History of Racial Violence: Exaggerations and Hypocrisy

This weekend, the Huffington Post published an in-depth profile of Mississippi governor and potential Republican presidential candidate Haley Barbour. The author considers Mr. Barbour's candidacy in the context of his state's racial past and Mr. Barbour's own white-washing of that history.

Yet the 63-year-old has shown a penchant for airbrushing his state's segregationist past, a period he's inclined to describe as more like Mayberry than "Mississippi Burning."

Critics have dogged him for such comments, and Barbour has recently attempted to make amends, a sign he's aware that if he is to carry his party's banner next year against the country's first African-American president, he will have to be more forthright about Mississippi's troubled history.

His critics have accused Mr. Barbour of "insensitivity" and purposeful obtuseness about the state's racially charged violence. The governor himself has done little to assuage his opponents:

Just days ago, the governor told The Associated Press he remembers little about the racial violence pulsating through the state and the South during his youth. What does Barbour recall about the Freedom Summer of 1964, when he was 16, and the slayings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi shocked the nation?

"Not much," Barbour said casually, the kind of answer his critics find at once unbelievable and predictable.

The overall tone of the criticism is predictable. Apparently, Mr. Barbour doesn't spend enough time or energy wallowing about the state's violent history or understanding the persistent melancholy of his state's black citizens. Of course, a (white conservative) politician who refuses to prostrate himself as a sort of metaphysical racial sacrifice is often privy to such disdain. But as with most anti-racist rhetoric, one must question the justification of said grievances and the hypocritical stance of today's views on racial criminality.

Elite academia has largely reduced American history to a few important wars and seminal moments in black freedom. To support this narrative, "history" depicts whites as violent oppressors, from slavery to 20th century lynching as in the unfortunate case of Emmett Till. According to history texts, pre-60's America was a scary place for blacks with the potential for murder around every block.

The Mississippi in which Barbour grew up was home to some of the deadliest conflicts of the civil rights era, as black citizens sought to gain voting rights and to integrate public facilities, including schools and universities.

Yet such evident truths somehow escaped Mr. Barbour's purview, a reflection that perhaps most whites simply didn't care and that the violence has been exaggerated somewhat. Now I wouldn't make such a seemingly outlandish claim based on merely a logical premise, so let's consult a first-person account of black and white relations in that time period. Here's founding neocon Norman Podhertz's essay My Negro Problem and Ours:

Nor can [I] altogether gainsay the evidence of my [own] senses - especially such evidence of the senses as comes to being repeatedly beaten up, robbed, and in general hated terrorized, and humiliated.

I am standing alone in front of the building in which I live. That day in school, the teacher has asked a surly Negro boy named Quentin a question he was unable to answer. As usual I had waved my arm eagerly and, the right answer bursting from my lips, I was held up lovingly by the teacher...As I turn to walk into the building, the corner of my eye catches the motion of the bat [Quentin's little brother] has handed him. I try to duck, but the bat crashes colored lights into my head.

That afternoon, walking home, I am waylaid and surrounded by five Negroes, among whom is the anchor man of the disqualified team...This is all they need to hear and the five of them set upon me. They band me around, mostly in the stomach and on the arms and shoulders...For days, I walk home in terror.

How many times had I been called a liar for pleading poverty and pushed around, or searched, or beaten up.

Now the above incidents took place in New York and not the South, but many will recognize the described behaviors. Yet despite the seeming ubiquity of such violence, why does history view pre-60's blacks as helpless and oppressed?

Further, if the anti-racist crowd can bash Mr. Barbour merely for his professed ignorance and his lack of projected racial shame, then what of today's blacks? And similarly, why do we hear so often of pre-Civil Rights white racial violence, yet the facts of today's disproportionate violence is outright silenced. I won't provide specific numbers for the latter point because it's simply depressing, but there's plenty out there.

The hypocrisy is quite obvious here; blacks have no collective shame and their preponderance for violence is simply never mentioned. And if one dares speak the truth, empty pejorative commences instead of reasoned analysis, a situation summed up well by the term "hate facts." In fact, many of the anti-racist zealots go even further and seek to blame whites for black violence. As an example, Ferdinand profiled a sick woman who forgave her Haitian rapist as a nod to white colonialism.

So I applaud Mr. Barbour's position here, as he has actually denounced pre-60s violence but does not dwell on past transgressions in which had no part. We need mainstream politicians to take this route more often.

Trusting the Establishment: Examples and Underlying Reasoning

In a followup to Friday's post entitled Trusting Data, Part 2: Evidence on Both Sides, I present a worthwhile article from Newsweek's Sharon Begley about the fickleness of organized medicine.

If you follow the news about health research, you risk whiplash. First garlic lowers bad cholesterol, then—after more study—it doesn’t. Hormone replacement reduces the risk of heart disease in postmenopausal women, until a huge study finds that it doesn’t (and that it raises the risk of breast cancer to boot). Eating a big breakfast cuts your total daily calories, or not—as a study released last week finds. Yet even if biomedical research can be a fickle guide, we rely on it.

But what if wrong answers aren’t the exception but the rule? More and more scholars who scrutinize health research are now making that claim. It isn’t just an individual study here and there that’s flawed, they charge. Instead, the very framework of medical investigation may be off-kilter, leading time and again to findings that are at best unproved and at worst dangerously wrong. The result is a system that leads patients and physicians astray—spurring often costly regimens that won’t help and may even harm you.

She cites numerous medical controversies where popular opinion changed rapidly, with each side producing data ultimately flawed in some major respect. I had not read Mrs. Begely's article when I wrote mine on Friday, yet it perfectly mirrors what I had stated - that biases inherent to research should caution us from fully accepting the relevant wisdom.

While Begley does a great job of presenting the problem, she largely ignores the underlying motivations and reasoning behind such an unfortunate situation. I have previously considered the liberal ideology undergirding much of nutritional scholarship. For a quick refresher, think reformed hippies eager to adopt Eastern and South American mysticism as manifested through ethnic cuisine as well as undermine the palpable connection between meat eating and manhood. One could also consider the intellectual smugness, as a class issue, alluded to in this quote:

Biostatistician Steven Goodman of Johns Hopkins, who worries that the most-research-is-wrong claim “could promote an unhealthy skepticism about medical research, which is being used to fuel anti-science fervor.”

Perhaps I'll consider that in a future post. I have also mostly ignored the big money interests pushing the debate in whatever direction the drug companies decide. As Begley notes, the 40 billion dollar statin industry is built out of whole cloth, creating a problem where none exists then disseminating drugs that do nothing to thwart it. Everyone has heard the cliche that "money is the root of all evil" and despite its banality, it explains so much of how humans and their institutions operate. The drug companies have colluded with academic and medical establishments to create a wholly opaque system of faulty scholarship. This three headed monster is essentially impenetrable to the average intellect, making the general public susceptible to whatever snake-oil they decide to champion next.

Yet what solution exists for the small government, pro-capitalism conservatives? We understand the trade-offs inherent to any productive system and perhaps we begrudgingly accept this behemoth in order to maintain societal and economic freedom. Unfortunately, I don't see a viable solution, a situation exacerbated by a government that promotes the same tripe. Further, as I've covered before, our society now believes credentials are the only indication of authority. As a result, almost everyone will reject any justified medical iconoclast as an eccentric and ignorant crank.

We're stuck in a rut, a big, fat one full of death.

Cellphone Convos

Saturday Audience Participation

Today's Question: When in a public space such as a mall, restaurant, or store, why is it more annoying to hear someone have a cellphone conversation than to hear two people speak to each other in person?

Trusting Data, Part 2: Evidence on Both Sides

Last Friday, I posted a qualified criticism of empiricism. Primarily, I intended to denounce the political, personal, and social biases inherent to much of today's academic research. These biases include pharmaceutical companies funding a majority of medical research and then giving kick backs to general physicians (statins), liberal bias in research on intelligence, and political bias in economics for ideologues like Paul Krugman, 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Economics. I promoted a "commonsense" approach to making life decisions mostly based in evolutionary wisdom and anecdotal experience.

