Response to the Liberal Arguments against Arizona Immigration Law (and other general racial issues)

The Arizona immigration law, discussed here and here, has spurred a "non-cowardly" national discourse on race. Fortunately, following the election of a blatant racist, overt racial pandering, and the coming demographic changes, whites have largely avoided prostrating to rampant anti-white rhetoric. The rise of the Tea Party movement and the parallel ascendancy of venerable personalities like Glenn Beck and myself constitutes a potent backlash.

Yet the left continues to condemn these concerns as xenophobic, instead offering "solutions" that reflect their naive idealism. The Huffington Post is churning out articles regurgitating the same hackneyed drivel. First up is Desmond Tutu.

I am saddened today at the prospect of a young Hispanic immigrant in Arizona going to the grocery store and forgetting to bring her passport and immigration documents with her. I cannot be dispassionate about the fact that the very act of her being in the grocery store will soon be a crime in the state she lives in. Or that, should a policeman hear her accent and form a "reasonable suspicion" that she is an illegal immigrant, she can -- and will -- be taken into custody until someone sorts it out, while her children are at home waiting for their dinner.

This represents the main crux of the liberal perspective: innocent people will be inexorably hurt by racial association. I'm not going to belittle this argument because it has some merit; however, what utopic alternative could provide success similar to that of basic racial profiling? Catching criminals is based on markers of criminality and in specific cases, this reduces to witness sketches, DNA, fingerprints, and other pieces of evidence. Occasionally, these indicators lead the police to an incorrect conclusion, an undeniably injurious situation but one inherent to any criminal justice system. Do liberals suggest we further enervate the police by denying them use of hair color, eye color, height, and weight as clues? Liberals clearly dismiss the notion that societal stability requires pragmatic trade-offs.

I am not speaking from an ivory tower. I lived in the South Africa that has now thankfully faded into history, where a black man or woman could be grabbed off the street and thrown in jail for not having his or her documents on their person.

Replaced by a South Africa with the highest global rate of rape and a country where whites live in constant fear of brutal murder. Much better!

The problem is, under the new law, the one or two who would do it [unfairly persecute a Hispanic] are legitimized. All they have to say is that they believed that illegal immigrants were being harbored in the house. They would be protected and sanctioned by this law.

"One or two" injustices justifies abolishing an effective program that ultimately curbs crime, drug use, and other social pathologies? And they say conservatives are removed from reality.

The problem of migrating populations is not going to go away any time soon. If anyone should know this, it should be Americans, many of whom landed here themselves to escape persecution, famine or conflict.

Mr. Tutu dissembles on the potential of Hispanic nationals, drawing a parallel to early 20th century European immigrants. This chart suffices in undermining that claim. Next, illustrating their risible desire to portray this law as Draconian, some media outlets are hyping this innocuous event as a harbinger of things to come.

Last week, an Hispanic truck driver was stopped at a weigh station along Rt. 202 by a patrol officer. The commercial truck driver, "Abdon," is a natural born citizen of the United States. He's obviously employed. He speaks English. He pays taxes.

And yet "Adbon" was shackled by the police and detained by the Phoenix Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. At that roadside weigh station in the middle of an otherwise ordinary weekday, Abdon made the mistake of not carrying his birth certificate with him. His birth certificate! Put another way, Abdon was handcuffed and detained because he's Hispanic.

I followed the link and came to this interview. Now how could that guy, as American as apple pie and Chevrolet, arouse suspicion?!

It's unconstitutional to arrest people because they merely look suspicious.

No, I'm pretty sure that's how arrests generally work.

This week, Eugene Robinson asked a salient question about the Arizona law: where are the tea party people who claim to be against government overreach?...But Glenn Beck, for example, said the Arizona law is okay because "the Constitution is not a suicide pact."

I'm not a libertarian, so I suffer from no such cognitive dissonance. But his formulation of the Tea Party is quite mendacious. These individuals don't champion a complete dissolution of government; in fact, this represents an optimal avenue for government intervention. The Constitution doesn't exonerate the criminals for whom liberals have an exceedingly odd sympathy.

If the Republicans are really interested in preventing illegal immigration, they would pass laws that crack down on the trafficking of cheap immigrant labor to corporate farms and factories, but the fines for such violations remain laughably small.

Writing and reforming the law on the corporate side to disincentivize the exploitation of illegal immigrant labor makes the most sense, while leaving civil rights intact.

How about the civil rights of citizens to shape their own communities? How about the civil rights of citizens to oppose the immigration of a menial labor class with minimal socioeconomic ascension of their progeny? I actually like this auxiliary proposition as well, though this reflects the antipathy liberals have towards corporations, ya know the institutions providing jobs. Further, we note another liberal meme where individual transgression is always pawned off onto some larger edifice. Hispanics who subvert our laws aren't culpable for their crimes, but the corporations coveting them ("exploitation of illegal immigrant labor") are?!

Like the neo-slavery laws of the old South, the Arizona immigration law is another way for the white, Republican establishment to retain some semblance of control in the face of a growing minority population.

I'll refrain from arguing with this supposition. Much of the ire does derive from white conservative apprehension concerning the ramifications of racial demographic changes. But such wariness doesn't constitute irrational hatred; rather it reflects a tacit understanding of racial crime disparities, economic concerns of a growing underclass, a reverence for American tradition, a fear of racialist politics, skepticism about our radical diversity experiment, the inexorable changes to the nebulous, but palpable American way of life, and the social framing of whites as bland and insidious (just to name a few reasonable objections, warrants far more discussion obviously).

Luckily, some are brazenly voicing their opposition with implicit allusions to racial composition being a salient factor in societal stability.

For-Profit Colleges Are Basically Worthless

In the midst of the current racial firestorm (commentary on a number of stories for Friday), I give you some sensible reporting from the HuffingtonPost as Anya Kamanetz condemns the for-profit college racket.

They concentrate on students who are nontraditional (aka the new normal: working adults) and underserved by traditional colleges. They offer them help filling out the FAFSA forms, more convenience and better customer service. They aggressively pursue growth in enrollment -- growing at an estimated rate of 5% to 10% a year or five times to 10 times faster than the overall market. That type of growth is needed to fulfill student demand, not to mention our national goals of a more credentialed population.

Of course, these businesses masquerading as educational institutions peddle an unreasonable dream that reflects the "national goal of a more credentialed population". The college degree has lost its status as a marker of the elite and has devolved into an assumed "achievement" for all. As Ms. Kamanetz notes, these colleges do provide an alternative path to the erudite study offered at more traditional universities. But even with the practical focus, most of their constituency can't handle a rigid academic schedule:

they are not so much "serving" the underserved as they are targeting or exploiting them. Although enrollment rates are high and growing, graduation rates are very low. And students who attend these colleges are twice as likely to default on their loans.

Some have argued that this situation is highly reminiscent of the mortgage crisis: these colleges are peddling yet another false promise of the American Dream (in this case, the college diploma part of the dream, rather than the homeownership part) to those who are truly not qualified to take advantage of it. That their graduates and especially their non-graduates will have a very hard time pulling in salaries commensurate with their debt.

I made the exact same point in regards to regular college admits, a cohort that fails in a similarly miserable fashion. However, I diverge from the author's analysis in who we find culpable for this avarice. She admonishes these fake universities for peddling a worthless product to unqualified idealists. And while I understand her criticism, I find the prevailing zeitgeist to blame for this calamity. Two social norms contribute.

First, in an effort to normalize achievement, there's a burgeoning movement to legitimize community colleges, online universities, and other institutions of piddling academic value. This reflects the degradation of virtue that pervades our society, whereby actual achievements are equated with those of significantly lesser value. Thus, many laud a degree from the University of Phoenix as worthy of our veneration when in actuality, it represents a picayune accomplishment with little practical or intellectual importance.

Second, the insistence on education instead of apprenticeships, even in the vocational field, encourages these individuals into a path that's ultimately counterproductive. A piece of paper and the commensurate social capital do little to buttress one's economic value. The author ends with a plea for accountability (was this really published on HuffPo?!):

The second is that the same kind of policies that would improve the performance of for-profits would improve the performance of all colleges, but they freak traditional higher ed out. Things like administering tests to see what students are actually learning, or imposing real accountability for terrible graduation and default rates.

