Liberal Commentators on "Bitter" Whites

[Note: These arguments don't preclude LIMITED immigration, just the type of demographic shifts discussed in these articles.]

Recently, the liberal blogosphere has resolved to psychoanalyze "white bitterness", putatively regarded as the irrational anger motivating Tea Partiers. Mangan posted this article last weekend offering more shortsighted drivel concerning the impact of America's coming immigrant class.

For Mr. Kotkin, population growth translates into economic vitality—the capacity to create wealth, raise the standard of living and meet the burdens of future commitments.

Most of America's population growth between 2000 and 2050, he notes, "will be in its racial minorities, particularly Asians and Hispanics, as well as in a growing mixed-race population." No other developed country, he says, "will enjoy such ethnic diversity."

These open borders advocates suffer from the same delusion that underpins neoconservative hawkishness: the notion that Western Civilization exists independent of its primary constituency. Of course, such an assertion depends on racial HBD, a concept that the cited author clearly ignores as he giddily surmises that "population growth translates into economic vitality—the capacity to create wealth, raise the standard of living and meet the burdens of future commitments." Really?

In this article (H/T: Mangan), Kai Wright, yet another example of OneSTDV's Law of Black Intellectualism, believes whites fear losing demographic hegemony.

America is undergoing one of the most deep, significant changes in its history...White people will shortly lose their status as normative Americans. Whatever else does or doesn't change, by the time Millennials are adults, no one will equate white skin with the phrase "all-American" – assuming the phrase carries meaning at all.

He frames this opposition as collective bitterness towards being displaced as the main cogs in American life.

All of this will eventually shape every aspect of American life. Young, colored folks will drive the economy, the culture, the politics – and the country's rapidly shrinking, white-dominated enclaves will grow increasingly defensive about that fact.

But the leftists incorrectly diagnosis the source of this discontent. It's far deeper than merely becoming a minority racial group. While the Tea Partiers have trouble articulating a lucid exegesis beyond "Take our country back", their basic fears concerning gross demographic shifts are reasonable. First, diversity simply doesn't work; it only increases the schisms that separate racial groups. This anecdotal observation noted by any public school middle schooler has been supported by ample research. This has grave effects on communal and social happiness as well as reinforcing the continually burgeoning identity politics racket. Liberals want to engage in a national social experiment that has failed miserably on the microscale and which no other civilization has ever undertaken successfully.

Second, as alluded to above, 'America' no longer exists if dramatic population shifts occur. America isn't merely a collection of diverse racial groups; instead, it's an entity with a specific history inexorably connected to European ethnics. But leftists denounce such a definition of American.

And Millennials are redefining the very idea of an American.

GuyWhite often alludes to the axiom of which I provide a specific example next: If one imports 30 million Brits and Nordics to Italy, is it still Italy? Is America only a nebulous collection of ideals easily dispensed to a new immigrant class? Perhaps when those immigrants were genetically similar to the current denizens. But exporting these ideals doesn't seem to work well.

Further, nationhood requires a central American narrative defined by the prescience of our Founding Fathers, luminaries like Emerson and Fitzgerald, and the Enlightenment freedoms that support innovation. But a multicultural society, one dominated by the PC multicult, will demand equal time and value given to all backgrounds. Thus, America will merge into the cultural Marxist rhetoric of tomorrow, relinquishing its luster as a paragon of Western progress.

And of course, this doesn't even broach the practical consequences of a larger NAM class. What becomes of Medicare when the productive ratio shrinks? How will we thrive on a global level when our smart fraction dwindles? What becomes of social tension and white scapegoating when the recalcitrant achievement gaps of today persist interminably? And many more problems present in second and third-world countries. But such concerns are reduced to nonsensical rage:

The Glenn Becks of the world peddle the notion that sheer anger can reverse these trends. Either we seize the moment by addressing the "bitterness" Obama so infamously identified on the campaign trail, or we watch the public square devolve into a mob of spit and bricks.

Seeing one's civilization crumble under the auspices of "progress" tends to get people a tad heated. But I guess we can look forward to "enjoying" that ostensibly beneficial diversity.

Crime Rates and Increase in Prison Population

In general, mainstream conservatism is pro-prison. Now, it's rather odd to even define such a term, as everyone should support the seclusion of dangerous criminals. Yet, to far-left liberals, each individual's constitution derives not from a hereditary predisposition, but rather a tabula rasa invariably sullied by the odious forces of classism and racism. To them, the most dastardly individuals can be wholly transformed through intense intervention. Thus, prison doesn't represent a means by which to protect law-abiding individuals and maintain social stability. Rather, it's an inhumane system that unfairly castigates individuals for harmful externalities that ultimately motivates their behavior. In essence (and quite disgustingly I might add), liberals actually sympathize with criminals.

In this vein, liberals have concocted some balderdash deemed the "prison industrial complex". Apparently, there's a massive, but ironically furtive, effort to profit off increased prison populations. To note the scale of this collusion, the process supposedly involves street police officers, administrative level police officers, lawyers, judges, juries, politicians, state government, federal government, and large corporations. Now of course, the left claims that this massive chain of egoism represents an immoral scam that does nothing but punish potential Rhodes Scholars and Ivy Leaguers. [Is the argument completely bunk? No, but the mere fact that some profit off a given initiative doesn't equate it with immorality, especially if said process is ultimately beneficial.]

And how do they make this argument? As Raina Kelley does in this article, liberals glibly boast about decreased crime rates and use this data to belittle conservative apprehension about violence. The left contends conservative policies derive from irrational paranoia as well as selfish interest in procuring votes and corporate donations. But perhaps, they're missing a rather clear implication of overcrowding jails and a "tough-on-crime" mindset, one that ultimately underpins the falling crime rate.

I'll use this graph to illustrate:

Now the crime rate didn't drop immediately. It started decreasing in 1990, so perhaps there was a critical mass that needed to be reached for the avenues of crime to be weakened (drug trade, gangs, etc...). Or perhaps, the advent of punishing first-time offenders, what I logically consider a preventative measure, engendered the crime rate drop. These offenders would likely gradually progress to more violent crime after a significant amount of years. So unlike previous decades, ten years out these first-time offenders were no longer around to cause trouble. Finally, the explosion of the illegal drug trade in the 80's took ample resources and time to adequately combat.

Nonetheless, the data is pretty straightforward and does well to substantiate the "exclude not rehabilitate" paradigm. In my opinion, Occam's Razor supports this explanation as the most reasonable. [I'd also add an aging population as a viable explanation.]

NYT Book Review of The History of White People

This NYT article reviews The History of White People authored by Princeton historian Nell Irvin Painter, a scholar whose academic output wonderfully illustrates OneSTDV's Law of Black Intellectualism. I respond to the article below.

But the title is literally accurate, because the book traces characterizations of the lighter-skinned people we call white today, starting with the ancient Scythians. For those who have not yet registered how much these characterizations have changed, let me assure you that sensory observation was not the basis of racial nomenclature.

The reviewer, an NYU professor of history Linda Gordon, can't help but quickly divulge the distortion that will permeate her piece. Note she deems racial classifications as "nomenclature", implying that these categories reduce to subjective demarcations reflecting inherent (European) bias.

Exoticizing and sexualizing women of allegedly inferior “races” has a long and continuous history in racial thought; it’s just that today they are usually darker-skinned women.

Really? Tyra Banks is the only full black woman to ever appear on the cover of Maxim magazine (H/T: Chuck Ross) and according to this OKCupid study, black women are considered the least attractive potential romantic partners. Since the reviewer is white, this appears to be a projected case of Sailer's Law of Female Journalism whereby a white liberal fabricates a sexual hierarchy in order to raise the esteem of non-white women.

“Whiteness studies” have so proliferated in the last two decades that historians might be forgiven a yawn in response to being told that racial divisions are fundamentally arbitrary, and that deciding who is white has been not only fluid but also heavily influenced by class and culture.

