Pluralism and Clarity

Bowery on the Bowery Tax

2012-02-10T19:32:00.000-08:00

I would like Jim Bowery to adumbrate his tax idea here. I do not understand it. He offers it as an alternative to both the status quo and to the Moldbug's self-assessed formalist tax (which is itself an alternative to Henry George's land value tax).

I have invited him to this thread to summarize the proposal and hopefully answer questions. I have no opinion on it other than that it is interesting and I couldn't digest it.

Correlation Data on Homicide and Race

2012-02-06T20:03:00.000-08:00

Over at HBD Chick's place I posted some data on homicide rates by region. These data are for murders per million residents, as per Wikipedia:

All the countries in Southern Africa – 373 (2004), 320 (2010)
All the countries in East Africa – 208 (2004), 230 (2010)
All the countries in Central America - 293 (2004), 250 (2010)
All the countries in West and Central Europe - 15 (2004), 12 (2010)

[Example of a particularly nice European country: France - 8 (2006)]

Data by US State came from an anti-death penalty site:

New Hampshire – 10 (2010), 8 (2009)
North Dakota – 15 (2010), 19 (2009)
West Virginia – 33 (2010), 46 (2009)
California – 49 (2010), 53 (2009)
Louisiana – 112 (2010), 118 (2009)
USA nationwide - 48 (2010)

So while the American totals are dramatically worse than West/Central Europe, it's impressive how much it varies from state to state. Almost looks like it varies with IQ, doesn't it?

Of course psychometrics enthusiasts wouldn't find that too surprising, but neither would race realists find it too surprising if it was correlated with race. The above data make it look like states that are racially equivalent to Europe are approximately as dangerous as Europe, with respect to murder/homicide. Since there are no US states with as a high a percentage of blacks as most African countries, we shouldn't be surprised that there are no states topping 200 murders per million inhabitants (and indeed only Louisiana tops 100, but of course DC is at about 234).

More direct data, from victimization reports, indicates quite the same thing (though as Queen Latifah proved recently, noöne will call you out if you ignore victimization data and concentrated on arrest data, which are allegedly tainted by racism).

HBD Chick recommended I do a post on this, so I decided to do a little research and put 2010 data on homicides by state together with data from the census of the same year on race and ethnicity by state. I used the state-by-state homicide data from the above site, while I found data on race and ethnicity at this US Census Bureau page.

Here are the data:

State	Homicide	White	Black	Hispanic
Alabama	62.5	68.5	26.2	3.9
Alaska	37.5	66.7	3.3	5.5
Arizona	61	73	4.1	29.6
Arkansas	54.5	77	15.4	6.4
California	51	57.6	6.2	37.6
Colorado	28	81.3	4	20.7
Connecticut	33	77.6	10.1	13.4
Delaware	49.5	68.9	21.4	8.2
Florida	53.5	75	16	22.5
Georgia	58	59.7	30.5	8.8
Hawaii	18	24.7	1.6	8.9
Idaho	14.5	89.1	0.6	11.2
Illinois	57.5	71.5	14.5	15.8
Indiana	47	84.3	9.1	6
Iowa	13	91.3	2.9	5
Kansas	39.5	83.8	5.9	10.5
Kentucky	43	87.8	7.8	3.1
Louisiana	115	62.6	32	4.2
Maine	19	95.2	1.2	1.3
Maryland	75.5	58.2	29.4	8.2
Massachusetts	29	80.4	6.6	9.6
Michigan	59.5	78.9	14.2	4.4
Minnesota	16	85.3	5.2	4.7
Mississippi	68	59.1	37	2.7
Missouri	67.5	82.8	11.6	3.5
Montana	29.5	89.4	0.4	2.9
Nebraska	26.5	86.1	9.2	7
Nevada	59	66.2	8.1	26.5
New Hampshire	9	93.9	1.1	2.8
New Jersey	39.5	68.6	13.7	17.7
New Mexico	84	68.4	2.1	46.3
New York	42.5	65.7	15.9	17.6
North Carolina	51	68.5	21.5	8.4
North Dakota	17	90	1.2	2
Ohio	43.5	82.7	12.2	3.1
Oklahoma	57.5	72.2	7.4	8.9
Oregon	23.5	83.6	1.8	11.7
Pennsylvania	52.5	81.9	10.8	5.7
Rhode Island	29	81.4	5.7	12.4
South Carolina	64	66.2	27.9	5.1
South Dakota	32.5	85.9	1.3	2.7
Tennessee	65	77.6	16.7	4.6
Texas	52	70.4	11.8	37.6
Utah	16.5	86.1	1.1	13
Vermont	12	95.3	1	1.5
Virginia	46.5	68.6	19.4	7.9
Washington	26	77.3	3.6	11.2
West Virginia	39.5	93.9	3.4	1.2
Wisconsin	26.5	86.2	6.3	5.9
Wyoming	17	90.7	0.8	8.9
DC	234	38.5	50.7	9.1

The first column of numbers is the 2009-2010 average homicides per million residents. After that are statistics from the 2010 census for two racial groups (whites and black) and one ethnic group (Hispanics).

Here are some correlation coëfficients:
Between homicide rate and number of whites ... - 0.584
Between homicide rate and number of blacks ... 0.784
Between homicide rate and number of Hispanics ... 0.136
Between homicide rate and sum of blacks & Hispanics ... 0.716
Between homicide rate and sum of blacks & adjusted Hispanics ... 0.816.

I wasn't satisfied with just correlating homicide and number of blacks, but adding in Hispanics detracts from the correlation (basically because Hispanics aren't nearly as homicidal as blacks). So I decided to try to sum blacks plus a fraction of Hispanics, with the fraction chosen to maximize the correlation. The fraction I eventually chose was 0.3125. (The latter is certainly not a formal multiple regression, but I've forgotten how to do that so for the time being it will have to suffice.)

In conclusion, the magnitudes of these correlations tend to support the thesis that blacks and Hispanics really are more prone to violent crime than whites, and that arrests of innocent blacks and Hispanics by racist police officers are not responsible for differing arrest rates.

(Coming up: I found a different site with the interesting "White persons not Hispanic" statistic, which I add into the data mix for comments below. I hypothesize that homicide and WNH will be even more strongly negatively correlated than homicide and whites. Rates for Europe broken out by country are available here.)

What Ron Paul Taught Me About Myself

2012-01-31T18:46:00.000-08:00

I went to a Ron Paul speech recently. The speech was fine--dispassionate, brief, full of facts. It was utterly devoid of the kind of character assassination that the public say it can't stand but secretly loves. (Incidentally, it was also full of support for the individual liberty the public says it loves but never seems to vote for. Also, it was full of painfully straight talk and devoid of feel-good rhetoric, but again the public doesn't really respond the way they said they would. I think I see a pattern.)

Another I noticed about the speech: very little security. Two or three police officers, unknown number of Secret Service people. I suppose that's the deal in parts so far north--a big crowd of scary people (we used to be called "Caucasoids") all tromping around with our boots in the ice-melter, cheering for an elderly obstetrician when he decried the National Defense Authorization Act. It was the least edgy political event I can even imagine.

I'm not just a Ron Paul supporter, I'm enough of a Ron Paul supporter that if Romney or Gingrich gets the nomination I'll drop my Republican registration (something I promised to do a while back anyway). I'm not really a Republican anyway, but if Ron Paul didn't exist I'd quip that I'd join any party in which someone like him was a prominent member and potential leader. So I suppose I'm being true to my alternate-reality self.

Seriously though, supporting Rep. Paul, with his bad immigration rating as a candidate (and a good one as a member of Congress), has shown that I was not quite honest with myself once in the past. It was probably in 2008. My wife asked me what issue was most important to me, repealing the PATRIOT Act or stopping immigration? (Somehow she knew killing affirmative action wasn't in my top two. It's in my top ten though.)

I told her stopping immigration was my highest priority, and if someone agreed with me on that issue and on no others, I would vote for that person in preference to a person who disagreed with me on immigration and agreed with me on all the others. Yet I prefer Paul over Rick Santorum.

It's not that I agree with Paul on everything else, or disagree with Santorum on everything else. But it's close enough that it gets the point across. At the end of the day, character and the correct stand on a dozen political issues trumps a rating from a single pressure group.

Major Political Reforms

2012-01-25T19:11:00.000-08:00

The formalist and the reactionary need a clear vision of the sociopolitical arrangements they seek. Herein I suggest a set of such arrangements. It matters not that reforms of this magnitude seem implausible with the current political culture and institutions, for the long-term survival of that culture and those institutions is itself implausible. We need something to look forward to after the collapse, a goal to strive for, a direction in which to persuade others.

If the initial reaction is that these ideas are too far-fetched, I'll acknowledge that that is a natural stance. But let me counter that anarchists of various flavors are often taken seriously, and that they offer much more radical reforms than anything I offer here. I do not seek to abolish armies or privatize the courts, nor do I seek massive expansions or contractions in property rights.

First, the generalities. We need to set course away from egalitarian democracy. A lot alt-rightists sum up their preferred state as a republic, in preference to an empire or a democracy. I offer a clarified vision: we seek to create a res adsiduorum - a thing not of the public but of the taxpayer. To this end we demand, not an end to elections, but an end to heartbeat suffrage, to be replaced by a measured franchise of net taxpayers and military personnel. (More about that later.)

In addition to res adsiduorum, we seek both decentralized government in the form of a federation or confederation, and constitutional government.

Runaway expansion of individual rights is a hallmark of leftism, to the point that others consider radical autonomy to be the soul of leftism. I consider the problems of laughably overextended conceptions of rights to merely be a symptom of modern degeneracy, one that is paired with growing collectivism in thought and centralization in governance. Individual rights, as well as group rights, can and should continue to be protected constitutionally. Alt-rightists who disagree can consider where our forum would be if the government could ban "hate speech".

More specifically, the res adsiduorum is built as much as possible on familiar constitutional terrain. Several provinces compose the confederation. They create a power structure of institutionalized jealousy in which, as much as possible, they lend personnel to the federal government, while at the same time creating small institutions of nationwide character.

Power flows from the provinces to the confederation largely through the congress. First we resurrect and old US idea and represent every province with an equal number of senators in the upper chamber. The senators serve longer, staggered terms and are elected by the provincial legislatures.

Second, we create a common, optional set of election rules for the provinces. Provinces which play by these rules can send a number of trustees to the lower chamber, with the provinces represented in proportion to their numbers of eligible voters. The rules specify that participating legislatures be elected exclusively by net taxpayers and military personnel, with each citizen's subsidies (welfare, contracts, scholarships, civil service pay, etc.) totaled and subtracted from direct tax paid. Furthermore, participating legislature must be elected by approval voting with no partisan role in nominations and no party affiliation listed on the ballot, which must be secret. From legislatures elected this way, trustees are selected at random and sent to the congress. (Provinces which opt out, for example using universal suffrage or partisan voting, send no trustees to the congress.) Ordinary sessions of congress and the legislatures are each six months, at opposite times of the year.

Rather than abandon the independent judiciary, a pillar of constitutional and limited government, we limit the power of activist judges by refining how judges are selected, and by narrowing the scope of the laws that they interpret. The lowest levels of judges is selected by a competitive examination analogous to a civil service exam or a bar exam, but one in which candidates are graded on their ability to apply textualism alone to answer questions. Higher levels of judges are chosen by the congress. Judges have mandatory retirement ages but beyond that they can only be removed by impeachment.

The confederation's executives are small in number and independent of one another. Executives with limited policy scopes (such as highway or oceans) serve at the pleasure of the congress. I see no reason they should number more than five. Congress also elects three executives to fixed terms: a president, with responsibility over the military and foreign policy, a chancellor, who guides fiscal policy, and an attorney general. No person who fancies himself an expert on all policy areas will be attracted to this branch of government.

Under these executives is a civil service, no member of which can serve the central government for more than five years out of any ten. A modern high-tech society simply could not govern itself with a civil service selected on the spoils system, but rotation in office is completely compatible with meritocracy.

I offer a raft of traditional and innovative measures to limit government and strengthen national civic life.
The power of the central government vis a vis the provinces is circumscribed by:

a constitutional provision similar to the 10th Amendment, limiting the federal government to enumerated powers,
a list of enumerated powers basically boiling down to Article I Section 8 minus the interstate commerce power, the power to coin money, the power to pass legal tender laws, and the power to establish post offices, plus the powers to levy a tax on limited-liability business, to pass laws to protect the natural environment (but see (1) in the next section), and to ensure safe transportation by air, interprovincial highway, and major waterway,
the omnipresence of provincial personnel in the legislative branch and their heavy representation in the civil service,
limits on the types of taxes the central government can levy (i.e. tariffs, excise taxes, and corporate income taxes only),
a two-year limit on any appropriation (similar to the limit the US constitution places on appropriations for the army),
a supermajority requirement for bond issues and all other forms of borrowing, and
an independent judiciary selected by textualist examination and by provincial trustees.

The power of the central government vis a vis the public is circumscribed by the above, plus:

an easy-repeal clause regarding restrictive legislation (any law preventing a citizen or business from doing something), which requires three-fifths of each chamber to vote in favor for passage, but only a simple majority voting to repeal, and
a bill of rights similar to relevant American and Canadian law.

That is res adsiduorum in a nutshell. I will provide more details if I scrape the time together, including an actual geographical setting for the project, locations of capitals, names of departments, etc.

Excerpts from "Obscene Liberal Anger"

2012-01-17T17:52:00.000-08:00

Over at OneSTDV's blog, there was a very provocative post on Obscene Liberal Anger. Before I mercilessly killed the thread, I got into a pretty interesting discussion with a commenter named Dave. My championing the HBD-believing alt-rightist position please a couple of other posters so I decided to preserve what I thought were the highlights here. I have added a few explanatory comments in square brackets and deleted extraneous stuff.

To see the discussion itself, read the thread. OneSTDV's original post is good and a lot of the comments are too. What I present below is more of an anthem than a discussion.

If most slaves were bought from locally-ruled (black-ruled) areas, what would this imply about the rulers of the region and their attitudes toward labor force development? Would we expect a ruler whose impulse toward his workforce was to sell it would spend a lot of resources on education, roadbuilding, sanitation, etc.?

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The way we know that Western influence was, on balance, harmful to SSA [Sub-Saharan Africa] is...? I don't know how we know, on the balance. I've seen awful things the King of Belgium did to the Congolese, and I've seen the British struggling to build railroads and abolish slavery. Is free labor and a British-built railroad a subtle kind of cultural poison?

[In ancient times] some folks moved out of East Africa / SW Asia and started adapting to life in Eurasia. Some didn't. Both have had the same amount of time to evolve, but not in the same places. So we still freeze to death if we try to spend the night in light clothing in a Scandinavian winter. Not so in Mother Africa.

Missionaries struggled and died and got awful diseases trying to save Africa from death and disease. All we remember about them is that their fave sex position isn't very racey. Setting aside whether or not it matters, how do we know the missionaries did more harm than good?

You can't count the Ghana Empire [as an indigenous black African attempt at civilization, unspoiled by the imperialist West] because...? I guess I don't know why not. You don't think Charlemagne was "fucking them up", do you? Byzantium? Whose "fucking" was it that was preventing them from developing a written language, or building a capital that can be located today?

The absolute limits for civilizations are extremely high. I don't believe [sub-Saharan Africans] could have broken the light barrier, but I believe they could have broken the sound barrier. People can certainly developing the same basic technology in different places, without anyone copying anyone. Look, for example, at an SSA technological innovation ca. 1800--the basic armament that the Zulus used to dominate southern Africa is strongly reminiscent of the combination of large shield, short sword, and light javelin that Romans used to arm the two first ranks of their legionaries. And the Zulus could hardly have gotten those technologies from the Romans since those weapons had been considered obsolete outside of southern Africa for centuries.

So, estimating an approximately 2000 year delay in technological development, we could expect SSA to develop germ theory on it own in about CE 3900. [This estimate was wildly tongue-in-cheek, the culmination of a debate between Dave and I on whether or not you could estimate how much, or if, the West set Africa back.)

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Right now, I am wondering do we really know if it is white inferiority that has caused Europe to be so backward?

Europe has yet to cure cancer, or even the common cold.

There are no cost-effective flying saucers, nor interplanetary tourism.

Vicious wars sweep Europe all the time, such as the horrors in Yugoslavia, which happened almost less than a decade ago.

Europeans must still put on their trousers one leg at a time.

I could go on and on, but the point is ... is all this really evidence of white inferiority?

Maybe not. The thing is, there is no not-messed-up baseline with which to compare Europe to another place. Slavers from North Africa began visiting Europe in the early 16th Century to take slaves. By 1780 they may have nabbed a million people who could have been vibrant youths or scholars in their homelands.

But centuries of post-medieval slavery are only one episode in the subjugation of Europe. Previous to that, you have to consider attacks on Europe by Persians, North African, Huns, and what have you; they spanned millennia.

I don't believe Mongolia has ever even considered paying reparation for what Genghis Khan did, despite the fact that it may have been his intervention in Europe that caused the aftereffects that have prevented Europeans from inventing flying saucers or learning to put on their trousers two legs at a time.

Keep this in mind when you race schmealists are putting down the white man. (And please quit calling Europe "the pasty continent". It hurts our feelings.)

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Concepts of racial guilt are the entire reason the modern left is the way it is. Affirmative action, mass immigration, and foreign aid are more important to the modern left than traditional leftist programs are. Health care, civil liberties, fiscal "generosity", Keynesianism--the lot of the mean nothing if they can't stick it to whitey, pass him over for college spots and jobs, displace him with various grades of immigrant, etc. They are willing to be anti-labor (more illegals please! kill the minimum wage!) if it means they can be anti-white.

Just as the Republicans have betrayed us by abandoning fiscal continence, the Democrats have betrayed us by abandoning native labor. If Samuel Gompers were alive today he would be campaigning for Tom Tancredo, and leftists would be calling Gompers a "xenophobic racist" for his trouble.

You can't get to the contemporary leftist program without taking white wickedness as an absolute article of faith. No one would uncritically accept that the people who brought railroads, hospitals, and literacy have hurt SSA if the people bringing these things were not white. No one would have voted against the Riggs Amendment if they thought they were victimizing blacks or La Raza. (Their chief victims were Asian, not white, but that is collateral damage for you.)

I heard lectures on slavery for many years in school. I never ONCE heard a word even of implicit criticism levied at Arabs for their role in African slavery.

Tacit racial guilt is mesmerizing to the leftists in charge of the school system. Once I was able to excise it, crystallize it, and name it--that is when I was able to meditate on it. My understanding of modern leftism / PC is part of who I am as an adult. If I lacked that understanding I would still be a depressed teenager.

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Maybe the whole time my teachers were talking exclusively about the negative effects of colonization, exclusively about the ways Reconstruction failed blacks, exclusively about the ways segregation was unfair to blacks, and exclusively about speculations that racism caused the problems that blacks suffer today ...
... maybe they were not trying to create white guilt,
not trying to get people to accept government-enforced discrimination,
not trying to get people to accept mass immigration,
not trying kill English as an official language, and
not even trying to get votes for the Democrats who have a consistent history of cooperation with public-sector unions.
Maybe they were just trying to suggest that there was a level of both harm and aid that corrupts the experiment, and that we're not really sure whether blacks would be better off in some country other than the US, or some environment other broadly-construed capitalism.

Do you see why I doubt that?

The modern left is a peculiar mixture of Marxian terminology and teleology and class war, combined with racial, ethnic, national, and sexual guilt. An old-fashioned left, combining Marxian class views with Fabian views on democracy and governance, would likely adopt immigration restriction as a way of protecting native labor. Old-fashioned leftists would never puts whites (and CERTAINLY not "rednecks") into a Marxian dialectic in place of the bourgeoisie. It takes a lot of credit-hours in English, Peace Studies, what have you to decide that rednecks are the modern equivalent of factory owners.

I suspect that AA and mass immigration are something most leftists would not give up, despite the fact that the first is outright racial discrimination and a violation of the 10th and 14th Amendments, and that the latter is utterly irrational in times of high unemployment. Hurting white people is top of the agenda.

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Ethnic libel serves a largely depressing, humiliating function and the truth alleviates that. PC is intended mainly to humiliate. It did its job. My teachers literally hissed when they said "white". They taught the history of the 1860s and left out the 13th Amendment, just as they left the explosion of black-on-white crime out of their "history" of the 1960s.

My life changed when I learned facts that had been suppressed. Black men really do rape white women by the thousands. Blacks really are disproportionately represented on welfare roles. Missionaries really did some good in Africa. Colleges really do reduce standards to let in more blacks and Hispanics. At that point the right-wing values started to make sense. Actually, a lot of other things made sense too. Like why my "friends" always got uncomfortable when I talked about politics. I was "obsessed" and I knew too much and asked too many questions.

I don't know much about the correlations. When I read Leftism Revisited, The Discovery of Freedom, The True and Only Heaven, A Return to Modesty, and the others, I found sets of values that were logically coherent. Those were value sets that were based on the facts that leftists ignore and ignored. Previous to reading them I had thought leftists just needed a couple of lessons but after I read them I realized that leftism does harm by its very nature.

Almost anyone can get beyond leftism if they want to, but if they don't get beyond leftism, inconvenient facts will be water off a duck's back. They base their worldview partly on the notion that blacks were killed disproportionately fast in Vietnam. Disprove that, and they'll move onto another "fact", like Lincoln being "worshipped" even though he "never freed the slaves". Show them the joint resolution he signed sending the 13th Amendment to the states, and they'll question the relevance, since the real reason they're mad at whites is that whites did so much damage in Africa. Show them that isn't certain, and they'll assure you that the real problem is that banks avoid black areas even though blacks are such excellent credit risks that banks could make a profit there if they weren't so racist. Disprove that and the problem is that whites voted against Obama in such massive numbers - only the fact that whites are a minority, with the black/Hispanic coalition outvoting them allowed Obama to win. Show them census data proving non-Hispanic whites are majority, combined with surveys indicating that whites only went to McCain by a small margin, and the problem is ... whatever. How many leftists know that there is more genetic information distinguishing Britons from Nigerians than there is distinguishing dogs from red wolves?

After those and other books, and a few years' soul-searching, I quit trying to reconcile the facts that I had read about (and my own direct observations) with an acceptable worldview that forbade them from being recognized. I dropped the worldview, and that particular stress went away. Now I have the stress of belonging to a school of thought anathema to most of my contemporaries. It's not depressing but I don't talk about politics much any more.

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One early thing I read about HBD, before I believed it or disbelieved it, was something to the effect of "This is the sort of thing non-whites already know about. They talk about it in foreign languages or argots so the press doesn't pick it up. Whites have a special disability in looking at reality, that you can overcome if you try."

