Chariot of Reaction

The Ranks of Concealed Weapon Permit Holders Swell

2012-03-04T14:48:00.000-08:00

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

2012-03-02T21:03:00.002-08:00

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

2012-03-01T20:15:00.002-08:00

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

2012-03-01T01:00:00.000-08:00

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.

Happiness of Women Declining Faster than that for Men

2012-02-28T08:52:00.000-08:00

http://mangans.blogspot.com/2012/02/men-now-happier-than-women.html

None of this should be terribly surprising. Raising the status of women relative to that of men creates relationship unhappiness for women moreso than for men. Women are attracted to status, it is catnip for the neurotypical woman. Lowering the relative status of men basically makes men less attractive to their women. The flip side of this is the increasing prevalence of obesity, since looks are to men what status is to women.

Furthermore, women derive most of their satisfaction from their relationships and communities. Guess what diversity undermines and destroys? You can cite Putnam if you really need to in support of this claim, or you could alternatively just open your eyes. Women thrive in a high-trust environment when they have ready access to similarly situated friends, another thing that packing most of them off to an office environment while putting their little bundles of joy into daycare to be raised by someone else tends to fragment.

How Diversity and the Loss of Free Association Sucks for the Proletariat

2012-02-25T13:48:00.002-08:00

http://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/smart-flight/

It occurs to me that most of the so-named proles are perfectly decent neighbors. A thought experiment to prove this follows:

How many low middle class/upper lower class neighborhoods in the US would fail to become nice places to live if you could eject (or ideally, prevent from living there in the first place) the worst 20% of the residents? Not very many I wager. But under a PC multiculturalist regime, only rich people are allowed to live in nice neighborhoods, and only by erecting economic barriers to entry.

It has been said that the worst part of being poor in the US is having to live next to other poor people. A huge part of this is that people outside the upper middle class and upper classes aren't allowed to maintain control over their own neighborhoods. Hell, under high diversity, they can't even maintain soft power by controlling normative behavior. And if this isn't bad enough, the SWPL/DWL crowd even supports stuffing Section 8 residents into whatever lower income neighborhoods are too functional for their tastes.

My Contribution to the High Education Bubble: Two Free Thesis or Dissertation Topics

2012-02-24T12:46:00.000-08:00

Most rational observers agree that there is a serious higher education bubble going on, and way more theses and dissertations are produced that is optimal (although there's been a strong move towards non-thesis option Masters degrees). But we're in the habit of encouragement here at the Chariot---it seems to be our area of comparative advantage, so today I'm offering two suitable topics, absolutely free. You don't even have to cite me or credit me in any way.

Topic 1: Do a study of the ending outcomes of children who are homeschooled of the various main flavors (traditional or unschooling) vs the various flavors of private schools vs public schooling. Control by the IQ of the parents (you can get this from military records or the longitudinal studies that Murray used back in the Bell Curve, another alternative would use SAT/ACT scores). This beats the hell out of just controlling by race/SES/education, and controlling by the parent's IQ gives you an indication on whether any of the modes of schooling might actually increase IQ, which after all isn't 100% nature although most of it is in the context of a high surplus modern society. Some interesting questions you could answer this way, besides the obvious, might be which modes of schooling work best as a function of IQ ranges. Do homeschool kids overperform their IQ? Do homeschool parents tend to be smarter than their SES/education/race would tend to imply?
I imagine you could walk this topic in any of a number of departments, and it'd probably be worth several journal articles.

Topic 2: It has been observed that the homicide rate presently would be a lot higher if we still had the medical capability of, say, the 1980s (this is to say a lot of people treated today and who make full recovery from aggravated assaults and the like would've been remanded to a pine box 20-30 years ago). Put meat on this skeleton. Using hospital and other medical aggregated records, compute a normalized homicide rate, normalized to 1900 medical technology or thereabouts, or the earliest date where your records of homicide and medicine are of good quality. Consider also likely criticisms: is there any evidence that people murdered today receive more injuries prior to actually expiring? Do those intend on murder automatically adjust the lethality of their attacks to compensate? Is the trauma medicine capability significantly unevenly distributed throughout the country? Enough to make county-level rate significantly impacted by this effect? Has the particular means of murder significantly shifted? Like the first topic, you could walk this in several different departments, although I'd say Criminology is less likely to make a hash of it than medicine, although you'll probably want someone with relevant medical expertise (preferably a very long history of such, like a guy nearing retirement age in a major hospital in a big city who has worked trauma medicine most of his career) as a co author on several of your papers.

The Zeroth Commandment of the Cathedral: Thou Shalt Be Fungible?

2012-02-23T20:13:00.001-08:00

Many things on God's Earth are fungible to one degree or another. Money is the classic example, being almost perfectly fungible. Oil under normal circumstances is mostly fungible too---a few nations refusing to buy Iranian oil isn't likely to hurt Iran all that much if they can turn around and sell to China and India instead. Similarly, even if we were to miraculously achieve 'foreign oil independence', we'd still be affected by the market as a whole, because American oil producers are perfectly happy to sell to, for instance, freezing Europeans with a taste for expensive diesel fuel irrespective of the opinions of Americans if the price is right.

But the sort of fungibility I'm talking of here today is that of people. You see, I'm arguing that the Cathedral absolutely loathes any kind of real diversity. If you're a counselor, for instance, the notion that you might be willing to counsel a person who experiences unwanted homosexual temptation in a way that doesn't glorify or affirm the lifestyle associated with such gives them hives. They absolutely hate the idea that in a free marketplace, Joe, who hates the fact that he is tempted towards homosexual fornication and wants help from a counselor grounded in a reactionary Christian worldview in dealing with the fallout and stress assocated with his struggles can do so, while Jack, who likes the fact that he is gay but wants help dealing with the fallout and stress associated with his lifestyle can also find an appropriate counselor. They hate the fact that some pharmacists refuse to traffic in some sorts of wholely legal drugs for reasons of conscience. They detest the fact that an artist might not want to affirm a lifestyle that they consider degenerate, or bake a wedding cake in honor of it. In short, they insist that everyone be fungible and interchangible within their particular role and class, even those elements who on the surface appear to have an exemption (woe to them when they stray off the reservation!). God forbid you start talking about free association.

The classic reactionary position on this is that fungibility is anti-human. Human beings aren't fungible nor were they made by their Creator to be such. Large corporations love this zeroth commandment though, for fungible peoples are less difficult to market to and manipulate, probably explaining a lot of the alliance of the corporate and the Cathedral.

Is There a Connection Between Pervasive Negotiation and Being a Low Trust Society?

2012-02-22T16:22:00.000-08:00

Such seems pretty likely to me, as most of the societies that spring most to mind when I think 'low trust' are also associated with all kinds of haggling and negotiation, and not just on rare big-ticket purchases. George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, also seemed to think so, believing that negotiation inherently disadvantaged the meek and who introduced fixed pricing in England as the implementation of his belief. Just from a pure productivity standpoint, were this a technology in a game like Civilization, it'd almost certainly be considered radically overpowered. Think of how many hours are expended haggling over prices---guessing that fixed pricing practices resulted in a 5-10% improvement in overall productivity is probably an underestimate, to say nothing of the reduction in stress levels, particularly among the more introverted segments of the population.
Can a case be made that the introduction of fixed pricing and the marginalization of negotiation in daily life increased the trust levels in the Anglosphere (George Fox pushed the idea pretty charismatically on Quaker merchants, and the success of it lead to increasing adoption over the years by other merchants---the reputation of Quaker businessmen for honest dealing, relative to the standards of that era, was commercially valuable)? Is it an accident that people that negotiate prices in general are thought poorly of in our society (e.g., car salesmen and furniture salesmen)?

Supreme Court Takes Up Texas Affirmative Action Case: No Lose Battle for Reaction

2012-02-21T19:20:00.001-08:00

http://gantdaily.com/2012/02/21/supreme-court-agrees-to-hear-university-affirmative-action-case/

If they dismantle more of Affirmative Discrimination, we win. If they don't, they hand us more of the all important public anger at an advantageous time, perhaps even enough to move more of the population down my judicial delegitimisation scale.
This summer's raft of decisions should be interesting indeed, especially played to the background of $4+ a gallon gasoline prices.

On Politicians, Faith, and Nearly Information-Free Statements

2012-02-20T16:12:00.000-08:00

Pretty much every politician in the US proclaim their Christianity. They do this because a supermajority of the US population professes at least nominal Christianity. The mere statement by a politician that they are Christian carries precious little information, because if they were not, they generally would say they were anyway. My gut tells me that an awful lot of politicians in the US are functionally atheists and this isn't limited to the Democratic party or 'Catholics in Name Only'. They simply profess a faith because it is death electorally if they do otherwise.
About the only politicians you can probably take at face value when they declare a religious affiliation are the ones of non-mainstream faiths in the US---like say a Buddhist or a Mormon. Much talk is advanced on whether Obama, for instance, is a secret Moslem. I don't think he is, but I don't think he's a Christian either. Obama worships Obama, and seems to want everyone else to also. Christians and others who care about religious values in the political arena in the US should pay much more attention to a politician's track record of voting on the issues that matter to them and put much less stock in their nominal affiliation.

The Desperate Struggle Against Homeschooling

2012-02-18T09:12:00.000-08:00

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/02/homeschooling_and_unschooling_among_liberals_and_progressives_.single.html

by way of http://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/02/argument-for-against-homeschooling.html

I find this article terribly funny. The author of the Slate article is attempting to convince progressive/liberal parents not to make an unprincipled exception for their children in the matter of education. He's saying they need to make their children 'take one for the team'. He's making the flip side of the argument I make when highly liberal parents claim to believe their cant while private schooling their kids (I've never had an argument of this form with a homeschool parent for some reason). My argument has typically been of the form: You don't act as if you believe X, see here is evidence of that fact, therefore you don't really believe it and you should stop mouthing the platitudes. I've rarely had any success converting people's opinions in such discussions, but it does nearly invariably succeed in suppressing them like artillery fire and they slink away with their tails between their legs. Now this author attempts to get them to break their hypocrisy in the opposite direction---implying excommunication from progressive status should they not do so. This will fail, because if there's anywhere people will make unprincipled exceptions, it is for their kids. Only the most degraded, withered examples of humanity make status points on the backs of their children. No president since Carter, for instance, has sent their kids to a public school.

The beauty is, if this is not an isolated note, but rather a regular drumbeat, this will have the effect of radicalizing a lot of progressive/liberal homeschoolers. It will drive them further into the arms of reactionary homeschoolers. There's an old expression common to mothers: Love me, love my kids. It also works in reverse---when you love (i.e., protect the interests of) their children, they'll tend to like you better. They might just realize that not only are they unwilling to have their children 'take one for the team', but that there is no 'team' there at all. Teams, after all, imply reciprocal ties of obligation and support in the pursuit of a shared goal.

The Scandal of the US Public Health Apparatus: Pissing Away Moral and Social Capital

2012-02-16T20:14:00.001-08:00

Frequently you'll read breathless stories about how large numbers of children and adults are not 'properly immunized'. It is also frequently commented on that most people don't stay home when they have contagious illnesses. Further, we see a public with extremely low by modern historical standards confidence in the public health system. This may be part of why there's so much pull towards socializing medicine---the doctors lack the standing that they once had socially. How did we get here?