She sees racial classification as so utterly unscientific as to merit merely a "yawn". But of course, actual science doesn't always yield to the prevailing "wisdom" of PC. Noah Rosenberg of UMich found:

In one of the most extensive of these studies to date, considering 1,056 individuals from 52 human populations, with each individual genotyped for 377 autosomal microsatellite markers, we found that individuals could be partitioned into six main genetic clusters, five of which corresponded to Africa, Europe and the part of Asia south and west of the Himalayas, East Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.

Loosely speaking, it is these small discontinuous jumps in genetic distance—across oceans, the Himalayas, and the Sahara—that provide the basis for the ability of STRUCTURE to identify clusters that correspond to geographic regions.

And here's more evidence concerning bone marrow donors, natural selection driving population differentiation, and this rather explicit finding showing racial groups as biologically based and corresponding to continents:

Numerous recent studies using a variety of genetic markers have shown that, for example, individuals sampled worldwide fall into clusters that roughly correspond to continental lines, as well as to the commonly used self-identifying racial groups: Africans, European/West Asians, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans (Bowcock et al. ¹⁹⁹⁴; Calafell et al. ¹⁹⁹⁸; Rosenberg et al. ²⁰⁰²).

She continues, summarizing the slight changes in the definition of "whiteness", all the while implying a non-static definition equates with a non-scientific concept.

In general, Western labels for racial superiority moved thus: Caucasian → Saxon → Teutonic → Nordic → Aryan → white/Anglo.

This parallels the machinations religious creationists engage in to thwart the foundations of evolution. But by such a standard, the Earth doesn't rotate around the Sun because scholars have continually updated the physics of the heavens. Science is a progressive concept; views change according to new evidence, such as that provided by the modern genomic age. The author then proceeds into the requisite denial of cognitive differences.

In the long run, the project of measuring “intelligence” probably did more than eugenics to stigmatize and hold back the nonwhite. Researchers gave I.Q. tests to 1,750,000 recruits in World War I and found that the average mental age, for those 18 and over, was 13.08 years. But I.Q. testing achieved success in driving the anti-immigration movement. The tests allowed calibrated rankings of Americans of different ancestries — the English at the top, Poles on the bottom.

FYI: Those IQ scores haven't changed despite undeniable educational and social ascension by non-white groups. Throughout the article, she seems to suggest that any collective "ranking" automatically incorporates some moral characterization. I won't deign to respond to this risible assertion as no one ever claims Ivy Leaguers have more moral value than state schoolers or that American Idol finalists are morally superior to your local church singer. Rankings of merit imply nothing but the mere facts of nature.

Painter points out, but without adequate discussion, that the adoration of whiteness became particularly problematic for women, as pale blue-eyed blondes became, like so many unattainable desires, a reminder of what was second-class about the rest of us.

So being "pale, blue-eyed, and blonde" is "unattainable"? I beg to differ. What she really means: it's "unattainable" in the sense that not everyone can have it and thus beauty doesn't conform to the egalitarian paradigm. She finishes by asking:

Also missing from the book is an analysis of the all-important question: Who benefits and how from the imprimatur of whiteness? Political elites and employers of low-wage labor, to choose just two groups, actively policed the boundaries of whiteness.

Ahh, the white privilege argument. As evidenced by this article and the academic and political framework in which it resides, a political elite that panders to whiteness is surely a vestige of our country's past. As she alludes with this statement, "[w]hiteness thus became a method of stigmatizing dissenting ideas, a marker of ideological respectability", whiteness used to represent a desirable category, as only groups such as radical, anti-Gentile Jews and non-assimilationist Italians shirked such a classification. But now, with the advent of a multicultural doctrine, whiteness has become a mark of emptiness ("Matt Wray..."), a delineation devoid of cultural richness, as if Western Civilization has nothing to offer its progeny. "Whiteness" has become synonymous with social awkwardness and jingoism instead of a WASP elite, technological proficiency, or a rich history. How far we've come indeed.

Raina Kelley on Racist Media and Black Flash Mobs

My favorite Newsweek columnist and the ultimate representation of OneSTDV's Law of Black Intellectualism is at it again. In this week's article, Raina Kelley denounces the racist response to a recent urban flash mob turned mildly violent. She espouses the standard liberal tripe concerning black violence and the supposed collusion engaged in by such pernicious media outlets as the New York Times (seriously, that was her main citation). For anyone who doesn't know, a flash mob is a decidedly SWPL event organized online whereby a large group of strangers rapidly coalesce, perform some random activity, then disperse as quickly. In a bizzaro twist, blacks have seemingly appropriated this cultural meme, but unlike the white middle class incarnation, hordes of black youths haven't behaved quite so peacefully. The NYT reporter comments:

These so-called flash mobs have taken a more aggressive and raucous turn here as hundreds of teenagers have been converging downtown," Ian Urbina wrote in the article. "For a ritual that is part bullying, part running of the bulls: sprinting down the block, the teenagers sometimes pause to brawl with one another, assault pedestrians or vandalize property.

Ms. Kelley responds, clearly unaware of any crime statistics:

I'm not looking to excuse their behavior, only to explain how ingrained racial stereotypes kick in to criminalize behavior by black youths that is tolerated in more diverse crowds. To be sure, these groups of teenagers weren't out to perform the chicken dance in front of the Rocky statue; but not every kid was beating up people or wreaking havoc.

Time and time again, crimes committed by African-Americans have been presented as the first of a wave of race crimes, only for the phenomenon disappear without a trace. But as the years roll on and crime rates continue to drop, these kinds of activities are proven to be the isolated incidents of a few, not the will of the many. So why do we have to go through this same song and dance every time black teenagers do something bad?

Yea, I'm sure your entire editorial output isn't meant to exonerate black Americans for their collective dysfunction. But Ms. Kelley isn't entirely wrong in lamenting the innocent being lumped in with the guilty. Nonetheless, the basic aversion to hordes of black youths is merely a reflection of statistics. Yes, most of them will be relatively well behaved, but due to HBD and the implications of racial differences in aggression and rambunctiousness, the congregating of young blacks just doesn't turn out well. Ms. Kelley then continues with some hilariously weak parallels:

And where is the concerned hand-wringing over the future of flash mobs after tea-party protesters shouted racial epithets at congressmen? When a 2009 Valentine’s Day pillow-fight flash mob in San Francisco caused flooding of nearby businesses, wasted tens of thousands of gallons of water and cost the city nearly $20,000 to clean up, no one brought in the FBI to monitor social media and certainly no one thought to institute a curfew, as they are in Philly. Pictures accompanying the coverage of this year's fight were white people kissing and laughing in a cloud of feathers.

Why do I have to point out the distinction to a Newsweek columnist?!? Purported threats and unintended damage are not equivalent to actual assault and violence. Was that really the best she could do?

Maybe that's part of the reason so many individual crimes, like the felonies committed during the flash mob in Philly, become the next weapon in the imaginary war between black kids and middle-class America.

I wonder what kind of neighborhood Ms. Kelley lives in and where she sends her son to school. Finally, even though she postures to the contrary at the beginning of the article, Ms. Kelley still manages to sympathize with the black flash mobbers:

So it really isn't shocking that flash mobs would appeal to these poor African-American teenagers in Philly—their neighborhoods are extremely violent, their schools are bad, and the Great Recession has cut what few after-school and employment programs they had by 93 percent.

She spends the whole article regurgitating the mundane argument concerning unfair media portrayal of blacks. But by her own admission, these black youths comprise the population of "extremely violent neighborhood" and "bad schools". Now take a guess why their neighborhoods and schools experience such dysfunction: the people perhaps? Is it really that outlandish or hateful to be wary of these cohorts congregating aimlessly?

Funny Internet Videos

Saturday Audience Participation

One of the great things about the Internet is the window we get into peoples' lives. Perhaps this is also the worst thing about the Internet as voyeurism and the culture of shallow celebrity has grown. Nonetheless, who doesn't enjoy wasting time watching crap like this (it's a little old but I just rediscovered it)?

So today's question: Provide a link to a funny Internet video. Please provide a very brief description and a warning if NSFW.

Ann Coulter's Place in the Political Debate

Ann Coulter canceled a scheduled appearance at the University of Ottawa Tuesday night.

