Glenn Beck on SNL and Media Portrayal of un-PC Opinions

On the premiere of Saturday Night Live this past weekend, there was sketch where Obama visits the rest of the networks he "missed" on his media tour. In the sketch, seen below, SNL mocks Glenn Beck as an irrational, ignorant, and generally clueless extremist.

First off, let's admit it's hilarious. Yet the implication of it concerning political discourse and the mainstream media is disheartening. Beck is one of the only pundits with a large scale audience that voices unabashedly honest problems with racialism and modern liberalism. Is the guy somewhat of a wacko? Possibly, but the veracity of one's statements derive directly from those statements, not the authority of the individual making them.

By incessantly mocking right-wing zealots like Beck, the MSM dismisses his opinions and concerns without actively engaging with them. When Beck called Obama as a racist with a "deep-seated hatred for white people", the MSM responded by lambasting his character and pulling sponsorship. Yet, as members of the Steveosphere can attest to, such a claim is surely supported by a substantial amount of evidence. Further, associating Obama's policies or Obama himself with those of socialist regimes is often viewed as ideological rhetoric and fear-mongering. But, the parallels and the expedite manner in which Obama has accrued power over private industry make such a relationship rather convincing.

The MSM undermines these viewpoints not by actually opposing them logically, but by simply mocking and denigrating them as foolishness. Perhaps, such derision galvanizes those who hold these opinions. Such a situation drips with irony and surely isn't the intended goal of the people perpetrating such mockery.

Current News Sites?

I have a pretty busy schedule (yes HBD bloggers do have lives) and I like to invest almost all my blogging time into actually writing the posts. So I can't spend too much time scanning the various news sites looking for interesting and relevant stories. I also like to find videos like the the one below (via Guy White).

Anyone have any recommendations for a good collection of stories that would interest readers of this blog and that is quick/easy to scan through? For reference, I go to Science Daily for science-themed news.

Affirmative Action at the Absolute Highest Levels of Science

I take much pride in my forthright objectivity. I try to look at everything without the bias of personal motivation or allegiance. So sometimes, I make points uncommonly voiced by my peers. Today, I will defend a select portion of NAMs.

One of the unfortunate consequences of HBD, for me personally, has been my suspicion of NAM achievement. I call this unfortunate because while my suspicions are usually correct, they're not always a fair assessment of an individual's merit. Thus, I occasionally write off a qualified NAM or female peer due to my knowledge of HBD averages and the ubiquity of affirmative action.

But does this knee-jerk reaction EVER apply at the highest levels of scientific and engineering achievement? I explicitly exclude humanities success, such as Obama being a law professor, because the standards are so wonderfully subjective (see Sotomayor's writing sample here). So how should we approach the female professors in Ivy League physics or biology departments? Should we assume they only achieved such distinction through biased hiring, just as we readily assume black students are subpar?

From experience reading research papers in the relevant fields, it's absurd to assert these NAM or female individuals are unqualified. Perhaps they haven't conducted award winning research, but the ones that got hired can't fake it like their humanities peers. Either they can do the science or they can't. These professional scientists and researchers are the real-deal and suspicion of them is almost always unwarranted.

Cryonics: Random Thoughts on "Re-Awakening"

Ted Williams is currently "stored" at a cryonics company. These companies keep a dead person's body and head frozen in liquid nitrogen. From what I understand, the objective is to some day, when the technology becomes available, revive these individuals.

I imagine these people will awake in either a virtual reality, Matrix-type environment or a brain transplant into another body. The technology required of these processes may actually be quite similar; though the former would require software to formulate a realistic environment. Likely, such a breakthrough will arise parallel to the medical ones required for the actual brain "reawakening".

I assuredly think the goal is an achievable one. Maybe science fiction movies motivate this optimism, but I've always seen the body as a superfluous machine. The brain is where our consciousness, emotions, and even our experiencing of physical sensations lies. To illustrate this, think about individuals with phantom limb syndrome. These people "feel" as though they have an arm despite there being no physical appendage.

As for the people already hoping onto this bandwagon, I'm sure Ray Kurzweil has his spot reserved if he doesn't make it to the Singularity. I don't think I'd want to live forever, but I'd love a chance to see the future and what becomes of humanity. And one more thought: What does the person feel like when they wake up? That they had been asleep for an unidentifiably long time?

New York Times on Fixing the Educational System

I recently wrote a four part series on the failures of the American educational system. Here's parts one, two, three, and four. My main points were our policies grossly ignore the existence of natural intelligence, engage in racial denialism concerning disparities, and use credentialism as a proxy for objective measures of merit. On Friday, the New York Times gave five educational "experts" a brief chance to champion a particular goal. I'll respond below:

Diane Ravitch is a historian. Her book ‘‘The Death and Life of the Great American School System’’ will be published in February:

We educate because we want citizens who are capable of taking responsibility for their lives and for our democracy. We want citizens who understand how their government works, who are knowledgeable about the history of their nation and other nations. We need citizens who are thoroughly educated in science.

But because of our narrow-minded utilitarianism, we have forgotten what good education is.

Classic IQ-denialism. Only a select few are capable of truly understanding these esoteric concepts. Further, only an intellectually gifted child will find this type of education enjoyable. It's far more beneficial to teach practical skills than such ambiguous ones as "understanding how our government works" and "science". The populist masses speak in bumper stickers because that's what they understand. Attempts to provide them with a greater ken will assuredly fail. It's also quite obvious she's attempting to justify her own liberal arts education. Ivy League liberal arts graduates, proofreading in some New York City temp agency, don't realize that such study is largely irrelevant in the marketplace (not that I don't enjoy it though).

The worst statement is the last one, where she characterizes our approach to education as "utilitarian". Unfortunately, it actually isn't, but I wish we would adopt a more efficient method by "investing" in the most academically able. While a "good" education, not necessarily defined as above, will likely benefit all children, our resources, of which education is surely a significant part, must be allocated properly.

Tom Vander Ark invests in edu-entrepreneurs and blogs at EdReformer.com:

But because education is largely protected from incentives and consequences, it lags in embracing technology.

New tools already make possible a generation of schools that blend the best of online and on-site learning. They will be less expensive and more fun, delivering excellence with equity.

Of course, this is a very good idea. Learning should include more "fun". But it's not a necessary component of education. Pretty simple: The generation that made it to the Moon with a TI-83 learned from those crusty old textbooks everyone is always trying to throw out.

Susie Buffett is chairwoman of the Buffett Early Childhood Fund:

...emphasize early education. It wasn’t impossible for disadvantaged students to catch up later — just a lot harder, and costlier.

Inside Educare, kids facing the worst odds find, beginning at birth, a full-day, full-year oasis. Visit and you’ll see highly trained teachers, down on the floor, talking, singing and inspiring.

Educare students come close to national norms by the time they reach kindergarten. That is big news, and a solid investment in human capital.

How about we invest in the human capital with the most potential? Not the ones whose parents are crack addicts? This seems a lot like Head Start, which was a failure. Mrs. Buffet noted "highly trained teachers, down on the floor, talking, singing and inspiring". I wonder if Mrs. Buffet realizes the saccharine tone of her words.