A few commenters took issue with my argument and blasted my presumed lack of respect for statistical rigor. I agreed somewhat and thus specified my approach should be applied almost exclusively to those fields not inundated with potential bias, like physics, astronomy, and engineering. I didn't illustrate my point further, namely that a layperson could have a very hard time meandering through all the specious data available. While those of us in the reactionary sphere, the iconoclasts who've justifiably rejected much of mainstream "wisdom", understand the basics, a person who hasn't yet taken the red pill could easily find research buttressing the mainstream. In almost every post on a controversial issue, I try to embed links to a few research papers supporting my arguments, but even I must admit that someone on the other side could do just the same.

So let's say someone has just discovered the paleo diet. He simply doesn't understand how the opposing paradigm, the one that lauds vegetarian, high-carb, low-fat as optimal, could promote such wrong information, how this lie could disseminate so thoroughly throughout society. A curious sort, he goes online to consider the data both ways and he starts with what he knows - the vegetarian diet is the best. Here's a sampling of what he'll find:

The Mayo Clinic promotes vegetarian diet as healthy alternative, including phytate-heavy beans, six servings of grains per day, incomplete-protein nuts, and spaghetti.

Website containing a large amount of research promoting health of vegetarian diet:

A significant body of population-based research documents the health benefits of a vegetarian diet. For example, a paper published in 1999 summarized the results of a study associating diet with chronic disease in a group of nearly 35,000 Seventh day Adventists living in California. The members of the group who followed a vegetarian diet (defined as eating no red meat, poultry, or fish)had lower incidences of many diseases, including obesity, hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, colon cancer, prostate cancer, and ischemic heart disease than the nonvegetarians (Fraser, 1999). Also in 1999, Key, et al., analyzed the combined results from five studies involving a total of more than 76,000 people that compared the incidence of disease among vegetarians (defined as eating no red meat, poultry or fish) to that of nonvegetarians with similar lifestyles. Mortality from ischemic heart disease was 24% lower in vegetarians than nonvegetarians (Key, et al).

Study showing a Low-Fat Vegan Diet Improves Glycemic Control and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in a Randomized Clinical Trial in Individuals With Type 2 Diabetes

Famous China Study by scholars at Cornell and Oxford claiming eating animal products leads to significant increase in modern disease (see destruction of this study here)

American Dietetic Association on vegetarian diet:

The results of an evidence-based review showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease. Vegetarians also appear to have lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension and type 2 diabetes than nonvegetarians. Features of a vegetarian diet that may reduce risk of chronic disease include lower intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol and higher intakes of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, soy products, fiber, phytochemicals.

Of course, one could also find plenty of research supporting the paleo diet and debunking nutritional myths like the connection between total cholesterol and heart disease as well as almost startingly quotes like this from the former president of the American College of Cardiology:

The low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet may well have played an unintended role in the current epidemics of obesity, lipid abnormalities, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndromes.

Now, I can almost guarantee each vegetarian study has an obvious flaw, usually that heavy meat-eaters tend to also eat lots of bad foods (think of the people at McDonald's). Essentially, none of these studies adequately compare the two major nutritional paradigms: low-fat/high-carb vs. high-fat/high-protein. And even I'll admit a vegetarian diet low in processed foods is a step-up from the typical American diet that includes meat but also a ton of horrible extras.

Of course, one could look at the data itself, but one can't expect a layperson to wade through the endless amount of data out there. And even if he had the time to do so, how many are capable of understanding the relevant arguments, dissecting faulty scholarship, or having the fortitude to reject the mainstream's maxims based on his own skepticism? In the end, it's exceedingly difficult because so much data exists on both sides. And that's why I consider commonsense, informed by paleo/evolutionary wisdom (generally defined) and anecdotal observation, so powerful.

Making Europe

If you've never seen this before, enjoy (H/T: Auster).

To any sane individual, this is obviously absurd. But can the left, consistent with their principles, really argue against this? After all, we are but one humanity, fully interconnected with no differences inherent between our groups. Europe was made not by European whites, but by people, wholly indistinguishable from their African brethren. Further, if societies exist independent of their majority constituency, then why can't Africans (and Muslims) comprise a "new" Europe, made according to progressive edicts and not the ideals of yesterday's jingoistic European man.

Obama Believes in American Exceptionalism

In his State of the Union speech last night, Obama tried to convince the American public that help is coming - from immigrants.

We’re the home to the world’s best colleges and universities, where more students come to study than any place on Earth.

What’s more, we are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea -– the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny. That’s why centuries of pioneers and immigrants have risked everything to come here.

Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents. They grew up as Americans and pledge allegiance to our flag, and yet they live every day with the threat of deportation. Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense.

Now, I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration. And I am prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows. (Applause.) I know that debate will be difficult. I know it will take time. But tonight, let’s agree to make that effort. And let’s stop expelling talented, responsible young people who could be staffing our research labs or starting a new business, who could be further enriching this nation.

Just as jobs and businesses can now race across borders...

One should consider the above in the context of his statements on education, whereby he regurgitated the axioms of educational romanticism and cognitive racial egalitarianism. Obama sums up America's educational future by envisioning a time when "America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world."

Yet for all his liberal creationism and idealism, Obama does seem to advance a popular meme of the Right, American Exceptionalism. A Washington Post article derisively notes the recent prevalence of this idea amongst conservative voices:

But with Republicans and tea party activists accusing President Obama and the Democrats of turning the country toward socialism, the idea that the United States is inherently superior to the world's other nations has become the battle cry from a new front in the ongoing culture wars.

...an argument over American exceptionalism "is a respectable way of raising the question of whether Obama is one of us," said William Galston,

The formulation of America as a shining beacon doesn't sit well with the relativistic left who not only see America as a toxic force, but also avoid denigrating failed nation-states common in the (eternally) developing world. Fortunately, Obama does view America as wholly unique. Though he has largely shirked an explicit statement on this subject, once offering a noticeably evasive answer that he " believe[s] in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." As the article cited above notes, he has however made other statements, always in ever grandiose terms, that imply a tacit support of American exceptionalism.

But how then do I conclude that Obama does actually view America as exceptional? In his SOTU, Obama implies that we must, in part, rely on immigrants for educational success, innovation, and general progress. Yet, if one looks at the nations from which most recent immigrants originate (primarily South America), one would presume these people could not provide such benedictions. After all, Mexico is pretty far down on this list of global testing scores. Thus, assuming Obama doesn't believe in racial intelligence differences (ha), his entire argument is premised on the notion that America can provide an educational, social, cultural, and occupational landscape that brings out talent unearthed by their native countries. Obama seems to believe that America can succeed where South American and African countries have completely failed. Obama's immigrant-as-savior-argument presumes that only America, and not Mexico or Colombia or Darfur, can turn farmhands into physicists within a generation or two.

Now, one would expect me to denounce such a naive viewpoint, but actually I don't fully disagree. I do think America is exceptional, though I surely don't think it has the ability to do what Obama thinks it can. In other words, demography is destiny no matter the protestations of America's left.

Yet, if we make this simple logical step inherent to Obama's speech, he's in fact making quite an incendiary statement from the left's perspective. After all, the globalist left never dares speak ill of South American and African nations, unless in the context of castigating America for the problems therein. Obama priasing America as an objectively better nation opposes the relativism popular on his side of the aisle.

However, I imagine most won't make this connection, thus freeing Obama's real message to promulgate unhindered. Obama wants to convince us that immigration is the future, that racial demographics have little impact on national success, that we should welcome Mexicans who we will train to make our cars and airplanes instead of our fajitas and burgers.

