A Little Encouragement on the National Question: Does Gingrich Drop Next?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/gingrich-shakes-up-campaign-cuts-staff/2012/03/27/gIQALnsKfS_blog.html

By the looks of it, Gingrich is reducing his campaign staff by 1/3, which leads me to believe he'll effectively drop out soon.  This improves the field on the national question (Santorum is A-, Romney B-, Paul D- on the national question per numbersusa.com).

There's another encouraging angle I hadn't considered until today, although Steve Sailer has mentioned it quite a few times in other contexts.  The last 3 presidents have had only daughters, no sons.  Santorum, Romney, and Paul all have sons, quite a few of them in fact between them---Romney has 5, Paul has one who is a senator, and Santorum homeschooled all his.  They are therefore inclined to at least consider the interests of their sons and grandsons in making decisions.

Lastly, those gasoline prices I often talk about are creeping past $4/gallon throughout much of the US, and peak prices for the year aren't here yet (usually late April is when that comes).  Such prices are brutal to the incumbent party in elections.

Hypergamy in Multiple Dimensions: More on the Marriage Marketplace

To continue from the previous post, let us next look at three less dysfunctional cases.  It turns out that women aren't just hypergamous in one dimension (status as perceived by the set of women as a whole), they're hypergamous in multiple dimensions.  I'll illustrate with three cases.  We'll start with the easiest one.

Woman A (names changed to protect the guilty) is a woman at around the 80-90th percentile of attractiveness as judged by the median man (very close to her ideal weight with good skin and hair and a coloration combination that is appealing).  She's about 1 sigma from the mean in terms of intelligence and only ever so slightly above the mean in terms of economic/career prospects.  She has roughly average capability in terms of homemaking skills and slightly above average artistic capability.

Obviously she's looking for a man who is 80th-90th percentile status, but also she's likely to insist that he be at least as smart as her, preferably somewhat (half a sigma to one and a half sigmas) smarter than her, since being a member of the Second Sigma, her intellect is a substantive part of her identity.  In addition, she'll want him to have better economic prospects than she has.  How difficult did her multi-dimensional hypergamy make it for her to find a suitable husband?  Not very difficult at all, as it turned out, she was the first of my wife's friends to marry by a large margin.  Her ordinary social circle was perfectly sufficient to the task, because her extra dimensions didn't heavily constrain her choices.  Probably 1 in every 10-20 men would have been suitable matches.  Her high non-neurotypical tolerance and enjoyment of dressing in costume only made it easier.

Now let's turn to Woman B, a somewhat harder case.  She is also a woman in the 80th-90th percentile of attractiveness for similar reasons as Woman A.  Also similarly, she's right around 1 sigma from the mean in terms of intelligence.  She's right at the mean in terms of economic and career prospects, but she's also very non-materialistic in outlook, having spent quite a few years as a missionary in Eastern Europe.  Her artistic and musical skills are excellent, probably at the 2nd sigma, and her homemaking skills are also top notch---she's probably the prepper/survivalist's ideal wife.

 So what is she demanding, besides the obligatory 80th-90th percentile in status?  Again, she's wanting a man who is smarter than she is, but she's less vested in that as part of her identity than woman A.  She's wanting a man who is more accomplished musically and artistically than her, because that is a significant part of her identity.  Lastly, she wants a man who can at least vaguely compete on holiness/religious status with her---at least a member of a church band or choir or worship leader or the like.  How hard was it for her?  Moderately hard, probably 1 in every 50-100 men would have been suitable.  As it was, some matchmaking by her religious allies was required, but nothing that would have been unusual, back in say, the 1950s in the US.  The cutting planes of her additional requirements didn't create any weird and hard to fit geometry for the set of men available to a woman of her qualities.  Her marriage came later than woman A.

Now let's turn to woman C, the hard case.  She's in the 80th-90th percentile of attractiveness for similar reasons as Woman A---amazing how tightly correlated these things often are, although the particular coloration combinations are different for all three women, one having a dark-haired, fair skinned 'Snow White' look,, another having an archetypal redheaded girl appearance, and the last having the Nordic blond hair and blue eyes.  She's the smartest of the three by a fair margin, being between 2 and 3 sigmas from the mean, a fair bit smarter than the denizens of the Second Sigma.  In terms of economic and career prospects, she's up between the 90th and 95th percentile, with excellent financial discipline.  Her artistic and musical skills are good, probably 1 sigma in voice and 2-3 sigmas in various crafts and photography and her homemaking skills are above average, although not in the same class as Woman B's.

