The dilemma of a dynamic perspective

It would appear I'm hardly the only one to see the similarities between the rhetoric of the Israeli government and the behavior of the Jewish mob and the past rhetoric and behavior of other nations:

Last Thursday morning I woke up feeling more embarrassed for the state of Israel than almost ever before. Considering pogroms, racism (known in Israel almost exclusively as Anti-Semitism) and refugees are such central topics in Jewish history, collective memory and the Israeli education system, one would think that we would be the first to recognize such acts happening in our own backyard.

Apparently not.

Rather, it seems that the recent influx of migrants from Africa and their “taking over” of “our” cities has created a blind spot in our national conscious. Sadly, the riots in south Tel Aviv have demonstrated that nearly a century later, some of us are no better than our former European and Russian hosts who wanted nothing more than for us to leave their country.

Is it a blind spot or is it a newly clarified vision? Ironically, it would appear that I have less problem with Israelis who wish to maintain a Jewish state than some Jews. I do, however, take exception to those who actively oppose the idea of Israel or any other country being permitted to preserve its primary national identity by closing itself off to migrational waves, and American Jews are only a small, if vocal, percentage of a broad range of globalist multiculturalists who oppose that right. I have to give some credit to Feldman and others who would have Israel abide by the same principles that they insist other countries should obey, even though I think they are mistaken and that both the current Israelis are, and the historical non-Jewish nations were, operating fully within their rights to refuse to permit foreign nationals to dwell among them. That doesn't justify pogroms or violence, of course, merely the peaceful deportation of foreigners to their former country or nation of origin.

On a related note, Chelm Wiseman has begun to respond to my first point, first with what he terms a primer on Jewish immigration views, followed by a post contemplating the four different types of residents and his perspective on a country's responsibility to them. I don't fully agree with his perspective, but it is far closer to mine than one might imagine, as he asserts "I believe that a sovereign state has the right to determine who resides within its borders, although that comes with some limitations."

The devil, of course, being in the details of those limitations, which we shall no doubt discuss in future posts. However, I think the issue of the observed Jewish hypocrisy on the issue of immigration is quite easily explained, and without resorting to any bizarre collectivist theories. The fact of the matter is that until very recently, the Jewish perspective on immigration was entirely shaped by their 2,000-year experience as migrants, with no sense of ownership in a geographically established location or even a viable, self-sustaining society to call their own. Now finally they've got one again, so naturally, their perspective has begun changing in precisely the same way that a worker promoted into management has no choice but to begin to understand that the past decisions of management are not necessarily based in pure evil, avarice, and hatred for the working class, but are much more often the necessary consequences of events.

Of course, this process of promotion-based perspective-broadening is often intellectually painful, as it usually involves giving up long cherished myths, some of which have sustained the worker and perhaps even driven him to the success that led to his promotion. One would hope that the Jews of Israel can learn from the mistakes of those who historically sought to defend their nations from the influence of unwanted foreigners even as they begin to understand the reasoning of those who deported their ancestors long ago. There will always be some who hate Jews for one reason or another, but I suspect many Israelis, especially those in positions of responsibility for the continued survival of their country, will soon understand, assuming they do not already, that most of the nations that expelled their ancestors harbored no more intrinsic hate for the Jews than modern Israelis harbor intrinsic hate for the Sudanese now in their midst. A desire to live among one's own kind and protect one's own people from dissolution and eventual destruction by foreign influences is not hate, but rather love. It is love for one's people, and love for their culture, language, and traditions. This is a concept that Jews should understand and respect as well as anyone.

WND column

De Facto Marriage

It is no secret that marriage has been on the decline in the United States even as illegitimacy is on the rise. The problem is obvious: No-fault divorce combined with abusive child support and post-marital support laws has increased the incentive for women to end marriages while simultaneously driving up the cost of ending them to men. As economics would predict, providing incentives for ending marriages to women has increased the percentage of women ending them, while increasing the potential cost of marriage has decreased the number of men willing to take the risk. As is the case with so many government actions, the laws intended to revise marriage, beginning with the California Family Law Act of 1969, were predicated on static human behavior and failed to take into account their own influence on how men and women would subsequently behave

Peasant Game

This Alpha Game post is dedicated to my friends at Fraters Libertas:

I would be remiss if I did not mention that there is a much more serious and underlying problem [than the Beer Shield] on display here. By holding a beer, by drinking beer, by even being credibly identified as a beer drinker, a man is signifying that he is an illiterate peasant, of solid, but hearty stock, the sort of man thick-waisted farm girls with red faces and ankles the size and shape of overstuffed German sausages expect to meet out behind the haystacks. Civilized men who attract beautiful women drink wine, preferably red wine, although prosecco and lambrusco are acceptable alternatives in the summer heat or on Friday night with pizza.

Enter the zombie

All those movies and television shows and cute rewrites of Jane Austin weren't fairy tales... they were warnings:

One man was shot to death by Miami police, and another man is fighting for his life after he was attacked, and his face allegedly half eaten, by a naked man on the MacArthur Causeway off ramp Saturday, police said.... Police theorize the attacker might have been suffering from "cocaine psychosis," a drug-induced craze that bakes the body internally and often leads the affected to strip naked to try and cool off.

That's just the police trying to keep everyone calm. Don't believe the non-hype. It's obvious the Zombie Apocalypse is upon us.

Why the USA can't win wars

VDH considers the question:

Given that the United States fields the costliest, most sophisticated, and most lethal military in the history of civilization, that should be a silly question. We have enough conventional and nuclear power to crush any of our enemies many times over. Why then did we seem to bog down in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan? The question is important since recently we do not seem able to translate tactical victories into long-term strategic resolutions. Why is that? What follows are some possible answers....

