be heartened, as I think our fate may be about to change. Once again, the Anglo-Saxon world may be saved by a set of circumstances beyond anyone's control. Let us hope.

Wisconsin Six

2005-09-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

I have got to admit, I had heard nothing about this tragedy:

Chai Vang, the Hmong immigrant who murdered six Wisconsin hunters last November has been found guilty on six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder. However, this verdict is not enough. All of his victims were white and his vicious behavior went much farther than simple murder.

Vang was trespassing on private land, when he came upon the group of men and women on a yearly Thanksgiving hunting trip: Robert Crotteau, 42; Joey Crotteau, 20; Al Laski, 43; Mark Roidt, 28; Jessica Willers, 27; and Denny Drew, 55. Only one person in the group actually had a gun!

There has been a growing problem with Hmong hunters trespassing on private lands in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Hmong regularly hunt game out of season, none have licenses, and many reportedly use AK-47 assault weapons.

Robert Crotteau confronted Vang and ordered him to leave as well as report him to game authorities. Vang began walking away, then turned and opened fire on the group.

Vang used a semi-automatic rifle, which held a 20-round clip. He gunned down all eight of the hunters. Five of them died in the woods, one succumbed to his wounds in the hospital, and two survived the attack.

Sawyer County Chief Deputy Tim Zeigle described the murder scene by saying: "Vang was chasing after them and killing them. He hunted them down."

Maybe this is why...

Make no mistake, had a white man been chasing down a group of unarmed Asians, picking them off one by one--the news coverage would trump that of the Natalee Holloway case. The FBI would also consider the massacre to be a 'hate crime.' However, it is never considered to be hateful nor racist when the murder victims are white.

Unarmed Volunteers Attacked and Terrorized in San Diego, US Flag Desecrated

2005-09-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

Vie American Patrol, Andy Ramirez's FBP had a meeting yesterday, here is some of what happened:

...The Captain instructed our volunteers where to meet up and was almost immediately confronted by an angry mob. An American flag was immediately desecrated by being torn away from our volunteers, off its pole, and onto the ground where it was stomped on and kicked. This vile act was committed by an individual who had concealed his face from cameras. We do have video footage, which was released by the volunteer to the media and shown in San Diego on their television newscasts.

Individuals on tape were also assaulting and battering a number of senior citizens. Here's something to consider. These young people assaulted our volunteers, many of whom have served our nation in the military with distinction, which includes senior citizens. To show the footage, which we'll post asap on our website, will absolutely leave you speechless, and angry. The protesters stalked our volunteers around the site, screamed in their ears, were cursed at, physically assaulted and battered, trespassed on private property, and participated in crimes of hate and acts of terrorism.

The video is supposed to be up soon, and I will link when it is. Please do your part to pass this information along. It is simply unacceptable that Americans be deprived of their rights by foreigners on our own soil.

The Revenge of the Productive, Revisited

2005-09-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I wrote a three part series titled “Revenge of the Productive” which was essentially a thought experiment looking at what might happen if mass underclass immigration continues indefinitely. The assumption was made that the underclass would be fairly content and happy, as long as they could be subsidized by the productive class, which would ironically imply that the productive class would be the most likely to agitate for change.

Since the events in New Orleans a few weeks ago, much of what I wrote in the series, especially about the weaknesses of a multicultural, politically correct society, seems to have been clearly demonstrated. It is with that in mind that I am amending and annotating the series. Besides some spelling corrections and edits, the posts are essentially the same in content however.

Part I

Internally or externally imposed order?

One of the results of a politically correct, multicultural (PC/MC) society is to radically reinvent society into a form of bondage or coerced association between a collection of productive individuals on one hand, and parasitic individuals or groups on the other. In every society there have always been children, the elderly, handicapped, and others who could not fully support themselves. However, this new coerced association is marked by the degree to which fully capable adults and feral youths do not contribute, and by the presence of an underclass which is disproportionally costly to society or even anti-social. One of the results of a highly developed, highly educated, yet redistributive society is that even individuals who do some form of minimum-wage work may still be a net-loss to society due to the degree to which they are subsidized, directly or indirectly (consider health care, or driving without auto-insurance as examples).