Her requirements are pretty difficult, cutting a very small footprint indeed in the set of men from the 80th to 90th percentile in status.  He needs to be at least as smart as she is, and preferably smarter, so she's asking for 3rd-4th sigma in just that one attribute alone.  Complicating this is the fact that a very large fraction of men that smart are non-neurotypical, which puts a significant hit on their status, especially if they don't have a decent emulation capability.  There's also the expectation that he be more accomplished economically than her, since few women want to be the primary breadwinner in their family.  In this case, her nominally positive qualities actually made it a lot harder for her to find a suitable husband----maybe one in 1000-2000 would have fit the bill.  Ordinary matchmaking by her religious allies was not up to the task, such a woman in the 1950s might well have been mysteriously left on the shelf.  Fortunately for woman C, the internet provided a significant improvement to the efficiency of the marriage marketplace, so she was still able to marry prior to the age of 30 to a man inside the envelope multidimensional hypergamy dictated.

Interestingly, all three women wound up with husbands at least a couple of inches north of six feet tall.  Woman A and woman C's husbands are both non-neurotypical, with near flawless and good emulation capabilities respectively.  Only Woman C was more or less locked into a non-neurotypical man as a choice (because a neurotypical man with the other attributes she was demanding would be out of her price range--i.e. higher than 90th percentile status--otherwise).  All three also selected a man with at least one higher degree level or certification in education than their own.

What's the take away here?  If the box your requirements create is small or of an odd shape, you're going to need more selection and sorting firepower than even an extraordinary social circle matchmaker can provide for you.  And if you're a woman with otherwise sterling qualities that are valued less in the marriage marketplace, the converse is true---you need an area with a grossly inefficient marriage marketplace where a man might have to choose, for instance, between a woman of 50th percentile attractiveness and superb other attributes and a 70th percentile woman with poor attributes.  I suggest Alaska.  In more normal markets you're invisible to him and he'll be trying to find the woman around the 70th percentile that has the best mutual fit with him.

The Universal Cry: Structure the Status Rules Such That I Rank Higher

Contemplating the fate of one of my wife's friends from college, it occurs to me that it is yet another case of the incessant desire of humanity to structure the rules of the status game such that they personally rank higher within it.

This friend of my wife's, who has subsequently drifted away, actually has a fair bit going for her.
She's about 2 sigmas in raw intelligence, probably around 90th or so percentile in terms of income/economics/career success, and slightly above average in the homemaker constellation of skills.  Unfortunately for her, she's also about 50 pounds higher than her ideal weight, significantly overweight although not morbidly obese.

This means that effectively, she ranks around the 30th to 40th percentile among women her age in terms of the marriage marketplace (since about half of women these days are about as overweight as she is, and she'd actually be very pretty sans 50 pounds or so).  In turn, this means that she's largely limited to men who are evaluated by women (primarily on social status) at around the 30th to 40th percentile.  The dislocation between what she thinks she ought to be able to get (men comparable to the husbands of her college friends, who are in the 80th to 90th percentile on the same metrics) and what she can actually attract is profoundly jarring.  I mean, earning around the 90th percentile or so would raise a man's status, so why not hers, she reasons.  I'm about 98th percentile in brains, why can't I get a 98th percentile man in terms of status?  But the marketplace doesn't work that way.  There's precisely one way she can improve her prospects, and that is to get much closer to her ideal weight.

The American marriage and sexual marketplaces are really quite perverse when you think about it---all a woman needs to do to get to the 75th percentile or thereabouts is to be almost entirely average looking, but to be close to her ideal weight.  80th to 90th percentile is honestly not out of range for most women, in a twisted Lake Wobegon sort of way, because nearly half of the competition have effectively taken themselves out of the race.  Avoid the abject failure of short hair and you're even closer to the mark.
The difference between the men who are available in the 30th-40th percentile of status versus the 80th-90th percentiles ought to be all the motivation you need.

What happened to this friend of my wife's, I can hear you asking?  Let's just say it involves multiple cats and 'changing teams'. 

Trayyon Martin and Reaction

One important thing to remember as reactionaries is that we are long volatility.  Anything which undermines the prestige of the existing power structure works in our favor long term.  What are some of the possibilities in this case?

The power structure is pretty clearly bent on attempting to railroad Zimmerman, but that's going to be awfully tough to do in Florida.  My bet is the jury acquits him, and there's a good chance the grand jury would as well. 