The most obvious answer is why we argue over the results of our interventions is an inability to articulate our strategic objectives—what exactly do wish to see follow from our use of force and for how long and at what cost? Do we wish to rid the world of Bashar al-Assad? We could do that quite easily and probably without ground troops. But would the region be more or less stable? Would Iran suffer a blow or find ways to fund more terrorists? Would the collateral damage from funding insurgents or bombing be worse or not as bad as the current Assad toll? Would the insurgents prove reasonable, or more like those in Egypt and Libya—or even worse? Many of our problems seem to hinge on explaining to the public what we wish to do, why so, how, at what cost it is to be accomplished, and what we want things to look like when we’re through.

The real answer is that we don't articulate a strategy because we don't have one that is palatable to the American people. Most of our actions are not in the American national interest, so naturally the objectives underlying those actions can't be explicated in a simple and straightforward manner because they would be rejected. There was no national interest at stake in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Serbia, or in Uganda. There is none in Iran. And where there is no coherent and strictly delineated objective in the national interest, there is no strategy, and where there is no strategy there will be no victory regardless of the tactical excellence.

Mailvox: one down

Chelm Wiseman begins what apparently is the Herculean task of responding to me:

I wrote my response to Vox's charge #1 of Jewish Hypocrisy on immigration policy, but I decided I don't like it and will have to rewrite it before I post.... I fully concede the point that Vox did not really think that the Amelek comment was a credible and realistic threat of violence. I just found it amusing to assure Vox of my non-violent intent every time I say something that could be vaguely misinterpreted as a threat. It makes me laugh and so I will probably repeat the joke. Following this theme, the title of his post also made me smile. [Insert Top Gun Quote Here]

I will also note that Vox's continued the strategy of overwhelming me with charges to respond to continued in his post today. He seems to recognize a pattern of that he calls the fighting withdrawal, where a commenter will simply declare him wrong and decide not to respond. Vox should take a moment to think about this. If this is a consistent pattern, then perhaps the problem is his debate style. I must admit that I had a moment of ... is this really worth it? ...before I posted yesterday. Basically, Vox has given me a todo list of between 4 and 7 posts to adequately respond to him. I think that it is fine (and frankly fair given the nature of what I wrote) and because the topic of each is relevant to the theme of my blog I think it appropriate to continue.

It's a start, anyhow. And while there is certainly nothing wrong about Chelm's repeated assurances of non-violent intent, what he skates over here is the fact that necessarily following from his concession is the implicit admission that his interpretation revealed nothing about my thinking. A minor point, but still relevant.

I fail to see any problem with my debate style at all. The general consensus appears to be that it is as successful as it is maddening to opponents. The idea that providing detailed and substantive points is somehow a problem when one is attempting to make a case is ludicrous, and anyone who has read my blog should understand by now what they are in for prior to deciding to engage. It's not my problem if the occasional drive-by critic wants to fire a pop gun in my direction and then finds himself overwhelmed by the artillery barrage he receives in response. The fact is that I seldom express an opinion without having something to support it, and I seldom enter a substantial discussion without having a significant amount of evidence upon which to draw. That doesn't mean I'm always right, of course, but it does mean that I'm never going to be an easy out even when I have somehow managed to reach the demonstrably wrong conclusion.

Anyhow, make your case or concede has always been the standard to which I hold both myself and others. However, I have to point out that what Chelm is describing is not a Fighting Withdrawal, as that is a tactic which involves continuing to defend a position by sacrificing the larger part of it. What he is describing is Silence That Gun, which involves falling silent and disappearing rather than defending a point when the arguments supporting it have been contested, or conceding a point when the arguments defending it have been refuted.

As for the label "Alt-Right", I didn't object because a) I don't know what it means, and, b) I don't care how others choose to categorize me. I might wonder about the sanity of someone who describes me as part of the "conservative media", but I doubt I'd even bother to comment on that. I've simply run across too many people who call me a conservative, or even a Republican, to concern myself any longer with whatever label others choose to apply. Raciss, sexiss, misogyniss, anti-semiss, whatever. But to the best of my recollection, the only time I ever registered to vote, I registered Libertarian, and the only time I voted, I voted Libertarian as well. However, I don't belong to the Libertarian party and I depart from it on a number of policies because I don't believe they are in line with the combination of libertarian principles with valid logic.

I do agree that Americans are largely unprepared for European openness about matters of race in general and Jews in particular. I would simply assert that I am using primarily American language on the blog, though I suppose it's entirely possible that I'm not always as conscious of the distinctions anymore given how long it has been since I left.

Mailvox: tools of the trade

LB wonders what I use to write:

Thank you for the near constant intellectual stimulation you provide. I'm a long time fan of yours and have often wondered something. You often write about your adventures in writing and I can recall several instances when you have answered readers questions about your particular methods. What I don't remember ever reading though is what you use as the tools of your trade. I've noticed that I seem to get the very least accomplished when using my Windows 7 laptop, and that I seem to get the most accomplished when using a composition book and a pen or the ColorNote app on my Android phone. What do you currently use and in what proportions?

It's a pretty simple answer. I use my Dell XPS laptop running XP and LibreOffice 3. Nothing else. I've used the laptop long enough that the paint is worn off three of the keys, but it works fine for my purposes. I've written 52 columns, three short stories, hundreds of blog posts, and 626 words per day on the current novel with it in the last year, so it would appear to suffice. The only change I've made in recent years was to switch from OpenOffice to LibreOffice following Oracle's decision to interfere with the OpenOffice board. I find that the key to getting work done on your laptop is to ignore the Internet and refuse to get sucked into doing "research". Sure, you can use it to look up a name or a piece of vital information, but then, get back into the word processor right away. I've found that for me, the key for staying focused is maintaining a spreadsheet that contains both my word count progress and keeps track of the various organizations. So, no matter if I want to know how many more words I need to write today, who was consul five years ago, or how old a character's uncle is, I have the information readily to hand.

