Tim Tebow's Ad and the Abortion Debate

During next Sunday's Super Bowl, James Dobson's Focus on the Family will run an implicitly pro-life ad featuring Tim Tebow. The ad tells of Pam Tebow's risky pregnancy and her decision to go through with the birth. Even as someone who sympathizes with the pro-life side (ultimately consider it a necessary evil), I find the message absurd. Not everyone is having a Heisman trophy winner.

CBS' decision to run the ad has generated much debate over censorship, abortion "rights", and the abortion controversy. The New York Times editorial board opines:

The National Organization for Women, NARAL Pro-Choice America and other voices for protecting women’s reproductive freedom have called on CBS to yank it.

The pro-choice side engages in a quite wily argumentative strategy by couching the debate in terms of "rights". I mean, who could argue with protecting one's inherent rights? But such a paradigm, where the pertinent issue becomes the supposed oppression of women, distracts from the central point of contention concerning abortion. One's position on this issue doesn't constitute an opinion or "belief" (as Tebow unfortunately put it) or taking a side on a person's God-given rights, it's actually a matter of defining life. The abortion debate reduces to the issue of when life begins, how we define life, and what circumstances justify ending life. Pro-choice advocates dissimulate on the issue by injecting rhetoric like "allowing women to make their own decisions" and "protecting the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices." No one wishes to undermine the freedom women experience; instead, pro-lifers wish to protect the most vulnerable of "lives".

[Some miscellany on abortion:

• For a humorous take, see this video and article both from The Onion.
  
• Further, I just don't understand how someone could look at an aborted fetus and not at least find the "conception begins at life" viewpoint somewhat viable.
  
• Finally, I enjoy relaying to pro-choice advocates, the kind that see abortion as merely an innocuous proxy for birth control, my future decision to abort a child because I don't think he'll like my favorite football team. After all, if one can abort a fetus simply because one is unprepared for parenthood, that implies it has essentially no moral value and thus any arbitrary reason should suffice (the above article from The Onion alludes to this as a reasonable response to abortion).]

As for appropriateness, the Times surprisingly doesn't push for censorship:

CBS was right to change its policy of rejecting paid advocacy commercials from groups other than political candidates. After the network screens ads for accuracy and taste, viewers can watch and judge for themselves. Or they can get up from the couch and get a sandwich.

I have to agree with those opposing the commercial. The Super Bowl or any sports event is not the proper place to push a political or moral message. I want sports, that's it. And for God's sakes, can we stop with old men discussing their erections (or lack thereof) as well?

Loving Children: Blood vs. Politics?

Saturday Audience Participation

Madalyn Murray O'Hair was the one-woman precursor to today's New Atheism movement headed by Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennet. A tireless advocate for secularism (or anti-religious zealot), she would found American Atheists and make a lot of enemies along the way. Murray O'Hair actually reveled in insulting religion and its adherents; she refused to mince words in denouncing what she perceived as the destructive and irrational aspects of religious belief. This was a woman who invested her entire being into undermining and opposing religion.

In 1980, as Murray O'Hair continued her crusade, her eldest son, William, was baptized at a Baptist Church and would later become a preacher. While many parents assure their children of unconditional love and support, Murray O'Hair said this of her son:

"One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times...he is beyond human forgiveness."

That's about the harshest words one could expect from a mother. Perhaps she owed such a response to her unflinching rationality where reason and logic take precedence over emotion and other aspects of the "incorporeal soul". She could not forgive such a betrayal, such a transgression against her most treasured principles and motherhood couldn't mollify her negative reaction.

Today's question is about family and the bonds that tie them together. If your child adopted some moral or political system or some way of life that directly opposed your most important values, how would you respond? If your child turned out to be the queen of the gays, would you shower him with love? If your child promoted, in an official position, unfettered immigration, anti-racist Tim Wise propaganda, or other far-left liberalism, could you compartmentalize such iniquities, choosing blood over politics?

Howard Zinn and the Morality of Imperialism

Howard Zinn, author of the notorious anti-West manifesto A People's History of the United States, died this week. The narrative of this diatribe against America and the West in general regurgitates typical liberal rhetoric. It champions the oppressed (non-white) as victims of a violent (white) people, the poor as casualties of the self-aggrandizing system of the elites, and women as pawns in a rigidly patriarchal society. Are there some nuggets of truth buried in these polemics? Admittedly, yes, but the overall message depicts America's founding peoples and visionaries as nothing but racist, classist, sexist, and xenophobic. The fact that such a vile screed is common in our education system speaks to the suicidal nature of our culture. For this post, I'll focus on an axiomatic principle inherent to all works written in this vein.

Western Imperialism is one of those phrases Berkeley political science students love to say while sipping their lattes and musing on the world's problems. Implicit in the condemnation of imperialism is the idea that forced subjugation of an indigenous population is immoral, that forcibly supplanting a given ethnic group represents a moral wrong. As everyone knows, the formation of the American colonies required the displacement of Native Americans. This also occurred in Latin America and in Africa due to the slave trade and subsequent colonization.

The leftist assumes this is wrong. But why? The only tenable argument for such a position is the correspondence between empire-building and violence. But violence is merely an unnecessary consequence of imperialism, an act engaged in by a group stubbornly opposing positive change. Of course, such an assertion requires the context I provide below.

In dilemmas involving large groups of individuals, the most rational avenue for resolving conflict is appeal to utilitarianism. In any debate, we simply define a reasonable measure of good or "gross utility" and seek solutions that most readily maximize these aspects of life. In this situation, the task is formulation of civilization and the "goods" are societal stability, crime, technological advancement, industrial advancement, development and attainability of luxury, harvesting of natural resources, food, etc. As any Gaia-worshipping leftist knows, planet Earth has a limited number of natural resources, especially in a time where society was solely agrarian. Land is the most important commodity, along with trade routes along rivers.

So which group, Native Americans, South Americans, and Africans or Europeans, is best able to utilize the land and natural resources of the Western Hemisphere and Africa? While Jared Diamond might disagree, HBD research, including Lynn's seminal work on IQ and wealth of nations, tells us ethnic and racial groups will succeed or fail relative to their innate predilections. [This also applies to Asian countries, but they formed largely insular societies during this global colonization.] If we seek to maximize gross utility, and do so by taking into account all peoples, it's clear that imperialism represents the most moral strategy available for dividing land.

Leftists seek a global society where arbitrary borders have little meaning. So why then does imperialism, which is essentially a denunciation of traditional ethnic borders, represent such a dastardly activity? Further, European imperialists created daughter states that provided a boon to their home countries, early settlers, and subsequently, the world at large (where would Haiti be without America?). Native Americans, South Americans, and Africans are simply incapable of gross technological and societal advancement. If Europe hadn't set about colonizing the West, it would have possibly succumbed to overpopulation, disease, or have been stifled due simply to geography. [This may be a current problem for Japan.]

The argument against imperialism holds that all cultures and peoples have equal potential. But HBD directly opposes such an idealistic contention. Similarly, anti-imperialistic idealism holds onto the "noble savage" idea which I've previously covered. European colonization supposedly permanently tarnishes these glorified cultures.

Thus, the oppressed non-whites and their noble savage wisdom must possess truths not readily available to the privileged Westerners. Contrastingly, the non-whites possess an exotic quality closer to the spiritual basis of man, not besmirched by the racist, classist, and sexist West...[T]he noble savage doesn't engage in the deleterious activities of the oppressive Western classes.

Finally, there's the issue of violence and forced subjugation. I'm going to veer into eccentricity here and contend that the Native Americans and South Americans should have peacefully acquiesced to the demands of the European settlers. By engaging in a peaceful surrender, the conquered peoples may lose some freedom and cultural vigor, but the positive changes derived from increased trade, including medicine or technology, would offset these harmful ramifications. In the end, a conquered peoples loses autonomy, but again, utilitarianism sometimes must ignore emotional desires in order to achieve some greater good.

Why Abstinence Education Fails

Bristol Palin, America's favorite teen mom, has declared that she will be abstinent until marriage. The mainstream media has quite predictably mocked this self-imposed celibacy, ruminating on a multitude of ulterior motivates behind her "re-virginization". While one could attribute this to Palin Derangment Syndrome, I think the liberal media sees this as an opportunity to buttress one of their pet causes: sex education as opposed to abstinence-only education.

