The Mystery of Art

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We mostly deal with social, political, and cultural analysis here at OneSTDV. We discuss prevailing trends with the discussion grounded primarily in reason and rational debate. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the author of this site finds himself bound by this same sort of rationalism in daily life. Everything has to have a reason, it has to follow predictably from some chain of events or from some logical foundation. Order and reason define the world. Sure, I've often left plenty of room for the nebulous complexities of man, but I still find myself trying to explain everything according to quantifiable metrics or logical arguments.

Perhaps surprisingly then, I find myself often moved by art, that aspect of human experience defying explanation, that piques our sensibilities just because. I know evolutionary psychologists and scholars probably have many explanations for it, but in the end, art just hits us. We like it because it's beautiful and it's beautiful because we like it. Admitting the axiomatic beauty of art often makes me uncomfortable. I understand art intuitively, I can experience art as everyone else does (personally, a good song is most potent), and I recognize many forms of art as valuable. But I sometimes have to shake off the nagging question, "why?" Not 'why' is it beautiful, but why would anyone think of that, why would someone do that there, why would someone write that sentence or draw that line or play that note just for the aesthetics of it all. It almost doesn't make sense to me that people would create art in the first place, even though I can enjoy it just as others do.

Well anyway, this video went around online a few years back and I occasionally watch it again just because it gives me chills (the extremely pretty girl doesn't hurt). I don't really "get" it intellectually, but it makes me feel good inside and hopefully it does so for you as well. Enjoy:

More Thoughts on Violent Black Mobs and the Evil of Modern Leftism

We always try to switch up the topics here at OneSTDV, but the Carter Strange beating and other recent incidences of black mob violence have really hit a nerve. In this case, it is the leftist/official response to the Strange beating and the subhuman acts themselves that have gotten to me. I burned out on blogging last month, an almost inevitable danger if one invests too much emotion in the topics discussed here. But this rash of subhuman behavior needs to be publicized, especially in honest and cathartic forums such as this one.

The state prosecutor contends this beating had nothing to do with race.

“This was a robbery,” said Johnson. “People have made an assumption of hate crime because the victim is white and the suspects are African-American. But there is no evidence we have seen that race played a part in this.

And the left still wonders why ordinary Americans express increasing skepticism regarding government motivation. The government, with a Justice Department led by Eric "Nation of Cowards" Holder, has no desire to protect whites, afford them any social respect, or allow them any collective grievance. I know it goes without saying, but if this were a gang of whites beating a black teen, the Justice Department, along with the indefatigable race hustlers, would assuredly consider it a hate crime. Honestly though, and it pains me to say this, we can't definitively prove this was race-related. We all know it is because we notice the pattern, but we can't prove it because we can't see inside someone's head to parse their motivations.

Yet the official story on the incident obscures the details of what happened. Mr. Johnson describes it as merely a "robbery", a semantic trick no doubt intended to dampen public ire. But why then did they beat Carter until he almost died? A skinny 18 year-old walking alone, surrounded by a pack of eight black animals, can not defend himself. I can confidently state that a robbery would have required almost no physical assault whatsoever. Of course, we know these animals robbed him, then beat him repeatedly, seemingly for the fun of it. We likely can't prove it was a hate crime, but we can obviously conclude that this was an attack without logic besides the evil expressed by the eight perpetrators.

Clearly, the prosecutor intends to downplay the severity of the attack. At the very least, a standard robbery makes sense; it is the domain of the parasitic class, but it manifests from basic human desire. This beating, unlike retaliatory white lynchings, speaks to something outside civilization. This beating reflects a wholly different constitution of man, a savage mentality that completely lacks human compassion or even human emotion. The prosecutor actually wants to paint the best scenario possible, as most can sympathize with the basic impetus for robbery. I imagine the prosecutor will use this misleading description to justify letting these animals out by age 18 or, at the very latest, age 21.

In doing so, this prosecutor and the vile commenters at places like Media Matters reflect the increasingly amoral nature of modern leftism. The genesis of modern leftism likely arose amongst an overly idealistic group who wished to normalize their lascivious behavior and rebel intellectually against American traditionalism. Contrary to these early dreamers, the modern left has descended to the precipice of evil. I hesitate to classify them as "evil", but their tacit exoneration of blacks for these violent attacks fits the definition.

The modern left no longer cares about human dignity. They no longer care about protecting individuals from harm. They no longer care about happiness, safety, or general well-being. The modern left cares about their narrative above all else, a narrative that dictates their beliefs, their self-aggrandizing moral posturing, and their nauseating reaction to violent acts like this.

I have not read even one comment in those Media Matters threads expressing sympathy for Mr. Strange or the others affected by these mob attacks. I have not seen even an off-hand reference to the victims. All I see are shrill leftists spewing hatred at anyone who just barely crosses the PC line. All I see are leftists asserting that conservative commenters are the bad guys and not the subhuman animals that beat people. The left ignores evil, forgives evil, and ultimately permits evil. Perhaps they don't do it themselves, but they find a way to project blame. In doing so, in celebrating murderers and thugs, the modern left has completely perverted the moral order. They have excoriated the innocent, extolled the bad, and expressed a vile sickness that permeates their political platform.

In erecting this distorted conception of morality, where external and ostensibly positive aspects of society replace individual motivation as the primary cause of evil, the left no longer connects with any reasonable standard of humanity. In essence, they celebrate destruction as a means of maintaining their flimsy narrative, as in Matthew Yglesias' commentary on his own mugging. Fittingly, the modern left almost doesn't consider the humanity of whites or at least doesn't believe whites exist as moral beings independent of an inherited history of evil. I discussed this idea in a post entitled Racial Original Sin:

Because liberals consider whites as inherently corrupt beings, even benign predilections become fodder for censure. The author believes facial recognition is racist, even though he also accepts that it's natural, because he considers any deviation from the liberal racial paradigm as evil. Leftists then argue that one can exonerate himself of "original sin" through deeds like forced desegregation, support of unlimited immigration, support of affirmative action, and advancement of the basic hate-whitey ideals. Only then, when a white person has fully accepted his inherent depravity and rejected his presumed white privilege through deeds can he be considered a moral individual.

Above, I've spoken about leftists refusing to blame actual murderers, instead bringing up ancillary issues to deflect the focus. One such issue is the notion of forgiveness. Matt Lauer interviewed Carter Strange and his parents (you can just tell they're a nice, upstanding, working-class Southern family) on the Today Show. Mr. Lauer actually had the audacity to say this to the family:

It seems to me the defense so far is saying, 'Look these kids who are between the ages of 13 and 19 are basically good kids who did a very bad thing and made very bad judgments.' Do you feel that way?

I read a quote from the mother referring to the attackers as "animals." Unbelievably, Lauer also asks:

Carter, your dad has already said he finds it hard to find forgiveness in his heart, what about you?

An eighteen year-old kid is beaten to within an inch of his life and Lauer, along with the rest of liberal society, presumes that he will make a moral concession. Liberal society, which Lauer reflects, asks him such a question as he suffers through recovery. Why should innocent individuals find themselves responsible for the moral cleansing of these animals. From this, it seems modern Western society upholds "progress" over sense. Are we so enamored with our "enlightened" attitudes that we've lost a basic understanding of human dignity, of right and wrong?

In sum, I believe this recent spate of violent black mobs culminating with the Carter Strange beating, has illuminated the evil of modern leftism. And fortunately, essentially every single unmoderated comment section I've read is full of people understanding the same exact thing.

Pertinent Links:
Unamusement Park; GLPiggy; SBPDL; Auster; Jewamongyou; Paul Kersey in Death Wish
Fund for Carter Strange

Followup on 'Blacks Behaving Badly' News

Followup points on this past weekend's black mobs:

As I noted in yesterday's post, the left gets sanctimoniously angry about conservatives passively noting the common trait of mob participants. Apparently, they can't find any sympathy for actual victims of crime, save the Jena 6. Media Matters continues the narrative by criticizing Drudge's encouraging collection of Blacks Behaving Badly links. Drudge obviously gets it and that's absolutely huge. The Media Matters commentariat offers this insightful analysis:

I think Drudge is an egg short of a McMuffin.

On Druge's front page he has a article that says "french fries and fat fried pies for the First Lady in Botswana". Why is a balding fat old man complaining about what a healthy young woman like the FLOTUS eat.

drudge only follows orders from the rightwing noise machine bosses. ailes, rove, luntz and bozell. newscorp is paying drudge a hefty amount to run talking points. this meme of the scary black man is what they do over and over again

You might want not want to wear your hood out in public, racist.