Most of the alt-right wrestles with the proven literacy of leftists pretty frequently. Alt-rightists (and conservatives of old) draw a sharp distinction between brainpower and wisdom. Leftists are generally wicked or deluded, not stupid (though some of their shock troops are pretty stupid). I didn't have to be told leftists were meaner. I knew that by talking to them. (My favorite were the arguments pro-choice people got into about abortion--with other pro-choice people. Often ended in shouting, always in profanity.)

The Free Market Distributist Budget: State & Local

2011-12-10T20:47:00.000-08:00

State finances and local government finances probably each deserve a post of their own, but because my data source handles them both at the same time and because they share their proposed main tax source, the Henry George-style land value tax, I am dealing with them both in the same post. (This is a followup to my post proposing an ideologically-similar budget for the Federal government.)

This post is even more abstract than the first, because I am dealing with the statistical average state and city (not even using medians, but arithmetic means!) The goal of these numbers is to show the potential benefits of fiscal discipline, even at this late hour.

State Fiscal Balance - - +5
Local Fiscal Balance - - +28

All spending items in the above are funded at their actual per capita levels circa 2008. All other spending items I have zeroed out (education, social services and income maintenance, public utilities other than solid waste and sewerage, etc.) As far as revenues go, many taxes were abolished but I left the total levels for the other taxes alone. The main exception is property taxes, which I have replaced with land value taxes at the same overall revenue level but with more (20%) going to states (in reality, states collect very little in property taxes but I needed to alter this since the biggest of the abolished taxes, the sales tax, currently funds state programs much more than local).

The Free Market Distributist Budget: Federal

2011-12-09T18:52:00.000-08:00

Classically liberal distributists like myself have never had much of a political party, although we have something in common the Single Tax movement. Recently I have moved away from classical liberalism, with its usual civic-nationalist underpinnings, to a basically ethnopluralist position, but on fiscal policy the "classical liberal" shoe fits well enough. On a whim, I recently took a look at some US Federal budget data and found that the corporate income tax brings in much more money than I had once thought, and furthermore that the estate and gift taxes bring in much less than I had once thought.

I like Henry George's justification for his land value tax, i.e., that it's not an individual who gives his land value, it's the surrounding community (which needs fiscal support) that does. But by the same token, an individual does add value to the whole property by building houses or businesses upon it. Therefore, an efficient and fair tax should be on land alone, exclusive of improvements.

An analogy struck me: Just as the community gives land its value, government gives corporations their existence. Thus corporate income taxes have a justification lacked by personal income taxes, estate taxes, and (at other levels of government) sales taxes. Furthermore, one major objection to the individual income tax is its intrusion into people's personal lives, which can't be directly applied to a tax on a business with multiple owners and a government charter. Corporate finances must be public to a great degree because of the nature of management in a company in which the managers are not generally owners (and in which many of the owners never even visit corporate premises).

Then the question: If you abolished failed anti-poverty programs and privatized education and social insurance, could you run the country without personal income taxes, estate taxes, or sales taxes? (The latter is important for state and local matters, which have a post of their own.) Notice that I am being less radical than a true single-taxer, or even a "double-taxer" (land value and corporate income only). I am tentatively accepting the other taxes which have any justification beyond simple revenue (other than wealth redistribution). Thus I am leaving in place alcohol & tobacco taxes for harm reduction, motor vehicle licensing and fuel taxes for road improvement, and tariffs for protection from foreign competition.

The verdict: It's possible, not easy. (This holds individual Federal income taxes separate to retire the debt; see below.) Even after abolishing Federal education meddling and Robin Hood "egalitarianism", it took deep cuts in defense spending to get a small surplus (and this is after subtracting out all spending for the global war on terrorism). It also estimated a 20% increase to the haul from corporate income taxes, which may be possible by including S-Corps and LLCs. (This is subtracted from the individual income tax in my debt-reduction model, below.) I left revenue figures for the other Federal taxes alone even though, as a moderate protection, I favor replacing quotas with tariffs, a move which should generate some more revenue.

Federal revenue sources - - annual revenue in dollars per capita:

Customs duties - - 95

Excise taxes - - 221

Corporate income taxes - - 1224

Other revenue sources - - 164

Total - - 1703

Federal spending by department - - annual spending in dollars per capita:

Defense - - 1091

Veterans Affairs - - 128

Homeland Security - - 78

Justice - - 65

Health & Human Services - - 22

Transportation - - 27

Treasury - - 27

Interior - - 24

State - - 11

Energy - - 8

Agriculture - - 7

Labor - - 3

Other On-Budget - - 117

Other Off-Budget - - 88

Total - - 1699

Federal Balance - - +$5 per capita

I zeroed out the budgets for the global war on terror, the department of education, HUD, and NASA. The former will be unnecessary as soon as the nations of the West have erected the Iron Veil; latter three can be completely privatized.

I gave 90% budget cuts to Health and Human Services, State, Energy, Agriculture, and Labor. These departments are laden with programs which are unnecessary, counterproductive, and sometimes unconstitutional. I didn't zero them out because they generally have important roles in gathering and analyzing information on things like communicable disease and nuclear proliferation.

I gave 30% budget cuts to Defense and Homeland Security. We incur a lot of expenses defending other countries, which we can no longer afford to do. I dislike a lot of what the DHS does, but they do patrol the borders and try to stop illegal immigration, so I figured I would be as easy on them as I am on Defense.

I gave 30% budget cuts to Transportation, Treasury, Interior, and other programs (on- and off-budget). I made fairly mild cuts here because these items are very diverse and since the totals are fairly small, I thought I would be generous rather than commit to a lot more research.

I left Justice and Veterans Affairs alone. In the latter case, it is out of fairness to the soldiers returning from overlong, basically unnecessary wars in Asia. In the former, it is because I strongly support prison reform, which must cost money, so I figured at least I shouldn't cut that department's budget.

I have not yet dealt with existing debt and interest payments. Thus the above numbers reflect an ultra-hypothetical "If we could start afresh" hypothesis. However, even keeping the above figures we can see that fiscal discipline, though harsh (much harsher than if this program were begun ten years ago), can set things straight given enough time. My modeling is very crude and assumes no population changes or economic growth (pessimistic assumptions which partially offset the considerable optimism inherent in assuming there is any fiscal discipline in the first place). I am using total national debt of $13.56 trillion and an effective interest rate of 4%.

Let us assume no defaults, and the highly un-Georgist individual income tax is temporarily kept in existence at falling rates only for debt reduction, on the condition that the rest of the budget (above) is in balance or surplus. (FICA payroll taxes are still zeroed, as is spending for Medicare and Social Security. State and local income taxes are zeroed as well as all sales taxes.)

For this model I am taking into account the expanded (S-Corps and LLCs too) corporate income tax on a dollar-for-dollar basis. That is, since my 20% increase in corporate income tax revenue expanded its haul from $1020 per capita to 1224, I have reduced my total individual income tax haul by $204 per capita. The debt reduction rule is, 4% of the remaining debt must be retired each year until income taxes are cut at least in half, after which point taxes remain constant until the debt is gone.

Income tax revenues are immediately cut 9%. After that they fall at about 3% annually for the first decade, and fall at about 2% thereafter until year 16. From year 16 until year 33, income taxes remain at 50% of their present values. Thirty-three years after the unblinking adoption of fiscal discipline, the debt and the individual income taxes go away.

Concise Truth

2011-12-03T19:59:00.000-08:00

Raising the race and IQ issue is, for whites, merely a matter of self-defense, and of the truth.

Dennis Mangan says it hard and says it well.

A Matter of Discipline: Crazy Talk

2011-11-17T18:22:00.000-08:00

It is often stated that one should never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. (My rejoinder is that one should never attribute to stupidity that which can only be explained by malice.)

One might ask: where does this leave the Third Great Cause of Wrongdoing, i.e. insanity?

My brief answer is: leave that to the Bolsheviks. It is a cliche of Communist propaganda that anyone who disagrees with the progressive viewpoint is "insane". (They could also call you "reactionary" but that is tautological, and to me it is a compliment anyway.)

So what exactly is so implausible about the idea of collective insanity, of "Emperor's New Clothes" connivance, of an elite so drunk on ideological purity they can only be considered insane by anyone with real-world experience? It's not that these concepts are implausible, only that they are an unacceptable expansion of the term "insanity", and that they risk releasing Bolsheviks (and crypto- and neo-Bolsheviks) from culpability.

If someone isn't confined to a mental institution, or under house arrest or something analogous, we have no business calling them insane. It is difficult to get out of the habit of using this expression. I've tried. Just because I can envision rightist discipline doesn't mean that I myself am disciplined. Bad habits notwithstanding, I firmly believe that treating personalities as diseases is modernist degeneracy.

This doesn't mean were left to a simple dichotomy to explain wrongdoing. Between wickedness and idiocy lies a variety of conditions like laziness and insincerity. Typically, leftists believe what they believe because they foolishly channel all of their brainpower into the exclusive analysis of Cool Thinking. They've all read The Mismeasure of Man (and believe me, you can quote Gould chapter and verse all you want - if you don't agree with him, the leftists will simply never believe you have read him; a fair number of them haven't read him themselves, and so will not recognize your quotations). Willful ignorance is a form of wickedness, particularly if it is intended to protect the ignorant from cognitive dissonance*. Ignoring all Uncool Thinkers leaves you with no possible way to explain, for example, why black anger has gotten so much worse since the civil rights movement achieved its goals.

Thus you can see that leftism is not a product of insanity at all, but selfishness and immaturity. A grown-up will note when a government program has the opposite of its intended effect, and will be willing to note that aloud even if he can't do anything about it. Pilloried for criticizing "progress", the grown-up may be forced by economic or political considerations to keep his mouth shut, but he's not going to adjust his thinking so he doesn't have to carry the "burden" of believing mass opinion to be wrong.

The ethical, mature individual uses the full force of his mind to analyze government policies, even if that means being Uncool. Many wicked, sane people have developed ways to combat this.

* Let's not confuse cognitive dissonance with doublethink.

A Pair of Quotes

2011-11-06T06:58:00.000-08:00

Let the white race perish! They seize your land. They corrupt your women. They trample on the bones of your dead . . . . Burn their dwellings—destroy their stock—slay their wives and children that their very breed may perish! War now! War always! War on the living! War on the dead! - Chief Tecumseh, 19th Century

You will do well to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race. - Lord Amherst, 18th Century

Verdict:
Chief Tecumseh, American hero.
Jeffery Amherst, wicked genocidalist.

(Note that the first quote is not included on the relevant page in Wikipedia; the second quote is, at least twice.)

Gender Feminism and White Nationalism

2011-10-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

(In this essay, I am not trying to use a particularly narrow definition of "white nationalists" or "paleoconservatives". I chose those words for convenience. I could just as easily have used terms like "reactionaries" or "race realists" or "alt-rightists".)

One of the things that struck me many times reading Who Stole Feminism? was the number of times something a gender feminist would write something that sounded embarrassingly similar to something a white nationalist said, or could have said. The form of many GF dictums is identical to the form of many WN dictums, only with "whites" replaced by "women" and "blacks" replaced by "men".

Could a white nationalist (or paleoconservative) have written the following paragraph?

As long as some blacks use physical force to subjugate whites, all blacks need not. The knowledge that some blacks do suffices to threaten all whites. Beyond that, it is not necessary to beat up a white to beat her or him down. An organization complying with recent interpretation of civil rights law can simply refuse to hire whites in well-paid jobs, extract as much or more work from whites than blacks but pay them less, or treat whites disrespectfully. A black can fail to support a child he has engendered.... He can beat or kill the whites he claims to love; he can rape women, whether mate, acquaintance, or stranger.

I think so. Of course, this quote is from Marilyn French, with "women" replaced with "whites" and "men" replaced with "blacks" and, in one case, "an organization complying with recent interpretation of civil rights law". (This latter point is important. In one notable way, WN form departs from GF form: WNs have black criminals and anti-white institutions as twin enemies; GFs have men, alone, for their enemy.)

It is natural that this should cause some dismay, since of course the GFs are wrong. Woman-beating males do serious time for their crimes, partly because they deserve the punishment and partly because there are no nationwide "civil rights" organizations putting pressure on law enforcement to go easy on them. Businesses that discriminate against women on pay grounds face serious legal action, which is why you need to ignore differing career paths in order to create the illusion of pay discrimination against women. (Industries in which pay is higher for women face no such legal threat, which is why female investment bankers and dieticians earn so much more than their male counterparts, and why women who have never had a child earn 113 percent of what men earn.) GFs have also made numerous false claims about rape, self-esteem, and even Super Bowl Sunday (I really recommend the book to learn about some eye-popping GF lies, and really shameful credulity on the part of the media.)

The dismay recedes when you remember that form isn't everything. Content, true content, matters more, and that is what the WNs have. Because of course what the WN/paleocon says is based on fact rather than emotion, which is why Jared Taylor and Pat Buchanan remind you of the host of a dinner party while Susan Brownmiller and Andrea Dworkin come off like hissing snakes. GFs have had to inflate pretty much every claim they make about male-on-female violence and discrimination, something Sommers documents in admirable detail in her book. In contrast, WNs only have to undo the suppression of facts about black-on-white violence (and discrimination by the government against white proles) to make their point.

Still, there is something fascinating about an utterly-wrong leftist ideology that gets the form exactly right but mistakes race & statism for gender. What could the connection possibly be? Sommers may provide the clues, even if she doesn't make the connection herself (since she has nothing to do with paleocon or WN ideologies):

[Katie] Roiphe sees the campus rape crisis as a phenomenon of privilege: these young women have had it all, and when they find out the world can be dangerous and unpredictable, they are outraged.

She quotes Roiphe as saying:

Many of these girls [in rape marches] came to Princeton from Milton and Exeter. Many of their lives have been full of summers in Nantucket and horseback-riding lessons. These are women who have grown up expecting fairness, consideration, and politeness.

Stripped of leftist-sounding talk about "privilege" this almost sounds like a paleocon praising traditional civilization for protecting women and families the old-fashioned way. The loss of traditional communities and the rise of education-driven career paths put thousands of young women in the paths of strange males in unfamiliar settings.

In a monoethnic, highly-religious society where anonymity was treated like a troublesome but short-lived "teething stage" in a human relationship, a bright girl could be put on a train, greeted at the station at the other end of the line by a firm but indulgent woman whom she had never met, and given an excellent education at a single-sex institution. At school, far from being treated like a galley slave or an imbecile (as the antihistorical GF propagandists would have us believe), she would be introduced to Shakespeare, Ovid, and Socrates. Nobody worried that Anne of Green Gables would get drunk or be raped when she went off to college. (And yet, with a combination of excruciatingly high educational standards and almost unbelievably low crime rates, the modern person can't quite put a finger on whether Anne was coddled or thrown into a sort of lace-curtain dungeon.)

Nowadays, anonymity is considered, of all things, one of the main benefits of urban living. Furthermore, "anti-racism" has stripped the victims of leftist propaganda of their ability to notice that black-on-white stranger rape is hardly a "myth", but is, in fact, a very real phenomenon. The expectations that women of northern European descent have, that a man will treat them with respect (or at least not rape them), have recently become quite unrealistic. "Anti-racism" blinds us to an important reason for the change. (The other major reason for the change, binge drinking, has been examined better, but hardly anyone forthrightly advises young females against heavy drinking around males.)

It was perfectly sensible for America to become collectively outraged at the loss of safety for women. The combination of GF and anti-racism saw to it that this outrage became grist for its favorite mill: hatred of white men. Equally important, ubiquitous leftist propaganda saw to it that the outrage was channeled safely away from the realization that racial diversity, bureaucratization, and urban anonymity are bad things. As evidence supporting WN and paleoconservative assertions has mounted, the left has gotten stronger. Only time will tell if modern internet technology will allow the record to be set straight.

Thoughts on Who Stole Feminism?

2011-10-18T20:06:00.000-07:00

Christina Hoff Sommers is the author of the distinction between gender feminists (radical misandrists, cultural Marxists, etc.) and equity feminists (those who seek equal opportunities for women and men, like Sommers herself). As far as I know she introduced the concept in her 1995 book Who Stole Feminism?

I won't summarize the book too much here. Sommers did a lot of serious debunking of leftist horror stories about mistreatment of women, from rapes in college to beatings in the home to unfair wage gaps in the workplace. Her main thesis is that gender feminism is not based on facts, it does not believe in or seek equity between men and women, and it does not improve the situation for anyone (except tenured gender feminist academics). In contrast, equity feminism is what is good and and true, is as American as apple pie, and still enjoys healthy support among ordinary women (though it is somewhat underrepresented on certain campuses).

As a doctrine which both infantilizes and deifies women, gender feminism can naturally be criticized from several angles. Sommers tends to doubt the notion of "women's ways of knowing" which gender feminists have used to insulate themselves from criticism that their conclusions are asserted rather than proven, and developed using emotional feedback in committee settings rather than using facts. Sommers is dead on, but I think she pays too little attention to the possibility that women do think differently from men.

I wouldn't go so far as to consider myself an equity feminist. I'm a heathen formalist of the hard right. I don't "believe in equality" so much as I advocate single standards. Still, I see little that distinguishes my political positions from those espoused in the book. Women may or may not process data differently from men (I think they do), a few may be able to succeed in virtually any occupation (I think they can), or maybe just as many women can succeed in a given high-power job as men can (I doubt it).

The bottom line is: as long as discussion is open and honest, and as long as the system is rich in single standards, any decent civilization can accommodate ambitious women. The problem with feminism is not biological but ideological, and therefore transient. Brave men and women can stand up to the genderfem/ cultural Marxist/ PC threat, particularly if they have a position at the American Enterprise Institute.

(Coming up: Strange, out-on-a-limb thoughts connecting feminism and white nationalism. Be patient; my baby boy takes a lot of time.)

Reflecting on the 1980s

2011-10-13T17:34:00.000-07:00

DeLorean DMC-12, 1981-1982 (John DeLorean)

Dornaus & Dixon Bren Ten, 1983-1986 (Jeff Cooper)

Apple Lisa, 1983-1986 (Steve Jobs)

Can anyone add to the list? Only technically impressive, failed technologies from the 1980s are allowed. Bonus points if they are overpriced, sought-after by collectors, and considered "toys for the rich".

A Real Victory

2011-10-06T14:41:00.000-07:00

It's small, but it's a start. Apparently Huffington thinks the law is an ass because he was only arrested in a drug raid, and they only have him for a misdemeanor.

A Chilling Thought from the Ancient World

2011-09-18T16:06:00.000-07:00

From The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History by Colin McEvedy:

Not that the Germans had any thought of destroying the Empire: it had existed for so long that everyone assumed it would go on forever. What the barbarian warlords wanted was imperial grants and commissions, lands for their followers and positions for themselves.

McEvedy is describing the Western Roman Empire in AD 408. Rome was still culturally important and rich, but they had been relying on hired foreigners for so long that they had very few military men of their own. It had gone out of fashion for young Romans to become warriors; Rome had plenty of gold to buy the temporary allegiance of barbarians.

The Germanic and Gaulish tribes to the north were used to being able to alternately work for and attack Rome; they had no real loyalty to Rome but had grown used to Roman institutions being rich and easily manipulated. Visigoths sacked Rome in this period, not intending to hold (and feed) the city, but instead staying only for three days. Their move was intended to show Rome that they were serious about their demands for ransom.

The Western Empire was not taken seriously as a political force after this point, though Rome was considered worth sacking several more times during the fifth century.

SPJ SLAWBs

2011-09-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

The Society of Professional Journalists established themselves as a pack of anti-white, anti-kafir bigots with this left-wing screed. (Hat tip: Dennis Mangan.)

I'll leave it to Dennis to quote the thing. Me? I'll do what "journalists" do best: interpret.

Some key directives:

When noting that Muslims have been responsible for a huge amount of terrorism, pretend that there isn't a common reason (Sura 9:29, among other passages) for their violence.

When noting that Muslims have been responsible for a huge amount of terrorism, pretend that there weren't many many acts of historical aggression against non-Muslims (the conquest of Visigothic Spain, the near extermination of Buddhists in India, etc.), preceding recent acts of terrorism.

In fact, it is best just not to note that Muslims have been responsible for a huge amount of terrorism.

Ensure that white voices are drowned out by those of darker-skinned people, whose opinions about terrorism targeting white Americans are valid. Opinions of the people targeted are not valid on their own.

When writing about terrorism, pretend that white supremacists and radical anti-abortionists have even approached Islam in scale and scope. Most of your readers will lack a sense of the scale involved and have no basis to even begin questioning this deceit.

Word combinations such as "Islamic terrorist" or "Muslim extremist" are accurate and edifying because they link a whole religion to the violent activity demanded by that religion's holy book (Sura 9:29). Since it is the duty of the dhimmi to cover up Islamic violence, avoid these word combinations.

Avoid using terms such as "jihad" unless you are careful to obscure their greater meaning. The basic meaning of "jihad" is to exert oneself for the good of Islam and to aggrandize oneself. Since Islam is a religion of permanent warfare which has attained most of its power through violence, "jihad" is accurately used to describe violence. Under no circumstances should any journalist stoop to this level of accuracy.

These are your countrymen, openly planning to silence you and replace your voice with that of people sworn to kill or enslave you (Sura 9:29).

Update your list of Stupid Leftist Anti-White Bigots to include:
Hagit Limor
Darcie Lunsford
John Ensslin
Kevin Z. Smith
Neil Alan Ralston
Bill McCloskey
Lauren Bartlett
Tara Puckey
Taylor Mirfendereski
George Daniels
Kym Fox
Luther Turmelle
Brian Eckert
Bill Oates
James Pilcher
Liz Hansen
Amanda Theisen
Kelsey Volkmann
Scott Cooper
Donald Meyers
Dana Neuts
Jodi Cleesattle
Sonny Albarado

Revolt Against the Modern World: Where has Flavia gone?

2011-09-07T14:18:00.000-07:00

modernitysucks.wordpress.com is no longer available.

The authors have deleted this blog.

[I hope you come back, Flavia. If not, farewell.]

The Brain is the Soul - For the Secularist

2011-08-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

The other day I had my mid-year review at my office. After the main portion of the meeting, in which we talked about me, my performance and my goals, my boss asked if there was anything, anything at all, that I thought could increase the unit's efficiency. Since it was a private meeting and she seemed generally curious, I said, No, there isn't, because a certain coworker of ours has been much quieter recently. I said it with some pleasure because a few weeks earlier the story would have been different.

This coworker is 100% office nightmare stereotype. Beer belly, stiletto heels, miniskirts, late 30s, is always talking either about how many hot guys she met at the club or how she is going to raise her children after she is married, etc. She is quite loud when she does so, and of course quite loud when she is on the phone yelling at customers. A few months ago a few of us complained to various managers and she obviously got the message.

My manager seemed to want to vent ever so slightly. She said that this coworker had been like that for years, and that when it was first mentioned to her she responded with tremendous anger. My manager stopped herself from going into too much detail and simply said she was glad, as was I, that the situation had improved. Then she added, apropos of nothing, that Miss Noisypumps is the smartest person she's ever met.