Geoffrey Canada is president and chief executive of Harlem Children’s Zone.

Our schools were designed to prepare children for jobs that predominated in the 1930s. Children didn’t need a thorough education for manufacturing jobs. Summers were for working in the fields with your hands, not sharpening your mind. One result is that we have one of the shortest school years in the industrialized world.

National success will not be based on how much iron ore was mined but on how many children can access the new international currency: intellectual prowess.

Wow. This might be the best one. Children may not need specific training for manufacturing jobs, but surely, school can imbue them with behavioral norms that make them better equipped to handle tedious and arduous labor. But Mr. Canada clearly dismisses this honest work as below all the geniuses he has at Harlem's Children Zone. His last statement epitomizes liberal creationism regarding innate intelligence. And finally, kids don't need more school, they probably need less so as to not overwork them.

Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of ‘‘Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality.’’:

Discredit the bachelor’s degree as a job credential. It does not signify the acquisition of a liberal education. It does not even tell an employer that the graduate can put together a logical and syntactically correct argument. It serves as rough and unreliable evidence of a degree of intelligence and perseverance — that’s it. Yet across much of the job market, young people can’t get their foot in the door without that magic piece of paper.

Finally some reasonable words from none other than Charles Murray. Anyone else slightly surprised the Times asked him to offer an opinion. They probably did so with the caveat that he avoid race and IQ.

HBD in Indian Populations

A fascinating new study in Nature reveals new insight into the genomic structure of India. The research traced the genetic history of modern Indian peoples, using 500,000 genetic markers as the guide.

The new research reveals that nearly all Indians carry genomic contributions from two distinct ancestral populations. Following this ancient mixture, many groups experienced periods of genetic isolation from each other for thousands of years.

The bolded part is quite interesting as it implies groups can diverge from a larger population through not only natural selection, but self-isolation. Further, it might provide a genetic explanation for the proposed different Indian caste IQ's, as noted by rec1man here. Godless Capitalist provides another IQ-estimate algorithm for Indian castes in the comments. Admittedly, I'm not sure if the groups presented in the paper match up with the traditional castes.

Here's how the researchers made their discoveries and their results:

To shed light on genetic variability across the Indian subcontinent, the research team analyzed more than 500,000 genetic markers across the genomes of 132 individuals from 25 diverse groups, representing 13 states, all six language families, traditionally "upper" and "lower" castes, and tribal groups.

Different Indian groups have inherited forty to eighty percent of their ancestry from a population that we call the Ancestral North Indians who are related to western Eurasians, and the rest from the Ancestral South Indians, who are not related to any group outside India.

Here's one undeniable reason why HBD-ignorance could be dangerous.

The widespread history of founder events helps explain why the incidence of genetic diseases among Indians is different from the rest of the world.

Well that summarizes the study, but I left out some ironic statements throughout the piece. Consider these highlighted statements in light of this article No Such Thing As Ethnic Groups, Genetically Speaking from the same exact website.

Although the genome sequences of any two unrelated people differ by just 0.1%, that tiny slice of genetic material is a rich source of information.

In recent years, maps of human genetic variation have opened a window onto the diversity of populations across the world

And now they bravely tread into Watson-territory:

In studying Indian genetic variation we also developed a novel toolkit for understanding the relationships among groups and the history of mixture. We believe that these tools can drive future studies not only of Indian history but of groups worldwide.

Be careful, be very careful.

[Anecdote: I wrote this post in a public library while seated next to a black guy wearing traditional African garb.]

Jennifer's Body not Enough to Attract Audience

For the last three months, Megan Fox has been tirelessly promoting her new film, Jennifer's Body. It's written by Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody, the college graduate who engaged in possibly the most SWPL stunt ever when she took up stripping to get a book deal. The advertising campaign was rather simplistic: Put Megan Fox everywhere and dress her in as little clothes as possible.

Well, it didn't work. The movie bombed, finishing in FIFTH place last week with a box office total of only 6.8 million. Insiders are blaming the R-rating and ambiguous genre placement. I blame the marketing campaign: This semi-horror movie is about...just come see Megan Fox looking hot and in a lesbian kissing scene.

Movies marketed in this manner must contend with the huge amount of material available on the Internet. Why see the movie when all the "good" scenes are spliced on Youtube?

More IQ Denialism: Daniel Goleman and Multiple Intelligences

Daniel Goleman, one of the foremost proponents of "multiple intelligences", will be giving a talk at the New York Open center entitled, "Bringing Intelligence to Our Personal World". He attempts to downgrade the importance of innate intelligence by stressing a concept he calls "emotional intelligence".

Emotional Intelligence allows us to think more creatively and to use our emotions to solve problems. The emotionally intelligent person is skilled in four areas: Identifying emotions, using emotions, understanding emotions and regulating emotions.

Goleman, like all anti-HBDers, claims that these interpersonal skills far outweigh natural talent. In fact, and here's a surprise, such an imperative facet of success can be learned!

Part of emotional intelligence is being able to manage this circuitry well," says Goleman. "And that's a skill that can be learned.

He supports this argument by noting the Marshmallow Test. In this test, young children are given a marshmallow, with the promise of a second marshmallow later if they resist eating the first one. The test is glorified as a better predictive measure of success than traditional intelligence examinations. Perhaps, the test actually measures a facet of IQ or at least personality traits highly correlated with IQ. Just to understand the logical causal chain would be quite impressive for a three year old. Further, resisting temptation for future benefits is a staple of high future time orientation, a characteristic more common amongst the highly intelligent.

...in navigating our lives, it is our fears and envies, our rages and depressions, our worries and anxieties that steer us day to day. Even the most academically brilliant among us are vulnerable to being undone by unruly emotions.

That's great. But the most socially adept, gregarious individual won't master theoretical physics without the requisite intelligence. Goleman falls into the trap of many anti-HBDers. He champions this alternative metric of utility (and stresses that it's "nurture" based), yet his system doesn't do what he claims it does: replace IQ as a highly accurate predictive measure.

Further, many researchers in this field, blinded by PC-stupidity, ignore the possibility that highly social, but less intelligent individuals will only pursue jobs that require their unique set of skills. An outgoing person with little academic talent will be successful as a car salesmen, but if jobs were based on IQ alone, his success would not be as apparent. In making his argument, Goleman and others like Howard Gardner presume HBDers think success is entirely dependent on IQ. While this is a generally true trend (higher salary positions generally become increasingly dependent on IQ), it's surely not an entirely robust one. Interpersonal skills, like those part of EQ, are important for occupational success and, ostensibly, even more essential in the social sphere.

Goleman argues against strawmen. It's sad that such intellectual shallowness comes from a former science journalist at the New York Times (disheartening, but not entirely surprising).