A protest by hundreds of students led organizers to cancel a Tuesday night speech by American conservative commentator Ann Coulter at the University of Ottawa.

A spokesman for the organizers said Coulter was advised against appearing after about 2,000 "threatening" students crowded the entrance to Marion Hall, posing a security threat.

"It would be physically dangerous for Ann Coulter to proceed with this event," said conservative political activist Ezra Levant inside the hall.

Several other conservative commenters, such as Tom Tancredo, have been similarly harangued and threatened by young liberal ideologues. Excluding Glenn Beck's recent ascent to deified pundit status, Coulter is probably the most despised mainstream conservative. Her Ivy League background (Cornell undergrad), law degree (UMich), flowing blond hair, and unapologetically sardonic tone make her an easy target for the venting of liberal rage. Of course, Coulter revels in her heterodoxy, continually offering polemics both in scholarly terms and under the guise of humor. Is Coulter's approach ultimately good in advancing conservative ideals? I'd say probably not, as her exacting wit irks the agnostics and engenders spit-spewing anger amongst her rivals. Further, the Alinsky left will use any personal fault as fair game in swaying opinion. But she gets her ideas out there and not many have as big an audience as she does.

Coulter subsequently condemned the university, belittling their status as "bush league" and trumpeting her talks at "Harvard [and other] Ivy League" schools. The protesters main justification in banning Coulter was the hackneyed allusion to "hate speech":

She's targeted the Jews, she's targeted the Muslims, she's targeted Canadians, homosexuals, women, almost everybody you could imagine.

This is how the left frames information concerning collective behavior: keep equating it with blind bigotry and people will ultimately believe it. For example, take her comments on Jews, presumably those made on Donny Deutsch's show back in 2007. I guess Coulter did use an unfortunate phrase ("to be perfected"). However, only hypersensitive Abe Foxman/SLPC types could have construed as anti-Jewish her opinion that Christianity is a superior belief system to Judaism and that a religiously homogeneous population is preferable to a disconnected one. What kind of Christian would she be if she didn't hold these opinions? But liberals take these reasonable statements and champion a perverted version of them as evidence of bigotry.

I won't deny that the Right suppresses dissent through scare tactics and engages in this type of mendacity as well. But the Right, at least my Right, pushes an agenda of pragmatism, not moral imperatives.

Breasts Implants are Going out of Style?

Is there a breast implant backlash in Hollywood? Casting demands for the fourth Pirates of the Carribean installment (H/T: Auster) will hopefully foreshadow a paradigm shift in the movie industry:

Disney is searching for real treasure chests for its upcoming shoot of the next "Pirates of the Caribbean" swashbuckler -- that is, women with natural breasts.

The movie studio has banned actresses with artificial enhancements for the fourth installment, "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," directed by Rob Marshall and starring Johnny Depp as the drunken buccaneer Jack Sparrow.

"Must have real breasts. Do not submit if you have implants." And they warn that there'll be a "show and tell" day.

The general public's increasing comfort with implants has always confounded me. Back in this participation post on Transhumanism, many commenters disagreed with my contention that humans have an innate aversion to artificial body parts. Some argued that humans would slowly adapt to these unnatural additions, but I was skeptical of such a position. As with the uncanny valley, most people are attracted to the natural aesthetic. Perhaps Hollywood will begin championing the virtuous splendor of nature and not those of man's inferior imitations. We shall see. [For any masochists, here's a (NSFW?) picture of possibly the worst implants ever.]

Joe Mauer Signing: Do Huge Baseball Contracts Equal Championships?

Earlier this week, the Minnesota Twins signed catcher Joe Mauer to an eight-year deal worth $184 million. He trails only Derek Jeter at 189 million and Alex Rodriguez at 275 million, both of the New York Yankees, in gross salary.

Baseball allows these huge contracts due to the lack of a salary cap, meaning any team can spend as much money as they choose in attracting players. Since there's no limit on potential contracts and the union is adamant about players seeking maximal value, salaries continually increase to these absurd levels. Further, there is relatively less revenue sharing, so large markets squads like the Yankees and Red Sox can capitalize on their much higher profits in the pursuit of free agents.

But given the structure of the game, one must ask if these individual contracts actually represent a rational spending strategy? In regards to actual winning, does the team benefit commensurate with the amount of money spent? I contend that exorbitant spending on position players represents an exceedingly illogical business model. Other than for catchers, defense is generally considered a minimally important aspect of the game, evidenced by Ryan Howard winning the 2007 MVP despite being considered a poor fielding first baseman. A given player's primary value is in his offensive output, the kind of production that apotheosizes men like Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Hank Aaron.

Yet, an individual player is merely one out of nine to bat each game. A given player's potential impact is nullified by the mere presence of eight other batters. Contrast this with basketball, where just one player can have a demonstratively significant impact on the game. Now imagine the worst team in basketball having the best player or the worst team in football having the best quarterback. It would never happen, yet ARod spent years wallowing in abject team failure as a Texas Ranger. Ted Williams, regarded as the greatest hitter of all time, made only one World Series and lost. So why then do teams pay so much money if such an investment has little guarantee of success?

Basically, free agent signings foment passion amongst the fan base, illustrated by a miserable 2009 Sixers team bringing back a washed-up Allen Iverson merely to ignite fan interest. These big name signings in baseball are primarily PR coups designed to sell tickets, not win championships. To actually win, only a handful of teams have the necessary capital to build an entire championship quality lineup. As evidence, one notes the lack of parity in baseball, with the Yankees winning about a quarter of the World Series. But owners will surely continue this charade and naive fans will forever hope for next year.

The Problem of Liberal Atheism

Despite once believing in a secular utopia, I've since reneged on this wish as my knowledge of human differences and the default beliefs of man has made such a position untenable. But there are those that persist in this futile quest to expunge religion from man's experience. Unfortunately, this entire cohort has succumbed to a doctrine far more pernicious and blind than religion.

I've been reading FriendlyAtheist.com since its inception almost four years ago. Perhaps its a result of my recently heightened passion for right-leaning politics, but it seems the tone has veered into "aggressively tolerant liberalism". Take a few comments I've left recently. On the Texas textbook controversy, I said:

You’re conflating Creationism and anti-science with a more accurate (read: less PC) framing of American history. If one claims to be freethinking, then surely cogitation on a wider variety of issues, such as concerning the free market, pro-traditional nuclear family, and pro-military, should be welcomed. You’re basically attacking a strawman by equating conservatism and an ardent appeal to the Founding principles with Christianity. The latter is merely touched upon, as would be warranted considering our country is 80% Christian.

Adding the ideas of Milton Friedman next to those of Karl Marx can hardly be considered advancing a rigid ideological agenda.

The responses from self-identified free thinkers:

However, I am aware you might be trolling, I’m not sure whether you’re delusional or dishonest.

O, for a giant rattle can of Troll-B-Gone…

In another thread, an 18 year-old Swedish girl asks for advice on dating a Muslim. The loquacious response completely ignores the man's specific religion, as if this point of contention is insignificant. Reginald and I commented:

Reginald: How nice. Has he introduced you to his other wives yet?

OneSTDV: I’m curious what HIS parents think. Let’s hope she’s not part of an “honor” killing.

The responses:

@ Reginald:Please tell me you’re kidding. Please?

Wow, what a rude comment to start off with. Reginald must be embarrassed at having said such a thing.

@Reginald Selkirk, OneSTDV: It’s nice to see atheists eschewing the bigotry that we so often see in the religious.

Re: honor killings: You do realize that it’s pertinent to have probabilities before making judgements about risk? How do you assess that without knowing the number of Muslims in Sweden and the number of honor killings? How do you even attempt to calculate the risk?

who invited the fucking trolls?