Now of course I don't believe that, and looking back I don't think my manager does either. Yet I don't think it was a lie, either. It was more like a benediction. It's pretty nasty to let on that you think someone's character is rotten, but there is nothing apparent about Miss Noisypumps' demeanor, work performance, or appearance that would redeem her. My manager had to balance out our mutual recognition of Noisypumps' worthlessness with something that seemed substantial, yet couldn't be disproven.

As far as I know, no Christian ever seriously attempted to measure the human soul. It wouldn't make any sense to do so. Yet measuring brainpower is a pretty straightforward business of progressive matrices, reverse digit span, vocabulary, etc. So why does the PC left say it can't be measured?

Or should I say, why does the secular PC left say intelligence can't be measured? Put that way, the question is in the answer: secularists threw away the soul because they didn't know what it was used for. Unfortunately, they also suffer from mind-body dualism, and seem to believe that your body is not your self but merely a servant of your self. With the soul gone, the only thing left to be your self is your brain.

Measuring the brain is easy enough, but dead brains don't count. It's what the brain does that is so important. Therefore, the secular PC left, egalitarian to the core, refuses to measure intelligence, or even to admit that that is possible.

Egalitarians need brainpower to be immeasurable so that whenever they run into an overgrown, silicone-enriched female thing wobbling around in high heels yelling about how hard she parties, they can say, "That is a person too. That person is valid and human and as legitimate as me and it would be wrong of me to push that person down a flight of stairs."

The alternative, for people who just can't figure out the soul, would be maturity and self-control. "That bipedal creature is a waste of space. The community would be better off if it were euthanized. However, that is not my job." No speculation, no pretty lies about cognition, no extraneous moral judgements, just a recognition of facts. Alas, the PC left seems uninterested in maturity and self-control.

Factually Incorrect Humor

2011-08-08T16:28:00.000-07:00

I prefer my jokes to be based on facts. Here is one that isn't (and my humorless replies, suitable to the humorless joke that civilization became when it died). (And another version.)

Your car is German. (Mine is indeed an import; I had a Ford until it got totaled; if hunting season were longer someone might have bagged the doe that was waltzing on the freeway before I hit her.)

Your vodka is Russian. (Can't stand the stuff. The word "vodka" probably originated in Poland.)

Your pizza is Italian. (Semantics. Heavy-cheese low-veg pizzas are really an American thing, but leftover veg on flatbread is indeed Italian.)

Your kebab is Turkish. (Uh-oh ... kebabs originate in Persia.)

Your democracy is Greek. (The Greeks had a sensible democracy with a limited franchise. Universal male suffrage is a Franco-American corruption.)

Your sauna is Finnish. (Go Finland!)

Your coffee is Brazilian. (Probably should have skipped this one. Dozens of countries export coffee.)

Your movies are American. (My movies are British. I'm interested in neither vampires nor serial killers, thankyouverymuch.)

Your humor is Jewish. (This is the truest item on the list.)

Your electronics are Chinese. (Maybe, I usually see them credited to the Japanese. The import innovations were all American.)

Your numbers -Arabic. (Hindu, actually. Oops, second time an Indo-Aryan invention has been assigned to someone else.)

Your letters -Latin. (True.)

Your tea is Tamil. (See "coffee", above.)

Your shirt is Indian. (Oh.)

Your oil is Saudi Arabian. (Not my fault, but true enough.)

And you complain that your neighbor is an immigrant? (Hmm...

No...

I fled to an area with low crime and it just so happens that none of my neighbors are immigrants. If I lived next to the charming Chinese family who runs the second-best restaurant in town, I doubt I would have any complaints. If I had unpleasant immigrants for neighbors I wouldn't complain anyway since many employers would fire a white man for speaking his mind, and many immigrants would get violent with him. I have a family to provide for and I can't do that while unemployed, in the hospital, or in prison fighting "hate crime" (self-defense) charges.

In case the person making up this joke didn't know it, kebabs, shirts, and saunas don't reproduce. If they did reproduce, it's not entirely clear to me that the first generation of US-born kebabs, shirts, and saunas would commit crimes at rates several times higher than their parents.

The rate of kebab-perpetrated violence is negligibly low in any case. Shirts and saunas, on the other hand, can be downright brutal. See, I can be funny too! It's just that my jokes don't make light of the physical and demographic persecution of the decent, ordinary descendants of a once-great, spacefaring, inventive, generous civilization by the Mexican mafia, Islamic extremists, Islamic moderates, and the like.)

"They Don't Make that Kind of Music Any More!"

2011-08-07T15:01:00.000-07:00

I've heard it a hundred times. People wonder where classical music went, and a cynic tells them "that kind of music" is dead, killed by serialism. Tonal, non-serial music, we are told, is too naïve, or perhaps too beautiful, to have survived modernism (read: World War I).

Somewhere, in one of the darkest corners of the right end of the blogosophere, I ran into Richard T. Hill. (I think it was in a tract someone wrote about how black metal is a conservative revolution in music.) He is an eclectic musician.

Your idea of eclectic may be one of those ska musicians who does a little reggae on the side, or a modern jazz guy who does a little swing, or a doom metal head who dabbles in death metal too. Richard T. Hill plays a guitar in a band and composes formal music for strings, winds, and piano. It's no gimmick, either; this is no Guns and Roses backed by the London Snoot-Harmonic. This is the real mccoy - melody, harmony, classical timbres, and form.

For this post, I'll review his String Quartet No. 1: Iberia. Other reviews will follow.

Hill's treatment of melody is classic. By that I mean it recalls exactly what I want to hear when I am listening to classical music - a melody that is not too sweet but not abstruse. If you can imagine your bubblegum pop song tasting like bubblegum, and your university-approved pantonal serial thingumbob tasting like the pages of your nine-grade algebra book, Hill's melodies taste like a filet mignon in a Béarnaise sauce. (This is what happens when you read music reviews by people who have no education in the subject - you get food analogies.)

The handling of mood is also classic and kept me coming back. For some reason, when the mood becomes sad toward the end of the first section, it is always a little bit of a surprise, which engages me toward the piece as a whole rather than leaving me just coolly noting "That's a nice melody." Unchanging mood is a huge turnoff and why I can't get into minimalism or serialism (if the mood changes it is in way that is too abstruse for me). I feel like the same mood leads off the last section and then transforms.

The harmonies are not as easy to digest. They show hints of modernism, a little dissonance here and there. The effect is to lighten the piece somehow, not to make it comical, but to show that Hill isn't trying to imitate old-fashioned harmonic rules.

Hill's use of pizzicato (he devotes one of the piece's four sections to it), is quite ambitious. In my experience it is unusual for such extended use of this technique, which is used sparingly most of the time it is encountered. The pizzicato conversation between Hill's strings continues, carrying the listener through the piece's least emotional ideas.

Then of course we are treated to a tango which is the only revisitation of the original melody which was obvious to me. It is classical music as it should be - a voluptuous melody is established and superseded until the music becomes unrecognizable. The composers teases us with beautiful timbres in unfamiliar melodies which refuse to repeat what we so want to hear again - for a time. When the sweetness returns we want to cheer, if only it were that kind of music.

Invent beauty. Declare it boldly. Develop it in several directions - don't be afraid to get cerebral. Then bring back the simple beauty. This form seems to have been forgotten by the hyperformalist composers of the academy. Why even bother to write a nice melody if you're going to throw it away? But of course "nice melody" is not the kind of thing people get MFAs in any more.

Emotionally, Iberia reminds me of The Gathering's "In Motion" more than anything else - a pair of ambient / goth / metal songs that have nothing in common with Hill's composition in terms of instrumentation, rhythm, or any of that. Why? Because Anneke's voice is one the boldest statements of feminine beauty in music I've ever heard. The violin in Hill's quartet is a glimpse of the same kind of beauty.

Listen to Hill at Reverb Nation. (Oh, and you can listen to The Gathering at YouTube.)

The WTMJ News Team Tells the Truth

2011-08-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

In a surprising instance of actual news coverage, WTMJ posted an uncensored news article covering black-on-white mob violence in Milwaukee. It was picked up by Fox Nation.

[Violent black bigots] were looking in everybody's windshield as they were running by, seeing who was white and who was black. Guarantee it.... I saw them grab this white kid who was probably 14 or 15 years old. They just flung him into the road. They just jumped on him and started beating him.

This is the first incidence of honest reporting of random anti-white violence perpetrated by black in a mainstream news source. This is big. Make no mistake.

Naturally, bloggers with more time and energy than I have already covered this. Dennis has, and so has Ryu at M4 Monologue. At American Renaissance, Joseph Kay wonders whether the mobs represent the end of the unspoken agreement between ruling-class leftists and underclass blacks, since the former are still ponying up other people's money and job opportunities to appease the latter, but the latter aren't playing nice any more. Hat tips to you all.

I'd just like to make note of a silver lining (unprecedented media honesty) as well as the storm clouds (August is not over yet, nor is the depression).

Addendum: Donovan and Dudzik, two of Milwaukee's aldermen, have released a statement specifically naming African Americans as being the perpetrators of anti-white violence. (Hat tip once again to AmRen, which is really doing sterling work.) I expect the retaliation from the establishment left will be swift, but I'm no longer so sure it will be decisive. No Arizona sheriffs have been assassinated, after all, and they have a whole lot tougher guys mad at them.

Also, Unamused posted on this. I expect it will be less polite than Mangan's, maybe a smidgen more polite than Ryu's.

Today I am a Norwegian

2011-07-23T08:35:00.000-07:00

With hat tips to Pamela Geller, Robert Stacy McCain, and Zilla of the Resistance.

Now I am going to go to the lake.

Trauma and my Little JQ

2011-07-21T17:17:00.000-07:00

A while ago I asked my fellow rightists what role, if any, trauma played in their political development. Without meaning to, both Jew Among You and Mucius Scaevola both answered my question, with heart-wrenching personal accounts of the violence that they were exposed to as adolescents, violence that leftist theory says can't really happen.

Why? Because both groups of perpetrators were among the left's favored groups. In J.A.Y.'s case, it was a group of blacks who decided to beat the hell out of him for the crime of GTSWW (going to school while white). In MS's case it was sexual assault by a pair of homosexual male acquaintances. Both of their tales are moving; actually, both bring me to the brink of rage.

I too experienced trauma at the hands of a protected minority. In my case the trauma was all mental - the physical attacks I suffered were too minor to be considered trauma. Rather, as a 12-year-old I witnessed several sexual assaults on girls my age by boys in my school. Boys tore at girls' clothing, kicked girls in the crotch, groped breasts, dry humped. I could scarcely believe what I was seeing and I have no clear idea of how I reacted. I felt like some sort of hovering, trembling, worthless camera absorbing it all.

As far as I know, none of the girls was penetrated but the attacks hit me as trauma. For years afterwards I couldn't think of the events without the usual PTSD symptoms - elevated heart rate and respiration, anger, forgetting where I was, etc. How much of my reaction stemmed from an unsatisfied need for justice as opposed to buried fears for my own life and safety, I do not know.

What emerged years later came from my consideration of the demographics involved. Two of the perpetrating boys were Jewish and one was black or part black. All the victims were white gentiles. (My class had a lot of Jewish girls as well but I never saw any of them being assaulted.) One of the Jewish boys was the son of an important member of the school's administration; the other was the scion of an important business family.

It goes without saying that the black boy was protected from discipline by pro-black bias. The question I have wrestled with - my own little "Jewish Question", if you will, is whether the other perps were protected by their ethnicity or their individual circumstances. I only became aware of the idea of loxism several years later, after I was done with my education.

I have blown the question quite out of proportion. It doesn't really matter if the racist leftists who ran my school on a "boys will be boys" basis were also hyperethnocentrically Jewish. (Many of them were Jewish, in any case.) On the other hand, I don't believe my case is 100% unique. Jews form gangs like anyone else, and can be ethnocentric like anyone else. Given the overwhelmingly leftist ideology of every Jew I've discussed politics with in real life, someone with my experiences could be forgiven for thinking Jews are out to get us.

This underscores the importance of bloggers like J.A.Y. and Latte Island (who identify as Jews) and Mencius Moldbug and Unamused (who note that they have some Ashkenazi ancestry). Rightist Jewish bloggers do not form a large group, but neither did the Jews who kicked me, threatened me, spread rumors about me ... and tried to tear off the clothes of my female coëthnics.

Jews have been infected by the same cultural-Marxist virus that so many white gentiles have. I'll not rehash the names of the Jews or gentiles who were instrumental in creating and spreading the virus. It's not a contest. J.A.Y. and Unamused have done more to directly help white people than any other pseudonymous person I know, and that is that.

The Anglophones Are To Blame!

2011-07-18T15:50:00.000-07:00

In an otherwise successful thread at Unamusement Park, I alleged that the Germans invented city bombing, mainly because the Germans invented city bombing. As I expected, a commenter dismissed the August 6, 1914 raid on Liege as having been done with "firecrackers". As to the next relevant war, the raid on Guernica was dismissed as "tactical bombings in support of an advancing army in the field". 1939 raids on Warsaw, Frampol, and Wieluń were dismissed likewise.

So "tactical bombing" can't be "city bombing" (presumably for the same reason that "quantitative easing" doesn't equal "intentional debasement of the currency"). All that matters, as it were, is "strategic" bombing, supposedly invented by the British in 1940. (In reality it was invented in a previous World War, by Germans armed with "firecrackers". It is also false to think that German raids were only with airships, or even that Zeppelins were always airships. The Zeppelin plant also produced heavy airplanes designed for bombing, as did Gotha.) But of course, I never asserted that the German invented strategic bombing or effective bombing.

So why move the goalposts? Why does city bombing not matter while "strategic bombing" does? Why does the German alliance with Stalin (1939-1941) not matter while the US-British alliance with that monster (1941-1945) does? Why does Roosevelt reflect poorly on the United States, and Churchill reflect poorly on the UK, while Hitler only reflects poorly on "the Nazis"?

Or, more generally, why is that, whatever the subject, whatever the historical epoch, the British and/or Americans are bad guys? Well, let's think: what do the UK and the USA have in common? It could be English, which is a second-class language even in the most American part of the British Commonwealth.

Or could it be a peculiarly Anglo-Saxon attitude towards guilt?

I think it is a bit of both. People will project guilt where it sticks, and refrain from blaming those who become are liable to become aggressive. It's no surprise that we can't figure out how treat someone who can't take responsibility; all our other values are inverted as well. We treat thin-skinned athlete types as "alpha males", so why shouldn't we marginalize and abject someone for daring to show remorse?

Still, I don't think the Anglo-blame habit is simply a function of a British or American mindset. It is also a function of the tragically large number of people who speak and write English as a second language. Anyone with an axe to grind from virtually any country can write a screed trying to make Anglophones feel bad about themselves. If we reply in kind, we are replying a in language that our accusers view as a tool, not as the core of their ethnicity. You simply can't insult someone in a second language as effectively as you can in their native language.

Of course, loads of native English-speakers reflect the "blame the Anglophones first" attitudes, but this is partly due to a third influence: tons of foreigners are in teaching positions in the United States at least (maybe also in the UK; I don't know). Our universities are filled with people from country X who can tell you in detail how the USA mistreated country X and how as a consequence we owe them foreign aid. Pretty much anyone from wherever can purport to know our countries better than we know them ourselves. That, combined with home-grown Anglo-American political correctness, has over time corroded our self-image and our mental boundaries.

Optimism Applied to Child Behavior

2011-07-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

One phenomenon I noticed again at my last get-together of young parents was the notion that optimism about the future behavior of a child is subtly taboo. By the same token, pessimism is encouraged and shared. Observing my boy's pleasant, quiet disposition, they assured me that he will be a holy terror when he can walk, adding of course that he will be worse when he is a teenager.

It wasn't notable for being unusual - I've been assured that having a son will make my life miserable since we announced the pregnancy. People are pretty disappointed to find that he sleeps through the night, that he has no colic, etc. What struck me as odd was that it happened in the same conversation as the obligatory mockery of a certain relative of one of the guests, who is "stockpiling weapons for doomsday, when Obama will take all the guns". I.e., socio-political pessimism about the state of the economy, the prospects for gun control given the Hurricane Katrina example, etc., is silly wingnut speculation, but assertions that a given infant will have behavioral problems is rock-solid logic.

What I saw, really, was leftist social ethics, or rather, what leftists have in place of social ethics. Lacking a firm hand, leftist mothers predict behavioral problems for all children so they don't have to do anything to prevent dangerous or inappropriate behavior other than constantly saying, "No!" and repeating the child's name.

Reduced behavioral standards are a self-fulfilling prophecy which allows all of us to let our children run rampant while none of us feels guilty for it. Apparently it is okay for us to feel stressed by our children's behavior, but remorse is out of the question because it implies that a better lifestyle - a more ethical, more thoughtful lifestyle - is possible. Raising children to be polite, engaged, and curious is a betrayal of the great sisterhood of harried mothers at their wits' end.

All going well, I predict the following conversation in eight years:

"What did you do with him? I've never seen a boy that age shake an adults hand, entertain himself with books, ask to go to the zoo instead of wanting to stay home with the television. Is he on something?"

"It's not what he's on, it what he's not on. He's homeschooled and he isn't allowed commercial television."

"Oh no! You can't do that! He'll never develop any social skills!"

"You mean like shaking an adults hand and saying hello? Not interrupting people?"

"Well ... ummm ... racism ... uhhh ... multicultural...."

I think I will enjoy that conversation.

Take a Stand Against Anarcho-Tyranny

2011-07-14T16:24:00.000-07:00

Ban anonymous commenters!

This advice goes to all bloggers with a large commentariat: Dennis Mangan, OneSTDV, Anti-White Media, and especially Steve Sailer. (Unamused and Jew Among You are still developing a following so they have a little more latitude.)

Unamused Needs YOU

2011-07-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

This post at Unamusement Park is the first direct-action plan I've seen on the right side of the blogsphere in some time.

Huns ... gangs of white-hating blacks ... whatever

I couldn't find an image of Unamused in a peaked cap, so I decided to use Lord Kitchener instead.

It's all about distributing flyers highlighting this summer's wave of anti-Caucasoid violence.

Remember - the hottest days of summer have not yet arrived.

Now then, off you go, chop chop.

Meat on the Neocameralist Bones

2011-07-06T23:10:00.000-07:00

I've been working on this for long enough. Busy as I am with the new baby, this as good as it's going to get, at least in the short term.
As a longtime reader of Mencius Moldbug (I used to post there as Curve of Freedom), I found his posts on neocameralism and the patchwork to be very thought-provoking and useful. The patchwork is an innovative, nondemocratic form of government and neocameralism is the philosophy underpinning it. In addition to being a neocameralist, Moldbug is also a royalist.

Back when I had more time on my hands, I decided to flesh out Moldbug's proposal a little. It is not my favored system of government but it is intriguing and it is much simpler than my own (the "Commonwealth" proposal from last year). I hope he will comment and see if I have gotten the flavor of his idea right. Note that it is I, not he, who has combined royalism (my strong Rex) and corporate governance (my Governing Companies, which he calls sovcorps). I may eventually post something on a scenario for the future describing how we could conceivably achieve the neocameralist state. Without further ado.
Overview
This former United States is governed as a monarchy along anarcho-capitalist and neo-cameralist lines. The country is partitioned into a patchwork of highly autonomous city-states called Freeholds with ownership-based taxation powers and powerful land forces; governance of each Freehold is by a common stock corporation with Royal charters.
The Monarchy
The crown is hereditary. The Rex is commander-in-chief of the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy, all nuclear weapons, and ground forces totaling approximately 10% of the country's army. Royal ground forces include guards for airbases, naval bases, and Royal residences, border patrol, and highway patrol.
The Rex pays for all Royal expenses out of pocket, and pockets what he does not spend. He has the right to collect Tribute from all Freeholds, a self-assessed property tax with the percentage rate set by the Rex and the Assembly. Though he has no power to abrogate property rights, he has the right to partition each Freehold into the parcels Governing Companies assess and pay tribute upon. This is to prevent enclaves, i.e., he uses his power to make sure each parcel borders either the ocean, a foreign country, or land belonging to another Freehold.
The Royal Courts are chosen as follows. Judges of District Courts are chosen by competitive examination. The examination is created by a council appointed by the higher courts. Judges of Appellate Courts are chosen from among District Judges by all members of the Assembly except those whose jurisdiction overlaps with that of the Appellate Court with the vacancy to be filled. Justices of the Supreme Court are chosen by the Rex from among all Appellate Judges. They are chiefly courts of equity dealing with jurisdictional disputes and pollution, though military cases can be referred to higher Royal Courts. No judge or justice can be removed except by conviction of a felony or several misdemeanors.
The Rex has sole power to appoint diplomats to foreign nations and to make all bilateral treaties.
Major freeways are Royal Highways and are owned and maintained by the Rex out of pocket. No Governing Company is permitted to interfere with their usage. Furthermore, travel in the air, on the oceans, and on major rivers is a Royal matter not to be interfered with by any Governing Company. In addition to Tribute, the Rex may also collect revenue through tariffs, highway, and port user fees, at rates proposed by the Rex and agreed to by the Assembly.
The tribute is intermediate between a rent and a tax. There is a uniform percentage rate, countrywide, that each Freehold owes on the assessed value of each of their parcels. Each Freehold assesses the value of each of their parcels, and each assessment is a binding sales contract to any Royally-chartered corporation.
The Assembly
The Assembly consists of a representative of each Governing Company. It has the power to approve or block changes in the percentage rate on which Tribute is applied, as well as the rates for Royal user fees and tariffs. Sole power to recommend changes in these rates lies with the Rex. It has the power to determine the penalties for failure to pay the Royal Tribute and for violating the constitution. It has the power to ratify or block all multilateral treaties. It has the power to approve or block appointments of all diplomats to multilateral organizations. Voting in the Assembly (on all matters save the election of Judges of Appellate Courts) is weighted. Each Governing Company controls a number of votes equal to the square root of the most recent Royal Tribute paid by that Freehold (provided it was paid in full and on time). Freeholds in arrears on their tribute have a voice but no vote.
Royal Charters and the Governing Companies
Any publicly-traded corporation registered in the country can apply for a Royal Charter. There are several restrictions on Governing Companies. They must be organized on common-stock basis, not as coöperatives or worker-managed collectives. No Governing Company may own stock in any other Governing Company, either directly or via corporate intermediaries. Residents of a Freehold cannot own stock in the corporation that governs it. All Assembly representatives must be either appointed by the board of directors or chosen on the same basis as the board of directors is chosen; they cannot be chosen by the corporation's employees or customers.
No Governing Company can be a information provider, i.e. a school, broadcaster, publisher, or internet service provider. That is, no security corporation can publish a general news periodical or anything in broadsheet or tabloid format, broadcast television or AM/FM radio signals, or provide education or internet service to general consumers. To do so is a violation of their royal charter. No Governing Company can own stock in, lend money to, or contract major security duties to an information provider. (Major security services include the power to make arrests or operate armed vehicles.) No information provider can own stock in a Governing Company (they must divest within one month of a corporation's receipt of a Royal Charter).
(Security corporations can use 2-way radios, publish irregular news releases on government topics, train adults they intend to hire, and own routers and cables for their own use. Corporations extending beyond this into gray areas do so at the peril of incurring royal wrath.)
If a corporation meets the criteria above, it is granted a Royal Charter, and can purchase one or more tax parcels. The corporation becomes a Governing Company when it buys land, and territory thus purchased becomes the Governing Company's Freehold.
The Freeholds
All the adjacent tax parcels owned by a Governing Company are called a Freehold. If this Freehold includes any territory within the city limits of one of the 50 largest cities in the United States circa 2010, the Freehold is called a Free City. (For these purposes, the "largest cities" are determined looking strictly at population within city limits.) A Free City is limited in size to 1200 square miles (equivalent to the smallest state, Rhode Island).
If the Freehold does not include any big-city territory as defined above, it is called a Province and is limited in population to 500,000 (equivalent to least populous states, circa 2000).
The right to govern is secured by the payment to the Rex of an annual tribute. The government of a Freehold has extensive powers of governance therein. There are rules and guidelines on the behavior of Governing Companies in the country's Constitution:
A Governing Company should not exile criminals to other Freeholds without compensation.
A Governing Company is forbidden to take any action to prevent the emigration of anyone it has not imprisoned.
A Governing Company is forbidden to tax goods being transported across (rather than into or out of) its Freeholds. A Governing Company is forbidden to collect taxes from travelers on Royal Highways.
A Governing Company is forbidden to restrict spoken or written communication or religious worship. A Governing Company should not allow political parties.
A Governing Company is forbidden to operate any warships or warplanes. A Governing Company should not seek to develop or maintain an army larger than that of the Rex, but should have an effective and reliable force of moderate size for military, police, and civil defense duties. (Warship: Armed watercraft with overnight accommodations for crew members, or turbine engines. Warplane: Armed fixed-wing aircraft. Armed spacecraft are also forbidden to Governing Companies.)
A Governing Company is forbidden to own any weapons of mass destruction.
A GC's headquarters must not be in any of the Freeholds it governs, and its board meetings may likewise not take place in any of its Freeholds. When a corporation buys a tax parcel, all stockholders with a residence there have six months to divest or sell their homes.
No GC can own more than three Freeholds, whether they be any combination of Provinces or Free Cities. No two of a GC's Freeholds can be adjacent.
Governing Companies can devolve powers, at their leisure, to local councils. Any local council with a jurisdiction of 1000 or fewer families can be constituted on any basis the GC desires; any local council with a larger jurisdiction must be elected by a weighted franchise based on fees paid to the GC.