Agreed. Not much to add there.

Heidi Montag Crosses the Uncanny Valley

Heidi Montag stars on MTV's eminently popular pseudo-reality show The Hills. The final season chronicles Heidi's recent plastic surgery binge when she endured ten unnecessary procedures in one day. Apparently, "back scooping" exists, who knew? In addition to the abhorrent voyeurism whereby the public "consumes" portrayal of Heidi's pathological insecurities, Ms. Montag has made a seminal leap. She is the first person to cross the uncanny valley from above:


More pics here (best evidence, though slightly NSFW) and here.

Hispanic Illegal Immigrants: "We are Human"

The following picture was taken at a protest in Phoenix. The sign reads, "We are Human", constituting a criticism of the Arizona immigration law's presumed message.

Essentially, opponents of this law contend anything less than unfettered immigration represents an egregious offense against civil rights. The "We are Human" slogan argues that the law dehumanizes illegal immigrants.

One notes the basic presumption of liberalism and the commensurate philosophies of Communism and socialism: entitlement. Instead of procuring one's own wealth and maximizing one's genetic potential, leftists consider capital, in whatever form, as belonging to the collective rather the individual who earned it. This mode of thinking extends to the notion of citizenship and explicates the basic foundation of the debate. Hispanics believe, by mere virtue of birth and desire, they are entitled to American citizenship. They contend this birthright exists independent of occupational proclivity, cultural concordance, and nationalistic tradition. And then, to further compound the practical noxiousness, these poor illegals demand government largesse according to some convoluted formulation of human rights.

Quick thought experiment: Imagine a homeless man brazenly excoriating a local homeowner for refusing to house him. Similarly, Hispanic illegals and their naive American allies blithely demand capitulation in a similar manner. The insistence on acquiescence from the left, and their framing of this as abject jingoism, represents the complete undermining of the nationhood and the private domain.

This controversy perhaps underlies the basic strategy of the Obama era: form a coalition of non-whites and idealistic single women against the traditional white male class. Obama's recent campaign video ostensibly omits white males as if they don't even exist. Such a exclusion surely reflects a conscious effort from the President and his allies to spur an anti-traditional backlash against the presumed oppressive class. Apparently, not all of us are "human".

War on Childhood: The Culture of Overmedication

The war on childhood, a deleterious phenomenon I've covered extensively, continues to harm our youth, deprive them of adolescent freedom, and potentially stunt their natural development. According to a recent study, powerful medicine is being dispensed at an alarming rate.

The use of powerful antipsychotics with privately insured children, aged 2 through 5 in the US, doubled between 1999 and 2007, according to a study of data on more than one million children with private health insurance in the January, 2010, "Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry."

The lead researcher on the study above, Columbia University psychiatry professor Mark Olfson, told Reuters that about 1.5% of all privately insured children between the ages of 2 and 5, or one in 70, received some type of psychiatric drug in 2007, be it an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, a stimulant or an antidepressant.

Of antipsychotic-treated children in the 2007 study sample, the most common diagnoses were pervasive developmental disorder or mental retardation (28.2%), ADHD (23.7%), and disruptive behavior disorder (12.9%).

Only a decrepit society would seek such early intervention whereby incipient intellects, personalities, and behavioral patterns are deemed pathological. Such a gross offense against nature could cause some lasting effects.

"These drugs have measurable severe hazardous effects on vital biological systems, including: cardiovascular adverse effects that result in shortening lives; metabolic adverse effects that induce diabetes and the metabolic syndrome," she wrote. "Long-term use of antipsychotics has been shown to result in metabolic syndrome in 40% to 50% of patients."

Psychiatric drugs bathe the brains of growing children with agents that threaten the normal development of the brain, according to Dr Peter Breggin.

One could wax about the collusion between psychiatrists and the companies that push for use of their products. Surely such an analysis could help expound upon the foundation of this problem. And those that naively advocate an unrestrained free market should heed caution when children become commodities for sale. Since I've covered it extensively before, I won't repeat my admonishment of the suburban helicopter mom who fears her progeny express merely average ability. Instead, let me focus on two additional social issues that underpin this issue.

First, while the article doesn't mention it, I imagine a large majority of the patients are boys. Much of the war on childhood represents a direct attack on the curiosity of adolescent males, the kind of wonder that leads to days in the woods, jumping off playground equipment, and taking apart various household gadgets. By framing this as abnormal behavior with an erudite name like ADHD, society opposes these natural predilections. We see a similar situation where free range boys (and girls) are constrained by hysterical mendacity concerning child molesters, environmental hazards, and junk food. Additionally, we impose the intended gender uniformity by depressing male rambunctiousness.

Second, the feminist indoctrinating of working age women leaves an entire generation without a mother figure. Exhausted from a day of fetching coffee or yelling at 30 first graders, suburban moms have little extra energy to discipline their own children. These drugs act as de facto babysitters, dampening the child's energy to make him more tractable to his enervated parents. One can imagine frustrated moms venting, "I just can't control him" and gladly accepting some "help". But instead of fixing the root cause, we've created a disheartening culture of youth medication that furthers the insidious war on childhood.

I Admit It: The Tea Party Movement is about Race

Here's a journalist interviewing Tea Party activists on Tax Day.

The people shown in the clip, all of them white, offer the same prosaic bromides concerning socialism, constrained liberty, and excessive taxation.

We are limited in our freedoms today.

I believe it's going to be the end of life as we know it in America...ya know the socialist angle.

Socialist agenda, tyranny. Mandatory healthcare...umm I don't know.

Of course, I wholeheartedly agree with these libertarian sentiments, the valuable notion of our (slightly stunted) free market economy that gives unto one what he earns. I've always felt a palpable connection to the "up by your own bootstraps" mentality that underpins much of the Tea Party's basic foundation. It's encouraging to see individuals decry free handouts as not only economically inefficient, but also a moral transgression against individual resolve. [See link for "tax cut" dissembling from the Obama adminstration.]

We should all be paying our own fair share of the taxes.

When you hose the rich, you hurt America because I've never worked for a poor person. The gentleman I work for now is a wealthy individual. He wasn't always wealthy, but he built his business up and he's now a millionaire, God Bless America.

[For people making billions of dollars, should they pay more] No they have a right to earn that money. Nobody has a right to take it away from them.

Now due to my pseudo-utilitarian ethics as a basic means for societal stability, I'm not advocating a flat tax rate or dissolution of the federal reserve. But I do support a country where economic ascension isn't punished nor discouraged through unjust wealth redistribution. In addition to these economic concerns, the Tea Party expresses frustration concerning a burgeoning intrusion of government into private business. Of course, such a complex issue warrants far more discussion than I give it here, but again, our privacy and autonomy represent sacrosanct values inherent to American prosperity, democracy, and culture. We can't allow government unfettered access into what we do, an ideal tempered by situations where government intervention represents a net positive (i.e. corporations bent on subverting illegal immigration laws).

OK so I took a circuitous path to my main point. Here's the problem with the Tea Party: it's essentially one big "Southern Strategy" encumbered upon by the racial PC. While leftists interminably denigrate the Tea Party for clandestine racism, in essence they're right. The post-1960's cultural framing of whites as bland and empty, the pervasive racial hypocrisy concerning expression, and the consistent guilt promulgation from our major institutions culminated in the election of a blatantly racist, Marxist, anti-American, Arab apologist black man. This stupefying event fomented the explosion of a "silent majority", a cohort sporadically riled up by OJ and the Duke Lacrosse scandal.

But still, in a landscape where clean cut whites are smeared as mass murderers merely for being white and one can't admit sexual attraction according to race, the Tea Party avoids specious claims of extremism by eschewing race and its attendant cultural implications. Yet, the Tea Party really represents a direct attack against these insidious forces condemning our school system for NAM failure, apologizing to the world for America's militaristic prowess, and concocting an environmental scam as part of the oppressor-savage narrative. While couched in the language of economics, there's a clear path to racial issues engendering irrevocable changes for our cultural and racial makeup. Of course, this doesn't equate with hatred, but rather a simple frustration with the prevailing racial zeitgeist as expressed on this and similar blogs.