Well, for one thing, the public health apparatus doesn't ACT like they're fanatical partisans of public health. If they did, they'd be constantly screaming holy hell over the failure to maintain the integrity of our borders. Back in Ellis Island days, preventing the spread of disease into the US was actually taken seriously. Seriously enough that a lot of diseases USED to be pretty much extinct in the US, including TB. But no more (this is just the latest story, there have been quite a few over recent years).
http://amren.com/news/2012/02/single-case-of-tuberculosis-at-high-school-in-colorado-forces-widespread-testing/

Add to this not taking the AIDS matter properly seriously---a serious response would've been extremely heavy handed from a 'civil liberties' point of view with quarantines and sanctions against those that break quarantine being only the beginning. Here's a hint to doctors: You're not expected to uniformly WIN all such struggles of protected class VS public health, but you ARE expected to give it the old college try. When you don't or just phone it in, people get the idea that the health of the public is NOT your highest priority. That's dangerous, and not just to your income stream.

Mass disease control can be compared to nuclear fission reactions. Diseases only get really dangerous to societies when each new carrier begets more than one new carrier, analogous to a supercritical chain reaction. This is where the whole concept of 'herd immunity' comes into play. See, most vaccinations are nowhere near 100% effective, which is why when there's a minor outbreak, of, say, measles, frequently only half to two-thirds of the infected will be unvaccinated. Flu shots are even worse, sometimes only reducing your probability of getting the flu personally by a third or so. Much of the benefit of your vaccination doesn't actually go to you. It goes to the population in your area as a whole, by lowering the number of new carriers that might otherwise have been produced by you. The whole affair is very probabilistic and it is based on a utilitarian ethos, which is why this is very rarely discussed openly in public. To be able to make pronouncements of the form: You and your kids need to do X, which may be unpleasant or have side effects (which we will keep as quiet as possible) for the benefit of capital-S Society, you need to have moral authority and the requisite standing. Otherwise the public won't trust you and you'll be in the position of frequently lying to the public about the whole nature of the disease control game, which begets, you guessed it, further degradation in public trust.

The awful standards of research and statistics in medical journals don't help either, but the average person doesn't actually feel that in his gut the way the previous failings rankle. My recommendation is to work on these failings now, or be ready for a really really nasty surprise should we ever have to contend with something as bad as the Spanish Flu again.

Can the Catholic Church Find Its Voice?

2012-02-14T19:33:00.000-08:00

http://collapsetheblog.typepad.com/blog/2012/02/the-ongoing-apostasy-58-of-catholics-support-contraceptive-mandate.html

Apparently a clear majority of American Catholics support mandating that the health insurance provided by employers cover contraception. This is a step of apostasy beyond simply ignoring the clear direction of Catholic doctrine and tradition.

Clearly, Benedict, you've got an apostasy problem. Now, as a Quaker (albeit in name only), I've got little room to talk, as my denomination is at least as hollowed by apostates and frankly, probably moreso. So let our Catholic readers not imagine that I'm taunting them. Far from it, encouragement is what we do best here at the Chariot. What we aim to do this evening is encourage.

As I see it, the problem is that you've lost your voice. Oh, I see your many encyclicals---I've read many of them. I'm a Protestant but I'm more inclined to give you the time of day than most Catholics, at least in my country. The problem with the many encyclicals is that they generally tend to speak to Reason, and not to the gut. Not by accident, I think, does God say He wants obedience, not sacrifices. But most of us have forgotten what your voice sounds like. Perhaps you have as well? Let me refresh your memory

(From A Canticle for Leibowitz, hat tip to http://payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/09/18/book-recommendation-a-canticle-for-leibowitz-by-walter-m-miller-jr/ for the quotation, but read the book if you've not already, it is a masterpiece and the only thing, IMO Walter Miller wrote of lasting value)

“ – but even the ancient pagans noticed that Nature imposes nothing on you that nature doesn’t prepare you to bear. If that is true of a cat, then is it not more perfectly true of a creature with rational intellect and will – whatever you may believe of Heaven?”

“Shut up. Damn you, shut up!” she hissed.
If I’m being a little brutal,” said the priest, “then it is to you, not the baby. The baby, as you say, can’t understand. And you, as you say, are not complaining. Therefore—”
“Therefore you are asking me to let her die slowly and –”

“No! I’m not asking you. As a priest of Christ I am commanding you by the authority of Almighty God not to lay hands on your child, not to offer her life in sacrifice to a false god of expedient mercy. I do not advise you. I adjure and command you in the name of Christ the King. Is that clear?”

Dom Zerchi had never spoken with such a voice before, and the ease with which the words came to his lips surprised even the priest. As he continued to look at her, her eyes fell. For an instant he had feared that the girl would laugh in his face. When Holy Church occasionally hinted that she still considered her authority to be supreme over all nations and superior to the authority of states, men in these times tended to snicker. And yet the authority of the command could still be sensed by a bitter girl with a dying child. It had been brutal to reason with her, and he regretted it. A simple direct command might accomplish what persuasion could not. She needed the voice of authority now, more than she needed persuasion. He could see it by the way she had wilted, although he had spoken the command as gently as his voice could manage.

That, Friend, is what your voice sounds like. Not the plaintive meow of a housecat but the roar of the Lion of Judah. Not the simpering of the scholars of the Second Sigma, but the Command Voice of the Vicar of Christ.

Justice Breyer Receives Cultural Enrichment on Holiday

2012-02-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/13/justice-breyer-robbed-at-west-indies-vacation-home/?test=latestnews

Maybe it'll do positive things for his jurisprudence. Isn't the old saw that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged?
If memory serves, Breyer has been a gun control fan as well, fitting he was robbed at machete-point.

Gasoline and the Upcoming Election

2012-02-12T16:28:00.000-08:00

Most seem to expect that the price of gasoline will rise on the order of 60 cents by this summer, putting the price right around $4 a gallon for most Americans. That is also right around the price that I think would doom Obama under most circumstances.

In addition to this, we see that gasoline consumption is way down year over year
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-why-gasoline-consumption-tanking

This would tend to imply that economically things are a lot worse than we are led to believe. I have a suspicion that Obama will call for a release of oil from the SPR to attempt to keep gas prices below the psychological value of $4 a gallon. I'm not sure whether it'll work. There has been since 2008 a lot of demand destruction in the US for gasoline and oil in general---we're importing a lot less than then--much more so than can be accounted for by increased fuel production inside the US.

Blessed are They for Whom the Media Does Not Impute Wickedness

2012-02-11T16:02:00.000-08:00

By way of Instapundit we have:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/02/is_sexual_abuse_in_schools_very_common_.html

Let's see...proportional rates likely HIGHER than those of the much reviled Catholic Church....check
Coverup....which we're all told is far worse than the original crime...check

Massive media attempt to generate public outcry to raze the schools to the ground and salt the earth on which they stood? No

This is a classic example of the media applying radically different standards to groups it likes versus those that it doesn't. Think, for instance, of how much cultural attention the less than around 5000 lynchings over the course of about a century got. Way more than the disproportionate black on white murders get, and a lot of the lynchings back in those days were frankly, quite justified.

Let me relate an old family story of mine. I'd have been inclined to dispute it but for the fact that a postcard from the beginning of the 20th century was produced as photographic evidence.

A malefactor in a Southern state raped a girl. He was convicted by the jury and sentenced to death. Nobody seriously disputed the fact that he was guilty. However, he was a crony of the state governor. The governor pardoned him---incidentally breaking the 'honest graft' rules of his contemporary up North (George Washington Plunkitt, who called the penal system the Forbidden Fruit). The good citizens of the capital city in question decided they'd have none of that, so they strung the convicted and pardoned man up from a lamp post, and made a postcard of it. I suspect a lot of lynchings were similar, despite the popular narrative in the media that all lynching victims were innocent black people murdered by wicked white people (in this case, I'm pretty sure that the lynched was neither innocent nor black). History is always messier than any clean narratives progressives like to spin.

Problems in a Bright Future: There is Plenty but Plenty of People are Useless from a Productivity Standpoint

2012-02-10T13:09:00.000-08:00

On the previous post, B writes

"I agree with everything except the idea that there is necessarily a fixed limit to the amount of unproductive people that a society can support. It is entirely conceivable that technology could evolve to a high enough level that a small amount of productive people could support the rest. The main issue is how to keep stupid and unproductive people (whose unproductivity is mostly contextual and caused by tech-in a tropical climate, given a digging stick and a 5 gallon bucket, they could produce enough manioc to support themselves and a dozen kids) from degenerating morally and making their life and the lives of those around them a living hell."

This is one possibility for the future---fictionalized in 'The Diamond Age'. What has happened in such a scenario is that a very large fraction of the population has become useless from a productivity standpoint. A few people have meaningful jobs but most forms of scarcity, excepting, of course status and positional goods, have been repealed.

In our own time in the US, we've seen a steady rise in the fraction of the public that are unemployable or 'zero marginal product' workers. Indeed the minimum IQ coupled with average work ethic needed to be worth a 'living wage' has steadily risen. As it continues to rise this will inexorably raise tensions between the productive and the combination of the unproductive and those simply not allowed to produce due to regulations, minimum wage, and the like.

My suggestion regarding how to deal with this problem is the following (my recommendation with how to deal with an economic contraction due to a future where cheap energy has gone the way of the dodo is similar):

Repeal pretty much all social safety net programs---medicare, SS, welfare, unemployment, et al.
Eliminate pretty much all minimum wage and similar labor regulations
Guarantee all citizens over the age of majority a citizen's dividend, probably on the order of $10k/year present purchasing power. You can fund this dividend however you like, but I recommend a simple consumption tax or something equally transparent. Treat it exactly like monthly dividends from a corporation like the Realty Income Corporation (O on the NYSE), except it wouldn't be transferable. No means testing would be used and the team to do the distribution could probably be a dozen people or less. Ideally, this would represent 2/3 or so of the governmental budget and the tight connection between taxes paid and dividend received would tend to constrain other budget elements.

Do that and most of the population can find SOMETHING useful to do, and the reasoning behind minimum wages and the like becomes moot. Status striving will insure that most people don't just take the dividend and like a low lifestyle, although such would be an option and necessarily so. The fact that people would be free to work for very low wages---as a supplement to their dividend, much in the way that some retirees work as Walmart greeters and the like to make a few extra shekels---would tend to drive unemployment rates very low. People would also have a strong incentive to maintain the borders and be conservative on legal immigration, since it would directly and tangibly impact their own dividends.

The Only Social Security Plan With A Track Record Of Success

2012-02-09T19:51:00.000-08:00

More folks my age believe that Aliens are regularly visiting the Earth than believe that they will collect any meaningful amount of money from Social Security. In this estimate, I believe they are correct despite my low probability estimate of regular visitation from interstellar illegal aliens.
Social Security is not structured as a forced savings/investment program, but rather much like a tax-supported welfare program with a loose connection in amounts paid out versus amounts paid in. Relatively recently outflow exceeded SS taxes collected. Some speak of a 'Social Security Trust Fund', but frankly, that is merely an accounting fiction. Where is the trust fund? Why, it is in fact just part of the national debt. You didn't really think they did something like used it to buy tons of gold and oil did you, cached somewhere in the deep Midwest? Or invested it into a Sovereign wealth fund like the Chinese? No, they used it to offset deficits and reduce their apparent size. Anyone who talks about a Social Security 'lock box' with an eye to mollifying you ought to be locked in a box.