Guy Cole and Martha Daughtrey Hate White People

2011-07-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

Two Federal circuit judges affirmed the second-class status of white people on July 1st. (Hat tip to Dennis Mangan.) The ruling, which struck down an anti-discrimination law passed by Michigan's voters in 2006, was supported by both of the judges appointed by President Clinton and opposed by Julia Smith Gibbons, who was appointed to the appellate court by George W. Bush.

The judges made the move to explicitly allow both sexual and racial discrimination in admissions to public universities, as well as in hiring civil servants. No white males were among the judges who made this decision. (In contrast, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed at a time when Congress was overwhelmingly white and 97% male, explicitly forbade discrimination by race and gender.)

Cole and Daughtrey have made their move at a time when it is clear that gender discrimination will hurt only males, while racial discrimination will hurt whites and Asians. For many decades, orthodoxy in the United States has held that any support of discrimination against a group is proof of hatred of that group.

Michigan's attorney general has stated that he will appeal the ruling.

How to View the Past

2011-06-25T08:33:00.000-07:00

This came to me in an epiphany the other day. I'm sure this is not original wisdom, but I'm not sure who I'm borrowing from so I'll gobble up all the credit for myself.

The past is not part of a "timeline". Forget about "timelines". The past is an instruction manual to the present and future. Conceiving of the past as on the same line with the future means you are lumping what you can change in with what you cannot, like whiling away your time before an exam by wishing for a bigger brain instead of studying.

If you wish for a time machine to go back and change the past, you are wishing for the facts in your instruction manual to be deleted and replaced by fantasies. This is a natural tendency. It is childish rather than evil. Maturity means focussing on learning and responsibility. Responsibility is the reality of freedom; superpowers are the fantasy.

This is a discipline I in particular need since I am an incorrigible dreamer. My fondest dream is the First World War never happened. The dream is beautiful but ultimately it is a burden.

Why Anti-Male Bigotry Makes Me Uncomfortable

2011-06-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

Like a lot of offices I've worked in, my current workplace is riddled with angry, aging feminists who loathe men and constantly feel the need to belittle and insult them. For a few weeks now it has been tying my stomach in knots and I've been wondering why.

The insults aren't particularly clever zingers or any of that, it's usually bromides along the lines of "Men are lazy! Har har har!" So my reaction was a bit of a mystery until today when a coworker asked me when our learning module on diversity was due. (We have little learning modules between bouts of real work; in a learning module you watch a video on your screen about sexual harassment or various legal matters.) I thought back to the parts of the module that recommend that you report cases of sexual discrimination, hostile work environment, etc.

Of course, it goes without saying that the rules would never be used to protect a man or punish a woman. All of the examples the learning module uses have the white males as villains, and everyone else as victims and heroes. They give away their bigotry right there, but of course you have the nominal right to fight discrimination regardless of who you are.

The smaller part of what bothers me is that they are so shameless in lying. I don't know if I should snicker or scowl or smile placidly when I am hearing my affirmative action loving employer go on about "equal opportunity". I wish I could laugh but it is just nauseating. I suppose this is because I know that, if I were a different person, I could and would stand up to the bigotry, talk in Jared-Taylor-steady voice about how I feel like the company needs to abandon AA and start treating whites and males decently, etc. I refrain partly because I need the job, and partly because I emphatically do not have a Jared-Taylor-steady voice.

So I suppose the larger part of what bothers me is the knowledge that I am not technically helpless in this situation, I am just functionally helpless. White males who complain are always isolated and mocked, often interrupted, threatened, misquoted, and accused of having violent intentions. Dealing with this effectively is really, truly beyond my abilities. Something about that realization feels like I have just downed a large glass of milk only to realize it has gone bad right after swallowing the last drop.

I know that the mockery and the humiliation is not an accident on the part of the left - they humiliate productive people first by design, and later out of habit. I simply don't have the superhuman poise that is required to nod and smile when I see a huge, megarich corporation engaging in this sort of bigotry. Adults aren't supposed to think that males are made of puppy dogs' tails.

Loser = Uppity

2011-06-14T18:47:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been reminded of a phenomenon I noticed in junior high school. (With the Death of the Grownup, an increasing number of sociopolitical phenomena are starting to remind me of junior high school.) For these purposes I'm dividing JH students into the cool (high-status kids who intimidated others), the masses (kids who weren't cool but seemed to accept the heirarchy), the outsiders (kids who didn't really accept the heirarchy but didn't fight it either), and the uppity (people who noted that the whole thing was a sham, based - whether they knew it or not - on the inverted value system common to post-civilization groups).

The cool kids became cool largely by insulting others, an approach which was sure to work if the others chose to respond with logic or reason. Once the coveted label of "cool" had been achieved, no behavioral rules applied to you, including the supposed rule against complaining and the injunction against "having a thin skin". It was perfectly acceptable for the cool kids to complain of having hurt feelings, not so much because people rationalized it, but because they didn't notice. When cool kids pointed out that so-and-so hurt their feelings, the masses would uncritically believe that so-and-so was an incorrigible bastard.

Even though the outsiders may not have accepted "proof by accusation" in the case of the aforementioned incorrigible bastard, they would still enforce the injunction against complaining, and the injunction against thin skin. They may have noticed the double standard and the doublethink that allowed the captain of the soccer team to insult away any constructive criticism, but they still applied one half of the standard ruthlessly to anyone who spoke of injustice.

This brings us to the uppity. These were the guys who noted that both the rules and the emotionality were completely bogus. For example, while the masses claimed to care nothing for academics or the people who excelled scholastically, they didn't casually dismiss grinds and nerds at all, but rather acted out bewilderment, disgust, and obvious hurt feelings whenever anyone performed better than average. The uppity occasionally called BS. Like everyone else, outsiders felt like no one should speak of the double standard, and joined in the chewing-out of the uppity at any opportunity.

The point is not to tell you about my junior-high. The point is to show how similar this is to the blogosphere. To be honest, as a happily married man I don't really care much about either Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) or Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW). The main thing I keep noticing about them is that MRAs and MGTOW make a whole lot less noise than the people who loathe them, at least at the right end of the blogosphere. Everyone is just so absolutely sure these guys are "losers". Technically, a lot of them have "lost" if you take their divorce history into account. It kind of puzzles me why people feel the need to complain about them so much, especially about their habit of complaining too much (be the change you want to see in the world!) They certainly don't complain more than the Anti-Defamation League, the National Organization for Women, or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The analogies are:
cool ... journalists, professors, judges, and civil servants
masses .... masses
outsiders ... alternative rightists, neocameralists
uppity ... men's rights activists, MGTOW, white nationalists

If MRAs and MGTOW are irrelevant (and they probably are), then it follows that there is no real percentage in putting them down. Doing so only confirms for them that the masses don't respect white males who don't follow the rules. (Incidentally, doing so also proves that white males are still the victim of a double standard, which should perhaps cause anger to be focused in directions other than at white males.)

Might be better just to ignore the whole matter. If you want to prove MRAs and/or MGTOW wrong, tell one of them that you respect him, and that he's way too good to spend his spare time focussing on the wrong that's been done to him when he could be doing something useful, like volunteering for Numbers USA or passing out Unamused's flyers. Then again, I don't want people to lie, and I know it's hard for most people to respect "losers" they have been conditioned to hate.

Question is, can you rise above your conditioning?

It may not have been about student loans

2011-06-13T16:36:00.000-07:00

According to Death & Taxes, the US Department of Education denied that it raided Kenneth Wright's house and detained him for six hours because his estranged wife was in arrears on paying her student loans. It says that the raid was authorized by a magistrate and that the reason is currently a secret, under seal by the court.

The official shotgun of the US Department of Education is the trusty Remington 870, 12-gauge pump, with a 14" barrel.

(One thing I like about Federal contracts is how specific they are. If I decided to confound all the mall ninjas by idolizing a US force other than the Navy SEALs, and I were willing to pay a $200 transfer tax for the short barrel, I could copy the Education model part for part. I think the Army's Long-Range Surveillance units are by far the coolest anyway.)

Best and Most Frightening Article I Have Read in Some Time

2011-06-07T17:38:00.000-07:00

Jason Collins wrote an excellent, concise article on a Malthusian meta-trap, in which K-selection (not Collins's term) only provides temporary escape. High technological-economic growth follows from quality-preference (Collins's term) in family size (i.e., when people invest a lot of time and effort into mate selection and education, famine and poverty can be defeated). Unfortunately, this era of plenty begins favoring quality-preference as people who are unwilling to choose mates or invest time in raising children have their children surviving at increasingly high rates. This in turn kills the environment for prosperity, throwing the economy back into the Malthusian trap.

Easy to question the assumptions, but harder to disprove the prediction, based on the recent past.

Respect is a One-Way Street?

2011-05-30T16:45:00.000-07:00

This weekend I watched Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress. Set in feudal Japan, the movie portray the very strict class roles of peasant, Samurai, and royalty. The two lowest-class characters felt the need to treat with great disrespect anyone who wasn't obviously higher than them in class. Several upper-class characters appear clad in nondescript garments that don't properly signal their status to the peasants, so the pair (a familiar cinematic duo of bumbling, bickering, cowardly males) only gets wise when the disrespect is turned around on them. Respect, it appears, is a one-way street, and a Japanese general or princess can completely disguise his or her social class simply by refraining from disrespecting the lower classes.

It was fiction, of course, but I wasn't struck by its historical accuracy or lack of same. I was struck by the familiarity of the pattern: "respect is a one-way street". It struck me in the same odd way it did in middle school and high school - whoever "lowered himself into the gutter" by throwing insults fastest and most frequently got the most respect. Just as I was taught that throwing insults debased the insulter, I was taught that respect was a two-way street and that it occurred between equals. The adults who taught this were obviously autistic, dishonest, or from a completely different culture.

It occurs to me now that the latter explanation is most likely. Equality in modern voter-states is as superficial as it is absolute. But while we lack the yeoman / republican equality of the early United States (i.e., anyone who paid taxes was considered a full citizen, worthy of reciprocated respect), we also lack the rigid caste structure of a feudal society. Instead, we have a chaotic socio-political tumult in which anyone who can put someone down "effectively" is, for the time being, a Samurai general or princess.

"Effectively" must be in quotation marks, of course, because I was taught (by mostly irrelevant adults from a different culture) that only sticks and stones can break our bones; names can never harm us. What "effectively" means nowadays is (a) quickly, (b) without remorse, and (c) using buzzwords of only the highest currency. Thus it is no longer "effective" to say someone is "retarded", you have to say they are "butthurt". (By invoking anal rape, the insulter aligns himself with prison gangs and likens his target to an incarcerated white man. And thus we see that anti-white bigotry has wormed its way into the most thoughtless chancres of everyday discourse, as it has into literature, social science, and governance.)

You can throw away class structures based on erudition, breeding, good looks, and money, but you will still have class structures. With no law and order, classes would sort themselves along the lines of combat ability and weapon stockpiles. For the time being, though, actual violence is kept to a minimum in circles occupied by the nonmilitary elites - college punks, propaganda hacks, and bureaucrats. The grownup is dead, and middle-aged adolescents rule in quite the same way that they ruled in school - clever putdowns.

Etymological Coincidence: Terms for White Western Men

2011-05-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

Reading snippets from “American Sexual Reference: Black Male” by Amiri Baraka (a/k/a LeRoi Jones) is always amusing. Most obviously, it's amusing that Yale and the state of New Jersey chose to grovel to such a hate-filled, rape-promoting bigot. But on another level, Baraka's choice of words is really amusing:

Most American white men are trained to be fags.

Why "fags"? It's short for "faggot", which is a modification of fagot, an Anglo-French word for bundle. Another word applied to white Western man quite frequently is "fascist", derived from another word for bundle, in this case the Latin fascia.

Both words reflect the ways men can hold together, but these two words have opposite connotations. Specifically, if you obey all the politically correct injunctions about how to behave, they'll call you a "faggot" and heap disrespect on you ipso facto. If you disobey the politically correct injunctions on how to behave, they'll call you a "fascist" ... and heap disrespect on you, ipso facto. The treatment differs, slightly: in the first case, you get the disrespect of the yoke and whip, in the second, the disrespect of the door slammed in your face.

This is one of those cases where the anti-white, anti-Western left unwittingly reveals both its attitudes and its vulnerabilities. The left always believes Eurowhite males, whether they are coöperative, self-sacrificing, meek sort of guys or assertive, straightforward "man's men", are busy creating some spooky sort of cabal with each other. That notion makes the left very afraid, and they reflect this in their choice of schoolyard insults.

If you're a white male, you may want to take this into account next time you have the choice to bash another white male, or to stay your hand.

The Thinking Housewife Gives a Reason to be Proud to be American

2011-05-23T18:52:00.000-07:00

Laura Wood quotes de Tocqueville:

No other crime is judged with the same inexorable severity by public opinion…. as Americans think nothing more precious than a woman’s honor and nothing deserving more respect than her freedom; they think no punishment too severe for those who take both against her will.

I think the feeling lives on to this day and I am proud of that. I wouldn't mind seeing a rapist or two get branded and pilloried.

I am saddened when people take anti-rape feeling* to extremes. I think that is what Brownmiller was doing when she talked about rape - presenting herself as The Arch Anti-Rapist, with the weaker sex ("all men") being necessarily weaker in their opposition to rape. This of course had to be described in the hysterical way typical of gender feminists (so now all men are guilty?), and then fed into the impressionable minds of young women who might otherwise have been able to trust some of the hairy barbarians who use the other restroom.

* Taking anti-rape wariness to extremes is no vice. Women, especially young women, need to know that they can protect themselves. It does a disservice to say that they can't protect themselves perfectly. "Perfectly" is the enemy of "good enough".

Heinz Uthmann Strikes a Blow for Islamic Terrorism

2011-05-13T19:33:00.000-07:00

Subhuman dhimmi judge Heinz Uthmann struck a blow against free speech recently by filing a criminal complaint against German Chancellor Merkel for the "tacky and undignified" move of saying she was gladdened at the death of Osama bin Laden. His move, which cites section 140 of the German Criminal Code, blatantly violates Article 5 of Germany's Basic Law, which apparently doesn't protect spooky white Christians of the type that terrify globalizing leftist do-gooders. (Hat tip: HBD Chick.)

History truly does repeat. Prior to Uthmann, another German with a record of opposing free speech and ignoring his country's constitution went out of his way to curry favor with murderous Muslims. I don't know if Uthmann has any plans to murder millions of Jews and Slavs, but destruction of free speech would certainly facilitate those ends.

Coincidentally, the Canadian government has decided that Part I (2b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn't apply to scary Caucasian kuffār of the type that panic internationalizing progressive schoolmarms. (Hat tip: Dominion of Canada.) In this case, it's a nominal conservative (Harper, whom I used to get a pretty good vibe from) doing the constitution shredding. Canada's Human Rights Commission apparently retains the power to assess fines for hurting people's feelings.

Finally, it looks like the national security letter provisions of the USA Patriot Act are still in place, in blatant violation of America's First Amendment, which apparently doesn't offer any protection to terrifying European-descended infidels of the type that horrify world-uniting social-liberal crusaders.

Sorry to throw three completely random, unrelated snapshots of the world today into one rambling post. I guess it's just that watching liberty and civilization get turned into garbage by an alliance of communists and their patsies leaves me all flighty and whimsical.

Missing Term Problem: Are Jews "White"?

2011-05-10T17:30:00.000-07:00

I used to think that the existence of both race and ethnicity as distinct concepts was unnecessary. Over time I have come to the conclusion that there are not too many such terms, but too few. Why? Because of the continual debate, or rather, the continual semantic stalemate, on the question, "Are Jews white?"

This question used to be trivially easy. White means "belonging to the Caucasoid race", said I, so naturally almost all Jews are white. Over time I noticed that many people who knew of the Caucasoid race would not necessarily accept the first part of my statement. Does "white" necessarily have to mean the same thing as "Caucasoid"? There are two terms and a lot of concepts to define, so why don't we use white to mean something narrower than Caucasoid? The Caucuses lie on the border between continents, after all ... what is the term for people on just one side of the divide?

To avoid confusion, let's join the words European and white into Eurowhite. It's too narrow a group to be a "great race", but too large to be an ethnicity. Is it a "subrace" or "ethnic cluster"? It is defined as: Caucasoid people of any ethnicity who trace their origins to Europe rather than elsewhere. Since tracing ones origins involves choice like language and custom, while race is strictly a matter of genetics, Eurowhite is properly conceived of as a cluster of ethnicities, related not by language but by race and geography.

With this definition in hand, it is clear that substantial numbers of Jews in the Anglosphere are emphatically not Eurowhite. Their origins in southwestern Asia are an important part of how many Jews self-identify. This is to say nothing of the often-ignored but persistent cultural gaps between Jews and the nations they inhabit. (Can you think of any other group of people who would call you a bigot just for stating, "Some of my best friends are" from their ethnic group?)

It won't answer any large-writ "Jewish question", but if "Eurowhite" gains currency it will be a small step toward resolving this labor-wasting semantic impasse.

No "We" Did Not Create Bin Laden

2011-05-07T17:55:00.000-07:00

One linguistic tic I can't condone is the way leftist writers so commonly use "we" to mean the United States government, or even the Central Intelligence Agency. If James Ridgeway wants to admit culpability for the rise of Islamic aggression, that is fine by me. It would make him more honest than most leftists, anyway. For my part, though, I'm pretty sure if I were with the CIA I would be aware of it.

We had nothing to do with Bin Laden, or the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein, or any of that. Neocon/Trotskyite elites and their antecedents in the Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt administrations are not us and they are not America and they damn well did not have America's interests in mind when they redefined America as the world's policeman.

The Thinking Housewife on Modesty and Beauty

2011-05-06T16:39:00.000-07:00

Laura Wood the Thinking Housewife has a post on democracy and beauty (or perhaps "democracy versus beauty"). The post itself was worthwhile but what really grabbed me by the lapels was what Laura wrote in response to commenter Bruce B (who raised a valuable distinction between "hot" and "beautiful").

Immodest dress is also a result of a loss of privacy and of an unconscious understanding of what privacy is. Modest clothes, at their best, are not an expression of prudery or an abhorrence of sexuality. They reflect the desire for privacy, an appreciation of intimacy and a reverence for individuality, as opposed to conformity. The conformist is prone to immodesty. The individual has something of himself in reserve, not freely given away.

Laura's point about conformity and individuality is one I hadn't thought of, but I put the part that really impressed me in boldface. This was one of those mild epiphanies that recalled the way I felt reading A Return to Modesty.

What Laura is alluding to in this sublime phrase, I think, is that when modern people have some understanding of what modesty is, it is all too often a distorted, propagandized version. Some seem to believe that men shouldn't ogle women no matter how the women present themselves, that you violate a woman's modesty by looking at her boldly presented cleavage, etc. This puts all the responsibility on men, and gives all the power to men. Only a feminist could believe that a woman is "empowered" by dressing like a strumpet and having all the men around her pretend not to be heterosexual, while she is "objectified" when men give her a good hard look.

Anyway, "Why Radical Democracy Punishes and Eliminates Beauty" is a good post and one of the few I've seen where the comment thread lives up to its promise.

On "Whining"

2011-04-30T17:41:00.000-07:00

One word I encounter entirely too much online is "whining". It is the all-purpose put-down, and I object to its use in serious writing for four reasons:

First, because it comes off as too blithe and superficial for serious essays. It sounds like something a teenager would throw at another.

Second, because its use borders on hypocrisy. When you apply a pejorative to someone's else's grievances, you are complaining about complaining, more or less.

Third, because it obscures meaning. A charge of "whining!" could be an indictment of style or substance, but many authors who use it feel no apparent need to clarify. If someone has a legitimate grievance, but gets their message across in a maudlin or repetitive tone, it is fine to express your opinion on that matter if you consider your appropriate role to be that of editor. If not, it may be better to focus on content.