For some, the thought of calling the parasitic elements of society "parasitic" may seem cruel or hard-hearted; however there is no other word which better describes the situation. It is certainly true that if some individuals take, then some productive individuals somewhere else must in turn give. In this way, there is a clear hierarchy of dependence, but it is only a one-way dependency. It should be obvious that these parasitic elements of society benefit from a system that they neither created, nor could ever create if left to their own devices. Further, it is certainly right to call this state of affairs unjust, for that is what it is. If one doubts the necessity or value of the productive elements of society, Bangladesh, Mexico, and Zimbabwe should provide sufficient examples to learn from.

While the parasitic elements have benefited from this redefinition of society, many of the leftist and elitist fetishes which have been foisted onto society in these last few decades have only been possible as long as the law-abiding citizens have keep society functioning. It would seem that the democratic process would easily solve this abuse, but there have been several major obstacles which have prevented this from happening. First, those most influential and well off often benefit from the system, or tend to be protected from its negative effects. Secondly, politicians have long since realized that redistributive government measures make it easy to buy the votes of the parasitic elements. Finally, our PC/MC society has made it very difficult to even raise the concerns and interests of the productive elements of society in a direct and honest fashion, much less to actually build enough consensuses to generate political results except in the most extreme instances of abuse, such as welfare reform in the 90's. This produces something of a conundrum for the productive middle class however, because unlike say, the riots during the civil rights period, they cannot easily engage in mass-scale civil-disobedience without collapsing the very pillars that keep society held up.

The rather obvious danger is that society will slowly sink to the level of the lowest element, or at least diverge into an overclass and underclass as is the case in many third world countries. However there is a second possibility which could emerge, especially in an Anglo-Saxon, common-law culture, specifically, that the productive citizens might turn the tables and force the rest of society to recognize their importance. It should not be forgotten that the productive elements of society also have the potential to be far more effective in their application of destructive action than others: what they create they can also destroy. Their superior social organizing ability, education, sense of order, and productivity trace back to what Victor Davis Hanson calls the Western way of war, and has long provided the West with an advantage over its adversaries.

By "destructive action", one should not take this to mean anti-government para-military action, terrorism, or any other such extremism however. The probability of any actual revolt by the productive elements of society would tend to be exponentially more likely with respect to lowering the threshold of action. This is to suggest that civil-disobedience/civil-disorder type behavior would both be the most likely result of middle class frustration, and probably the highest degree of disobedience and danger which would still draw large support. For this to be a possibility would require that these social-disobedience/civil-disorder type actions would need to be effective enough to have at least some chance of generating change. If this condition can not be established, then the chances of such instability are quite low.

Part II

Internally or externally imposed order?

Now I will state here, in case anyone who is not already familiar with this blog is unsure, that I am not suggesting, condoning, glorifying, or in any other way supporting any form of revolt. Rather, at the center of my reasons for this blog is a belief that our PC/MC society is rapidly approaching a point of becoming socially and politically unstable; my hope therefore is that we can correct the problem before it is too late and while these changes can be made peacefully and democratically. In other words, the motivation behind this post is to sound out what we might be looking at in a decade or two if we do not take action soon. [Recent events suggest that one to two decades may be far too optimistic.]

Now back to the primary topic: what actions might the productive elements of society take should their frustration reach a tipping point? Some would be rather predictable -- forming associations to promote their interests, lobbying congress, protesting, and even strikes all seem rather plausible. On the other extreme end of the spectrum, we would likely see a rise of extremist groups, especially among youths. However none of these actions seem very effective except for national strikes, but even such strikes would be difficult to actually pull off effectively.

Internally or externally imposed order?

As in any case where resources are at a minimum and efficiency has to be maximized, serious thoughts must be given the methods used. Since the aim of any such actions would be ultimately political rather than merely destructive, a careful evaluation of the political situation would need to be made. Further, all available opportunities would need to be used to exploit the weaknesses of the opponent, and to trick them into working against themselves whenever possible. This would require a careful eye for their weaknesses, fissures, contradictions, and critical nodes.

Internally or externally imposed order?

What then, is the effective weakness, or at least a prime one, of the PC/MC society compared to the Jacksonian social order? It seems that the weakness is effectively whether individuals and groups have self-imposed order, or externally-imposed order.

Internally or externally imposed order?