But, be that as it may, SS would still be in deep trouble even if it were structured the way some people still naively assume it is----like a gigantic 401k system with conservative investment management. Even under ideal conditions, there will be massively correlated net selling activity as the huge elephant in the demographic python enters retirement age--i.e. the Baby Boom Generation. And what does massive net selling activity generally do to the prices that the sellers receive?

At bottom, money or investments represent a present claim to resources in the future. A society can only support X% of its population not being productive. In crude terms, only so many can ride in the wagon that the rest must push. The increase of the retiree to non-retiree ratio means problems, big problems, in the fairly near term future and massive headwinds for the economy as a whole. In addition, the lower 'demographic quality' of the younger generation will not help either---anyone with delusions that illegal immigrants and massive legal immigration from the 3rd world is going to solve this problem should sell the excellent drugs they have discovered to fund their own retirement.

There is, however, a fairly time-tested strategy for retirement, used for most of human history. Raise functional children, preferably several of them, and hope that at least one of them and their spouse will look after you in your declining years. For reactionaries I'd suggest at least 3, four if you had the good sense to marry early.

The Faithful Follow the Reactionary Plan for Victory

2012-02-08T10:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2012/02/islands-of-fertility-in-an-ocean-of-demographic-decline/#more-34254

Brought to us by way of the Thinking Housewife, which is, IMO an excellent blog

Here we have evidence that, just like homeschoolers, the areas of the reactionary Remnant are increasing exponentially, albeit from a low base. These areas, called Fertile Intact Census Tracts (or FICTs) are areas where the fertility is high and most families are intact. This is the reactionary long game---simply avoid committing suicide along with the rest of the culture and ensure that it can not take you down along with it in its dying spasms.

Adding Insult to Injury With Anarcho-Tyranny

2012-02-06T18:26:00.000-08:00

On Super Bowl Sunday, some church friends of ours had their car tagged by some 'loosely organized youthful malefactors'. The police, of course, have zero interest after it was reported to them in actually investigating the crime or punishing the guilty.

But they were most interested in warning our friends that they have only 2 weeks to get the tags removed, or THEY will be punished.

Things like this make me loathe the police. I wonder if they recognize just how much ill will this sort of thing generates?
Of course they'd move heaven and earth to prosecute and punish were our friends to form a civic committee of vigilance to do the job that they themselves refuse to do.

Rational Economic Man, DUI, and Desacralizing Adoption

2012-02-05T14:04:00.000-08:00

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2012/02/polo_mogul_john_goodman_says_adopted_girlfriend_to_protect_kids.php

Apparently this very rich man decided to adopt his girlfriend to shield a large amount of assets from a potential civil judgment in the aftermath of DUI charges against him. Both of his kids are minors, and apparently his trust for his children could still be hit by a future judgment against him, but with the adoption of another daughter who is not a minor, the trust becomes immune to such judgments. Enter the girlfriend and the strategic adoption. Rational Economic Man never disappoints in his ability to desacralize institutions and game systems.

Komen Breast Cancer Foundation: PR Malpractice and the Never Apologize Rule in the Political Sphere

2012-02-04T21:47:00.002-08:00

This week has shown us a rather amusing little drama. First, we hear the the Komen breast cancer foundation has decided to stop funding Planned Parenthood. Then there was a massive outcry from those who view abortion as the Great Sacrament of their misbegotten religion. Then for a few days, donations to the Komen foundation surge. Finally, the Komen foundation apologizes and reverts to their original policy---i.e. decides to continue funding Planned Parenthood.

Frankly I couldn't make a worse PR decision if I tried, and I'm a believer in strategically inflaming particular adversaries whenever possible (Per Sun Tzu, if your opponent is choleric, inflame him---this is of course because if you can cause him to lose full control over his emotions, you will find him easier to defeat). First, you piss off those who view abortion as a sacrament, like, say, the famous reporter woman who said she'd have been happy to emulate Monica for Bill Clinton for 'keeping abortion legal'. This group is so damned touchy that a private charitable foundation simply deciding not to give them money anymore sets them off, predictably. Anyone who doubts what I say about the neurotypical mind being ungrateful as hell can look here for Exhibit A. If you give me money or useful help on a regular basis out of the goodness of your heart, with no strings attached, and then one year you tell me you'll no longer be able to do this for me anymore, my gut response bears no resemblance to Planned Parenthood's. It's more akin to---Thank you very much for your many years of support. I hope that maybe you'll find it beneficial to support us again at some future date. Gratitude for the favors granted, and no hard feelings or feeling of entitlement to future favor. But then I'm way the hell out of the neurotypical range. Classier outfits than Planned Parenthood, even if they didn't feel the way I would at the gut level, would at least attempt to emulate my response. This is one of the areas where Christianity has had a profoundly beneficial impact on the culture---in getting people to at least FAKE gratitude and act as if they were grateful when they receive unmerited favor.

Then, to compound their predicament, they decide to change their mind and apologize. Yes, companies can often help themselves by apologizing. For instance, my wife got a loaf of bread from a grocery store some weeks back that was stale when opened well before the sell by date. When she called the bread company, they were profoundly apologetic and sent several loaves of bread worth of manufacturer's coupons (effectively like a small gift card). The apology was accepted and we did not prejudice any future transactions with this particular manufacturer. But politics in the US doesn't work that way---hasn't at least since the 60s. When you apologize in such a venue it is simply used to beat you with further. Amusingly, I suspect that the Komen foundation would've been better served if it said something like this:

Burn in Hell you damnable baby-killers. We're sorry we ever funded you and if we could retroactively take it out of your miserable hides, we'd do so. You'll never see a plugged nickle from us ever again.

Had they said that they'd at least have had the pro-life community behind them---that group which was likely responsible for the surge of donations in the meantime. Here's the thing, they are now seriously on the radar of pro-lifers. Before I knew they did business with Planned Parenthood and had no truck with them, but I'm an outlier and I know it. Now the fact that they support Planned Parenthood is in the public eye and record. What's more, an awful lot of pro-choicers are going to remain pissed off at them. So their chosen course of action results in pretty much everyone hating them on both sides of the issue. Had they followed the first rule of political PR---never ever apologize---they'd have at least kept the pro-lifers...in fact if they'd been as vulgar as my facetiously proposed PR message, they'd have become a celebrated cause in those circles and gotten a big bounce out of it, in much the way Gingrich got a huge bounce for telling off the media moderator who asked about his position on informal polygamy.

Romney Shows Additional Signs of Being an Educable Whore

2012-02-03T09:41:00.000-08:00

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2012/02/president-obama-versus-religious-liberty/2165911

Glory be, he might actually want to win this thing.

Here's the main thrust:

"My own view is clear. I stand with the Catholic Bishops and all religious organizations in their strenuous objection to this liberty- and conscience-stifling regulation. I am committed to overturning Obamacare root and branch. If I am elected President, on day one of my administration I will issue an executive order directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue a waiver from its requirements to all 50 states. And on day one I will eliminate the Obama administration rule that compels religious institutions to violate the tenets of their own faith. Such rules don’t belong in the America that I believe in."

First, he states his intent to overturn Obamacare in full. Secondly, he describes actions that he would actually have the authority to do unilaterally (issue a waver to all 50 states and eliminating a previous administration rule). This is encouraging, it demonstrates that Romney might actually understand what a president can actually DO.

Standing up for the Catholic church against bullying by the current administration is also very good politics. This sort of action is likely to improve Romney's standing among evangelicals---many of whom, it turns out, actually hold the Pope in very high esteem. The Pope often receives a more respectful hearing from conservative or reactionary evangelicals than he does from his own flock.

Is Romney Educable?

2012-02-01T21:30:00.000-08:00

Many of our readers know that I've long described Romney as a whore, which, by the standard descriptions I apply to most politicians in the US, is actually somewhat above the median. Romney can historically be counted on to modulate his positions according to his electorate. However, of late, I've begun to wonder if he might not also be an educable whore.

Romney has been one of the first politicians, certainly on the national presidential stage, to actually start talking about solutions on the national question involving self-deportation. This is one of the most important observations on the national question, going back to Operation Wetback. For every illegal you deport, if you show you're serious about enforcing the law, lots more will self-deport, which is much cheaper and doesn't make for tear-jerking media coverage.

https://www.numbersusa.com/content/nusablog/beckr/january-31-2012/fla-vote-winners-are-latino-dignity-self-deportation.html

Another interesting story by way of the Washington Post. Apparently, not satisfied with simply avoiding what I deemed 'Gross Political Malpractice' in a previous post by insulting Ron Paul, and more importantly, his supporters, Romney has apparently been quietly forming ties. This shows better judgment than I thought likely from him. It also illuminates the possibility of a 'grand bargain' between supporters of the Pauls and more conventional Republicans come convention time. Could the stupid party do something profoundly not stupid?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-paul-and-romney-a-strategic-alliance-between-outsider-and-establishment/2012/01/20/gIQAf8foiQ_story.html?hpid=z1

My suggestions for such a bargain would be to dial back the support for the 'War on Some Drugs' and the rhetoric substantially, and let the states go their own way on the issue. The cover can be an appeal to Federalism and States Rights. The second issue would be to recognize that the US can not afford to maintain its present level of military spending or its level of foreign 'military intervention'. The budget for such simply isn't there and defense and entitlements are the elephants in the budget room. Since talking about a sustainable entitlement reform is death electorally, this leaves the best option to greatly reduce the volume on the war drums and wind down the Empire.

Romney with the addition of a substantial chunk of Paul's independent support would have, IMO, a better than 50-50 shot of winning the presidency. But Paul's voters are more discerning than most, to buy them you actually have to pay them. Romney would need to persuade them that he can be THEIR educable whore.

More encouraging developments: The SWPLs embrace Homeschooling in the Guise of DIY Education

2012-02-01T00:30:00.000-08:00

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/29/why-urban-educated-parents-are-turning-to-diy-education.html

I find this incredibly encouraging. Once they take the step of homeschooling their little one, several things are likely to happen. First, they will have taken a massive step towards Reaction. Homeschooling a child is a pretty explicit acknowledgment that there are limits to one's submission to the Cathedral. The second thing is that homeschool families tend to become larger. I suspect part of this is that the marginal cost of additional children once you've gone ahead and restructured your family life and economics for homeschooling is pretty small. This in turn tends to drag the family further towards Reaction. Approaching Reaction from what Americans deem the Right is not the only way to get there, you can also approach from what we call the Left, especially the 'Old Left'.

As the fraction of non-public school children increases, support for the accursed Cathedral public school system dwindles. We already see this reduction in public support as the various states have been squeezing the teacher unions to make their budgets balance. Bringing a bunch of SWPLs into the orbit only accelerates this positive feedback process.

The Task of the Church: To be an Honest Broker between Disputes, Not to Shout 'Me Too' with the Culture

2012-01-30T19:27:00.000-08:00

Presently the Church as a whole stands accused of being a one-eyed watchdog on a lot of issues. By this I mean it sees two sides of a dispute, both of whom can be accused of being in violation of some command or covenant, and it chooses to hold merely one party responsible, and that party invariably being the one that the Culture also generally chooses to sanction. Thus you see the majority of the Church, and nearly the entire 'elite church' taking the anti-male and anti-white sides whenever possible in disputes. I do not believe that shouting 'Me Too' is a productive form of Christian witness.