And since we're on the subject, I'm expecting to see the cover of the book next month. It's being done by the same artist who did the SE cover, so I have great expectations of it.

The anti-abortion trend

One of the informative things about those who draw conclusions from purely linear poll-based trends is that they do so on a very selective basis. For some inexplicable reason, we're supposed to believe that legal gay "marriage" is inevitable because more people - though still less than half based on most polls - support it than before, and yet an abortion ban is impossible even though the anti-abortion trend is not only every bit as clear, but is also supported by demographic logic.

About four in 10 Americans said they support abortion rights in a new Gallup poll — the lowest figure recorded by the organization since it began asking the question in 1995. Fully half of Americans, meanwhile, told Gallup they were against abortion rights.

Of course, the more stories like this one of murdered little girls being literally thrown to the dogs leak out into the press, and the more third-worlders enter the country and begin to exercise their feminist "right to choose" by aborting baby girls, the stronger the anti-abortion movement will grow.

[Insert Top Gun quote here]

I have the feeling that even if Chelm hadn't already accused me of anti-semitism, someone else is bound to by virtue of the extreme ease with which I will show the erroneous aspects of his arguments. After I disputed what he described as "the danger of the alternative right", Chelm doubled-down and attempted to bolster his position as follows:

The other day I wrote a post about an exchange I had with Vox Day on his website Vox Popoli. I made a rhetorical mistake by referring to some of his more hotheaded anti-semitic commenters as "Amalekites." Vox took this to be a credible and realistic threat of violence against his readers... which I believe reveals more about Vox's thinking than mine. You can read his post here and my response here. If you didn't read the post, additionally, I had the nerve to described him as dangerous, because his blog is a great example (in terms of quality) of a group of web sites of the "alternative right" (or alt-right) which, among other things, seeks to create an intellectual basis for a more socially acceptable anti-semitism....

So, this is what Vox did in today's post. There are so many errors and accusations in it that to try to refute them all in one shot would require a long rambling... boring... post. In advance, he is slamming me for doing exactly what he is inviting me to do. So here is how I will approach this... I will list the accusations below (paraphrased) and over the course of the next few days, I will refute them one by one.

So many errors that he can't possibly respond to them all right now... that sure sounds familiar, doesn't it? But it's not actually a Fighting Withdrawal, as Chelm proves himself to be more than the usual handwaver in actually troubling to list seven of my purported charges and declaring that he will respond substantively to them. Unfortunately, he's already provided some indication that he's not going to be able to respond effectively to them, given the prelude provided above.

First, I absolutely did not take his reference to "Amalekites" to be "a credible and realistic threat of violence" against anyone, least of all my readers. I understood it to be simple rhetorical exaggeration, which Chelm himself subsequently admitted, as he was using the term to refer to what he described as an "irrational Jew hater" in the modern sense. In fact, my very first response to him was "I think you exaggerate quite a bit. How do you define "Amalekite"? Most people here neither curse nor care about Jews." I subsequently added: "Given the historical metaphor, calling someone an Amalekite strikes me as giving the less metaphorically astute a perfectly understandable justification to not only hate Jews, but commit violence against them. So, you may wish to rethink the use of the slur." At no point did I ever take it as any sort of threat, much less a credible and realistic one, nor would any reader of this blog ever believe that I am so intellectually humble as to number myself among "the less metaphorically astute". I not only understand, but have frequently pointed out on this very blog, that metaphors are not reality.

Because Chelm is incorrect about how I interpreted his rhetoric, he is necessarily incorrect about what that interpretation reveals about my thinking as well. It should be readily apparent that if there is any projection taking place here, it is Chelm projecting his own fearful tendencies upon me, since I don't believe there is any threat posed by him whereas he has already openly referred to me as "dangerous".

Now to the question whether my blog "seeks to create an intellectual basis for a more socially acceptable anti-semitism". There are 10,667 posts on this blog, dating back to 2003, precisely 118 of which have any reference to Jews. And many of those 118 posts aren't concerned with the Jews as such, but rather, are related to Biblical references as part of discussions of atheism or Christian theology. So, given that less than one percent of the posts are even potentially related to what Chelm describes as an objective of this blog is an exaggeration so vast that it borders on outright falsehood. I assert, to the contrary, that it is the actions of Jews such as Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Chuck Schumer, and Eric Cantor that are actively providing the basis for that socially acceptable anti-semitism in America that he fears. Perhaps Chelm has forgotten that I live in Europe, where there is simply no need to create a more socially acceptable anti-semitism because far more virulent forms of anti-semitism are already quite socially acceptable here. For example, I find it hard to imagine that Americans would refer to any political leader as a "sale juif", as Sarkozy was often called.

Moreover, being a libertarian, even a nationalist libertarian, (which I would argue is logically one and the same), I simply do not adhere to the concept of collective identity that genuine Judenhassen requires. I have previously blogged on the topic of anti-semitism here.

Concerning the seven charges listed, I shall wait for his promised refutations before adding anything further. I will, however, note that his characterization of numbers 2, 4, 5, and 6 are inaccurate and he should probably look at them more closely or they will be as easily and conclusively dismissed as his "threat of violence" claim was. And as for 7, he can rest assured there are plenty of non-Jews for whom a mere 60,000 African criminals would also be a bargain.

And finally, I suspect Chelm will want to comment upon some recent and related events in Israel, in which Sudanese migrant workers were attacked by a large and angry mob which also broke store windows and searched passing vehicles for suspected migrant workers to beat up. One wonders whether he will be able to draw any obvious historical parallels between yesterday's events and European history.