Expressing HBD/Conservatism in Social Situations

I've become increasingly passionate about HBD and its political implications over the past year. This has coincided with me having to deal with a bunch of new social acquaintances in a short period of time. My peers and the general environment where I am is heavily skewed towards liberalism and an embracing of diversity and immigration. I'm constantly conflicted regarding the person I portray to people I just meet and the inner/online person I actually am. In reality, I'm probably a combination of a somewhat curmudgeonly intellectual loner and an effervescent and acerbic people-person. I know, it's a rather odd juxtaposition of traits, but I somehow balance them well.

Having endured endless rants concerning my indefatigable horror regarding the West's fall, amongst other topics such as religion, my immediate family is very familiar with this blog's author. To others, these wholly un-PC views come out in snippets, usually obscured under the guise of sarcasm and humor. But only one person in my life knows of my HBD belief and he doesn't know I keep a blog.

It's difficult to keep meeting these new people, to keep being put in situations where I want to rail against an unjust and decrepit system (e.g. like the guy today who was lauding the New York Times), but I'm somewhat held back due to the unanimity of opinion opposing my own. So, I mostly keep quiet, hinting at my HBD-ism such as today when I jokingly said to a group of white peers, "we need to rise up" (I don't feel like explaining the context). I also lost my discretion a view days ago and started ranting about stupid people and the educational romanticism myth, along with positive impressions of eugenics. I try to hold myself back, but sometimes it's too difficult.

For everyone else: How many people know of your HBD belief? Do you regularly express your un-PC or conservative thoughts in your social circles? The best person to answer this would be Steve Sailer. I wonder what his wife's friends think of him.

Two New Projects on Finding E.T.

A few months back, I posted about the existence of aliens. The topic of extraterrestrial intelligence has compassionate zealots on both sides and science, with all the unknown variability of the problem, can not formulate a comprehensive answer. But such skepticism hasn't tempered the imagination of two independent research teams.

A team in Austria has postulated that life may arise with a different basis than our own. If such a hypothesis were true, this would greatly increase the number of possibly inhabited planets.

Scientists at a new interdisciplinary research institute in Austria are working to uncover how life might evolve with “exotic” biochemistry and solvents, such as sulphuric acid instead of water. Traditionally, planets that might sustain life are looked for in the ‘habitable zone’, the region around a star in which Earth-like planets with carbon dioxide, water vapour and nitrogen atmospheres could maintain liquid water on their surfaces...However, these may not be the only conditions under which life could evolve.

"Even though this is the only kind of life we know, it cannot be ruled out that life forms have evolved somewhere that neither rely on water nor on a carbon and oxygen based metabolism."

Another team, from Open University, is attempting to formulate a normalized "habitability number", a similar construct to the infamous Drake Equation.

Researchers from the Open University are laying the groundwork for a new equation that could mathematically quantify a habitat’s potential for hosting life, in a similar way to how the Drake equation estimates the number of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way.

Dr Hagermann and colleague Prof Charles Cockell have the ambitious aim of developing a single, normalised indicator of habitability, mathematically describing all the variables of each of the four habitability criteria. Initially, they are focusing on describing all the qualities of an energy source that may help or hinder the development of life.

Both of these new modes of thinking might have little effect on us finding an extraterrestrial intelligence. However, it could advance our understanding of life and under what circumstances intelligence may arise. In the end, it's likely SETI and other ventures will fail because we may lack the appropriate means of finding a signal or we simply can't scan the enormous range of frequencies. Likely, we'll be contacted by an alien automaton and given instructions or information concerning the parent civilization. Research in this field amounts to little more than conjecture, though it sure is fun to think about.

One overlooked aspect of the Drake Equation and work in the field of astrobiology is the notion of not only intelligence arising, but the appropriate degree of intelligence. A planet's environment might limit the intelligence of its dominant species, such as through hot temperatures. Or it might limit, or fail to select for, personality traits that would induce curious exploration. This would significantly decrease the amount of potential life-sustaining planets, though the percentage would be almost impossible to estimate reasonably.

New Anti-HBD Book on Black Basketball Players

A new book, entitled Black Men Can't Shoot*, by University of California at Riverside sociology (what else?) professor Scott Brooks deals with HBD and black dominance of basketball. I'll breakdown his summary below.

The myth of the natural black athlete is widespread, though it’s usually only talked about when a sports commentator or celebrity embarrasses himself by bringing it up in public.

Wait, it's a myth? So I'm mistaken that over two hundred 100 meter times have been run under 10.0 seconds and each of them was accomplished by blacks. Am I imagining that both NFL cornerback and running back have been exclusively black positions for about a decade?

Those gaffes are swiftly decried as racist...

This knee-jerk response reflects political correctness not any scientific truth. Notice how Dr. Brooks doesn't even consider the possibility of black athletic prowess. He rejects the supposition a priori.

...but apart from their link to the long history of ugly racial stereotypes about black people—especially men—...

Racial stereotypes are almost always based on some underlying truth. I can think of one stereotype with almost no truth value: Polish people are stupid. Other than that, stereotypes arise because people routinely categorize behavior. Brooks would be correct in asserting that stereotypes unnecessarily stigmatize exemptions, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson. But, I doubt his PC-deluded mind would allow him to make even that mildly contentious statement.

....they are also harmful because they obscure very real, hard-fought accomplishments. As Black Men Can’t Shoot demonstrates, such successes on the basketball court don’t just happen because of natural gifts—instead, they grow out of the long, tough, and unpredictable process of becoming a known player.

Ahh and here we come to the hackneyed idea that HBD parallels genetic determinism. The two, natural gifts and "hard-fought accomplishments", are not mutually exclusive. Why do these liberal creationists entirely disregard natural talent to ensure persistence and determination are given proper credit? Personally, it's rather easy to distinguish between the two while also understanding both are requisite components of success.

*: Just to be clear, "shoot" refers to a scoring attempt in basketball.

SWPL Afraid of Committing Horrible Crime: Offending a Minority

This is a letter sent in to The Atlantic, September 2009 Edition:

We’re having friends over soon for a barbecue, and in planning the menu, I said we should have watermelon for dessert. She objected because some of our guests are African American, and she thought they might take offense. I said it’s not racist to serve watermelon to black people, and she agreed. But she thought that, to avoid making our guests uncomfortable, we should be sensitive to stereotypes. Is she being hyper–politically correct, or is she right that people might think we’re projecting racial stereotypes onto our guests?

You're not alone in shaking your head in sorrow. Here's the answer:

To borrow from Freud, sometimes a watermelon is just a watermelon. My suggestion, though, is for you to serve cantaloupe, or honeydew...,not because watermelon would necessarily offend your guests, but because its presence would destabilize your excessively thoughtful wife.

He completely averts the main point. Here's what I would have said:

German people don't get offended when you serve hamburgers and Italians would welcome some great pizza. Why are "African-Americans" treated with kid gloves in every aspect of life? Your wife's fear at offending your guests belies her outwardly tolerant attitude. Clearly, she feels "African-Americans" lack the emotional fortitude to handle offensive situations or she's just damn scared of catching a beating (probably both). This latter situation implies she thinks "Africans-Americans" are more emotionally volatile (gosh where would she get that idea?). Also, thank your wife for representing the SWPL downfall of this country.