With articles like the following greatly undermining the initial media narrative, it's hard to envision a conviction.
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-26/news/os-trayvon-martin-zimmerman-account-20120326_1_arizona-iced-tea-suv-unarmed-black-teenager

http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/03/trayvon-martin-case-heading-towards-the-political-abyss/

There's also this:  Zimmerman is clearly a Hispanic, specifically a Mestizo.  How is that community going to take an obvious attempt to railroad him?  Hispanics aren't nearly so deracinated as white people, and they know how to play in the ethnic cleansing game.  This sort of thing isn't good at all for the Democratic coalition.

Lots of Republican officials seem to be eager to prove their anti-racist (read, anti white, or in this case, anti whatever the media mistakenly calls white) credentials.  Romney and Paul seem to have the good sense to keep their mouths shut on the issue---and Newt attacks Obama on a meta-point.

So there's a pretty high probability that we'll get some riots out of this.  While tragic for any victims of such, this only helps the cause of reaction.  Look to the aftermath of the Rodney King rights back in 1992 for an example of how quickly the mood of the country turned in a reactionary direction.

The Best Summary of the Trayvon Martin Case

http://destructure.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/trayvon-martin-faq/

Honestly, this case shouldn't be news at the national or frankly, even the state level.  But because of the false narrative that the MSM is hell-bent on pushing, it is.  Therefore I link to the best summary I've found.

Some key points that should not be in serious dispute:
Trayvon was not some tiny preteen.  He was a 17 year old football player at minimum 6' tall.  The picture most circulated is 3 years or more old.
Zimmerman is a Hispanic man, most specifically, a Mestizo
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/03/missing-m-word-in-george-zimmerman.html
He's not the Aryan Avenger Vigilante that he's portrayed as.
The police on the scene and the witnesses interviewed tell a story consistent with Zimmerman engaging in self-defense, not some racially-motivated cold-blooded execution.  Most likely because of the credibility of this self-defense narrative, they didn't arrest him.

It is pretty disgusting how the MSM is slanting the presentation.  My guess is after the smoke clears and Zimmerman is exonerated by the legal system, and the ensuing riots and double jeopardy by Holder's civil wrongs department, there will be hell to pay for slander in the civil courts. 

What is a Reasonable Expectation of a Politician?

As a reactionary, I've long viewed politicians as being, at best, whores.  So what should we set as the expectation of our public harlots?

My take is a politician taking a new position during an election cycle is reasonably acceptable, as long as he votes commensurate with that new position if elected.  Election year is in fact the most reputable time for a 'flip-flop'.  What is not acceptable is running, say, as a pro-gun politician and betraying those voters who thought they were buying a pro-gun temporary liason or vice versa.  Nobody should have any indignation that someone who supported an issue, say, in the 1980s does not do so now.
Expecting politicians to be paladins and exemplars of particular issues is a recipe for disappointment.  Instead, here's the questions:
Is he willing to be your whore on this issue?
and
Does he have a history of staying bought for the election cycle?
Yes, occasionally you'll get a 'true believer' on an issue, and having them around is very nice, but that's no way to assemble a working majority to defend your interests.  To do that you need to learn how to employ the mercenary who will stay bought.

Viva Cristo Rey! Now For Greater Glory

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/03/21/trailer-for-greater-glory/

It appears that Cristiada, now rechristened 'For Greater Glory' will be coming to the big screen after all, in April in Mexico and early June in the US.  This should serve as excellent propaganda for Reaction and might well remind Catholics of the days when they had a collective spine.

The iron is hot, the issues in question are in play, and the stage is set, much in the same way that the Scottish autonomy movement got a serious shot in the arm from Gibson's Braveheart.  I admit I was disappointed that it didn't release last year, and basically vanished from the radar screen for several seasons.  But I have to admit that the new timing could hardly be better.

Fish Explicitly Confirms the Chariot of Reaction Thesis

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/two-cheers-for-double-standards/

That being essentially that those that advance the Cathedral agenda using moral language have zero moral standing and that whites should therefore mock any attempt to guilt them into failing to support their own group interests.