Abortion as an Abstract Concept

Last week, police arrested a truly sick individual named Dr. Kermit Gosnell. For years, this sociopath had induced labor and killed, via scissors to the back of the head or a knife across the throat, viable babies at about seven months. Once again, the abortion debate has revved up, with the pro-abortion side stridently condemning a man who takes their perspective to its logical conclusion and the pro-life side smugly nodding "I told you so."

In a germane post profiled by Vox Day, biology professor and leading atheist PZ Myers (or as I like to call him, "PC Meyer") espouses what I can only interpret as argument from relative disgust:

[T]he standard bullying tactics of waving bloody fetuses might cow the squeamish, but I'm a biologist. I've guillotined rats. I've held eyeballs in my hand and peeled them apart with a pair of scissors. I've used a wet-vac to clean up a lake of half-clotted blood from an exsanguinated dog. I've opened bodies and watched the intestines do their slow writhing dance, I've been elbow deep in blood, I've split open cats and stabbed them in the heart with a perfusion needle. I've extracted the brains of mice…with a pair of pliers. I've scooped brains out of buckets, I've counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies.

You want to make me back down by trying to inspire revulsion with dead baby pictures? I look at them unflinchingly and see meat. And meat does not frighten me.

Vox notes the despicable nature of this passage, Myers' unflinching coldness, his macabre delight in death, the false equivalency between a "dead baby" and "meat." Of course, Vox uses this to criticize atheism. I disagree, but I won't spend this post arguing that. Instead, let me highlight Vox's final statement:

This is the naked face of atheism, ladies and gentlemen. Look on it well and remember it, because it usually doesn't dare to show its disgusting and anti-human nature so openly.

I would disagree that atheism necessarily leads to this "anti-human nature" and instead apply this concept to general liberalism. In an attempt to undermine ethnic kin, the nuclear family, and growing babies, characterize sex as merely the pursuit of pleasure, and reject religion not due to its philosophical weakness but its correspondence to traditionalism, leftism has literally adopted an "anti-human", anti-transcendent stance. In other words, they have removed emotional attachment, whether to country, child, or spiritual concerns, from the cultural landscape. I'll use the abortion debate as an example to illustrate the larger point.

The pro-abortion cabal has convinced mothers that their fetus is a "clump of cells" and thus has no moral value. This final step follows a long chain of cultural memes that disentangle sexual relations from birth and undermine life itself as well as the family structure that nurtures it. Thus, our society does not view children as manifestations of loving relationships and valuable lives themselves, these being wholly spiritual concepts, but rather considers children pragmatic concerns that only matter when they affect the parents' daily lives. As a result, liberals and feminists have successfully couched life as a practical, not a moral, concept.

Fittingly, mothers don't connect the baby inside them with a valuable life. After all, they don't have to feed it or cloth it or figure out the baby daddy so as to obtain child support. So when they go to kill their child, they can successfully dampen their primal moral misgivings. The Gosnell case, however, makes this violent death explicit. It gives everyone a wake-up call about what we've allowed to occur. It gives us something to see right in front of our eyes, a concrete something while liberalism champions "rights", "choice", and other ambiguities. Perhaps this does nothing for Dr. Myers, but for those with an actual heart...

FWIW, I no longer vacillate on the abortion issue. I believe life begins at conception and any abortion outside of rape or when the mother's life is in danger is tantamount to murder. And further, I simply don't want to live in a society that accepts abortion as morally tenable.

Weather Reporting is Leftism Personified

[Make sure to read until the very end.]

I've written before about how liberalism underpins a number of supposedly accepted truths, including the healthfulness of a low-fat/high grain diet, endurance training and yoga as the best workout regime, and Eastern mysticism as a peer to Western medicine. I've also argued that, while not a direct consequence of liberalism, the advent of breast milk substitutes advances it nonetheless.

Well, I just observed yet another ubiquitous cultural edifice that advances an aspect of liberalism. This particular institution pervades mainstream society and most everyone accepts it as viable. We never question how the elite, globalist technology firms, and rapacious businessmen have convinced us that we need this service, and more importantly, that they can provide a reliable product.

Of course, I'm talking about weather reports, including the local news weather, national morning show weather, weather websites, and the Weather Channel. As a society, we believe that one can consistently predict the weather. This type of axiomatic belief obscuring widespread delusion mirrors that of paleo dieting, HBD, and Eastern mysticism. Despite the ostensible dubiousness of the claim, that one can predict wholly unpredictable phenomena, most people put faith in their local weather man. In fact, we imbue these supposed luminaries with such undue ardor that many have become beloved figures in their local communities. And we then apply these weather reports to our daily lives, never considering the apparent fallacy of weather prediction as a falsifiable science, sort of an astrology for the scientifically inclined.

In doing so, weather reporting, no doubt advanced by a surreptitious cabal of unsavory characters like the man pictured, embeds three concepts of liberalism into the cultural landscape: female dominance, global warming, and hysteria leading to paternalism. Weather reporting used to be a male dominated profession, done by unassuming men who worked hard and didn't complain. As with any profession, the left has engaged in a war against this egregious gender imbalance. Now, especially in foreign countries, most weather reporting is done by attractive women with little background in meteorology, continuing the affirmative action crusade against meritocracy. Further, women love weather reporting despite its lack of success, allowing them justification for choosing their clothing, makeup, and whatnot. Thus, we as a society must once again patronize the irrational whims of women.

The second concept, global warming, should be familiar to any denizen of the conservative blogosphere. By convincing the public that they can accurately predict short-term weather patterns, liberals can more easily transition into long-term predictions. The public will trust the dire long-term prognostications of global warming alarmists if short-term weather reports about rain and snow are treated as verifiable fact. And further, the constant in-field reporting on bad weather itself, with reporters themselves in the wind and snow, scares the public from wanting to experience that on a daily basis, as global warmists bombastically warn.

The final concept, hysteria as a means of fostering paternalism, arises from the constant warnings about adverse weather conditions and the corresponding fear amongst the populace. We are inundated with potential problems associated with weather, many of which never come to fruition. And as a result, we give undue authority to external figures outside the home. We allow external bodies, many of whom get information from the same sources, to dictate our behavior. In addition to government and public education, we allow a larger institution power over our personal choices, relinquishing this control as a means of improving our lives. Liberals love this notion of a large, benevolent influence and weather reporting fits into the narrative well.

So I advise to ignore the weather report and thus undermine their societal influence. It's usually wrong, so just don't worry.

[Come on, you thought that was serious? I did however seriously consider the notion of leftism as a conscious conspiracy vs. an embedded cultural meme in a previous post.]

Consequences of the Vegetarian/ Low-Fat and High-Grain Diet

[Note: I use low-fat/high grain and vegetarian diet interchangeably.]

I've written often about the paleo diet and the corresponding hypothesis that the low-fat, high grain diet, as promoted by the USDA, underpins much of modern disease. Meat-eating paleos have a foil in vegetarians and not merely because they espouse dietary guidelines at odds with the evolutionary adapted basics. Several commenters have noted that one rarely encounters a fat vegetarian or vegan and this would seem to undermine my supposition concerning disease. While insightful, this observation constitutes a shallow understanding of the relevant problem, as I discuss below.

These commenters correctly note that being fat is the absolute worst thing one can do their body. Fatness is an almost inevitable precursor to a ton of modern diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and back pain. So skinny vegetarians do avoid the most common cause of modern disease by maintaining a reasonably healthy weight. Yet, one must consider slightly less obvious consequences of the vegetarian lunacy to understand its deleteriousness.

First, the vegetarian diet stigmatizes saturated fat and meat instead of sugars, the real cause of heart problems and other disease. In turn, this greatly affects the layperson who doesn't watch his diet too closely, but still wants to be somewhat informed about healthy eating. He then decides on meal choices with the misguided notion that avoiding meat is the key to good health. So he goes to Olive Garden and gets pasta without chicken or slathers BBQ sauce onto his steak because he believes he's already committed a dietary no-no by eating steak. He eats whole grain bread, whole grain cereal, and organic this and that. He drinks "Real, 100% fruit juice" like Snapple, "Organic and All-Natural" pies from Whole Foods with as much sugar as a milkshake (I've looked at these personally), and low-fat whatever. And he thinks just as long as he avoids fat and meat, he's doing fine. A nutrition professor at Harvard agrees:

"The country's big low-fat message backfired," says Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. "The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today."