The disadvantage which the productive elements face is that they not only have to maintain a self-imposed order, but they are also required to provide a minimum amount of external order for the parasitic elements of society. This boundary, where order is imposed internally or externally, is a core weakness of any PC/MC society, and one which presents a weakness which is very vulnerable from attack by any enemy, be it Islamic extremist, China or other foreign powers.

In keeping with the above then, it seems that creating the conditions to separate society clearly into these two groups, and emphasize the difference would be the political objective. In order to do this, it would be necessary to remove (temporarily) the means by which to effectively impose order, thereby allowing what amounts to an exaggerated opportunity for the exercise of free will. At the same time, individuals in the productive majority would be forced to reevaluate their ideological foundations in light of a more honest and realistic picture of society, shaking off the contradictions of the the PC/MC society.

What practical implementation might this strategy take? While there are many possibilities, one is given as follows. Using tactics which are non-violent (though possibly not generally considered merely "civil-disobedience") 3000-5000 individuals would carry out vandalizing attacks on key civil infrastructure: traffic control for major intersections, blacking out of the power grid, and obstructing major highways and transportation infrastructure. At the same time, further efforts to create disorder and swamp the civil authorities might be taken, such as setting tires and refuse on fire, agitating crowds of the unproductive elements, etc. All these activities would be taken simultaneously in 30-100 major urban centers, creating a sudden and unexpected disruption of order.

It should be clear that the efforts would not be designed to be especially destructive in and of themselves. Certainly with the lack of manpower available for such action and potential as few as 30-50 "activists" per urban area, their direct effect would be fairly limited. Rather, the objective of these actions would be to spark further unrest and disorder, as the parasitic elements realize that the civil authorities can not impose order on them, for the time being.

Internally or externally imposed order?

The efforts of the initial disruption of order would be a classical guerilla maneuver, which would be aimed at exposing the opponent and forcing them to overreact and show their true hand. By removing the effective enforcement of order from these parasitic elements, much in the way of their true nature would be reviled. Not only would there be the rather traditional rioting, looting, and opportunistic behavior that characterize such events, but radicalism, be it Islamic, La Raza, or other, would also likely be revealed. As these parasitic elements revel in their new-found "freedom", they would almost doubtlessly begin to display the arrogance of the mob as they overestimate their power and misread their opponents.

Certainly such a scenario would be a potential death-blow for the PC/MC society. With much of the media infrastructure (TV, internet, papers) temporarily disabled, there would be no way to reframe the situation or scapegoat it onto a less politically correct group; rather, individuals would be forced to make up their own minds based on the scene before the. By putting the instability of a PC/MC society on full display, there would be no room left to believe utopian schemes. Finally, the shared experience would tend to create a new sense of unity and identity among the productive class, thereby bringing the sense of "us" and "them" unmistakably out into the open.

Part III

Internally or externally imposed order?

From part II, it does seem reasonable that fairly low-threshold, non-violent action could prove to be very disruptive if targeted at the fault-lines of an unstable PC/MC society. Also, given the fairly small number of "activists" required to initiate such a situation, there would not necessarily need to be a unified productive class before-hand, but rather simply a dedicated core.

Internally or externally imposed order?

Despite the potential danger of such a situation unfolding, there is little reason to expect such a scenario would develop in the near term. First, there is still a significant lack of awareness of the problem among the productive elements of society. Further, multiculturalism has not yet reached its peak, and good economic conditions have masked over much friction between groups. Finally however, even action by a few thousand individuals in a coordinated manner would be quite unrealistic at this stage because of the difficulty of planning and recruiting members without detection by the authorities. Without an established infrastructure in which the productive elements could associate, plan, organize and built trust and relationships, executing such a plan would be essentially impossible.

However, should conditions continue to disintegrate, it is likely that organization on the part of the productive elements will increase. In a sense, the Minuteman Project is an example of the early consciousness of the collective interests of the productive class. The very existence of such an organization, combined with the publicity and the negative attacks directed against it also serves to further concentrate this group identity.

Internally or externally imposed order?