For instance, lots of males and an overwhelming preponderance of women have seriously defaulted on the command and covenant that used to exist and which the Church still nominally upholds. We call this marriage 1.0---woman respects, man loves, woman obeys, man sacrifices. You see the breakdown of the extended social version of that covenant (Women and children first) in recent events. The extended social version was based on a level of social solidarity basically making the pact---we'll sacrifice for YOUR woman and children if you'll do the same for ours. Now, of course, neither the social solidarity nor the original man-woman covenant has the strength to be a moral hegemon. Why should we be surprised when we no longer see the sacrificing behavior?

The problem arises when the Church selectively decides to shame and scold only one side of this social default. This sort of thing is but one reason of the many why most churches have a serious deficit of males (I've recommended to readers looking for a good church in the past that they look for one where men are not significantly outnumbered by women, since men will go where they are wanted and stay where they are well treated). This would be one thing if the culture were, say, a culture that seriously shamed women who defaulted so and gave the men a totally free pass (e.g., said 'boys will be boys'). There it would be an example of redressing a imbalance. But when the Culture is pushing hard in only one direction, the Church must exercise extreme caution if it decides to push in the same manner. Yes, you get called names when you push in the opposite direction, but Jesus never promised you that the culture would like you. Rather the opposite, if my memory serves. But the calling of the church when two groups have mutual grievances is to make peace where possible, and to provide a sterling example always.

Honest Graft: Some Wonderful Writings Excavated from the Era Before The Hegemony of the Cathedral

2012-01-28T16:14:00.000-08:00

Whilst wandering throughout the Reactionary and fellow traveler spheres, I came across the phrase 'Honest Graft'. Being somewhat intrigued, I found that it was attributed originally to one George Washington Plunkitt, of Tammany Hall, a Democrat from New York City back in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Here's the reference:
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, by George Washington Plunkitt

A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics, Delivered by Ex-senator George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany Philosopher, from His Rostrum—the New York County Court House Bootblack Stand

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2810/2810-h/2810-h.htm
(Google books and Project Gutenberg are both quite wonderful, making lots of historical research easier than it ever has been).

Now the big city 'machine' politics were the original adversaries of the Cathedral. Plunkitt is a damnably astute fellow, largely free of hypocrisy, cant, or even self delusion. He correctly identifies the civil service acts as the sin qua non of the Cathedral and attacks it with any stick that comes to hand. He argues in defense of what he calls 'honest graft'. I'll let Plunkitt speak for himself:

"EVERYBODY is talkin' these days about Tammany men growin' rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin' the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. There's all the difference in the world between the two. Yes, many of our men have grown rich in politics. I have myself. I've made a big fortune out of the game, and I'm gettin' richer every day, but I've not gone in for dishonest graft—blackmailin' gamblers, saloonkeepers, disorderly people, etc.—and neither has any of the men who have made big fortunes in politics.
There's an honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin': "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em."
Just let me explain by examples. My party's in power in the city, and it's goin' to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I'm tipped off, say, that they're going to lay out a new park at a certain place.
I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before.
Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that's honest graft.
Or supposin' it's a new bridge they're goin' to build. I get tipped off and I buy as much property as I can that has to be taken for approaches. I sell at my own price later on and drop some more money in the bank.
Wouldn't you? It's just like lookin' ahead in Wall Street or in the coffee or cotton market. It's honest graft, and I'm lookin' for it every day in the year. I will tell you frankly that I've got a good lot of it, too. "

Sound familiar? It's like what Cathedral politicians do today, writ small, except they don't confine themselves to honest graft at all. It's as if the Progressives acted to rid us of some minor fleas and ticks and instead brought in bona fide vampires---excepting that unlike self-respecting vampires of fiction, many of them drain blood well in excess of that needed for actual sustenance.

C.S. Lewis knew this well---here's him speaking about the Cathedral and its more honest theocratic cousins

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Here's the takeaway from the Reactionary point of view. All systems of governance devised by Man are going to suck for someone, and they're all going to be 'suboptimal' from a cosmic point of view. This is what I term the Fundamental Axiom of Reaction. Tammany Hall had aspects of it which sucked, but nowhere near so hardcore as what followed it. Could you see Plunkitt countenancing the ethnic cleansing of his constituents or the collapse of Order in New York City? Were he and his half as oppressive as what has followed them?

To stay in power, a government needs to be able to deliver the goods to its coalition. That means graft if you're lucky and massive transfer programs and huge numbers of sinecures otherwise. I'll contend that 'competent corruption' like Tammany hall is probably the most benign manifestation of such a ruling coalition we're likely to actually see in the real world. Would that 'honest graft' be the worst corruption in the body politic.

High and Low Surplus Societies: Yet Another Reason Why You Should Also Read (Very) Old Books

2012-01-26T20:22:00.000-08:00

On a number of my previous posts and in comments elsewhere I've spoken of high and low surplus societies. Apparently I've vastly overestimated how common these terms of art are, searching google turned up very few matches. So let me describe in more detail what I mean by high and low surplus when speaking of societies.

A high surplus society is a society that has vastly more resources readily available than are necessarily to sustain basic survival for all of its members. To earn enough money to have basic food and shelter takes a small fraction of the available time for even a person who is well below the mean in terms of economic value. A high surplus society is so rich it can even afford to give significant alms to those who can't (or in extreme cases, won't) work. You and I live in a high surplus society, probably the highest surplus society to exist for thousands of years. Even welfare recipients in most Western countries have treasures that the kings of old could only dream about. Pretty much everyone would be in the category of 'a rich man' from the perspective of Jesus' contemporaries. Status is a different matter---that is largely zero sum, someone must always be, by definition, in the back of the bus. We'll not belabor that in this post. The high surplus condition of our society is largely the result of our technology base and the availability of extreme quantities of cheap energy. Here's an exercise I once offered for extra credit to new engineering students a couple of decades ago. Hop on a treadmill at the gym. They've normally got meters on them that indicate how many watts of energy you are expending. 150 watts isn't terribly atypical for a sustainable level for a healthy young man. Now consider that to make one kilowatt-hour you are talking 6-7 hours at that pace, probably enough to largely exhaust your energies for the day. Now look up how much that amount of energy would cost you from the electric company (typically 8-20 cents). To do this is to truly understand at a gut level what permits the 'holiday from history' we are presently still mostly living in.

A low surplus society conversely lives very close to the margin of basic survival. Famines, droughts and the like don't just mean higher prices, they mean lots of people are likely to die. Most people today in Western countries with the exception of a few missionaries to the absolute worst basket cases of countries have no experience at all with a low surplus society. But there are quite a few reasons why we desperately need to understand such societies:

1. We need to understand low surplus societies so we can properly understand our own history without radically distorting our view of our ancestors. Much of 'White Guilt' can be traced to a failure in this.
2. It is difficult to understand our present institutions without understanding the circumstances that gave rise to them.
3. Our present high surplus condition is not guaranteed by the laws of physics or history. Being reduced to a low surplus condition is not only possible, but frankly quite likely, especially if the center does not hold and things fall apart. It is also, of course, quite possible that we may find ourselves in a nearly-limitless surplus society, should something akin to the Singularity come to pass. I rate these two prospects as both far more likely than business as usual when I think about the medium-term (25-75 years out) future.

So how can we understand such societies, assuming we're not interested in a long term mission to examine what is most likely an extremely dysfunctional low surplus society ('modern' low surplus societies are usually a lot less functional than historical ones). Our old friend Thomas Carlyle provides us an answer:

"In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream."
(From On Heroes and Hero Worship)

C.S. Lewis had quite a bit to say on why modern readers should add old books to their diet, and preferably the original sources rather than 'books about books' His essay, in the form of a forward to Athanasius: On the Incarnation is linked below---I dare say his forward has become more famous than the work to which it is prepended. I'm not certain how he would have felt about that.

http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm

In short, Lewis' argument is that you are totally surrounded by the trappings, attitudes and assumptions of your Age and your only real way to get a perspective outside of that is to read works from other Ages. The books from the future being sadly unavailable, those from the past must suffice.

I'm normally loathe to excerpt such a masterpiece, preferring to link it for the benefit of our readers, be they reactionary or fellow travelers, but I'll make an exception for Jack. Hopefully it'll induce enough appetite in you to consume the whole thing.

"Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them."

By reading these particularly old books--these works of Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Homer, Virgil, et al, I contend you can gain a better grasp on past, present, and future.

Giving the Devils Their Due: Romney and Gingrich

2012-01-25T11:24:00.000-08:00

Let me be blunt, I don't like either of these two candidates. If Gingrich or Romney is the answer, it is a pretty damned stupid question. Unfortunately, one of these two is probably the answer to the question: Who will run against Obama with more than a single digit percentage chance of victory?

My gut would love to beat them with sticks, but Christian charity obliges otherwise, and to at least make an attempt at being fair to them. So here is my praise, faint as it might be:

Romney:
Is a husband of one wife and seems to have raised functional children. Maintained his financial privacy as long as was feasible, but is now shown by his tax returns to be very generous (around 15% average, which is still way above average even if one neglects his expected Mormon tithe). That he never trumpeted his generosity speaks well of him. Romney also apparently possesses considerably more than the average level of self-control (I'd say 2 sigmas, maybe more). Newt might even have ordinary (+0 sigma) levels of that same quality. Let me explain:

Romney, and especially Gingrich are both very high status males. Most of us have to work to some degree to make attraction to the opposite sex happen. Some of us have experience with unsolicited indications of interest from them---as I did, for instance, when my status was enhanced by being a ranking representative in the student governing body at a large university. But I'm willing to bet very few of us have any experience at all resisting a deliberate onslaught of temptation in the manner that a Romney or a Gingrich receives as a matter of course. It is for this reason that I occasionally find a slot for Tim Tebow in my prayer list, and hold him in great esteem for his manifestly superior self-control, which we Christians deem one of the 'fruits of the Spirit'.

Indeed, Christianity has always recognized this, even back on the Sermon on the Mount prior to the Resurrection. Simply because you may not be attractive or have no 'game' in no way immunizes you to the spiritual sin of adultery. God looks to the condition of your heart and not your capability to find willing partners for sinful purposes. Many are perplexed by why God loved King David so much, despite his appalling behavior in the Bathsheba/Uriah affair. My intuition is that most of us, faced with the same intensity of temptation and in possession of the power to paper over the difficulties that King David had, would fall just the same as he did. For this reason I'm inclined to be less harsh in my appraisal of the character of politicians who commit adultery than I would otherwise be inclined to be. I'm also, in the spirit of 'avoiding the occasion of sin', seriously disinclined to run for any significant office.

And Newt, I did promise to say at least a few things positive about him. Newt, in conjunction with his brother in spirit, Bill Clinton, did accomplish significant welfare reform back in the 90s. They also accomplished something a lot less ruinous in terms of living beyond our means than did Bush II and God forbid, Obama. Finally, in Newt's favor, he is one of the only prominent governmental figures who vaguely gets the notion of civil defense (check his forward to One Second After). The condition of our civil defense apparatus and the brittleness of our infrastructure (especially the power grid and the Just in Time system) is appalling, and could easily turn survivable setbacks into outright catastrophes. Newt, given the proper position, might actually move towards doing something about this problem, if he can keep his attention focused long enough.