Second, I contend that vegetarians aren't really that healthy. Here's a great picture reflecting the difference between those that follow paleo eating and training versus those that follow the "common wisdom" of low fat diet and endurance training:


I can sum it up with one adjective: vegetarians aren't robust. And many are actually quite sickly. Sure, they don't get fat, but they're weak and this manifests in chronic pain, getting sick often, stomach aches, joint pain, and diarrhea. The human body needs fuel and that fuel must be meat and saturated fat. Those that ignore this biological reality, usually for social reasons, put their bodies (and unfortunately others' too) at risk.

Extreme Female Beauty

Saturday Audience Participation

Despite the protestations of Internet keyboard jockeys (the guys who complain "but what about her asymmetrical kneecaps"), there are a lot of attractive women out there. Sure, you have to avoid the People of Walmart hiefers, an increasingly difficult task in our expanding nation, but hot girls exist. And if you're in the right environment, you simply can't escape them, whether in the flesh, splashed across billboards and magazines, or on just about every website in existence. (Tip for aspiring bloggers: obey Rule 5 - hot women sell.)

There's a funny scene in The 40 Year-Old Virgin where Steve Carrell resolves to abstain from women altogether. He's then immediately inundated with sexual images and attractive women, running home with his head down to avoid it all. In essence, he experiences sensory overload, the potential for arousal is just too much for him to handle.

On that note, I ask: can a woman possibly be too attractive? Yea sure, some will scoff at such a notion. But seriously, can a woman's beauty simply be too much to handle? I think instead of pursuing a verbal articulation of this question, let me offer some photographic evidence.


Though Megan Fox no longer counts since her breast implants and possible facial surgeries. Why must Hollywood women mess with perfection?! Here's another example:


Today's question: Is it possible for a woman to be too attractive? As in, can a woman's beauty be unfathomable and thus too much to handle?

Trusting Data or Experience

[Update, Response to Comments - In this post, I'm primarily concerned with contrasting empirical vs. personal approaches to understanding social, political, and societal-level phenomena. I am not, at all, criticizing an empirical approach to understanding nature or using science as a means of bettering our lives, i.e. through medicine and technology.]

John Derbyshire, eminent race realist and (as I brag about incessantly) a reader of this very blog, gave an interview with the HL Mencken Club where he champions data above all else:

And it [mathematical training] gave me a deep respect for data. I always want to go to the data. And if somebody tells me that society is in this state or that state, show me the data that tells me that...And I think a proper conservatism should rest on respect for data.

He goes on to discuss empiricism, the world of facts, and the application of these facts to understanding the human world. Over at GLPiggy, Chuck and others had a discussion about female licentiousness and tattoos and piercings. A commenter, Retrenched, offers this quip on what he considers the rather obvious connection:

They needed a study to tell them this ["females with tattoos more likely to engage in risky behavior including sex"]? Really? What next — “research shows that Minnesota gets more snow than Florida”?

Clearly, Mr. Derbyshire's approach contrasts with that of Retrenched. And thus a conundrum arises for the empirically inclined conservative, individuals who ostensibly respect the insights of yesterday yet also understand the power of modern science.

One notes that the evident truths of yesterday, such as racial intelligence differences and the existence of stable gender norms, have been undermined by Boasian anthropology and social constructionism. Society no longer accepts these facts as even acceptable avenues for inquiry. Prior to the great PC purge of the 20th century, people just knew some things, such as those noted above, to be true. You had your eyes and that sufficed in understanding group predilections and other social phenomena, as in men don't like fatties. A modicum amount of anecdotal evidence substantiated popular conceptions and stereotypes.

No one championed convoluted explanations for obvious genetic propensities. No one questioned what they say right in front of them every single day. People just knew stuff and everyone agreed because it was so damn obvious.

Yet according to Mr. Derbyshire, we need an empirical approach to understanding the complexities of human behavior. We need data to substantiate our claims about how the world works and how people act. Simply, I'm not convinced. I don't need studies to convince me to eat paleo, I only need to look in the mirror (eye placement and teeth shape). I don't need complicated statistics to convince me of racial intelligence differences, I merely need a day at the mall and another in a public school. I don't need a study to tell me girls like assholes, I need a weekend at the Jersey Shore.

Further, we can no longer trust the academic and intellectual elite to produce accurate data. Quite simply, they lie and do so almost without shame. Here's my takedown of diet luminary Dr. Dean Ornish's praise of an anti-paleo study and a similar intellectual disembowelment of the much celebrated China Study from Denise Minger. In the realm of gender, here's a blogger who argues that these women are ugly only due to Western insularity. With regards to race, here's David Brooks on the much heralded, and ultimately flawed, Harlem Miracle. Of course, there's the now infamous ClimateGate scandal as well.

All this blatantly dishonest scholarship implies that even if we did accept data over our own observations, we no longer have a dispassionate intellectual edifice to trust. The left has taken over the intellectual landscape and I personally trust my own instincts more than the almost always biased work of professional intellectuals.

Anger as Justified Political Response

Recently, we've heard a lot about civility and rancorous discourse, what I consider a furtive strategy to undermine conservative opposition. These calls to dampen political animosity fit in with the "angry white man" stereotype of conservatives popular for quite some time now. For example, here's HuffPo's Roy Sekoff using that exact phrase on Joy Behar's gabfest. And here's an article from Salon.com criticizing Rush Limbaugh for his profiting off political rage:

My theory: Ever since Rush Limbaugh adapted the techniques of drive-time sports radio to politics -- the loudmouth hyperbole, the fake omniscience, the mute button -- the mass-marketing of outrage to people stuck in freeway traffic with blood-pressure levels already approaching the blowout range has coarsened public discourse to the level of road rage.

See, they compete with each other, these clowns, to set you against an imaginary enemy consisting of your friends and neighbors because conflict pushes ratings, and higher ratings lead to more money.

I won't argue against the notion that conflict sells - watch any reality TV for evidence of that. And blowhards like Limbaugh and Savage surely profit off stirring it up. Their histrionics, amplified by Limbaugh's guttural delivery, allows listeners a vicarious thrill at venting their frustration. So perhaps I agree; popular conservative pundits do thrive on rage amongst the populace and, yes, people are angry.

Yet, I ask why the reflexive dismissal of anger as unjustified and irrational? If something is going wrong and the people in charge implement policies that will exacerbate the problem, then why shouldn't the masses get angry. If society adopts a depressive social, economic, and political ethos despite widespread opposition, then why not get angry? If elites enact policies that cause job loss and cultural decay and one is personally affected by such idiocy, then why not get angry? And if one discerns the elites' willful ignorance, then why not express frustration as the elite persists obstinately in such delusion.

Basically, anger is often justified and rational in a society so dominated by liberal thought. The populace has a right to express their frustration, especially if their livelihood and their country are at risk. But to the left, conservatives should not value their cultural traditions, their country as it stands today, and their ability to find work. They should instead acquiesce to the meddling and haughty elite who know what's best for the unwashed masses, those stilted intellectually and thus unable to appreciate liberal wisdom.

Finally, according to liberals, when exactly would anger be justified? First, I've noted before that liberalism often rejects nationalistic symbolism and collective emotional phenomena (such as patriotism) as a means of championing globalism. The stigmatization of emotion as a political response, illustrated by Jon Stewart's desperately non-partisan "Rally for Sanity", fits into this narrative. Second, I presume liberals reserve anger for their protected groups and native born white Americans surely don't qualify.