The drachma is not catastrophe

As for the Euro, on the other hand.... Ambrose Evans-Pritchard contemplates the upcoming Greek exit from the Euro:

The danger for Euroland is slow contagion later once the sanctity of monetary union is violated, compounding the underlying crisis as Portugal, Spain, and Italy sink deeper into (policy-driven) debt-deflation.

Fitch boss David Riley told a banking form in the City that the Greek saga is "knocking down the central pillars underpinning monetary union".

EU leaders said successively:

1) There would be no bail-outs.

2) Sovereign defaults inside EMU were inconceivable.

3) EMU exit was out of the question, lunatic, and so forth.

Every one of these claims has been shown to be untrue....

Mr Papademos said withdrawal from the euro would be "catastrophic" for Greece. This is a religious incantation, or possibly just a threat. It would be catastrophic if EU leaders and the IMF chose to make it catastrophic. That is a political decision. Such shroud-waving borders on political blackmail.

We hear this sort of language before every devaluation crisis. Argentina in 2001-2002, Mexico's Tequila crisis in 1994-1995, the East Asian crisis in 1997-1998, not to mention countless others through history, including the UK's two liberations from dysfunctional fixed-exchange systems in 1931 and 1992.

The reality is that the Euro is intrinsically catastrophic and has been from the start. It's never been about the economics, but rather, providing a first step towards a single unified European state of the sort previously constructed by Charlemagne, Napoleon, and Hitler. And, like its three predecessors, it is rapidly collapsing, albeit under the weight of its structural inconsistencies rather than any external pressures. Pritchard has made some serious blunders along the way, mostly because he made the mistake of paying too much attention to the mainstream economic experts, but he is entirely correct to remark that "Remaining in the euro is demonstrably catastrophic already."

Exit Europa

Most Americans want US troops out of Europe:

The Rasmussen polling organization is out with a shock poll that the entire Washington establishment needs to study: 51 percent of voters surveyed said they wanted all US troops out of Europe, now. Only 29 percent favored keeping the troops where they are. US troops have been in Europe since World War Two. In the Cold War, they not only kept the Russians out; they gave the rest of the Old World the confidence that Germany would not come storming back for a rematch. The presence of US troops helped give western Europe its longest era of peace since Roman times.

Since the end of the Cold War the US presence in Europe has made much less sense to the average American, but foreign policy junkies like yours truly think that it still serves a purpose. Not only do those troops provide security in new NATO countries like Poland and the Baltic republics; US bases in Europe are important in dealing with terror and other problems in the Middle East and without the US presence in Europe it is unlikely that NATO in its present form can survive.

Being a sophisticated foreign policy junkie, but not, apparently, a historian or an economist, Walter Russell Mead completely fails to understand the crucial point. It's not that "the arguments for the US presence in Europe are credible, clear and compelling", it's something else that entirely supersedes them. You're BANKRUPT, dude! The USA cannot afford to pay for the US presence in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in South Korea, or in Europe. It's done. It's over. Even the slow-witted American public has finally figured it out.

And the more Hispanics and other third-worlders that enter the country, the less the average American is going to give a damn about the wet dreams of foreign policy junkies.

Don't they know diversity is strength?

It should be fascinating to see how the "conservative" Jewish columnists who have long advocated open borders in America react to this immigration-related news out of Israel:

Illegal infiltrators threaten Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic country, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday. Calling the issue “very grave” and a threat to the “social fabric,” Netanyahu said, “If we do not stop the entry, the problem, there are now 60,000 illegal infiltrators; could easily grow to 600,000 illegal infiltrators. This would inundate the state and, to a considerable degree, cancel out its image as a Jewish and democratic state.”

The prime minister spoke of the importance of finishing construction of the Egyptian border fence and working to send away “those [illegal migrants] who are already inside.”

Netanyahu said the latter will be done in part by punishing employers who hire illegal migrants....

Also on Sunday, Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) repeated his call to jail illegal African migrants, most of whom he said were involved in crime. “I repeat what I said – we must jail all of them or deport them with a stipend. The moment they are put in jail – others won’t want to come here anymore,” Yishai said, in an interview with Army Radio.

Now, I support Netanyahu's position, and Yishai's as well. I support it for Israel, I support it for the USA, and I also support it for the nations of Eastern and Western Europe. And for every other nation on the planet as well. Multiculturalism is not merely a failure, but a lie. So I should be very interested to hear how avid immigration advocates such as Jon Podhoretz, whose advocacy of open immigration is overtly and explicitly based on his Jewishness, explain the dichotomy between Netanyahu's position and their own. Podhoretz once said: "[A]s a Jew, I have great difficulty supporting a blanket policy of immigration restriction because of what happened to the Jewish people after 1924 and the unwillingness of the United States to take Jews in."

But why should the United States not have been any more unwilling to take Jews in than the Jews are to take in Africans? Given that some Jews are still more than willing to whine about having been deported from Spain more than 500 freaking years ago, it seems more than a little ironic that the current leaders of the Jewish state should now claim the right to deport non-Jews from their own country. If the Jewish people want to claim some sort of human right to immigrate into every country in the world, then they have absolutely no grounds for deporting 60,000 African immigrants, or 600,000, for that matter. I already know how at least one of our resident Israelis will answer, since we are of the same opinion on this issue, but I'm interested to hear what Chelm and other Jewish readers have to say about these statements by the Israeli government. Do they believe Netanyahu and Yishai are wrong, do they believe the historical expellers of the Jews were justified to expel them, or do they believe in one law for themselves and another for non-Jews?

It seems to me that if Israel is justified in deporting these African immigrants, that action will provide a powerful ex post facto justification for the many non-violent historical deportations of the Jewish people from European countries during the medieval period. I am, of course, distinguishing these non-violent deportations from the historical massacres that took place from time to time during the same historical epoch, especially in Germany and Russia, which cannot be justified regardless of what the current Israeli government ends up doing. It will also offer similar ex post facto justification for the more recent expulsion of Jews from the Arab nations. One also wonders how an excess of Africans can be said to threaten Israel's existence as a democratic state.