Sailer's Law of Female Journalism

Steve Sailer's Law of Female Journalism is copied below:

The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter-looking.

Maureen Dowd, who last week characterized anti-Obamacare persons as racist, is one of the most consistent offenders. This week, she discusses why men have become happier than women, using the General Social Survey as evidence. Unsurprisingly, she sees this as a bad thing. She discusses the greater responsibility woman now have since they've entered the workforce (are they starting to regret it?).

When women stepped into male- dominated realms, they put more demands — and stress — on themselves. If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judge themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties — and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage.

And of course, men must have no supplementary stresses, right? Women fought for equality (and I applaud those first women who demanded equal pay for equal responsibility), but when they're given more opportunity, they grouse about the added stress. Then, Dowd ventures into her favorite subject: men should like 45 year-old strippers.

Another daunting thing: America is more youth and looks obsessed than ever, with an array of expensive cosmetic procedures that allow women to be their own Frankenstein Barbies.

Men can age in an attractive way while women are expected to replicate — and Restylane — their 20s into their 60s.

Men also tend to fare better romantically as time wears on. There are more widows than widowers, and men have an easier time getting younger mates.

You can just hear the vitriol spewing from these words. This is why feminism fails: shrill voices like Ms. Dowd's.

Why the Communist Argument against Atheism Fails

I wrote this as a guest post for Unreasonable Faith a few months ago. I'll copy it below:

Arguments against atheism or secular based societies almost always offer trite arguments concerning atheism’s supposed intolerance. Commenters drudge up Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao as evidence for the purported terror associated with atheism. This exceedingly simplistic and reductionist argument belies the actual basis of these totalitarian systems and its parallels to the Church and religious fervor.

While the dictators mentioned were all non-believers, their intellectual basis and central objectives differ markedly from the scientific and logic-based atheism most common today. The historic argument for atheism’s noxiousness almost always points to Communist leaders and their regimes. In this case, the aforementioned dictators fit the criterion. Each led a violent and suffocating brand of Communism that resulted in the deaths of many innocent people. The argument seems to mirror the atheist argument against religion, using institutions like the Gulag as proxies for the Crusades and the Inquisition.

Why the Argument Fails

Yet, the religious argument fails for two reasons. First, the primary motivations differ in the two cases. Religious uprising and violence are explicitly caused by religious texts and/or the relevant interpretation of these scriptures. Religious zealots act “in the name” of religion, using supernatural justification for their actions. Contrastingly, while Communist regimes did support atheism, none of their actions could derive from some universal laws of atheism. Atheism exists as merely a lack of belief, not as a moral or social guide. Thus, it’s inconceivable that a lack of belief could dictate one’s actions, especially in regards to violence. Communist leaders were motivated by political power, not the edicts of a moral system that atheism doesn’t even espouse.

Second, the religious argument falsely depicts Communism as an atheistic system in the same mold as modern atheism. The link between atheism and Communism is tenuous at best. The purveyors of Communism didn’t arrive at disbelief through rational thought, reasoned analysis, or scientific rumination. Rather, they promulgated disbelief in order to subvert the most powerful opposing institution to the State: the Church. To define Communism as a godless system is to misrepresent the motives and underpinnings of their government structure. It wasn’t about ultimate truth, it was about ultimate State power.

This spurious characterization of Communism as an atheistic system belies its’ dominating faith-based aspects. The familiar structures of the Church and religious belief are all present in Communist systems. In fact, one could easily define it as a religion, wherein “thoughtcrimes” replace sin, denigration of individualism exists as a proxy for the sin of avarice, omniscience of the State as proxy for God’s presence, indoctrinating constituency with “faith” in the State instead of faith in the Church/God, revising historical events replacing the flexibility of Biblical interpretation as justifying almost any action, and the cult-like worship for dictators replacing God-worship.

These societies were not based on secularism as defined by Dawkins and other atheists. Communism was defined by adherence to a pervasive and suffocating governing body, much like religion. Faith was simply transferred from unseen, intangible powers into the hands of an opaque State regularly engaging in duplicity.

The religious argument using Communist dictators fails because the underlying premise of Communism’s secularism is undoubtedly false. Instead, it proves that undying faith and fanatical obedience to any authority is ultimately harmful.

Hofstra False Rape Case Proves this Blog is Right

There hasn't been a case in recent memory that typifies the themes of OneSTDV better than the recent Hofstra "rape" case. Here's a quick review the details of the story:

Danmell Ndonye, 18, who had accused five men of gang rape, admitted the truth only when prosecutors confronted her after learning of a cellphone video that captured the whole sordid episode and showed she had willingly participated, officials said. Danmell Ndonye made up the story that she was gang-raped at Hofstra, which sent Felipe Stalin, Kevin Taveras, Jesus Ortiz and Rondell Bedward to jail. She created her outlandish tale when her boyfriend, a Hofstra student who's been dating her since the semester began a few weeks ago, demanded to know where she had disappeared after a wild frat party early Sunday.

Just a hilarious tidbit: The "wild frat party" where a fight broke out was a school sponsored event run by Alpha Kappa Alpha, a black fraternity. But I digress. The "rapists" had to endure harsh treatment despite the lack of evidence:

Publicly branded as rapists, the men said they were hounded as the lowest type of criminal in prison and feared for their lives. "They were harassing me more than anybody else, just because of what I was in there for," Felipe said. "[The guards] were badgering me. They would push me and shove me.

There's so much here that I'll split it up into distinct sections:

College as social ritual: College has become one big drug and alcohol fueled four year sex romp where academics are inconsequential as compared to socializing. The exorbitant cost of college, presumably justified by the skills learned, makes a college "education" even less tenable.

Too many people go to college: Two of the students involved were current students at Hofstra. These individuals apparently represent our best and brightest? Clearly, the threshold has been lowered so far as to allow such depraved persons to be a part of what was once a hallowed, elite institution (college in general).

No Opposition to Unfettered Hedonism: I'm not a "Auster"-ian prude, but surely this crosses some sort of moral line. How anyone could willing engage in such sordid behavior, especially the female, is beyond comprehension? Society's implicit consent regarding this behavior is reflected in the fact that I've yet to see any condemnation of the actual sexual acts.

Regression to the Mean: Apparently, this woman's parents are immigrants, likely high IQ, educated ones that kept a strict household. Clearly, a stable childhood and high achieving parents still resulted in this sick individual, in a moral sense and, well, any other metric of good.

Feminism Imbuing Women with Power: False rapes are absolutely sickening incidents. Yet, the political and criminal establishment provides almost no incentive to discourage such potentially disastrous allegations. They basically drop the charges and just sweep it under the rug. The men in this case must carry this immense stigma for the rest of their lives. And what evidence did the police act upon? One woman's word.

NAM Behavior: Five men having sex with one woman in a bathroom.

Lack of Future Time Orientation: Did this woman believe she would get away with it considering it was filmed? She clearly lacked any forethought concerning the flimsy nature of her story.

Anti-Male: The media was so quick to condemn these men, attributing such credence to a woman who we now know had sex with five different men in the same bathroom on the same night.