Fourth - the subtlest and most important reason - it is easiest to use to unfairly slur those communication styles that are most healthy, not those that are the most obnoxious. I have noticed in recent years a distinct tendency to get one's grievances across through put-downs (aggressiveness) or through intentional distraction put into question form (a form of passive aggression). Whether or not these strategies have been developed to avoid the ubiquitous charge of "whining", I don't know; the point is that both aggression and passive aggression are unhealthy.

Consider the following (completely fictitious) scenario. A man has just come from a 12-hour shift on a construction site. In the past, he has offered to lend his lawnmower to a roommate, noting that it is quite dirty, and stating vaguely that "You or I could clean it; shouldn't be too hard." Neither remembers the conversation verbatim.

Roommate: Hey, your lawnmower's totally filthy, dude. I need to use it. Hop to it, dude.

Man: Oh, you can clean it if you need it right now. I had a long shift and I'm not inclined to do it this evening.

Roommate: What? It's your lawnmower. Why can't you clean it?

Man (version 1): You must either be deaf or a moron. I said you can clean it.
Man (version 2): Why should I clean it?
Man (version 3): I'm too tired to clean it right now. I need a shower.

Ask yourself which of these versions is the healthiest (i.e., most assertive). Now ask yourself which of these versions is most vulnerable to the charge of "whining".

Version 1 replies to Roommate's fallacious complex question with insults and repetition. It doesn't move the conversation forward, but it can hardly be accused of "whining".

Version 2 is just a "question", albeit a fake question (there is no reason the Man should clean it, so it makes no sense to ask for a reason). Most modern people were brought up in highly ideological institutional schools where it was constantly drilled as a mantra that there is "no such thing as a stupid question", and so they become habituated to putting most of their jabs and ripostes in question form as a form of rhetorical defense.

Version 3 is the most informative and least obnoxious, but in the modern world it would surely invite the knee-jerk reply. It is also the sort of reply I hardly ever hear any more (outside of my marriage and certainly highly-scripted "professional" discussions). To constantly scream "Whiner!" discourages people from being assertive or even minimally informative, and encourages the verbal war of all-against-all that seems to have replaced discourse.

Maybe You Can Legislate Morality After All ...?

2011-04-28T20:00:00.000-07:00

My office is mostly women. A chatty bunch, they are usually either talking about American Idol, child-rearing, or the weather. The other day I heard one of them talking, or preaching, about how heinous it was for so many old men to be looking at a certain 17-year-old female celebrity. She didn't mentioning about lust or drool, she actually used the phrase "look at". Something like, "They shouldn't be doing that. Don't they know how old they are? She's not 18, she's 17." She was met with nods and murmurs of agreement.

Never mind the ominous tones of thoughtcrime and sexcrime. What was weird was the statutory tone of this woman's moral judgement. To declare that someone's date of birth (to the year) determines who we should be "looking at" (perceiving sexually) seems like an extremely bureaucratic way to make a moral-ethical judgement. I'm not questioning the statutes; I know that Loki's wager makes it difficult to get across the need to draw a legalistic distinction between child and adult where no bright-line distinction exists, psychologically. It makes no sense to speak of informed consent when someone is too young to truly be informed.

The point is, why exactly is an expedient legal provision turning into grounds for actual moral condemnation? We have grown accustomed to (or given up fighting) the notion that anything an 18-year-old girl consents to is perfectly acceptable, since we don't want to be accused of "censorship" (apparently criticism is censorship when directed at pornography). So now we have to hit back in a manner patterned on a legislature - pick a numeric dimension (17 versus 18 - not "leering at girls" versus "appreciating beauty", because neither of those concepts could be defined in regulation) and pass a resolution.

Bureaucratic states pass on their patterns to their subjects. People begin to think like bureaucrats, to set their judgement aside, to confuse concepts of regulation and custom, acceptance and passivity, legal action and moral condemnation.

(If you're curious, I think they were talking about the magnificent Selena Gomez, who is now actually 18 or 19, but that isn't relevant since the ladies were pretty sure she was under 18.)

State Representative John Martin is a White-Hating Piece of Filth

2011-04-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

Maine State Representative John Martin is an anti-white bigot, who recently accused the state's Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Philip Congdon of insufficiently kowtowing to the tender feelings of Maine's failed minorities. Martin chose to insult and vilify Congdon based on comments the Commissioner is alleged to have made, conveniently while no cameras or recording devices were present.

Unsurprisingly, no news source has had the courage to print what the Commissioner said (the Bangor Daily News filled out its article on the matter with summaries of the Commissioner's feelings about french fries, and an unrelated personnel matter). I surmise that he was simply pointing out the truth that affirmative action, and the "disparate impact" court cases that go hand-in-hand with it, force businesses to make hiring decisions that make no sense to them. The economic costs of AA are enormous, and it is the Commissioner's job to know that. What he did not know was that, according to the mainstream media and their shills in the legislature, it is apparently also the Commissioner's job to cover up the costs of affirmative action.

John Martin should resign and apologize to the victims of affirmative action.

Men Don't Like Harpies, Men Like ...

2011-04-09T15:42:00.000-07:00

My wife and I have been reading about and discussing game quite a bit recently. OneSTDV and several other right-wing bloggers have written on the subject. Then Cassandra Goldman wrote a post about young men that sent my thinking off on a sharp tangent. The question that formed was:

Why do men complain so much about shrews, harpies, bitches, castrators, etc., without mentioning or perhaps even thinking about the opposite? We talk about the opposite of ugly women, dumb women, unavailable women, slutty women, etc., so what gives?

Part of the problem, surely, is the obsolescence of the phrase "nice girl". It means any number of things other than "woman who is respectful, mature, and supportive", so we run into the very same Missing Term Problem I point out in so many discussions. But that only tells half of the story. I'm convinced that the reason men don't talk about how they desire to meet, associate with, and marry nice women is that it involves admitting, to themselves as much as the world, that they want to be treated well, emotionally speaking.

A woman can be pretty, smart, and virtuous in a vacuum, but for her to be nice requires someone to be nice to. Obvious though it might be, if a man lets on that his anti-bitch attitude is matched by a pro-nice-woman attitude, he may be tagged as a wimp who fears roughness and demands to be coddled. Nobody want to come home to put-downs, iciness, emotional instability, or a voice raised in anger.

As an adolescent I remember listening to the other males judging the girls in our class, and I remember all of them carefully avoiding this topic. Obviously they were highly focussed on appearance, but they seemed to pick around the topic of whether or not so-and-so was a backstabbing, trash-talking grouch. It is not a surprise that boys don't know what they want, but it's a little distressing that the same macho complex has gamed so many older males into forgetting.

Gentleman, it is not a weakness or even an eccentricity to seek out a woman who is kind, considerate, sweet-talking, sweet-natured, and thoughtful. These goals are laudable. You don't prove that you're a tough guy by letting a woman cut you down constantly, but you don't prove you are a tough guy by out-bitching her either. You just have to avoid that sort of person. You should seek the sort of woman of strong enough character that she holds her tongue rather than vents anger at another person, of strong enough character that she would rather criticize than insult, and rather inform than criticize. And you should be proud of that.

Vegetables: you must try this

2011-04-08T20:38:00.000-07:00

This is a post about one of my favorite subjects (food), also one that I know very little about (making it). On the advice of my mother, my wife tried cooking vegetables in a way that is simple, delicious, and nutritive.

Vegetables:
We use broccoli, carrots, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, potatoes, red peppers, onions, garlic in whole cloves, and string beans.

Cut vegetables into the desired sizes (we used largish bite sizes), place into a ziplock bag. Add extra light olive oil and shake until coated evenly.

Place vegetables in high-sided baking dish and salt to taste. (We use a Corningware 9" for two crowns of broccoli; you don't use the glass lid in this recipe.) Roast broccoli, red peppers, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and garlic in a standard oven or toaster oven at 350F for an hour; this will scorch the tops of broccoli, garlic and the edges of Brussels sprouts slightly black (don't be distressed that it looks "burnt." Trust me, it is delicious). Potatoes and onions go for an hour at 400F; carrots take longer. We've done broccoli, potatoes and Brussels sprouts individually as side dishes (throw a little crushed rosemary on the potatoes), or the entire above list of veggies all mixed together under a big roast beef.

The point of this post is to add some more ideas for a good paleolithic diet (or quasi-paleolithic, e.g. with potatoes and string beans as above). I don't find salads nearly as satisfying as hot vegetables, and a lot of vegetable dishes are either bland (boiled, plain), totally unpaleolithic (full of corn and/or dry beans) or heavy on everything but the actual vegetables (i.e. vegetable soup that is mainly potato and beef). So vegetables black roasted in olive oil present another delicious option.

Clockwork Orange: A Meta-Review [spoilers]

2011-04-05T17:38:00.000-07:00

So I finally got around to watching A Clockwork Orange. It's a movie I'd heard so much about, I considered it almost superfluous to watch it, but considering that I occasionally mention it in writing (it's on anyone's list of dystopian moves, and I've often noted how rare non-dystopian futuristic movies are, by comparison) I figured I should give it a try.

It was very, very different than I had been led to believe. Far from a fast-paced orgy of drugs and violence, the movie dragged from time to time. Kubrick has his points to make about bureaucracy, and in A Clockwork Orange he makes them fairly literally (i.e., prisoner intake is lengthy and laborious, psychiatrist interviews are lengthy and laborious, etc.)

As to the main character, I was again misled. Most fans of the movie said Kubrick's genius lay in his ability to create a charismatic figure out of a boy who committed unspeakable violence in nearly every scene. I found Alex to be occasionally comical and about as despicable as his reputation. I didn't find him nearly as "eerily charming and magnetic" as someone like Hannibal Lecter or Darth Vader, but then I am more turned off by puerile, self-centered "non-conformists" than most so that isn't surprising.

Oddly enough, as the movie wore on I found Kubrick almost understated the violence of Alex and his gang. They beat up an alcoholic derelict, but they don't kill him even though he begs for it (which he does for personal reasons, before they have hurt him). Next they take on rival thugs and stop a vicious gang rape, albeit serendipitously. The barbaric attack on the writer and his wife are when Alex first shows his true colors. Following this up with an attack on an even older, even more defenseless (and a more cautious and probably more sympathetic) woman, the only reason Alex's arrest feels unfortunate is that three quarters of his gang get away.

While Kubrick doesn't spend too many reels showing Alex as a cold-blooded killer, it's his cinematic handling that generates the most controversy. The crimes, we are told, look too fun. This might have bothered me ten years ago, and it surely would have bothered me when I was Alex's age, but as I get older I get more used to the idea of an artist throwing us headlong into the bad guy's point of view. This may be because, as a hard rightist who is also a former center-leftist who used to associate heavily with leftists, I am quite well acquainted with the bad guy's point of view. Kubrick's "exciting and fun" camera work never offended me - he was just trying to show how an obnoxious, selfish teenager can throw himself into a life of hardcore evil as a means of entertainment.

So there you have it - I'm one of the ones who didn't misunderstand Kubrick. (I think.) Alex is not a nonconformist at all - he's just a prick. But then again, Kubrick's "bleak, dystopian" future only looks bleak if you're stuck in the Summer of Love (the Brits didn't even have Vietnam to spoil their fun). From the perspective of 2011, it's not that bad. There is no interracial violence, the economy seems to be working okay, noöne ever complains about food prices or wonders if her son will ever return from Central Asia.

The awful Ludovico technique into which Alex was forced ... was actually something he chose. Granted, he was unclear on the details, but between sessions of watching the films (about as violent as Kubrick's first reel, seems like), he converses normally with psychiatric staff. During the viewings, eyedrops keep his eyes from drying out. Only the introduction of the drug causes the violence to as sickening to him as it should be. The technique seems to be awful mainly by accident - it causes Alex to associate nausea and illness with the one wholesome part of his character: Beethoven.

The main downside of the world of A Clockwork Orange is that leftists are still stupid. And this brings me to the crux of this post, and the deep sickness of modern leftism betrayed by reaction to the movie: all the praise and condemnation I have heard for this movie concentrates on the ethically questionable anti-crime activities that form the movie's middle. The demonstrably pro-crime, pro-barbarism activities that form the movie's coda never warrant a mention. It's like "thank goodness he's cured, and he can be an edgy non-conformist again." Questionable means can't be purified by a laudable goal, but apparently using the same means (spooky experimental psychiatry) is just fine if your goal is to turn a defenseless young man into a monster.

The plot arc of Mr. Alexander, the writer character who is an apparent alter-ego of Anthony Burgess, seems to be a pretty obvious indictment of the liberal's critique of the Ludovico technique. The writer, like the audience, is steadfastly opposed to this "brutal" technique, only he changes his mind when he realizes Alex is the same boy who had invaded his house and brutalized its occupants, years ago. It seems that when crime victims remain an abstraction, the liberal finds it easy and even laudable to sympathize with the criminal, no matter how brutal. Alex's ill-considered rendition of "Singin' in the Rain" turns Mr. Alexander into a conservative, as it were.

In my experience, the film's audience is not so easily moved. The truly dystopian ending to the movie, in which it is hinted that the anti-crime party has taken to enlisting thugs to intimidate political opponents, was lost on most of the people I've known who have discussed the movie. The idea that their beloved state, far from using "spooky mind control" to turn thugs into well-spoken young gentlemen, is turning impressionable youths into narcissistic, hypersexualized political footballs is just too horrible for the leftist to contemplate.

And that is leftism in a nutshell. It surprised me not at all to find that Burgess was a rightist and a monarchist.

Modern Fable

2011-03-24T16:47:00.000-07:00

So, there was a 18-year-old male working in his father's garage. He was preparing to build his own miter box, in preparation for other carpentry projects he had planned. Then his parents reminded him that there was a paper he could be doing for an English class. It was extra credit, not required, but he felt like he would be better off ensuring a high grade and besides, it was chilly in the garage.

He put aside his tools and went inside. He completed a paper entitled "Patriarchy and Oppression in The Scarlet Pimpernel" which was judged the best in the class and which bumped up his A- for the term in to a solid A.

His father found the half-completed miter box project in the garage to be annoying, and eventually cleaned up the mess himself after exchanging some sarcastic words with the rest of his family. The next fall, when he needed a miter box, he used his credit card to buy one made in Taiwan.

When the next summer arrived, neither he or his son had any recollection of the carpentry project, though they did discuss the twin deficits hypothesis, as presented to a college economics class.

Great quote from iSteve

2011-03-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

Usually comments to iSteve are the absolute worst I find at the right end of the blog alley. One, however, is completely unforgettable. From a poster named Harry Baldwin:

Every year or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little neocon and throw him against the wall, just to show them we're tired of them screwing this country up.

There is a policy I can get behind.

Question for Rightists: Trauma

2011-03-06T11:37:00.000-08:00

I am currently reading Trauma and Recovery, a book which touches on many of the same themes in the excellent movie Regeneration which I saw recently. Though the book is from a moderately leftist, feminist perspective (its take on World War I is of the typical peacenik Ernst-Jünger-didn't-exist mindset), it inspired me to think about my online rightist friends. In the tradition of OneSTDV, I have a question for rightists:

Has personal trauma significantly affected your politico-philosophical positions, especially your self-conception as a rightist? Does is underpin any specific positions or stances? Or does it merely inform your worldview in a general way? It need not have been trauma affecting you personally, but that would have affected someone you knew personally.

Addendum: I have not blogged on the Cleveland, TX atrocity because I am just too busy and others (Mangan, Sailer, OneSTDV) have done a commendable job. However, I think that situation ties in serendipitously with this topic. Should someone stop by and want to shine a little light in this somewhat overcast blog, I'd be grateful.

A Poem on Immigration

2011-02-17T20:01:00.000-08:00

Cameron of M4 Monologue has written the first poem I've ever seen on the subject of immigration. It is a brief poem, in a straightforward style (think: the opposite of "The Wasteland") - good enough to kick off a genre.

We men of the West may not have politicians, or even politics that we can count on, but for now at least we still have poetry.

The WHAT Civil Liberties Union?

2011-01-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

While the national ACLU doesn't believe gun rights apply to individuals (maybe "gun privileges" do), the South Dakota chapter believes they definitely do apply to resident aliens, and not just for ownership, hunting, and open carry, but also for concealed carry.

In other words, the ACLU is about as close as possible to the leftist's dream of having it both ways on rights - denying rights to US citizens while guaranteeing them to foreigners on our soil. Because of course the national ACLU doesn't just say that concealed-carry isn't a constitutional right; according to them, no level of individual gun rights is constitutionally protect, only state militias are protected. (I.e., the government can't ban itself from doing what it wants to do.) The ACLU of South Dakota is not prepared to settle for one iota less liberty for holders of green cards, even though defense against foreign invasion is one of the express purposes behind the Second Amendment.

An argument can be made that, since the Second Amendment doesn't say anything about "citizens" or "naturalized persons" but rather "the people", the rights to keep and bear do apply to everyone legally in the country. Why this necessarily includes carrying weapons concealed is never explained by the SD ACLU - an interesting question given that both the courts and most gun rights advocates accept a higher level of regulation for concealed-carry than for simple ownership, hunting, or open carry on one's own property.

As the GOA's Larry Pratt points out, the extension of these rights to immigrants is an attempt by the left to set a precedent for arming "illegals" (foreign scofflaws). The SD ACLU's move is another reason to dramatically reduce legal immigration, as well as step up deportations of foreign scofflaws. The NRA's support of the ACLU on this one, combined with their endorsement of John McCain in his senate reëlection bid, is enough to keep me from joining. I'm joining the Gun Owners of America instead.

Answers to the Four Tough Questions

2011-01-01T14:02:00.000-08:00

Bruce Charlton recently wrote an open letter directed at me (among others), asking four tough questions, presented below in italics (there is additional explanatory test at his site):

1. What do you want? And what do you not want?

I want a stable society with minimized violence, predictable order, and contented citizens. I want to defeat mob rule, rule by hostile elites, and the destructive ideologies that support them. I do not want mass immigration, enforced race-mixing, affirmative action, or a centralized surveillance state.

Is your list any more than a mere wish list? If so, what binds-together these core values and necessary exclusions?

This is a fairly typical conservative-nationalist list of demands. The demands were created by a clear-eyed understanding of the impossibility of having both a vital culture and infinite tolerance at the same time.

2. Having listed these requirements, is it possible to sustain a society which gives you what you want, and not what you do not want?

Certainly. As a Moderate American Nationalist, the political framework I seek is open enough to accommodate many ideologies and cultures in different regions. All that is required to build a mass movement strong enough to create this framework is the death of the PC multicult. Put another way, I don't demand that every region of the country adhere to my every whim. I only demand that the country allow every region to be itself. At that point I could pick and choose.

What are the mechanisms by which your ideal society would be maintained? Are they plausible? Are they strong enough?

My ideal society harnesses human jealousy in defense of local and regional power. The mechanisms can be seen as a modern answer to the Articles of Confederation, with a couple of simple dictums to make things work. The first dictum: only people who contribute, either by putting their life on the line in uniform, or by paying out more in taxes than they take in in subsidies, should have the right to vote. The second dictum is that lower levels of government can be trusted with more powerful than higher, as long as citizens have the freedom to move from place to place. The third dictum is that the civil employees should only be leant to the central government, rather than permanently employed by it. The fourth dictum is that central government legislators should serve regional governments, either directly or indirectly.

These mechanisms are plausible if the big thinkers are focussed, and if they are heard. The sooner we quit fantasizing about disenfranchising women the sooner we can get down to the business of disenfranchising welfare mothers and civil servants, etc.

3. How would your ideal society stop itself recapitulating the course of all existing Western societies?

The all-important trick of harnessing jealousy of lower levels of government strengthens the whole system. Both the European Union and the United States made the mistake of creating too many permanent central institutions and then trying to keep them from becoming too powerful. All of the people with both power and expertise in the EU benefit when the EU grows in power. Thus it continues to grow, way beyond the customs union that was originally intended.

4. In such a society as you conceive, what will motivate people? And are these motivations plausibly strong enough to resist relentless, implacable and dedicated foes who cannot be convinced of the virtues of your favoured society and who are prepared to sacrifice pleasure, experience pain, and even willingly to die to get what they want?

I don't think people's motivations will change too much. The ideological motivation to centralize, to make PC, to borrow-and-spend, etc., will remain, but the political/financial motivation to do so will be broken apart. Law and order would be maintained by local and regional governments with a strong motivation to protect the taxpayer without overtaxing him. The dedicated foes of this arrangement could sacrifice all they wanted, but their freedom of movement would become very limited. I.e., the Fred Phelpses of the world would find they couldn't visit the San Franciscos; the Eldridge Cleavers would not be welcome in Idaho; the neo-Nazis wouldn't be welcome in Florida, New Jersey, or the New York islands, etc. Very few people would really be motivated to strike at the heart of a decentralized system.

At root this is just one question: what would be different about your desired secular society which would plausibly make it self-maintaining when all previous secular societies have become progressively more self-destroying?

I don't but that Switzerland is progressively more self-destroying, even though there are directly-elected legislators in their central government, they have universal suffrage, etc. Surely this is partly because their political culture is healthier than most, but I don't think they have any secret magic.

My desired non-clerical society would be self-maintaining because it would encompass the wisdom of the American founders plus experiences they couldn't have had. For not much longer will we be blind-sided by cultural Marxism, "religion of peace" propaganda regarding Islam, illusions about meso-American culture, etc.

Too Many Cookies

2010-12-24T20:30:00.000-08:00

I ate too many cookies today. I am miserable. It is all my fault.

This isn't some kind of "poke fun at your own decadence" thing where you're supposed to laugh that you'll pay for it next time you step on a scale. I am physically very uncomfortable, because my blood sugar has almost certainly plunged, but I ate enough decent food in addition to my cookie overload that there is simply no room in my stomach for anything decent. I am thirsty, I have a very strange headache which I cannot locate except to say it seems to be "following my brain around", I can't find a comfortable position to sit in, and I desire to simultaneously have much less and much more in my stomach.

Anyway, the silver lining is that this is all caused by my flirtation with paleo-paleo living. I'm not as serious about paleolithic eating as OneSTDV, but I've kept in mind his advice to eliminate grains and sugars in mind when planning meals. Accordingly I've reduced pastas, white breads (but not pumpernickel, which I love even though it's not all that much better than white breads), certain legumes (soy and peanuts), and especially sugar.

I've felt a lot better over the last couple of months but apparently I've lost my tolerance for ordinary Christmas eating. That's the awful truth: eating 20 or 30 cookies over two days wasn't out of the ordinary for most of my past holiday seasons. Having repeated this behavior without the associated tolerance I can feel how bad it really is for human physiology. Nature is finally giving me the punch in the chops it has owed me for years.

B Lode Drops the Masque

2010-12-21T18:55:00.000-08:00

My southern hemisphere friends over at M4 Monologue asked me where my odd pseudonym comes from. If you're curious, you can hunt around over there for the true answer, which I assure you is quite mundane. For a far more interesting, if less factual, answer, I give the following:

I am the Baron Lyaksandro Olave d'Estienne, the great Ukrainian-Manx-French nobleman who has been in hiding since 1963, hunted mercilessly by the combined forces of the Rosicrucians, the Shriners, and the DGFI. Should they ever learn my whereabouts I am certain my life would be forfeit.