Ironic that on an atheist website we get people stumping for Islam. Due to the correspondence between atheism and liberalism, atheism provides an inefficient and potentially dangerous counter to the spread of religion, especially Jihadism. Most atheists of this variety are primarily anti-Christian and see Islam as the quaint cultural traditions of an oppressed people. Due to conflict with their worldview, they refuse to acknowledge Islam's deleterious track record or note the common behavioral norms of this people. I wrote awhile back on the Swiss minaret ban:

...the overarching liberalism pervading structured atheism affords members of a minority religion, such as Islam, the "protected minority" treatment. Any condemnation of Islam isn't a result of real-world events or rational discourse, but rather a reflection of bias and intolerance.

Since Christianity is the central component of Western conservatism, this becomes the ultimate enemy of liberal atheists. Further, since ethnic nationalism is no longer a socially acceptable political framework, anti-Christian atheism undermines one of the only other successful nationalistic memes. Islam's focus on servitude and zealotry allows its adherents to form a strong collective. But due to the growing secularization of the West, Western peoples have almost no means by which to foster unity. This means that liberal atheists see Muslims not as an exceedingly fecund and noxious collective unit, but rather as potential peers in rationality. Secular liberals can not appeal to any nationalist or communal bonds in order to oppose Islam. And in the absence of these memes, atheists actually allow Islam to spread.

Hollywood Liberalism Personified: 2012

This past weekend, I saw 2012, the apocalyptic disaster flick modernizing the story of Noah's flood. In watching this film, it's important to note that almost all purveyors of art fancy themselves members of the enlightened class, meaning they relish in championing an agenda. In general, I can ignore the underlying theme if its palpability doesn't diminish from the overall product. But, I can't imagine any movie so accurately portrays the mindset of the Hollywood elite as does this despondent picture. I'll go through a brief outline by highlighting the leftist diktats (in bold) that pervade the film.

Tons of spoilers follow, but believe me, you don't want to see this movie anyway.

The picture's main premise is global warming on steroids, as large solar flares are found to be heating the Earth's crust to an unstable level. An Indian physicist, working in conjunction with America's chief geologist Adrian Helmsley, a black guy, makes the discovery. The black American scientist relays this information to his dubious boss, a white man who subsequently represents the moral failings of pragmatic government frugality, and then the black President. A global consortium of nations resolves to save humanity by appropriating funds from rich donors who are offered seats in exchange for their donations. Of course, this private fundraising effort is later criticized by Adrian, the moral compass of the movie, for unfairly limiting occupants to the rich.

After establishing John Cusack, his ex-wife, and their children, the dismantling of Earth's crust begins. I generally love disaster films, but that usually doesn't imply watching billions of people die. This extreme seismic activity that eventually destroys almost all of Earth's landmass is an allusion to the Mayan's 2012 calendar prediction popular amongst the "woo" sect. In a nod to the noble savage meme, several characters mention the foresight of the Mayans and, in doing so, belittle Western technology as practically equivalent to antiquated superstition.

The movie continues in China, where the Chinese have been building ships to save humanity. Cusack is joined by a Russian billionaire who later dies in a horrifically violent manner, justified due to these reprehensible character traits: having a hot young blond as his trophy girlfriend and being a rich capitalist. In between, we get Mr. Miyagi Eastern mystic wisdom while the Vatican disintegrates, killing a bunch of Catholics. (Coincidentally, no Muslim monuments were eviscerated in the film.)

While in China boarding the arks, the black American scientist delivers a "We are the World" speech that inspires all of humanity. At the end of the film, with the natural disasters having extirpated almost all of civilization, one continent stands alone as the new birthplace of humanity: Africa. Yes, the only continent to survive a worldwide flood was Africa (South Africa to be specific!). So with the entirety of civilization destroyed, humanity can now progress into a new dawn free of the restrictions imposed by all those pesky conservative institutions.

Black Girl Arrested in Class at UW-Milwaukee

I found this yesterday perusing Youtube (NSFW: Language). By the time you read this, the video is probably already viral.

There's an obvious commentary involving race and the pitiful manner by which higher education mitigates black dysfunction. The indignant black girl is clearly miffed that the "uptight" professor expresses displeasure with her behavior, voicing her ire in the most erudite of terms:

I ain't say nothing to you until you came back at me and started yelling (professor seems quite calm to me). I don't have to leave nowhere. I paid to fucking be here...I threatened this bitch...I paid for class like everyone else did.

To police officers: I'm not going nowhere so you're going to have to carry my ass out of here if you want to. Get the fuck out of my face...You're putting your fucking knee in my back. Yes, I do need an Amber Lamps (OK I made up that last quote).

From what I gather (around 2:05), the spat seems to have begun when the girl raised a question concerning (a presumably bad) grade on an exam:

It was not a specific question. It was about how you worded the question. Obviously, I didn't understand the question. I think that that was a very vague question and that is not a specific question...

From this video, one could ruminate on the lack of impulse modulation in blacks, even absent amongst those that seek socioeconomic ascension. Ostensibly, this clip epitomizes such a social phenomenon, though I often avoid making generalizations based on isolated incidents. Was the teacher emboldened by the Epic Beard Man/Tea Party mindset? I doubt it, but the incident does represent a microcosm of how racial cohorts with opposing behavioral norms interact.

Second, notice the root cause was a grade dispute. I was about to reminisce on a time period when college existed as a bastion of merit, but anyone familiar with the phrase "gentleman's C's" knows otherwise. Instead, let me just remark on how the "everyone goes to college" meme has imbued students with an entitlement complex that results in arguments like the one above.

Students believe that merely paying money for enrollment is tantamount to earning the grades they want. Compounding this is the absence of forthright criticism during early and secondary education. In an effort to inflate graduation statistics and the number of AP students, too many schools let slip subpar scholarship. When these students arrive at college and encounter honest appraisal of their work, such condemnation must be the result of teacher error. Thus, professors get accosted for failing to engage in the "everyone is so smart" ruse promulgated by the public school system. [See this example.]

I wonder if any PC media outlet will frame this as a racist professor, a racist class, and a racist police force. (Just like when it happened to this guy. Oh wait, he's a middle class white kid: just a bellicose rabble-rouser then.) I imagine they'll probably instead admonish an overly aggressive police department, as police are one of the conservative institutions liberals enjoy castigating.

New Healthcare Bill: Good or Bad?

Saturday Audience Participation

This weekend, the House will vote on a revised healthcare bill. In rather complex issues like this one, it's difficult to formulate an informed opinion. From the "fuzzy math" offered by White House economists to extreme interpretations spread by the "death panel" right, there's an endless amount of obfuscation from both sides of the political spectrum. Here's a Salon.com (very liberal website) article on the upcoming healthcare plan.

But it would significantly change the way healthcare is paid for and delivered in the United States, and it would represent an enormous expansion of access to medical care.

This is the main crux of the issue for Democrats: the notion that many individuals are unfairly excluded from obtaining insurance. The number of uninsured residents is about 45 million, but around 10 million of them are illegal immigrants. The vast majority of the remaining individuals are either non-citizens or healthy young people who take a reasonable risk by abstaining from purchasing insurance. For almost everyone, insurance represents an irrational "betting strategy", as only those suffering from catastrophic injury will likely be reimbursed with care commensurate to their gross insurance payments. In accordance with this, this cohort of young people represent no net loss to the country's economic standing. It would represent a scary government takeover (yes I just used that word) if Congress instituted mandatory health insurance.

Insurance companies would no longer be allowed to deny coverage to people based on their past medical history; everyone would be entitled to insurance, and insurers couldn't charge vastly higher prices for people with preexisting conditions.

Liberals generally see medical care as an inherent right of man. And I'm actually apt to agree with them. Though such a position conflicts with my passion for a free market where insurance companies can justifiably choose who they wish to insure, thus maximizing their own profits. But we run into a moral conundrum in that people with preexisting conditions, many illnesses being the result of natural bad luck, can't obtain care. If government does impose restrictions on who insurance companies take on as customers, then surely this sets an ominous precedent in public manipulation of private choice. But is there a reasonable compromise between free market ideals and this moral imperative?

Employers with more than 50 workers would be required to offer insurance. Businesses that don't offer coverage would have to pay $2,000 per employee if any of their employees got federal subsidies to buy their own coverage.