But clearly, many people won't take the measured approach when their country is on the line. Thank God for that.

College is a Waste

In more surprising news, college is a waste! A recent study found that a ton of people simply don't learn anything in college.

Nearly half of the nation's undergraduates show almost no gains in learning in their first two years of college. After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change.

For those that did learn something, I wonder about the magnitude of their gains, especially relative to tuition costs and an increase in job prospects. The researchers, of course, blame the universities' priorities for student failure:

...in large part because colleges don't make academics a priority, a new report shows. "We can hope that the (new research) encourages rather than discourages college faculty to learn more about what works in terms of fostering higher levels of student learning."

A quick question: why must researchers always generalize their results and offer a potential prescription? I don't see the connection between adequately describing a problem and having the ability to enact a viable solution. As for their predictable censure of colleges instead of students, the author's statement above implies the education system has been stagnant for years. So apparently, the last 40 years of incessant school reform, including larger classes, smaller classes, group work, more technology, and more teachers, never happened.

Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago, the research shows.

Instructors tend to be more focused on their own faculty research than teaching younger students.

This explanation is just sad. What's really happening: colleges accept lots more dumb students, who then decrease the average amount of studying and increase the number of students who learn nothing. Many of these students are basically incapable of learning the rigorous material of early collegiate courses. Despite the authors' romanticism, the study reflects this undeniable truth.

The authors also point to students prioritizing socializing over academia. The authors contend this differs from decades past. However, college has always been a sort of social training ground for middle and upper class youth, once providing a cohort of suitable spouses and now a group of potential sexual partners. One wonders how the general decadence of campus life has increased in recent times and if this, in part, underlies the results. If I had to guess, I'd say no, as Johnny 1950's electrical engineering major didn't play beer pong and get laid just as 2010 Sanjay doesn't either. Again, student mediocrity derives from colleges reaching lower into the applicant pool than ever before.

Yet, one could argue that colleges have been complicit in prioritizing socializing over academia. Post-60's, colleges have morphed from largely meritocratic intellectual institutions to viewing themselves as purveyors of societal ethics. As a result, they have implemented numerous programs to socialize students in conjunction with proper (liberal) etiquette. We have the well-known orientation programs, but also the plethora of social events to "bring students together", "to learn about each other", and "to widen their worldview". Extracurricular clubs serve the same purpose as well as attracting students in the increasingly competitive admissions race. And then there's all the speakers on campus to further distract students from their studies.

So what can colleges do to stop this downward trend: the bubble might pop first.

Blacks as Ultimate Arbiters of Good

Over at AlternativeRight, Paul Gottfried deems MLK the "patron saint of white guilt." Note that MLK Day is the only federal holiday celebrating an individual's birthday. George Washington, the man who embodies the nation's founding, must share a day.

Every January, there takes place an orgy of guilt-tripping and pseudo-Christian penance, one that seems to become shriller and more robotized with the passing of time. For this is certainly what King has become, a martyred deity, in today’s American political culture.

For liberals and now most conservatives, MLK really is a pseudo-religious figure, leading America from its decadence as Abraham and Jesus did before him. Yet, the concept of minorities, primarily blacks, as moral saviors expands beyond MLK. Take this highly flawed study purporting to show blacks and Hispanics exhibit higher levels of "heroism" (H/T: SBPDL). I wonder if USA Today would publish any data on whether blacks and Hispanics exhibit higher levels of criminal activity?

In the study, both blacks and Hispanics were twice as likely as whites to have performed heroic deeds. Zimbardo says they want to do follow-up research on the reasons for the racial/ethnic differences, which he speculates could be attributed to "greater opportunities to respond" or "being discriminated against makes them have more compassion to others in need."

To make the case further, see this article from last year's elections with a title that reflects the above principle: Can [Blacks] Save Us From Ourselves?

So, at a time when frustration and fear are blinding a majority of white voters to their own economic self-interest, black voters may well hold the key to which political party will drive the Congressional agenda during the next two years. Will they turn out in sufficient numbers to save us from ourselves?

We also see this in the popular conception of American history that depicts colonial whites as morally defensible only when they do something good for blacks and Indians. Of course, this ignores their relative benevolence as compared to ancients like the Aztecs. We see this in supplication to blacks over any perceived slight, most publicly in the frequent prostrating to Sharpton and Jackson. And we see this in pop culture where the moral center or voice of reason, ala the Magic Negro, is often a black character.

All the above examples illustrate the idea that white Americans must look to blacks as their moral compass. In each case, we have a supposedly debased white population that exonerates itself only through the emancipation of blacks and/or under the direct guidance of blacks. As I've argued before, whites have no moral racial independence. As a collective, whites can not embrace any moral imperative unless blacks and other minorities approve. This perversion of morality and the excuses given for black pathology undermine our ability to solve and diagnosis problems. If the majority collective, the one that built this country, has no social capital with which to define morality and societal norms, then its successful traditions will erode.

Focusing on Race

Last week, frequent commenter Stopped Clock said this about OneSTDV's recent content:

Actually I think it's interesting to note that OneSTDV doesn't talk much about race anymore. I see this as a good thing, even though I like most people here think we should be able to talk honestly about all manner of topics, going after the same issue over and over again won't give you a good understanding of everything else.

I started blogging last May primarily because I had become exhausted with the national discourse on race, especially in the context of the Obama phenomenon. I couldn't stand the blissful ignorance of polite society and the organized left's antagonistic vitriol. I needed an outlet for my discontent and this blog provided it. Fittingly, almost all my early posts centered on racial differences and social phenomena that dealt largely with race.

However, Stopped Clock's assessment of my recent writing is somewhat surprising. I don't necessarily disagree as I have focused more on the left/right dichotomy and issues of culture and nationalism in recent months. However, I never intended to avert my focus from race; and given my thoughts and intense intellectual interest on the subject, I can't imagine a potent conservatism without a deep understanding of race.

As I argued in considering the relative importance of sex and race realism, race matters above all else.

It's the most salient feature of group behavior. It explains almost the entirety of relative success amongst disparate groups, societies, and nations. Race is a wonderfully prescient means for predicting individual and collective outcomes and in hindsight, offers the best explicative tool for understanding society.

Yet some have criticized the reactionary sphere's presumed obsession with race, lambasting the fledgling online movement as "pseudo-intellectual racism." Here's E.D. Kain writing at TrueSlant:

Spencer and Derbyshire* and Sailer** and the rest of the far-right-wingers at Alternative Right represent the ugly – and yes racist – underbelly of ‘alt’ conservatism. But as I learned more about Spencer, and not simply through his guilt by association with characters like Sailer, the more I became aware of how racially charged that wing of the right-wing really was. Everything, it appears, boils down to a question of race. And, more importantly, in this world view diversity and difference are not enough. Superiority is necessary.

Note the bolded statement above: "everything...boils down to..race." While I hesitate to reduce social phenomena and collective behavior to such a simple formula, I ask why shouldn't it? If race, as fastidiously (and ironically) enumerated by the anti-racist left, has such powerful predictive and explanative qualities, then why focus elsewhere? If we have discovered the underlying root of man's disparate success, then we should try to understand all the details we can.

Mr. Kain ends his article by praising traditionalism and culture as the edifying constructs of society:

One cannot really be conservative without respect for tradition, without respect for collectivism properly understood. The two, after all, are not so different in a healthy society. Society is collectivism, and too much individualism leads to an atomized culture that is hardly the conservative ideal.

Yet, Mr. Kain avoids the indisputable connection between culture and ethnic/racial background, an association that becomes more apparent as American demographics change. As an example, think Jews or Chinese-Americans.

The race-conscious conservative notes both genetic proclivities and cultural mores and provincialism as they all correspond to race. The mainstream conservative conception of race posits a utopic collection of ethnic groups who will apparently forsake their own norms to adopt those of America. Of course, mainstream conservatives can never fully articulate what this "America" means because it's inextricably linked to its majority demographic. Further, given the social prestige and collective amnesty bestowed upon NAMs, can we really expect them to start acting like middle class whites? As Sailer and SBPDL have said, black people really love being black.