Here's the bottom line:  you're not going to win the effort through logical persuasion, particularly without any signficant representation in mass media.  Persuasion isn't about logic, or even truth.  It is about status, repetition and affiliation.  That's the world we live in.  Frankly, despite mainline protestations to the contrary,God doesn't give a damn whether group X is in the front of the bus and group Y is in the back of the bus or vice versa.  Because of our nature, one group will ALWAYS be in the back of the bus, or will at least protest vehemently as such.  The overwhelming majority of issues we cast as moral issues are in fact just issues of interest, affiliation, and status.  With a few exceptions, the primary evil involved is the deceit and mendacity with which we feel compelled to clothe these conflicts and the moral inversions we have erected.  If you can't win a conflict as it is presently framed, and can't reframe it, change the mode of conflict to one where you can win.

Authorial Affirmative Action and Distorting the Histograms of Reality

Back when I was a grade schooler, in a few of our classes, we had a 'propaganda unit', wherein many of the common techniques of propaganda used historically were detailed and analyzed, perhaps with the intent of inoculating students against them.

Unfortunately, the techniques studies were not the ones actually used most frequently by cultural Marxists---they were really more those of 1950s-1960s Mad Men and WWII propaganda posters.  The really dangerous techniques were never described.

It is our intent to coin a phrase to describe a rather ubiquitous pattern.  We will call this technique 'authorial affirmative action', with the objective being distorting the histogram of reality.  How does one use this technique, one might ask?
The beauty of this technique is you never need to say a damned thing.  What you do is place large numbers of non-representative characters---with a frequency vastly in excess of their frequency in reality.  People generalize from fictional examples all the time, and you're directly poisoning their histograms of reality (which is to say, their estimation of how commonly class X does behavior Y).  Black scientists is one of the biggest examples here---what's the fraction of blacks among eminent scientists (the only variety that usually show up in fiction or TV)?---now compare the actual fraction of such in reality.  Women who can fight better than trained male combatants is another---the actual difference between male and female raw physical strength is huge, on the order of 3-4 standard deviations, granted strength is not all there is to conflict, but it's a very large factor.
Such authorial affirmative action is particularly gratuitous when it is clear that the character(s) in question could be rewritten to occupy another gender or race with a very small amount of effort---being almost like a 'product placement'.  Black lesbian naval officers with supreme physical combat capabilities (Island in the Sea of Time)?  I'm looking at you Mr Stirling, largely because I know that you know better.  Do your editors/publishers require such things in general, or are they just still sore at you from your Draka series?

In addition, you make members of favored/protected groups never unsympathetic or low status characters.  For instance, almost all the criminals on Law and Order and similar shows are white males.  Gays or blacks pretty much never get to be the bad guy or betrayers.  Besides corrupting people's priors, there's also the objection that this makes most fiction and dramas terribly predictable and the limited range of characterization must terrifically suck for any talented actors in particularly protected classes.
How long has it been, for instance, since a black man got to be a Bond villain---the 70s?

The bottom line on this is that persuasion isn't really about truth, it is about repetition, status, and affiliation.  Anyone who uses such techniques adversely towards your group is your enemy, and you probably shouldn't support them when you have an option.

How Much Does PR Malpractice Hurt? The Case of the Komen Foundation

Some weeks ago, I described the debacle with Planned Parenthood and the Komen foundation as PR Malpractice, as they succeeded in pissing off both sides through their actions.

http://chariotofreaction.blogspot.com/2012/02/komen-breast-cancer-foundation-pr.html

Periodically, I like to revisit predictions I make to see whether they held water, with an eye towards refining my world model for more accurate predictions in the future.  In this case, the prediction was something of a vague one---fundraising and involvement would suffer because of the malpractice.

I confess I didn't expect it to be QUITE this devastating:
http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/03/16/3814718/funding-fight-appears-to-be-affecting.html

Apparently fundraising and involvement in their big yearly event in Fort Worth is down nearly 50% year over year.  I didn't expect that, I expected more something along the lines of 10%.  Making two big segments of your donor base angry reduces donations:  Who would have thought that?

How Diversity Hurts the Sexual and Marriage Marketplaces

Diversity promotes sprawl, by the engine of white flight and NAM crime.  Sprawl promotes obesity, the number one killer of a woman's value in the SMP and MMP.  Obesity is promoted in several ways:
1.  People have longer average commutes, and walk less
2.  People tend to eat a preprocessed 'Standard American Diet' partially due to longer commute times cutting into energy and time for food preparation
3.  Diversity reduces the number of stay at home moms, which aggravates the previous problem, because many couples believe that two incomes are necessary to escape the NAM undertow