Again I'm torn, primarily because of my knowledge of human cognitive differences. A mainstream conservative might readily reject this as an imposition on the autonomy of private business. But think about a fast food chain that doesn't offer their employees insurance. One could argue that these individuals will simply go elsewhere for employment. But this naively presumes these persons have marketable and unique skills that would render them a commodity in the job market. However, fast food workers are generally only qualified for such menial labor, meaning the fast food sector could enact a wholesale policy to not offer insurance, similar to unpaid internships in the communication industry. Thus, we have a cohort of individuals willing to work, but having essentially no marketable skills and thus being unfairly denied insurance. It's easy to withhold empathy for lazy people mooching off government charity; it's harder to do so for individuals who simply lack the natural gifts to obtain middle class wealth.

I was going to respond to the rest of the article, but that's enough for now. Perhaps this is all wrong and the simple free market approach is the best alternative as government almost always represents a hardship not a help. But I just get this nagging feeling that insurance companies would engage in all sorts of odious tricks, a problem because medical care is not a luxury. Luckily, there's no single payer system or a public option.

So today's question: Is this stripped down healthcare bill really that bad? If not, then do you actually agree with some of it despite ardent Republican opposition? If yes, then what specific aspects do you oppose? Please provide external sources if available.

Abolishing Summer Break

In an unsurprising move, President Obama and his educational henchman Arne Duncan are overhauling the school system. I wonder how that's going to turn out. What exactly is the endgame scenario for these annual hysterics about failing schools, incompetent teachers, and the everpresent racial achievement gaps? Steve Sailer has commented on a phenomenon deemed the "stolen generation", a process by which impoverished blacks are taken in by nurturing and open minded whites. By maximizing their intervenion in childhood development, the government seeks to become the ultimate "white family". To achieve this objective in a socially palatable manner, Obama and Duncan have countenanced the abolishment of summer break.

Both President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have called the traditional school day and school year outdated and inadequate for the demands of 21st-century life. Students in countries that routinely outscore the United States on international tests go to school for as many as 230 days each year, 50 more than kids typically attend here. "Go ahead and boo me," Duncan said in April to Denver students. "I think schools should be open six, seven days a week, eleven, twelve months a year."

And next, some HBD denialism. I wonder what's so special about Japan, South Korea, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Scotland. Must be those long school years and proximity to Canada!

Part of the reasoning here, as Duncan suggests, is the need to compete internationally. Most other industrialized nations have longer school years than we do (see the chart to the right), and there is fairly strong evidence that more time in school means higher standardized test scores.

Guess where this is going next:

That last point is worth lingering over. One issue that doesn't come up enough in discussions of extending the school year is that doing so is also, fundamentally, an issue of economic fairness. If you believe in equality of opportunity, then one of the most important things the state can do is provide some baseline level of education that seeks to alleviate vast differences of class.

"Class" here really includes race as well, a salient point made explicit in most other articles on this topic. Apparently, middle class parents do something magical over the summer that allows their children to retain learning:

This is because wealthy parents can afford to given their children all sorts of edifying summer experiences that downscale parents cannot. And this, as researchers at Johns Hopkins have found, leads to backsliding: Educational advancement across classes tends to be fairly even during the school year. But downscale students actually decline in educational achievement over the course of the summer, while upscale students remain relatively stable.

Let's review: Maximize the amount of time children spend in school per year. Summer break exists as merely a vestige of a pre-technological age. Shrinking summer break will moderate the racial and class disparities that arise throughout summer.

By extending compulsory education into a year long task, the leftist think tanks can further inculcate our youth and undermine the importance of kin in childhood development. In doing so, they engage in the idealism discussed here this week, where continual cognitive training is viewed as the "treatment" for natural differences in acuity. Also, note that justification is primarily based on racial and class gaps, implying the main impetus for reform stems from a wholescale Marxist formulation of society. Finally, these pundits muse on the recondite summer activities of middle and upper class parents. Many liberal writers suffer from "Upper East Side" syndrome, a delusion that equates the middle class with those of the highly wealthy elite. Apparently, the middle class has the means to finance obscure educational programs beyond their children playing basketball in the driveway, going to soccer camp, and hiking with family in Colorado. Somehow, these adventures bestow upon their children wisdom not attainable at urban Boys and Girls clubs where summer school tutoring and classes are held.

Yet another example of the "clever sillies". To put it bluntly: It's the kids stupid. (Or the other way around, whichever you prefer.)

Depictions of Masculinity in Popular Culture

Our modern culture has constructed a system that emasculates males, demanding relegation in the gender hierarchy. In essence, this represents a perverting of the natural order. Men should feel no guilt in asserting their dominance and pursuing positions of explicit authority. I'm not championing a wholly misogynistic culture where women are excluded from the arenas of power nor am I asserting that all men be given high social value. Instead, I'm assailing the notion that men must temper their predisposition for leadership and authority. This mentality, where females bestow upon men their preternatural wisdom, pervades sexual relationships (a phenomenon undermined by Game), the political sphere, and the workplace. As men have been socially neutered, we have the audacious few who reject this confinement, erupting in the most absurd of macho grandiloquence.

These repugnant caricatures of masculinity show up on such pop culture tripe like Tool Academy and Jersey Shore and during fraternity hazing. But we also get the mainstream journalists lauding imprudent and reckless behavior merely because it reflects a time when prudent male vigor was celebrated. In his column this week for ESPN the Magazine, Rick Reilly, foremost purveyor of saccharine athletic tales, lauds George Karl for basically trying to kill himself.

Karl, the legendary and bombastic NBA coach, is fighting throat and neck cancer by undergoing the most arduous of treatments.

Denver Nuggets coach George Karl pops in his mouthpiece and puts on his helmet and braces himself for a brutal 15 minutes, but this isn't football. This is cancer radiation. We're at Denver's

With only three of his torturous six weeks of treatment done, and the inside of his mouth looking like he just took 100 bites out of a lava-hot pizza slice, and his head throbbing and his eyes hollow, Karl looks like a guy who should be on a stretcher, not an NBA bench.

Reilly continues, tacitly relaying his admiration for Karl's foolhardy approach to maintaining his health.

"George, this is only going to get harder," a nurse tells him. "You're not going to feel like working." Clearly, she's never met George Karl.

Karl absorbs the machine's worst for 15 minutes every weekday, except on Wednesdays, when he does it for 30. Then he goes to work.

But Karl won't take the drugs, even though the pain is kicking his butt by about 40 points right now.

I don't know how your Monday was, but this was Karl's: He'd coached the Nuggets to a 12-point win over Portland the night before. Didn't hit the sack until 1. Got up at 5. Was at the hospital by 6. Had surgery at 6:30 to put in the stomach tube that, coming soon, will be the only way he'll eat. Out of surgery at 7. Radiation at 8. Home by 10. Nap. Then started working on preparing for the Minnesota game.

"When does it get intense?" Dr. Davis asks. "April 20," says Karl (though the playoffs actually start April 17. Could be a problem. For anybody else.

I imagine there was a much better story to write here than framing Karl's absolutely horrible decisions in a positive light. Karl's stubbornness isn't bold or admirable, it's simply stupid. Yet, Reilly spins this as the brave actions of a bold man, not the headstrong inanity of a man seriously endangering himself. Because men must temper their natural (within reason) urges, the only actions we can associate with masculinity are the ones completely outside the realm of good judgment.

Educational Romanticism and the War on Childhood

On Monday, I responded to David Shenk's dissimulating arguments concerning the heritability of aptitude and his exceedingly naive optimism on the potential improvements brought about by intervention. I will gladly admit that Shenk's unjustified confidence in "nurture" does have positive repercussions, as it stifles hopelessness in the average and demands persistence in the gifted. However, these blank slatist type ideas imbue many parents with unreasonable expectations concerning their child's potential, a situation fomenting the "helicopter mom" surge of the 00's. Our educational system has been increasingly hypnotized by this romanticism, holding teachers entirely culpable for student failure, viewing America as a national Lake Wobegon, and engaging in an interminable cycle of reform despite continual failure. But some parents are forgoing the increasingly rigid confines of our school system (or, more aptly, factory):

About a year ago, a friend of my wife's was touring the kindergarten classroom at her local school, in a middle-class, racially mixed New York neighborhood. She noticed the lack of blocks, craft supplies, sand or water tables, a puppet theater -- things she remembered from her own year in kindergarten, long ago. The teacher shook his head firmly. "They played with that stuff in pre-K," he said. "In kindergarten, they're here to work."