It has been mentioned by others that any violent attacks on the Minuteman Project volunteers while on the border, say by drug or human smugglers, would likely spawn a resurgence of the militia movement of the 90's (though probably not by Minutemen volunteers themselves). It is certainly true that much of the militia movement was in response to the perceived threats of the Clinton administration, and seems to have largely receded since the Bush administration. So it does seem rather plausible that continued failure by Washington to protect the border, combined with violent attacks on non-violent observers might cause the politically sensitive militia movement to reemerge.

A resurgent militia movement would be one sign not only of an increased awareness and organizing on the part of the productive class, but also potential preparation for action. However there could also be other organizing going on, with aims less radical than the militia. These organizations might center on other common interests or goals: concern over crime, collective political lobbying, or shared culture and ethnicity.

Internally or externally imposed order?

Certainly the next few years will be interesting to see how our PC/MC society develops. It is possible that efforts such as the Minuteman Project and others may gain enough momentum to start rolling back some of the excesses of our current society. It is also possible however that instability will grow as the parasitic elements mushrooms, creating a future which we will all wish we had avoided.

-I think at this point that the New Orleans situation has likely caused far more damage to the public perception of the current PC/MC society than we yet realize. There should certainly be no doubt that it had an effect on our enemies, especially China and Islam, as they realized just how volatile our social mix has become. It has become a very cute fetish for many individuals, even on the right, to talk about reforming these parasitic elements, but there is not an infinite time horizon to try these latest social engineering experiments in. The reality is that the situation at this point constitutes a grave national security threat, which makes it practically impossible that our nation with its current demographics could fight another WWII type situation without looking more like Brazil than the USA.

Help Jim Gilchrist

2005-09-16T15:57:00.000-07:00

Katie's Dad over at American Kernel posts on a subject that I have been meaning to get around to for some time. Specifically Jim Gilchrist is running for congress in a special election, and he needs all the support he can get. If he can win, it would be profoundly exciting to say the least. Read his background on his site, and you will see how well qualified he is. Donate today if you can!

JimGilchrist.com

Also read though American Kernel, as it has a bunch of good stuff.

Growing Frustration in Denmark

2005-09-16T15:46:00.000-07:00

Mikkel at Enough! has an excellent post about the growing sense of frustration and anger that people are feeling in Denmark resulting from the actions and attitudes of the many third world'ers living in their country.

...a couple of days ago in Sweden, a couple of Swedish girls were first harassed in the shop where they worked, then pelted with objects, called whores and beaten - especially when they began to resist being terrorized! One of the girls argued, when she was discharged from the hospital two days later, that "..one shouldn't be called whore just because one is Swedish and female.." - she does have a point... What she does not have however, is peace - being called whore in the ghetto of Ronna in Södertälje where this took (takes) place, is very normal for Swedish girls - and this particular girl has more ugly episodes to disperse.

Anyway, when the police arrived at the scene of the mini-ethnic-cleansing, they were attacked by the immigrants who quickly gathered into a swarm of 50 (fifty!) through their preferred means of communication through Mobile-phones. As usual, there were no respect for the police at all which were attacked, heckled, insulted, pelted with stones and so on. As the extremely right winged National Democrats reports: "The immigrants gave no impression of being a poor excluded group, to the contrary, many wore Rolex-watches, brand clothing and gold chain-necklaces in abundance".

IQ and Living Standards

2005-09-15T19:07:00.000-07:00

To continue with the subject of the post from yesterday about IQ and quality of government, the original blog post over at Right Economy blog also had this:

One IQ point is associated with 6.5% higher living standards, while moving up one country in the Ease rankings apparently raises livings standards by 0.6%. So (again, being cavalier about causality) you'd have to move up about 10 countries in the Ease rankings to get the same (long-run) benefit as raising national average IQ by one point.

What can this tell us about the situation that California is currently in?

First, some rough facts and assumptions. California has become about 50% hispanic. American hispanics are slightly over 10 points below whites. Hispanics from south of the border tend to have an even lower IQ, approximately 85 for Mexico, and perhaps lower still in Central America. I am also going to use the assumption that with all the tech industry in California, the mean white IQ is one point higher. Blacks and Asians won't be factored in. Also, the historical hispanic population will be assumed small enough that it can be ignored for this estimate. Illegal/first generation hispanics guessed at 20% of population.

Given the above, as a rough back-of-the-envelope estimation, I am going to estimate the mean IQ of California is about 7 points lower than in would have been without mass illegal immigration from south of the border. This then gives...