And still, despite the essentially subterranean focus on race, the media portrays the Tea Partiers, the educated, productive Tea Partiers, as bucolic, jingoistic backwoods dolts harboring an immoderate racism. Despite the complete absence of explicit racial collectivism, contrasted with the Wise Latina, Obama's church, this popular t-shirt, and this lovely woman, they're still unfairly smeared. Such a strategy, whereby leftists hurl false racially charged pejoratives, is gradually losing its luster and soon whites will become numb to such accusations. Til then, maybe we should ignore it instead of pandering to a media that sets an impossible standard for those with "lying eyes".

[Note: I wholeheartedly champion the individualistic notions the Tea Party advocates and that's the type of race-neutral, BUT RACIALLY CONSCIOUS, as in the HBD, movement that I want to see.]

Implications of Arizona's Illegal Immigration Law

On Friday, Arizona signed a controversial bill imposing stricter guidelines on immigration and liberating efforts to depress illegal trespassing. The law institutes seemingly reasonable policies.

The legislation, sent to the Republican governor by the GOP-led Legislature, makes it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally. It also requires local police officers to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants; allows lawsuits against government agencies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws; and makes it illegal to hire illegal immigrants for day labor or knowingly transport them.

Of course, the left frames this as an Orwellian scheme targeting Hispanics. Here's some amusing quotes from dissenters (apparently, their racial collectivism is acceptable):

Emilio Almodovar, a 13-year-old American citizen from Phoenix, said "We can't walk to school any more. We can't be in the streets anymore without the pigs thinking we're illegal immigrants." [Great ambassador for the leftist idealism about assimilation.]

"A thousand people a day are being deported. A thousand families being destroyed. And this comes at a very high moral and financial cost to this nation," said Maria Rodriguez, executive director of the Florida Immigration Coalition. [I won't even comment on the financial cost statement. But perhaps if they didn't want to be separated, they shouldn't have ventured here illegally?]

Guatemala's Foreign Relations Department decried the measure in a statement saying "it threatens basic notions of justice." [For who?]

The law sends "a clear message that Arizona is unfriendly to undocumented aliens," said Peter Spiro, a Temple University law professor. [You're perceptive. Should we welcome them enthusiastically?]

Generally, the opposition's soothsayers foresee a police state where legal migrants are harassed merely due to their skin color. This will likely happen quite infrequently, but no matter, crime prevention has inherent probabilistic uncertainty and thus some innocent parties will suffer by mere association. As in the feminist desire for unfettered sexual freedom, liberals want a world free of inequity and injustice, yet still somehow be able to maintain stable societies. Here's President Obama on the news:

Earlier Friday, Obama called the Arizona bill "misguided" and instructed the Justice Department to examine it to see if it's legal. He also said the federal government must enact immigration reform at the national level – or leave the door open to "irresponsibility by others."

"That includes, for example, the recent efforts in Arizona, which threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe," Obama said.

Note that Obama seeks reform at the federal level, a hallmark of centralized power where a few powerful parties can exert inordinate control. Also note the transparently whimsical dismissal of this law as Draconian, appealing to some nebulous concept of "keeping us safe" and "notions of fairness". In essence, liberals don't covet a "reasonable immigration policy", instead they will simply oppose any measure of immigration restriction until none exists. They will interminably disseminate vague proclamations on the issue, offering bland rhetoric, yet really just procrastinating the issue until the proper voting demographics arise.

The intended end game scenario is the complete cultural and racial overhaul of America, as leftists consider this country an entity soon coalesced into a fully global landscape. In their view, the massive influx of Hispanics represents a neutral (or probably positive) transformation of this country as we are devoid of meaningful tradition, laws, and policy precedents. Not to mention the abject blank slatism that finds Canadian proximity to be a factor in school performance. I leave you with this illustrative quote from the HuffPo comment section:

I STAND with the HISPANIC COMMUNITY!!!!!! I am AFRICAN AMERICAN, so, that mean's, I am BROWN! so if I were to go to ARIZONA, I would be STOPPED for being BLACK and BROWN!!! INDIAN'S, BLACK'S, CHINESE, and now the HISPANIC'S, these are the so called, (ILLEGAL'S) well, NOT SO! we are the BACK BONE of AMERICA! we BUILD this country! and we ain't going no where anytime too SOON! we are here too STAY! WATCH US!

Should I even comment?

How the Vastness of Space Reflects on Humanity

Saturday Audience Participation

The Hubble space telescope turns 20 years old today. In my estimation, the basic conflict between faith and reason is the demeaning view science takes towards humanity's importance. Besides the (albeit contentious) undermining of special creation, perhaps astronomy provides us with the most sobering of truths. It's in the grandiose pictures like the one shown that we find ourselves barely registering on the cosmic scale of existence.

But some consider our loneliness, even our possible uniqueness as an intelligent species, as justification for our value. Maybe we don't register in the heavens, but large scale impact needn't define worthwhile experience.

So the question: How do photos like this make you feel? Does it engender a nihilistic depression or an idealistic romanticism about human life? Or maybe merely asking these questions should be a task only for the masochistic more worried about philosphoical esoterica than immediate and ultimately more gratifying local matters?

Steele on Black Voters and His Conflict with Conservatism

In remarks given to a group of DePaul University students this week, Michael Steele unabashedly countenances the notion of identity politics. Asked about the paucity of blacks amongst Republican voters, Steele responded as if channeling Nancy Pelosi:

"You really don't have a reason to, to be honest -- we haven't done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True," Republican National Chairman Michael Steele told 200 DePaul University students Tuesday night.

The GOP is purportedly the conservative branch of our political machine, the ones who protect individual rights and denigrate racial racketeering. Yet Steele clearly disavows these core conservative principles, implying that Republicans must pass a standard unique to the black experience. Steele, owing to his conservative pedigree, should have noted the sufficiency of individual freedom and free market ideals as justification for "doing a good job" in regards to blacks. Conservatism champions individual opportunity as the defining metric for societal freedom, a concept Steele neglects in pandering to all those potential minority voters. Of course, Steele has become notorious for using colloquial catchphrases in fashioning himself as an intrepid leader.

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

The focus on attracting black and Hispanic voters isn't new; W. and Rove chased the same idealistic dream during their tenure. In his remarks, Steele chastises the much maligned "Southern Strategy", which in my opinion represents rather elementary math, not insidious racism.

"For the last 40-plus years we had a 'Southern Strategy' that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, 'Bubba' went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton."

“We need messengers to really capture that region - young, Hispanic, black, a cross section."

Again, why would the Southern Strategy offend any person who supports individual freedom, choice, and classical liberal economics? The Southern Strategy was a surreptitious effort stressing rather benign issues like school choice and neighborhood demographics, redistribution of wealth, merit-based hiring, and traditional culture. Was there an underlying opposition to blacks? Perhaps, but only because most liberal social engineering schemes, like universal healthcare and welfare, ultimately derive from racial disparities. [When I talk of the Southern Strategy, I mean the late 1970's to early 2000's incarnation.]

And while Steele denigrates the Southern Strategy for alienating minorities due to its tacit coveting of white males, will his "off the hook" initiatives not have the same effect, but in reverse? Are whites not allowed to experience the same ire towards transparent racial patronizing? Are the means by which Republicans attract minorities, perhaps by softening immigration laws, necessarily palatable to a white audience?

Seriously, I sometimes feel sorry for Mr. Steele. He does seem like a decent man who sincerely wants to make this country better. But he too often goes off script and discloses some opinion more befitting of an establishment Democrat than the leader of a nascent conservative renaissance.

Evolution of Beauty: Ciara's "I Ride"

The evolution of beauty - From this:

to this:

How Much Time Parents Parent

I've written a number of posts on parenting, childhood, and the importance of family. Mostly, I've taken the romantic view that childhood represents a unique period unburdened by larger societal and occupational constraints. I've advocated two potentially discordant views: the notion that parents are an integral variable in properly raising children and also that parents must temper their tendency to overprotect curious youth.

According to a recent study, parents are actually spending even more time around their children than ever before.