Speaking broadly, American public education, especially in the early grades, has become dominated by a bizarre orthodoxy that is almost completely unsupported by rigorous research, or for that matter by teachers, education professionals and child psychologists. It's the orthodoxy of political buzzwords like "standards" and "accountability," the orthodoxy of business-school methods like standardized testing (and the hours of test preparation that accompanies it), drill-based and scripted instruction and repetitious busywork. It's the orthodoxy that has created homework for 5-year-olds, along with the expectation that they should be able to sit at a desk for hours at a time (or risk losing their 20 minutes of "choice time," which you and I once knew as recess).

The solution for many parents has been homeschooling. In this environment, the necessary elements of childhood development, such as play and exploration, are afforded their due respect. But to those with the mindset of Mr. Shenk, every second is an opportunity for improvement. We need to nurture their cognitive development because this is the primary means for achievement. Ensuring children engage in endless cognitive drills becomes paramount because "cutting-edge science" says there's no limit to inherent "genius". Luckily, some aren't indoctrinated by such delusion:

By age 12, children "should be able to read a chapter book, write a story and a compelling essay; know how to add, subtract, divide and multiply numbers; detect patterns in complex phenomena; use evidence to support an opinion; be part of a group of people who are not their family; and engage in an exchange of ideas in conversation.

That sounds about right. But unfortunately, too many parents don't understand that development is natural; ability needn't be extracted at every stage of a person's life. If so many parents believe that exceptional talent is attainable merely by providing the appropriate support system, then we shouldn't be surprised helicopter parents ensure the "right" implementations are in place. Shenk and his ilk do this generation a disservice by attaching to them unreasonable standards of excellence and reformulating your childhood as a training program instead of an inherently valuable experience. In general, idealism underpins the disheartening war on childhood.

Corruption of Elites in the Information Age

Time has put together a series of essays forecasting trends in the next decade. In this essay entitled Twilight of the Elites, the author details the public's growing dissatisfaction with the institutions supposedly responsible for their welfare.

In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it's General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both.

But after a cascade of scandals and catastrophes, that implicit social contract lies in ruins, replaced by mass skepticism, contempt and disillusionment.

I've come of age during this period, one which the author depicts as rank with duplicity, avarice, and depravity. In essence, this new transparency has shaped my current worldview, yet that cognizance hasn't come without a price. I remember my astonishment concerning the steroid scandal in Major League Baseball and the understanding that the memories of my youth, sitting with one of my brothers cheering on our favorite team, wasn't as pure as I had imagined them to be. The author doesn't share my pessimism though, prognosticating on a future where a dissolved power structure demands accountability:

In the wake of the implosion of nearly all sources of American authority, this new decade will have to be about reforming our institutions to reconstitute a more reliable and democratic form of authority.

This, one hopes, is just the beginning. All these new institutions are inspired by a desire to democratize old, big oligarchic hierarchies and devolve power downward and outward. That's our best hope in the decade to come. For at the end of the day, it's the job of citizens to save elites from themselves.

He alludes to Wikipedia, the Internet as a whole, and grassroots activism as the main motivators of this institutional revival. But how can the very things that created this "problem" seek to fix it? From my perspective, the Internet and new media, using technological expediency to both obtain scurrilous information as well as disseminate it, was the primary factor in exposing corruption.

In the age of sex tapes, recorded conversations, and cell phone cameras, the private sphere no longer exists as it used to. The backdoor dealings of Washington weren't privy to the same funnels of information-leaking as they are today, such as e-mail chains, electronic paper trails, and Youtube journalists lurking everywhere.

We'll always have people subverting the laws of decency and the court. The elites, imbued with a mind-engulfing hubris, won't stop what they're doing merely because the plebeians demand it. The elites won't change because they don't consider new media a worthy challenger. I foresee an elite blinded with ambition and thus unwilling to compromise in attaining success. Thus, the purveyors of scandal will always be able to find salacious details to forever weaken our faith in the ruling class. Perhaps we've entered an age where the speciously pristine institutions of yesteryear are gone. Maybe I'm the only one yearning for a time when the public was blissfully ignorant of such corruption. I doubt any of it is coming back and the bedrock conservative edifices of yesterday, elite academia, Wall Street, church, and the pillars of culture, may take our society down with them.

Responding to David Shenk's The Genuis in All of Us

On the heels of Richard Nisbett's egalitarianism opus last summer comes another blank slatist treatise from David Shenk entitled The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong. Well, one surely can't admonish him for lack of ambition. I've read or listened to a number of interviews where he expounds on his banal and idealistic thesis. This post will be organized in bullets for clarity.

Confuses Necessity and Sufficiency: This is the primary problem with Shenk's argumentation strategy. Any high scoring LSAT student is assuredly familiar with the logical distinction between these two notions. For a given principle to apply, there are necessary conditions, those which must be achieved but may be achieved despite failure of the larger objective, and sufficient conditions, those that guarantee satisfaction of the given principle.

In this Bloggingheads conversation with Will Wilkinson, Shenk makes this rather elementary error, asserting that work ethic isn't merely a necessary condition but a sufficient one:

Everyone in the NBA is an extraordinary athlete and has spent years and years working their butts off and has worked very very hard and has all the qualities that you just stated. But Michael Jordan did stand above them in not just in his ability, but in all of these ingredients that we look at. We know that his drive and his ambition, we look at how he got to be where he is, it's just documented...So there is a difference in the quality of how people practice.

OK, so Jordan practiced really hard. That doesn't undermine the notion that a basic component of success is genetic (Wilkinson gives the fantastic example of Michael Phelps' body dimensions). It's pretty simple: Independently, hard work and proper genetics are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the highest levels of achievement. This anecdote brings me to my next point:

Using Anecdote and non-Quantitative Studies: In the Bloggingheads interview and in these two essays (WSJ and The Atlantic), Shenk employs what one could appropriately deem the "Gladwell strategy". His arguments are primarily buttressed by personal anecdote, individual instances, and a noticeable lack of quantitative corroboration. For example, take his comments on Michael Jordan whereby he appeals to this book from David Halberstam. Let's just assume this secondary source offers a reasonably accurate representation of Jordan's pugnacity. Yes Jordan's work ethic was legendary, but where are the books detailing the lives of Patrick Ewing, Clyde Drexler, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, and Karl Malone/John Stockton (the last pair of whom had an almost telepathic connection on the court - lots of practice perhaps?). We have absolutely no means by which to quantify Jordan's work ethic and appropriately compare it to a control group or cohort of individuals achieving a reasonably close measure of success.

In The Atlantic article where Shenk broaches cognitive ability, he points to a number of studies yet provides not one number allowing readers to gauge the practical implications. He discusses a study attempting to connect amount of verbal exercise during early childhood to adulthood intelligence:

Head Start wasn't getting hold of kids early enough. Somehow, poor kids were getting stuck in an intellectual rut long before they got to the program-- before they turned three and four years old. They devised a novel (and exhaustive) methodology: for more than three years, they sampled the actual number of words spoken to young children from forty- two families at three different socioeconomic levels: (1) welfare homes, (2) working-class homes, and (3) professionals' homes. Then they tallied them up.

Children in professionals' homes were exposed to an average of more than fifteen hundred more spoken words per hour than children in welfare homes. Over one year, that amounted to a difference of nearly 8 million words, which, by age four, amounted to a total gap of 32 million words. They also found a substantial gap in tone and in the complexity of words being used. As they crunched the numbers, they discovered a direct correlation between the intensity of these early verbal experiences and later achievement.