This remains quite a contentious issue due to the both the practical consequences, such as teen pregnancy, and the moral ramifications pushed by the more pious sectors of society. In this case, liberals discard their cherished idea that cultural learning can overcome any biological urge, as in this NYT editorial.

Federal support for the wishful abstinence-only approach, which began in the 1980s, ballooned during George W. Bush’s presidency. As the funding grew, so did evidence of the policy’s failure. A Congressionally mandated study released in 2007 found that elementary and middle school students who received abstinence instruction were just as likely to have sex in the following year as students who did not get such instruction.

Many states rightly declined to participate in the abstinence program, forgoing federal money. Most of the nation’s recent progress in reducing the abortion rate has occurred in states that have shown a commitment to real sex education.

First, I consider any study purporting to support some liberal position with a measure of incredulity. Second, I'm not surprised that abstinence education largely fails, as our overarching popular culture would temper, if not completely override, any effects of these initiatives. It's ironic that in this instance, liberals completely neglect the "culture" argument by asserting innate sexual urges are too powerful to counteract. Yet, biological predilections in the context of gender don't represent such an indomitable force dictating behavior?! For the left, science isn't merely a pursuit of truth; it's a social activity intended to shape public opinion in resolving controversies.

But why does abstinence education fail? Because, as Ferdinand notes here, teenagers live in sexually charged environment where shame no longer dissuades anyone from partaking in destructive activity. How can 45 minutes of abstinence-only education oppose the inundation of sex and sexuality pervading our culture? Further, in classic liberal fashion, the abstinence portion of sex education is generally presented alongside demonstrations of condom use. Teenagers then receive a mixed message, ultimately undermining the notion that abstinence represents a viable option. One can't expect teenagers to accept abstinence if the presentation is couched in the language of relativism and depicted as more of a choice than a mandate.

Of course, this issue is far too complex to fully discuss in a brief blog post. So carry on in the comments.

What Aliens Look Like

I found the following article on the physical traits of aliens quite interesting. It discusses the correspondence between appearance and home planet.

So if our aliens come from a planet with a range of habitats not too different from those on Earth, they might well have some of the same characteristics. A well-lit world like ours would probably produce beings with eyes - so maybe a recognisable face after all. And our cosmic correspondents would presumably need some manipulating organs to fiddle with the nuts and bolts of their technology.

Putting it all together, the daring astrobiologist might be prepared to make a very small bet that SETI-type aliens will be social multicellular predators with eyes, sexes, and sticky-out bits of some sort. Unless, of course, the aliens were usurped by smart machines or decided to modify themselves using biotechnology.

Of course, movies always produce anthropomorphic beings, a choice more tailored to audiences than possible reality. For me, it's difficult to hazard a guess because we only have a sample size of one and we're undoubtedly biased towards that morphology.

Another Mainstream Political HBDer

Somewhat surprisingly, Obama's presidency hasn't engendered an uprising of idealistic young people, but rather a revival of conservative politics. In this renaissance, spurred on by Obama's unique radical leftism, conservatives seem more willing to neglect the restrictive taboos of polite society. Admittedly, so as to shirk liberal excoriation and defaming, this isn't usually done in explicit terms. In this vein, a South Carolina Republican candidate for Governor expressed rather clear sympathy for eugenics last week. His comments were in the context of discussing free school lunch programs; guess who receives most of those.

His criticism of this "culture of dependence" and these "stray animals" is presented in rather uncouth language. Nonetheless, the message against government largesse is evident. But Mr. Bauer, paralleling the eugenics of yesterday and the HBD community of today, goes further and considers the effect on future generations:

Quit feeding stray animals. Ya know why? Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem! If you give a person or an animal ample food supply, they will reproduce especially one that don't think much further than that.

So Mr. Bauer not only admonishes the welfare state, but he clearly understands birth rate disparities (assuming both in regards to race and class) and future time orientation. This is quite a revelation from a mainstream politician, a man who subsequently defended his comments by chastising fellow politicians as "scared to appear politically incorrect".

What does this promise for future HBD-themed discourse? Note that Mr. Bauer uses the term "politically incorrect" as both an admission of his breaking a social taboo, but also as a kind of excuse for presenting this opinion. There's a plethora of information contained within this label, hidden from the mainstream out of fear of ostracism. These facts are incorrect only in regards to their corresponding social repercussions. By presenting the information as being "politically incorrect", one acknowledges the possible consequences of the facts, thereby implying an understanding of the opposition's delicate sensibilities. But the information is nonetheless presented, just with a qualifier that may weaken the inimical intent counterargument.

Dunkin' Donuts Covets Proles

In my opinion, the central act that defines the SWPL is coffee drinking. Even before reading the eponymous blog, I could readily imagine them eating sushi in their tweed jackets while discussing Western Imperialism and Whole Foods organic produce. But coffee always epitomized this class of individuals.

With that in mind, Dunkin' Donuts new marketing campaign (video below) represents a dramatic risk as they seek to attract a new demographic.

This advertising campaign places their product against the more established (and more SWPL) Starbucks brand. [Though, now even SWPL's generally dislike Starbucks as its ubiquity has fomented a "too corporate" backlash.] The commercial ends with the tagline "America really does run on Dunkin'" and has the phrase "hard-working Americans", a slogan covertly used to represent lower middle-class, Sarah Palin admirers . Additionally, the following occupations are shown: auto mechanic, leaf-blowing, electrician, and taxi driver.

It's interesting that Dunkin' Donuts believes such a drastic rebranding is a viable business model. Coffee, along with wine and non-domestic beer, are drinks of the elite. Perhaps this strategy will fail miserably or possibly, this represents the growing mainstream presence of the Tea Party cohort. But I just can't imagine all the plumbers and electricians eagerly adopting a symbol of the corporate world. It's hard to repackage something so ensconced in what's basically a foreign cultural landscape. I think they need to take it a little further, maybe noting how the effects of coffee best counteract physically enervating work. They'll need more than this one commercial to attract a new market.

Update [1:08 AM 1/26/10]: Some commenters disagree with my contention that coffee is primarily SWPL. They point to coffee drinking being common amongst prole occupations like construction and plumbing. This may be true, but it doesn't undermine the strong correspondence coffee has with the upper, corporate, and SWPL classes.

Almost every beverage has a presence across the entirety of the social and economic hierarchies. But that doesn't contradict the notion that a given beverage is primarily connected to a particular class. For example, proles love to drink cheap wine, but wine remains an assuredly upper class drink, as evidenced by the recent fervor sparked by Palin talking at a wine convention. While everyone drinks wine, people still primarily associate it with the upper classes and thus consider it unbecoming of a woman of Palin's social class. Beer represents another pertinent example, being primarily a drink of the lower classes/male sports fan, yet concurrently being an aspect of SWPLism (non-domestic). All in all, I think it's clear there's quite a bit of flexibility in defining aspects of culture, their relations to class, and the additional equivocacy caused by the co-opting of certain brands.

SWPL War on Childhood

Emily Bazelon, author of this cringe-inducing article on Frank Ricci, is a Slate.com senior editor with a Yale law degree and, currently, a research fellowship position. This week, in supreme SWPL fashion, she takes on childhood. Note that Ms. Bazelon does not define adolescence by unfettered recklessness and unsupervised play. Fittingly, Ms. Bazelon and her husband have turned their child's birthday party into a book swap. By disallowing sports equipment and video games as acceptable gifts, she considers this a lesson in asceticism. Ya know, because 10 year old boys like spending their afternoons reading. Here's her justification and the added restrictions imposed on her children:

But there are certain core Spartan practices that we have adopted and acquired an undeserved sense of moral superiority about. No sugared cereal. No soda. No TV or DVDs during the week. No weapons or gazillion plastic action figures [Well there goes my childhood.]

The hard part for us has become: What's the answer? Have we staked out this bit of moralistic turf because somehow it represents our family values in a way that nothing else quite does? Paul quietly explained that this was our family's way of drawing a line against consumption and excess.