Thankfully, Blogger has allowed me to conceal my whereabouts even as I reveal my identity, hitherto suppressed. I can only reveal that my small cottage at the sea, though spartan, is surrounded by the most beautiful sights and sounds a fugitive like myself could hope for.

As to my family, well, the exploits of my paternal grandfather, Victor Bruno, Baron d'Estienne, are well-enough known that to rehash them here would make me quite the braggart. I'll only recommend that curious readers, if they desire, read up on the Ukrainian and Manx branches of my family tree as well.

Suffice to say that I am happy in my current life, a grizzled old man with only a loyal mastiff and a bushbaby for company, hoping to contribute my two rupees to the right half of the blogosphere. Admirers and detractors need not type out my full name, of course; it would be more parsimonious to simply abbreviate my moniker to B LOdE, or, if camel case seems too awkward, B Lode.

Anti-White Bigotry: I don't think this one is a joke

2010-12-16T20:37:00.000-08:00

Technically, this should be called "anti-non-Hispanic bigotry" but that is too cumbersome.

Around 84 million Mexicans may qualify as "trusted travelers", allowing them to bypass certain checkpoint procedures if they go through a rigorous background check. They will be able to use machine-readable cards at kiosks, in order to speed up their passage through.

Read it, write about it, pass it on to your friends. We should remember when and how this happened.

I Identify with the Horse (My Strangest Post Yet)

2010-12-13T18:08:00.000-08:00

To people who know me, it goes without saying that the repetitious nature of supermarket / shopping mall Christmas music makes it harder to enjoy the season. I've heard those songs every year for going on four decades now; they've lost their novelty.

And most are novelty songs. Those are bad enough, but when I'm standing in line at the market is the time I'm least likely to be moved by the other kind of Christmas songs ... religious songs. I'm just not in the mood to fall on my knees and hear the angel voices - not when I'm stuck in the tabloid aisle trying to escape with my groceries. (I used to love Nat King Cole's version of "O Holy Night", only long after dark when I'd be with my folks, after we had run out of talk and were just enjoying our tree.)

But this year it hit me why I can't stand "Jingle Bell Rock" - I identify with the long-suffering horse! Not kidding. That horse appears in several songs, always pulling a sleigh all by himself. (Songwriters are always specific on the latter point.) In the original version of "Jingle Bells", he even goes astray and crashes; it's not clear if the animal is injured. Perhaps he was moving too fast?

In "Jingle Bell Rock", he's told to move faster and pick up his feet. This time, it seems he's moving too slow. Clearly the creature is overworked, lonely, and unappreciated. And lest you think he's contributing to some economically or medically vital process, oh no! It's clear that the only goal of these icy excursions is to entertain people. Talk about human arrogance!

Long story short, as a working guy I wish the songwriter would lay off his loyal beast, at least until December 26.

As a matter of complete coincidence, a video I posted to a much more serious, but tangentially related thread (on duty, masculinity, and gelding) features a one-horse open-sleigh. Here's another song from the same album (same artwork):

What is the other axis?

2010-12-02T18:18:00.000-08:00

We are told, on the one hand, that the world is divided politically into Left and Right. Some say Left and Right are totally obsolete as concepts and should be discarded. Others say that while they have some validity, they leave out another axis.

I tend to agree with the latter group, but only recently have I come to a conclusion about what the second axis. While I am certain that is very from time to time and from place to place, I am convinced that in the West, at this time, the second axis is attitudes toward Jews and Israel. Nowhere is this more clear than in a recent post at Age of Treason, where TANSTAAFL makes a Sobranish point about Murdoch, Phillips, and Auster. That is, a very critical stance that someone like Joe Sobran or Pat Buchanan might take.

Since my mantra is "Unite the Right!" these sorts of disputes always make me a little sad, though not surprised. If rightists are united against the socialization and Islamification of the West, there should be little else to debate. In the previous sentence, "should" is of course an even flimsier word than it usually is. There is oodles and oodles to debate between the Zionist Right and the Anti-Zionist Right. The latter tends to sympathize profusely with Palestinians and loathe Winston Churchill, for example, which creates some friction with other rightists.

The left is really no different. The Anti-Zionist Left (think Vanessa Redgrave and Lyndon LaRouche) can't stand the Zionist Left. This is why the axes seem to be completely orthogonal, and well they should be. Whether Jews have a right to run Israel as an ethnostate is irrelevant to whether socialism (forced sharing) is a good idea.

My position on the respective axes can be summed up best as Neutrality and Rightism, but there is more to it than that. I could be described as a pro-white ethnopluralist. I technically belong to the Zionist Right because I think Jews do have a right to run Israel as an ethnostate, but I am also Jew-critical because the globalizing influence of American Jews is somewhat distinct from the anti-white influence of leftists. Think of me as a multi-Zionist counterpoint to multiculturalism.

I regard these positions as a potential crystal on which to build ideological discipline. To me, ideological discipline doesn't mean professing what you don't believe or condoning what you see as wicked. It means refining your positions in ways you are wholly comfortable with in order to become more in line with your true allies.

In other words, when I ask for discipline on the right I'm not asking for the anti-Zionists to praise Israel or for the Zionists to abandon it. I'm asking for someone who might criticize Israel on "sauce for the goose!" grounds to put that in neutral for a while and - and simply demand Zionist rights for gentiles. (To maintain that the Jews deserve as much of the damage from immigration and multicult as they have buffaloed Europe, Oceania, and North America into accepting is asserting an eye-for-an-eye sort of justice that I think we should move beyond.) I'm asking for someone who might assert that is Israel is the America's most important ally to reconsider whether a tiny stretch of the Mediterranean coast can be more important to the US than, say, Canada. And it goes without saying that any rightist should oppose foreign aid.

Ideological discipline need not be created with doublethink or by going against you're ethical impulses. If you're more pro- or anti-Israel (or pro- or anti-Jewish) than you are rightist, you may not be a lowlife dirtbag, but you're not my ally. If you can turn down the salience dial a little bit on your opinions about this little spot in Asia (half as many inhabitants as the Netherlands), you may find you can be a more effective rightist.

Nerds

2010-11-30T18:24:00.000-08:00

Since everyone else has posted on nerd, I'll follow suit as usual.

When I first started seeing the best conservative bloggers writing about nerds, the topic seemed innovative and unpretentious. Take seriously an adolescent term for a moment, consider the group it applies to, and philosophize about their roles and the implications of their existence. So far, so good.

Then I noticed that, as with terms like "alpha" and "beta", "nerd" seems to mean whatever it mean at the writer's junior high school. Some say nerds are near-autistic or aspergian, always saying exactly what is on their minds and damn the consequences. Some say nerds are pandering, cowardly hypocrites who engage in nothing but groupthink. Some say they are womanish; some say they are hypermale. Some say they should be shamed into becoming hermits or completely altering their personae; some say they should be encouraged to come out of the shadows and fulfill their potential as real (conservative) men.

This isn't a debate. It is quibbling about semantics, and that is inevitable as long as the discussion has its roots in a schoolyard put-down. "Nerd" is an interesting term because it has a slightly more precise definition that "butthead" or "asshat". Over time I am learning how limited "nerd" is as a term - ultra-serious systems administrators who tend to step on the toes of the less-technically savvy are a distinct group. Girlish emokids who play lots of computer games and watch anime have little in common with this group beyond a college course or two. And of course hackers are their own deal.

The upshot: I want the sysadmins and a few of the hackers at least on my team. The PC emo crowd I can do without, tech skills or not.

Tories are Okay Too

2010-11-23T19:59:00.000-08:00

Hats off to Dave Cameron.

Recall that this measure is coming from a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. This doesn't prove the doomsayers are wrong but it is a hopeful sign.

My Pledge to the GOP

2010-11-18T17:13:00.000-08:00

Oddly enough, I am a Republican. I say "oddly enough" because I've never really felt like I belong with them. They care about things like abortion and capital gains taxes which I know a little about but don't have strong feelings on. (Is there a reason to treat capital gains as different from ordinary income? If so, what is it?) In contrast, I care mainly about the National Question, a sheaf of questions most Republicans don't think much about, and a term most Republicans haven't even heard of.

Recently I became a Republican anyway. It amuses me to hear people patting the Tea Party on the head and telling them it's way past their bedtime, as if anyone has done more to shake up the leftist establishment in as little time as the Tea Party has been around. But anyway, I acknowledge that the Tea Party may get nothing done, in which case the zero dollars and ten minutes I have invested in their movement will all go to waste.

I make the following offer to the Tea-flavored Republican Party to which I currently belong:

I will continue to be a Republican through the end of 2011. If the Republicans have met my conditions at that time, I will give them another year. Since most of what the Republicans can do can be vetoed by President Obama, my requirements are only for serious attempts to do the right thing, defined as two thirds of Republicans in each house voting my way (whether or not their attempts succeed). They must vote:

For a complete pullout of all US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, to begin when the law is passed and be complete, under several estimates, no more than 12 months after that time
For construction of a real (non-virtual), San Diego-to-Brownsville border fence, and sufficient funding for it
For all statutory provisions underlying affirmative action to be repealed (this is admittedly vague; most of the pillars underlying affirmative action were put their either by executive fiat or judicial fiat; another Riggs Amendment would suffice)
To repeal the Patriot Act

Action to roll back gun control, secure prisons, or officialize English would help but is not required. Note that I am not demanding that the Republicans privatize Social Security, abolish the income tax, or anything radical (and economic). The Tea is not yet strong enough for that.

The criteria under which I will judge the Grand Old Party at the end of 2012 will be determined in a year's time.

I encourage other Republicans to publish similar pledges. Let's get the show on the road.

Republicans are Better than Democrats on Immigration After All

2010-11-03T18:50:00.000-07:00

It is often said that the Republican Party is far too riddled with PC multicultural RINOs to put up a decent stand against the elites who support mass immigration. I have no problem with right-wing doomsayers; John Derbyshire, for instance, is a great writer and speaker. On the other hand, by temperament I tend to be quite skeptical with pessimism, mainly on the grounds that the sky has yet to fall despite the predictions of so many of the Cassandras of the past. Furthermore, I believe too many people are copying-and-pasting the views of elitist neocons like McCain and Bush down onto the rest of the party. Republicans can certainly be accused of excessively loyalty to the men who betrayed them, but that doesn't mean they necessarily vote like the RINOs.

So I decided to get to the bottom of the matter with a little number crunching. Using the trusty Numbers USA site, I decided to convert the US report card-style grades into numbers, and calculate party-wide averages. (For this post I am using arithmetic means; I may add an update using medians later.) The grades run from A+ to F- with no F+; I assigned A+ a score of 13, F- a 0. The data I use apply to this Congress and the last (2007-2010).

Some caveats: First, no one is obligated to trust that Numbers USA rates the candidates accurately or even picks the right issues. I personally do trust them; VDare may be more ideologically exciting but Numbers has the numbers. Second, only legislative candidates are included (executives aren't usually rated likes this). Third, the past is only a loose guide to the future.

Just to make it exciting, when I was at M4 Monologue I decided to phrase my moderately warm feelings toward the post-Bush GOP as a testable hypothesis.

Null hypothesis: Like the gloomiest hard rightists say, the Republicans’ voting records on immigration are about as bad as the Democrats, defined as being within one letter grade. (I.e., if the Democrats average a C-, the Republicans won’t beat a B-.) This translates to 3 points, using the scale I created.

Alternate hypothesis: The gloomiest hard rightists may be right about other things, but Republicans of the current Congress are significantly better on immigration than the Democrats – more than a whole letter, or dropping fractions, at least 4 points.

Here is what I found - first, some tidbits:

A total of two Democrat received grades above B+; none received an A+.

One hundred and six Republicans scored in this range; 37 got A+s.

One hundred and sixty Donkeys got scores below D-; the corresponding Elephant herd numbered five (3 of whom are from Florida).

Democrats average 2.86 points on a 13-point scale - between a D and a D-.

Republicans average 7.60 points - between a B- and a C+. (To put this in perspective, John McCain, widely excoriated on the right for being a softie on immigration, got a C-. He is not near the middle of either party on this matter, but he is near the middle of the Congress as a whole.)

The alternate hypothesis is sustained - the Republicans of 2007-2010 are significantly better than the Democrats on immigration.

Based on this, I believe the doomsayers have a little retracting, or a least a little explaining, to do. They are not necessarily wrong; who am I to say that the new Republicans will be as restrictionist as their predecessors? Or even to say that a B will be enough to stop the tide, or that Obama won't outmaneuver the GOP with some elitist media trick?

I do regard these numbers as a hopeful sign, because I highly doubt that the Republicans are becoming more in favor of mass immigration, with their voters hopping mad and unemployment showing no signs of alleviating. A few RINOs notwithstanding (notably recently defeated Meg Whitman of California), the Republicans as a group are far different than the Karl Rove-style suckers' gamers of the bad old days.

Recent Addendum:

In answer to Steve Sailer's question, ALIPAC has a complete list of wins and losses for its endorsed candidates. It endorsed candidates in a little under half the races, with 137 wins, 66 losses, and 2 races still up in the air.

Two to one victories aren't bad, but in more than half the races, ALIPAC thought no one was worth endorsing.

Addendum:

1. Because of a spreadsheet error, the above numbers for Republicans had to be corrected, sustaining the alternate hypothesis a little less comfortably. (My original numbers had them at a B+.)

2. Medians make the difference look a little bigger. The median Democrat was just below a D-; the median Republican was just below an A-.

3. I'm not finding sub-issues all that interesting as a way of comparing the parties, since many seem to cover very few votes or maybe only one. In one respect they are interesting: They show the uniqueness of Texas Rep. Ron Paul; he got A+s on "Reduce Amnesty Enticements" and "Reduce Illegal Immigration Rewards", a D on "Reduce Illegal Immigration at the Border", and a D+ on "Reduce Illegal Jobs and Presence". This goes to show that a libertarian is going to vote differently from a cultural conservative; that will only come out when you look at the sub-issues (on the whole, Paul is a moderate on immigration, because opposing immigration is a combination of limiting government enticements and erecting government barriers). I respect Rep. Paul, but as immigration grows more salient, I cheer for less and less for his philosophy.

Compare this to Sen. Olympia Snowe, who is rated similarly overall but whose votes on the sub-issues are almost Paul's opposite. Her votes reflect a strong anti-illegal / pro-legal stance similar to McCain's, which seek to stop immigration at the border and in the workplace, while continuing to reward and facilitate it with visas, amnesties, chain migration, etc.

A Pointed Reply to Countless Lousy History Teachers

2010-11-02T20:11:00.000-07:00

In the 1790s, African American males who owned property could vote in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Maryland.

So you guys were lying to me the whole time about the "racist" nature of the franchise in the 18th Century. It wasn't racist at all - it was classist. This is a mistake that is tantamount to saying that whites dominate the National Basketball Association because the players make such great salaries.

But you guys were sort of big on mistakes, weren't you? One of you told me that most Jews who escaped the Holocaust in Europe escaped through Switzerland. Sort of geographically illiterate, isn't it? But what you were trying to do was cover up the fact that the European ruler who saved the greatest number of Jews was a conservative Catholic - a man you like to call a fascist. This mistake is tantamount to getting Savonarola mixed up with Mussolini.

What else were you lying about?

Oh, everything that makes your ideology look good, and that could make America look bad. In other words, pretty much everything.

A Pointed Question for White Males

2010-11-02T16:00:00.000-07:00

I wrote this angry rant about two years ago. I figured publishing it now would be a good way to post something without having to type too much.

My question for the white male is ... what am I to you? Am I just a political football for you to play your suckers’ game with? Because if you’re waiting to stab me in the back as a fancied way of escaping membership in the “oppressor class”, you truly are a sucker. The Oppressor Caste is not a “class” at all. If you are born a white male, that is all you will be, for the rest of your life. You can never be anything else.

Either you got my back or you don’t.

Reflections on Family Life in the Workplace

2010-10-29T22:03:00.000-07:00

OneSTDV has recently had a great post about women and men. Also I've been in a gender-oriented thread with Cassandra of A Letter to the Times, so I was inspired to make a short (and largely unrelated) one of my own.

One of my coworkers at work rarely talks about her children. She occasionally talks about an ex-boyfriend of hers who was a hockey player, but mostly, when she deigns to talk about men, she talks about Edward the vampire. She has an enormous poster of him gracing her desk (she is in her thirties), and she brings up him up whenever she can fit him in.

Today I found out she has a husband. Is still married to him. They met in high school. I saw their picture - they looked like typical fresh-faced high school sweethearts. She mentioned that she wished he still "looked like that".

An outgoing married woman at an institution populated by grownups, and she talks about a vampire from a fantasy movie easily twenty times more often than she talks about her family. I figured she was divorced or widowed, or maybe just never married (never loved?) the man who fathered her children. It turns out that, if she is divorced, it is only in a metaphorical sense.

I think that attitude towards the family is becoming more common.

B Lode Goes Emo

2010-10-27T17:03:00.000-07:00

Since I have broken my pledge not to spend any time typing that isn't absolutely necessary to pay bills, etc., I guess I'll "go for broke".

I want the troops home safe now.

I want it so badly it is distracting and depressing. I alternately avoid and devour news of the Afghan and Iraq wars; I never get used to the pictures of the carnage.

My countrymen are over there and they are hurting and I can't figure out what I can do to get them out. This is a more emotional issue for me than immigration (though I don't believe any issue is more important than immigration), and until now I have said little about it online because I have so little to offer.

I want an American pullout from Iraq and Afghanistan to begin this very minute, and taking only enough time to get out all of our people and equipment. I know it will take a long time ... all the more reason to not delay.

There. That is enough online emoting, and wrist-straining, for one night.

... An Ethnic Slur

2010-10-27T15:41:00.000-07:00

Hat tip: Moonbattery

In the mouth of Rob Reiner, "Hitler" has a new meaning: it is an ethnic slur against goyim. Having kicked off his career by collaborating with a co-ethnic on a TV show designed specifically to degrade and insult gentiles, Reiner has followed up by insulting a movement aimed at limiting government and increasing personal freedom. In fact, the Tea Party and the NSDAP have nothing whatsoever in common, other than that both parties were made up mostly of gentiles opposed to the sort of left-wing globalism that Reiner loves. The fact that one was composed of Jew-hating, Slav-hating socialist murderers intent on stretching government involvement into every sphere of society, and the other is made up of assorted Americans opposed to income taxes and socialized medicine... doesn't really matter.

Any mostly-gentile organization not taking orders from Reiner's Hollywood establishment is evil? Reiner is a loxist bigot who hates the majority of America's population.

Addendum (10/28):
Not everyone is cheering Reiner's slur. Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League has condemned Meathead's comments:
Such comparisons only serve to trivialize the Holocaust and are deeply offensive to Jews and other survivors, as well as those Americans who fought valiantly against the Nazis in World War II.

I may not like Foxman's politics, but he is enough of a straight shooter to object to this kind of slander. Also, I added the italics in there to point out that Foxman is also acknowledging that not all of Hitler's civilian victims were Jewish.

Skeptical Conservatives!

2010-10-20T19:47:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to David Hume (either Razib Khan or John Derbyshire, never remember which) of Secular Right.

I'm about an inch from signing up!

Semi-hiatus

2010-10-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

I've had a weird tingling in the index and middle fingers of my right hand. My wife says it's carpal tunnel. I'm not going to blog much for a while.

Popular vs. Unpopular School Subjects

2010-10-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been thinking about why exactly the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects are unpopular. The usual explanation is that they're harder than other fields. Undoubtedly this is true, but it doesn't get at exactly why they are considered so hard, and why other fields haven't simply been concentrated so much that they equal STEM in difficulty. It is conceivable, though not likely, that a sociology course could be graded as harshly as a STEM class. Something else must also be a factor.

The next thought was: NUMBERS. All the STEM fields are full of them. Numbers are dry and not particularly laden with sex, violence, or emotion. Fairly easy fields, like accounting, are full of numbers and they aren't very popular either.

Thinking back to college, I thought of another very unpopular field: logic. Logic, in a way, is like math without the numbers. So perhaps the logical thinking that is the underlying basis of math, engineering, symbolic logic, accounting, and many sciences is what causes people to dislike these fields.

Then I thought back to a demand that students always made in junior high and high school: that social studies and history teachers assure us we would never have to "memorize" dates. Numbers again, but not really logic. Something about learning dates would have sucked out all the (very limited) pleasure history could give the ordinary student. One teachers assured us that we wouldn't have to learn dates, only to keep events in their proper sequence. If you think the Thirty Years' War happened before Luther nailed his demands to the door of the church, you're simply wrong.

Then it hit me: any field in which you can be simply wrong is unpopular. The reason social sciences are graded so much less harshly than STEM is that it is much easier for lazy and uncurious students to answer every question in generalities of marginally-acceptable grammar and thereby squeak by. The notion that, while books may teach a certain answer to a history / social studies question, you can come up with the "real" answer on your own, gives license to every sophomore to give a postmodern (easy) answer to every question and expect praise in return. (This is undoubtedly why so many young people have told me with a proud grin that "Hitler wasn't really a socialist" - they liked socialists and disliked Hitler, so they were "really" opposites.)

STEM fields could have been dumbed down to equal the social sciences, but they weren't, because even the squishiest hippy could stick by simply wrong in the face of the outraged reaction of a meta-hippy student (as lampooned wonderfully by Trudeau in cartoon recalled on p. 6 of this newsletter). Eventually the students who were most allergic to right-and-wrong answer fields learned to avoid STEM entirely, and noted that they became cooler by doing so. Then America became deindustrialized, the trade deficit ballooned, etc.

ADDENDUM: Ilkka has an article at The Fourth Checkraise on a similar subject.

I'm a Liberal Today (obligatory post on Geert Wilders)

2010-10-07T15:47:00.000-07:00

Being a minarcho-populist ethnopluralist of the far right, I don't commonly identify with living liberals. Geert Wilders is an exception. He is on trial for his conscientious and principled stand against the Islamification of his country. He is also, as many on the alternative right have mentioned, a modern liberal, more or less.

According to some, his flatfooted support of Israel makes him too pro-semitic, his loyalties too divided. I don't actually know if he supports monetary and/or military aid for Israel. If not - if he stops at moral support - then I am right with him. Israel - founded on "stolen land" like any country, with a government often said to be laden with power-hungry bastards like any country, whose military upsets pacifists like any country - has a right to exist like any country. I'm not the slightest bit shy about declaring that. (I certainly do stop short of material support for Israel; I am against all foreign aid.)

He is a proponent and defender of gay rights, women's right, and the Netherlands' welfare state. According to some, this makes him too much of a squishy leftist to deserve our support.