Neurotypical Republican Women Choose the Serial Adulterer Over the Whitest Man in America

2012-01-24T13:17:00.000-08:00

I admit that I'm a little, but only a little, surprised that the airing of Newt's serial adultery failed to hurt him in the polls. Newt even managed to win among married women in South Carolina. Among neurotypical women, an adaptation of a common Scriptural adage might as well apply:

Blessed be the alpha male, for women shall not impute his sins against him.

Were the (completely true) accusations against, say, Romney or Santorum, they would almost certainly be fatal, as they were against Cain and a host of other politicians. But Newt deftly deploys a reframe and shames the questioner, and probably gains support rather than loses it. The fact that he's consistently talked a 'family values' line that he manifestly fails to live up with is irrelevant. Only non-alphas get held to standards of hypocrisy by the neurotypical woman who is on the same side of the red/blue tribal boundaries. Perhaps the easiest way to describe Newt is a lesser Bill Clinton, an appetite in a suit. They've got nearly all the same markers, but Clinton is (IMO) slightly smarter---I view Clinton as likely @3 sigma and Newt between 2 and 3--and somewhat more charismatic. Neither lacks the ability to seduce though, and they have nearly exactly the same vices. I suppose some of the delta between their respective approval ratings can be explained by their median media coverage (Clinton, fawning vs Newt, hostile).

My gut tells me that neither Clinton nor Gingrich is neurotypical---that both of them are just running emulation. Emulation that good should be viewed with extreme scrutiny, as it indicates truly exceptional capacity for deception, without even the need to believe one's own bullshit like a more neurotypical liar would need to. What do you call someone with no intrinsic sense of gratitude? Neurotypical. What do you call someone who doesn't run away from being called selfish? Non-neurotypical. What do you call someone with neither a gratitude heart OR at inclination towards unselfishness?

Apparently you call him a candidate for the presidency of the United States.

So You Say You Want to Reduce Inequality in America?

2012-01-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

Inequality is a pretty hot topic right now, especially in discussion of Charles Murray's latest writings as regards marriage, family, and inequality. I have some thoughts on inequality within the US.

First and foremost, I have no particularly strong passion for equality. But neither do I have a strong passion for inequality. Most who posture about inequality don't really have a real passion either---except one for moral posturing so as to aggrandize their social status. But for the purposes of this post, I'll take many at their word and postulate that they do indeed wish to reduce inequality within the US (the geographic boundary wherein the desire to reduce inequality exists is very very important).

To begin with, if one sincerely wishes to reduce inequality, one would pretty much shut down all immigration, legal or otherwise. Adding more people at the bottom end of the distribution just aggravates what you claim to wish to reduce. So supporting something akin to the immigration law of the 1920s is what is called for here.
The next item is more subtle. What you really need to do is motivate a higher birthrate in your upper classes while reducing it in the lower classes. If a rich man has, say, 4-6 children and a poor man has one or two, the inequality of the next generation will be reduced substantially, almost by definition. What you want to do is restructure the way child tax credits and exemptions work so as to motivate more fertility at the top of the distribution and less at the bottom. I suggest raising marginal rates in general but reducing the marginal rates by X percent per child when both parents of said child are still married to each other. The key is you want it remain highly significant even for those who earn millions of dollars but not to be a material incentive below the median. Should the parents divorce, I recommend reducing the benefit by 50%, and dividing that reduced benefit between the two former spouses equally.

Suggested Punishment for Those Who Pushed SOPA

2012-01-21T14:01:00.000-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States

Patent terms in the US are presently approximately 20 years. Is there ANY good reason why copyrights ought to be longer than that term? Is there any good reason why authors/screenwriters/etc should receive monopoly protection longer than engineers/biologists/pharmacists/etc? Let's leave aside that both are usually intermediated through huge corporations and we'll also leave aside that the archetypal copyright beneficiary (the author) typically receives a higher fraction of the surplus created by their invention than does the equivalent for patents.

So here's what I propose. Reduce, retroactively, all copyrights to the term of patents. 20 years, no more. Prissy artists will just have to learn to live with people misusing their creations. We engineers have had to deal with this for a LONG time. Check out, for instance, the developer of the TV set.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyright_term.svg
Depicts the copyright term expansion over time. I also encourage any readers to practice who...whom anytime they might happen to be on a civil or criminal jury relevant to the issue.

SOPA, and Other Complex Legislation Made Simple

2012-01-20T19:46:00.000-08:00

All you really have to ask is, who is pushing it? In this case it was Hollywood and the MSM. Who...whom.
You don't even have to read it or pay any attention to it, you know from the above that you're against it. Yes, reading it may be useful for broadening the base of outrage against it, but who..whom tells you nearly everything you need to know. Amusing how often that is true.

With the initial effort to pass SOPA blunted, how about pushing for a repeal of the last extension of copyright terms? Groups like this need to be punished when they try to push things like this rapidly through Congress before opposition can form. Laying on an immediate counterattack after a successful defense is probably the only way diffuse groups can compete with concentrated interests in a pseudo-democratic system like ours. The message needs to be sent: Don't piss us off again or we'll hit you back even harder next time. As a more broad-based retaliation, I suggest widespread who...whom any time this industry is in the courtroom where a jury is present, be it criminal or civil.

Culling the Herd, Goodbye Perry

2012-01-19T21:00:00.000-08:00

Now Rick Perry has dropped out of the race, taking his abominable immigration positions with him. Hopefully Gingrich will be next, as, in my opinion, he's the next worst candidate still in the race.

Perry and Gingrich are both particularly bad because one gets the feeling that their hearts really are in the whole racial replacement enterprise---that they're not just posturing for anti-racist/anti-white brownie points from the MSM. In addition, both Gingrich and Perry have generally run from fairly conservative areas (Perry the governor of Texas, Gingrich a representative from Georgia if memory serves). It is a good bet that their positions would modulate to the left when running in a less conservative electorate. With Romney that effect is likely to be in the opposite direction---most of the US is more conservative than the state of Massachusetts.

Interestingly enough, I noticed today that the MSM is running the line that Gingrich's ex-wife says that he wanted an 'open marriage'---i.e. to practice a soft polygamy. It's amusing what rope is being produced to hang him with---I'd prefer that we practiced a more old school hands-off approach to the personal lives of the politicians that we set up as alpha males, but I can't say I terribly mind seeing Gingrich cut down, especially if in so doing more of the prestige of the MSM is eroded away.

Interesting News From Saudi Arabia in Light of the 2012 Elections

2012-01-18T20:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-news/global-exchange/financial-times/saudis-target-triple-digit-oil-price-for-the-first-time/article2304075/

Apparently the Saudis have targeted around $100/barrel as the price for oil. Presently the price of oil is around $110/barrel. In addition, the political break even prices of oil (i.e. the price at which oil revenues allow business as usual for the governments of mostly oil revenue-dependent nations) have been rising substantially as well. Whatever you take this as a sign of (e.g., Peak Oil, export land model, or socialism eventually running out of other people's money), the take away is pretty clear. Expect the prices of oil and gasoline to continue to rise, even without a major incident in Iran, which is hardly out of the question. I'd also not be surprised to see a purely political release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, probably close to the summer, in the attempt to keep gas prices in the US from rising towards that magic $4 number that my gut tells me is the doom of one Barrack Obama's reelection hopes.

Encouraging Developments in the Republican Primary, Huntsman Out, Santorum Upgraded

2012-01-15T22:10:00.000-08:00

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

https://www.numbersusa.com/content/nusablog/beckr/january-15-2012/santorum-opposes-chain-migration-visa-lottery-earns-immigration-grade

What's this? A Republican candidate that actually WANTS to win rather than be considered nice or respectable by the MSM? Perhaps the crude taunting over the untimely demise of his little two hour old baby and his family's utterly human response to the tragedy has driven him over the edge.

Whatever it was, he's come out sufficiently strongly on the immigration issue to push himself from a D all the way to an A-, stronger than even Bachmann, who has dropped out of the race. With Huntsman out as well, the Republican field has marched in our direction a fair bit.
Santorum as a Senator had a B- overall, so this is, I suppose not a radical departure for him and apparently he has butted heads on occasion with the Catholic hierarchy over this issue.

Here's one recommendation for Mr Santorum: dial back the militancy of your rhetoric as regards foreign policy, especially on Iran. You don't have to go as far as Ron Paul, although I'd suggest you actually consider it, but I'd invite you to consider this question:

When was the last war that the US got itself involved in that was good for Christians in the area of conflict, before, during, or afterwards?

Iraq? No, Afghanistan? No....Libya or Egypt? Are you kidding me? Bosnia?
No, near as I can tell, the impact on Christians in the areas of conflict that the US chooses to involve itself in are almost invariably negative, generally amping up the level of persecution, sometimes to the point of near annihilation.

South Korea I think was the last conflict where the US getting involved actually helped Christians in the area of conflict. There's also this: Iran is a conflict that would have extremely grave repercussions on the global economy if it ignited with the strong potential for undesired escalation. Such affairs should be handled carefully because they carry the possibility of turning into genuinely existential matters.

Romney also appears to have inched upwards to a C+. This too is an encouraging development. Hopefully Gingrich and Perry will fall by the wayside soon.

The Normal Distribution and You

2012-01-14T21:58:00.000-08:00

The normal distribution crops up so often in our daily experience and applies to so many different phenomena that a tremendous amount of mental energy has been spent in its study. Furthermore, we talk about those aspects of reality so frequently here at the Chariot of Reaction that it is probably useful to make a utility post on what we mean when we speak of sigmas.

Normally when we're talking about sigmas, for instance, saying +1 or +2 sigmas, what we are referring to is the rarity of that level of talent or capability within the population as a whole. Generally here at the Chariot, we speak almost exclusively of positive sigmas, but the distribution is symmetric, so the frequency estimates apply just as well for negative sigmas. What I find particularly interesting is how this is embedded into the language and how even such prosaic metrics like the rating of attractiveness on a 1-10 scale are obviously using something akin to a z-score (basically, the number of sigmas from the mean, NOBODY says 10% of all persons are 10's, for instance).

In terms of frequency within a population, here's what you get:
+1 standard deviation or more is approximately 1 in 6.3. This means that about one in every 6 people is at or above this level in a given attribute or quality. Linguistically, this usually translates to 'Joe is strong' or 'Joe is smart' or 'Joe is good looking' or the like. Sometimes when the speaker himself has a high attribute in the quality being described, he'll apply a hedge like 'pretty strong'...'fairly smart' or the like. You (the reader), almost certainly know a fair number of people with this level of capability in any attribute you can think of. Good examples include almost anyone with a real degree (intelligence), people who have no debt and live within their means (fiscal discipline, this one is really uncommon in the US as recent events demonstrate), people who tend to lead their small social circle (charisma), and anyone you'd describe honestly as 'athletic'.

+2 standard deviations is about 1 in 44. So for every 40 or 50 people, you generally have someone in this category. In language, we typically apply some sort of amplifier to our description---for instance...Joe is very strong or Joe is very smart. Almost nobody puts a linguistic hedge around their descriptor here. Typical examples here for the physical are noteworthy athletes at the high school level---some of the larger high schools might well have people with this level of physical prowess on their starters on the sports that they emphasize.

This level of intelligence is typical of the 'talented and gifted' and a lot of doctors, lawyers, engineers, and honestly, national level politicians are at or slightly below this level. If your social circle is at all typical, you probably know at least one person at this level for each attribute (albeit not usually the same person).