6.5% * 7 = 45.5%

In other words, this suggests that without the major population replacement we have seen in California, the standards of living would be approximately 40-50% higher than currently seen, or are likely to see in the future. (Perhaps it is somewhat misleading to suggest that living standards have changed, instead the changes may be yet to come as they probably change more slowly than the demographics.)

Obviously, there is a lot going on here that this estimation does not take into consideration. However, it is still a very interesting thought to consider.

Fighting Silence

2005-09-14T19:31:00.000-07:00

As many may or (more likely) may not know, The Color of Crime has just been released, which is a factual study of race and crime. Many of the findings are remarkable by any measure, but something that the MSN is quite silent about. I strongly recommend everyone read the VDare article about it, tell their family about it, and generally do whatever possible to shame the media into at least mentioning it.

Some interesting points from the article:

The proportion of blacks and Hispanics in an area is the single best indicator of how dangerous it is. The racial mix is a much better predictor of crime rates than poverty, unemployment, and dropout rates combined.

Although Jesse Jackson and Bill Cosby wring their hands over black-on-black mayhem, blacks actually commit more violent crime against whites than blacks. A black is about 39 times more likely to do violence to a white than the other way around, and no less than 130 times more likely to rob a white.

...

Some years back, a group called Violence Free Duluth in Duluth, Minnesota, studied a year's worth of the city's gun crimes. They looked into type of gun used, whether liquor or drugs were involved, the relationship between shooter and victim; age, race, and sex of criminal, etc.

But when they released their report they left one thing out: race of perp.

Frank Jewell, head of the organization, explained that "we didn't include it because it might be misinterpreted."

Duluth's deputy police chief Robert Grytdahl added that race might distract whites from the real problem: "It's a comfortable place for white people to park the [gun crime] problem. It would be a huge distraction, and we wanted to focus on firearms." [Duluth Gun, Crime Study Withholds Race Data, [Pay Archive] By Larry Oakes, Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 30, 1999.]

Mr. Jewell and Mr. Grytdahl are saying, almost in so many words, that the people of Duluth can't be trusted with the truth.

Duluth is about 90 percent white. What if it turned out most of the gun crime was committed by the other 10 percent?

Someone might think Duluth has, not a gun problem, but a minority problem.

When an organization deliberately suppresses its findings like this, it is not doing research: it is putting out propaganda.

Self-Reliance

2005-09-14T19:19:00.000-07:00

Pierre Legrand has a good post about why the 2nd Amendment is so important, and why it is so equally important to practice it:

If someone told you that a major city in the United States could descend into anarchy all of us would have probably dismissed them as a nutty survivalist that we might need to be careful around. If he went farther and declared that because of this possibility we should all make sure we not only had weapons but knew how to use them we would probably, even if we agree with the 2nd amendment, declare that a pitiful way to make the argument for owning and being trained to use firearms.

...

Obviously the argument that may be advanced by those trying to take our weapons away will be well no other city will be hit with such a deadly hurricane. Which completely forgets the small fact that we are at war with a group of people who think it would be peachy dandy to reduce several other cities to levels below that of New Orleans. Police protection in those instances would also be nonexistent since obviously they would be dealing with the disaster itself. For a short time at least you will be on your own and standing in front of your house with your finger pointed at a looter/thug is not going to be nearly as effective in convincing him to not steal your generator, food and water as my Stainless Steel Springfield GI-45 with a 5" barrel loaded with Winchester FMJ 230 gr and High Standard 20 gauge with the 18.5 inch barrel and #4 shot. Welcome to the brave new world of self reliance...something our grandfathers knew a bit about.

IQ & Good Governance

2005-09-14T19:07:00.000-07:00

Vie Steve Sailer, the Right Economy blog has a very interesting post about the correlation between IQ and the quality of government. While this is quite predictable, it is just one more reason why it is irrational to continue to pretend that we can design or manage social systems without inquiring what types of people they will contain.

Why would I think that higher national average IQ will lead to better governance? Well, mostly because of Linda Gottfredson. She's a sociologist who has looked at how higher intelligence helps people throughout their everyday lives. According to her, IQ tests measure a lot more than just "your skill at taking standardized tests." They measure key skills that are extremely helpful in just getting through the day (and in producing output).