Why Obama's Race Matters

After Joe Wilson's "You lie" outburst, the mainstream media has been quick to characterize the anti-Obama uprising as racially motivated. Maureen Dowd said the following in an NYT opinion piece earlier this week:

Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

The response to this invective goes something like this:

No, it's not about race. It's about socialistic policies and government infringement.

But should Obama's policies and his far left liberalism be gauged in the context of his race and his racial past? I say race should matter when discussing his plans for reform.

Obama's race matters because we're in the midst of both a demographic and a socio-cultural shift in the American consciousness. Whites have neutered themselves with regard to social power, allowing NAMs to dominate any discourse concerning social strife or race relations (I have a hilarious example of this coming very soon). Whites are basically forbidden to discuss any contentious issue without accusations of racism or xenophobia. Such a society, where a dysfunctional minority group dictates the nature of all social discussion, will eventually succumb to the wishes of that minority (e.g. affirmative action, minority set-asides, segregated college housing, LGBT groups, grousing feminist groups, etc...). It's clear these initiatives represent an undermining of societal stability. The group responsible for the basis of the West (white males) has had their institutions decimated by political correctness; and, as a result, they cease to function as a bloc in defending Enlightenment and Western principles.

So why does Obama's race matter? Because, in addition to the social dominance of NAM groups and their SWPL enablers, blacks, simply by virtue of Obama, have gained much control of the political process. While the academic blathering of Henry Louis Gates and the anti-white examples of popular culture shift the zeitgeist slightly, the real change emanates from government policies. Currently, the landscape of polite discourse forbids whites from advocating policies for the explicit advantage of whites (I don't necessarily back these either though); yet similar rhetoric from NAMs, such as all these Society for Black [insert occupation or group], is considered the expression of a perspicacious individual. Thus, when policies or "diversity" initiatives making explicit mention of NAM achievement, at the expense of high achieving whites (and Asians), is put forth, any opposition is unfairly categorized as racist. This gives black politicians unregulated power in advancing racialist processes. And, from my perspective, countries run or populated by blacks or Hispanics aren't nice places to live.

Now, I'm not advocating every politician be white. I don't mind someone like Bobby Jindal in a position of power (well, at least economically, the guy's kind of a wacko) because he champions the fair, just, and free policies under which whites (and everyone else) can flourish. Obama's race matters primarily because he's such a radical leftist. His race matters because whites are slowly losing population share, cultural relevance, and, now, the foundations of power. Eventually, whites will lose this country and we'll all have to move to Australia.

Are Social Cons Afraid of Game?

The social/biocon debate has started once again. In a previous post on this issue, I expressed my opinion that Game was incapable of saving Western civilization. The main premise of this argument was that former betas would trade stable married life for three to five different sexual partners per year (a total not overly ambitious for a moderately practiced Gamer). But this issue is irrelevant to the matter of this post.

While biocons/Gamers and social cons bicker about the predicted efficacy of their divergent processes to save the West, I' m also interested in perhaps the underlying motivations for social cons denying Game. It's not just that social cons deny Game as a civilization saving initiative, but they also dismiss the effectiveness of the "craft". This naive denunciation of a successful process, both from empirical data and evolutionary psychology models, is curious.

Perhaps, the social cons are quite comfortable supplicating to the feminist and hypergamic urges of the modern Western woman. Such a position, as the subservient male, is quite easily adopted and requires little testicular fortitude. The male feels no need to assert his appropriate gender role by engaging in expressions of dominance. Basically, the social cons are scared to challenge society's twisted gender roles and thus dismiss Game because it requires the male to reject the female's various ways of garnering control.

Auster and his ilk are all too comfortable in their compliant role as the female's carnal mate. See Auster's almost unbearable description of the female below. The social cons and their creed of "just be yourself and you'll find a nice girl" believe this to be true because they're afraid of the reprucussions of confronting the female status quo.

In the second chapter of Genesis, God creates man, Adam, out of the dust of the ground, and then, seeing that the man is incomplete and lonely by himself, God proceeds to create woman out of a part of the man's body. While feminists of course complain that this makes women subordinate to men, the feminists--of course--miss the whole point, which is that the woman is made out of higher stuff than the man. The man is made out of mere dust; the woman is made out of the human body. Further, as the last thing God creates in the process of creating the world, the human female is the crown of creation.

The foundation of Game is rather simple: men need to assert their independent will. Auster and the other social cons are unwilling to do so because it requires standing up to a deluded society bent on opposing such behavior.

Holy Fucking Shit!!!!!

I just walked three feet away from a famous person (not mainstream famous, but definitely famous for me) who I absolutely despise. I even made eye contact with this person to assure myself that I was actually looking at this deluded individual. No one challenges this person's mendacious diatribes, so I almost started berating this person right there. That had to be one of the most surreal moments of my life.

Human Factor and Health Insurance Economics

At SecularRight, Heather Mac Donald argues that health insurance should be considered an exclusively monetary arrangement between two independently consenting parties, instead of the moral imperative it's generally considered. In such a view, humans and their health become economic factors in a dispassionate free-market system where health care equates with any other commodity. While economic efficiency underwrites such a system (especially if, as many claim, health insurance is the responsible paying for the chronically ill), widescale policy shouldn't entirely dismiss the notion of collectivist ethics and humanity.

Health insurance fundamentally differs from car and home insurance because the relevant commodity has inherent, dare I say spiritual (in a completely materialistic manner), worth. Thus, it's rational to trade market efficiency for a tempering of human suffering. This trade-off becomes even more tenable if one considers that many conditions do not result from unhealthy behavioral habits like smoking or high number of sexual partners.

Moral Indoctrination and the Black Church

On this site, religion is often suggested as a partial antidote for low-IQ dysfunction (I believe 'sabril' is the foremost proponent of this idea). The argument states that indoctrination of pseudo-religious, positive values like charity, kindness, condemnation of violence, and the "God is watching" meme do have a palpable effect on some religious adherents. Anyone who has seen a late-night airing of The 700 Club has witnessed former drug addicts and gang members owing their turnaround to religion. The added punch of religion comes from the supernatural aspect of it, whereby an omniscient entity serves as both a surrogate father and a merciless executioner. In addition, it's reasonable to assume religion would prove a socially unifying force amongst the disparate racial groups.

Yet, this recommendation will likely fail due to the manner in which religion has been appropriated, especially by the black community.

Even to the most idealistic liberals, the black community clearly has problems, such as an incredibly high crime rate, highest teen pregnancy rate, the lowest educational attainment, and being one-half of the most volatile racial relationship. If religion is to affect positive change, it must induce behavioral changes in the black community and a moderate repairing of the black-white racial turmoil. However, looking at the black religious experience, it's highly unlikely such changes will result.

Mainstream American whites, secluded in their suburban enclaves, got their first real glimpse of the black church when Jeremiah Wright's infamous sermons surfaced. Here are some of the more delightful excerpts (video here):

The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.

The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America. No! No No! God damn America

Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich, white people.