In a continually shifting nation with leftist institutions that see America as interminably corrupt due to racial disparities, only a race-conscious conservatism can truly succeed. A conservatism that does not understand the importance of race chases futile initiatives and fails to offer a full explanation of the world.

Indisputable Fact of Gender Realism

In discussing gender and race realism, you need a go-to, indisputable fact to start the conversation. You can't begin with recondite information about cranial capacity, sociological studies of babies, and the dishonesty of mainstream academia. Either others won't speak that "language" or they won't believe what you're saying.

You need a fact that absolutely no one can reject. You need a fact that every single person knows to be true. You need a fact that shows up every single day in real life that absolutely no one can deny. And this fact must then lead somewhat directly into the relevant discussion.

Unfortunately, I can't think of a particular fact for race realism, though this chart sufficiently undermines the culture argument. But for gender realism, particularly the notion that what women say they want is actually what they want, I have a rather simple one I use often.

The common conception of female sexual attraction is summed up as follows:

"I want a nice guy who will treat me right, listen to me when I need to talk, who's always there when I need him, who shares my interests, and understands me emotionally."

Basically, society believes women want an equal partner who tends to their needs and supports them at all times. Of course, a quick gander at HotChickswithDoucheBags should disabuse you of that fallacy. But how to convince someone of the primary premise of gender sexual realism: that women actually want a dominant male partner.

Simple: essentially no woman will date a man shorter than her. Physical dominance is a very reliable proxy for social dominance. Thus, if women really wanted a supportive and equal partner, they wouldn't be so enamored with tall men and would more frequently date men of the same stature.

Media has "Jumped the Shark"

Saturday Audience Participation

[I switch back and forth between "media" and liberals in this post. For the purposes of this discussion, consider general liberalism and the mainstream media equivalent.]

I spend a lot of time criticizing the leftist media. I've bashed them for their inherent biases, their sometimes laughable distortion of facts, and, worst of all, the real-world consequences of media engaging in such blatant obfuscation. But never before have I witnessed coverage so vile, so disgusting, so reprehensible, so amoral as that of the past week.

Sure, those on the reactionary right understood that the media lies. We understood that they used their influence and prestige as means of swaying public opinion. We understood the way they hide or distort facts to fit a particular (liberal) narrative. And it is this rampant dissembling that has spurred the Internet Right, willing to take on mainstream lies and offer the masses an outlet without purposeful dishonesty.

Yet the past week, dubbed "Liberal Hategate" by Larry Auster, is unprecedented. I've written 3 posts on media reaction to the Tuscon tragedy, yet I don't think I've articulated what a seminal moment I think this will become.

The media no longer spews baseless invective; they have now formulated a narrative where conservatives are to blame for murder. Within hours of the tragedy, these sick leftists hastily blamed right-wing extremism. They continued with the disgusting lies (and many outlets like AlterNet and MSNBC haven't really changed their tune) about the supposed violent conservative masses. Then, they adopted this absurd "civility" BS with a barely subterranean nod to (conservative) "heightened rhetoric" as the primary motivator of discord. And when Palin had the audacity to defend herself from this libelous, hateful, and downright sickening crap, they vilified her presumed selfishness and lauded Obama despite his injecting political rhetoric into an event we now know had nothing to do with politics.

So what have we learned. We have learned that the left has no limit to their hatred, engaging in any level of evil to bring forth their policies. Additionally, I think it's clear the media has "jumped the shark." (H/T) The media has been corrupted for quite some time, yet this is something different. The media is, quite simply, done. Like a TV show about to be canceled, it is over. They no longer have any authority after such a despicable display this past week.

Today's questions: Are you as disgusted as I am? Has the media/left "jumped the shark"? Can you ever trust any media outlet again?

What "Civility" Really Means

The buzzword this week has been "civility". Every talking head, especially those of a leftist bent, has encouraged those in the political arena to moderate the rancor. Here's President Obama, who would happily bring a "gun to a knife fight", on the subject:

And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not -- but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud.

At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized — at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do — it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds

I could point to an unending stream of commentary advancing the same idea, especially the notion that political rhetoric has become too personal and emotional. Funny that we should dispassionately allow our country, culture, and way of life to be flushed away. Apparently, only an inbred, irrational moron would get angry about a failing society in which he continually loses social and political autonomy.

Since this past summer, I've often appealed to Barry Goldwater's timeless aphorism that "extremism in the pursuit of justice is never a vice". Fittingly, I don't consider "civility" an axiomatic positive, especially if one notes the purposeful ambiguity of the phrase and the people who use it in such context. And I really don't see why either side should avoid heated debate. Politics doesn't exist solely in abstruse historical texts; the repercussions are real and impactful in every day life.

As for the recent appeals, all the calls for civility allude to "heightened rhetoric" and "polarization", yet rarely do they explicitly define what these terms mean. Now that the original portrait of the Tuscon psycho has been undermined, the left has largely backed away from explicitly blaming "anti-immigrationists" and the Tea Party. So one justifiably asks how can conservatives temper their rhetoric? What policies or political opinions have supposedly fomented the current political firestorm? In my original post on "extremism", I said the first statement, followed by another relevant phrase in a later post:

The current mainstream doctrine, one based on the "anything goes" mentality, has defined "extremism" as any position with steadfast loyalty to a set of principles. An "extremist" is now someone who refuses to capitulate and surrender his values, even if said values represent some ultimate good.

Because if not, if one refuses to stand hidebound in opposition to the left, it will continue its gradual march against every traditional edifice we have left.

In other words, the call for "civilty" is nothing more than a call for surrender to the liberal zeitgeist. After all, look at the past two years of political discourse. Every single conservative has been lambasted as "extreme". Leftists have criticized every conservative position as motivated by surreptitious ends, almost always racism, bigotry, and homophobia. Leftists consider even these initiatives, not paying for illegal immigrant healthcare, wanting to speak English, and voting for a white person, as out of bounds.

So again, I ask what exactly do they want. One can conclude then that the only viable option for conservatives to achieve civility is to fully accept leftism. In the end, they put forth "unity" and "togetherness" bromides because conservatism is somewhat based upon insularity and exclusion - after all, Harlem isn't Harlem with a bunch of white SWPLs.

Over the past few days, we've seen that leftists will attempt to neuter conservatism in the guise of tolerance. We don't solve this problem via puerile gun metaphors, vandalism, or debating which side is worse - instead, conservative need to put their collective foot in the ground and not relent. And I optimistically believe that the Right is waking up and understanding that no conservative can ever attain leftist approval.

Update: Also, if this had nothing to do with politics, then why is everyone all of a sudden concerned about civility? We now know this act was completely independent of political motive, so why has it spurred a debate about political enmity. In my opinion, the left has continued with the "tolerance" paradigm as a means of implicit excoriation and censure of conservatism. The initial message has changed from last weekend, but the intention remains.

War on Childhood: Childhood as Boot Camp

For the past year, I've covered the so-called "War on Childhood", a phrase that I apply to overweening helicopter parents and the societal constructs and values that encourage such behavior. Here's a typifying example - occupational therapists used for helping kids meet developmental benchmarks:

Twenty-five years ago, pediatric occupational therapists primarily served children with severe disabilities like spina bifida, autism or cerebral palsy. Nowadays, these therapists are just as focused on helping children without obvious disabilities to hold a pencil. In affluent neighborhoods in and around New York, occupational therapists have taken their place next to the army of academic tutors, psychologists, private coaches and personal trainers...

The War on Childhood, as I've conceived it, derives from two social phenomena. First, affluent parents want to guarantee that their children meet the standards of social prestige - primarily an elite education and an elite job. Second, they believe that professional "help" is required to ensure their child succeeds corresponding to these dictates. In other words, it's social posturing mixed with liberal creationism.