The study analyzes a dozen surveys of how Americans say they use their time, taken at different periods from 1965 to 2007. It reports that the amount of child care time spent by parents at all income levels — and especially those with a college education — has risen “dramatically” since the mid-1990s.

Before 1995, mothers spent an average of about 12 hours a week attending to the needs of their children. By 2007, that number had risen to 21.2 hours a week for college-educated women and 15.9 hours for those with less education. Although mothers still do most of the parenting, fathers also registered striking gains: to 9.6 hours a week for college-educated men, more than double the pre-1995 rate of 4.5 hours; and to 6.8 hours for other men, up from 3.7.

Yet, this increase in involvement isn't reflected in parent surveys.

It’s a function of people working so hard, and they are worried they’re shortchanging their children. I’ve never found a group of parents who believe they are spending enough time with their kids.

First, let me qualify the above by pointing out the ramifications of delayed fertility. As the birth rate drops for all racial and economic cohorts, the people who want children are comprising an increasingly larger sector of the parental population. In years past, prior to abortion, condom use, and the morning after pill, pregnancy often occurred as an axiomatic trajectory of life, instead of the "let's have one when we're ready" mindset that dominates today. Perhaps today's parents are simply more involved because they're more willing to have kids in the first place. Further, they also have less kids, so time isn't split between separate children and activities.

Back to the paradoxical reaction noted above and the pervasive bemoaning of absentee parents. Parallel to my own analysis, social commentators lament that in our cultural malaise, parents become secondary motivators of behavior behind TV, popular culture, and the insidious political machine (i.e. your local public school). Quite simply, as the avenues of information open, parental imposition is increasingly diminished as a motivator of behavior. The Internet first provided children with a glimpse into forbidden spheres of knowledge, including porn, dirty humor, and mystifying phenomena like the Insane Clown Posse. Mobile technology and the incessant communicating between teens via texts, Facebook, and Twitter further enervates parents as authority figures. As a result, parents engage with a formidable opponent in focusing their children's attention and logically conclude their time represents a futile effort at impacting kid's lives.

Social Construction of Race and Hollywood Casting

Anti-racists forcefully promulgate the mendacious claim that race is merely a social construction. While that phrase has become entrenched in racial academic discourse, the underlying motivations behind such speciousness are rarely articulated. In essence, defining race as a social construction allows Boasian intellectuals to theorize that all stereotypes, presumed racial differences, and the interminable phenomenon of white privilege derive from the promotion of a European-centered racial hierarchy. By promoting these social memes in concert, anti-racists can impugn whites for any issue even obliquely related to race. The antithesis of social constructionism, referred to as HBD, race realism, or hereditarianism, provides an alternative postulation on race that anti-racists seek to undermine.

In a reductionist sense, most of anti-racism emerges from a virulent hatred of Western Civilization and unctuous moral preening for the purposes of social posturing and ego-masturbation. Thus, the arguments espoused by this cohort often represent blatant internal contradictions. Of course, such logical inconsistencies become ineluctable when the main goal isn't a pursuit of disinterested truth, but rather indiscriminate censure of whites.

Last December, Disney cast an Italian-American as an Asian superhero in their upcoming film adaption of The Weapon.

More white people playing Asians! Hey, it's the Hollywood way. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the very Caucasian star of the Disney Channel series Wizards of Waverly Place, will star in The Weapon. I am not familiar with The Weapon, but from what I've read about it, Tommy Zhou is indeed an Asian character. David Henrie, who I had never even heard of before reading this news item, is not an Asian person. Hooray for Hollywood, you've done it again. That's racist!

This race-bending with whites playing Asians has quite a history in Hollywood. I needn't be pedantic here and point out the ire displayed above and in the comments section. But I will note the obvious conflict between social construction and anger concerning these types of casting decisions.

If race is solely a construction of the biased human mind and thus one presumes almost entirely based on physical characteristics and easily appropriated indicators like dress and dialect, then where's the problem? The pigments of white and Asian skin are quite close and the epithantic fold can be easily replicated with makeup. Any other obvious differences in phenotypes will be imperceptible given a modicum of makeup and, if needed, special effects. In fact, when David Carradine, the star of Kung-Fu, died, I was quite surprised he was not at least part Asian. Part Asian actors such as Keanu Reeves, Dean Cain, and Kristin Kreuk often play plain-ol' white characters with the audience completely ignorant of their ancestry.

Basically, the line between Asian and Caucasian, if defined solely by physical appearance, is often quite ambiguous. And under the guidelines of social construction, the paradigm that defines Barack Obama as black and Wentworth Miller as white, these anti-racists should applaud such overt attempts at blurring racial distinctions.

Instead, they complain and they do so because this represents yet another opportunity to criticize whites for xenophobia, cultural ignorance, and racism. And that's the message: anti-racists will forever condemn whites even if such admonishment constitutes a stark departure from their most important principles.

4/20: Why Liberals Love Weed

Today is 4/20. To hipsters, the University of Colorado - Boulder, and high school kids nurturing their anti-conformity, it's time to smoke that ganja. At Alternet.org, the director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, Bill Piper, opines on pro-weed "activism":

The war on marijuana won't end, however, if everyone who supports reform stays silent. Maybe you smoke marijuana and are tired of being considered a criminal. Maybe you work in law enforcement and are tired of ruining people's lives by arresting them. Maybe you're a teacher or public health advocate tired of politicians cutting money for education and health to pay for the construction of new jails and prisons Maybe you're a civil rights activist appalled by racial disparities in marijuana law enforcement. Or maybe you just don't want your tax dollars wasted on ineffective policies.

Mr. Piper risibly couches this as a civil rights mandate whereby potheads are punished for individual action independent of any societal impact. Such a claim merits more than a cursory analysis, but considering the excessively violent Mexican trade of weed and significant negative health effects, I'd consider that statement with cautious incredulity. In general, I don't oppose decriminalization of marijuana, primarily appealing to the precedent of alcohol legalization. But I don't naively presume weed is a product akin to vegetables and potatoes.

Generally, one will encounter individuals like Mr. Piper whose rational arguments belie an emotional attachment to pot. As I've mentioned many times before, at its most basic level, liberalism represents a capricious rejection of any social or cultural meme even tenuously connected to tradition. Every pervasive norm of the left derives from an aversion to mainstream culture, including the love of microbreweries, Whole Foods, and weed. That's why pot finds favor amongst the SWPL/effete urbanite sect, a cohort that eschews fast food due to its noxious health effects, yet champions pot as a benign relaxant.

Marijuana, forever associated with the ultimate counter-culture movement of 60's hippies, melds together a number of leftist ideals. It's "natural" so glib Gaiaists can pontificate about the environment and engage in a safe realization of the noble savage lifestyle. Further, the opposing forces that deny its use, such as the police force, prison system, and social conservatives, epitomize the "Man" and his insidious "fascism". Finally, Mr. Piper notes the following as if it represents some awful injustice:

Police made more than 750,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2008 alone. Those arrested were separated from their loved ones, branded criminals, denied jobs, and in many cases prohibited from accessing student loans, public housing and other public assistance.

I point Mr. Piper to this early 2000's one hit wonder. I think that about explains the justification for this "discrimination". Of course, I imagine those advocating such a view also decry insurance companies charging higher premiums for fat people as if obesity has no affect on health outcomes.

Reasoning and Practical Consequences of Racialism

Yesterday, the Audacious Epigone commented on the seemingly contradictory social perspectives germane to gay and (white) racial pride. He notes:

On my facebook news feed, I noticed a friend had a status update that read "Yay pride week!" She's bisexual with a healthy libido--the kind of girl who screams to be bedded, not an ugly, serious LGBT-activist type. So I commented:

White pride, huh? I'm glad you don't hate everything about yourself ;)

....several other comments expressed very predictable disgust at the idea, justifying my comment in a general sense. Those responding with hostility clearly were appalled by the idea of embracing a white racial identity.