+3 SD is about 1 in 740. You usually get one, maybe two people at this level per 1000 people. In the US, for instance, you'd expect about 405K people at this level for each attribute. It is very exceptional, and people here usually get the superlatives hauled out when describing them. In a small town, at this level, you might well be 'the strongest man' or 'the smartest guy' in town. This is the bare minimum for 'only the obsessed need apply' sorts of competitions, such as the NFL. At this level in athletics, if you're doing all the other stuff, you've got a very thin chance of going beyond college level. With a broad social circle, you probably know at least one person at this level, although probably not for many different attributes.

+4 SD is about 1 in a little more than 30K. So for every 100,000 people, there are 3 at this level. In the US, you'd expect about 10,000 people at or above this level. So, Mr. Smart guy with the 160 IQ, there are probably 10000 people in the US smarter than you are, more if the US is disproportionately brain-draining other nations. This is the typical level for the NFL or the NBA in their relevant attributes. Linguistically, people break out the words like 'genius', 'incredible', and the like.

+5 SD is about 1 in 3.5M. So for every 10 Million people, there are probably 3 at this level. The US, for instance, with @300M population would have about 90 people at this level. Really noteworthy guys in the NFL are probably at this level. This is also the level of the 1st string Olympian in sports that your nation takes seriously.

+6 SD is 1 in a billion. Probably 5-10 people like this exist in the entire world. Athletes at this level frankly EXPECT to medal.

+7 SD is past the limits of most of the tables you'll find. Human history Might include one person at this attribute level in each attribute.

How to: Who...Whom in the Jury Room

2012-01-12T19:42:00.000-08:00

I've talked at some length about the use of Who..Whom in Jury Nullification before, which I'd like to expand on more.

Specifically, how does one actually carry this out?
Unlike FIJA, which is a fine organization, I'm not advocating openly attempting to nullify. Instead, I'm advocating a backhanded and passive aggressive nullification strategy, one that is far harder to fight against, by, say, the judge removing you from the jury. Conflict requires both in your face and slippery strategies---one enables the other just like rushing sets up passing opportunities in American football.

The first rule is you never breathe a word about jury nullification anywhere near the courtroom and certainly not in the jury deliberations. You don't even hint at it with things like---oh I don't think it's right to send him to jail for so long for X or I'd rather use the prison space for guys like Y. No, instead what you do is expand the area of fuzziness that you are given into obscene proportions. That fuzzy area is 'reasonable doubt'. What does reasonable doubt mean? Does it mean being 99% sure? 99.9%? as sure as a Christian with 4 aces?

The key is it means precisely what you want it to mean. So take a leaf from Public health guys making 'studies' about gun control. Start with your desired conclusion and set your parameters to whatever they need to be to 'justify' it. Remember, if you torture the data enough, it'll confess to whatever you want it to. Of course you go who...whom, under the same circumstances as the FIJA-style nullifier, you just aren't open about such.

The first phase from your perspective (I'm assuming you're not a grand juror---I've been called for jury duty several times but never for a grand jury) is jury selection. Both the prosecutor and the defense are looking to shop for the most favorable jury they can get. What you want to do is betray as little information to them as you can short of obvious perjury. They're looking for information out of the verbal band as well as what you actually say. For instance, the more words you say, the better their estimate of how smart you are is going to be. If they're actually good at their craft (fortunately, an AWFUL lot of them are horrible at it, I can normally infer a person's political positions and cultural alignment within a minute or so of hearing them speak on matters that are not explicitly political, it is a matter of word choice and inflection and a willingness to combine signals that are only in the range of 80% or so accurate into a reasonably accurate prediction, stereotypes are damnably useful things) the more you say the more likely your game is up. Plus particularly smart people are prone to be more verbose and to want to cover their answer completely and with the desired nuance. Try not to present that image. Last time I was in jury selection I knew one of the sides was going to smoke a peremptory challenge on me when the defense attorney asked me what standards of evidence I was familiar with employing, and I answered him with the two that he knew (preponderance of evidence and 'reasonable doubt') and another that he didn't know (clear and convincing, typically an administrative law standard midway between the other two). But I had negative interest in being on that jury. So remember, short answers that betray no bias towards defense or prosecution, even though if you're going to go Who...Whom, you are the most biased defense juror imaginable.

Assuming you make it onto the jury, what you need to start doing as the trial progresses is make lots of notes (if they allow you, many don't), or mental notes (if you have to), on anything and everything that is plausibly painted as weak in the prosecution's case. Imagine what the five star defense attorneys would question. Question that and remember it for the jury deliberation. It's actually better if the defense doesn't actually question it, because then the prosecutor would have a chance to defend against that line of argument. But guess what, neither lawyer gets to go anywhere near the jury room. You do. Think 'motivated skeptic'. Emulate whatever group you consider to be 'immune to reason' that 'uses its high intelligence to deny what is nearly certainly true'.

Here's the bottom line. Simply by staying the course, you can almost certainly force a mistrial, since the jury won't reach a decision. But you can play for more than a mere tactical victory. You've got things on your side, notably that you're likely way more committed (imagine this is, say, a case against some redneck for having a shotgun that is 1/4 of an inch too short) than are the other jurors. They know this (and you should NOT explicitly remind them of this, that is likely to backfire)---they get to leave only once a mistrial is declared or a decision is made unanimously. One way to get there is to surrender to your who...whom and return a not guilty verdict. In addition, by spinning scenarios that are admittedly of low probability, you will make them seem more real to the other jurors, and hence higher probability in their minds. Drip, drip, drip--exploit those cognitive biases. Try to seem reasonable and extremely 'fair minded'---it helps if you betray a lot of cultural markers of disliking the class/group from which the defendant is drawn, this will make your scenarios wherein the defendant isn't actually guilty seem more credible, as in an admission against interest. But if you can't swing the other 11, no biggie, a mistrial is usually nearly as good as an acquittal. Done in reasonable numbers, this procedure would result in making nearly any law without an overwhelming consensus behind it practically unenforceable. The only defense against it is trying to take away the right of a trial by jury, which, by the way, was one of the big grievances motivating the 1st American revolution.

Schelling, Kuran, Reaction, and the Way Forward

2012-01-11T13:47:00.000-08:00

About a week ago, on my post

http://www.chariotofreaction.blogspot.com/2012/01/advice-for-conservatives-you-need-to-be.html

a short discussion took place in the comments.

CLAR said...

my impression is that most reactionary/conservative types are stuck in a mode like wildebeests getting ready to cross a river- milling around, getting frustrated, yet still scared to be the first into the river and have their career ended by the crocodiles enforcing the informal thought crime laws of our government. i definitely count myself in this crowd.

my prediction is that when this shifts, it will be a stampede that might run away with itself. while such radical change will be to our net benefit, it will probably have many negative side effects from being so rapid.

at the time I responded

CLAR,
'Negative Side Effects' is an interesting euphemism. What you're describing is a preference cascade a la Timur Kuran, and yes, I do think such an event is not unlikely.

I've had this on my mental back burner for some time, and recalled a few jigsaw puzzle pieces lying about on my mental map that can probably be usefully pressed into service.

CLAR clearly identifies one major aspect of the problem. There are tons of wildebeests, and only a few crocodiles, but nobody wants to go first. This is directly analogous to the metastable circumstances immediately preceding a riot (or more commonly, a riot that doesn't actually happen). This brought to mind Schelling (for those unfamiliar with his work, specifically, a Schelling Point or 'point of coordination', here's the executive summary. A Schelling Point is a point around which groups can spontaneously organize based on their estimate of where others of like mind will naturally gravitate. The classic example is of meeting a person in New York City, where you have no time or place, just a date---the 2 Schelling points being Grand Central Station at noon and the top floor of the Empire State Building). Fortunately, a lot of mental energy has already gone into analyzing these particular problem.

The publication below provides a hint
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj14n1-13.html

The entrepreneur will throw the first stone when he calculates that the risk that he will be apprehended for doing so has diminished to an acceptable level. The risk of arrest declines as a function of two variables--the size of the crowd relative to the police force available to control it, and the probability that others will follow if somebody leads. This latter point could potentially be tricky, because as we have noted, crowds will generally be inhospitable to the commission of violent acts. But it is possible for a crowd to telegraph its willingness to riot. Buford's account (1991: 81n-dash85) of a soccer hooligan rampage in Turin furnishes an example. Members of the crowd marched themselves around in a spontaneous formation with a stilted, unnatural gait, chanting the name of their team. This unmistakable token of cohesion stopped well short of anything that the Italian police could plausibly charge as solicitation or incitement, but served to assure the members of the crowd that a critical mass had formed.

In essence, what is needed to to provide at least one Schelling point to generate plausibly deniable cohesion. A group needs to be able to communicate its intent in an easily deniable fashion. Leftists understand this at least at a gut level, which is why they impose their regime of thought crime enforcement so rigidly. They perceive the possibility of a preference cascade wiping out much of their work and work hard to maintain massive preference falsification per Kuran. If you ever want to be REALLY encouraged as a reactionary, leaf through some of the books by the left about the vast right wing conspiracies at your local bookstore. They will tell you what they fear. It's funny honestly, to read their perception of the average conservative as being like me, but on Thomas Carlyle class reactionary steroids.

If we look at this through a chemical metaphor, one needs several things. First, the reaction requires sufficient energy to overcome the barrier of activation energy. The analog of course is that the population must become sufficiently angry to create a prerevolutionary condition per Lenin. Second, a catalyst is needed to speed things along. This is where the plausibly deniable cohesion comes in. I've suggested several things that fit that category here in the past:

1. Weaken the power of universalist moral rhetoric in the public sphere through mockery and identification of the real particularist interests that ACTUALLY motivate said rhetoric
2. Assault the various entities of the Cathedral at every opportunity, and use their mistakes to weaken them and erode their legitimacy. In particular, the Judiciary is presently ripe for the destruction of its prestige. Several cases of obvious (but deniable) who..whom Jury Nullification can be used to embolden one's supporters and demoralize our adversaries. Such will almost certainly provoke a disproportionate response from the Cathedral, which is actually a positive thing from our point of view, because it just raises the temperature of the reaction.

Here's how we can reduce the activation energy to Jury Nullification. First, simply by talking about it (although inside a courthouse, never breathe a word about it or you'll never be selected as a juror) we make it more likely. Second, it would be very useful to us to break down some of the social taboo on it by maneuvering other groups into making the first move on it. The group that is really ripe for this are drug users and the legalization crowd. Pretty close to half the population is against the War on Drugs, at least insofar as pot is concerned. If you can get substantial sections of that group to start bringing out the jury nullification hammer, the reluctance of other groups to use it will be greatly reduced. This is something I've been working on for years now in other guises on various forums on the left.

The Fatal Flaw of Whites and Jews: The Insatiable Hunger for Cheaper Labor

2012-01-10T21:03:00.000-08:00

We hear the same refrains throughout history...

That's no job for a white man. Let's buy slaves to do it instead.
Those are jobs Americans won't do, and I want cheap maids. Let's import a new people, and if you complain about it, you're a racist!
And apparently these statements and the sentiments translate pretty well (or, from my perspective, rather horridly) into Hebrew in Israel instead.