And here's the right-wing Drudge managing to find 5 stories about African American crime and not one story about Phylicia Barnes, Mitrice Richardson or Christopher Thomas.

Had anyone actually been hurt or killed, then maybe it becomes a national story. [Do liberals even bother reading the actual stories?]

In between the incredibly unfunny insults, the commenters did manage to put forth a few middling talking points. I'll paraphrase them in bold with my responses following:

White people do this stuff too: Apparently, Drudge and others are cherry-picking data concerning black riots, violent flash mobs, and random beatings. If the stories of similar behavior from whites and Asians actually exist, then why do liberal sites like DailyKos and Salon.com not run with them to counter Drudge's "scary black man" narrative? Where are all these incidents of whites running around county fairs beating black families, videos of whites engaging in gang warfare in college cafeterias, accounts of whites flash robbing stores? I challenge liberals to find the same exact local stories, except with white perpetrators.

Crime is going down, so this isn't a problem: Crime has gone down in recent years primarily because we've vastly increased the prison population. Of course, liberals understand the huge racial disparity here and have been on a crusade to soften the justice system as a means of imposing racial equality - justice and safety be damned. Further, crime has decreased because whites have taken precautions to avoid it, most significantly by moving away from largely black neighborhoods. Daily precautions have become a way of life for middle-class whites targeted by black crime. Our great grandparents and even our Canadian neighbors would find the insistence on locking your front door the epitome of paranoia, same with locking your car and consciously avoiding walking alone at night. Black crime is reduced only due to the diligence of whites in avoiding it.

None of the stuff actually happened: That's what they're going with now: "not only did this alleged incident not take place...". When in doubt, the left goes with the Leslie Neilson tactic, "Nothing to see here, move along."

You guys are racist: We should expect this standard liberal response to noting obvious patterns. I'm confused - when exactly are we allowed to notice racial patterns? Apparently, we must notice race when understanding racial disparities of who comprises the prison population. But apparently, we can't notice race when these same people actually commit their crimes. That would be racist, right? The left has jumped the shark, folks - it's full of the most vile, sick, and deluded people on Earth. I hesitate to call political activists evil and surely it didn't apply to many of the idealistic Baby Boomer hippies, who just got a case of limitless empathy. But today's professional left is now on the precipice of outright evil, a term I don't use lightly.

Unfortunately, the mainstream Right isn't much better, or at least, similarly deluded. Here's a thread on Hannity's forum with the conservative commenters nonplussed as to why Drudge posted all those links:

What's up with all the mob attacks on Drudge?

I was wondering this too. There definitely seems to be a surge in this, and it's very disturbing. There's also been multiple stories about mobs of teens banding together and robbing stores.

I don't know if this is a new trend or just something Matt Drudge has decided to start reporting on.

I think he's illustrating the use of social media in "flash mobs" running amok. It's a new phenomenon, and unlike the "flash mobs" we've seen in the past where people are out on a lark breaking into song and dance numbers, these are committing theft and acts of violence.

Maybe he simply wants more hits on his website and he knows that these reports will garner more hits?

On my post yesterday, a commenter discourages anger:

However, it's important that all HBDers remember that anger is an emotion that must be controlled. One of the reasons Steve Sailer is so effective is because he doesn't get angry. He doesn't let venom drip from his pen, even when that would be the emotionally accurate thing to do.

In linking to my post yesterday morning, Mangan stated that I "communicated the right amount of outrage, especially at the Carter Strange story." I vehemently disagree with the anonymous commenter who decries anger as a justified political emotion. Passiveness as a social strategy accomplishes nothing and it enervates the populace from actually enacting change. The passive intellectual crowd who offers convoluted solutions to real-world problems don't understand the human cost of their Ivory Tower ruminations. They don't get angry because it doesn't affect them, the problems so far away that it registers as a data point instead of a personal tragedy. The Carter Strange attack is NOT a data point; he's a son, a friend, and a seemingly good person.

Anger is justified for practical purposes in affecting political change and as the appropriate response to evil. We must allow a rational type of anger to interject itself into the political landscape because, in the end, politics is about people's lives. We need a political and cultural framework that supports happiness and safety. And the only way to do that is to inspire the populace, an arduous task if we demand they discard any sort of reasonable emotion.

Finally, commenter The Undiscovered Jew parrots leftist talking points in asserting whites still run everything:

White America is not being genocided, black crime is at a historic low.

White Americans (including middle class whites) won't become more attracted to sociobiology because of this one black on white attack because they don't view themselves as victims because they run everything.

Ethnic martyrs are for minorities, not white people, because white people don't feel like victims, they feel like winners.

I discussed this leftist talking point in my original post on Drudge. I'll copy it below:

Quite simply, the modern PC environment ensures those whites in power pursue initiatives at odds with the views of the white majority (new book shows rampant Hollywood liberalism) and that any apostasy from the PC doctrine, as above, is rigorously thwarted. Just because whites are in power doesn't mean they represent the desires of American whites as a collective nor does it mean, and it almost never does, that our culture and our politics seek to encourage conservatism.

TUJ broaches the concept that whites won't see themselves as victims. In a way, I agree - whites run everything. But that doesn't mean they have political, social, and cultural hegemony. They must endure a political class that ignores their concerns (primarily immigration). They must endure a social doctrine that demands adherence to PC and a complete silencing of all racial truths. They must endure a culture that denigrates them, portrays them as evil or stupid, and does not celebrate their traditions. I could keep going. Sure, whites run everything, but they're still under attack. Whites run everything but the elites pursue a paradigm at odds with the concerns of the majority of white citizens. Who cares if most of those perpetuating the war against whiteness are whites themselves?

TUJ ends by qualifying his criticism as pertaining only to the widespread marketing of race realism. OK, so we're back to esoteric arguments that will inspire no one. Are whites victims in the most general sense, as in 1930s German Jews or black slaves? Of course not. But they are victims in the sense that they must surrender to whatever PC garbage demands their acquiescence. They are victims in that their concerns, even their own basic humanity, is ignored. Should whites then not see themselves as victims or at least the intended target of a concerted effort at political and cultural genocide? I think the term "victim" applied to a racial group perhaps doesn't feel right, as I propose a more proactive, positive approach that celebrates tradition. But informing whites of the ongoing attack against their nation, of which these violent incidents represent the most potent example, is the best way to proceed. Finally, for those like TUJ who question the palatability of these incidents - Bernard Goetz.

Reflections on Carter Strange Attack and the N-Word

I originally started this post off with, "Black people be actin' a fool again," but the sarcastic tone belies the gravity of this issue. Two big news stories from this past weekend showcase the increasing delinquency of black youths. In Periora, Illinois, a mob of about 70 blacks marched through the city literally yelling the anti-white rhetoric that underpins our increasingly multicultural society:

Tonight, around 11 p.m., a group of at least 60-70 African American youth marched down one of the side streets (W. Thrush) to the 4 lane main drag (Sheridan). They were yelling threats to white residents. Things such as we need to kill alll the white people around here. They were physically intimidating anyone calling for help from the police. They were surrounding cars. Cars on the main drag had to slam on their brakes to either avoid the youth blocking not only all four lanes, but a large section of the side street as well. fights were breaking out among them. They were rushing residents who looked out their doors, going on to porches, yelling threats to people calling the police for help.

And in an absolutely horrific story out of South Carolina (trigger warning justified), a pack of eight black teens robbed and then severely beat a white teen to the brink of death:

Police Chief Randy Scott said the 18-year-old victim, later identified as Carter Strange, was jogging through a parking lot near the intersection of Blossom Street and Saluda Avenue just after midnight on Monday when the assault happened. "This teenager was minding his own business, trying to make his curfew when he was brutally attacked and robbed," said Scott.

Police said Henrey and the seven juveniles he was with were roaming Five Points, targeting others until they came across Strange. In fact, investigators said the group tried unsuccessfully to rob or assault at least four other people.

Vicki said she rushed to the hospital and found a son she could barely recognize. "I literally bent over him; I recognized his hand and his hair, and I said 'that's my son,'" Vicki told WIS News 10. Carter's family told police the beating was so severe he required emergency surgery to remove a brain clot. He had his second surgery Friday afternoon, which was for facial reconstruction. It's Carter's latest step in a long road to recovery.