AE makes a perspicacious observation concerning the differing attitudes concerning majority and minority behavior. First, allow me to redress a slight problem with AE's argument. "Gay pride" as engaged in by most homosexuals isn't actually an expression of "pride" concerning one's predilection towards same-sex attraction. Instead, as a result of social ostracism, gays are opposing the larger paradigm that frames homosexuality as sexual deviancy and appropriate in only a private context. Essentially, they assail the notion that homosexuality is something to be ashamed of; in doing so, they co-opt a word that doesn't reflect their exact message, but does confer upon them the intended positivity. They actually feel the opposite of shame, a concept framed as "pride" for the purposes of marketing.

Second, AE broaches the idea that popular society tacitly admonishes any notion of white racial pride, as opposed to its encouragement of minority collectivism. In my opinion, this apprehension concerning white racialism underpins the Tea Party backlash and the incessant chiding of its racial homogeneity.

Pride is generally considered the feeling of esteem or satisfaction. In regards to racial pride, this would seemingly equate with the notion that racial or ethnic accomplishment bequeaths individual members of a given genetic family with a sense of gratification. By this definition, the successes of "tribe" members, such as those by a scientific luminary like Newton, and those of large scale cohorts, such as early American colonists, are motivators for racial or ethnic pride.

But is this concept even rational? Can an individual completely removed or essentially inconsequential in bringing forth these accomplishments rationally feel pride? Can individual esteem derive from the actions of others significantly removed from oneself? I contend these objections completely undermine the rationality of ethnic and racial pride, as pride for venerable achievement only reasonably results from one's own struggle. Only those intimately involved in a given process deserve the honor commensurate with laudable work. In general, it is the slothful and unsatisfied that seek to claim admiration rightfully conferred upon others.

For a concrete example of this phenomenon, take a family comprised of one incarcerated sibling and one decorated scientist. How can the loser sibling reasonably feel pride for the accomplishments of his sibling by the mere genetic link between them? Is he magically exonerated for the miserable failings of his own life through genetic osmosis? Did he display an indefatigable spirit, intense pugnacity, and peerless ability, the aspects of achievement that justify his brother's esteem? Not at all. Yet, he can somehow embrace this as reason for his own pride!? Perhaps, he feels empathetic happiness FOR his brother, but surely not pride.

The spoils of accomplishment, the pride initiated by a job well done, belong to the actors bringing forth the success.

But let me briefly qualify this argument. As in many realms of discourse, the reasonable needn't match the pragmatic. Is racial and ethnic pride a wholly illogical phenomenon? Yes, but that doesn't preclude it from providing benedictions for a given population, such as ethnic based initiatives like Swedish socialism, the British BNP, and those opposing Muslim intrusion in the Netherlands. As with the 2001 New England Patriots, a collectively defined objective that still celebrates individual success can prove adaptive in regards to large scale endeavors. Owing to our social constitution, humans react positively to peer group reinforcement and experience a palpable connection to kin that often betrays our egoistic leanings. The hidebound keepers of reason like myself surely scoff at the masses' delusions, but as any economist notes, human behavior whimsically shirks the logical. And if the ends prove positive for both society and its individual constituents, should we dissuade emotions that are ultimately foolish?

A Picture Defines the Debate

William Shockley was the brilliant inventor of the transistor, a feat that gave him the Nobel Prize in 1956 and changed the course of human existence. Later in life, Shockley expressed his concern for the dysgenic future of humanity, particularly as it would impact American life. Of course, his arguments were premised upon the basic tenets of racial intelligence differences and the heritability of IQ. His views were almost identical to those of HBDers (demography defines destiny), so I needn't expound further on his background.

Of course, popular media demonized Shockley as a furtive racist despite his cogent proclamations to the contrary. Nonetheless, Shockley tirelessly defended his un-PC positions for he understood the inherent inequities and potential problems that arise from low-intelligence fecundity (whites included). In 1974, Shockley "debated" a black woman over the merits of racial intelligence differences in a rather famous television program. The following screenshot still encapsulates how the two sides argue in discussing this highly contentious issue (Shockley on the right).

Simple Genetic Based Dating Tip

Quick Dating/Game tip for Betas:

If you intend on scoring women significantly above you in dating market value (i.e. physically attractive), then focus on dating prospects within your own ethnicity. This is an especially efficacious strategy for Greeks, Jews, and Russians as these groups have extant cultural, religious, and social edifices solely comprised of peer ethnics. I would include Italians as they've maintained themselves as a distinct group, but Italian women are primarily attracted to alphas, per Jersey Shore. Women will lower their standards for the commonality resulting from shared culture and background as well as the offering of positive communal reinforcement, especially from more traditional elders.

Open Thread

Saturday Audience Participation

Open thread.

The Tea Party's Belief in HBD

Yesterday was Tax Day and the Tea Party regime was out in full force promulgating their message. As the Tea Party movement grows, many are curious as to what demographics comprise this grassroots campaign. A recent University of Washington study sheds light on the matter:

A new University of Washington survey found that among whites, southerners are 12 percent more likely to support the tea party than whites in other parts of the U.S., and that conservatives are 28 percent more likely than liberals to support the group.

"The tea party is not just about politics and size of government. The data suggests it may also be about race,"said Christopher Parker, a UW assistant professor of political science who directed the survey.

Of course, any large scale congregation of white Christians automatically equates with something noxious. By merely forming a coalition that attracts whites, these libertarian leaning individuals are blamed for racial enmity. I can't think of any other factors underpinning this discord.

"Are we in a post-racial society? Our survey indicates a resounding no,"Parker said.

Here's the interesting part. I couldn't find the exact questions, but this represents positive news for those pushing the HBD canon into the public sphere.

Among whites who approved [of the Tea Party], 35 percent said they believe blacks to be hardworking, 45 percent said they believe them intelligent and 41 percent said they believe them trustworthy.

That's a rather large group of potentially unmined HBDers (55% of pro-Tea Party whites). The opaqueness of Obama's campaign dissembling and his "uniter" birthright are slowly unraveling and many are beginning to notice the racial motivation behind initiatives like the fittingly named Race to the Top and universal healthcare. Immigration reform further illustrates the left's plan to extirpate the hallmarks of American life. As the left's motivations become patently evident, people such as the Tea Partiers will free themselves from the constraints of PC and feel strongly compelled to admit what we all know to be true.

Derbyshire at Penn Law and Intellectual Monopolism

In a panel discussion entitled Revisiting Race and Remedies: Should the Government Play A Role in Eliminating Racial Disparities in Education and Employment? held by the Black Law Students Association of UPenn's Law School, John Derbyshire presented the hereditarian position that racial gaps ultimately derive from disparate evolutionary paths.

Derbyshire, who I gladly note reads this blog, was joined by the usual suspects arguing for rampant discrimination, anti-intellectual culture, and an intrepid professor contending the abolishment of tracking will subvert the 80 year-old gap. The response to his scientifically sound (and anecdotally corroborated) arguments were unsurprisingly harsh. Keith Olbermann deemed him the third worst person in the world and the former Sportscenter anchor found the mere notice of West African spring dominance appalling. More race denialism ignorance and personal invective pervade this DailyKos article.

Actually, Genetics Shows that there is no such thing as race. We all have the same DNA. [And Sarah Palin has the cognitive acuity of Richard Feynman?]

There's no evidence that "our species separated into two parts 50, 60, or 70 thousand years ago" that's bullshit, especially about the "two parts" he just makes stuff up as it suits him...and then is Derbyshire wholly ignorant of trade routes? [Umm...I think even liberal creationists agree we did leave Africa. There weren't many trade routes prior to civilization, which is the time period when most racial traits and genetic material arose.]

you can't tell a black persons genes from those of a white persons! [Tell that to a black person hoping for a bone marrow transplant.]

You start with the 'fact' that your own DNA is superior to all other DNA, then work your way down by people you like less and less in a completely objective manner! :D!!! [Only overeducated Brown and Berkeley grads could conflate average measures of intelligence with moral value.]

In addition to the anti-science blithering copied above, the DailyKos commentariat also attacks Derb for lacking the appropriate credentials.

You mean he doesn't have an advanced degree in genetics! I'm shocked.

The guy learned about genetics while working on his mathematics degree?

Apparently he believes his maths degree & computer-programmer-on-Wall-Street experience qualify him to hold forth on topics in all sorts of fields.