Of course, Shenk provides no actual data from the study. Contrastingly, Charles Murray provides data from a US study that controlled for home environment (middle class) and found that some underlying factor distinguishing siblings (genetics?) had a substantial effect on adulthood achievement.

Each pair consists of one sibling with an IQ in the normal range of 90-110 ,a range that includes 50% of the population. I will call this group the normals. The second sibling in each pair had an IQ either higher than 110, putting him in the top quartile of intelligence (the bright) or lower than 90, putting him in the bottom quartile (the dull). These constraints produced a sample of 710 pairs. In 1993, when we took our most recent look at them, members of the sample were aged 28-36. That year, the bright siblings earned almost double the average of the dull: £22,400 compared to £11,800. The normals were in the middle, averaging £16,800.

Additionally, Shenk never actually quantifies the magnitude of improvement. He uses ambigious phrases like" positive influence", "importance of", and "growth mindset", but never distinguishes between minimal mutability such as passing algebra and gross malleability such as getting a physics PhD. The former of which has little implications beyond personal appeasement and confirming erudite theories of educational philosophy. (In Real Education, Murray alludes to studies where intense academic intervention engendered about a 5% gain in test scores). Then when Shenk does provide an appeal to specific data, he forgets to qualify his optimism through a modicum of critical thinking.

The same dynamic applies to talent. Something crazy happened to the world's violinists in the 20th century: they got better faster than their peers had in previous centuries. We know this because we have lasting benchmarks, like the effervescent Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1 and the concluding movement of the Bach Violin Partita No. 2 in D Minor—14 minutes of virtually impossible violin work. Both pieces were considered nearly unplayable in the 18th century but are now played routinely and well by a large number of violin students. (The Bach is now routinely included in the repertoires of music schools and competitions).

Does he consider that perhaps, with expedited travel and the spreading of classical music throughout the civilized world, there are simply more people playing violin? Let's say in the 18th century, only 100 people in the entire world played violin seriously. If only 1% (and thus 1 person) of the violin-playing population had the genetic gifts to master such an arduous task, then yes, one could justifiably conclude this piece was virtually impossible. But 200 years later, let's say 10,000 people play violin seriously. Now there are 100 who can play and thus it would seem to be relatively routine. And remember, the repertoires of music schools and competitions, especially in the highly competitive suburbs, are for the best of the best.

As for the supposed increased talent of our runners and tennis players, on the scale of human ability (from the fat kid in 4th grade huffing his way after one lap to Usain Bolt), the improvements gained through fastidious study of experts are picayune.

Attacks Genetic Determinism Strawman: As with most blank slatists, Shenk argues against a concocted framing of the hereditarian argument. By showing environment and work ethic are important factors in achievement, Shenk believes he undermines the genetic argument.

That's because genes interact with their surroundings, getting turned on and off all the time and, even more amazingly, saying different things depending on whom they are talking to. "There are no genetic factors that can be studied independently of the environment," explains McGill University's Michael Meaney, in his article "Nature, Nurture, and the Disunity of Knowledge." "And there are no environmental factors that function independently of the genome. [A trait] emerges only from the interaction of gene and environment."

Let me repeat this rather obvious point: No sane person asserts that genetic predilections define a rigid trajectory of one's successes and failures. As stated above, merely illustrating the influence of environment does not invalidate the hereditarian viewpoint. My conception of the nature/nurture dichomoty is that genes define a reasonable interval for one's potential achievement. Then, environment and work ethic, amongst other non-biological factors, pinpoint one's position on that interval. This squares much better with the available evidence than Shenk's specious claims.

I've skimmed over a number of other interviews and articles. Shenk basically keeps repeating the assertion that the genetic hypothesis is an antiquated myth promulgated by the likes of Francis Galton. He rarely provides actual scientific support besides referencing some intrepid group of "scientists" or innovative rat studies! He also quite predictably engages in standard IQ denialism deriding the Bell Curve and positively citing Robert Sternberg's drivel. I don't feel like regurgitating these easy arguments countering this romanticism.

Finally, if intelligence is a pliable attribute, then surely our decades of educational reform would have spurred a mild improvement in academic achievement. We must have hit something right in the last forty years. If so, please explain the chart above. What we really need is a "Skinner Box" experiment on a bunch of kids. But I doubt that will happen any time soon.

[If you have any other studies that show stability in human traits, cognitive, physical, or otherwise, please include them in the comments and I will add them to the post.]

Answering Obsidian (and general Liberal Creationism)

A few days ago, after Obsidian once again spammed the comments with the same hackneyed questions, I offered him an opportunity. He was to condense his most important objections to HBD to ten questions and myself and other commenters would answer them, ONCE AND FOR ALL. Here are the questions (some of them are truncated below) and the answers. Thanks especially to John Galton.

Much is said by the HBDers about Sir Francis' Galton's notion of "regression to the mean". Could someone please discuss why none of the HBDers never actually [discusses it relative to whites]?

Anonymous: The reason RTTM is frequently brought up in HBD circles is because it strongly suggests that the regressing trait is under genetic control (at least partially). So whenever some egalitarian shows up and insists that there are no reasons to think that IQ is real and partially genetic, someone brings up the well-documented facts of RTTM in affluent blacks. (The lower is the group's mean, the easier it is to observe the RTTM)

OneSTDV: Pretty simple. Regression to the mean is almost always broached concerning the absence of a robust black middle class. And seriously enough with the JP Rushton comment. You do realize he was referring to a correlation, not a direct correspondence. And wouldn't that apply to you as well?

Why it is that the HBDers are relatively silent on the problems presented by the right enders of the Bell Curve. If HBD is to discuss the full range of human potential, wouldn't it make sense to explore it all, or do the HBD crowd merely wishes to address that which they deem as problematic in the American body politic?

John Galton: What problems do the right enders of the Bell Curve present? Could you be specific and describe these threats and quantify them for us? Since you are all about race as well, what do you think the odds are of being murdered, robbed or raped by a high-IQ an upper middle class dude vs a low-IQ middle to lower class NAM? Would it start at 1:1,000 you think? Do you constantly stare up at the clouds looking for a lighting strike while crossing LA freeways during rushhour? Is that what you're asking?

Obsidian is ignorant that these two examples of high-IQ and high reproductive fitness groups [Orthodox Jews and Mormons] undermine the very claim he tries to make that high-IQ groups suffer negative tradeoffs.

OneSTDV: In addition, almost all the "problems" associated with high IQ (a phenomenon Obsidian greatly exaggerates and provides zero evidence of besides reliance on media stereotypes and anecdotes) are internal. Obsidian also promulgates the canard that high IQ whites can't "get laid", yet according to TUJ's posts on smart fraction fertility, high IQ whites have lower fecundity due primarily to delayed fertility, not lack of opportunity. Perhaps, the high IQ beta male must accept his lower sexual value and settle for a less appealing female, but such a concession has little widespread implications.

Finally, Obsidian answers his own question. "HBD" blogs, owing much of their inspiration to Sailer's writings, aren't primarily motivated by dispassionate cogitation regarding the distribution of human attributes. It would probably be more appropriate to deem the cohort of HBD blogs as "bioconservative" as many champion the notion that knowledge of racial differences will engender a conservative renaissance.

So what do the HBDers have to say about WHY their cohort has such relatively low fertility, and WHY they have yet to meaningfully address it?

John Galton: This is a mischaracterization. HBD blogs have frequently commented on the low birth rate for this cognitively elite and high rate for the non-elites to the point of obsession. There have been many posts noting the differential birth rates according to IQ, religion, race, etc. You're claiming the opposite makes you seem like you're taking credit for HBD insight.

What do the HBDers suggest be done, since what is currently being done to fight Black crime isn't enough for them; two, why do they focus so intensely on a problem that they have little if any direct involvement with, since by their own often vociferous declarations, they neither live near or interact with ANY Blacks?

John Glaton: As you mention on your blog, black crime affects blacks more than whites. However, black crime affects everyone by driving up the costs of finite public resources like fewer safe neighborhoods and schools. More indirectly, excessive crime and other avoidable extreme black pathologies, impose a huge social cost in terms of pouring massive amounts of social goods and services like education, welfare, policing, insurance, prisons, etc.