To her credit, Bazelon does broach the alternative viewpoint expressed by her oldest child. And she does compromise in letting her son receive gifts from a few of his friends. But what troubles me about this is the notion that childhood no longer exists as a period devoid of social and moral consequences. Of course we must imbue our children with the necessary rights and wrongs of polite society. But we shouldn't see every simple childhood joy as an opportunity to preach (or impose) some larger life lesson. In fact, constant attempts at moralization are often redundant, as for the more intelligent, moral values generally come through osmosis. We do kids an injustice by depriving them of freedom, by moderating that freedom so as to construct a child's moral outlook to mirror our own idealism, and by seeking to disrupt normal childlike ambivalence through initiatives like this book swap.

Idealism and the status game, two intertwined and ubiquitous aspects of modern suburbia, dominate the SWPL's parenting decisions. We have kindergartners competing for "elite" private schools and "enrichment" programs overtaking after-school free time. The modern helicopter mother has begun a war on childhood, seeking to invest real capital and bequeath social and moral capital to their offspring. They desperately want their child to reflect the values of the enlightened liberal, complete with an Ivy League degree and compassion for the world's injustices. And perhaps even the childless can sympathize with these objectives. Don't we all wish for a child embodying the best, the most righteous, and the most successful?

Maybe, but imposing such strict rules and rigid austerity on our youth robs them of their own learning, formulation of personal values, and the freedom that only childhood can offer. [I almost always try to avoid attacking someone personally, but this was perfectly illustrative of a larger cultural meme.]

The Left's Demigods

Because Leftists tend to eschew religion, they need a proxy for traditional religious belief. For those of a decidedly political bent, this replacement usually constitutes a fanatical faith in liberalism and its corresponding virtues: diversity, "tolerance", imposed equality, socialism, etc. Most structured ways of thinking are formulated in manner as to motivate passion amongst its followers and organize the system's rhetoric. Ann Coulter draws out this metaphor in her flawed, but worthwhile book Godless: The Church of Liberalism.

This week, two stories illustrate how the left deifies their most important figures, such as Martin Luther King, Jr and Michelle Obama. To liberals, these people represent an almost godlike perfection of values. Thus, any acerbic comment, no matter how benign, represents blasphemy of the highest order. Last Monday, on MLK Day, a 16 year-old Twitter user named OMGFacts unwittingly committed this sin.

"Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spent his last night on Earth having sex with two women," he posted.

And with that, the barbs started to fly. Unfollow @OMGFacts for their crude tweet about Martin Luther King Jr yesterday!," posted one tweeter. "What a disrespectful way to dishonor MLK," posted another. Rapper Q-Tip commented, "it wasnt racist just tasteless."

"It became a big firestorm," said celebrity and pop culture blogger Shabooty, who wrote a post about the incident on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. "A lot of people were kind of appalled." A few hours after the controversial tweet, followers of @OMGFacts noticed that the account disappeared, Shabooty said. Some surmised that Twitter had shut it down over the comment, others thought the creator had deleted it.

Though the account was back up by Monday evening, @OMGFacts hasn't tweeted anything since Monday. But Deck told ABCNews.com that he isn't quitting @OMGFacts, he's just taking a bit of a hiatus to "recover and think about things."

Of course, the left (and the intellectually vacuous right) doesn't care about the facts or the truth value of any statement. The only pertinent issue is the pristine image of their heroic figures. And of course, the accusations of racism are omnipresent. The poster in question immediately repudiated his innocuous tweet and swallowed the PC rhetoric as he "recovered and [thought] about things". The potent force of social shaming once again silences dissent. In an almost identical story, former child star Scott Baio made a facetious comment concerning the ravishing first lady.

Former 'Happy Days' [Charles in Charge anyone?!?] star Scott Baio says he is receiving death threats over Twitter after posting an unflattering photo of Michelle Obama with an insulting caption.

Baio is a vocal Republican who had been tweeting breathlessly about Scott Brown's victory before he made this attempt at a joke about the first lady.

"WOW He wakes up to this every morning," Baio tweeted, along with this photo [see article]

Note the desperate attempts following the tweet at proving his non-racism. Reminds me of a Seinfield episode where George gets his black exterminator to pose as an old college friend to ensure his boss doesn't think he's a racist. The Michelle tweet wonderfully encompasses two leftist memes: the notion that Michelle represents a paragon of modern woman and the deluded lie that she possesses some measure of physical attractiveness. I can't imagine harboring such a rapid fanaticism for historical and political figures.

On a final related note: I wonder how many pro-choice feminists would attend a celebration of Margaret Sanger?

Updated: HalfSigma just posted this picture of Barack Obama which sums up the phenomenon discussed in this post quite nicely.

"Best" Insults from the Opposition

Saturday Audience Participation

OneSTDV, the blog, has attracted a few trolls and haters, though not as many as I had anticipated. However, in online conversations preceding the advent of this blog, I was continually attacked for expressing my views on HBD and racial conservatism. In the midst of these outrageous personal invectives, I have completely avoided responding in a similar fashion. The ad hominem comes from the puerile and mentally vacuous individuals who have little argumentative substance and therefore must resort to juvenile name-calling. I honestly don't care about the specifics of an individual's background; it's almost invariably inconsequential to the debate.

However, our liberal interlopers often reject such a premise. We've all heard the "racist" label, an "insult" so trite and banal that it should be rewarded with its very own Godwin's Law. But sometimes the liberals get creative, perhaps in offering online psychological diagnoses or confidently asserting the size of one's genitalia.

My all-time favorite response from a liberal creationist was the following (given during discussion of racial intelligence differences):

I'm almost positive that you were sexually molested as a young child.

So the question is: What is the best, most outrageous, hilarious, insane, or downright stupid insult you've received in discussing HBD, race, or conservative politics?

Sports and HBD: Everyone Knows It

With the advent of a whites-only basketball league, physical racial differences have crept into the national spotlight. In the nascent days of my blogging, I explained how European basketball players can compete in the NBA:

[Europeans] fill this unoccupied niche due to the genesis of basketball amongst American blacks. While American blacks play above the rim, focus on flashy ballhandling, disregard defense and rebounding fundamentals as extraneous skills, and engage in one-on-one isolation plays designed to humiliate the opponent, Europeans have concentrated on more fundamental tasks like free throw shooting, perimeter shooting, passing, team ball, boxing out, post-up moves, and defense.

Of course, white basketball players MUST do this because most lack the physicality of blacks, as epitomized in the movie title White Men Can't Jump. I found the following 1997 article from Sports Illustrated discussing sports and HBD, with a few interesting statistics concerning views on this matter (long excerpt but it's worth reading):

But many people find it hard to believe that economic incentives alone account for black athletic dominance. These observers offer a simple theory: Blacks dominate sports because they are faster, quicker, better. "If you want a gauge, go to the track meets," says Bowden. "Who's winning all those track meets?" Certainly there is a chuckling acceptance, among both blacks and whites, of the inability of whites to leap high and run fast. It's not that whites won't play anymore, the thinking goes: It's that they can't.

When coaches and players talk about the issue, they usually use the logic of the obvious: Open your eyes. Look around. "If 80 percent of the league is black, that means that black players are that much better than white players," says Orlando Magic center Rony Seikaly.

The perception of black superiority isn't found only among white coaches and players. A plurality (34%) of black males in SI's poll agreed with the statement, "Whites are not as good athletes as African-Americans." Some 42% of the black males who attend racially mixed schools said that they sensed their white peers backing off from sports because they felt they couldn't compete with blacks. Jason Webb, a nationally ranked backstroker at Virginia who is half black, half white, says, "In general, it just seems that blacks are more athletic."

Such talk may not be politically correct, but the underlying fact—that at the elite level blacks are the fastest runners, the most prodigious leapers, the dominant force on NBA courts and NFL fields—is unassailable. While the scientific jury, faced with intriguing preliminary evidence, still debates whether black athletes possess innate physical advantages, the white athlete works in a world that seems already convinced of the answer.