Their condemnation isn't without merit. But the data, much of which resides in the quantitative and not biological domain, simply doesn't require an advanced degree to analyze. The basic processes of evolution, the ones that explain racial differences, are taught in 6th grade classrooms. Further, an inspired autodidact can attain reasonable fluency in a specific field with appropriate study. But notice how the commentators automatically dismiss Derb's viewpoint because he never "officially" studied the subject. [I doubt many of them have STEM experience as most lifetime researchers or academics have several, occasionally orthogonal, interests throughout their career.]

This reflects the liberal insistence that everything be "officially bestowed". Some governing body must always confirm success or deem one as a proper authority. Of course, in medicine or piloting, this represents a prudent and reasonable strategy. Other times, most notably in the job market, this hampers individuals from passing standards for which they're appropriately qualified.

As noted above, this blockades "non-experts" from commenting on assuredly public fields of knowledge. In the age of New Media and open sourcing, no longer are the avenues of study confined to the Ivory Tower. Scientifically-based websites teem with homegrown neophytes parsing through the data in their spare time. But by continuously affirming the unquestioned authority of Ivory Tower intellectuals, liberals can obviate any dissension from the PC doctrine.

Since the Ivory Tower is now dominated by left-leaning, race denialists, academics who espousing a counter opinion, such as Linda Gottfredson or Arthur Jensen, are subject to hostile working conditions. Additionally, any audacious graduate student wishing to pursue race-based science, in genetics, psychometrics, or medicine, will be met with derision and likely ostracism from his peers and the professors who provide his funding. To endure such hardship represents a formidable task and, accordingly, those that come out the other side, the ones DailyKos readers lionize as the real judges of Science, conform to the embedded views of their predecessors. Thus, the Ivory Tower engages in a self-aggrandizing scheme, both by championing the pursuit of secondary education as required for the enlightened class and by supporting only those with an acceptably PC mindset.

[For anyone curious, click on hyperlinks for supplementary material.]

Healthcare, Malpractice, and The Problem of Democracy

The main problem with healthcare reform is that instead of fixing embedded inefficiencies, Obamacare seeks to undermine the entire system. A recent study found that a significant number of doctors are motivated by fear, instead of patient health.

A substantial number of U.S. heart doctors — about one in four — say they order medical tests that might not be needed out of fear of getting sued, according to a new study.

Nearly 600 doctors were surveyed for the study to determine how aggressively they treat their patients and whether non-medical issues have influenced their decisions to order invasive heart tests.

Most said they weren't swayed by such things as financial gain or a patient's expectations. But about 24% of the doctors said they had recommended the test in the previous year because they were worried about malpractice lawsuits. About 27% said they did it because they thought their colleagues would do the test.

The insurance companies and their paying constituency must foot the bill for thwarting the rapacious malpractice racket. A reasonable change of law concerning the standard for doctor incompetence could easily rectify this and offset many expenses. Instead, Obamacare neglects these reasonable solutions in favor of implementing idealistic ones.

This is an inherent problem with democracy. Concerning large-scale policies such as healthcare, the grandiose initiatives often trump pragmatic ones because the former resonate more vigorously with a largely ignorant public. Imagine Obama instead championed a restriction on malpractice suits and reducing administrative costs through some mild form of standardization. These reasonable and practical ideas would likely be far more beneficial in reducing insurance costs and providing better healthcare. But how would the public, the VOTING public, react to such seemingly enervated changes?

Contrastingly, Obama's complete transformation of the healthcare system sells better to a public unaware of market efficiencies and economic tradeoffs. Ostensibly, politicians sell ideas to the public, not act as disinterested arbiters of policy. And in a world where Michael Bay's ostentatious cinema reigns supreme and Lady Gaga's garish make-up engenders admiration instead of ostracism, the judicious and prudent usually lose out.

African "Brain Drain" and Western Emigration

Despite profligate investments, exhaustive study, and use of esoteric statistical tools, sociological research fares about as well as the average person's perennially lying eyes. Here's another groundbreaking study showing Africa lags in scientific research output.

Africa's contribution to the global body of scientific research is very small and does little to benefit its own populations, according to a report from Thomson Reuters released on Monday.

Like India and China [umm..China? You mean the inchoate world power], Africa suffers from a "hemorrhage of talent," the report said, with many of its best brains leaving to study abroad and failing to return.

"Africa's overall volume of activity remains small, much smaller than is desirable if the potential contribution of its researchers is to be realized for the benefit of its populations," said Adams.

Interestingly (or not), South Africa is the largest producer of research. I wonder what distinguishes that country from its continental neighbors. The authors blame low output on "brain drain" and "chronic lack of investment in facilities for research and teaching".

"The African diaspora provides powerful intellectual input to the research achievements of other countries, but returns less benefit to the countries of birth."

Well the first claim is a dubious one, likely included to deflect charges of racism and to allay those with a vacillating faith in racial egalitarianism. But fortunately, the paper does broach the importance of a "smart fraction", the notion that a large intellectual class is necessary for gross societal benefits.

Predictably, the authors ignore how Western mores concerning immigration undermine African progress. Madonna, a woman that epitomizes illogical American liberalism, recently said this about her new Malawi school for girls:

"We will stop the brain drain happening in so many African nations - our students will receive an internationally competitive education while incorporating local values...Once instilled with pride in their homeland, young women will understand the importance of remaining in Malawi and investing in their own communities."

But isn't this sentiment tantamount to reduced immigration? Isn't Madonna essentially championing a world where native sons stay and build their own communities instead of migrating to foreign nations? In America, immigration reformers want to reduce foreign-born nationals from coming in, but the situations are parallel. The primary difference is that American conservatives formulate an argument where the ultimate beneficiaries are native-born Americans (who maintain their jobs) instead of foreign, non-white peoples.

In addition to this rather obvious incoherency, the simultaneous support of unfettered Western immigration of third-world peoples and demand for third-world aid represents an interminably noxious feedback loop. In an effort to increase diversity and express their limitless tolerance, Western countries welcome third-world peoples, some of whom are of the smart fraction cohort. As the paper shows, this undermines African progress, thus fomenting demand for America to export money, food, and even our own intellectual class. Citing the article's findings, this aid "[is] not being invested in the research base" or other potentially beneficial initiatives, in part due to a corrupt government absent of its most component citizens. This loop continues, with Africa getting worse, smart people escaping destitution, and America forever seeing itself as the main purveyor of success.

How to Choose a College: Don't Listen to "Experts"

Earlier this month, undergraduate colleges sent out their admissions decisions. For some, that means four years disgracefully exiled to their safety school; for others, it represents a fresh start walking halls covered in Ivy. Recently, many students have begun applying to upwards of 15 schools, thus making this month fraught with indecision and apprehension. After expressing indignant surprise over the dream school rejection and subsequently hiding such failure from the hordes of other suburban moms, their parents will meticulously seek out advice regarding the proper school for their special son or daughter. Unfortunately, the purveyors of this information are woefully incompetent in providing accurate and helpful aid. So unlike the avaricious Upper East Side private college counselor, I will provide a free and concise guide for choosing a college.

Location: In my opinion, this should be the least of your concerns. Essentially, there's middle of nowhere, urban, urban ghetto, and suburban collegetown. Suburban and middle of nowhere locations (most schools in the Midwest and Upstate New York) provide an enclosed social sphere and relatively little campus crime. If you are a female, please avoid urban and urban ghetto locations, i.e. Johns Hopkins and Georgia Tech. Universities in large cities, like Columbia, NYU, American, and Boston College, do provide somewhat of a safe haven from the odious people living in near proximity but one must always be judicious in venturing off-campus. I'd wager the collegetown scene is probably the most attractive to the widest array of students. As for location relative to home, don't worry. You'll only go home maybe once a semester, so this also shouldn't be a central concern.

Size: OK, here's the important stuff. The issue of size is mostly broached by the more reticent and reserved students. They worry that a large school will provide little support, coalesce them into a faceless crowd, and become too intimidating to scale socially. But in reality, these claims have little veracity, persisted by small schools manipulating the fears of the less congenial student. First, college is generally considered the initial step towards adult independence and accordingly, no school offers a "hand-holding" program. Even in a small school, a vibrant social life results from personal initiative, not facilitations of the school administrators. There are no playdates, sorry. If you do require personal attention, in the form of a peer adviser or a counselor, these are available at any school, independent of size.