OneSTDV: You constantly downplay the negative impact of black crime. Imagine there was a horrible social problem. Someone told you that one factor alone could account for 50% of that problem. Would you discount it as unimportant?

Why does nearly EVERY discussion that takes place in HBD venues, wind up being yet another discussion about Black folks?

OneSTDV: Probably because much of America's history is framed or ensconced in the black-white paradigm. In doing so, many conservatives consider this reductionist depiction an ugly belittling of this nation's preeminence and the singular foresight of our early luminaries (almost all of whom were white males). Second, blacks are the most vocal dissidents in the sphere of racial discourse, interminably grousing about achievement gaps, purported institutional racism, and other chimerical social ills all readily explained by HBD. Due to the PC doctrine, blacks hold an inordinate amount of social capital in discussion of racial issues, so much so that whites are excoriated merely for congregating with each other. Finally, the stark contrast in behavioral norms, intelligence, and physicality between blacks and whites makes HBD all that more obvious.

What have atheists ever done for anybody?

NutUporShutUp: The Civil Rights Movement, Harlem Renaissance, and other black oriented movements were started by black atheists and usually were still led by many black atheists, even when carpetbagging religious types toke over the respective movements...So New England Christians get credit for the earliest abolishist movements but Southern Christians are not blamed for bringing slavery to America? Religious folk get credit for ending Jim Crow but not for setting it up? Your post is logically inconsistent.

OneSTDV: Do I really have to even respond to such an absurd proclamation? From a 1934 study of scientists and religion, "67% of 1,000 randomly selected US scientists expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of God, and that this figure rose to near 85% among the 400 "greater" scientists within [the] sample". And here's a chart showing the results of a 1996 survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences (the best scientists in the country), where only 7% profess belief in a personal God paralleling that of traditional religion. Finally, here's a huge number of atheist or disbelieving celebrities. As for questions of morality, atheists comprise 0.2% of the prison population, compared to about 5% of the US population total.

What would such a world look like [if HBD was publicly accepted]? What public policies would be crafted with HBD at their core? Could anyone here, be it OneSTDV or anyone else, make a rough ten point plan outlining these measures? It's just that they don't catch serious flak for saying that they want a rollback on everything that made African Americans a real part of this country.

dana: just because i want to accurately describe the nature of blacks in the US doesn't really mean i want to do anything about it or believe in a government strong enough to "do" anything about it. most HBDers are libertarians [OneSTDV: I'd say pseudo-libertarians] and don't want to "do" anything but REPEAL unconstitutional and dysgenic policies--not enact positive active eugenic policies.

Anonymous and Galton (with my revisions):

-Scale back educational funding and profligate spending on "new and improved" reform. Reinstitute tracking and place emphasis (both practical and social) on vocational training.
-The end of the abusive and parasitic race hustle industry: Accept racial disparities as natural.
-End all unfunded entitlements, including section 8, affirmative action, and Medicaid.
-Dissolve Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
-Having a child without the means to support it is a felony or some other less stringent disincentive for fecund welfare recipients.
-Increase length of jail sentences for all violent offenders.
-Tell the truth about race differences in the mainstream media.
-Persistent felons would be deported.
-Only skilled immigration.
-Deport all illegals immediately.

OneSTDV: "Not doing anything" roughly equates with removing the anti-white/anti-meritocratic diversity industry that pervades almost every policy decision, including but not limited to immigration, education, welfare, taxes, social programs, and healthcare.

Your last statement is a complete fabrication and misrepresentation of HBD. Please provide evidence for such an outlandish claim. What exactly "constitutes everything that made blacks a real part of this country". Let's take a specific example: I support N.C. schools reverting back to neighborhood schooling and thus discontinuing the forced integration of schools. Now how can you equate this with reinstituting the apartheid state of pre-1960's America. Overwhelmingly black urban schools actually receive the most funding per student and if blacks and whites are functionally equivalent, there should be no malediction imposed upon the education of black students. Basically, whites have no moral imperative to see that blacks achieve economic stability and should only ingratiate themselves in order to moderate enmity that could lead to violence (also applies to high IQ vs. low IQ people).

I will not respond to Obsidian from this point forward.

Christianity and Liberalism

Saturday Audience Participation

Awhile back, Mangan and Larry Auster went back and forth concerning the correspondence (or lack thereof) between Christianity and liberalism. Mangan took the position that Christianity, with its notions of universality and fervent proselytizing in foreign countries, has undeniable parallels to the edicts of modern liberalism.

This past week, Glenn Beck lambasted churches for coalescing religious teachings with mandates for "social justice". He urged Christians to leave these purported spiritual feeding grounds for socialism and, in doing so, motivated a number of church leaders to condemn his statements.

An evangelical leader is calling for a boycott of Glenn Beck's television show and challenging the Fox News personality to a public debate after Beck vilified churches that preach economic and social justice. The Rev. Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a network of progressive Christians, says Beck perverted Jesus' message when he urged Christians last week to leave churches that preach social and economic justice.

That concern for justice is what helped convert him, says Wallis, president of Sojourners. Wallis says the Bible isn't just concerned with feeding the poor -- it's concerned about the conditions that create the poor.

If I had to take a side on this issue, I'd probably agree with Mangan. But in the end, Christianity can be construed in any manner to promote any agenda. That's what makes religion so powerful: the amorphous structure of its message allows anyone to genuinely connect with it. From the most miraculous of events to the most picayune of circumstances, we witness God getting credit for everything.

So today's question: Is Christianity susceptible to being a justification for liberalism? Or is it inherently conservative? Or is it neutral to matters of politics? And should morally based arguments take precedence over matters of practicality in political disputes?

Cultural Depression, Megatron, and "Acid Art"

In news concerning the imminent arrival of the Idiocracy: I don't know if the following is real. But my lack of incredulity is a disheartening reflection of this Youtube/Facebook generation where behavior noteworthy merely for its absurdity is rewarded with acclaim.

MY SISTER SAID IF I GET ONE MILLION FANS SHE WILL NAME HER BABY MEGATRON

Yet another reason I've never been compelled to join Facebook. And then there's this popular Youtuber's nightmarish amalgamation of weird images, disgusting people, and probably copious amounts of illicit drugs. It's not quite reveling in the spew of a transvestite performance "artist", but the standard of artistic merit has surely plummeted. Perhaps society has always imbibed in these lurid displays masquerading as insightful ruminations on the human experience. But I can't imagine such perverse concoctions were taken in by any significant portion of the population, let alone extolled as valuable representations of the cultural zeitgeist.

Maybe the advent of viral content is continually pushing the bounds of impropriety, forever demanding even more outlandish behavior in order to garner fame. This "progress" manifests in people willfully engaging in the most lewd improprieties knowing fame is no longer confined to the select few. And while everyone, no matter how much one postures to the contrary, experiences that visceral feeling towards such stupidity, it still embeds itself deep within our cultural landscape. Yes we deride the vacuities of our times, the prattling of TMZ on Heidi and Spencer, but we keep it going. And then we wake up and the most popular show on TV is about the daughters of OJ's defense adviser, given a show only because one of them made a sex tape with a D-list R&B singer.

The problem is that civilization is intended to dampen our carnal predilections. Social shaming used to exist as a deterrent for such abhorrent behavior. The means of socializing were largely public, under the watchful eye of intimate acquaintances eager to dispense disapproval upon a social rival. But what we have now is an odd melding of eagerness for public infamy coupled with a private means of offering that validation. We have individuals willing to publicly shame themselves and a public who gives their support through anonymous means, such as Internet commenting and video watching.

In this chicken or the egg scenario, it was the clandestine public hiding in their private computer rooms that could break these social taboos without regard for community shame. There used to exist a default prohibition on such a mutiny, as no one would dare besmirch the order of things for fear of reproach by their social betters. But now, the public needn't worry about such repercussions, thus they're able to sate their carnal desires without consequence. And of course, the ever present "attention whores" are spurred on by this tacit approval.