[T]he Christianity of the slaveholder is not the Christianity of the slave. The God to whom the slaveholders pray as they ride on the decks of the slave ship is not the God to whom the enslaved are praying as they ride beneath the decks on that slave ship.

Pay special attention to the last quote. This inflammatory rhetoric and victimology is quite common in black churches. Here's the the Nation of Islam's teachings on race. They are a prominent black religious movement that includes Muhummad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Snoop Dogg, and Louis Farrakhan:

The Blackman is the Original Man. From him came all brown, yellow, red, and white people. By using a special method of birth-control law, the Blackman was able to produce the white race. This method of birth control was developed by a Black scientist known as Yakub, who envisioned making and teaching a nation of people who would be diametrically opposed to the Original People. [Yes they believe whites were created by a black scientist 6000 years ago.]

Louis Farrakhan has stated that "White people are potential humans…they haven’t evolved yet." (Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/18/00).

Many speeches refer to people of European descent as "white devils".

Finally, and somewhat disconnected from the above, the "prosperity gospel" seems to be especially prevalent amongst blacks. Prominent ministers targeting blacks (watch BET late night) who basically just steal their congregants' money include Creflo Dollar, T.D. Jakes, Peter Popoff, and Kenny Thomas.

From the above, it's obvious the black religious experience and the purveyors of that experience do not achieve (or even intend to achieve) the goals of a value-based religious indoctrination scheme. Rather than encouraging stability, discretion, and responsibility, the core of black religiosity seems to center around spiritual justifications for racialism. Race racketeers like Rev. Wright, Rev. Al Sharpton, and Rev. Joseph Lowery use their religious authority to disseminate racially antagonistic views of America. Instead of focusing on educational attainment, the Nation of Islam and the black church rile up animus towards a supposed oppressive "white power structure".

These ideals directly oppose what a conscientious religious community should be teaching. Their portrayal of America cultivates an angry, bitter outlook on one's future earnings and social mobility potential. In the black church, moral indoctrination is subordinate to the racial interpretation of religious texts. HBDers see religion as possibly creating a cohort of low-IQ, but hard-working and stable individuals unlikely to betray their religiously-based impulses for the fruits of hedonism or violence. Instead, the black church creates a racially charged cohort eagerly blaming failure on white racism and lacking any impulse control in what they perceive to be an unfair society.

Is American Patriotism Prole Behavior?

I was driving through an upper class, older-SWPLer town yesterday. In these suburban enclaves, it's common to see various objects hanging on a porch or the back of a car. Going through some neighborhoods, I noticed a few American flags hanging out. The curious part: Only the lower class, prole-type neighborhoods had flags.

Just from anecdotal evidence, it's pretty clear American patriotism is strongest amongst the lower classes, while denigration of America as imperialistic and oppressive remains popular amongst the higher social spheres. The town hall protesters and the academic elitists epitomize this dichotomy. According to the General Social Survey (variable: AMPROUD1), patriotism does seem to be higher amongst lower class whites as compared to the working and middle classes.

The numbers probably aren't significant enough to make any reliable conclusions, but it does provide support for what I've witnessed. So why are the lower classes the most patriotic and why do upper class people eschew harboring nationalistic pride. For proles, patriotism allows them to associate with a larger collective that typifies success. The upper classes dismiss nationalism for two reasons. First, they see patriotism as the "last refuge of a scoundrel" and thus inappropriate for those of higher status. Second, the elite educational system indoctrinates this class with a despondent view of America and supports a globalistic, not nationalistic, outlook on politics. However, one would presume this last reasoning would have a far greater impact. After all, even for non-proles, over 80% are "very proud to be an American". I find this statistic an absolutely huge overestimation, but that's what the numbers say. Nonetheless, the comparison remains apt if the absolutes don't.

Example of Liberal Delusion: Huffington on Van Jones

Recently, I've just stopped arguing with liberals. Most are unwilling to see any viewpoint that's slightly beyond the mainstream. To liberals, no matter the veracity of the claim, the value of a statement depends primarily on the person making it.

To prove my point, I give you Arianna Huffington defending Van Jones. I blogged about this extreme radical a few days ago. VFR also had a great article on him here. Pay very close attention to Mrs. Huffington blinding herself to the nature of Jones' beliefs:

Thank you, Glenn Beck. By helping force the resignation of Van Jones, you have done a great service to your country. But in the exact opposite way than what you intended.

Your vile and vicious smear campaign has helped reverse one of the worst examples of miscasting since John Wayne took on the role of Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.

So quoting the man's own words is now tantamount to "smearing". I recall Obama using this same defense.

Contrary to the media caricature, the real Van Jones is a thoughtful leader who knows how to use words to move people to action.

All demagogues "know how to use words". Such a talent doesn't mean those words will have positive effects. I also love the condemnation of a so-called "caricature". Even if Jones' entire personality wasn't displayed on Fox News, aren't the vile statements he made enough to warrant extreme criticism?

Student groups and labor groups and small business groups and middle class Americans everywhere who are losing jobs and losing homes and losing hope. He's free to push with all his might and insight for the vision tens of millions of Americans...

Yes Mr. Jones is such a righteous crusader for middle class Americans and small businesses. Why don't we look at Mr. Jones own words regarding who he intends to help through a green job economy:

Jones envisions West Oakland and other depressed neighborhoods as healthy, thriving hubs of clean commerce. He hopes to "build a pipeline from the prison economy to the green economy" by training prisoners reentering society to help build a solar-powered, energy-efficient future.

The Ella Baker center that he founded: "Decades of disinvestment in our cities have led to despair and hopelessness. For poor communities and communities of color it's even worse, as excessive, racist policing and over-incarceration have left people even further behind."

I don't think Mr. Jones is fighting for everyone. Here's how Jones does it:

In pursuit of a clean energy future for America, Van has successfully brought together urban youth with clean-tech entrepreneurs, labor leaders with business leaders, civil rights activists with environmentalists.

Perhaps, it's not a singular ability of Mr. Jones that forms these connections. Maybe these coalitions are NAM groups willing to exploit the SWPL/white guilt sensibilities of people with money?

that never stopped him from looking for ways to reach out and bridge the political, economic, racial, and social chasms that continue to divide us.

Yet again, Huffington makes a specious claim without providing any evidence to support it.

In fact, his journey from radical activist to someone who came to see that the solutions we need in this country are ones not easily categorized as right or left is what has made him such an effective leader.

Jones realized his communist, overtly black racialist stance wouldn't engender wholescale change. But a more subtle version of this philosophy, with the same exact aims, can be successful in the PC culture of modern politics. He needn't organize violent protests; rather he can achieve the same objectives by repeating the truisms of PC doctrine: racial collectives must be equal in achievement and any inequality is due to white racism. Such discourse is rarely challenged amongst the liberal elite.

Hardwired for Religion?

Scientists in the UK claim we're hardwired for God-belief:

The idea has emerged from studies of the way children’s brains develop and of the workings of the brain during religious experiences. They suggest that during evolution groups of humans with religious tendencies began to benefit from their beliefs, perhaps because they tended to work together better and so stood a greater chance of survival.