And what does the mainstream media do - blame Matt Drudge for noting a pattern and cops for trying to maintain peace. They makes a conscious effort to hide details of racial patterns and hurl baseless invective at anyone willing to notice one. However, this insistence on colorblind delusion doesn't extend to the specious and often downright false claims about racial profiling. With that issue, we must hold the policemen (and society too!) responsible for exaggerating the transgressions of blacks. Due to their exculpating primarily black perpetrators and their efforts at hiding racial truth, I now view the MSM as complicit in a genocidal campaign against white America. They avoid blaming vile perpetrators of crime, instead, championing this amoral narrative of minority political, cultural, and social penury.

If you haven't noticed, I am about fed up. I propose that Carter Strange becomes a martyr for white America, an obviously good-hearted (one's face often reflects one's disposition) middle-class kid almost beaten to death by a pack of feral blacks, merely for the fun of it. Just how the Rev. Wright tapes and the "acting stupidly" case of "Dr." Henry Gates spurred a conservative renaissance of honest racial speech, these recent acts of violence need to wake up "honest, hard-working" Americans.

Now, I don't contend blacks are invading our towns like the War of the Worlds tripods; instead, we must look to the collusive effort of the MSM, the black-run Justice Department, anti-white popular culture, and anti-white academia that tacitly approves of anything that dispossesses whites of their national birthright. We have a wholly perverse value system that refuses to understand the phenomenon of black-on-white violence, a facet of the war against whites as a collective. We have a society that no longer respects whites as valuable human beings, manifested in the tripe about "privilege" that denigrates their achievements, popular media that mocks white men as doofuses, "two minutes of hate" campaigns against anyone straying outside the PC, direct disenfranchisement via immigration from Latin America, and the increasing number of racist attacks across the country.

Regarding the Carter Strange attack, Lawrence Auster describes the perpetrators as "savages". I've seen other descriptions of these attacks as committed by "feral blacks." But such terms do not adequately describe the nature of these attacks. These black youths did not merely rob Mr. Strange, an act at least logical in its motivation. No, these blacks robbed Mr. Strange then gang-beat him until he needed facial reconstructive surgery and suffered a blood clot that almost killed him. The terms "savage" and "feral" presuppose a basic humanity to the individuals, not domesticated by civilization but still possessing the empathy and compassion of man. The actions committed by this pack of blacks reflects a wholly evil disposition, something that we should not even consider worthy of society's nurturing.

I propose we begin calling these vile creatures subhuman. This degrading term reflects the sickness of their hearts, the rampant evil present that could cause them to act in such a carnal, animalistic manner. They are not human, they are animals deserving of life in a cage, a sentence unlikely given their ages and the soft justice system. Hell, we can't even know their names because they're too young.

Clearly I believe that words carry a deep meaning. It's important that we use language that adequately reflects our emotions and illustrates whatever phenomenon we wish to describe. I read the article on Carter Strange. Then I looked at the picture of the one 19 year-old gang member, as I'm sure most of you have done. In thinking about the nauseating act of violence and seeing the man's face, I'm sure I'm not the only person who thought to himself, "fucking nigger." Now, I never use that word here and I discourage others from using too. It's not a word that I think should be thrown around because we no longer live in that society. And we should at least give blacks the opportunity to adopt white, middle-class mores, an presumably unattractive task if we degrade them in such a manner.

But those black teens are niggers. When I use the term here, I apply it to these specific individuals who committed an act of violence, a type of violence, that now seems unique to blacks. Of course, evil exists in people of all races, but this type of unprovoked violence without any reasonable motivation is only done by blacks. We shouldn't use the term nigger in a general sense, thereby denigrating upstanding blacks like Walter Williams. We should use it to categorize this particular type of animalistic, subhuman evil that manifests almost exclusively in blacks - the kind of evil that propels a man to beat another man to death for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Note 1: I know whites used to lynch blacks, but more whites than blacks were actually killed during the height of lynching. Plus, the black lynchings reflected a state-sanctioned racial hierarchy that all but encouraged the violence. The murders were just as evil and sickening, but a different, more "civilized" type of evil that doesn't suggest a pack of animals attacking a helpless prey.

Note 2: I do not condone use of the term "nigger" in a general context.

Note 3: I described the Carter Strange attack to a close, race-realist family member, using no details whatsoever. As a thought experiment, I merely asked him, "tell me something, anything about the story" and he immediately said the respective races.

Religion vs. Spirituality

Liberals hate traditional religion, a phenomenon I discussed concerning Millenials:

the fact that young people are abandoning religion isn't indicative of a growing rationalism, but rather merely an opposition to traditional mores. According to this recent Marist poll, Millenials have replaced traditional religion with a nebulous "spiritualism", which in practice equates to an amalgamation of liberalism, religious pluralism, and the edicts of New Age. For example (page 13), Millenials embrace moral relativism at a rate of 64% compared to Generation X at 54% and the Greatest generation at 52% (surprised the final one is so high though). Also, a full 63% of Millenials found some truth in the statement, "I'm spiritual, but not religious," a clear reflection that they do not abjure religion for reasons of philosophical objection.

Millenials, inundated with the ideals of modern liberalism, seek institutions that will support these same norms. Thus, they discard religion in favor of "spirituality" (note: if you encounter a girl really into this, she probably has an STD), prurient behavioral norms, and the "anything goes" approach of relativism. Millenials aren't actually less religious; they've just increasingly adopted liberalism as a guide for life.

In sum, liberals like faith, but not the rigid and conservative standards of traditional religion. They'll gladly accept all sorts of odd beliefs, just as long as said beliefs don't demand any particular standard of behavior or come with the purportedly archaic ideals of Christianity and the like.

Here's a great example from Joy Behar. Ms. Behar, an unmarried harpie comedian on the lady gabfest The View, is known for making rather controversial statements about religion, especially the Catholic Church. I don't feel like drudging up all sorts of links, so just take my word for it. However, on her own HLN talk show, Behar had on "psychic medium" James Van Praagh. She introduced the segment as follows:

Earlier this week, I spoke to author and medium James van Praagh. And we had such an interesting conversation that I wanted to invite him back, but this time for a reading.

Here's the video with Behar seemingly convinced by Mr. van Praagh's display (I'd wager he does both cold and hot reading here).

Now one could argue that Behar is just playing to the audience - middle-aged women who love this 'woo' crap. Seriously, women really love this crap. But she does seem somewhat genuine in lauding Mr. van Praagh.

Once again, we see how liberalism has erected proxy institutions for conservative ones - with religion replaced by "spirituality", a wholesale term used to describe the current inane New Age fad (well, I guess Oprah's not pushing that anymore though).

On a related note, I'm not sure if I have a huge problem with this. In regards to claims that van Praagh and others like him "take advantage" of gullible consumers, I definitely don't agree. He provides a service that people choose, of their own volition, to pay money for. Too bad if they get suckered, it's not his fault. In regards to the notion that he sells them a lie instead of the cold truth, I don't particularly mind pretty lies if they have little chance of being undermined. Now a fattie can't go around believing she is a supermodel because eventually she'll realize the fallacy of her belief and prior to that, the self-doubt will gradually get to her. But this pretty lie has little chance of going away; instead, it will persist and offer something that the cold truth can't.

Personal Experience with Jewish Attitudes

Saturday Audience Participation

Still open comments, but comments will be strictly monitored for this thread.

I've been meaning to write a post about leading Jewish researcher (or nefarious Jew hater, depending on your viewpoint) Kevin MacDonald for awhile now. In doing some reading for the post, I came across Derbyshire's very interesting discussion of KMac's work over at Jewish website, Jewcy. Derbyshire doesn't exactly hold back in noting Jewish reticence concerning gentile criticism and Jewcy author Joey Kurtzmann avoids the often ignorant condemnation of KMac's work. He ends the conversation as follows, in a post entitled "A Break from the Hooray-for-us Histiography":

So, in toto, “Is Kevin MacDonald right about Jews?” On some issues, I think he is. In other instances I think he’s misunderstood basic aspects of Jewish history, or described Jewish behavior with near monocausal explanations that seem overblown or patently silly. Whether his theory of “group evolutionary strategies” turns out to make sense in light of future research, and whether improved understanding of Jewish population genetics will support or rubbish the theory that Jews have hardwired behavioral predispositions, we’ll just have to wait and see. I’ll be watching with interest.

But what seems to me undeniable is that MacDonald has presented us with a fascinating and genuinely novel examination of the history and internal workings of the Jewish world. His trilogy is a hell of a read. To any Jewcy readers tired of pious, “hooray-for-us!” Jewish historiography, or just interested in seeing traditional Jewish history through a kaleidoscope, I happily recommend it.