I say nonsense. The bodies politic of the West are easily broad enough to accommodate honest liberals as well as a variety of rightists. I say "honest liberal" because that's what Wilders is - he is straightforward about his belief that encroaching Islam and Third World birthrates threaten a very Dutch conception of freedom. That this conception doesn't equate one-to-one with a Anglo-Saxon minarchist conception is of little matter. Gays and women are among the broad variety of people who would suffer under Islam; Wilders chooses to protect them for the same reason he chooses to fight Islam in the first place - his conscience.

Only a very dishonest liberal (or more accurately, a multiculturalist and probably an extreme leftist) would say Islamification is compatible with liberal (or conservative) Western values. If by considering Wilders my ally, I am a liberal by association, so be it.

Today I am a pro-Western, anti-PC, blood-and-soil liberal.

Several other writers have written on the subject as well:

Dennis Mangan (interesting discussion of Rousseau-style enlightenment liberalism versus Burke-style enlightenment liberalism versus modern "liberalism" in the comments thread)

OneSTDV

The Hesperado

Bi-Coloured Python Rock Snake

James of Athwart History

Mike of NZ Conservative

Proto

HBD Chick

Glaivester

And the gent who started it all, Randall Parker of ParaPundit, has written on the subject again.

WHY THE TEA PARTY IS DESTINED TO FAIL

2010-10-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

Because they have never ever had one of their candidates win in a general election!

Ever!

What's that? You mean that they haven't been around for a whole election cycle, and thus haven't had the chance to prove themselves, so it's unfair to judge them so early?

Really?

Come on now folks, seriously, you can't use the extreme length of the American election season as an argument that the Tea Party is a failure.

Reasons to forget about the Tea Party - they're such big budget cutters that they will never get any votes, and they're not really big budget cutters so hardcore minarchists should ignore them.

Hmmm.

People are just tired of hearing of the Tea Party because they've been around so long (about a hundredth as long as the major parties!) so they are thinking of reasons to put them down. That is my theory. Otherwise I could never explain how people are so certain that a brand-new party is going exactly nowhere.

As promised ...

2010-09-28T15:57:00.000-07:00

Allow me to put some preliminary thoughts together on men's clubs.

In no particular order:

The clubs should be explicitly political, but not primarily political. They must be explicitly right-wing or they will become left-wing over time, but they should not be narrowly ideological. They should appeal broadly, to conservatives, libertarians, and patriots.

The clubs should focus primarily on creating groups of friends and allies who feel trust each other, developing a information exchange network outside the leftist media, and building important low-tech skills. Secondarily, the groups should focus on creating a subtle civic presence, developing healthy lifestyle, and an array of community activities.

"The information network outside the leftist media means", in short, people talking about iSteve, Adventures in Reaction, Mansized Target, Hesperado, etc. (It might also mean people lending each other rightist novels that go for $40 on Amazon.) Less web-savvy rightists should be interested in this stuff, and they're not going to get it from Fox. Another aspect relevant to this is home-schooling - fathers may need to talk to other fathers about support in their unpaid role as teachers - this should not be left all to the wives and mothers.

"Important low-tech skills" means horticulture, local flora and fauna, carpentry and home repair, wilderness survival, even first aid and CPR. Hunting and fishing, while appropriate for many reasons (especially considering my ideas about healthy lifestyle, below) already tend to be a common male-bonding activity and may not need to be pushed as hard as other skills. Martial arts and self-defense are another interesting angle but I'm not sure how to work them in. A club is not a dojo.

"Subtle civic presence" partly means fashion. Bring back the fedora and the flat cap, the hunting coat, tweed. Serious haircuts for grown men. Resurrect some of the many types of boot not favored by motorcycle clubs and punk rockers. Etc. Members should cut a profoundly unusual figure at first, but definitely not want calculated to be threatening or cool (is there even a difference any more?) Eventually the public will start to associated well-dressed retro-males with good manners and reliability.

"Healthy lifestyle" is of course open to interpretation. I think these clubs should hitch their wagon to paleolithic eating and a variety of athletic activities other than ball sports and jogging. Beyond that, though, the club should encourage, nay, inspire members to get rid of their televisions and stop imbibing James Cameron.

"Array of community activities" will mean different things from area to area. It could mean anything from a blood drive, to supporting other guys' kids' extracurricular activities, especially if they are the sort of "whitebread" cultural activities that run the risk of seeming uncool to young people. Picture a bunch of kids at a clogging recital - now picture a half a dozen guys dressed like Wooster & Jeeves watching casually. That's what I'm talking about.

The clubs should consider making recognizable logos without any specific familiar icon. No crosses or stars that could be easily copied. Better, an outline of cheerful handsome guy in a flat cap or something.

The clubs should be as serious as possible without becoming boring. That means, no leaving the game on TV at a low volume while discussing the future of the West. No drinking beer while sharing your skillset with the men in your community. Men already spend enough leisure time, half-drunk, with other men, and it hasn't protected civilization from feminism, mass immigration, or any of that. This guideline doesn't mean no laughing, relaxing, or befriending other guys. Friendship is half the point.

The clubs should not have a religious aspect. The explicitly right-wing provision will keep out certain members of certain religions bent on the destruction of European civilization (e.g., the ones whose holy book reads in part: "You shall fight back against those who do not believe in Allah, until they pay the due tax, willingly or unwillingly.") Beyond that, all religious and non-religious beliefs should be welcome.

There should equivalent women's-only clubs. I won't write much about these, since they should be organized and guided by women, and crafted to appeal to women. (As to younger males, this group is enough like the Eagle Scouts that there is a natural partnership there. However, I know little about Boy Scouts of America.)

There should be a nationwide network of clubs. It would serve to agree on nationwide symbols and logos, and have certain nationwide policies (more on what behavior is acceptable, less on what activities are best).

That is all for now. If I develop any of these idea in future posts I'll drop links to those right here.

Tribe of Ice

2010-09-22T17:40:00.000-07:00

Tribe of Ice seems to be gone. I was one of only a few people who regularly commented on her posts. Maybe she got tired of laboring in obscurity; the WordPress page says the blog was deleted by "its authors" rather than by WordPress.

If you're out there, Tribe of Ice, let me know how you're doing, I'm just curious. Anyone who knows, feel free to chime in.

Nightmare

2010-09-16T16:21:00.000-07:00

A decent ruler, Wilhelm I, got Prussia into a war it could win, with France. His less-talented grandson, Wilhelm II, got Germany into a two-front war it couldn't win, with both a western front and a Eurasian front.

George H.W. Bush gets the US into a war with Iraq that we can win; his son gets us into two wars in Asia we may not win.

Germany's eastern enemy was defeated at great cost, but holding the territory also proved quite costly in sheer manpower. As it became obvious the war could not be won on the remaining fronts, the Kaiser abdicated. The Kaiser having never had good democratic credentials, war-mongering became linked in the public's mind with undemocratic government. Promising peace, the Social Democrats gained power and found they could not solve the problem of ending the war while saving face.

George W. Bush is elected twice with questions about whether the system is giving the promised democratic result. (Others question whether democracy was a sensible goal in the first place.) In any case, his designated successor hangs his own chances for election by promising not to leave the fronts without achieving victory. The Democrats gain power promising peace. By 2010, they still have not ended the war on either front, probably due to the glib assertions along the lines of "We can't just walk away."

The early government of the Weimar Republic created hyperinflation due to a combination of debts, reparations, and the destruction left over from the two-front war. Nevertheless, permissive morality and globalist cultural ferment made Germany in the interwar period very productive in terms of art, science, and architecture.

Despite the multicultural vibrance of America, it is not clear to many economists if our current debt crisis can be resolved without large increases in the money supply.

Hitler took power capitalizing on German fears of foreign enemies, cultural decadence, and a state riddled with leftists. Legitimate though some of the fears may have been, Hitler was in power a scant six years before plunging Europe once again into chaos. Notwithstanding his facile reputation of being right-wing, pro-white, and Catholic, he proceeded to destroy conservative Catholic regimes in Austria and Poland, slaughter millions of Slavs and Ashkenazim, and align himself with the most advanced non-white nation of his time (Japan). From there he moved on to an unwinnable two-front war.

Howl Back

2010-09-13T21:11:00.001-07:00

I

I saw the best minds of my generation enslaved by madness, starving
hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the first-class-citizen streets at noon
looking for a fuzzy fix,

headless hipsters burning for some some any way to match your
generation for its power, its majesty, its Trotskyite glory glowing on
their album covers,

who were nauseated by their manhoods and who fed their womanhoods to monsters,

who thought America a burden and whose skinny teenage ribs were
crushed by the burden,

whom were thought burdens for the costs of the tuitions for the
schools that would take their money and that of the Truly Special and
whose degrees were risible and Common,

who spun clockwise always clockwise looking for That Which Had Not
Yet Been Done Before Better.

U

You saw the popular kids from your generation destroy themselves to
impress everyone,

and indeed you were impressed,

and in turn you impressed us.

I wonder now,

How's that working out for you

... being impressive?

Roissy II

2010-09-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

In my previous post, I grumbled a little because Roissy comes off as such a complainer. Looking back to my closest experiences with aggressive/apathetic (those words, like "alpha", start with the letter A) males, in high school, I remember distinctly being impressed with how the A/A males could complain consistently, Monday to Friday, without anyway conceiving of them as complainers. They were always "making good points." I have no doubt that this odd perception fooled the A/A males themselves.

In other words, I'm not sure it's entirely Roissy's fault that he comes across as negative and resentful and doesn't even know it. He had years of training in institutional schools being taught that, as long he didn't care about anything but hurling put-downs, he could say pretty much what he wanted. Childish insults, or "negs" as he calls them (a jargon for everything!) became a way of life for him - that is the seductive and subversive power institutional schools have over impressionable young personalities.

Roissy

2010-09-08T19:02:00.000-07:00

Everyone else has written about him, so I will to.

Some interesting things I've noted about Roissy:

He benefits from feminism.
He has an unusually good understanding of how women think.
He has crafted his personality to appeal to women.
He has apparently fathered no children.
He works (or worked) a cushy office job.
His writing comes off as judgemental, gossipy, and bitchy.

To me, that list doesn't exactly add up to "masculine". I'm not trying to suggest that Roissy is gay, or even metrosexual (whatever that means), but in some sense, the man is undeniably womanish. There's nothing wrong with that. I am womanish too, albeit in different ways (I love cuddling small animals, talking about relationships, etc.)

I do pause a little when I see lots of young man stampeding off to his blog for advice. Do what you want, but realize you're stampeding in the opposite direction from, say, The Art of Manliness. Roissy will not teach you to be autonomous, not help you build a household, not keep from you being dependent on others for your emotional or physical well-being. Getting by on your good looks and your silver tongue is callow and short-sighted gambit.

Zipless?!

2010-09-02T17:21:00.000-07:00

Note: Generally I avoid using profanity in my writing, since I consider it something of a crutch. In this post, it is not possible to avoid profanity.

It is anyone's guess how feminists could have ever been convinced that promiscuous sex was not psychologically damaging to women, especially when it happens on the terms of the "pickup artists" (cads) who dominate the nightlife in the big cities of the Occident. Modern cads use a combination of studied insouciance, minor insults, and calculated body language to entice women to their bedrooms, where they specialize in quick, dirty sex which they can brag about.

Whether the women enjoy the physical act or not is little discussed. What is clear is that the women are treated as toys to manipulated into sharing their bodies with aggressive strangers. If this were a business transaction it would be considered a "rip-off". The odd thing is, there is a more general term for what is happening to the women:

They are getting fucked.

The strange thing is, that's figuratively and literally exactly what is happening! Seems like kind of an obvious warning, right? This is not a mystery to either the pickup artists, or the guys who can't stand this behavior, or most women for that matter either.

The only people to whom this is a mystery seem to be the feminists, or at least the third-wave feminists, for whom "fuck" was usually a noun ("He and I had a fuck" or better yet "He and I had a zipless fuck") or perhaps an intransitive verb ("He and I fucked [ziplessly]"), but hardly ever a transitive verb ("He fucked me"). Of course, the etymology of the word (from a Germanic verb meaning "to penetrate") doesn't allow nominal or intransitive uses, and doesn't really allow the female to be anything but the object.

In other word, the English language itself is telling you:
Ladies, if you're not making love, you're getting fucked.

The language's opinion is of course just a construct I've thrown together for this post, and it wouldn't matter if social psychology didn't agree. Social psychology does agree. Women most certainly do get the sweetness and femininity fucked out of them when they behave promiscuously. Sexual bonding with their future mates is reduced, which means their inclination to build up their vulnerable menfolk is lacking.

While feminists rail about women being demeaned by being "expected to do menial chores" and "used as sex toys", many women seem to eschew cooking and meal-planning a lot more than they eschew acting like sex objects. The fact that men's day jobs are often plenty demeaning never really comes up. If a man comes home from cleaning out deep-fat fryers all day wearing a plastic apron to a woman who tells him too "cook his own supper for a change", he may well have trouble remembering what exactly the benefit of being married and having a job was supposed to be.

It doesn't help that more and more men are opting out of the job market in favor of becoming girlfriend parasites, but it's interesting to study exactly which men can get away with this. In my experience, it's generally the apathetic-and-hostile crowd - the same men who get away with pretty much everything else. Since these men stand out much more, socially, than the faceless drudges and nerds who work for a living, male parasites cast a pall of ignorance on their sex.

Which bolsters the notion that now it's men who are only good for one thing ... as long as it's zipless.

Rape and War, 2006

2010-09-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

Before I proceed, let me say that I believe the human cost of the war in Afghanistan, to all sides, is too great to justify continued US involvement in the region. Our initial reason to attack was better than our reason to attack Iraq, but we have worn out our welcome in any case, and I urge President Obama to return the troops to the continental United States as soon as possible.

Next let me assert that I do not consider rapes and battlefield deaths to be strictly fungible, only approximately equivalent. Soldiers do not volunteer to be killed; rape victims do not even volunteer for hazardous duty.* On the other hand, with love and support, rape victims can recover while KIAs (and many WIAs) cannot. (I count myself lucky; none of the young men I've known who've been to Iraq and Afghanistan were killed or injured. Welcome back, men.)

Finally, I'll grant that the race of a rapist does not really matter, in the sense that the crime is not legally mitigated or aggravated by race. We have been told, however, that "hate crimes" are by definition more severe than other crimes. I maintain that, without telepathy, hate crimes are indistinguishable from noneconomic interracial crime. Same-race rape, though obviously hateful in some sense, cannot be considered a hate crime as the term is generally used.

On to the data.

32,000 whites were raped by black men in 2006.** (This varies a little from year to year.)

We had 20,297 troops in Afghanistan in February 2006.*** (It increased somewhat by March of the next year.)

If we lost one soldier in Afghanistan for every white person raped by a black man, we would have lost all US forces in Afghanistan in under eight months.

* They can certainly take measures to protect themselves, but this is an active rather than a passive choice.

** The white-on-white rape count for the same year was a little over 98,000. Since we are told "predators like to hunt within their ethnic group", this figure is depressing rather than surprising. (White men rape far fewer than 100 blacks in a given year.)

*** The President, having been elected on a platform of change, with strong support from the anti-war movement, has changed our troop levels in that country to 94,000. (Here is Chris Roach on the subject.) If the black-on-white rape rate stays stable, the figure quotes above would rise from eight months to about three years.

On the Fed

2010-08-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

Lately I've noticed the competing critiques of the Federal Reserve, and how they do and don't match up. Almost everyone agrees that the Fed is not politically (or democratically) controlled to the correct degree, though there is no consensus as to whether there is too much politics or too little democracy.

One of the oddities of the Fed is that the term "the Fed" doesn't always seem to mean the same thing. Sometimes it means the Federal Reserve System, sometimes it means the Board of Governors, and I've often suspected that sometimes it means the Open Market Committee.

This of course provides fertile soil for confusion, and confusion in turn is fertile soil for conspiracy theories. Righty critics who loathe inflation can point out that "the Fed" consists entirely of political appointees. Lefty critics who hate interest can point out that "the Fed" is mostly private moneyed interests. "Private moneyed interests" is the lefty term for what the rightys call the free market; "political appointees" is the righty term for what the leftys call democracy.

Both sides are correct in pointing out that the public is largely ignorant of the important matters of monetary policy. From that it does not follow the critics are not themselves ignorant, or guilty of causing ignorance.
Here is a multipage article on the Federal Reserve which does not mention the Board of Governors a single time. Sort of like listing all the important people on a baseball time without mentioning the manager, or even noting that the job of manager exists.

Is that a surprise? It was to me, because I'm used to reading Austrian-school (anti-politics, anti-inflation) critiques of the monetary status quo. The linked article is quite the opposite - it is an anti-interest critique, and it wouldn't grind the proper axe to point out that the President's political appointees can effectively raise taxes at any time simply by expanding the money supply. The article also laments the lack of Congressional control, without noting of course that when the Presidential appointees forming a majority on the Open Market Committee vote to expand the money supply, it is Congress whose spending power increases.

What the article is essentially saying is that it would be better to have a system in which the entity that controls the money supply also benefits directly if the money supply expands drastically. While I hope it's clear that I don't agree, I am not sure that the entire slate of reforms the Austrian school proposes is necessary. I'm not sure why it is necessary to abolish the Fed entirely, instead of simply repealing the legal tender laws and banning government seizures of precious metals. It seems like that would provide quite enough "free banking" without eliminating the important networks maintained by the Federal Reserve System.

The Legacy of Hypersectarianism

2010-08-18T17:09:00.000-07:00

Meet Rachel. She is 15-year-old girl who wears heavy black eye makeup, slogan-spangled t-shirts, and skinny jeans. She has a 13-year-old punk boyfriend whom she snuggles mutely on the couch at family gatherings. She hardly ever addresses adults, although she is not unpleasant.

There is no singing or music at any family gathering if it happens on a Saturday, because the strictures of Rachel's sect forbid music on the Sabbath.

Or consider Krista. She is the youngest person in the office, and the older ladies are all keenly interested in her romantic exploits. However, they cannot talk about this when a certain other coworker is around - that coworker and Krista belong to the same church, which does not allow dating outsiders. Krista wants to keep belonging to the sect, and to keep dating outsiders.

We're all worried our teenage children are going to opt out of decorum, study, and community involvement in favor of being cool, with all of the hazards that entails. Religion used to be a safeguard against the tragedy of eternal adolescence. It wasn't just the rules that were important but also religious passion and spirit, and the tendency to get communities "all on the same page", behavior-wise.

When I first heard Dr. Laura railing against interfaith marriages, I didn't really get it. I didn't (and still don't) belong to a church so I couldn't really tell why it was a big deal. Now it seems obvious that mixing up different moral codes into the nuclear-family melting pot yields, not a random mix of religious codes so much as the most permissive mix possible. Similarly, mixed neighborhoods, schools, and institutions all put pressures on the individual to fit in, morally and otherwise.

The rituals to be observed are the ones that are the most fun. The rules to be obeyed are the ones that are the least inconvenient. It's not too bad to avoid eating poultry on Tuesday, but if I can't date all the Cathars, Copts, Sikhs, Scientologists, and Jeffersonian deists that I want, I'm leaving the church! It's been long noted that it is hard for church leaders to shepherd their flocks with so many distractions. It's only getting harder.

Yet few people are willing to resettle and form single-sect communities, and Communities are more complex than they've ever been - can a small sect guarantee that its town will include the requisite number of policemen, bookkeepers, dishwasher repairmen, and dogcatchers? What if the sect attracts mainly artists and philosophers? Are they going to contract out to non-members for vital services? If so, they are not a town at all, but a mere bedroom community. There's nothing wrong with that, per se, but your kids will still grow up hearing songs about suicide, group sex, and mass murder.

Moreoever, with no constitutional guarantee for freedom of association, single-sect businesses are probably illegal, and run into the same problems with today's complex workforce that the single-sect towns would. The problem of desiccating morals and civic life may not be solvable through religion - not in as thoroughly splintered an environment as the United States.

Revolt Against the Teenage World

2010-08-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

Proclaim your immunity all you want, but this is not a consultation and I am not spitting on you. You change your world whether you want to or not; trying is irrelevant. But youdo need to grow up and you do need to grow out of it. That you protest these truths in heavy rotation makes you look good only to the foolish and the puerile.

P.S. The concept of “tracing time” is nonsensical.

Open Thread: Survival on the Cheap

2010-08-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

This is a thread where we are discussing how a highly cash-strapped and none-too-knowledgeable individual can plan to keep the wolves at bay should the Keynesians turn out to be wrong about the economy.

Equality and Autonomy

2010-08-07T20:29:00.000-07:00

Conservatives have longed decried the corruption of the word "equality". "It used to mean equality of opportunity", they say, "and now it means equality of result." I would add to that. It used to mean equality of opportunity, equality of responsibility, procedural equality, an equal right to plead one's case. It meant an equal right to ask for things, not an absolute right to get them. It did not mean equality of result or equality of starting conditions.

It's hard to say where a longing for equality came from. What I sense, when I look at a psychological need for old-fashioned equality, is a profound resemblance to the longing for autonomy. A community of completely autonomous individuals would be hard or impossible to create, but it's easy to conceive.

What jumps out at us when we visualize a community of completely autonomous people? Total equality, in the old-fashioned sense. If you're annoyed by your neighbors, chafing under the serfdom imposed by feudal overlord, burdened by taxes, whatever, you feel the root of that desire for autonomy. Then reality returns and you see that a person who needs firewood, food, shoes, and health care cannot live on his own because no one can create the skills and capital need to simultaneously be a lumberjack, farmer, baker, butcher, shoemaker, and physician. Whether or not it is The Way the World Should Be, absolute autonomy is only a dream.

Yet as with any dream we carry something with us back into the waking world. Perhaps the classical liberal's idea of equality is a nod to the dream.

Thus, I believe there is even more separating the old-fashioned idea of equality from the corrupted leftist idea. They don't have the same psychological root. Classical liberals wanted autonomy and settled for equality. Leftist resentment is close to the opposite of autonomy. Leftists want to punish those more diligent, responsible, and talented than themselves. They stole the term "equality" to use as a weapon against their betters.

Why Passwords Don't Work

2010-08-05T18:05:00.000-07:00

... or at least, why I can't imagine how they could work. I'm talking about passwords in the workplace, as used by the typical American technoprole. You have half a dozen different things to log into, minimum. They all require different password formats, and they make you change your password on different cycles. So don't even think about happening upon some total abstraction that you can reliably memorize - it'll change soon enough and not be applicable to more than one ap over the long term. You'll have to make up passwords on a pattern. And don't even think about using similar passwords to meet different needs - does the payroll software require numbers (so I should use password123)? Or does it require "special" (shift-number) characters (so I should use password!@#)? By the time you figure it out you'll be locked out of the ap, on phone with tech support in a different city, watching your company's productivity bleed out.