Now, it seems likely that Chelm will consider this post to be "dangerous", in the sense that he describes in his post entitled The Dangerous Nature of the Alternative Right. That's his call, of course, but I find his assertion that doing nothing more than pointing out incontrovertible facts and asking the questions they obviously raise is tantamount to "attempting to put together an intellectually, socially palatable basis for a more modern brand of anti-semitism" to be more than a little dubious.

After all, if it's so easy to put together a sound and popular basis for a new anti-semitism, doesn't that tend to suggest that any such anti-semitism must be based on grounds much more solid and justifiable than irrational hatred? What Chelm can't seem to understand is that if one can "undermine Israel" by simply observing what Israel is undeniably doing, it isn't the observer who is doing the undermining. Nor does he appear to grasp that when a person insists genuinely neutral people are not only lying about their lack of interest in him, but are in fact his secret enemy, his paranoid assertion is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy over time. You can only attack people for so long before they get tired of your antics and start to find you irritating. And this is as true of groups as it is of individuals.

As I have previously noted, some Jews appear to be determined to create enemies where none previously existed. And while it's certainly a profitable strategy for the likes of Abe Foxman and the Southern Poverty Law Center, I would suggest that it is a ludicrously suboptimal survival strategy for a group that currently represents around 0.3 percent of the global population.

As to Chelm's defense of referring to various non-Jews as Amalekites, I note the following from Wikipedia: "Of the 613 mitzvot (commandments) followed by Orthodox Jews, three refer to the Amalek: to remember what the Amalekites did to Jews, to not forget what the Amalekites did to Jews, and to destroy the Amalekites utterly. The rabbis derived these from Deuteronomy 25:17-18, Exodus 17:14 and 1 Sam. 15:3." Now, perhaps he's not an Orthodox Jew and was simply using the term as colorful rhetoric, but it is simply ridiculous to attempt to somehow turn this around and claim that I am engaging in any sort of psychological projection by noting that the label, at the very least, potentially implies violence.

Obama's IQ is still ~116

It will be interesting to see the disbelievers in pattern recognition attempt to explain this one away. You may recall that back in 2008, I noted that Obama's IQ had an absolute sub-Mensa ceiling of 129 and that there was good reason to believe it is around 116. So, it was informative to read this article discussing the relatively low quality of the 1981 class of students transferring to Columbia, which included one Barack Obama:

Breitbart News has learned that the transfer class that entered Columbia College in the fall of 1981 with Obama was one of the worst in recent memory, according to Columbia officials at the time. A Nov. 18, 1981 article in the Columbia Spectator, “Tight Housing Discourages Transfer Applications to CC,” written by student Jeremy Feldman and quoting admissions officials, reported: “On paper at least, the quality of the students accepted [as transfers] has declined along with the number of applicants, the officials say.”

Among accepted transfer students, the average combined math and verbal score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test is a 1,100 and their grade-point average at their former schools is about 3.0, Boatti said.

There were 67 transfer students with an average SAT score of 1,100. Guess what that equals on the SAT to IQ conversion chart? It's between 115.51 and 116.55, depending upon whether one uses an SD of 15 or 16. Now, this isn't absolute and conclusive proof that Obama's IQ is 116, as it could well be a little bit higher or a little bit lower. But not much higher, because if he scored even 100 points more on the SAT, he wouldn't have had to go to Occidental in the first place. In fact, based on this new evidence of his transfer class scores, it's probable that my previous estimate of 116 is slightly overestimating Obama's IQ.

This is because the range from which that average SAT score was calculated was the 67 selected from the 450 who applied. That average was also 100 SAT points lower than the average Columbia freshman score of 1200. So, I would assume that the absolute low end SAT that Columbia accepted for transfers was probably half that gap, or 1050, which equates to a 111 IQ. So, we can reasonably conclude that Obama's IQ is probably somewhere between 110 and 118, which is not very far from my original estimate of 116.

Nor am I the only one to have concluded that Obama possesses moderate intelligence rather than the exceptional intelligence in which the more credulous still believe despite the accumulating evidence of his presidential term. At the end of his 2011 post on the subject of Obama's intelligence, which focuses on the Harvard Law Review and Harvard's graduating honors, Ace of Spades said this:

Hah! This guy guesstimates that based on tangible proxy evidence, which is right in the middle of where I figured it would be. Now, this guy is not just completely making things up. He knows, because there are records of it, that Obama was not a National Merit Scholar, or National Merit Finalist, or the lowest subcategory, "Outstanding Participant." (This seems to be an honor conferred by the College Board (the SAT people) primarily if not exclusively based on SAT scores.)

Since Obama did not make the list for any of those automatically-conferred SAT-based recognitions, we know his SATs must be below those thresholds, setting a hard upper cap on his possible SAT scores. We can then figure his highest, likeliest IQ score, because the SAT is just a modified version of the old Army IQ test. Current IQ tests and the SATs are both derived straight from the old Army IQ test, testing pretty much the same things and in pretty much the same ways. Different scoring system, but same ultimate term of comparison -- how you rank compared to the general population, expressed as percentile.

Not dumb, but I never thought he was dumb -- just not a genius. 116's a perfectly respectable score, but no one goes bragging on it and claims to be a genius at 116. No on ever says, "I'm a mere 30 points away from qualifying for Mensa," for example.

Good catch on that National Merit thing.

Well, its absence on Obama's record appears fairly glaring when you're a National Merit whatever yourself. Hilary Clinton, for example, was National Merit. I don't remember if I was a finalist or a semi-finalist, though. I know they gave a girl named Beth and me some sort of certificates at a school assembly, but I can't recall which one it was. I would assume semi-finalist, though, since in addition to having the SAT scores confirm the PSAT, being a finalist requires "having an outstanding academic record, and being endorsed and recommended by a high school official" My academic record would be better described as "unique" than "outstanding", since I was the first National Merit student to graduate without honors in the school's history. I am, of course, perversely proud of that.