If you didn't read the above, here's a concise summary: Everyone sees the obvious that blacks are physically superior. So how can HBD in regards to physical acumen be so widely accepted and starkly expressed (unless you're Jimmy the Greek)? I'd say the reason is twofold. First, it paints blacks as the superior group, thus imbuing them with higher value as compared to the oppressive class. Racism only exists if engaged in by whites and so any positive classification of blacks is welcomed. Second, the facts are simply too obvious. The metrics of intelligence are not only slightly amorphous, but at the higher reaches of the scale, palatable to a smaller proportion of the population. But any person can notice the freakish ability of Jordan or Lebron and the speed of Usain Bolt. One simply can't reject something so evident.

So what implications are there for HBD in regards to cognitive differences? I'm not sure because in previous conversations online, many people have begrudgingly acquiesced regarding sports, but remained staunch dualists with regards to IQ. Sports are essentially a form of entertainment with little practical importance for anyone's personal success. But intelligence dominates our social and economic trajectories and thus pervades the entirety of our society. Further, our cognitive and "spiritual" selves defines our humanity; it's what separates us from the base and primal urges of our evolutionary cousins. To define a racial hierarchy according to intelligence means, in some minds, to construct a moral value pecking order.

I think the seeds of HBD have been present for quite some time and as evidenced by the above, sports provides the most logical means of spreading HBD.

Professors in Elite Academia: How It Works and Why They're Liberal

A recent article on Slate.com discusses the inner workings and self-replication of elite academia's professoriate.

Professors, the people most visibly responsible for the creation of new ideas, have, over the last century, become all too consummate professionals, initiates in a system committed to its own protection and perpetuation. Professors worry that any general-education requirements, any attempt to make a college education seem relevant in a specific way, will be too "presentist" or "instrumentalist." They have been taught to think of their own work, which is accountable only to the internal standards of their profession, as something pure, something unrelated to the messy business of the world.

The most pervasive personality trait of today's elite humanities professors is idealism and the dissmissal of practicality. I surely sympathize with such a perspective as I generally consider myself something of a romantic, a dreamer, a person intent on accumulating knowledge merely for the sake of sating my eclectic interests. The article presents the self-sustaining process that produces the next generation of left-leaning academics, eager to adopt the idealism of their predecessors. He explains that elite academia exists as a vacuum where intellectual purity takes precedence over the presumed benighted constructs of the practical world.

they had to start thinking of what they did in nonvocational terms—as the pursuit of specialized knowledge for its own sake. This self-conception helps to explain why the attempt to construct a general-education curriculum has been so fraught. General-education requirements are designed with the idea that there are some nonnegotiable ends to a college education, but professors have been socialized to believe that what they do can't be reduced to something so vulgar and utilitarian.

There's some that think the dominant leftism and romanticism of elite academia springs from a wider political motivation. The idea is that elite professors seek to engender some greater social change that impacts life outside the Ivory tower. This surely pertains to the most outspoken of intellectuals. But for the others, those happily deconstructing forgotten passages of Russian literature or finding connections between obscure historical events, such ambitious goals may provide little inspiration. Instead, they champion leftism because, simply, it gives them a job that they love. Conservatism, in its quest for efficiency, sometimes eschews or rejects the wholly academic endeavors of today's humanities departments. Engineering departments, with its obvious connections to real life, teems with practical conservative types (well, aside from the Asian nerds).

But the left cherishes the profligate aspects of life that exist merely as an exercise in social posturing. The left provides a safe haven for those individuals. So maybe it's not about saving the world, it's actually about saving oneself.

Pat Robertson, Religious Pluralism, and the Left

[Editor's Note: Pat Robertson is a loon and his statements on this issue, and basically every other one, are absurd.]

Following the Haiti earthquake, Pat Robertson went on his popular evangelist platform, The 700 Club, to expound on the causes of this catastrophe:

And, you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, "We will serve you if you will get us free from the French." True story. And so, the devil said, "OK, it's a deal." But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.

His comments have, unsurprisingly, elicited quite a negative reaction amongst the entirety of the political spectrum. In the context of basic social relations, he shows an astounding lack of empathy and an opportunistic flare for exploiting gross tragedy. But from a teleological perspective, his comments reflect the traditional edicts of Western religion. Robertson expresses these basic rules in a stupefyingly stark manner, but nonetheless, his view squares quite nicely with that of mainstream religion. First commandment: "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me". There's little ambiguity in such a diktat and noting the manner in which the Old Testament God doles out punishment, one clearly sees the religious consistency in Robertson's statements.

Yet such a transparent appeal to the vengeful, emotional, anthropomorphic God of yesterday doesn't find favor amongst today's intellectual class. This article champions the notion that God's wisdom and his imposed morality judgments are outside the realm of human reasoning:

"I think," adds Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, "that it's supreme hubris to think you can read God's mind."

Every Western religious tradition teaches that mortals have no way of counting or weighing another's sin. "If that happened to the Haitians because they're so sinful, then why hasn't it happened to him?" retorts Bart Ehrman, a Bible scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The problem of evil remains a contentious issue amongst religious scholars, but with regards to Robertson's statements, the above waffling doesn't provide a sufficient counter. The First Commandment and God's punishment of early Israelite dissenters mirrors the cause and effect relationship Robertson alludes to above. Basically, you mess with God, he'll mess you up back. The most callow of religious neophytes can discern this from standard religious teachings.

Yet, the condemnation of Robertson's unending crusade to connect any tragedy with human transgressions strongly opposes the enervated construct of current religiously based morality. As I discussed earlier, our entire culture, and the corresponding religious institutions, increasingly shun honest criticism. We all secretly (well I'm open about it) love Simon, yet his candid appraisals are always booed by the sycophantic audience. In a world where dodgeball has been outlawed and Lake Wobegon dominates suburban life, is it any wonder our notion of morality has followed a similar trend. Here's a recent study on America's ideas about God.

But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity. The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal.

According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans call themselves "spiritual, not religious," according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in 2005.

The Western religion of Christianity, with its hellfire punishment and central notion of sin, directly contradicts the left's pseudo-religion that preaches relativism, unfettered social and sexual freedoms, and a Big Brother institution at fault for one's personal failings. The furor over Robertson's statements reflects this. The liberal media simply can't handle, or even rationally consider, direct judgment of behavior. Instead, it prefers the "spirituality" of religious pluralism, a paradigm that makes you feel good no matter what. [However, I do sympathize with the motivation to protect one's ego.]

Sexbots and the Uncanny Valley

HalfSigma and Ferdinand at In Mala Fide have recently posted about the world's first sexbot. Here's an excerpt from the link in HS's post:

The level of sophistication demonstrated was not beyond that of a child's talking toy, but Roxxxy has a lot more brains than that – there's a laptop connected to cables coming out of its back. It has touch sensors at strategic locations and can sense when it's being moved.

The picture below shows the model's face.

As seen above, the robot has a very unnatural looking face that generally won't elicit attraction amongst its users. No one could possibly mistake the model for a real person. As the technology of sex robots progresses, the morphology of the body and facial structure will advance. Ostensibly, the goal will ultimately be robots having physical characteristics closely mirroring their female counterparts. One would presume that a human-like form would elicit the most attraction amongst users.

Yet, such a view ignores the notion of an "uncanny valley". There are a multitude of hypotheses concerning this rather odd phenomenon, but there's consensus that it does exist. Wikipedia describes it:

The uncanny valley hypothesis holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The "valley" in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot's lifelikeness.

The failure of the move The Polar Express compared to the success of animation films with anthropomorphic central characters supports the "uncanny valley" idea. So while sexbot designers continue to push the correspondence between the physiology of robots and real females, they will inevitably encounter a stage where their efforts will fail to induce attraction. What implications does this have for future sexbots and other virtual reality environments? Perhaps, we progress to the uncanny valley, then see a complete rejection of the technology, only to reaccept it upon further technological advancement. Or the optimistic projections of sexbot technology becoming widespread will prove incorrect.

Racial Bias in fMRI Studies

Here's an appropriate post for Martin Luther King, Jr. day, the only national holiday on an individual's birthday besides Jesus Christ. [Though, I don't really harbor any special contempt for MLK.]

I found an article (excerpts below) yesterday highlighting the probable futility of complete racial cohesion. The post-racial promulgators envision an America devoid of racial collectives, a 'beiged' nation absent of racial demarcations. As with all ideals encompassing the liberal creationists' worldview, these utopic prognostications conveniently ignore our innate biological urges forged through evolution and their impact on our social behavior.