It goes without saying that it is harder for an individual to remember password!@#1 than it is to remember Jenny57EvergreenPlaceSpringfieldIL. But let's imagine the latter doesn't refer to the user's current home address, but rather, their ex-girlfriend's address from 1997.

Hard for the hacker to guess, right? Yes, much harder than password!@#1, but that would be allowed anywhere. A name-and-address would be rejected due to its lack of shift-number characters. Putting an ampersand in there would make it harder to remember - best to just write the password down somewhere.

That's right, we have a system which makes your password invisible when you enter it, to protect it from being seen by a coworker watching over your shoulder when you enter it. Writing it down, which the system encourages even though it may be banned, allows your password to be stolen by a coworker looking over your shoulder at any time, or visiting your desk when you're not there.

Computer security - starting with case-sensitive passwords - is ultimately self-defeating. The key would have been to make up a single all-ap regimen for passwords: case-insensitive, with at least two numbers and a non-word alpha string of at least three characters. Require everyone to change all passwords once a month on their hire date. Allow no software to depart from this protocol, and punish an employee for writing down their password.

The Commonwealth Plan for America's Future

2010-08-03T20:47:00.000-07:00

Introduction

With the seemingly inexorable leftward drift of the United States government, the possibility of a part of the country seceding has been raised and debated. Much time and effort has been spent on these debates, with no sign of either side giving ground. It is my aim to provide an alternative to both secession and the status quo; I shall present it several posts on this blog over the next few weeks. This post is an executive summary; there is also a Q&A post.

Overview and Conventions

The plan revolves around major constitutional change in a direction which (a) creates a new franchise (the "Common Franchise"), (b) devolves power to a new level of government (the "Nation") to be held in a loose confederation / mutual defense arrangement (the "Commonwealth"), (c) includes both traditional and novel limitations upon the size of government, and (d) both allows secession and makes it unnecessary. From our perspective, the key change I advocate is the devolution of power over both monetary policy, and immigration and naturalization, to the large multi-state Nations (whose structure and demographics are discussed in other posts). Thus, each Nation has the power to allow or bar immigration to any person or group on any basis it chooses, while it still must maintain basic rights for all people born on its soil.

This post is an executive summary of the changes I propose. It is organized around the differing levels of government, with attention to structure, function, and the goals of certain innovations.

In this proposal, I adhere to the convention of using present tense, i.e., describing the proposed changes as if they had already been enacted.

The Commonwealth

The Commonwealth is the highest level of government, with the largest jurisdiction. It encompasses all of the USA minus those areas which secede (which I oppose but would not attempt to outlaw).

Government Structure -

The Commonwealth has a Congress, and independent judiciary, and a executive branch composed of officials separately reporting to Congress. The lower chamber of Congress, the Assembly, is composed of Trustees selected at random from the National parliaments (i.e. legislatures of the next lower level government). The upper chamber, the Senate, is elected by those parliaments. Trial judges are selected by competitive examination; appellate judges are elected by Congress, with mandatory retirement ages. Executive officials are elected by Congress as well, and either serve fixed terms or serve at the pleasure of the Congress.

Functions -

The Commonwealth has the right to make:
- all foreign policy,
- most defense policy including maintaining the army and navy encompassing all full-time military personnel,
- all laws regarding intellectual property,
- laws regarding bankruptcies,
- laws regarding aviation and maritime safety,
- laws controlling air and water pollution.

The Commonwealth is prohibited from taxing citizens directly (by payroll or personal income tax), but it can pass a capitation on the National governments (apportioned based on the number of people counted as Nationals), and constitutionally-limited taxes on corporations, imports, and certain pollutants.

Commonwealth courts protect a short list of basic civil rights for all citizens, which include free speech and free worship, the right to bear arms, the right to legal counsel and trial by jury, and basic property right including the right to keep and sell (but not buy) land. Basic rights are enumerated at the bottom of the post on the Commonwealth; other rights can be created by the National governments.

Limitations -

Different types of laws have different requirements for passage; an easy repeal clause makes it harder to outlaw an activity than it is to repeal the law doing so.

No bond issue or other form of borrowing may be passed without the support of two thirds of each chamber of Congress. Entitlements are forbidden.

Since the Congress of the Commonwealth shares members with the National parliaments, each type of legislature is limited to regular sessions of six months, during opposite halves of the years.

Notes -

The most important factor limiting the power of the Commonwealth government is the nature of the legislature, with all of its members dependent on National parliaments in one way or another. The Constitution of the Commonwealth devolves to the Nations all powers not specifically reserved to the Commonwealth; this hasn't prevented the aggrandizement of Federal power but, combined with the government structure I've outlined above, it would be sufficient.

The Nations

Government Structure -

The Constitution of the Commonwealth places no restrictions on the structure of the executive or judicial branches of National governments. In contrast, the legislative branches of National governments, called parliaments, must be bicameral. The upper house must be either indirectly elected, randomly selected from elected officials of lower levels of government, or popularly elected by the Common Franchise (possibly with extra restrictions).

The lower house is directly elected by the Common Franchise, from single-member districts, by approval voting.

The Common Franchise is suffrage for military personnel and net taxpayers only. All civil service salaries, government contracts, welfare and income support, scholarships, etc. are summed and subtracted from total taxes paid to all levels of government. All adult citizens for whom the difference is positive are permitted to vote in Common Franchise elections. National law determines the franchise is used for elections to lower levels of government.

Functions -

The Nations have the right to make:

- all monetary policy (legal tender laws forbidden),
- all laws regarding public lands, mining, forestry, and National parks
- all laws regarding civil defense and emergency management

- law organizing and training their own National Guards and militias (heavy equipment being provided by the Commonwealth),

- laws regarding nationality, language, and civil rights, and

- laws regarding immigration and naturalization, as well as laws to secure their boundaries.

These are the chief functions of National governments; their constitutions can assign them other powers as long as this does not conflict with the Constitution of the Commonwealth.

Nations can pass any indirect tax, including limited tariffs, as well as property taxes.

Limitations -

Nations are forbidden to pass legal tender laws, to seize gold or silver, and to make compulsory property purchases (though they can take advantages of binding sales offers, in the form of property self-assessments, if these are provided for by law). They cannot levy unfunded mandates against lower levels of government, beyond incidental sums limited to a small value. They are prohibited from taxing incomes, payrolls, and capital gains, and from making any assessment of land and building values to be used in property taxation. There are protections for some basic rights in the Constitution of the Commonwealth, which I have enumerated in the post on the Commonwealth (they include free speech, the right to emigrate, protections against search and seizure, etc.).

Notes -

Nations provide important functions in political divisions of a manageable size. These are intended to evolve into nation-states in the traditional sense, the central Commonwealth government not attempting to govern as a "propositional nation," but rather as a fairly tight customs union and defensive alliance. The Nations control the Commonwealth government through co-opted or indirectly elected legislators; this will prevent the latter from becoming an independent power group.

The Nations have an incentive for currency competition (each trying to provide harder money than the others) and for talent competition (each trying to provide a desirable place to live for productive citizens).

Lower Levels of Government

Each Nation is divided into provinces varying in size from 1500 square miles (as large as the smallest extant state, Rhode Island) to 20,000 square miles (as large as the largest county, San Bernadino). These absorb various county and state functions at the option of the National parliaments. Since their taxation power is broader than that of the Nations, and since Nations are forbidden from passing unfunded mandates, provinces are likely to have substantial powers devolved to them. While provinces have no border control power, i.e., no power to prevent people from visiting or traveling across them, they are guaranteed the power to limit who can buy land in them.

With provinces as small as these, only a single level government below them - the municipality - is necessary.

List of Posts

I. The Commonwealth
II. National Governments
III. Associated States
IV. Question and Answer

The Problem with the Right Half of the Blogosphere

2010-08-02T18:10:00.000-07:00

The blogosphere gives conservatives an unprecedented way to communicate on the issues, but it's not perfect. The central problem out here on the right can be summed up in two truisms:

Birds of a feather flock together.
You tend to argue with the people who are around you.

Since people get bored with "preaching to the choir", and not many bloggers share my focus of creating heavily detailed, exhaustive constitutional reform proposals, arguments tend to crop up on the issues rightists disagree with one another one - not necessarily the most important issues.

Hence the inordinate focus on Israel, anti-semitism, World War II, monetary policy, and, to a lesser degree, abortion and the south-Asian wars. These are the wedge issues that threaten the right the most, yet we don't need leftists to put a floodlight on them. We seem quite willing to do it ourselves.

My fervent hope is that, at least in the few months leading up to the election, rightists will uncircle the firing squad and start putting the floodlight on leftists who threaten to keep delaying the border fence, protect affirmative action, and generally keep rocking the foundations of European civilization in America.

Reaction to the Susan Bolton Decision

2010-07-28T14:41:00.000-07:00

US Judge Susan Bolton has banned Arizona from enforcing Federal immigration law, and in doing so, has abrogated the general police power of the state. More importantly, she has chosen to use the status of legal aliens as the anvil on which to smash Arizona's initiative:

Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked.

I am sorry she had to do that. Until now, I had been opposed to the early cancellation of any person's visa being part of a policy to reduce immigration. As of now, I support immediate cancellation of all immigrant visas for citizens of any country whose leaders have spoken against US immigration statute or the enforcement thereof.

We Had a Ball

2010-07-23T16:06:00.000-07:00

Following the tradition of obscure righty bloggers posting on music, started by Tribe of Ice and Flyover Libertarian, I have my own two bits to toss in, specifically on the topic of dance. I dimly recollected the comment thread on Steve Sailer's review of Hairpsray, and it got me to thinking about concerts and dance clubs I've been to, and the complete impossibility of conversation in them. This is not necessarily a bad thing - conversation isn't appropriate at the movies or the theater.

The difference is, you're not supposed to meet people at the movies or the theater. Today's dance clubs, with their overpowering volumes, are still theoretically social venues. Compare this to the 18th Century social dance - also music-oriented, also social, frequented by people of the same age groups. The most important similarity is that both dance venues are particularly interesting to single people who want to meet other people - yet with no conversation, you can't learn anything about your partner(s) except stamina and body type.

That is rather the point, of course. Toleration and encouragement of promiscuity lead to a different style of dance. Rock, hip-hop, and techno invite us to judge dancers on the body they were born into and/or how often they work out. Add in freaking, and dancers can be judged on their willingness to act out specific, unmetaphorical sex acts in public. To "hip" (sex-crazed) young people, completely uninterested in starting either platonic friendships or stable families, old-fashioned balls seem laughably stodgy and prudish.

Of course, they were anything but. Anyone doubting this should watch a decent Jane Austen adaptation. (I'm thinking in particular of the BBC's Pride and Prejudice, with Colin Firth and the unforgettable Jennifer Ehle.) Wit flowed freely; a distaste for boring conversation is surely as old as speech itself. What I think might be easy to overlook is how important the structure of the dances was. A couple could converse, but would never be completely out of earshot. Tawdry or profane conversation would bring a swift reaction from any number of scandalized gentry, but with sufficient subtlety, almost any idea could be put across to one's partner, because the couple would not be in hearing distance of any single person for long.

In other words, the ball was an explicitly social gathering in which young women would be completely secure against the advances of rakish young men, yet also have the opportunity to evaluate their prospective husbands on several extremely important criteria. By observing a young man's adherence to the dance steps, she could evaluate if he had the ability and inclination to follow rules. By listening to him converse, she could tell if he was an absolutist about rules and propriety (i.e., a complete bore), or if he was willing to liven things up by cleverly tweaking the nose of authority from time to time - a moderately brave act with several sets of parents, maiden aunts, dowagers, and grouchy grandfathers watching.

A man who could dance a long time showed that he had stamina. A man with strong hands and a brutish habit of shoving his partner would be as disfavored as a man with no strength. A budding alcoholic who reeked of drink and staggered across the floor would mortify his partner - better to dance with someone who drank in moderation.

Naturally, young man would be evaluating his prospective wives as well. We are continuously told that men are shallow, evaluating women as if they were various cuts of meat. Yet at our 18th Century social dance, evaluating a woman on her looks alone was an obvious recipe for unhappiness. Premarital sex carried the risk of social stigma and, in some periods, death on the sword of angry father or brother. Moreover, divorce was generally unacceptable, so marrying a shrew was basically a life sentence of marital strife. These facts were clear to young people of all but the lowest social classes.

The important thing, though, is that a meat-market gaze would tell you very little about the women at an 18th Century dance. A woman's face would be visible, and her upper chest in some fashions, but the laundry list of details harped on by contemporary women's magazines would be largely invisible. Toned abs! Pish posh. Cellulite! What's that? The twin fears that drive so many of our young women to despondence - that a young man will value her for sex and nothing more, or conversely, that young men will sum up her flaws and find her "not hot enough" - were completely absent from the 18th Century dance.

A girl's chances of marriage would ride partly on the prettiness of her face. This is the sort of superficial yet intractable feature which makes life seem so heartbreakingly unfair to teenagers. In every other way, though, the 18th Century dance seems tremendously fair. A morbidly obese woman would be harshly judged, but in a way that is fair because obese women have trouble carrying pregnancies to term. A man was respected, not considered "egotistical", for wanting children, and his desire for a wife that could bear children was honored. Similarly, it would be hard to disguise a disfiguring disease of the sort that would render a woman barren or a man unfit to provide for his children. Minor blemishes, on the other hand, would be gracefully hidden by the dim candlelight.

Anyone who set their mind to it could learn enough grace and manners to be a passable dance partner and guest. It is inconceivable that someone be excluded from one of these gatherings because of being a "dork" or not being "cool". What could not be faked, at least not for an extended period, was wit, charm, and attentiveness - the raw materials of compatibility, and eventually love.

Immigration Politics: Handling the Details

2010-07-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

Immigration is the single biggest issue facing the US right now. Reducing immigration needs to become the top priority of everyone not mentally wedded to the left. Increasing numbers of moderates, reactionaries, and conservatives agree on this point. Beyond that, many things are still in question. Do we seek a reduction in immigration in general, or just better enforcement to reduce illegal immigration?

Assuming (hopefully) that it is the former, are we shooting for a measured reduction in immigration, or a total moratorium?

When talking about reducing legal immigration, are we talking merely about reducing or abolishing immigrant visa programs (i.e., reducing future legal immigration) or are we talking about canceling term-limited visas early (i.e., sending resident aliens home)? (I'm leaving non-immigrant visas out of this as non-germane; it is legitimate, though off-topic, for conservatives to want to reduce the numbers of tourists, foreign students, etc.)

We don't all need to agree on these questions. In fact, it may be better if we don't (assuming we won't spend too much energy excoriating each other or, worse yet, "reading each other out"). The reason is, if a small group, vocally but politely, advocates the cancel-visas-and-send-them-home position, everyone who wants to honor those visas until the end of their lives, while reducing or stopping new visas, looks moderate by comparison. (Incidentally, that is my position: Honor all extant visas unless they would be canceled under old policies, e.g. for criminal activity. Abolish or suspend all programs issuing new visas.)

Once we have charted a broad course for reduction of immigration, we can argue about the details. Don't ask your conservative friends if they want to reduce immigration. Give them more credit than that! Instead ask them if they prefer a reduction or a moratorium. Ask them if there are any visa programs they would continue, or if perhaps there are any types of visas they would pull retroactively.

Cooperating with other conservatives goes way beyond basic respect for your neighbors. I respect every Jewish, Christian, and polytheist religionist. They may have deep religious reasons to tolerate or even advocate open borders. I advise you to respect that, but don't mistake anyone who is happy with mass immigration for a conservative.

Bottom Line: Legitimize and normalize restrictionism, with everything you say and write.

Fractured Gentlemen

2010-07-13T19:35:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about Roissy in DC and Agnostic Gloam the other day. I haven't been to their blogs in a while, because reading pickup artist stuff always makes me uncomfortable. When rightists defend the PUAs I think they generally do a better job than the PUAs do defending themselves. Roissy's conviction that he is going to copulate feminism out of existence seems arrogant and implausible. In contrast, the various reactionaries, paleocons, immigration restrictionists who say he's onto something may be onto something.

Not onto something about chasing women, so much as ... onto something about what ingredients there are in the pickup artist's approach to life that are valid. (I'm not going to call PUAs "alphas". I don't endorse Roissy's peculiar use of "alpha" and "beta". An alpha is a male who has lots of children. As far as we know, Roissy has none.) I'll refer to that mass of lonely, usually awkward males as "the downtrodden".

A gentleman laughs off the "negs" (unprovoked put-downs) thrown by women. It would not be gentle to respond in kind, nor would it be manly to allow one's feathers to be ruffled. The downtrodden carry the reminders of every glove that lays them down (with apologies to Simon & Garfunkel). The PUAs win this round; they discipline themselves to roll with the punches (as well as honing their own razor tongues).

A gentleman respects the feelings of his friends. (The word for someone who does not is "cad', and it is a grave insult.) Still, the gentleman coddles no one over the age of five and has little patience with weaklings. This round is clearly a draw. Downtrodden men tiptoe around everyone, while PUAs enjoy running roughshod.

A gentleman enjoys the company of women. This of course is facilitated by the lighthearted spirit of play that pervades his social encounters with the opposite sex. The irony is that of the two modern archetypes, the downtrodden has every reason to eschew the company of women, since it can be so painful to his delicate feelings. His opposite, on the other hand, should have every reason to enjoy coed socializing - yet he seems to see it mainly as a means to arrange those encounters where there is little talking and (at least traditionally) only one woman. So in spite of their feelings, on the question of actually seeking female friendship, the downtrodden win the round.

A gentleman doesn't shrink from a fight. Likewise, Roissy gives "market value" points to any man who has been so angry that he fought and wanted to kill someone (unless it is a woman; on that Roissy and the gentleman of yesteryear are in perfect agreement). The downtrodden, by definition, avoid conflict and run for cover. Sorry guys, the more you shrink and try to be invisible, the more noticeable it is.

A gentleman has a healthy interest in gentlemanly pursuits. This is a tautology, but I include it because it is important to list and categorize these pursuits. Gentlemanly interests include "mechanicals" (we'll update that to science, guns, and automobiles), "the arts" (meaning approximately what they do today, with more emphasis on poetry and literature), "sport" (basically hunting, fishing, and ball sports), the "good life" (tasty food and drink, among others), and "civic life" (everything not government, military, or religious is civic, but the gentleman was a real joiner, as well as a talker and a listener). Family, religion, and work round out the list.

The PUAs and the downtrodden divide up this list. The PUAs are more interested in cars, sports, and social drinking. The downtrodden are more interested in science, weaponry (though not hunting, which is a rural everyman's pursuit), various nerdy clubs, religion, and their jobs. Both groups like movies and food in about equal measure; while poetry and family seem to have gone out of style for everyone. One the balance, I'd say the downtrodden win the purse here, if only because they have a greater variety of interests and are more likely to seem truly interested in their interests, while PUAs reek faintly of treating everything as a vehicle in which to chase skirts.

What it all adds up to, for me, is the unmistakable impression that the ideal gentleman has cracked in the middle and split clean in half. I'll grant that this is based on my experience alone. (If you haven't spent hours in basements with nerds talking alternately about guided missiles and how hard it is to meet interesting women, my combination may seem implausible.) If a Victorian gentleman fell out of a timewarp, I can't help thinking he'd despise all of the nerds he met, thoroughly enjoy discoursing with nerds in writing (at least if they didn't write about computers), and have a fine time clubbing with Roissy until he was forced to knock the latter's block off on the grounds of incorrigible rakishness.

Against Misogyny

2010-07-12T19:15:00.000-07:00

Andrew Yeoman wrote a pessimistic but thought-provoking article for Alternative Right that's been much linked to. (Hat tip to Tribe of Ice, who has linked not just to Yeoman but to three more upbeat posts on his blog.)

His sixth of eight points on Why We Will Lose reads:

Kryptonite to Women -- Okay, maybe what we're doing isn't kryptonite to all women, but many women won't associate with our ideas. Why is this important? Because it leaves half our people out of the struggle. The women that do stick around have to deal with a constant litany of abuse and frequent courtship invitations from unwanted suitors. Beyond the often-restated tropes about crime against woman, nothing says "you are not important to us" than sexualizing women in the movement. Don't tell me that's not an issue. I've seen it happen in all kinds of radical circles, and ours is the worst for it. With our woman folk that contribute to the cause, be encouraging and helpful and not discouraging and unhelpful. We need women's help, now more than ever.

This is a very good point. It is one that has been burning in the back of my mind for a while. There needs to be outreach to women by the pro-white conservative and reactionary movement. For now we are mostly male.

In a way this makes sense. White and Asian males are victims of affirmative action; females of these groups can either be beneficiaries or victims. So there is one less grievance spurring females to action. On the other hand, some of the worst interracial atrocities hit white women (and presumably Asian women, though I haven't seen direct evidence of this) in the form of over 10,000 rapes per year, as well as assorted beatings (hat tip: Dennis Mangan).

Women need to know that there are white men still alive who want to protect them, not through either "knight errantry" of either the martyr or vigilante variety, but through disciplined political action. Crime is of paramount importance, of course, but cultural decay, enforced multilingualism, falling educational standards, and emergency rooms crowded with non-contributors are also important issues.

Some of alt-rightists rail against woman suffrage. I am very skeptical of claims by some that the downfall of limited government and traditional republicanism can be blamed on female voters. I am not a feminist, unless you can be an ultraconservative neo-McCarthyist feminist, which I highly doubt. Contra the critics of woman suffrage, it is clear that the central problem of political rights is not the removal of gender qualification in 1920, but the removal of property qualifications in the early 19th Century.

I don't activate a return to the era in which owning real property was a qualification for voting. What matters is that only net taxpayers be allowed to vote. Owning land is a sign that someone is paying taxes, but not necessarily net taxes; furthermore, there are many taxes other than property taxes. Incidentally, my proposal would also satisfy John Derbyshire's call to Disenfranchise the Public Sector, as well as disenfranchising welfare recipients and military contractors (though not actual military personnel, who contribute enough by putting their lives on the line).

Difficult as this would be to put into a constitutional amendment, it would be considerably easier than disenfranchising women, which I consider nigh impossible. But beyond that, I ask you conservatives and reactionaries: Who would you rather disenfranchise - your mother and the love of your life, or a homeless man and a Federal bureaucrat?

How to Think Like a Conservative

2010-07-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

Imagine that you are an absolute dictator and that you have an undying affection for a group of people you know to be incurably sadistic. They simply love to harm each other, but at the same time they are not usually masochistic. It hurts you to see them suffer, but you cannot change their basic nature. Nor are you immortal. You do notice, however, that in addition to loving to bedevil each other, these people have a certain respect for and understanding of tradition and family, and prefer to inflict their sadism on people as different from them as possible.

What traditions do you instill in them during your lifetime as absolute ruler? What institutions do you create?

When you are thinking like this you are thinking like a conservative. That there are different answers to these questions only confirms that there are different types of conservative.