Not All Cultures are Equal

2005-09-14T17:35:00.000-07:00

From the Guardian, vie EconoPundit:

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".

...

He suggested that the use of skin and other tissues harvested from executed prisoners was not uncommon. "In China it is considered very normal and I was very shocked that western countries can make such a big fuss about this," he said. Speaking from his office in northern China, he added: "The government has put some pressure on all the medical facilities to keep this type of work in low profile."

The agent said his company exported to the west via Hong Kong."We are still in the early days of selling these products, and clients from abroad are quite surprised that China can manufacture the same human collagen for less than 5% of what it costs in the west." Skin from prisoners used to be even less expensive, he said. "Nowadays there is a certain fee that has to be paid to the court."

Learning from Sun Tzu

2005-09-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

I have been doing my periodic re-reading of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and one part really stuck out:

If the war is long delayed, the men's weapons will be blunted and their ardor will be dampened. If the army attacks cities, their strength will be exhausted. Again, if the army engages in protracted campaigns, the resources of the state will not suffice. Now, when your weapons are blunted, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted, and your treasure spent, neighboring rulers will take advantage of your distress to act. In this case, no man, however wise, is able to avert disastrous consequences that ensue.

Thus, while we have heard of stupid haste in war, we have not yet seen a clever operation that was prolonged. There has never been a case in which a prolonged war has benefited a country. Therefore, only those who understand the dangers inherent in employing troops know how to conduct war in the most profitable way.

There are a lot of things which can be drawn from the above. Certainly China is laughing at us as we try to conduct a "humane" war against barbarians.

I have increasingly come to the realization that the war against Islam has not actually started. When history looks back at 9/11, I fear that it will view what we have been doing as merely pacifying the masses, government PR, if you will. This is a shame, and perhaps I will be wrong, but increasingly, I don't think that I will.

Remembering 9/11

2005-09-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

On today, the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, we have paused to remember the horrors of that day, most typified by the images of individuals jumping from the burning towers. Power Line Blog draws attention to one of the heroes of that day, Rick Rescorla:

Rescorla was a British native who moved to the United States to join the Army and fight in Vietnam. Rescorla was inspired to move to the United States in part by his friendship with Dan Hill, and their friendship is the one constant theme of the book. Hill and Rescorla had become friends in Rhodesia and self-consciously modeled themselves on the characters of Peachy and Dravot in Kipling's story "The Man Who Would Be King." They both served as officers in Vietnam, where in 1965 Rescorla saw harrowing combat in the Ia Drang Valley.

...

Rescorla died a hero's death saving his charges at Morgan Stanley in the south tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Rescorla was head of security for the company and directed the evacuation in which he had long drilled them. Using a bullhorn he shephered his charges into the tower's one usable fire escape and exhorted them that it was "a day to be proud to be an American."

UPDATE: Steve Sailer reminds us in the comments section that Rick Rescorla was depicted in the book and movie, "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young".

UPDATE 2: I think one of the truly sad, and really degenerate, aspects of our current state of affairs is our inability to really make men like Rescorla into popular heroes that we can rally around the way we could and would have in previous times such as WWII. Today people would call it "propaganda" if we took serious efforts to make Rescorla and Todd Beamer icons in a broader sense in our fight against Islam. But I think that these hero figures play a critical part in rallying and sustaining unity (and even more importantly, a sense of "us"), just as the Norse and Greek legends and sagas played in past times and cultures. Of course, I suppose that this is precisely what liberalism is so afraid of, that we might develop a taste for the blood of our murderous enemies and a sense of "us" and "them", and ultimately forsake our universalism.

Rejecting the Embrace

2005-09-10T18:04:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Auster neatly sums up the problem of both the "Crescent of Embrace" outrage, and more broadly, our modern society:

..seen from the point of view of our present society, it’s not an outrage, it’s simply the only way modern liberal people (and all modern people are basically liberals) can articulate any issue, which is global, open, inclusive. To assert “us” versus “them” is closed and intolerant, the very thing that must be overcome.

That’s why I say that only a principled renunciation of modern liberalism can really change things. As long as liberalism remains our dominant belief system, atrocities like this will be the norm.