For the last forty years, (white) Americans have been inundated with the tolerance paradigm: the notion that racial bias exists due to a history of exclusion, segregation, and demoralization of an oppressed people. This isn't entirely false, but the "nurture" advocates who uniformly castigate whites glibly deny how racial intolerance, or the more passive racial separation, is spurred from a biological origin. To explain the genesis of these innate predilections is a rather simple exercise:

Early humans existed in small tribes, comprised entirely of individuals who looked exactly as they did. It was reasonable to assume any person not sharing their phenotype should be regarded as an enemy and a threat to their food supply.

This rudimentary explanation logically leads to many of the behaviors regarding race and racial tensions. But the nurture advocates don't agree. So who is right? Will the future racial utopia, one dependent on the culture argument for racial tensions, ever come to fruition? A 2007 paper provides very interesting commentary on this issue:

In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether skin tone bias moderates differential race-related amygdala activity. Eleven White participants viewed photographs of unfamiliar Black and White faces with varied skin tone (light, dark). Replicating past research, greater amygdala activity was observed for Black faces than White faces. Furthermore, dark-skinned targets elicited more amygdala activity than light-skinned targets.

...the amygdala, a subcortical structure that reflects arousal triggered by fast unconscious assessment of potential threat

In one study, it was demonstrated that both Caucasian-American and African-American participants showed greater amygdala response to African-American targets than Caucasian-American targets.

So whites, even those in the study that claimed no explicit bias, reacted to black faces as if an imminent threat were present. In addition to my hunter-gatherer argument above, one could explain this result, especially in light of the similar results for blacks viewing black faces, as a reflection of implicit acceptance of HBD. While no one will readily admit to perceiving blacks as more violent, everyone is well aware of the crime statistics (e.g. what do you think a "bad" neighborhood really means?). In the end, this should pose a major problem for the "we are the world/kumbaya" anthem of today's diversicrats. But, in the end, they'll find some convoluted manner to attribute this to culture (one of the cited articles does just that but I can't read it).

Sports and HBD: The Donald Sterling Story

Sports journalists, often the most PC of media commentators, generally shirk the most contentious of subjects, conveniently not opining on issues that intertwine so readily with the events they cover. The ultimate irony of the sports media involves race. In no other context are racial differences so exceedingly transparent, so easily recognized, than that of sports. Yet, when Jimmy the Greek alludes to this innocuous (and unmistakable) fact, he's forever ostracized as a senile bigot. Race realists such as Mr. Greek are quite rare amongst sports personalities. Donald Sterling, owner of the woeful LA Clippers, is one of them.

This week, Phil Jackson offered some sanctimonious comments regarding Mr. Sterling's supposed transgressions and the ongoing "curse" befalling his team.

[A] reporter [asked], "Do you believe in curses?"

"I don't," Jackson said. "I'm of that generation that believes in karma. I do think there is karma in effect, ultimately. But I can't proclaim anybody else's karma. That's their own making. If you do a good mitzvah, maybe you can eliminate some of those things. You think Sterling's done enough mitzvahs?"

Another reporter replied that Sterling is a major humanitarian: "Yeah, but how about all those other incidents?" Jackson said.

I wasn't aware Jackson's generation had an inordinate amount of Buddhists. (/sarcasm). Note that allusions to Karma have largely replaced overt condemnation in our society. It reflects the trend towards avoiding explicit judgments of others and mirrors similar movements within the religious community, as I discussed previously. But you might be asking what has Sterling done to warrant such derision, with this article referring to him as "vile". Well, he's basically an HBDer:

On August 8, 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Sterling for housing discrimination in using race as a factor in filling some of his apartment buildings. The government's ongoing case alleges Sterling refused to rent to non-Koreans in the Koreatown neighborhood and to African Americans in Beverly Hills. The suit alleges Sterling once said he did not like to rent to Hispanics because they "smoke, drink and just hang around the building," and that "Black tenants smell and attract vermin."

He also sought a certain dynamic to the Clippers team:

Sterling is accused of telling Baylor he wanted to fill his team with "poor black boys from the South and a white head coach."

Sterling is vilified for noting obvious behavioral patterns that just so happen to correspond with race. He observed that black and Hispanic tenants were generally obtrusive and destructive residents. In a rather logical move, he used these conspicuous trends to make sound business decisions. Yet, in a world completely opposed to any HBD-derived conclusions, this is serious heresy and equated with hatred.

BODIES: People on Display

Saturday Audience Participation Post

There's a traveling exhibition entitled: Bodies...The Exhibition. The concept is rather simple: Cut people up, maintain them through a process called plastination, then invite hordes of individuals to gaze at the human form in its most unobstructed form.

I won't provide a picture for my squeamish readers, but you can imagine what the displays entail. The partial and full bodies are displayed so that the body's intricacies can be quite easily observed. Apparently, the bodies are Chinese political prisoners, likely killed for their dissent.

Ignoring the issue of consent or appropriation of these bodies, the entire endeavor, a museum where humans exist as almost completely demoralized exhibits, has spawned much debate. Is this extreme voyuerism a morally tenable position? Should we afford the lifeless bodies of the dead any moral respect? In general, perhaps the exhibit itself doesn't fail any reasonable moral standard, but the precedence and the manner in which it reflects of cultural and social zeitgeist are the most disturbing aspects?

There's likely a scale to such a moral conundrum. Reality shows rarely cause such outrage, yet the attraction of these shows lie in exploiting the personal affairs of others. But they're willing participants and it's not of the same degree as this exhibition.

The question: How do you feel about this exhibit? Does it simply rub you the wrong way? Does it illustrate the complete undermining of inherent human value? Have you actually seen it or know someone who has?

Haiti Earthquake and Moral Obligation

There was an earthquake in Haiti and, unsurprisingly, the productive countries are deluging their citizens with pleas for aid. (Why didn't I see similar appeals for the Iowa tornado a few years back?) The question is: why exactly should we help them?

Haiti is a decrepit nation with little prominence worldwide other than their notoriety for being a decrepit nation. It's not surprising that Haiti had little resources nor an infrastructure that could handle such a calamity. As all poor nations (and peoples) do, they're exploiting the unwritten moral law of helping the impoverished. But why does such a moral law exist? Why is it incumbent upon the productive to help unproductive, the rich to assuage the suffering of the poor?

From a practical standpoint, the argument against shirking intervention is clearly tenable. We have our own problems and can't be concerned with the exportation of quality of life. But from a moral standpoint, is this globalist effort a reasonable default position? If we have a moral right to help those suffering from natural disaster in our country, then why does the imposition of some arbitrary national boundaries preclude our moral obligation to help those in Haiti?

That's not a trivially easy question to answer. It's pretty obvious, morally speaking, that a government with resources to help should help. These people didn't ask for the natural disaster, they're innocent victims of unavoidable circumstances (Katrina WAS avoidable). Yet, such an argument is short-sighted and considers morality in a sphere completely removed from the practical. The problem with this argument also befalls the edicts of utilitarianism.

The notion that we should help makes sense, but taken to its logical conclusion, it's simply unreasonable and thus, we must reject the initial premise of our moral obligation for aid. In isolated instances, it seems reasonable for us to help, but then the notion of maximizing the good also lends credence to the idea that we spend all our money assuaging the burden of living in impoverished nations. Similarly, all the doctors should move to Africa and set up hospitals where the relative potential good is greater?

The point isn't that charity is a bad thing; my argument is against the MORAL OBLIGATION of charity and aid. The argument fails because no reasonable individual or nation could possibly live up to the extrapolated standard that it logically requires. [Yes, I just spent 1.5 paragraphs claiming to resolve an exceedingly important question in moral philosophy, one that has captured the prolonged attention of history's greatest thinkers. But hell, I'm not apologizing for being efficient.]

Being Open-Minded = Total Relativism

I began my conservative transition a few years back. It was a rather drawn out process, motivated by my initial interest in eugenics and general proclivity for expressing the most heterodox of truths. My initial discussions following my progression from political apathy were decidedly mundane, devoid of much of anything provocative or sensational. I espoused the basic conservative principles that wouldn't induce shock: limited government, traditional gender roles, etc. But germane to this post, I didn't accept the conservative or right-wing label. You see, to characterize oneself as a conservative means one has accepted some objective measure of truth, one has dictated the right and wrong, steadfastly opposing the perniciousness of relativism.