The question that started their conversation was: "Is Kevin MacDonald right?" Even asking such a question would be considered PC sacrilege in most circles, the machinations of any Jewish groups completely off-limits in polite society. In fact, much as with black crime, one is never supposed to notice a person's Jewishness, unless of course its the Jewish community's own fastidious categorizing of every single prominent Jew, half-Jew, or quarter-Jew who has ever existed. Seriously, I've never read a Wikipedia of any person of at least partial Jewish heritage without an accompanying link to some article celebrating their Jewishness. And of course, there's Adam Sandler's famous Hanukah song that illustrates this phenomenon in musical form.

But the question remains: is KMac right? Usually when one asks this question, it's in regards to societal-level political or cultural initiatives, such as immigration reform or the Communist revolutions. So while KMac spent a lot of time blaming Jews for the breakdown of traditional societies (though I've read he claims Jews are a "necessary, not sufficient" condition), his theories on evolutionary biology ultimately underpin his entire perspective on Jews. Yes, the question of Jewish involvement in politics and popular culture is an interesting one, but I'm more concerned with the basic attitudes of Jews and collective Jewish groups that would motivate the destructive aims KMac ascribes to them.

The most incendiary of his theories, regarding Jewish leftism, comprises the content of his third book, Culture of Critique. KMac presents his theories regarding Jewish attitudes and group evolution in the first two books, A People that Shall Dwell Alone and Separation and its Discontents. In essence, he argues the following list of points. (Note that some of these are borrowed from the above Jewcy discussion, so I'm moreso detailing the basic framework of KMac's position, instead of directly summarizing his actual work.)

-Jews are hyper-ethnocentric.
-Jews have a highly evolved out-group animus.
-Jews enforce cultural separation between themselves and the dominant majority.
-Jews view themselves as distinct from the dominant majority.
-Jews express a strong collectivist strategy, usually at odds with the dominant majority.
-Jews proudly engage in "self-celebratory, triumphalist Jewish," and "pleasure [themselves] with the sort of masturbatory interpretation [they] like." (Kurtzmann)
-Jews get very uneasy concerning research into genetics, though this biological inheritance underpins essentially everything Jewish, such as Zionism, Birthright trips, marriage, etc.
-Jews have little respect for the dominant majority or their culture and in some cases believe them to be pathological as compared to their own communities.

Of course, there's tons of other stuff to discuss. But this is the main basis of how KMac depicts Jewish attitudes.

I'm going to go with something a little bit different today for Audience Participation. I don't mind if non-Jews discuss their own experiences, but I'd really like my Jewish readers (not sure if I have a critical mass of them, but probably) to answer these questions. I don't want secondary, historical, or scientific analysis as in that offered by KMac. I want personal experiences - dinners with cousins, family events with idle chit-chat, gossip at the synagogue and at Hebrew school, growing up on a Jewish street, listening to Jewish classmates and officemates, and hearing about so-and-so from the neighborhood. I want to consider the veracity of these claims about Jewish attitudes by hearing from Jews themselves, listening to close family and friends speak candidly because no one else is around to hear what they really think - good or bad. I want to hear personal stories of Jews speaking in confidence to other Jews. The best way to understand Jewish attitudes is to ask Jews themselves.

Today's questions: Out of the attitudes presented above in the bulleted section, how many are true? What do Jews think of gentiles? Is there a difference between older and younger Jews? Where does the loyalty of most Jews lie or how do they define themselves with respect to a collective? Is Uncle Morty still angry about not getting into St. Anthony's Hall or the posh country club? Does Bubbe go on and on complaining about the "goyim" and "shiksas"? Do Jews really love themselves, as a group and in meeting other individual Jews, as much as KMac claims? What do your family members and friends say about gentiles in private? In homogeneously Jewish contexts such as family gatherings, are non-Jews, such as through marriage or friendship, accepted like Jews would be?

Remember, I'd really appreciate Jewish readers answering these questions because I want experiences with personal attitudes and not the secondary hypothesizing of academics and scholars. And while I presented the questions in conjunction with KMac's work, I understand that perhaps some Jewish readers may have little experience with these attitudes.

Leftist Motivations for Climate "Science"

I can't recall anyone in the reactionary sphere writing about the political and cultural motivations of "climate science." After my discovery last year of paleo-diet nutrition and understanding the unbelievable lies proffered by mainstream science, I skeptically consider any "scientific" study with attendant political implications. The left will use the unassailable authority of "science", an authority buttressed by a largely ignorant and thus credulous public, as means of promoting their tripe. I admit I know little about climate science, but given the little I know and given that "climate science" is almost a perfect manifestation of leftism, I reject it.

An article at AlterNet argues that the right-wing worldview is damaged by climate science, though the article really illustrates how leftism can use "science" as a means of advancing both political and cultural memes.

It seems climate change is now part and parcel of America’s “culture wars.” Similar to abortion and other social issues, climate change has become a partisan issue, with liberals backing the science, and conservatives denying it [Liberals believe evolution suddenly stopped 50,000 years ago and that it shaped only our bodies, not our minds.].

Thus, the question remains: Why is the reality of climate change such a threat to the Right? A new study published in the Spring 2011 issue of Sociological Quarterly delves into this very topic. The study finds that conservatives' refusal to acknowledge the very real threat of climate change, has more to do with its implications rather than skepticism of scientific facts. It's a classic case of cognitive dissonance.

The author continues, risibly ignoring the possibility that all the reasons for conservatives rejecting climate change could perhaps also motivate the overwhelming number of liberal academics. Funny that when "science" conforms to their worldview, the infalliable content comes from completely unbiased researchers. But when it doesn't, such as the case of Kanazawa and black women, the intellectuals in question must have sinister motives.

Climate change poses a profound threat to many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. Conservatives tend to champion private property rights, small government, and above all else, unfettered industrial capitalism. Industrial capitalism is an economic system predicated on the accelerating extraction and consumption of fossil fuels for energy, which is driving the climate change we face today. To accept this basic premise, one is compelled to question the wisdom of capitalism itself, which is a terrifying notion for conservatives. And it doesn't take long to recognize that conservative values are inherently antithetical to the desperately needed actions to tackle global climate change.

Seriously dealing with the threat of climate change would require government to heavily regulate corporations and subsidize renewable energy. It would entail a strong international body, most likely boosting the power of the UN. It would bring an end to the inefficient and energy-wasting free-trade agenda, as localizing economies would become necessary to sustain communities. And, most importantly, confronting climate change demands addressing climate justice for developing nations suffering from the pollution of industrialized nations, or more simply, a redistribution of wealth from North to South.

So why is climate change such a boon to leftism? A brief summary: global bodies of authority, undermining of free trade, undermining of industry, demonization of white/Western industrial nations, glorification of indigenous tribes, and Gaiaism.

In particular, leftists really like the portrayal of a rapacious West, embodied by cartoons of fat-cat oil tycoons, destroying the world inhabited by the innocent noble savages of "developing" nations. For example, James Cameron made this dichotomy explicit in his ode to Gaiaism, Avatar. In essence, leftists get to, almost literally, paint the white West as Satan. Every religion needs a foil and Gaiaism, the religion of modern leftism, blames the ostensibly positive progress of modern technology for fomenting the end of the world. As with all leftism, the perverse status hierarchy reigns, with industrial Westerners somehow culpable for all the world's problems and the saintly noble savages quietly living in peace.

But we shouldn't find this surprising given that much of leftism seeks to demonize whites and their civilization. In this case, the left uses intellectual shaming as a means of winning converts, a term I use on purpose.

Update - Climate "scientists" are a bit defensive about their work (warning for language and hilariously awful content):

The Lessons of Glee

Update: Brief response to comments here.

So its the doldrums of TV season and I'm not a big movie fan. As I've stated before, I like my pop culture easily digestible. Awhile back, Frost wrote a post lauding Glee while simultaneously defending its presumed gayness. When I wrote my post on the absolutely gorgeous Dianna Agron, I came across a few Glee sites looking for pictures and decided to give the show a try. I did so due to 1) curiosity concerning the Glee phenomenon and 2) the fact that the show has some attractive girls on it. Yea whatever, call me a fag, but I have no shame in watching crappy, feminine TV.

So anyway, the show is as advertised - pretty gay, desperately diverse, and full of "we are the world" and "you are the brightest star in the sky" stuff. The show has three gays, two Jews, two Asians, a Latina, two blacks, a guy in a wheelchair, and probably more that I'm forgetting. Here's how Frost describes it:

So why is watching Glee taboo for manly men? Why is it that most of my friends laugh and crack jokes when I tell them I watch it? Well, the show is about a bunch of singing, prancing, dancing weenies in a loser-filled high school choir. Not only that, some of the producers are dicks and every episode is a shmaltzy fable about the power of friendship, diversity, and following your dreams. Yes, glee is just as super-duper gay as you thought, if not more so.