In addition, it works to undermine the SMP and MMP through other means.
Diversity atomizes communities, which makes mass media more influential in relation.  Mass media tends to reduce the status of males relative to females, which is toxic to attraction
The atomization of communities breeds virtual anonymity, which increases the effectiveness of the 'Cad' strategy relative to the 'Dad' strategy because communities that don't actually exist find it very difficult to enforce shared norms, especially in 'prisoner's dilemma' sorts of situations.
By importing lots of cheap labor, the value of the average Joe's labor in the economy is bid down, lowering his status, which is, again, toxic to attraction
Importing lots of voters with a socialist bent tends to move states in a more socialist direction, and the thicker the social safety net, the more devalued the archetypal 'beta provider' becomes
Forcing people to walk on eggshells all the time around issues of diversity, ethnicity, or race coerces most people to act like cowards or fools, neither of which is especially attractive

There really is something absurd when a woman can pretty easily get to the 80th or so percentile of attractiveness in the US merely by maintaining a weight proportionate to her height.

Is Provoking a Backlash the Only Thing That the TSA is Good For?

http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2012/03/so-just-what-is-tsa-good-for.html

By way of Borepath's blog, a nice representation of the rate of return the public has experienced on its investment of insane amounts of time, money, and humiliation into the TSA organization since 9/11.

There was one significant security improvement made after 9/11---in fact it was made on 9/11.
It was that the public changed its expectation regarding the impact of a hijacking from 'we'll take an unscheduled vacation to Cuba and pick up some cigars' to 'some SOB wants to turn us into charcoal by using our plane as a guided missile'.  Changing the expectation is all that it took to make such behavior impractical.  All of the rest is theatre---expensive, humiliating, and time-consuming theatre.  All of the terrorist incidents that have been thwarted recently have been done so by...you guessed it...passengers, or, if you prefer, by the unorganized militia of the US.  Not for nothing did Sun Tzu say, if you put your men on deadly ground (i.e., ground where it is clear that you must fight and/or die, retreat is obviously impossible) they will live (because most of the slaughter in ancients battles came after one side's morale had broken, and those 'on deadly ground' tend to have very strong morale).  Because the public now recognizes a hijacking as 'deadly ground', it is extremely unlikely that we'll see a successful repeat of the tactic.

But the TSA is good for one thing.  It is good for increasing the anger of the population against the system.  Check out the comments on any site with stories about the TSA that allows open comment.  Also check out the up/down votes by other readers on said comments.  It strikes me as not unlikely that the tipping point on the campaign to delegitimize the judiciary will come when someone decks a TSA agent for inappropriate action and the case goes to a jury trial where the jury plays the nullification card.  Every nullification makes the next one easier.  Perhaps the TSA will turn out to have been worth the price all along.

Your Grandfather Had Game

Or, depending on your age, perhaps your great-grandfather...
Much of what circulates through the Internet as regards 'Game' is pretty much what our grandfathers and great-grandfathers did without a second thought.  Consider:

Your grandfather took his dates, and probably your grandmother, dancing frequently, in couples dancing.  What's more, he pretty much always led.  Ask a woman of that generation---very frequently a widow due to different life expectancies, about her husband and she'll often mention dancing.
Your grandfather swaggered a lot more than men of this generation do. 
By current standards, he was a serious sexist, probably a believer in complementarianism rather than equalitarianism.
All of these things made him more attractive to women.
It's true that he didn't have a media constantly working at eroding his status versus women and minorities and denigrating traditionally male activities.
It is also true that he didn't have the second sigma working to undermine his economic power and ability to have a stay at home wife and mother of his children through importing a new people and increasing the sheepskin credentialism to the degree we now have.
It is further true that he didn't have the shadow of no-fault divorce in his early married years---back in those days divorcing was VERY low status.
Judging by their TFR, the men of his generation had no lack of sexual access during marriage.

In many senses, Game is a profoundly reactionary thing---an attempt to reconstruct something that our ancestors took for granted.

Some of the Challenges Facing Any Less Progressive Politician

Imagine you had to give literally hundreds of appearances, many with speeches, on a regular basis during campaign season.  Think you'd give equal quality performances every time?

Now imagine that your bottom 2% of performances got tremendous airplay by a hostile media and your better performances got nearly zero.  Think you could be made to look less competent, or like Dan Quayle was portrayed?

This is the daily reality for any non-Cathedral politician, or even one who is on the outer edge of 'respectability'.