Always rather than pay the prevailing wage in a free market, the white and Jewish business classes contrive to change the rules of the game to the profound detriment of posterity to beat down the price of labor. In practice, all the the statements above have the implicit clause, at the price that we'd prefer to offer, built into them. Businessmen need to be called on this and called hard. The Chambers of Commerce get nowhere near enough flak from supposed conservatives for their demographic treachery. They are about half of the alliance against us, and, frankly, we should lay into them without any remorse or any mercy at all. It should be personal. Any time they attempt to introduce moral language into the argument they should be brutally slapped in the face with their obvious economic motivation. And since they started the moral language first, that motivation should be loudly castigated as greed, avarice, exploitation, or whatever infuriates the population best at the time. The left side of that alliance can be painted as dupes and useful idiots of the Profits of Doom. The Chambers of Commerce need to be brought to heel on this question by being punished sternly. If Obama whipped them with whips, let us whip them with scorpions. Automation and innovation are far better ways to improve standards of living in any case, and it'll be a long time before robots decide they're a new people.

The Most Annoying Thing About the SWPL

2012-01-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

SWPL's piously claim to believe tons of things that are manifestly out of touch with reality, especially as regards material (i.e., not spiritual or legal) equality. But this isn't what is truly annoying about them.

What is annoying is that they behave more or less exactly as you'd expect them to if they were members of the KKK or 'white citizen's councils'. This means they don't even provide a huge block of 'stupid money' which an 'evil racist' could make huge amounts of money trading in stocks and real estate against.

Interesting Adhoc Bumper Sticker Sighted This Weekend

2012-01-08T16:15:00.000-08:00

Saw an SUV with 2 large Jesus-fish above 5 medium sized Jesus-fish while out and about this weekend. Said sticker was apparently assembled by mix and matching individual stickers, much like the common window decals on such vehicles that depict the family transported by the vehicle.

Perhaps they should have a beatific Darwin figure standing to the side, with the caption:
Well Done My Good and Faithful Servant!

Insane Political Malpractice by Both Gingrich and Santorum

2012-01-07T17:48:00.000-08:00

So Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul are all candidates for the Republican nomination presently, and all in the 10-25% range in terms of their fraction of supporters. Ron Paul's support nationally is probably in the 15% neighborhood. Any one of these 3 can only hope to win the presidency with the support of a substantial fraction of the voters who presently support one of the other two.

So what does Gingrich do? He calls Paul's supporters dangerous and way out of the mainstream. Riddle me this, how large of a fraction of the population, by definition can be 'Way out of the Mainstream'? This is damned stupid of Gingrich, there's zero need for him to pile on at this point considering the massive media barrage against Ron Paul and insulting Ron Paul's supporters is doubly stupid. Many of them are smart and observant enough to actually notice.
What does Santorum do? Calls Ron Paul 'disgusting'. This is damnably stupid also, although not QUITE as stupid as Gingrich's move. This will probably only mortally piss of maybe half of Paul's supporters, as opposed to nearly all of them.

Look, I'm no stranger whatsoever to antagonism and conflict. When I have a disagreement I make no bones about it at all. But attacking people who could be your friends, or at least your co-belligerents is stupid, if only because you only have so much ammunition available on any given day. It is perfectly appropriate to attack competitors for a nomination, and a certain amount of rough & tumble is the expectation. Calling someone a flip-flopper, a tax & spend liberal, et al is all part of the game. But going meta and attacking their supporters is suicidal, at least from the standpoint of a desire to actually win elections.

On the Wisdom of the Electoral College

2012-01-05T21:20:00.001-08:00

Pretty soon---my guess is no more then 3-4 months, stories will start cropping up on how the Electoral College is an anachronism and should be done away with otherwise neutered.

Others will talk about how it maintains a balance between large and small states, or discourages regionalism. I'm not going to talk about that, although many of those points are perfectly true.

The key virtue of the electoral college is that it limits the ugly consequences of a very close election and that it also serves to compartmentalize fraud.

No matter HOW many people RISE FROM THEIR GRAVES on election day in Chicago, they can only take Illinois.

Can you imagine if you had Florida 2000 style recount shenanigans going on in every state in the country?
Presently, the main reason why fraud is not investigated much in elections is because it rarely changes the outcome---it tends to happen most in areas that are already heavily blue to begin with...that and who..whom of course.

I could easily see a close election without an electoral college touching off a civil war.

Adios Bachmann

2012-01-04T11:59:00.000-08:00

Bachmann has officially suspended her candidacy today, after the Iowa primary results were reported. This was not unexpected, but it is too bad, as Bachmann was the closest thing to an acceptable candidate on the immigration issue going. Now Romney has the best rating, at a C-. Too bad Buchanan isn't running, or the Ron Paul of the 80s and early 90s.

Advice for Conservatives: You Need to be More Offensive

2012-01-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

Football is much maligned in intellectual circles, which I think is a mistake, because it is the only contact with multidimensional strategic thinking that most people have in their daily lives. Football is, after all, a metaphor for war, and if one reverses Clausewitz, politics is a continuation of war by other means.

Particularly for the non-neurotypical, sports and religious metaphors and language assist greatly in both making you seem less alien to the neurotypical and in actually getting your points across. Here's the point I'd like to get across to conservatives in the US, and to a lesser extent, in Europe, and the rest of the Anglosphere.

As a group, you need to be much more offensive. This has a double meaning, both in terms of being on the offense and in terms of giving offense. I'll discuss the more Clausewitzian offensive part first.

Playing defense exclusively will not win you any games. It can keep the score down, and slow the progress of the opposite side, but a lack of offense gets you into exactly the fix you now find yourselves in, where the collective center of the political battlespace marches leftward generation after generation. Consider yesterday's game with the Broncos vs the Chiefs. The Broncos defense managed to keep the score extremely low, allowing only 7 points, but the Broncos offense couldn't execute offensively at all, and thus they lost the game.

When you do actually play a little bit of offense, such as over the abortion issue, your offense is entirely too one-dimensional. In football, teams that threaten only a run or only a pass suffer because the opposing defense can easily adjust to counter their expected attacks. This is also true in politics. If you actually want to win, you need to assault your enemies on multiple axes simultaneously and constantly. You need to wage economic, moral, psychological, legal, and electoral warfare at all times. The operative question for any attack needs to be: is defending against this attack more expensive for the other side than mounting it is for us? When you only have a few attacks going at once, this allows the reserve armies of the left, for instance the MSM, to concentrate a great deal of fire against them. One might compare this to the Soviet assaults against the German army from 1942-1945. When the Germans had reserves still available, they could blunt Soviet assaults and sometimes execute a devastatingly successful counterattack. Since you're not killing or imprisoning your political opponents, the equivalent here is exhausting and demoralizing them. In football terms, you're using ball control and time of possession to wear out the opposing defense.

In addition, you need to strike BEHIND the lines of the cultural war and actually threaten progressive victories of years past. It is criminal, for instance, that you make not even an oblique attack against no fault divorce. Think of this as establishing a passing threat so you can actually run the football. You're going to be accused of being retrograde reactionaries regardless of what you do, so why NOT attack?

I know a lot of you find this antithetical to your nature. You don't like conflict in general and a protracted cultural and political war isn't anything you relish. But your alternative is to continue to lose. This brings me to the second aspect of my advice to 'be more offensive'. Most of you are terribly concerned with being perceived as nice and not giving offense. Let me break this to you:

If you achieve any meaningful portion of your objectives, your opposite numbers WILL profess loudly and often that they are offended and that you are a mean-spirited and evil band of villains. Whether you've actually given offense is irrelevant, they will steal it if they have to. Get over your normal projection that someone acting that offended MUST have been wronged somehow. Of course that wide receiver is going to exaggerate to try to draw a pass interference call. It's just a de facto part of the game. In addition, a fair amount of 'trash talk' is a part of any real struggle. You can only get away with voluntarily and unilaterally obeying a more restrictive set of rules of engagement than your opposite number if you have a gross superiority in terms of power. You don't. Get over it. You can and should win, but you must have the will to do so.

Too Smart for the New London Police Department?

2012-01-01T18:22:00.000-08:00

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/12/wheels-of-justice-grind-slow.html

Apparently the guy who applied to the New London Police Department and who was rejected for being too smart (with @125 IQ per Wonderlic when they wanted only 100-115) has lost his appeal on his discrimination case against the city.

I'm somewhat amused by this honestly. A lot of people I know are viscerally offended by this, especially those who inhabit the 'Second Sigma' that I've discussed here before. Even a lot of those outside that range are mortally offended by the notion that you can score TOO well on a test. I suspect a lot of that is the indignation at the lack of transparency---obviously they won't tell you openly that you need to somewhat tank the test in advance---that fact is likely insider knowledge and the existence of insider knowledge terribly offends a lot of fair-minded people. I'll admit that the lack of transparency is the only part that somewhat offends me. Obviously were I a taxpayer in said jurisdiction, I'd be annoyed, because this action fairly provably will reduce the effectiveness of the local police force (reference the Bell Curve and its cited research, police officer effectiveness was specifically discussed in that tome).

But society can choose whatever figure of merit it wants to hand out its goodies, and it isn't a moral issue. God did not inscribe on his tablets that jobs must be handed out to the top N scorers on an IQ test, despite the protestations of the Second Sigma, and sometimes the third as well.

I know the legal perspective must confuse the hell out of a lot of readers here---I mean, why is it that it is ok to discriminate against people with high IQs but apparently, per Griggs v Duke Power, not against low IQs.
The short answer is who...whom. The long answer is this---but keep in mind it is all, at the bottom, who...whom.

You're allowed, under US law, to discriminate against any member of a non-protected class as long as there is a 'rational basis' for said discrimination. Basically a rational basis is anything you can plausibly argue isn't 'mere animus', and the scrutiny that your supposed basis gets depends a lot on the court and whether the class in question is angling successfully to get 'protected'. White guys with high IQs are clear at the bottom of that list. If you're talking about protected classes, you get something called 'strict scrutiny', which is pretty much what it sounds like.
Now, if you were to, say, discriminate against people with low IQs, what would be looked at is if this had a disparate impact on protected classes---i.e., on black people. If it fails the 4/5 rule the scrutiny will be very very strict indeed. What does this boil down to? Legal sophistry surrounding the central pillar of the system...who...whom.

Some commentators have suggested that by artificially restricting the range of police officers, the IQ-related performance differences for those benefiting from Affirmative action will be far less noticeable, when the time comes for, say, a detective's examination. Devilishly clever, I must admit, it stinks of something a Third Sigma adviser to the Second Sigma cooked up. New London seems to be generating a lot of such schemes.

But, because we value the interests of our readers, if you happen to be taking a Wonderlic IQ test for whatever reason, and you need to emulate a lower IQ than you actually possess, here's the deal.

It's typically a 50 question test administered very fast, 10 minutes is the typical time if memory serves. Scoring is 1 point per question answered right. 100 IQ (average) is 20 questions. A 26 is NFL quarterback standard (@112). The basic formula is roughly (RAW_SCORE-20)*2 + 100. So if you need to present, say, a 120 IQ roughly, shoot for 30 questions correct. The questions are generally really easy, you just have to work them very fast. So if you're naturally, say, a 140 IQ, which would roughly equate to a 40 Wonderlic, just slow down a bit. Don't finish the test. Most people don't anyway, it's akin to the ASVAB's old computational section, where they tell you that you won't finish it. Just make sure to allow a little cushion in case you make a stupid mistake or two, but with New London's range, the target region is pretty broad. If you need to emulate a higher IQ, I can't help you, other than to say, you should take several practice tests so you aren't freaked out by the format of the test. It isn't a sort of examination that most people have a lot of familiarity with, so you can probably get a bit of artificial support for your score by being less naive to the test format than the average person who is tested. This is a good idea in general for those who need to take high-stakes examinations---be at least as familiar with the test type as the average person taking the test. Yes, such tests frequently have reliability levels up past 0.8 and 0.9, but there's often room to gain a small advantage through specific preparation.