This past week, the Wall Street Journal published an article on a mom from hell named Amy Chua. This sums up her parenting style:

Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:
• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.

So basically, their kids didn't have a childhood. Sure, her kids excel in school and that makes them feel good, but they do so at the expense of a normal childhood full of play, making friends, and, ya know, all that other trivial stuff comprising what most people consider the best time of their lives. Yet, some don't see it that way, as evidenced by HalfSigma's criticism of the parenting advice. (I'm hesitant to criticize a blogger who give me loads of traffic, but here goes.) HalfSigma's response reflects the same blindness demonstrated by Mrs. Chua, except that he expresses the end goal of social prestige more explicitly than she does.

American society doesn’t value violin or piano playing. When elite colleges select applicants, they value sports-playing far more highly than all other extra-curricular activities.

The Chinese parenting style will no doubt produce workers who are good value creators, and their corporate employers will love them, and they will be paid far less money than the value they create, the excess value being transferred to white people who got into better colleges because their curricula vitae had more leadership and sports activities, and with those more prestigious educational credentials they got into higher paying value transference career tracks like investment banking and upper level management, and now enjoy the value created by those Chinese cubicle employees who are doing the real work and the real value creation.

Also, those sleepovers and playdates are extremely important for learning the social skills needed to get ahead in corporate America where schmoozing is more important for getting promoted than creating real value.

According to HS, going to sleepovers is only important for its later application to the corporate world. I'm almost speechless. Perhaps HS has spent too much time surrounded by social climbers in NYC, but has the notion of common success, as described in Tuesday's post, become so ingrained that we no longer value anything else? That we see childhood not as an end itself, but rather merely as a training ground for adulthood? Of course, I disagree with this practical conception of youth and I reject the idea that every developmental hurdle must be spurred by external influence. After all, other than the kid who eats his boogers and the one who pees in the sandbox, who doesn't learn to socialize playing tag, learn to maneuver the social hierarchy already extant in elementary school, and progress through intellectual checkpoints just by going to school every day?

Yet, let me consider HS's refreshingly candid admission that this type of parenting helps in achieving professional success. If we reduce life to the pursuit of happiness, then do Ms. Chua and others actually confer something positive unto their children? Perhaps they steal their children's childhood, but these kids reap the rewards of social prestige and success later in life. The kids who spend their teenage years curing cancer, adopting African babies, and running a three minute mile, all in pursuit of a degree from HYP, do largely find adulthood success. With that success comes confidence and social prestige that does, after all, make us feel good. We also shouldn't disparage achievement either.

Obviously, I still can't condone such a dispassionate approach to parenting. In fact, I'd prefer a leftist utopia of "pretty" fatties and "most improved" dummies over the sterile environment of Ms. Chua's boot camp (as long as such romanticism didn't effect public policy). Childhood matters because it matters, simple as that.

Finally, one wonders about this phenomenon's genesis as caused by the destruction of family. Beware that I don't refer to the culture war "destruction of family", instead I point to the increasing social mobility of the post-liberal era. Surely, we should classify the opening of the upper classes to those not of familial lineage as a positive change. Yet, it has unfortunately made some desperate to maintain their prestige or vicariously chase the standards of prestige that have now replaced what was once automatically bestowed upon progeny. Instead of prestige via birth, we have to earn it through education, work, and cultural interest. Good. Children should surely experience failure and success. But at what cost?

The Broad Brush of Politics

I can't recall any time I've been more disgusted by the mainstream media than during the past few days. Their mendacious coverage of the Arizona tragedy is absolutely despicable. Lawrence Auster discusses outright falsehoods disseminated about the mostly venerable American Renaissance:

In reality, of course, AR, with its race conscious, white-nationalist philosophy and its belief in the reality and importance of race differences, has nothing to do with mainstream conservatism, and mainstream conservatism has nothing to do with AR; indeed, mainstream conservatives, not to mention the tea partiers, barely know of AR’s existence. But these obvious facts are beyond the comprehension of the left.

Very simply, the left sees the right as one undifferentiated mass of evil.

Auster correctly identifies this particular political strategy, though he seems to support the idea that the left's public conception of the Right mirrors their actual understanding of conservatism. However, I don't believe the left actually views every right-winger as an intractable racist, but rather uses that caricature for political gain. The left uses this negative conception of the Right not for its accuracy but rather to associate any conservative politics with undesirable personality traits.

And in doing so, the left has created a palpable us vs. them dichotomy that attracts racial and religious minorities and their idealistic white liberal counterparts. As Auster notes, the Right has become an amorphous mass with little distinction between largely innocuous individuals like Palin, more anti-PC pundits like Rush, and race conscious institutions like AmRen. In effect, this discourages moderates from leaning right and, more importantly, it reduces the political arena so that minorities and white liberals know which side of the line to stand on. Binary is far easy to decipher than a more refined political landscape.

Yet, the mainstream Right has largely capitulated to this tactic. They have allowed the left to paint them with a broad brush, yet refuse to champion any collectivist ideologies themselves. Instead, we get platitudes about moderate Muslims, the pathetic glorification of black conservatives, and overly inclusive displays like Beck's Co-Exist rally in August. Mainstream conservatives lose because they don't counter the us vs. them coalition of the left with even something like an "America vs. the world" patriotism. Populism works and the left's bizarro Sailer Strategy shows why.

The Emptiness of Common Success: Forrest Gump and Fight Club

In Fight Club, Ed Norton despondently muses on his life "ending one minute at a time," his days spent as a commonly successful man with an empty soul. Much like the "radical" men profiled in the film, I've recently begun questioning how tangible accomplishment, buttressed by a social system that rewards the productive but mundane, leaves us unsatisfied. (A new blog deals with this issue in more depth.)

Fight Club showed an aggressive and violent rejection of our worker bee culture. The men literally fought against common success as the defining concept of our lives, instead pursuing a basic primitive rush and harboring a desire to extirpate the culture that has restrained them. The film has a cult following and real-life mimics who take the message to heart. Along with that year's other anti-corporate film, Office Space, it seems that Hollywood has at least a small understanding of the worker bees' restlessness.

Both these films argue that accomplishment, social capitol, and societal prestige fail in satiating the spirit, unable to enliven our passions and our primal instincts. Yet this message isn't confined solely to counterculture films like the two cited. This past weekend I watched one of America's most beloved movies, hated only by jaded Hollywood media types, Forrest Gump. Sure, it's as saccharine as it comes, but the main message parallels the themes of the above films, albeit with an exceedingly different tone.

While the intellectually posturing types dismiss it as mawkish and simple, Gump is a multi-layered film with insightful commentary on both personal and political phenomena. I will focus on the one particular issue above, but maybe in future posts I will argue that Gump is a decidedly conservative film that uses the titular character and his love interest, Jenny, as reflections of the consequences of post-60's social change.

You guys know the story, but just for a quick recap, the movie follows a simple Alabama who floats obliviously through an amazing life. He finds himself affecting or affected by every major social event of the 1960's (primarily) and 70's. He motivates pop culture, finds athletic success, earns military honors, becomes famous not once but twice, and, to top it off, makes millions of dollars. Yet through it all, Forrest remains blissfully unaware of everything going on around him. He doesn't understand the anti-war movement, he doesn't understand Jenny's sexual abuse, he doesn't understand why he's such a big deal as a football player, a Forbes millionaire, or a folk legend running around the country. He doesn't get excited seeing Elvis mimicking his childhood dance moves or originating the Smiley Face yellow T-shirts. He doesn't understand Jenny's adulthood drifting or her HIV. All the while he remains contently ignorant of the social tempest surrounding him and the societal acclaim he himself earns.