We are the champions

Last night, we won our second straight league title, and I'm much happier about this one because I actually contributed to it. After three years of not being able to play soccer due to a leg injury, I joined a veteran's team that plays at a lower level than my old elite team. Whereas my old league featured a number of players who had been in top professional programs and even one ex-international, the only connection to any UEFA teams in my new league is that our main rival has a midfielder whose brother used to play for Liverpool. Even so, it's been difficult for me despite the lower level of play because I'm older, I hadn't played for three years, and it always takes a while to adjust to the style of your new teammates.

Last year, I joined the club towards the end of the season and my entire contribution was to play the second half of the last game, during which I did precisely nothing except send a few harmless crosses to no one, as we had gone into a defensive position and were happy with the tie that clinched our championship. This year, I was absolutely astounded to find myself starting the first game, since I was by almost any measure the worst of the six strikers we have at our disposal. Through playing my way back into shape and getting more accustomed to everyone's preferences, I moved up into the fifth position, but remained largely superflous as I'd scored only four goals over the course of a season which saw us rack up a +49 goal difference going into the last three games. However, we did so largely by crushing the weaker teams and losing the occasional game to the three best teams, so after last week's 3-1 loss to our main rivals, who were three points behind us going into the game, we found ourselves tied for first with a goal-difference advantage and two games left.

The problem was that our second- and third-best strikers were injured, as was our goalie. Injuries are a common problem with veterans teams, since you just don't recover as quickly from them in your thirties and forties as in your twenties, and most players have a few lingering, long-term issues that are susceptible to flaring up here and there. On my old team, we once went from 31 healthy players to 10 by the second half of the last game of the season. So, I wound up starting up front with our top striker, as our fourth-best striker was playing in goal. We attacked hard from the start and created two decent chances, but then the other striker got hit from behind and had to go out after only five minutes. Fortunately, I tend to play much better with the other striker, who came forward as another player went into goal, so we were able to maintain our offensive pressure.

I'd already missed one shot just wide of goal when one of our defenders charged forward with the ball and made a perfect through pass beyond the defense, which was playing an aggressive offsides trap. Of course, I love high offsides traps, since they're very vulnerable to any speed striker patient enough to remain onside. It set up what over the years has turned into my favorite situation, the through ball between the circle and the 18-yard box, which all but forces the keeper to come out in order to cut down the angle. I have a very weak and inaccurate shot, especially for Europe, in part due to poor technique and part due to the leg injury, but for some reason, the one thing I can always do is loop the ball over the head of the keeper and down into the upper left corner from 20 to 25 yards out. I touched the ball once with the outside of my foot to push it right and create an angle, he came out as expected, I hit the ball about five yards outside of the box, and it arced perfectly into the upper left corner. 1-0.

Only about two minutes later, our center mid passed the ball past the defense again, but wide right this time. Both the other striker and I broke on the ball, and while I could have gotten there first, being on the right, he shouted "lascia, lascia", which I immediately did since he has a very powerful and accurate right foot. So, I cut left and circled behind him, giving him an option to pass across, but assuming that he'd shoot and score. However, he instead drew the goalie and the defenders to him, then slid the ball across the face of goal to me, where I was so alone that I was able to take the time to safely trap it before booting it into the back of the net. 2-0. It was one of those plays that is so easy that you tend to forget all the proper decision-making and execution that made it possible

I was quite happy to come out at halftime with two goals on four shots, since it had been my job to chase the defenders around and keep them from having time to build their attack. However, ten minutes into the second half, it was 3-0 and our left midfielder had to come out after having his foot stomped on for the second time. Our captain, who is one of the injured strikers, looked at his options, all of whom had played the first half, and settled on me since I was the least worn out. I didn't start that well as their right midfielder, my man, scored on a post-corner kick scrum, but no one blamed me for it since our defender on the post had the ball right at his feet on the line but failed to clear it because he didn't see it. It probably wasn't my fault since the only thing I could have done was either physically tackle the guy and give up a penalty, or kick it in our goal myself. Still, it rankled a little. But that was pretty much their last gasp as our defenders soon figured out that neither of their outside midfielders could keep pace with me or our right midfielder, who is also an ex-track man. Between us, we must have made 12 long runs up the sidelines in the half, four of which resulted in goals. I was particularly pleased when on one of them, I beat the midfielder down the line, faked cutting in before cutting back out to beat the right defender around the corner, then returned the earlier favor by drawing the goalie and sliding the ball back to my former fellow striker. The shot I gave him was a little tougher than the one he'd all but gift-wrapped me since there were defenders all over the box, but he effortlessly buried it in the upper right corner. I really like playing with him as he always does what I consider to be the sensible thing, and that goal marked the third one in two games where one of us directly assisted the other's goal. The right midfielder added one more to make it 7-2 and the game was over.

We still have one more game left to play, but the team that beat us last week was upset on Friday, so even if we lose, we'll win the league by virtue of our +53 goal difference. Half the guys don't realize that yet, as our captain told everyone that we need at least a tie to be sure of winning the league, but that's just because he wants to win it on points, not goal difference. He reminds me of my high school team's captain as they're both hypercompetitive players who simply will not accept anything less than 100 percent effort from everyone. That high school team was good too, as we won both conference and regional championships. I've played on teams that win by virtue of superior talent and teams that win by playing as well-led machine, and I have to say, I very much prefer the latter.