Compound this with the brute fact that any politician that is even vaguely on the side of the general population has to speak in serious code---a gaffe is when you inadvertently speak something that is too true.
http://www.vdare.com/posts/asymmetric-political-warfare

Per Sailer
For example, here are a number of high life priorities for vast numbers of Republican-leaning, conservative-minded voters:

-- They want to be able to continue to live in their suburban communities where they've put down roots without being driven by demographic change to the exurbs.
-- They want to be able to send all their children to the local public school, which will be culturally dominated by the children of people like themselves
-- They want their children to be able to get into State U.
Is this too much to ask?


I'd add that they want immigration radically reduced and want steps taken to ensure that they retain demographic hegemony into the future, but Sailer is pretty much spot on insofar as the desires of the ordinary white American are concerned.
But any politician who speaks this honestly is crucified in the MSM.  So the challenge is how to communicate support for this in a manner that is plausibly deniable but which provides assurance that the communicator will not 'grow in office' (read, betray his constituency).

The Secret Sauce of Reaction: Particularism and Exceptions for the Truly Exceptional

Discussing reaction with my wife, who says that she only agrees about 80% with me, which is perfectly fine, we turned to the topic of women's 'liberation'.
My contention was that there have always been exceptions made under reactionary social regimes for the truly exceptional---the 3, 4 and 5 sigma talents.  Most of the complaints have come from the moderately talented, the 1 to 2 sigmas who today make up the group I've termed the 'Second Sigma'.  My further contention was that society needed, and still to a great extent still needs, most women to spend the lion's share of their working time raising their children, and only those who are really exceptional or unusually unsuited to such tasks should be encouraged to find their identity primarily in their work outside the home.

So the question was, does the world more resemble what I've described or the 'conventional wisdom'.  I reasoned that if it was true that we were really squashing lots of exceptional women's dreams, that we'd expect to have seen a grand increase in the number of women who are scientists at the highest level of achievement.  My wife agreed that the Nobel prize in Physics and Chemistry best characterized that level, and are also the least political of the prizes.  So our friend google was brought to bear, along with Wikipedia.

First Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics
1963 Maria Goeppert Mayer
1903  Marie Curie

2 Nobel prizes, one from a profoundly reactionary period and the second from a period of transition.  Curie is a really interesting case, because one of her daughters and her husband were ALSO Nobel prize winners in the hard sciences (she had two children but her family direct line appears to have had a fertility collapse sadly).  So the claim that the reactionary social order was capable of employing and recognizing the talent of the truly exceptional woman appears to be much better supported than the conventional wisdom hypothesis.  Interestingly, there are no Nobel prize winning women in physics since the era of affirmative action.

Now let's turn to Chemistry, another profoundly useful science (IMO, the mark of when a science is really matured is when it has an associated engineering discipline)
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry
2009  Ada E. Yonath
1964  Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
1935  Irène Joliot-Curie
1911 Marie Curie

So 2 in profoundly reactionary times, one in transition, and one in the modern Cathedral era.  Once again our claim is supported and the hypothesis that the exceptional flowers were trampled upon fails to pass muster.

That is, unless you want to claim that such 'trampling' encouraged the greatest flowering in the most noble sciences, in which case, why should we be against it?

Pat Robertson Embraces Key Components of Our Modest Proposal Regarding the War on Drugs

http://news.yahoo.com/pat-robertson-wants-smoke-pot-legally-143457144.html

Of course this isn't really a big surprise to me.  I've got quite a number of ultra-reactionary Christian friends, and I've noticed something that might surprise those who consume a steady diet of MSM news and entertainment.

In general they're a lot less totalitarian than the median voter.  They're more honest about talking about guns & cages than is the average Joe---who constitutionally just CAN'T seem to grok the fact that whenever you pass a law or regulation, you're compelling obedience to it with force---but differ from the libertarians in that they've made their peace with it.  Give them control of the government of the US, and what you're likely to get is a high-tech rerun of the 1950s.  Even the Spanish Inquisition, despite the massive propaganda, never really killed a lot of people---the highest estimates give less than 5000 over the span of 250 years and most estimates are substantially lower than that.

The real hardcore totalitarian impulse comes from the Yankee Progressives (Banned in Boston WAS the trope for aggressive censorship).  Most of the reactionary elements generally preferred to have such activities be low status and kept out of sight, occasionally illegal with lax to no enforcement.  Reactionaries at the gut level recognize that utopia isn't an option, and that there's a terrible cost to vigorously enforcing laws where you don't have serious supermajority support.  Accordingly they tend to establish a model wherein they keep elements that they morally disapprove of low status without any really serious attempt to use the law against them unless they start agitating for higher status.  The drive to smash their enemies is fairly low on to-do lists, which is also, unfortunately, why they're doing so poorly in the cultural war.