And despite his stupidity and his abject oblivion, we love Forrest. But the admiration isn't pity, it's genuine affection. In my opinion, we don't love the character because he's a great Ping-pong player or a heroic veteran, we love him because he (unknowingly) rejects the rat race that unfortunately defines our own lives. Throughout the movie Forrest earns our society's highest honors, yet it doesn't define him. In fact, Forrest doesn't even register the social acclaim commensurate with his achievements. Amidst all the money and fame, it's the people in his life that matter most.

It's his personal relationships and experiences that define him, that give him satisfaction, that invigorate his spirit. All the while, he remains devoted to his dear mother, his two best friends, and, most of all, his first and only love, Jenny. He doesn't start a shrimping business to make money or buy a fancy car and a big house; he does it to honor his best friend's memory and spend time with someone whom he cares for. And while he gallivants across the globe, he never forgets about his mother and Jenny. And at the end, when Jenny falls ill after chasing the liberal ideals that are supposed to make us happy, Forrest meets his son and reacts with far more emotion that seeing himself on the news or hob-knobbing with President Kennedy.

There are major differences between the films, with Fight Club advancing a far more nihilistic conception of man's utopia, one brought forth by violent action. However, both Gump and Fight Club support the notion that common success might not matter. Perhaps the modern trajectory towards success, defined by an elite college degree, a high paying job, and social prestige, is ultimately stifling and empty. Maybe we shouldn't derive value or define ourselves in conjunction with societal metrics that reflect nothing of creative and personal spirit.

Identifying and Locking up the Mentally Ill

The blame-game following this weekend's tragedy in Arizona reflects the left's conception of man.

“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government—the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous,” said Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, an elected Democrat, at a news conference Saturday evening. “And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

The left has jumped all over the Right, primarily Rush, Beck, and Palin, for inciting this guy to violence. The media has castigated the Tea Party and those crazy Internet right-wingers for creating a climate of hate that pushed this man to the limit. Consistent with the left's entire program, they need someone to blame. They need an external construct that imposes itself on individual persons and causes their actions. The edifice at fault, always an "enemy" of the left, deprives individual of their autonomy, making us all robots subservient to the insidious forces of society.

Unsurprisingly, I don't fault the "incendiary" political climate for this. I blame one crazy, mentally ill nutjob for acting on his own accord. As we see time and time again, this crazy individual simply couldn't hide that he was a crazy individual. Everyone saw it. He wrote about crazy stuff. He posted crazy stuff on the Internet. He acted in a manner such that it was obvious to everyone this guy was crazy.

So why then can't we simply call a spade a spade. Why can't we characterize this man for what he is? And then why don't we, as a society, have any measures in place to act on what we know about this crazy person?

Well to define this man as irredeemable would constitute surrender to biological determinism, the bane of liberal creationists and social constructionists. Liberals will not allow society to "give up" on anyone, not even the most hardened criminals or the dumbest children. Liberals imbue society with immeasurable power to successfully cultivate, nurture, and mold every single individual. It takes a village, from the cradle to the grave.

Yet what if we did "give up"? To even consider such a thought would be akin to fascism, a concept liberals define as government taking any necessary steps to protect its constituency from inexorable harm. When I was eight, I understood that bad things would always happen and that the only way to stop them would be harsh and, sometimes, unfair treatment. In general, to countenance any such preemptive initiatives tacitly implicates genetics as the defining factor in behavior.

The government used to be "fascist". Deinstitutionalization of mental health facilities began in the 1950's and continues to this day. In that time period, the number of persons classified as mentally ill and therefore justifiably subject to institutionalization has dropped by a considerable amount (found data suggesting it's been cut by 3). We used to understand that some people simply could not function in regular society and were not only a threat to themselves, but to others. So we locked them up and society didn't have that many crazy people walking around.

Sure, we had to tolerate an imposing government, but we understood that hard decisions needed to be made sometimes. Now, liberals view society as a large scale Oprah, but instead of trips and cars, it gives away mental acumen, work ethic, and social stability.

[FWIW: He seems to have a liberal past, but has probably morphed into a conspiracy nut, Alex Jones type. However, his political tilt, even if he was a "liberal pothead", shouldn't be the focus.]

"My best friend is black and he's so fucking smart."

The current "Nation of Cowards" climate works because people are afraid. They fear the "racist" label as it's perhaps the most socially damaging label of our time. Yet, as with all language, we imbue it with certain meaning and the pusillanimous reactions of those unfairly marked as "racist" have allowed this label's power to persist.

So, some people simply don't get it. Those that want mainstream credibility, even if they frame themselves as an iconoclast, usually defend themselves in a laughable manner. These desperate attempts at saving face were satirized on an episode of Seinfeld where George recruits his exterminator to pose as his black best friend.

So with the left's reflexive insistence than any opposition is founded upon racism and their convenient definition of what constitutes racism, many whites get confused. And this confusion, compounded by the social stigma associated with racism, begets comical incidents like when white teacher called a black student "nigga" then tried to explain himself on the local news - using placards. For the highlight, skip to 1:49, with an especially good part at 2:33. The reactionary sphere should adopt "Can you lend a nigga a pencil?" as a slogan indicating a confused white person reacting to the anti-racist pogroms.

We also get the George reaction, such as that of Marty Perez who thinks the world of black people:

At a basic level, he said, he can’t be a bigot; he mentioned two close, personal black friends, one who is “so fucking smart,” and then a third, a black student whom he had plucked from Harvard and made the circulation director of The New Republic.

Ironically, or not, none of these tactics work. The left either rejects them as disingenuous or mocks them mercilessly. The only tactic that works is to undermine the smear's power by simply ignoring it. For example:

No, I am not a racist and I don't care if you call me one.

Pretty simple and it undermines the left's ability to focus on tangential issues based primarily in invective. Instead, if one kowtows to the left's convenient definition of racism, then complete capitulation is the inevitable endgame. The Right must not allow the left to set the rules and frame the argument, especially in a venue defined more by social posturing than by strict logic. In the end, the cowering conservative demeans himself by forever chasing the morally pure chimera envisioned by the anti-racists. He simply can't win, so don't bother.

Homeless Man with Golden Voice and Celebrating Criminals

Saturday Audience Participation

This week, a homeless man with a golden voice became an Internet sensation.



While everyone reveled in this almost unbelievable story, The Smoking Gun dug up quite the rap sheet (and a host of accompanying mugshots) for Mr. Williams.

Williams, 53, has been busted for theft, robbery, escape, forgery, and drug possession. He is pictured at right in mug shots (click to enlarge) taken as a result of those Ohio collars, which stretch back more than two decades.

Some aren't so thrilled at the adulation directed at Mr. Williams considering his law-breaking past. And with Michael Vick leading the Eagles into the playoffs this weekend, the notion of a second-chance for criminals has become a timely topic.

Today's questions: Does it matter that Mr. Williams has such an extensive rap sheet? Should individuals with obvious character deficiencies be afforded such opportunities like playing in the NFL or doing national voiceover work? Should we allow lifelong criminals such as Mr. Williams a moral second chance as opposed to merely a release from jail? Can you compartmentalize this story and celebrate it independent of the man's past?

In answering these questions, I think one must consider social celebration and pragmatic second chances as independent. For example, while I strongly oppose banning Vick from the NFL, I feel uneasy witnessing the celebration of his renaissance, especially when commentators tacitly appeal to his football success as evidence of his moral rehabilitation.

Blog Recommendations

I don't do this often enough, so I'd like to recommend three very worthwhile blogs:

Gucci Little Piggy: A rough around the edges, less academic version of OneSTDV. Chuck often takes personal anecdote and, in an always incisive manner, connects it to larger social phenomena. Great blog that I check multiple times each day.

Foseti: Sort of a central hub for the reactionary sphere. Often compiles interesting articles from blogs and other outlets. Very thoughtful and precise when he opines.

B Lode: I don't read B Lode's blog often because he doesn't update a lot. I'm really only including him here because he's one of my very favorite commenters. Plus, I think I converted him to paleo eating!