This, moreso than advocating the most common of conservative causes, is the gravest political sin. It isn't merely the admonishment of leftist policies or the ardent disapproval of government intervention; rather, conservatism implies a delineation of the good and bad and with that, individuals and their actions will inexorably be regarded as belonging to one of those categories. What the left has done is not only remove restriction on behavior, but made condemnation of any action the stuff of insular minds of limited acuity. This is the era of anything goes, the "be open-minded", which in the urban female lexicon refers to bicuriosity, in academia refers to cultural Marxism, and in government applies to the welfare state. The Left has undermined objectivity to such a degree that moderatism, the wavering, vacillating, quivering agnosticism of political opinion, becomes the only acceptable position.

So that's what the doubting new conservatives do: they appeal to moderatism. They appeal to a belief system that neither rejects nor accepts anything. It's the ultimate vision of liberalism, a world where the notion of objective fact disappears. I'll end with a Dawkins (or Feynman, Russell, Sagan) quote:

Be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brain falls out.

Ann Coulter is an HBDer: Proof

Well this really shouldn't surprise anyone. She makes the HBD-supportive statement at 4:33. The only plausible interpretation is that Coulter accepts the notion of racial intelligence differences. In general, Coulter handles herself brilliantly in this clip and her acerbic wit is in full force here. While I find that personality type quite grating in real life, especially for a woman, it's fantastic to watch in an anti-establishment political analyst.

Small Talk and Meaningless questions

Introverts tend to be rational, contemplative individuals. They ruminate over the seemingly minute aspects of life and when engaging in social interaction, it's not simply for the fun of it. There's a reasonable purpose, not necessarily some grave objective or some weighty cause, but introverts don't interact with others just because. [Note the word introvert is commonly misconstrued as extreme shyness instead of its proper definition: becoming enervated due to constant social interaction.]

With this in mind, I give you following personal anecdote. I was quickly walking through a parking lot late last night. The reason: Not important, but any explanation would be necessarily prolix. So as I'm meandering through the cars, I catch eyes with a friend. It's around 11:00 at night, so I casually pass by him with a head nod. Right as we start walking in opposite directions, he notices my haste, asking, "Why are you in such a hurry?" To an extrovert, such a question has little meaning. He asks it not to obtain said information, but merely as an exercise in daily human contact. But for me, I don't ask questions unless I genuinely want to know the answer. If I'm not interested, I refrain from broaching the relevant subject matter. Assuming this was the case, I immediately begin rambling through a response, realizing in the middle that his attention wandered throughout.

So that's a difference between introverts and extroverts: To the former, social interaction is assumed to be purposive. To the latter, this kind of small talk somehow enlivens them.

Twin and Incest Fantasies: Why?

A few years back, this Coors light commercial played almost every minute during football season. The MAN sings about his favorite activities, including the phrase "...and twins!!" as two buxom blond twins appear (@ 0:12 and 0:23) on the screen. [Anyone else think they look like men?] Twin fetish is a common aspect of popular culture, usually male characters or individuals lusting after two female twins. It's generally played for laughs, but I think it's safe to assume there's a realistic component to this common media portrayal.

But what's with the twin fetish? Perhaps that's not as a provocative as the more general framework this fetish resides in: incest attraction. The attraction to twins, especially from a male perspective, doesn't imply merely engaging with them visually. Rather, there's an underlying sexual fantasy almost always connected to the twin fetish. But of course, a threesome involving twins or some other incestuous pair (mother/daughter, sisters) implies the twins engaging in sex acts together. Such a situation surely breaks the laws of decorum and general good taste, but why then is this fantasy so common? [Don't believe me? It's not hard to figure out how to test my claims.]

Aren't we programmed to avoid incest and familial affairs? So then what about twins/sisters threesomes and fantasies excites men so much? I'm having a hard (no pun intended) time rationalizing this one.

Reid and Blago on Obama's Blackness

Two race related stories came out this weekend. I'll review the less heralded one first. Notorious former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, believes he has more "street cred" than Obama.

''I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived,'' Blagojevich said. ''I saw it all growing up.''

Anyone waiting for the Blagojevich diss song against President Obama? Of course, the underlying premise of his statement is something everyone knows, but can't state unless in a sociology course or some initiative containing the words "...Bridging Race Gap...": black people live in destitute communities. But yes, assuming "black" inherently corresponds to significantly lower quality of life, then of course Blago is "blacker" than our Hawaiian Prep-Schooler-in-Chief. [As an aside, what's disturbing is the implicit attack on the middle class that this statement represents. There's a strain amongst our culture to degrade the achievements of middle-class persons as the stuff of nepotism or entitlement. Thus, hardscrabble victories are revered when the accomplishment is rarely greater, on its own merits, than that of those boring middle class surburbanites.]

OK, now to the other one: Harry Reid being surprisingly honest concerning race and the country's (white, young liberals) acceptance of a nonthreatening, empty black suit.

“[Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,’ as he said privately.”

Here's an entire book about the subject. Obama won because he portrayed himself to be the racial messiah, here to expunge America of its tortured past. I stated back in my first blog post:

When the youth saw Barack Obama, they actually did see "Change and Hope." They saw their unique opportunity to be a Rosa Parks, a Union soldier, or a Harriet Tubman. The media deluged them with the monumental possibility of the "first Black President". This could be their "first Black ____" and they were going to make it happen! Their vote was indicative of the ultimate type of change: the kind where blacks achieve some monumental ascension. So the youth voted to engage in the kind of change their history teachers taught them was the most important.

Reid was expressing a quite obvious aspect of our social landscape. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership, too hastily engaging in the bickering that dominates politics, has called for Reid's resignation.

"There is this standard where Democrats feel that they can say these things and they can apologize when it comes from the mouths of their own," Steele, who is black, said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday." "But if it comes from anyone else, it is racism."

Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the Senate's second-ranking Republican, drew a similar comparison on "Fox News Sunday.""If [Lott] should resign, then Harry Reid should," Kyl said.

I don't see what's so entirely objectionable about Reid's comments. How can we envision a return to an un-PC political and personal environment if even the conservative leadership seeks to silence any rational discourse on race. Shame on them. Finally, Michael Steele alludes to Trent Lott's statements back in 2002:

Trent Lott (R-Miss.). Lott, at a birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), said that "all these problems" might not have occurred if Thurmond had been elected president when he ran in 1948. Thurmond ran as a segregationist.

I wonder how many mainstream conservatives secretly feel this way.

Megachurches Bridging the Racial Divide

Many nights I've spent catching a few minutes of Joel Osteen, the "smiling preacher". His message is palatable to a wide range of people, a constituency that happily accepts the smiling preacher's positive affirmations and (trite) truisms for a fulfilling existence. So it's no surprise Osteen attracts a highly diverse crowd, one that is immediately recognizable even on TV. To those that champion this sort of thing, megachurches might represent the decisive factor in achieving racial transcendence:

Call it the desegregation of the megachurches — and consider it a possible pivotal moment in the nation's faith. Some of the country's largest churches are involved: the very biggest, Joel Osteen's Lakewood Community Church in Houston (43,500 members), is split evenly among blacks, Hispanics and a category containing whites and Asians. Hybels' Willow Creek is at 20% minority. Megachurches serve only 7% of American churchgoers, but they are extraordinarily influential.

"if tens of millions of Americans start sharing faith across racial boundaries, it could be one of the final steps transcending race as our great divider" — and it could help smooth America's transition into a truly rainbow nation.

Anyone else slightly incredulous concerning these claims of a diverse utopia? The article fails to ever justify its underlying premise: why is racial desegregation an inherently valuable concept? Surely a decrease in enmity between races is a worthwhile goal, but why must a valuable experience be predicated on diversity? If so, then what of Italy, Germany, and Japan; all prosperous nations with seemingly content people residing in countries almost entirely devoid of diversity. How do they survive in such a destitute situation?!!?

The church profiled in the article began its minority outreach when its pastor found the religion: that of leftist racialism.