Post Super Tuesday, Will Gingrich Drop Out and Improve the Field on the National Question?

Gingrich took only one state yesterday, his home state of Georgia where he was a representative for many years, with a simple plurality of the vote.  One questions whether he'll drop out soon now.  Personally, I hope so, as that'll push the remaining field in the right direction on the national question.  Santorum and Romney, with A- and B- ratings respectively, are both fairly decent on the national question---probably as good as we can reasonably expect in our profoundly dysfunctional political culture.  Looking at the delegate counts, a brokered convention looks unlikely, as Romney seems on track to accumulate the requisite delegates.  Should Gingrich drop out, Santorum might be able to beat him to the finish line if most of Gingrich's support falls behind him, as I suspect it would.  Should neither get the requisite numbers, Paul is actually slowly accumulating delegates himself and might be able to play a kingmaker role.

Looking forward to the general election, Romney and Santorum each bring several wild cards.

Romney has the Mormon thing going on---it's difficult to predict exactly how that's going to play after nonstop anti-Mormon propaganda for a couple of seasons.  Will the propaganda backfire, creating sympathy for him, particularly in light of the recent persecution of the Catholic church?  Will the more religious say, Yeah, they're heretics, but the Left hates them so intensely maybe we shouldn't?  Or will they see 'As we are, God once was, as He is, we may become' and totally freak out about that heretical 'Dungeons and Dragons theology' (where God is basically just the highest level spirit around, and being a good Mormon racks up the experience points such that you might become a planetary demigod or maybe even higher after your death if you gain enough levels).  Romney would be wise to pick a vice-presidential candidate that has clear 'fath & practice' orthodox Christian credentials.

Santorum has the abject and utter hatred of the Cultural Marxist left, especially the homosexuals, who have made his name an epithet.  It's difficult to predict just how much this is going to hurt with a season of media water torture in the polls.  There's also the Bella Santorum factor.  How is the public going to react to that human interest, especially if, as likely, her condition worsens?  It's interesting that Santorum has not been winning the Catholic vote in the primaries---I attribute this to the fact that Santorum is a bona fide Catholic and most Catholics in the US are either Catholics in Name Only or Cafeteria Catholics and he makes them distinctly uncomfortable for that reason.  I bet he even goes to Confession regularly and favors the Tridentine Mass.  I'm not sure what Santorum can do to help himself in terms of a vice-presidential candidate.  Hell, it's not out of the question that he might become the vice presidential candidate.

Adding to the List of Faithful Alpha and Beta Testers That I am Grateful For

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008542.html
Via FuturePundit, an article about how our pets are serving as a testbed to advance rejuvenation and longevity medicine.

I am personally thankful for those who alpha and beta test things that will likely or potentially benefit me and mine in the future.  For instance, soldiers in the US army have driven the advance of trauma medicine and prosthetics to a degree unimaginable to some of my friends who served in the military in the 70s and 80s---some prosthetic legs are SO good now that they are likely to be outlawed in competitive sporting events in the near future at the 'only the obsessed need apply level'.  These early adopters not only help work out the problems with protocols, therapies, and the like, but they also largely pay the 'Nonrecurring Engineering' costs as well.  Being as much of my vocation is nonrecurring engineering, I've always had great affection for those who pay said bill.

Should things not fall apart, and should we not cripple the medical research apparatus further, it is likely that we will continue to make strides towards actuarial escape velocity.  It is very good indeed, that we have this alternate channel with possibilities for excellent data quality and price competition providing sane incentive structures to advance the ball under a far weaker defensive regime than the FDA.

The Ranks of Concealed Weapon Permit Holders Swell

http://blode0322.blogspot.com/2012/03/number-of-concealed-carry-permits-by.html
Clayton Cramer by way of Blode

Apparently now there are over 5 Million active CCW permit holders in the US.  That's a lot, and as Blode points out, it has been a very low-key exponential growth, like that of homeschoolers, a group I expect has a lot of overlap.  With just one more doubling, this group can probably achieve the level of political clout that nobody will be inclined to mess with them.

I suppose most of you have noticed that no mass murder in recent history has been carried out in a place where ordinary people can carry concealed weapons.  I'd argue that this in no coincidence or accident.

Unfortunate Developments North of the Border

http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/thank-goodness-daddy-cant-really-protect-her-from-bad-guys/

Apparently a little four year old girl drew a picture of her daddy holding a gun and a teacher with the support of their CPS went totally freaking nuts about it.