Second, despite the spurious claims presented in small school brochures, the President will not know your name nor will he care about anything you're doing. School-wide attention is absent from even the most intimate of academic experiences, yet this doesn't preclude individualization within your department. If you show the proper initiative, many professors, TA's, and administrative assistants welcome outreach from students. But to qualify such optimism, your professors will still not have dinner with you nor will they attend your birthday party or hang out in the dorm. Again, individual attention is afforded to those willing to attain it. Many students will encounter gross obfuscation concerning class sizes, with most assuming small class size equates with a better academic experience. But in larger classes, there will likely be numerous teaching assistants (probably around 4-5 for a 100-200 person course) and thus far more avenues for help. In small classes, the sole professor will provide minimal time for extra help and will undoubtedly frighten struggling students.

Further, most naively presume small schools provide a less daunting social scene. In actuality, most small schools have a highly homogeneous student body and thus less peer group diversity catering to the plethora of social styles. Colleges like Lafeyette, Colgate, Oberlin, and the Claremont California schools generally have one type of student. If one doesn't square with that archetype, any benefits corresponding to a small school are null. At a place like UW-Madison, a Big 10 football powerhouse known for lurid and salacious partying, every type of social clique forms, including nerds, frat boys, sluts, thugs, and punk rockers. One can also further seclude himself from the boorish general population by entering venerable Honors Programs such as those offered Penn State, Purdue, and UIUC.

Now, I've attempted to disabuse my readers of the prevarication concerning small school environments. However, I can't really temper such criticism, as most large schools alum speak of similar experiences. Basically, many kids have a romantic vision of small schools despite such idealistic notions being satisfactorily mimicked at medium and larger schools. One word of caution: the peers at very large state schools will obviously be of lesser academic quality than those found at small schools. Yet, only the highest quality schools (solely Ivy-type, not even places like Colgate) can construct a student body almost entirely devoid of complete morons.

Social Life: Higher academic prestige is usually commensurate with less partying, but again, one can choose an appropriate peer group. But beware, unless you constrain your chosen peer group to the Campus Crusade for Christ, drinking will be an inevitable facet of life. Seriously, even the hardcore nerds drink. You simply can't shirk the encsconed American college drinking culture; there exists not one (OK maybe CalTech and UChi) nerd utopia in the entire country. Take the Ivy League for example: Cornell and Dartmouth have notorious frat scenes, Yale has had a recent drinking epidemic, Princeton has their eating club scene, Zuckerberg started Facebook after abject rejection from the Harvard in-crowd, Columbia and Penn attract the urban, SWPL sect, and Brown has naked parties with no academic standards. One could postulate the underlying reasons for such behavior, including adolescent outcast metamorphosis, jock-motivated social scenes (Ivies and Stanford recruit heavily), and childhood burnout leading to collegiate apathy.

As for Greek life, any male willing to submit himself to 3 months of embarrassing obsequiousness is rewarded with a guaranteed social calendar and a decent chance at women. You will engage in activities that undermine your pride, force you into a position of groveling servility, and likely make you physically ill. A cost-benefit analysis is probably most appropriate concerning this choice. For sororities, be attractive and gregarious, but not hotter than the older girls and you're in. Greek life dominates many small private schools catering to wealthy underachievers, like Washington and Lee and Lafeyette, as well as large southern state schools like Ole Miss.

One final note: The key to your social life is freshmen year and just to up your apprehension further, it's actually the first week. Make friends then because after your first year, almost every group is solidified. Most people I know spent their entire four years hanging out with kids from their pledge class, their major cohort, or their freshmen year dorm.

Academia: Note that crappy schools use the very same textbooks that the elite ones do. However, prestigious schools will challenge their students more, offering novel questions on exams and more arduous homework schedules. So, there is a difference in workload and in the difficulty of exams and assignments (mostly confined to examinations). Professor quality is likely a wash. The primary difference is the curve, an aspect of grading even in Humanities courses. Ivy-type schools have much higher average scores and thus beating the average or proving oneself superior to the masses is correspondingly more difficult. But again, go to an Honors program and you're essentially at a lower Ivy. Here's a few extra thoughts on Ivy vs. non-Ivy.

I'm not sure how many high schoolers or their parents even read my site, but I hope that helped.

Human Biodiversity and Sports on SNL

Via Saturday Night Live, physically-based HBD once again appears in the mainstream, carefully shrouded in the guise of comedy and espoused by an ostensibly uncouth character. Somewhere, Jimmy the Greek is very angry. This "joke" follows a recent Tom Brady sketch skewering the sexual harassment racket and noting female hypergamous attraction to alphas. At 2:13, Tina Fey says the following:

P.S. if Asians and Indians can compete with black people, it's not a sport. [Announcer: Hey, hey, that's racist.]

Violinist Abortion Argument and the Liberal Notion of Choice

I'm not an unequivocal pro-lifer, but I find abortion to be a deplorable act. To me, it reduces to an issue of life, not specious feminist blustering about subservience. In defining life, the only reasonably objective demarcation between life and non-life is conception, not a deliminator based on a subjectively chosen metric like heartbeat or fingerprints. However, the only tenable pro-abortion argument is eugenics-based. But the pro-abortionists almost always circumvent such reasonable discourse, instead favoring dissemblance on the patriarchy, the horrors of pregnancy, and the rather inane analogy presented below.

In 1971, Judith Jarvis Thompson wrote this rather obtuse article now part of the pro-abortion canon. The following example is probably the most famous part of the paper. I'm not seeking to fastidiously dissect this argument; instead, I want to comment on the underlying views of liberalism implied by this tome.

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you."

One would presume she confines this thought experiment to rape, but in context provided by the preceding paragraph, she implies this is a general case. Further, her acolytes make no such distinction.

Of course, such a view entirely removes women from the sphere of rational decision making. Ms. Thompson equates actively engaging in sexual intercourse to being unknowingly attached to another person. This means that despite being cognizant of the repercussions of sex and being conscious while the act occurs, the female is somehow an innocent victim imposed upon by a parasitic organism. Thompson includes phrases like "using someone else's body" in formulating her argument, implying she has an exceedingly stolid view on life. Further, such phrases illustrate how Thompson diminishes the singular bond between mother and child. The child is regarded as reaping in the mother's begrudgingly offered benediction.

But in sum, Thompson intends to fully exonerate women from making ultimately unwanted choices or having the ability to act autonomously. Here one notes the underpinning of liberalism whereby the underachieving groups, blacks, Hispanics, and women, are regarded as wholly dependent beings whose actions derive solely from a governing body. This amorphous governing body adopts the shape of the scapegoat-du-jour, including white males, the justice system, schools, and even the male sexual hormones. In this article, the creator of The Wire muses on the main contention of his beloved show. He's crafted a narrative where drug dealers, murderers, and other nefarious individuals are failed by "institutions like the police department or the school system" and thus tacitly excused for their transgressions.

In essence, these arguments include a implicit misogyny to them. After all, are women really so weak that they lack the ability to act on their own accord? Are women so weak that they can't gauge the ramifications of having sex? The conservative viewpoint actually considers women as independent beings who should pridefully own their actions, a standard set for any productive member of society. But feminists, like their crusading mimics in the anti-racist sect, chide such "utopic" dreams.

As an aside, Thompson does broach the voluntary sexual intercourse argument with a thought experiment concerning "people-seeds" (pregnancy seeds floating in the air that can impregnate a woman who opens her windows). Tacit to this discussion is the notion that subdued sexual activity is somehow impractical.

Reality TV and Social Conservatives

Saturday Audience Participation

Earlier this week, Larry Auster admitted to being completely unfamiliar with reality TV as he's "never watched one second of a reality TV show." I sent him the following e-mail, noting his perspicacity as a commentator is potentially undermined by this ignorance:

You admitted that you've never seen a reality TV show. But how can you consider yourself a serious commenter on the prevailing cultural depression when you're wholly ignorant of one of its most embedded trends?