Considering the ubiquity of religious belief, this isn't a surprise. They continue:

“Our research shows children have a natural, intuitive way of reasoning that leads them to all kinds of supernatural beliefs about how the world works,” he said. “As they grow up they overlay these beliefs with more rational approaches but the tendency to illogical supernatural beliefs remains as religion.”

Supernatural beliefs became more prevalent as the emotional attachment of a given event increases. Go to any diehard football fan's home on Sunday and view such behavior (FYI: Somehow I'm immune to such compulsions.) What's most interesting about these findings is that it contradicts both sides of the religious debate: the Dawkins atheists and the fundamentalist theists.

Andrew Newberg, professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania, has used brain-imaging techniques to show that such feelings are invoked by activity in “belief networks” operating across the brain. “The temporal lobe interacts with many other parts of the brain to provide the full range of religious and spiritual experiences,” he said.

This mechanistic view of religious experience is reinforced by separate research carried out by Michael Persinger of Laurentian University, Ontario, who has used powerful magnetic fields to induce visions and spiritual experiences in volunteers.

On one hand, atheists seem to be opposing a natural tendency amongst humans, much like our sexual desires. Yet, for the religious, such research seems to suggest religious belief is merely a vestige of an evolutionary past and these current experiences are simply manifestations of physical brain states. A religious authority opines:

I am quite sure there will be a biological basis to religious faith,” Reiss said. “We are evolved creatures and the whole point about humanity is that we are rooted in the natural world.

OK, but if one can formulate an accurate materialistic conception of religious experience and induce these experiences through physical stimuli, then the case is surely weakened. What I'm seeing here is a God of the Gaps argument, where religious people insert aspects of the divine in structures not wholly explainable through reductionist methods.

Part Four of Educational Reform Series: Getting a Job

Note: This Educational Reform series was inspired by Charles Murray's Real Education.

This is part four of four in my Educational Reform Series. Here are parts one, two, and three.

This post deals with the marketplace and its relation to the education.

Pervasiveness of credentialism: In a previous post, I discussed how employers use college degrees as the primary means of vetting potential employees. Such a situation unduly hinders the poor and unconnected, but qualified, members of society. Credentialism hinges primarily on the prestige associated with the given college degree. It bestows upon its recipient instant credibility, whether or not that impression is warranted. Unfortunately, this insistence on name recognition subjugates the individual to his group (namely, his collegiate peers). The marketplace likes flashy and obvious indicators of prestige and, in upper class America, the predominant factor of this prestige is the right college degree.

Irrelevance of college degree in real world occupations: While the educational system continually reminds us that education is a requirement of successful people, real world jobs have only a tenuous connection to classroom instruction. Ignoring the numerous counterexamples of autodidacts, one must only look at the daily tasks of salespeople, secretaries, business executives, real estate agents, journalists, and store managers to see the absurdity of stating one needs four years to qualify for these positions. College instruction is often tangential to real world job duties and if necessary, it provides only a rudimentary foundation for future work. In many cases, college work will do almost nothing to prepare a worker, such as teachers who study abstruse sociological theory in order to handle 30 rambunctious nine year-olds.

In my last article in this series, 'Dr. D' claimed engineering instruction actually had relevance for real world experiences. I ask any engineers out there how many times they used a boundary layer approximation of Navier Stokes equations to model fluid flow, used Laplace transform to find a system's time evolution, drew a free body diagram and solved it using statics, or found the eigenvalues of a heat conduction equation. The actual, hands-on mathematics of these problems is stressed in engineering curriculum, but only the qualitative knowledge of such topics are important. Real world engineering (and other sciences) is dominated by black-box computational tools and demands only an unlearnable intuition of how stuff works, not how well one can draw a phasor diagram.

Advice for Recent Graduates: I've spent a lot of time denigrating higher education, depicting it as a useless ploy perpetuated by HBD denialists. And while I'd love to see a society where individual, objective merit triumphs, we don't live in that utopia. One must recognize that the same HBD denialists exhorting everyone to attend college are the ones responsible for hiring you when you graduate. You may be brilliant and self-taught, but only Facebook-type entrepreneurs can survive in the white-collar marketplace without a college degree. There's no use railing against an unfair system; you can't win. So my advice: You have to play by the rules and go to college (and the more elite, the better)!

Pro-Finland Politician Fined for telling the Truth

Finish politician Jussi Kristian Halla-aho is on trial for making comments like this about Islam:

Prophet Muhammad was a pedophile and islam revers pedophilia as a religion. Islam is a religion of pedophilia. Pedophilia is Allah’s will.

He's also made statements against multiculturalism and immigration. Shockingly, his candor hasn't been received positively amongst the (scared) Finland elite. Even worse, they still have blasphemy laws there. Who wants to bet those laws only apply to condemnation of that non-violent, religion of peace Islam?

He was forced to pay a 330 euros fine for blasphemy. Fortunately, the hate speech charge against him was dropped. One could view such a case, where an honest person seeks to defend his country's majority population and restrict inimical immigration, as a microcosm of the West's downfall. In America, at least we merely shame the dissenting parties (see Watson, James); in Finland, they outright ban such expression.

Healthcare Reform: Public Option or Just More Regulation?

I just got done watching Obama's healthcare reform speech. He said a lot of good things, but I'm thinking there's got to be a catch, and that catch is likely an increase in government spending. For several of the restrictions he mentioned (e.g. not allowing insurance companies to drop consumers when they get sick), I'm shocked these laws aren't already in place.

It seems the basic premise of Obamacare is using a government option to "keep the insurance companies honest". By instituting a non-profit government option, the insurance companies will have incentive to "do right by the American people". This seems like a reasonable idea, but perhaps, it would be more prudent to simply implement the government restrictions he summarized at the beginning (e.g. stricter laws for medical malpractice to reduce doctor's insurance against it and some reform for those with pre-existing conditions). I've argued that wholly unregulated systems fail due to avarice. The (almost) free market is a fundamental aspect of American success, but sometimes the for-profit private industry can harm consumers if not beholden to the proper oversight.

I imagine Obama and the leftists refuse to stop at merely increased regulation because of who comprises the uninsured populations. Illegals, non-citizens, and the unemployed (mostly NAMs) constitute the majority of such individuals. By instituting the public option, these groups can continue to leech off government and, as a result, keep voting Democrat.

Feel free to express your thoughts on his plan in the comments.

Obama's Speech to Students

Obama gave a rather mundane speech to America's students yesterday. He regurgitated the standard bromides about staying in school and listening to your parents. I don't think the speech was particularly objectionable, though the letter writing campaign bordered on creepy. Unlike the rest of our educational system, there weren't any overt indoctrination attempts. I respond below.

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

[Pretty lame attempt to connect with audience follows.]I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster." [How many times do I have to hear this anecdote? Anybody want to guess the kind of stuff Mrs. Sortero was teaching young Barry?]

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility. [And how to blame someone else for all your problems.]