Did you need yet another reason to homeschool?
Is four years old too early to learn to practice Operational Security and Taqiyya?

Canada has become increasingly scary on the civil liberties front in recent years.  Now in Alberta they're making noises about punishing parents who teach that homosexuality is a sin:  That is, punishing any parent who professes an orthodox Christian faith and who presumes to teach same to their children.

I understand that the Catholic church in England has a long tradition akin to Taqiyya.  Perhaps it needs to be taken out of mothballs once again in the old dominions.

I'm teaching my little ones to append a silent 'that I have any need or right to know about' onto the end of any question asked them by a non-family authority figure.  I suggest doing the same.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/exclusive-homeschooling-families-cant-teach-homosexuality-a-sin-in-class-sa

The Republican Field Improves, Slightly, on the National Question

https://www.numbersusa.com/content/action/2012-presidential-hopefuls-immigration-stances.html

Santorum with an A-, Romney with a B-, Gingrich with a D, and Paul with a D-.
Given that Romney and Santorum are presently in the lead, this is fairly encouraging.  I'm also inclined to believe that Paul is likely to be slightly better than a D- in practice (for one thing, he'd be disinclined to meddle with the states deciding to enforce immigration laws on their own).   Attrition through enforcement plus EVerify is getting quite a bit of attention in the debates and scores well with the voters.  The genius of EVerify is that it lays the smackdown on the businesses that knowingly hire illegals, who are decidedly harder to paint in a ridiculously sympathetic light than the illegals themselves.  It is for PR reasons more likely to be effective and sustainable politically.  I still look forward to the sequel to Operation Wetback though, but I don't see any of the candidates as likely to do anything quite that sensible.

Santorum has also been talking good sense (read heresy in the MSM) on education lately
http://2012.republican-candidates.org/Santorum/Education-issue.php
Given that his kids are homeschooled, it's not too surprising that he's sensible on the issue (read, recognizes that the educational apparatus is a major node of the Cathedral and primarily an engine of indoctrination).

Ron Paul remains the only candidate likely to even try to get the debt and deficit under control (Romney would likely significantly reduce the deficit but the chances of him getting it to zero given what that would require are basically zero, which means debt/GDP over 100% is here to stay).

Retrospective on the Japanese Earthquake of 2011 and One Reason Why She is Wired to Test You Occasionally

I recall the day of the earthquake in Japan pretty vividly.  My wife and I and our two little ones were spending some vacation time in a little motel on the southern Oregon coast right up against the shore.  That night I recall reading on the web that there had been a massive earthquake in Japan and later, that the initial estimate of the magnitude of that earthquake had been upgraded to 9.0.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami

My wife had just given birth to our youngest a few months earlier, and we were still in the grey months of the year in the Pacific Northwest, so her morale was pretty low.  Note to the wise:  if you can, try to arrange it so that your wife can deliver her babies in the late Spring to early Summer, it seems to mitigate the baby blues quite a bit, especially if you live in a place with dark, rainy winters like Oregon.

Around 2 or 3 in the morning, a siren starting going off for a tsunami warning.  Apparently they travel across the Pacific pretty quickly.  My wife was really shaken, pulled out of REM sleep by sirens and loudspeakers.  In the parlance of wargames, we'd say that she'd failed a morale check and was shaken.  Therefore it was to me to gather up the little ones and our things and give her specific and simple commands as we executed a speedy evacuation from the waterfront.  One recommendation if you find yourself in such a situation:  give simple and specific orders to the shaken, you need to micromanage them quite a bit more when their morale is in that state.  As it was, we got downstairs with the little ones and packed into the minivan with everything I'd be terribly upset about losing in record time.  One other note:  little babies and toddlers can tell when one of their adults is shaken, and they tend to get really pliable---their instincts are pretty good.  A mile or two away from the scene and the constant sirens and my wife's morale returned to normal, and she was a bit embarassed about the matter.

So what does this have to do with her 'testing' you occasionally---referred to as 'shit tests' or 'fitness tests' in parts of this sphere?  What her hindbrain is looking for is assurance that, should the shit hit the fan, you will be able to exercise what we'll call emergency command authority.  Lots of women have been put to far scarier circumstances than this (as it turned out, the promised tidal wave never manifested at our motel room, although some did hit further south and caused significant damage), and her gut, if not her intellect, still understands such things.  She needs to be able to rely on you to keep your head when hers is temporarily impaired.