Considering that I thought my competitive days were done four years ago, it's truly a joy to be able to experience the feeling of seeing a ball go into the net and to play on a winning team once more. These days, I care much more about Ender's performances than my own, but I feel very fortunate to still be able to go out there on the field and contribute something. No matter how stiff and sore I feel today....

Plato and the fear of raciss

I find the behavior of some white readers here to be tremendously informative with regards to the way in which they react to the occasional "Vibrancy is our strength" posts. What is quite clear to me is that despite the evidence of some 40+ years of affirmative action and forced integration achieving little more than exchanging segregated neighborhoods for segregated schools and the highest incarceration rate on the planet, many white Americans, even conservative white Americans, are so afraid of being called raciss that they will bury their heads in the sand rather than recognize the readily observable realities of their multi-ethnic society.

Now, it's important to first understand that social homogeneity has been considered to be a vital aspect of civilization for more than a thousand years before the Northern Europeans were civilized. Consider Karl Popper's summary of Plato:

"Plato’s theory was a form of the organic theory of the state, even if he had not sometimes spoken of the state as an organism. But since he did this, there can be no doubt left that he must be described as an exponent, or rather, as one of the originators, of this theory. His version of this theory may be characterized as a personalist or psychological one, since he describes the state not in a general way as similar to some organism or other, but as analogous to the human individual, and more specifically to the human soul. Especially the disease of the state, the dissolution of its unity, corresponds to the disease of the human soul, of human nature. In fact, the disease of the state is not only correlated with, but is directly produced by, the corruption of human nature, more especially of the members of the ruling class. Every single one of the typical stages in the degeneration of the state is brought about by a corresponding stage in the degeneration of the human soul, of human nature, of the human race. And since this moral degeneration is interpreted as based upon racial degeneration, we might say that the biological element in Plato’s naturalism turns out, in the end, to have the most important part in the foundation of his historicism. For the history of the downfall of the first or perfect state is nothing but the history of the biological degeneration of the race of men."

Now, I am an anti-Platonist and anti-idealist, so please don't confuse his arguments with mine. My object in quoting that passage from The Open Society and Its Enemies is merely to point out that the connection between a heterogeneous population and the degeneration and ultimate downfall of the state has been understood for more than 2,360 years. I note that it is tremendously ironic that so many of the stated objectives of modern left-liberals have their roots in Plato's political philosophy even though those objectives are structurally undermined by the left's simultaneous rejection of Plato's core postulates as well as the structural basis of his ideal state. As Popper points out, Plato is the ultimate reactionary; his philosophy is not so much conservative or reactionary as literally prehistoric, and those progressives who look to his utopian ideals as a guide are attempting to progress to an imaginary prehistory.

But that doesn't mean all of his social observations are incorrect, to the contrary, we have seen the pattern play out over and over again. The ongoing breakdown of the European Union can be seen as a straightforward application of the inevitable degeneration of the multi-ethnic state, in that the Germans are unwilling to make the same sacrifices for the Greeks, the Italians, and the Spanish that the West Germans were willing to make on behalf of the East Germans only twenty years ago.

Now, I think Plato observed the symptoms and correctly diagnosed the disease, but came up with an insane plan of treatment to place the patient in a permanent induced coma. Multi-ethnicity is, when viewed through the lens of the organic theory of the state, a societal cancer. Like cancer, it will either be excised or the state will die. The proponents of universal equalitarianism and diversity have not only rejected this long-recognized principle, but have made a fundamental error in grasping the difficulty of civilizing human populations. They believe that civilization is a pure accident of geography, that if one takes a highly civilized group of people from an advanced civilization and places them in a barbarian culture, within three generations that group will turn into barbarians behaving in a manner identical to the barbarians around them, and that if one takes a wholly uncivilized group of people from an barbarian culture and places them in a highly civilized culture, within three generations that group will turn into highly civilized people behaving in a manner identical to the highly civilized people around them. It's little more than replacing Plato with William Golding, and works about as well as replacing the most influential philosopher in human history with a petty novelist would lead you to expect.

In light of this juxtaposition of Plato with Golding, consider the following news report from the UK:

A gang of 20 hooded youths stormed a pub after the Champions League final before dragging away a 25-year old man and stabbing him to death in scenes 'like a horror film', friends said today. 'True gent' Luke Fitzpatrick was killed and his father Bernard, who threw himself on top of his son in a desperate attempt to shield him, remains in a critical condition in hospital after being stabbed four times. The pair were attacked when a gang armed with bats and knives stormed the north London pub after father and son had watched Chelsea win the cup together at on Saturday.... 'There were about 20 young black guys all with their hoods up armed with sticks and bats and knives. They just ran in the pub and started trying to attack people. It was really frightening. But it should not have happened to Luke, it shouldn’t have happened to anyone, but he was a complete innocent.'

Now, had this happened in the USA, it would be blamed on the legacy of American slavery. Of course, there is no black legacy of slavery in England; the "youfs" are most likely descended from Africans who immigrated to the UK from the Caribbean as the 1948 Windrush generation, or directly from Africa in more recent years. There are at least 200 years separating the Afro-Caribbeans of the UK from the African American population, possibly as much as 340 years in the Western hemisphere alone. And yet, the similar behavior of both African populations, particularly in the predilection of young male Africans for committing crude and violent mob attacks on innocent non-Africans minding their own business, is readily observable and gives the lie to the diversity crew's theory that civilization is vicinity-based and can be successfully installed in a population in a few generations or less.

This isn't to say any one race or population group is necessarily any more or less capable of civilization than another; remember that it took more than 1,200 years for the white Northern Europeans to become civilized despite their close contact with Roman civilization. The challenge is that since it obviously takes more than the 360 years that the African population has been exposed to European civilization for a people to become fully civilized, the societies of the West are not merely betting their civilizations on the correctness of the fictional Golding theory, they are doing so in the face of more than 2,500 years of historical evidence. Now, if one wishes to dismiss all of philosophy dating back to Plato, all of the criminal statistics compiled by the various national police forces, and the entire written historical record in favor of crying raciss, that's perfectly fine. MPAI. But don't do so in the belief that your position is a serious one that is intellectually credible in any way, shape, or form.