I find this ignorance somewhat troublesome considering it's probably one of the most illustrative examples of how our culture and the concept of virtue is being shaped. In a similar vein, one can't accurately comment on the nature of social interactions without being familiar with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and Youtube.

Now I don't foresee Mr. Auster imbibing in the coming season of Jersey Shore or prattling about the latest drama on Real Housewives of Nauseating Entitlement. But can one accurately diagnosis our decaying cultural milieu despite being almost entirely removed from it?

I'm not sure. Surely, one can comment on activities, phenomenon, and events that one doesn't interact with intimately. Not all journalism requires a gonzo-type endeavor. But it just seems imperative that one is cognizant of popular culture memes, that viral content that spreads throughout the public consciousness. It's part of the water cooler discussion that's become ever more accessible and far ranging through recent social media.

So today's question: Do you watch reality TV and if so, what shows? Is reality TV a motivator, a symptom, or just a harmless guilty pleasure in regards to America's cultural depression (if it actually exists, of course)? And, can social conservatives justifiably comment on cultural trends that they circumvent? If social cons, supposedly the purveyors of piousness, do actually watch reality TV and visit TMZ, then is the battle lost already?

[Note: If you want pop culture from an acerbic, self-aware perspective, then watch The Soup on E!.]

StuffWhitePeopleDo: Become "Anti-Racists"

Awhile back, I came upon a few bloggers sanctimoniously referring to themselves as "anti-racists". Of course, these unctuous commentators propagate the prevailing wisdom about race in our PC-dominated culture: White (Christian) people suck. I hesitate in reducing an entire sphere of discourse to such a terse statement, but there's not much more than that. Possibly my "favorite" anti-racist blog is StuffWhitepeopleDo, written by a white guy so enveloped by self-hatred that I'm tempted to call a Poe's Law. If you wish to traverse the unobstructed plane of white liberal guilt, this guy represents the most elucidating example.

The blog is quite ironic in that it offers an absurdly comprehensive taxonomy of purportedly negative white behaviors, yet admonishes any parallel codification of non-white norms. Here's a few examples of white malevolence: "see a potential criminal in every black person", "refuse to shut up and listen when people of color explain racism", and "promote hollow forms of diversity instead of fighting racism". From reading these posts, one notices the ostensible lack of qualification for these observations. There's not even lip service paid towards these behaviors not encompassing the entirety of the white masses. Further, readers often criticize whites assuming non-whites will act in a certain manner; but isn't the entire point of the blog doing just that except applied to whites?

So here's a specific example of the anti-white diatribes released in this intellectual echo chamber, a domain of ideas currently undergirded by mainstream academia and media. A Mexican-America female attending a "very white university" (a hunch: not an Ivy) reflects on her odious white classmates:

A big reason is that although I’m clearly Mexican American, and that means certain definite things to me, including who and what I am, I often feel a friendly pressure to assimilate. Other students, especially, push me to do “normal” things sometimes that just don’t fit my background or who I am, even sometimes physically.

How dare they try to make her feel welcome?! Let's briefly look at the hardships she endures in this lily white prison:

...and a white student who knows me through other white students popped in. She had something in her hand, and she held it up while she was smiling.

“I think this would fit you!” she said. I saw that it was a dress. “My mom had it sent to me. It’s really pretty! It’s brand new, but it doesn’t quite fit me. Do you want to try it on?”

“Um, okay . . . “ And as she walked into my room, I said, “Wait, I mean, I’m sorry, but no. I’m okay, thanks. Thank you anyway, very much.”

I notice that white women as students here often push me to join in their ways. Their “fun” or “pretty” or “attractive” ways. I have dark, wavy hair, and they've asked several times if I’ve ever considered straightening it. Other women make suggestions about my makeup that fit lighter features and hair then mine.

Any of this sound familiar? Notice how the most innocuous (and openly nice) gestures are automatically fitted into this despondent framework of white vs. non-white. Sensible beauty tips and the lending of clothes are couched in a culture war with whites as colonizers and non-whites as innocent victims and, on top of that, the only ones conscious of this oppressive power structure. I'd bet the chubby and less fashionable white girls are receiving the very same recommendations. But the horrors continue:

The professors don’t seem all that sensitive to my ethnicity either. One knew that I’m not white and called me on it in class, by asking me to speak to how I felt about a topic (race and prisons) “as an Hispanic person.”...I didn’t feel right.

Funny that an explicit manifestation of the "diversity paradigm" is met with such contempt by actual students. Isn't the prime justification for affirmative action that different viewpoints, inexorably tied into race-based culture, will be expressed only if underrepresented peoples are present? Isn't her presence for the explicit purpose of varying the dialogue as it pertains to race and ethnicity? She continues. Read the last sentence of the above quote then the next one:

Most of the time, my ethnicity is not acknowledged in class, but then that doesn’t quite feel right either.

A dichotomy where whites lose either way. I think that about sums about the racial discourse in America. She finishes by asking the commenters for their take. I'm sure they'll be judicious in assessing the situation. Hope you enjoyed that stroll into bizarro world.

Romance Novels and Porn: Gender Sexual Fantasies

In an article HalfSigma will surely like, a Salon.com female writer muses on the double standard concerning porn and romance novels. Ms. Clark-Flory brazenly equates the fantasy provided by lurid and sensationalistic sex videos with that offered by overwrought romance novels and mawkish Lifetime movies.

[P]sychologist Helen Smith raises the question of whether "control over porn" is "really about control over men’s sexuality." She goes on to say: "I think there are many reasons that marriages are not working out, but porn seems to be the least of the problems. And I wonder -- does porn distort men’s attitudes as much as romance novels and Lifetime TV distort women's?" Well, that's provocative, ain't it! In all the time I've spent reading about and taking part in feminist debates about pornography, I've never heard that question raised.

Backing up for a second, this discussion was initiated by a divorcee blaming her husband's infidelity on porn addiction.

After 13 years of marriage, her husband had an affair with a woman who had "all the physical qualities of a porn star -- bleached blond hair, heavy makeup, provocative clothing, and large breasts."

The author and other commenters cursorily accept the axiom that porn presents the male ideal of female beauty. Apparently, this paragon of sexuality has large fake breasts, fake hair, loads of makeup obscuring her actual face, and wears clothes in order to exude a carnal availability. In order to undermine expression of male sexual wants and thus distort the sexual marketplace in an effort to court alphas, these commenters dissemble on what men actually want.

I interpret Smith's post much differently: It seems an attempt to point out that men and women are mutually deluded in their fantasies. (Which should come as no surprise, fantasies being fantasies and not reality.) Her point is that if we're to criticize the stereotypical male ideal of a sex pot with fake breasts and bleached blond hair, we ought to also consider a critique of equally clichéd female fantasy. Seems reasonable enough.

I applaud the author for noting the hypocrisy inherent in this debate. But due to the prevailing wisdom about media conceptions of beauty, she unwittingly ignores the fact that over the top porn does not motivate standards of beauty. Most men actually find the ornate porn star archetype quite off putting, as the fake breasts, fake nails, etc. diverge too far from the natural aesthetic to illicit attraction. Instead, they desire extremely beautiful, but natural and libidinous women to sate their sexual appetite. And much to the feminist chagrin, this represents a more accurate description of porn than the obfuscation above. In fact, the only physical trait described above that's ubiquitous amongst porn stars and sex symbols like Megan Fox and Heidi Klum are fake breasts.

Feminists create a false beauty paradigm where homely women feel comfortable by promulgating a distorted version of what men want. Then, they can define this version as unattainable and thus criticize male wants.

The female commenters also get the romance novel fantasy wrong. Romance novels and Lifetime movies don't actually present a "deluded fantasy". No, Nicholas Sparks movies disseminate a product that taps into the occulted domain of female attraction. Women do actually want an alpha Fabio with loads of money, an adroit cooking instinct, and eyes only for her. But the author denies she covets such a reductionist stereotype:

I would much prefer to sit here and fantasize about finding a knight in shining armor who will sweep me off my feet and do the dishes...I kid.

I don't believe her. To denigrate these products as fantastical is to deny the very things that pique a woman's sexual interest.