Hybels, a former chaplain for the Chicago Bears with many black friends, says, "I thought I was gonna faint." He was stunned to realize that racism is "not just an individual issue but a justice issue" with "structural and [systemic] aspects" violating dozens of biblical admonitions. "I went from thinking 'I don't have a race problem' to 'There is a huge problem in our world that I need to be part of resolving.'"

The author then cites one anecdote from the beginning of this diversity initiative. Notice the article portrays whites (by virtue of the woman) as naive, bucolic, and exclusionary. This is a rather common ploy to imply that whites eschew the diversity that blacks seemingly desire.

At the very first, in 2001, a well-meaning white woman kept using the phrase "you people." "Do you people want to be called blacks?" she asked. "Or African Americans? I never know what to call you people." Eventually it became too much, and Larry, along with Renetta and his brother Garnett, explained to the woman and eight other white congregants in the room that "every time you say 'you people,' you're holding us back — it's like we're not included," Renetta said.

Also, note how "diversity" really means replacing dominant norms (white) with foreign ones. This is a microcosm of the entirety of diversity thought: adopting norms of others just because.

Bibbs founded an annual "Justice Journey," busing Willow staff and black Chicago pastors together to bloodstained civil rights pilgrimage sites. Hybels added black, Hispanic and Asian performers to Willow's music and worship teams. In 2006, Willow introduced a Spanish-language service for Latinos, who were streaming into the area.

The pastor profiled alludes to a discussion common amongst secular conservatives: the notion that Christianity is an inherently liberal philosophy.

...how important racial reconciliation is to Christianity, he says, "It's absolutely core to the Gospel. It speaks to whether all humans are made in the image of God and have the capability of being redeemed and used by God to perform his work.

Finally, the author relays what this burgeoning racially diverse church portends for our country as a whole:

At Promiseland, Willow's vast Sunday-school complex, Jim and Ellen Strasma wrangle a band of 2-year-olds: seven Caucasians, a Caucasian-Asian, six Hispanics, an Indian American and an African American. A boy in a T-shirt and sporty maroon track pants shares a miniature plastic baguette with a ponytailed Latina. He looks like a preschool Bill Hybels, yet one of his parents is Asian American. The Indian-American girl and the African-American girl dance together.

OK, one more time: Why is such a scene inherently more praiseworthy than a racially homogeneous one? Isn't a primary goal of writing to support one's assumptions? And anyone else put off by such a saccharine ending?

Global Warming: Which Side are You On?

Saturday Audience Participation

I just realized I've yet to post on the topic of global warming. I've mostly avoided this topic because I mostly lack the requisite familiarity to discuss it. I understand why the left seeks to advance the topic. In fact, global warming and its corresponding political implementations encompass almost the entirety of leftist thought: the imperialistic, uncaring West, the noble savage, Gaiaism, globalism, world government, undermining of Western hegemony, decrease in white birth rate, appropriation of wealth, and many others. It's no surprise the left consistently embraces these apocalyptic scenarios; it provides an opportunity to justify their inimical policies.

Nonetheless, I don't dismiss science just because a bunch of liberals accept it. I'm generally agnostic on the issue, though after Climategate, I've moved towards the anti-global warming side. There's just so many estimated variables with huge sources of error and trendlines almost arbitrarily chosen by the researchers. Further, it seems pollution would concentrate in certain regions and not make a global impact.

So which side are you on? And if you have access to a concise summary of the issue, please provide. (HalfSigma: I think we know your answer.)

The Golden Ratio and Intelligence

An engineer at Duke believes he has discovered the origin of the "golden ratio":

Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, thinks he knows why the golden ratio pops up everywhere: the eyes scan an image the fastest when it is shaped as a golden-ratio rectangle.

The natural design that connects vision and cognition is a theory that flowing systems -- from airways in the lungs to the formation of river deltas -- evolve in time so that they flow more and more easily.

He continues, citing intelligence and speed of cognition as the main motivators of the aesthetically pleasing aspects of the golden ratio:

For Bejan, vision and cognition evolved together and are one and the same design as locomotion.The increased efficiency of information flowing from the world through the eyes to the brain corresponds with the transmission of this information through the branching architecture of nerves and the brain.

Those advancing the "it's complex so God must have done it" paradigm often delineate "beauty" from the rational. They point to those undeniable, yet difficult to articulate feelings arising during a sunset or the potent emotions felt staring at some impressive work of art. Yet, it seems even these constructs of the "soul" may have a rational basis derived from evolution and the propagation of species.

Liberals Don't Like Prisons

On Tuesday, the New York Times editorial staff commented on juvenile "detention" centers:

A recent series of damning reports have underscored the flaws in New York’s juvenile justice system and the urgent need to shut down these facilities. The governor and the State Legislature need to pay attention.

A report by a task force appointed by Gov. David Paterson describes a failing system that damages young people, fails to curb recidivism and eats up millions of tax dollars. Children should be confined only when they present a clear threat to public safety. The report also says that judges often send children to these facilities because local communities are unable to help them with mental problems or family issues. But once they are locked up, these young people rarely get the psychiatric care or special education they need because the institutions lack trained staff.

Of course, the editorial blames the system for failing to rehabilitate these individuals:

Not surprisingly, these institutions do a terrible job of rehabilitation. According to a study of children released from custody between 1991 and 1995, 89 percent of the boys and 81 percent of the girls were eventually rearrested.

The idea that the prison system acts as a rehabilitation unit, complete with educational and religious facilities, and not a safeguard for the law-abiding public, is a point of dissension between the left and right. It's clear these individuals harbor anti-social tendencies and that temporary expulsion of them from society is often warranted. But can one reasonably champion the notion that this anti-social behavior can be expunged from an individual's makeup?

For those of owing some of our conservatism to a biological motivation, this is an especially pertinent question. I think it's best to appeal to a utilitarian ethic here as well as simple biology. Yes, culture can have undeniable affects on channeling aggression or subduing an incorrigible spirit. But is our freedom, our safety, and our lives worth the social experiment necessary to test this hypothesis when the results are so often negative? If one proves himself a person unfit for a stable society, then mercy shouldn't be the first priority.

Liberals consistently excuse violent behavior and appeal to the power of culture to change man's innate composition. It's this naive idealism that buttresses much of modern leftism, an undying faith in the constructs of society as the ultimate motivator of behavior. This editorial seems to ignore the threat these individuals could pose and even hastily dismisses the 89% rearrest rate as a mere consequence of those meany guards and bad food. It's been said that liberalism amounts to civilization suicide. I think it's clear why.

Lou Dobbs for President: Already Dead!

Back in November, HalfSigma enthusiastically commented on the prospect of Lou Dobbs running for President in 2012:

The biggest problem facing the United States is immigration. Lou Dobbs is truly committed to the cause of scaling back immigration, and I can’t say that I trust any mainstream politician commonly mentioned as a likely 2012 presidential candidate to do anything about the immigration problem.

We don’t need yet another politician who decides how to think based on polls. We need a true leader who will think for himself and bring Americans along with him. That person is Lou Dobbs.

HS notes Dobbs' Harvard degree, his disconnect from the Christian Right, his everyman demeanor, and, of course, his ardent advocacy for immigration reform. Dobbs could plausibly reconcile the old America conservatives with the Tea Party populists. Yet back in late November, in a story almost entirely absent from conservative media, Dobbs succumbed to the insidious diversity racket:

"Whatever you have thought of me in the past, I can tell you right now that I am one of your greatest friends and I mean for us to work together," he said in a live interview with Telemundo's Maria Celeste.

Mr. Dobbs twice mentioned a possible legalization plan for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., saying at one point that "we need the ability to legalize illegal immigrants under certain conditions."

Conservative groups have dropped their support of a potential presidential run. If Lou Dobbs, the foremost, uncompromising firebrand against illegal immigration, caves to the pressures of racialism, then who will step up? Who will voice the politically incorrect opinions concerning race if a man like Dobbs repudiates these common sense solutions?