History doesn't care how it makes anyone feel. The objective truth cannot, by definition, be defined, let alone influenced, by subjective or dynamic elements. If one wishes to contest facts and observations, that's intellectually legitimate, but it is the very singular reliance upon the rhetoric of racism that should be one's first clue that the multiculturalists and diversity advocates know they have nothing.

Speed reading

It would appear that I still read rather quickly:

"You read 1,194 words per minute. That makes you 378% faster than the national average."

For the record, I answered all three questions correctly. If only I could write that fast.

A failure in condescension

In which SFWA President-for-Life John Scalzi's misguided attempt to curry favor with the non-white, non-male portion of the population is shown to be conclusively wrong by his very own selected metrics:

I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not their word. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.

So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word “privilege,” in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?

Being a white guy who likes women, here’s how I would do it:

Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.

Now, let me first point out that John is not a bad guy. He's actually remarkably low on the obnoxious left-liberal scale for a science fiction writer, much less a successful one, and there is no question that he means well. That being said, he's about as socio-sexually Gamma as it is possible to be and still be straight, and for someone whose communication skills are quite high, he's uncharacteristically oblivious to what a condescending little fuck this post makes him appear to be. But it's only an illusion, as the reality is that Scalzi is actually engaging in a brilliant subversion.

This will, of course, escape most readers. I suspect the average straight white man who actually works for a living rather than sitting around making up stories primarily for the benefit of obese middle-aged women aren't terribly inclined to be lectured by an overweight, educated, soft-handed little man about how easy they have it. Let's look at his metaphor of the difficulty setting, which as a gamer, game producer, and game designer I am rather well suited to examine.

First, I note that he is clearly referring to a snapshot in time. Straight white men didn't have it any easier than, for example, straight brown men back in the age of the Pharoahs, nor will they have it easier should China defeat the USA in 2050. So, the metrics have to refer to today, now, not what life was like in 500 BC, 1850, or 2050. Having established that, let's look at the measures he specifically notes and see how many of them are true:

1. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower.
2. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly.
3. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for.
4. The game is easier to play, automatically
5. When you need help, by default it’s easier to get.

1. This is clearly false. There is copious evidence showing that Scalzi has it completely wrong here. Who is permitted to graduate from high school or college while doing sub-standard work, a black individual or a white one? Who is permitted to skate in the workplace more often, men or women? For whom are the standards reduced more often, white men or non-white men?

2. This is also generally false; Scalzi's perspective here is likely skewed from his professional involvement in the literary and Hollywood worlds, where connections matter far more than experience or achievement. But unless your father owns the cleaning company, the average white male janitor or white male sales guy is not going to level up any more quickly than anyone else, in fact, there is considerable statistical evidence that proves women are promoted much more quickly than men in corporate America. One need only look at news broadcasts to see an example of this; one never sees a twenty-two year old man reading the news. Note that the median age of female newscasters is 26, six years younger than male newscasters.

3. This is true, but irrelevant and misleading. Scalzi simply ignores that white men created the desirable parts of the map where everyone wants to go. There is no straight white male privilege in Zimbabwe because their existence is strongly frowned upon... and what was once the wealthy colony of Rhodesia is now a third-world hellhole. Scalzi has his causation backwards here, it would be more relevant and historically correct to say that white men create more desirable parts of the map than others. If he seriously wishes to dispute this, I suggest he move away from his lily-white Midwestern exurbia into a more vibrant community such as South-Central Los Angeles, downtown Detroit, or post-Apartheid Yeoville. It should come as no surprise that straight white men happen to be better at playing the game of Western Civilization than anyone else. They're probably less naturally accomplished at the Grass Hut Game, the Aesthetic Stasis Game, or the Naked Savage Orgy Game.

4. Is the game easier to play or are the players intrinsically more skilled? Scalzi simply makes a naked assertion without offering any support for it. Since the game is the same and the rules are the same, logic favors the idea that any quantitative advantage to the straight white male in this regard stems from the way in which the characters points are distributed more efficiently rather than the game setting.

5. This is obviously untrue. The research on the male inclination to ask for, and accept, help clearly demonstrates that it is women who find help much easier to get. The ease with which women and minorities are permitted to exercise free association while white men are not proves that help is much harder for them to get than for others.

So, ironically enough, subversively enough, Scalzi not only fails to make his case, but by his own chosen metrics, winds up demonstrating that it is women who are playing on the lowest difficulty setting, not men. One would think that was obvious, given how they live longer, work less, and have far more options open to them. As for the straight question, that's not even relevant, since homosexuality is not the equivalent of a difficulty setting, but rather, being left-handed and choosing to play with your left hand on a right-handed controller. It's understandable why someone might make that decision, but the controller is what it is and it works a lot better if you simply use your non-dominant hand.

WND column

The Naked Economy

Facebook represents the ultimate test of two ideas. The first is that traffic once attracted, can successfully be monetized. Facebook is presently earning only $4 per user per year. Its investors are gambling that it can increase annual revenue per user before its users get bored and begin to fade away. The second is that there is real value created in passing personal information back and forth between people. It is the second idea that is the more troubling one. While I personally doubt that Facebook, which in my opinion has a dreadful interface, poor performance and a reprehensible privacy policy, can increase its user revenue faster than it loses users, the ultimate fate of Facebook doesn’t really matter to anyone but its investors and those who were hoping its IPO would somehow magically reinvigorate the stock markets. The second issue is the much larger one, because it calls into serious question the direction in which the U.S. economy has been heading for the last 30 years.