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn. [His merit-pay idea for teachers is the one of the only good suggestions I've encountered from Obama.]

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox. [God forbid kids enjoy themselves. Believe me, in 20 years, the culture gleaned from TV will be far more a part of them than their trigonometry homework.]

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards [Lake Wobegon!], supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve [Not every kid deserves the same opportunity, though every kid deserves an opportunity.].

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world [A pro-American sentiment from BHO?!?] – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education [But if it doesn't work, just see my NAACP speech for a contingency plan.]. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide [Not if everyone is pushed into the college prep route. Some kids need a practical education that the liberal elites denigrate.].

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine [Because there are so many Salks and Gates out there.] – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice [Must pass racial test first.], but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military [No mention of blue collar, non-government workers here.]? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country [Agreed, which is why educational policy is so important.]. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment [Ironically, all highly g-loaded tasks which means these statements only apply to about 5% of the audience.]. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free [I guess he couldn't help himself.]. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country [The one my wife wasn't proud of until last year].

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse [A shrewd strategy here. Kids often respect an authority figure more if they sense he has a troubled past. That's why almost all anti-gang mentors are former gang members themselves.].

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country [I think he forget something in this particular narrative about MO.].

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying [Good points. It's unfortunate he's always opposing this attitude elsewhere.].

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future [More inspiring statements.].

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez [While I'd love to take this at face value, the incredulity regarding NAM achievement is a subtle consequence of affirmative action.].

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall [An amazing story. It's great that Obama gave this kid such acclaim.].

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell [Notice two of them are NAMs.] aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community [Didn't he try to make volunteering mandatory?]. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball [Hmm, wonder who this was directed at?] or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." [Nice.]

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying [Or it could just mean you're stupid.].

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in. [While I'm an IQ realist, I do think this non-fatalist mindset can have positive effects.]

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other. [More good stuff.]

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn [I love how there's always so much emphasis on new books, interactive software, and computers. Since when did the American Revolution change and Newton's Laws stop working. We could provide a great education using textbooks from the 1950's. I think this attitude comes from IQ/HBD-denialism.]. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America. [Was this necessary? Probably added it so people stop thinking he's a Muslim.]

HBD's Nerdy White Male Problem

All great revolutions need a face. It's imperative that the chosen face embodies either feminine beauty or masculine strength and resolve. Unfortunately for the HBD crowd, we're mostly white beta males a little too interested in genetics and statistics. While almost the entire Steveosphere does wish for the dignified traditions of pre-1965 America, our traditionalism isn't the rugged aesthetic of the populists.

So, not only do we have a huge racism problem, we have a stereotype problem (ironic, right?). We're almost all white, we think black people cause a disproportionate amount of social turmoil, and we like science. That represents the antithesis of "cool" in modern, liberal America.

What we need is a shift in demographics, a seminal change that belies the racist Dungeons and Dragons role player image of current HBD. We need babes. It's that simple. Recruit a bunch of hot women to front the movement and it will attract more attention. This seemingly scurrilous strategy motivates almost every advertising campaign, the selection of pre-pubescent girls for Disney stardom, and even the choice for VP running mate.

Fox News has already realized what a powerful scheme this represents, using an endless number of relatively young, attractive blonds to moderate their news programs. We need to get going on this. Any suggestions?

Researchers prove HBD, but Claim it's all Culture

In his book, IQ and the Wealth of Nations, Richard Lynn argues that a strong relationship exists between IQ and a country's wealth. Predictably, his work was attacked by various critics, citing competing cultural theories advanced by individuals like Richard Nisbett and Jared Diamond.

Well, it seems Lynn has been vindicated by a recent study. Two Brown University economists found that a country's ancestral history (where the country's denizens came from or, in un-PC terms, racial demographics) has a strong effect on gross domestic product.

For 165 countries, the matrix identifies where the ancestors of the permanent residents were living in the year 1500.

When Putterman and Weil used the matrix to investigate the effects of the post-1500 population movements on income differences today, the results were “almost breathtaking.” The power of regional origins is illustrated by the fact that in a 125-country regression, 44 percent of the variance in current per capita GDP is accounted for by entering only the share of the population’s ancestors that lived in Europe in 1500.

So having lots of people from Europe helps facilitate wealth creation? Who would have thought that? They continue by opposing much of the Guns, Germs, and Steel argument:

[I]f this influence is indeed as significant as our findings suggest it to be, then efforts to sort out the roles that geographic, institutional, and other factors play in explaining income levels and growth rates may produce misleading results unless we properly control for it.

Then, unsurprisingly, they attribute their results to some nebulous concept of inherited culture:

[T]he influence of population origins suggests that there is something that human families and communities transmit from generation to generation — perhaps a form of economic culture, a set of attitudes or beliefs, or informally transmitted capabilities — that is of at least similar importance to economic success as are more widely recognized factors like quantities of physical capital and even human capital in the narrower sense of formal schooling. If we understand which culturally transmitted factors are important and what contributes to their emergence and propagation, we might be able to design policy interventions that could help less successful groups and countries to close their developmental gaps.

Might this "something human families transmit from generation to generation" be innate intelligence?!? I doubt they even considered this idea. Once again, HBD is proven and everyone ignores it.

Elite vs. Populist Conservatives

At The Next Right, Jon Henke proposes the organized Right abandon their fringe brethren comprising the Birthers and WorldNetDaily. His basic point is that these populist groups are an embarrassment to his intellectual brand of conservatism.

Vox Day identifies the most obvious flaw of such a strategy: you won't have enough people. David Hume at SecularRight thinks compromise is an integral and required aspect of our current political climate.

The problem with libertarian leaning, mainstream conservatives like Jon Henke is their false presumption that his fashioning of conservatism can have widespread appeal. Once again, we return to the bell curve and its insistence that not everyone has equal aptitude. The erudite politics of individuals like Henke are simply beyond the intellectual reach of almost the entire population. A scheme that bases an entire movement on first principles and the details of economic theory and historical relevance will ultimately fail. The elites can only wish to temper the irrationality of these groups, not force them to engage in reasoned analysis or dispassionate discourse.

As for the motive behind repudiating WND, this likely stems from elite peer pressure. Liberal urban sophisticates and Ivy League grads dominate the social sphere of these right-leaning persons. As a result, the implicit association of the angry populist movements with the policies of limited immigration, anti-racialism, and basic American patriotism adulterates Henke's views. To espouse iconoclastic views in the dining rooms of polite society, one must at least support them with the reason of a scholar. Henke is unable to do so because his perspective is immediately opposed as it supposedly constituted the modus operandi of Palin-ites.

What Henke and others miss is the opportunity these grassroots movements present. While Townhall screamers won't garner any respect from the establishment, their outcries do, at least, capture attention for nominally conservative ideas. Inserting even these histrionics into the public sphere may have an impact on the cultural zeitgeist and slightly remove the PC nuzzle of everyday life. If WND and Birthers allow middle class suburbanites to express even extremely hesitant acceptance of anti-PC concepts, then cerebral conservatives have a brief opening to interject their ideas into the mainstream.