Why has Dobbs crossed? It's likely he sees Hispanics as an important constituency for future political endeavors. Of course, mastering of basic arithmetic isn't a requirement of elected officials. Dobbs likely doesn't need a large portion of the Hispanic vote if he strongly champions populist ideals, yet also appeals to upper crust white conservatives by virtue of his Harvard and CNN credentials. But that's probably not the point; the number don't matter as much as the image. The actuality of Hispanics as an important voting bloc matters little when compared to what such a concession represents. Diversity has become our culture's preeminent pseudo-religion and endorsing views against this is akin to blasphemy.

Dobbs can't afford to brand himself a heretic, which means he must radically alter his values. Dobbs understands widespread appeal demands one mesh well with the prevailing zeitgeist. And the notion that NAMs are today's Italian and Irish, no different than our grandparents and easily assimilated if adequately Westernized, comprises an important component of that value system.

Yes, an African-American was the Black Ranger

I always knew Zordon was a badass, who knew he was so anti-PC.

Can College Ever be Relevant?

Are colleges finally starting to understand what should be their main priorities? Due to recent economic struggles, many colleges have begun cutting more abstract majors like philosophy and classics and expanding practical learning.

Even before they arrive on campus, students — and their parents — are increasingly focused on what comes after college. What’s the return on investment, especially as the cost of that investment keeps rising? How will that major translate into a job? The pressure on institutions to answer those questions is prompting changes from the admissions office to the career center.

The liberal arts people are quite peeved about this turn of events:

...colleges and universities worry that students are specializing too early, that they are so focused on picking the perfect major that they don’t allow time for self-discovery, much less late blooming. “The phrase drives me crazy — ‘What are you going to do with your degree?’ — but I see increasing concerns about that,” says Katharine Brooks, director of the liberal arts career center at the University of Texas, Austin.

I've spent a considerable amount of time lambasting the liberal arts mentality of today's universities. You see, the antiquated model of higher education dominating the Ivory tower derives from the colleges of yesteryear. Colleges such as the Ancient Eight and public Ivies like Virginia and Michigan provided a four year period for the children of privilege to acquire one of the requisite indicators of status. While these elite institutions always led in an academic realm, the undergraduate environment was decidedly social in nature, an unrestricted opportunity for wealthy children to make the right contacts and, while they were there, imbibe in the erudite material of history's greatest minds. Today's Ivory Tower elite still hold this idealistic vision of higher education, implying both an ironic apathy towards the poor's job prospects and an expected ignorance of intelligence differences.

They not only believe all are capable of digesting this difficult material, but also that cerebral self-discovery will take priority over binge drinking and fraternity life. But as the economic landscape portends a dreary future for today's graduates, suburban helicopter moms won't accept such irresponsibility on the part of college administrators. And they're right: college is no longer a luxury of the wealthy, but a requirement of today's middle class. Let's ignore the fact that most college majors still offer little practical importance anyway (I ask, how many accountants use a Taylor series approximation?). But at the very least, the liberal arts peeps aren't entirely naive, they do get something right:

“We believe that we do our best for students when we give them tools to be analytical, to be able to gather information and to determine the validity of that information themselves, particularly in this world where people don’t filter for you anymore,” Dr. Coleman says. “We want to teach them how to make an argument, how to defend an argument, to make a choice.” These are the skills that liberal arts colleges in particular have prided themselves on teaching. But these colleges also say they have the hardest time explaining the link between what they teach and the kind of job and salary a student can expect on the other end.

That's right; most real-world occupations barely reflect specific material taught in class. So in a convoluted, meandering path to the truth, the humanities diehards actually arrive at the correct conclusion. But why, then, are so many still puzzled concerning the presumed disconnect between classroom and office? Perhaps because the tasks mentioned ("tools to be analytical, gather information, and determine validity of information") aren't necessarily best learned in an academic environment wholly removed from real-world relevance. Perhaps, it's because these tools are an innate faculty of the brightest individuals.

In the end, colleges exist primarily as lucrative businesses selling an amorphous dream, a hope at future success. But other than the credential, they mostly offer an opportunity for middle class kids to delay real-life (which isn't necessarily bad). [Qualification: Some majors do offer a good introduction to a potential job, especially those in the sciences and engineering. However, in these fields, educators still need to increase hands-on experience if they wish to exist as a training ground for the job market.]

Fast Food and Drugs: A Liberal View of Personal Choice

It's well-known that liberals lack a consistent foundation to their beliefs. Since they uniformly oppose objectivity, they vacillate on just about every basic principle. There's no logical congruence between their view on one matter and a similar matter involving the same basic values.

And now for a OneSTDV personal anecdote: As I wrote last month, over Thanksgiving I argued with a relative about animal cruelty. The conversation quickly veered into general dietary matters, a near and dear subject to this tofu eater. Instead of pontificating on the cruelty of McDonald's or Burger King, he instead angrily criticized their role in the current obesity crisis. He argued that the prevalence of fast food and their horrible food offerings (like this and this) forces people to be fat. Of course, we note the liberal idea that people lack choice and freedom of activity; instead, it's Big Brother (Ronald MacDonald), that nebulous, shadowy entity pulling all the strings, who dictates our actions. He then called for an all-out ban on fast food, especially in urban areas where poor people simply can't decide what to eat for themselves. (Ironically, I just realized South LA enacted this fast food ban last year!).

OK I'm getting to the point. This same individual, an ardent The Wire fan, aggressively opposes the War on Drugs. He excoriates the puritanical attitude of this initiative, citing its purported failure and, get this, arguing that drugs represent a personal choice. So in one instance, he advocates a libertarian view considering personal choice as the preeminent value. Yet, in a similar situation involving noxious personal activity, he champions a totalitarian mandate concerning one's own behavior.

How can such doublethink, such compartmentalization occur? How can one hold these beliefs concurrently? In my opinion, this reduces to a feckless denial of anything tenuously connected to conservatism (meat) and an equally cursory acceptance of anything alluding to the anti-establishment movement (drugs). It's this undermining of any traditional institution that most encompasses the motivation of the left. Mirroring the intransigent religious/social conservatives, far left liberals seek progress away from tradition no matter the negative repercussions. There's also an undercurrent of HBD that undergirds much of liberal big government policy: Poor people can't think for themselves, they need smart people to do so for them. Well, I can't argue with that!

Left Hatred: Whites vs. Males

Saturday Audience Participation

In the opinion of leftists, there are two main classes of oppressors: males and whites. Generally, membership in either cohort opens one to the left's ire, but the white male is subject to the most derision. This site and related ones provide details concerning the left's indefatigable campaign against the white male and his supposed hegemony. Almost every policy, from healthcare to climate change initiatives, include some aspect implicitly intended to enervate the white male. The left seeks to undermine his economic ascension, his relationship with his child, and his social freedom.

But let's parse the two. Let's separate the hate spewed at males vs. the enmity directed at whites. The question is: Which collective does the left hate most: whites or males? I'm not asking which collective is most undermined by current policy (I previously argued race is a more potent factor). That question relates more to success of legislation. Instead, I'm asking what motivates the liberal mindset most: a hatred of men or a hatred of whites and their corresponding civilization.

New Year's Resolutions and the Death of Individual Pugnacity

Is there a more tiresome question than "What's your New Years resolution?" The person asking it doesn't care and the person answering it feels the same. It's one of those meaningless inquiries people offer in empty small talk, akin to musing about the weather or commenting on the ranch dip. If that wasn't bad enough, the New Year's resolution itself is an equally grating meme that reflects our collective laziness.

Excluding those that use the New Year's resolution as a vehicle for social posturing (one celeb tonight discussed her plans for charity involvement!), those wishing to actually change rarely go forward with it. But you knew that, so I won't belabor the issue. Instead, I'll note that the mere existence of the New Year's resolution illustrates our collective lack of motivation and our need to have desire externally imposed on us. People seem to require a contrived impetus to engage in worthwhile, yet strenuous tasks. What happened to individual resolve? What happened to setting a goal, adhering to a plan, and just doing it?

When I started lifting, my dad warned me about it. He warned me that it would be difficult, that so many days I'd want to watch TV instead, but he always reminded me there was value in struggle. So it wasn't about some fleeting desire, it was about a long-term process, one filled with inevitable hardship, but nonetheless worth the difficulty. In our basement, for the past 15 years, there has hung a giant poster reading, "JUST DO IT". If one doesn't harbor that go-get-it attitude, then rarely will an external motivation suffice in attaining success.