But let me go out on a limb here and say I actually like the "shmaltzy fables" that underpin each episode. I like the "follow your dreams", "you can do it" bullshit. I like that the losers seem to have formed genuine friendships. I like that everyone is important in Glee, that everyone is looked at special and deserving of respect. Sure, it's rather mawkish and I imagine the DVD comes with rainbows, glitter, and sunshine - but oh well. Pop culture should give us an escape, not remind us of society's failures, its interminable disappointments.

Some might find this position rather surprising due to my writings on masculinity and biological realism. First, let's discuss the masculinity angle. Frost thinks the Glee producers are using this as yet another surreptitious cultural offering to undermine traditional masculinity. I agree here as the gay-filled production team wouldn't pass up such a great opportunity. But as Frost notes, the West used to consider fine arts a masculine endeavor and only recently, perhaps in the latter part of the 20th century, has such a view dissipated. I mean, tell me Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra were a couple of homos right? In essence, this goes back to my idea that healthy masculinity no longer exists in our society. Since traditional, staid, stoic masculinity has become obsolete, a function of feminism and liberalism, men have separated into two camps: SWPLs who reject masculinity with condescending snark and the uber-men who decry anything other than powerlifting and getting wasted as the domain of "pussies." For a man to sing and dance, or to watch singing and dancing, surely precludes him from membership in the second cohort. And today's Western men, so insecure about his perceived masculinity, avoids anything that might undermine his status.

Second, consider the limitless optimism of Glee. In one episode in the first season (I've seen eight episodes so far), the Glee director finishes the episode by telling every student how great they are, no matter what. Here's the quote:

"You're in the glee club. And all you have are each other. So it doesn't matter that Rachel's Jewish or that Santana is Latina..."

Am I supposed to roll my eyes at this? Hell, I think not even the actors probably made it through that scene with a straight face. But why is such idealism so bad? On the show, the cheerleading director reflects the "win at all costs" attitude of society. She scowls, she yells, and she treats the children without any modicum of restraint. The Glee director does the opposite, telling them they're wonderful, that everyone is included, that they can do anything. As a cognitive realist, I'm supposed to find the intended message wrong at best and destructive at worst. Yet, I don't. I actually quite like it.

I've lamented before the "Ivy League or nothing" hysteria that permeates the middle and upper classes, with this type of pragmatic obsession permeating to the lower classes and manifesting as opulent purchases. And while I surely applaud accomplishment, I find the "rat race" ultimately unsatisfying. Not entirely because we need something besides material wealth and status to satiate our souls. But because it implicitly considers human value as dependent on our achievements and not on our personhood. Nature never intended for man to see wealth as anything other than a necessary component of survival. Glee, with its over the top ode to outsiders, doesn't care about looking too idealistic or trying too hard to make the losers look good. They embrace that concept and in the end they get it right. People have value as individuals because of who they are and how they affect others.

However, this type of liberalism doesn't confine itself to the vulnerable psyches of today's youths. It doesn't exist only in the choir rooms of our high schools and the encouragement of nice gym teachers. No, it seeps both into the public consciousness and into the halls of government. So instead of merely encouraging everyone to try their best, we have a cultural and political zeitgeist that demands full egalitarianism. It also blames failure on an oppressive construct, censuring "beauty standards" for lonely fatties and "institutional racism" for crack-dealing black dropouts. We all have value as people. We should judge others by virtue of their kindness (well not those "too nice" people, I hate them) and their passion, but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking this equates with practical and economic value.

We can't allow the idealism espoused by Glee to motivate our politics. We have to understand the distinction between moral/personal and practical value, with the former imbued upon every good person and the latter only to those with a verifiable talent. Unfortunately, the overweening elite has concocted a cultural value system that often conflates the two. Then, in conjunction with this perverse system of values, we must endure their schemes to correct the evident disparities through programs like Head Start.

In sum, we must understand the difference between idealism as a means of motivation and helpful encouragement and as basis for unrealistic expectations of outcomes. Further, we mustn't consider common success as a barometer for the respect everyone deserves if they are good neighbors and good citizens.

[See guys, I have a heart!]

The Failure of "Colorblind" Politics

If you haven't noticed, we (well...just me, but 'we' sounds more professional) like to switch up the topics here at OneSTDV. I started this blog primarily for cathartic race discussion, but gradually it became an all-purpose reactionary, anti-PC forum. That change wasn't exactly intentional, it just sort of happened. And in general, I try to cover more topics than just race, as the assault of liberalism impacts all aspects of life.

But even when I put up a post on gender, family, or popular culture, the comments almost always correctly ascertain the racial bias of a given story. Further, I sometimes have to consciously avoid noting race as a salient feature of the issue. So what does this mean? It means that race as a defining feature of man's disparate groups and as a foundational aspect of the left's pathological hatred almost always underpin political phenomena. We simply can't hide from race.

With this in mind comes Herman Cain's recent rejection of the label "African-American." I understand why he does so, with this reflecting his larger rejection of identity politics. He wants a meritocratic society and the stringent characterization of racial groups undermines that goal. Cain instead offers merely "American" as sufficient for his category, a similar label supported by another non-white conservative Michelle Malkin. I'm not going to disparage them because I like the sentiment.

But ignoring race altogether, as "colorblind", sanctimonious, and ultimately cowering, mainstream conservatives do, leads to the blank-slatist ideology that underpins all of our profligate political initiatives. Additionally, this repudiation of passive categorization ignores the very real connection between biological groups and the organic genesis of their cultures. Sam Francis, speaking at the 1994 AmRen convention, expresses this elegantly:

The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.

In sum, reactionary conservatives must understand race because they can not conserve anything or transmit a cultural heritage independent of direct biological inheritance. Further, they must understand race so as to combat the left's relentless attack on the West, appearing both as a subtle (think mainstream Democrats) tactic against whites and as a transparent, visceral, spit-spewing animus as on Feministing or AlterNet. The left pushes ideas, independent of their veracity, for the sole purposes of demonizing whites and the industrial West. For the West to survive, it must know why it's being attacked in the first place.

Gender and Other Reasons for Abortion

The Wall Street Journal gets very close to Game/sexual realism territory in a recent article on the skewed gender ratio. For decades now, Asian parents have wanted boys so badly that they often abort girls, merely because of their gender. More on this decision later, but first consider how the author correctly approaches the problem of society having too many men:

In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that's as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events. Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China's and India's populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120.

"Historically, societies in which men substantially outnumber women are not nice places to live," she writes. "Often they are unstable. Sometimes they are violent." There is indeed compelling evidence of a link between sex ratios and violence. High sex ratios mean that a society is going to have "surplus men"—that is, men with no hope of marrying because there are not enough women. Such men accumulate in the lower classes, where risks of violence are already elevated. And unmarried men with limited incomes tend to make trouble. In Chinese provinces where the sex ratio has spiked, a crime wave has followed. Today in India, the best predictor of violence and crime for any given area is not income but sex ratio.

So much for the gender egalitarian argument with regards to violent activity, huh? I wonder if feminists will lend their inimitably shrill voices to this cause. Seriously though, she is correct in noting that idle men, without a wife to love and a family to raise, get into trouble. It's a common aphorism that "civilization is really just man's way of impressing women." But, if merely due to a skewed ratio, there aren't enough women to go around, then what of the men who understand their lonely fate? They have no impetus to participate in a society that leaves them without the most desired of objectives - women, sex, love, and progeny.

The leftist author of the book, Mara Hvistendahl, unsurprisingly goes off into a tangential screed against the West for apparently causing this problem. If it weren't so desperate, I'd find it somewhat offensive to Asians who presumably lack the autonomy to construct their own cultural value system.

She ends by lamenting how the "Religious Right" may use this as justification for ending all abortion. In a refreshing twist, the WSJ author makes a somewhat un-PC point that I have thought of previously. Though the author couches it in terms of unfettered "choice" and leaves the question of life implicit.

For if "choice" is the moral imperative guiding abortion, then there is no way to take a stand against "gendercide." Aborting a baby because she is a girl is no different from aborting a baby because she has Down syndrome or because the mother's "mental health" requires it. Choice is choice. One Indian abortionist tells Ms. Hvistendahl: "I have patients who come and say 'I want to abort because if this baby is born it will be a Gemini, but I want a Libra.' "

Most pro-choice zealots likely find this somewhat disconcerting, with it being ever so close to the boogeyman ideology of eugenics. After all, leftists generally regard abortion as an outlet, a sort of safety net, not a conscious decision based on whatever innate qualities the baby possesses. For a telling thought experiment, just imagine if a gay test came about, a realistic projection given the hair test and the finger test - anybody want to prognosticate on the feminist response to that?

Further, inherent to their position, pro-abortionists assert that a fetus has no value as a life. It is not murder to abort a fetus because the fetus does not yet qualify as a life. Thus, as the WSJ author notes, any reason should suffice in aborting the child. And not just the predicted gender or some type of genetic abnormality. We don't need legitimate reasons like that because we are dealing with a "clump of cells", a bunch of matter not substantially different than the wadded up tissue paper in a 14 year-old boy's bedroom. Do we need a reason to flush that down the toilet? Do we need treat dead skin, hair, or nails with any respect? Of course not because they are not life.

Thus, a potential parent can abort a child for the most frivolous of reasons, such as the horoscope reason given above. In personal conversations, I once argued that aborting a child because he wouldn't like the same sports team as his father would be morally tenable given the leftists' basic philosophical frame. Or how about the child's favorite color being navy blue instead of royal blue. Or how about the child having five birthmarks on his arm instead of four. You get the point, any trivial reason should work.

In the end, pro-abortion advocates cede all moral ground when they define abortion as a "personal choice." They do so to piggyback on the feminist-inspired cultural ideal that holds female wants (solipsism) as sufficient for supporting any moral position. But in doing so, the leftists have given all moral standing to each women and whatever personal choice they express. One can foresee a woman using both the troubling reasons given above (though is "my career" as a soulless coffee-jockey any better?) or the persuasion of external entities as good enough reasons. These external entities could of course become eugenic in nature, such as the increasing number of organizations that pay for voluntary sterilizations. I imagine though that they'd somehow blame this on the coercive patriarchy, but isn't "making money", as in continuing in a professional career, usually the ultimate goal of getting an abortion anyway.

Once again, the feminist position is rife with potential contradictions, but they'll ignore that anyway and rely on shaming tactics as they always do.

White Men as Superheroes

According to "scholars" and "experts", comic book movies are too white. A recent article from the Christian Science Monitor (H/T: SBPDL) discusses how whitey is ruining comic book movies for everyone else!

But, as movies continue to mine classic comic books, some critics suggest they are going retro in more ways than one, returning to the genre’s early weak spots: a lack of diversity and an overwhelming emphasis on white American male power fantasies.

“Hollywood often continues to use a white American male as its default lead character and assumes that viewers of all demographics will be able to identify with him,” says Amy Corbin, assistant professor of art and film studies at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Penn.

The white male becomes the “universal” character who is supposedly compelling for everyone – while when women and people of color play the leads, those films are often assumed to be “niche” films that will only attract a viewing demographic that matches the lead character,” she adds via email.

So let's review: with a white man as the lead, the movie is not diverse enough. If a minority character is the sidekick, he is being relegated or fetishized as a prop. If a minority character is the lead, it's considered a niche movie (Blade anyone?). Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see an alternative that would satisfy these "experts".

The money quote follows, the anti-white sentiment transparent no longer shrouded by pseudo-academic prattling:

The Green Lantern origin myth pushes this particular bias further than most in the super hero canon, says comic book expert Julian Chambliss, who teaches history at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. In the Green Lantern mythology, the latest wearer of the ring of power is chosen by the ring itself, specifically for the wearer’s strength of will and ability to overcome fear.

The ring is looking for “the best of the best,” says Mr. Chambliss, adding: “You’re telling me that in 2011, on a planet of some 7 billion people, the vast majority of whom are minority faces, that the best of the best is going to be a white guy from southern California?”

Here's a (admittedly interesting) lecture from Dr. Chambliss at SWPL-idea fair TED. Dr. Chambliss' bio unsurprisingly confirms OneSTDV's Law of Black Intellectualism:

Dr. Chambliss teaches race and ethnicity, urban history, city planning history, African-American history, and popular history courses.

Back to the quote: note how Chambliss can't possibly fathom that a white man could embody heroic qualities. That a white man could harbor moral and spiritual gifts worthy of veneration. That a white man could be worthy of any ethereal responsibility. In Dr. Chambliss' worldview, white men only exist as leaders of society and industry due to white male privilege, that amorphous but apparently ubiquitous inheritance that someone only white men discovered. But Dr. Chambliss' statement goes beyond the nonsense of most anti-racist academics; it's actually quite more abhorrent than what we usually encounter.

In essence, Chambliss' countenances the notion that "white guy[s] from Southern California" have nothing to offer the world. He sees them as empty, especially when compared to all the "minority faces". He sees them as lacking that je-ne-sais-quo that makes heroes of ordinary men, that piques man's soul, that enlivens his spirit. Apparently, it's unfathomable that "a white guy from Southern California" could ever have the personal vibrancy to defeat evil, presumably because he embodies the world's evil himself.

Funny though that Chambliss so casually rejects the notion that a white man could be "the best of the best." After all, what do these men have in common:

Newton, Gauss, Einstein, Feynman, Galileo, Socrates, Plato, Darwin, Da Vinci, Hawking, Marconi, Tesla, Pasteur, Kepler, Copernicus, Faraday, von Neumann, Laplace, Watson and Crick, Euclid, Dalton, etc...

And let's take a look at commonly regarded "heroic" occupations (very hard to find good data, but the following links should suffice):

Whites make up over 90% of the FDNY.
The police force is mostly white men, especially on the front lines.
Almost all fighter pilots are white men.
Special forces are almost all white.

So it would seem, considering the entire history of science and technology and the racial make-up of "heroic" occupations, that perhaps the choice of a white man for galactic protector would make a little sense. Sure, there are respectable people of all races, but is it really that surprising that a white man would be chosen? According to anti-white individuals like Dr. Chambliss, apparently that answer is yes.

A final note on the curious manner in which Dr. Chambliss frames his point:

on a planet of some 7 billion people, the vast majority of whom are minority faces

The "vast majority" are "minorities"? And I think that about sums up academic race-hustling.

Study Lies About Skilled Immigrants

In the reactionary right, we criticize the mainstream media quite often. In general, we contend the mainstream media offers consciously skewed information that almost always supports their worldview. This is most apparent whenever some new study comes out with a conclusion substantiating a pet theory of leftism. Sadly, you can essentially never trust what the media or even the researchers tell you. For example, nutrition luminary Dean Ornish pointed to a study from Harvard which he lauded as undermining the paleo/Atkins diet paradigm. But looking at the data, one notes the "low-carb" group was eating what paleo dieters would consider an extreme amount of carbs!

With this in mind, here's a recent study from the Brookings Institute asserting that immigrants are now highly skilled. The Washington Post publishes the findings with little incredulity:

Highly skilled temporary and permanent immigrants in the United States now outnumber lower-skilled ones, marking a dramatic shift in the foreign-born workforce that could have profound political and economic implications in the national debate over immigration.

This shift in America’s immigration population, based on census data, is summarized in a report released Thursday by the Brookings Institution. It found that 30 percent of the country’s working-age immigrants, regardless of legal status, have at least a bachelor’s degree, while 28 percent lack a high school diploma.

As the number of working-age immigrants in the United States has swelled, from 14.6 million in 1994 to 29.7 million in 2010, the numbers of highly skilled and lower-skilled immigrants have risen, but the highly skilled sector has risen faster, according to the report. Among the causes are the recent rise in the number of international students and of temporary H-1B visas, for which a bachelor’s degree is usually required, the report said.

The report argues, and even alludes to the attendant political rhetoric, that the current immigration debate wrongly characterizes recent immigrants as low-skilled. Instead, it asserts that recent immigrants are highly educated, model minority types that will enliven our economy by creating jobs. Too bad their methodology has sort of a big problem, one that they gloss over and try to hide in the footnotes - their data doesn't include illegals. Their data on immigrant populations was taken from the 2009 American Community Survey and the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. Even the authors admit that illegals don't usually respond:

Both the ACS and decennial census seek to enumerate the full population, but fail to fully cover certain hard-to-reach populations. Unauthorized immigrants are a particularly vulnerable group that is likely reluctant to respond to government officials.

Then in the footnotes, they admit the following:

...readers should be aware that the undocumented population, most of whom are low-skilled, are likely underrepresented in our estimates of both the size and skill distribution of foreign-born populations.

And yet another concern they hide in the footnotes:

If high school graduates are included with the low-skilled, the overall skill ratio of immigrants in the largest 100 metros drops considerably to 55.3, meaning that there are nearly twice as many immigrants with a high school diploma or less to those with a college degree.

I also wonder about using only metropolitan areas as a means of estimating national data. It seems suspect to me, especially with lots of low-skilled immigrants working in agriculture in rural areas.

Finally, all of this overly pragmatic analysis ignores the cultural repercussions of widespread immigration. Arguing over education obscures the importance of tradition and sentimentality for the native population. Many people will gladly sacrifice money to maintain the "priceless" things in life, "the way things used to be."

So the authors massaged the data just a little bit. Unfortunately, only crazy people on teh Interwebs will give this more than a cursory overview. We can no longer count on academia or media "experts" to provide us with accurate and honest scholarship. Liberals like to say that "reality has a liberal bias" - yes, only if the numbers are fudged and the results presented accordingly.

LJBF Stories

Saturday Audience Participation

My favorite stories from Game blogs are those of LJBF - 'Let's Just Be Friends'. Definition from UrbanDictionary:

Abbreviation for "Lets Just Be Friends". Used mostly by women to indicate that they don't want a romantic relationship, but don't mind receiving attention from a guy that wants to be more than friends.

Roissy has also noted the phenomenon of "beta orbiters", which is almost the same thing. I can't recall ever being LJBF'd in my own life. And that's not because I bat anywhere close to 1000. LJBF isn't really being rejected by a woman who has permanently put you in the 'friend zone,' an unfortunate situation that has happened to essentially every man alive. In my opinion, an LJBF man is a beta supplicator who listens to a woman complain about all the bad boys that have done her wrong, buys her tampons when she's run out in the middle of the night, and holds her hair back when she throws up. He consciously puts himself below her, tending to all her needs and never once questioning her behavior or demanding any reciprocity in the relationship. He exists merely to give her attention. While I don't have any bad boy flair, I have never and never would lower myself like that.

Today's questions: Have an LJBF story? Or a near-LJBF story that you avoided? Or one that happened to a friend? Why do so many men allow this to happen to them?

America's Dying Suburban Communities

A couple days ago, SBPDL posted the following clip from the classic TV show The Wonder Years. (Editor's Note: There are a few pop culture items that I will likely never discuss because they are somewhat "sacred" to me. The Wonder Years is one of them.)



In an inimitable style with its slightly mawkish but heartfelt voiceover, The Wonder Years clip captures the idyllic serenity of early 70s suburban America. Paul included the clip as a testament to this time period and juxtaposed it with stories of more blacks behaving badly. In his post and the comments below, Paul laments the once communal celebrations of summer, now purportedly undermined by a certain minority group "flash mobbing" and "beating whitey" all over the great ol' US of A.

Paul (and Chuck as well) does a great of cataloging black pathology in all its forms, reminding us white-flighters why the suburbs became so attractive in the first place. But perhaps in our pursuit of information silenced by mainstream media, we've laid too much of the blame at blacks themselves and not enough at the cultural malaise affecting these communities. Perhaps we should look to direct black misbehavior as not the primary cause, but as one of several causes for the dismantling of community.

Unsurprisingly, I'm going to blame liberalism for the almost forgotten suburban community feel. As I've done before, I present a parallel analysis to Paul's enumeration of direct black misbehavior, castigating instead the cultural effects of liberalism that plague suburbia. In essence, the hysteria about blacks invading our towns is somewhat misguided. Black population density has always been around 12% and even higher in urban areas like New York City. White-flight communities remain white-flight communities, with measures such as housing rates set up to keep black people out; though, none of these polite society liberals would ever admit this. Sure, blacks now act worse than they ever have and better transportation makes our suburban enclaves more open. But watch that Wonder Years clip again and tell me that this doesn't exist merely because blacks are rioting or flash robbing. No, it's something intrinsic to suburbia, the attitudes have changed, the Bowling Alone syndrome has caught on. Why then?

Suburbia is denigrated as boring and too insular: In discussing Taylor Swift, I've noted the cultural bias against staid suburbanites. Suburban life, free of violence and drug abuse, is somehow "unreal" while urban life is exciting and culturally vibrant. The Baby Boomers and their children have accepted this depiction, looking outside their communities for cultural inspiration. Suburbanites no longer feel connected to their neighbors because they no longer believe their neighbors provide anything culturally authentic. Additionally, suburbanites have accepted the doctrine of "social justice". Instead of buttressing and improving their own communities, the only venerable concept of charity involves African babies (better if you adopt at least one!), poor people, and transsexuals. As commenter RobertB pointed out, school busing reflects this transition from a cohesive community centered around children to one implicitly globalized with concerns orthogonal to that of suburbia.

White people act worse: The reactionary sphere reacts to mainstream coverage and in doing so likely focuses a little too much on black and Hispanic pathology. Rarely do we condemn the cultural devolution of white America, especially amongst the lower classes. In one of my favorite Roissy posts "Then and Now", he uses pictures to showcase how the working class has gone from upstanding, dignified individuals to 'People of Walmart'. A new site, Modernity Sucks, has tailored an entire blog around this concept. Note that we'll always have a lumpenproletariat underclass, but here I'm concerned with the problems of the once respectable working class who now gleefully display 'truck nuts'.

Ironically, while liberalism has been a means of status aggrandizement amongst the upper classes, they have largely eschewed its diktats in their personal decision-making. They don't have children out of wedlock, they don't divorce, they don't do crystal meth, and they don't dropout of school. Middle-class kids probably behave worse, due to liberalism and better access to "bad" stuff via transportation and the Internet. But the lower classes have really adopted leftist-excused behavior and the results haven't been good.




[In this post, I use "suburban" loosely, meaning basically any small-town community.]

Liberal Creationists on the Black Family

Essentially every day, MediaMatters puts up a video or quote on their "Race and Ethnicity" page with no commentary. Now given the outlet and the cited quotes, their ostensibly intended message is something like, "Hey look at what this racist Right-winger said today." Of course, many of the articles cite rather innocuous incidents like Pat Buchanan's recent observation, met with vitriol and ineluctable accusations of racism by the MediaMatters commenters, that Evangelicals would vote for a Mormon over a black leftist. I mean, how can anyone argue with that?

In general, reading MediaMatters goes against one of my maxims: do not read liberal comment threads, it is bad for your mental health. Here's one from MediaMatters discussing Rush Limbaugh's contention that big government has hurt the black family. Here's the quotes:

CALLER: I want to submit to you that without the demonization and chickification of men, that the liberals' agenda cannot go forward because they need to do that in order to break up the family unit and get the father out of the home so that they can get their voter rolls farther along...And, yes, sir, and they also teach the next generation that they can do that the same way -- and the more children that you have, the more that you get, and it still keeps the people on the welfare rolls and also voting for the liberal agenda.

RUSH: Because this is exactly what's happened in the black community. The federal government has become the husband. The federal government has become the father. It exactly what's happened, and that's why the black family has disintegrated the way it has.

The liberal commentariat responds with reasoned analysis, largely eschewing the predictable ad hominem attacks. Oh wait, their responses are a Mad-libbed amalgam of:

"fat-ass", "hypocrite", "Barack Obama is married", "racist", "racist", "old white man", "racist", "stereotypes", "troll", "I worked in an inner-city health clinic...", "white people are racist", "white people have problems too!", "white people have problems too!", "racist", "Oxycotin", "stereotypes", "troll", "fat", "loser", "white people can't understand", "racist", "fat", "racist", "racist", "racist", "racist", "racist", "fat"

And shockingly (\sarcasm), in the probably over 100 comments, there's not one link to any data, not one. From my skimming of the comments, essentially no one actually offers a counter-argument besides accusations of racism and denying that any white person should ever comment on the black community. But from a few posters, the most common rejoinder is that blacks don't have access to birth control due to the presumably omnipotent Religious Right and that white racism in the workplace precludes blacks from professional ascension. I'll admit that in the insular liberal worldview, this is a mildly cogent argument. Unfortunately for the liberals, we can compare data from different time periods. And even better, we can compare data from different time periods where birth control access and black professional success were unequivocally worse than they are today.

I made a similar argument to Rush two summers ago, but I blamed social norms more than big government. Data from that post follows:

So we see that prior to the 1960's, the black family was largely in tact. Rush claims that Big Society programs of the 1960s replaced the 'father'. If one looks at the top chart closely, one notes in the year when Big Society policies took effect (1964), a markedly abrupt increase occurs in non-marital births amongst blacks. So the current data on the black family shows that despite better access to birth control and more professional success (largely due to an entire affirmative action class created by government), the black family is in worse shape than ever. Pretty convincing data if you ask me.

One could point to high incarceration rates, but I imagine this was always a problem relative to the white population. Further, non-marital birth data is taken at birth which is only nine months after copulation, a brief time period for even a black man to find himself in trouble. Also, one could point to the gender gap in educational attainment amongst blacks. But this is just grasping for straws, as it hinders the romantic prospects of a vanishingly small percentage of professional black women.

But instead of considering the above, I guess hackneyed insults about Fox News drones resolves the issue much better. It seems liberals haven't progressed much from their sanctimonious umbrage at Daniel Moynihan's seminal work.

American Students Don't Know Nothing about History

American students suck at History:

Just 13 percent of high school seniors who took the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress, called the Nation's Report Card, showed a solid grasp of the subject. Results released Tuesday showed the two other grades didn't perform much better, with just 22 percent of fourth-grade students and 18 percent of eighth-graders demonstrating proficiency.

The test quizzed students on topics including colonization, the American Revolution and the Civil War, and the contemporary United States. For example, one question asked fourth-graders to name an important result of the U.S. building canals in the 1800s. Only 44 percent knew that it was increased trade among states.

Rest of the article summary - blathering from pointy-headed intellectuals on the importance of history, blah blah blah. Two quotes stand out:

Educators said history is critical to students learning how to become better citizens and understanding how the country's political and cultural systems work. Students need to not only recognize leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, but also understand why they were important to the development of the country.

"Overall the quality and success of our lives can only be enhanced by a study of our roots," said Steven Paine, former state schools superintendent for West Virginia. "If you don't know your past, you will not have a future."

Honestly, I don't care about the ignorance of the public; in fact, I expect it. But seriously - the "quality of my life" will be improved by learning trivial historical facts?!? I'm skeptical of that claim. What the educrats don't want to tell you is that most educational institutions, especially for younger children, ultimately serve as a proxy babysitter. The indolent kid at the back of the room complaining, "when are we ever gonna use this?" is actually onto something. I mean, when was the last time you did long division, used Pythagorean theorem, or had to know what countries started WW1. Sure, for some of us, this knowledge amounts to pleasurable mental masturbation and for others, like doctors and engineers, it becomes a career. But for the vast majority, none of this matters.

We should view school as a way to inculcate values and discipline, not as an idealistic fantasy where everyone does great and loves learning. I imagine the Educational Industry pushes scholarship as the be all end all because it substantiates them. I don't mean it merely gives them a job to do and get paid handsomely for it. Instead, educrats erect a value system with educational attainment and knowledge of esoterica as the preeminent value, the foremost indicator of the enlightened class. Of course, all these individuals have this "qualification" and thus their status is secure if intellectualism remains paramount.

And this is how we get statements like people need to know history to improve their lives. Call me crazy, but I think surrounding oneself with individuals possessing a sense of humor and a welcoming personality beats doing so with pretentious know-it-alls.

Corporations and Leftism

In general, the mainstream Right views corporations as unassailable edifices of the free market. They triumphantly brag about shopping at big chain stores and express indifference towards corporate influence. Yet, the reactionary Right doesn't quite share this position or at least shares a tempered optimism towards the benefits of corporate dominance. In my opinion, the mainstream's defiance regarding criticism of big corporations is part of their frustrating adherence to the proposition nation. Instead of espousing a straightforward nationalistic and traditionalist conception of America, mainstream conservatives use proxy indicators, such as guns, religion, libertarianism, and corporatism, to illustrate their right-wing bona fides.

In doing so, they wrongly insist that corporations somehow push us rightward, apparently opening up trade and opportunity unimposed upon by government. I agree to a certain extent, but if our ultimate goal is a satisfying culture, of which steady employment is usually a component, then perhaps we should view corporations a bit more skeptically. In essence, corporations have no national loyalty and follow where the (liberal) cultural wind blows. They want money, that's it. As I've argued many times before, a strong, conservative cultural backbone must exist or else greed, sex, and other motivations will take over.

So what happens when you allow big corporations lots of freedom in conjunction with a zeitgeist that promotes liberal values?

AT&T is lining up support for its acquisition of T-Mobile from a slew of liberal groups with no obvious interest in telecom deals — except that they’ve received big piles of AT&T’s cash. In recent weeks, the NAACP, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the National Education Association have each issued public statements in support of the deal.

“For decades, AT&T has proudly supported numerous diverse groups and organizations,” a company spokesperson told POLITICO.

The NAACP was one of the first groups to announce public support of the T-Mobile acquisition. It received a $1 million contribution from AT&T in 2009 and has received funding in the six figures dating to 2006, according to the group’s annual reports.

AT&T’s record of corporate giving is widely touted by recipients, many of whom cite the company’s extensive record on promoting minorities, women, schools and the arts. But some public interest groups question whether the company is cashing in on its status as one of the country’s biggest corporate donors.

The Columbia Urban League received a $25,000 grant from the AT&T Foundation in 2009 to provide “underserved populations with resources to help their children achieve academic success,” according to the foundation’s IRS Form 990.

So AT&T has a history of giving money to leftist groups and then gets these groups' considerable clout when needed. Once again, the corporate/leftist monster rears its head. But if our culture was strongly conservative, such displays of leftism would find opposition amongst most consumers. Corporations couldn't get away with transparently liberal displays and the primary motivation, making money, would be null.

In the end, I don't know whether to boycott these places or to accept some level of government intrusion to undermine leftist corporations. Unfortunately, government would probably be even worse.

White, Heterosexual Men Do NOT Matter

This past weekend, actor and comedian Tracy Morgan offended the gays and a lot of people got huffy about it:

He said if his son that was gay he better come home and talk to him like a man and not [he mimicked a gay, high pitched voice] or he would pull out a knife and stab that little N (one word I refuse to use) to death.

He took time to visit the bulls*it of this bullying stuff and informed us that the gays needed to quit being pussies and not be whining about something as insignificant as bullying. He mentioned that gay was something kids learn from the media and programming, and that bullied kids should just bust some ass and beat those other little f*ckers that bully them, not whine about it.

After the hyped up gay suicide epidemic of the past year (I don't want to belittle the actual individuals who committed suicide, but less than ten does not constitute a national crisis), the preening left aggressively attacked Morgan for his comments. But we expected that - instead let me highlight Tina Fey's sardonic, but telling, comments on the matter:

"I hope for his sake that Tracy's apology will be accepted as sincere by his gay and lesbian co-workers at '30 Rock', without whom Tracy would not have lines to say, clothes to wear, sets to stand on, scene partners to act with, or a printed-out paycheck from accounting to put in his pocket."

So according to Ms. Fey, gays write all Hollywood scripts, work in construction making sets, design all our clothes (OK), include all actors and the entire accounting department. For a cohort comprising maybe 2% of the population, those gays sure have their hands in a lot of stuff. And I'm not just taking about their partners'...zing!

Even if we consider Fey's comments slightly exaggerated, the basic idea of what she said resonates throughout our society and underpins the entire diversity industry affecting both professional and political initiatives. Fey believes that gays do all the work for the presumably ungrateful masses who treat them badly. She believes that our country would be lost with the gay backbone. She believes that anything besides abject acceptance of gays illustrates the ignorance and evil of the populace. She thinks that without our heartfelt appreciation, gays will just pack up and leave, with the entire wheel of civilization stopping as a result.

Such a contention is laughable and indicative of leftism's humorously bad grasp of basic statistics. But let's generalize her statement: the left believes that society is dependent on the hard work of anyone who is NOT a white, heterosexual man (WHM). We need blacks to energize our culture and to play our sports, we need Hispanics to tend to our crops and perform the "jobs Americans won't do", we need women to provide stability, be the "super-parent", and reel in the recklessness/stupidity of men, we need gays to make us fashionable and clean, we need Asians to give us medicine and mystical wisdom. Notice how WHM have no purpose in our society. Notice how his place has been denigrated as epitomizing the mundane, the boring, the relatively incompetent, the undeserved, and, ultimately, the expendable. (Editor's Note: As I often do, I included links for supporting evidence.)

In the leftist worldview, WHM comprise both the oppressive class and the largely unneeded segment of society. Liberals like Tina Fey, currently the foremost "grrrl-power" voice in Hollywood, callously and perhaps consciously deny how the WHM built society and continues to make it run. As a result, we get specious and exaggerated claims about the importance of protected classes and notions of the privileged WHM with only nepotism maintaining his collective status.