Multiple Blood Children, The Hammer of Reality

2011-12-28T21:09:00.000-08:00

One of the most interesting aspects of having multiple children shared with a single spouse is how it brings the hammer of reality down on your thinking. The sort of thinking I'm discussing here is thinking on how all of your children are the same and how they are different. When you only have one child, it's easy to pretend that things might be a fluke. It's also easy to pretend nonsense like a child's gender being 'socially constructed' and not real at a gut level.

Looking at my two little ones would beat that out of me if I ever truly held it. For instance, give the little boy a toy sword, and what does he do with it? Why, he flourishes it with an excellent grip and proceeds to whack at the floating balloons nearby, or anything else identified by his parents as a legitimate target (he's been taught that he's not allowed to swing at anyone who isn't holding a similar weapon themselves). Give the little girl a sword, and she too will flourish it with a remarkably effective grip for a one year old. The difference is she uses it to get attention and to flirt with, flashing a huge grin and capturing the eyes of passers by, such as women of grandmotherly age. She won't try to whack at anything with it, despite never having been discouraged from so doing. One displays typical little boy behavior, and the other stereotypical little girl behavior, with no particular prodding required at all.

Another big thing one learns is that despite possessing very similar genetics and an extremely similar environment, each child really is significantly different. All we can do in essence is determine what tables their attributes will be generated using, it is not to us to determine the exact fall of the dice.

Lasik, an example of how medicine can work with rational incentives

2011-12-26T20:40:00.000-08:00

A little more than a week ago, a friend of mine got LASIK done on both of his eyes. His vision was extremely wretched with quite a bit of astigmatism as well. For the price of around $2400, and what was almost literally an overnight recovery (by the morning he was up to 20/30), he now has 20/20 vision and the possibility of improving to 20/15 or so. Apparently better than normal vision isn't an uncommon result from LASIK.

LASIK is almost universally NOT covered by health insurance (although you CAN often pay it with pretax dollars through an HSA or the like), and it is also one of the only medical procedures where the cost has fallen dramatically over time. The cost collapse hasn't been quite like that of computers, but it has fallen around an order of magnitude in only 10-15 years. Perhaps in anticipation of my questioning, my friend also talked to his provider about the business model being used as well.

Apparently in many LASIK shops, the manufacturer actually owns the equipment, and is paid a fixed fee every time the machine is used. In addition, they receive the results and feedback to help them drive software and hardware improvements. It's almost effectively a royalty model. Pricing is very transparent---even ADVERTISED in many cases, a clear departure from the opaque norms of medicine. Satisfaction with the procedure also is considerably higher than the norm and innovation in this space has been very strong (the procedures used now are a lot more reliable---thank you early adopters for beta testing for me in the future).

One wonders if there's any way we can move more of medicine onto this model (transparency, declining costs to customers over time, and strong technological innovation). Perhaps we could get areas of medicine banned from health insurance coverage?

Wrapping up the US Senate, all the rest

2011-12-22T21:45:00.000-08:00

Here we break down everybody else.

Congregational - 2 - Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) (2 Democrats).

Akaka F-

Klobuchar C-

Protestant - 2 - Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire), Jim Webb (D-Virginia) (2 Democrats).

Shaheen F-

Webb F

United Church of Christ - 2 - Max Baucus (D-Montana), Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) (1 Democrat, 1 Republican).

Baucus B

Kirk B

This is something of a surprise, I expected much worse from the United Church of Christ

Christian Reformed Church - 1 - Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts) (1 Republican).

Brown B-

Not that bad all things considered, probably the best we can hope for from Massachusetts honestly

Church of Christ - 1 - John Cornyn (R-Texas) (1 Republican).

Cornyn B-

Church of God (Anderson) - 1 - Jon Tester (D-Montana) (1 Democrat).

Tester B

Perhaps this has something to do with how a Democrat can survive as a Senator in Montana?

Eastern Orthodox Church - 1 - Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) (1 Republican).

Snowe C+

I have to confess I thought that the Republican women, often considered RINOs were worse than this.

McLean Bible Church - 1 - John Thune (R-South Dakota) (1 Republican).

Thune B-

I was kind of hoping this guy would run. He strikes me as solid and boring, just what I want in a president around this time.

Unitarian Universalist - 1 - Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota) (1 Democrat).

Conrad D+

How is it that a Democrat survives as a Senator in North Dakota? I suspect this guy is pretty vulnerable when his seat comes up for reelection. His career rating is a C- though.

Unspecified affiliation

Michael Bennet (D-Colorado)

Mark Udall (D-Colorado)

Both F-, go figure. The median political values of atheists and the non-religious are probably responsible for a good deal of the animus against them. Depending on how things shake out if things fall apart, I could pretty easily see score-settling occurring against the vocal atheist segment of the population also.

Rounding out the large blocks in the Senate with Methodists, Baptists, and Lutherans

2011-12-22T16:52:00.000-08:00

Methodist and United Methodist - 11 - Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico), Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia), Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Pat Roberts (R-Kansas), Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) (7 Republicans, 4 Democrats)

Bingamann F-

Burr B-

Inouye F-

Iskason B

Lugar D

Moran A

Nelson B+

Portman (no grade but career D+)

Roberts A-

Sessions B+

Stabenow D-

2 A's 4 B's 3D's 2 F's

Largely a Democrat (bad) Republican (less bad) split. Amusingly Inouye is F- rated---being a native Hawaiian himself you think he'd know better! How did unrestricted immigration work out for the Hawaiians? This group is pretty much the median of America as a whole.

Baptist and Southern Baptist - 10 - Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), John Boozman (R-Arkansas), Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), John McCain (R-Arizona), Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas), Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) (9 Republicans, 1 Democrats).

Blunt B+

Boozmann A+

Coburn B-

Cochran C+

Graham B+

Grassley B+

McCain B+

McConnell B+

Pryor B-

Wicker B+
1 A, 8 B's and a C. This group frankly rocks. Even the Democrat is a B-. While their denominational leadership in many cases is flaky, their political elites are generally faithful to the demographic interests of their coreligionists. There is definitely a strong Scots-Irish influence here as well.

Lutheran - 4 - Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota), Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) (3 Democrats, 1 Republican).

Brown B-

Johnson (R-Wi) (No Grade)

Johnson (D-SD) F-

Merkley D-

Another median group like the Methodists.

For reference, it should be noted that in general, Presidential Candidates are worse than Senators (Bachmann has the best rating at a B-, Romney is a C-, and everyone else is worse, sometimes a lot worse). In turn, Representatives tend to have better grades than do Senators (only 5% of the Senate is A rated, 21% of the House is).

Mormons, Presbyterians and Episcopalians in the Senate, Oh My

2011-12-22T15:14:00.000-08:00

Latter Day Saint - 6 - Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Dean Heller (R-Nevada), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Harry Reid (D-Nevada), Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) (4 Republicans, 2 Democrats).

A basic search reveals that there are about 6M Mormons in the US. This isn't terribly far from the number of Jews in the US, which would yield 2 senators with normal representation. As it is, there are 6 Mormon Senators, so they're managing approximately a 3x overrepresentation.

Crapo B-

Hatch C+

Heller A+

Lee B

Reid F-

Udall F-

Definitely a decidedly mixed set of grades, everything from F- to A+. Mormon republicans range from A+ to C+, Mormon democrats are uniformly F-. But Mormons definitely have the best average thus far. Too bad Reid wasn't knocked off in the last election in Nevada---the MSM really brought big guns to defend him against the upstart Sharon Angle. Interestingly, Udall F- and Heller, A+ are from the same state (New Mexico). Romney, with his C rating (sadly the 2nd best on the Republican candidates for President, only Bachmann has a better rating) is on the low end for Mormon Republicans but clearly better than Mormon Democrats. Can't we do better than this guy? Apparently not, he's better than Perry or Gingrich, and Paul, while not ideologically hostile to us, is opposed to the only mechanisms that would be proven to work.

Presbyterian - 15 - Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee), John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), Thomas R. Carper (D-Delaware), Dan Coats (R-Indiana), Chris Coons (D-Delaware), Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), Michael Enzi (R-Wyoming), Kay Hagan (D-North Carolina), James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia), Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), Mark Warner (D-Virginia) (10 Republicans, 5 Democrats).

Alexander B+

Barasso B-

Carper F-

Coats (No Grade but career D)

Coons F-

Corker B+

DeMint B+

Enzi B-

Hagan C-

Inhofe B+

Kyl B+

Paul (Rand) B-

Rockefeller D+

Shelby B+

Warner F-

Another really mixed batch, 6 B+'s, which are among the best grades any presidential candidate has gotten recently, 3 B-, a C- , 3 F- grades, a D, and a D+.

Hagan has the best grade for a Democrat here, at C-, Rockefeller the worst for a Republican at D+. Overall this group has a considerably better immigration record than I'd expected to find for a fairly mainline denomination (9 B grades, 1 C, 2 D's and 3 Fs)

Episcopalian - 4 - Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Bill Nelson (D-Florida), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) (2 Democrats, 2 Republicans).

Chambliss B+

Hutchinson B+

Nelson D- (note that there is ANOTHER B. Nelson in the senate, from NE, who is also a Democrat who has a B+)

Whitehouse F-

2 B+ grades, a D-, and one F-. This actually surprised me somewhat---I expected this group to have a much worse record considering how elite and SWPL mainline the Episcopalian denomination is on the whole. But you've got the usual breakdown of Republicans in the B to A range and Democrats in the D to F range.

An Inquisition Regarding the Catholic Senators

2011-12-21T21:37:00.000-08:00

There are 24 Catholic Senators in the US Senate

Roman Catholic - 24 - Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), Bob Casey, Jr. (D-Pennsylvania), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Richard Durbin (D-Illinois), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), John Hoeven (R-North Dakota), Mike Johanns (R-Nebraska), John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana), Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri), Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Patty Murray (D-Washington), Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), David Vitter (R-Louisiana), Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) (15 Democrats, 9 Republicans).

Using the same methodology (numbersusa.com, grades for 2009-present. Where no grade is assigned I also checked if they had a career grade since Senator is usually not an entry level position.

Ayotte (No grade)
Begich F-
Cantwell F-
Casey F-
Collins C
Durbin F-
Gillibrand F-
Harken D-
Hoeven (No grade)
Johanns B
Kerry F-
Landrieu D
Leahy F-
Manchin (No grade)
McCaskill C
Menendez F-
Mikulski F-
Murkowski D+
Murray F-
Reed F-
Risch B+
Rubio B-
Vitter A-
Toomey (No Grade, but career B-)

So here we have one A-, one B+, one B, one B-, 2 C's, one D+, one D, one D-, and 11 F- grades as well as 4 No grades
This is a pretty wretched average grade but nowhere near as bad as the average grade for the 12 Jewish Senators.

I will admit that my affection for the Catholic church in general is greatly reduced by the stance of its elites on the immigration issue. If the Catholic church were at least effectively neutral on this issue I'd seriously consider 'swimming the Tiber'. The rank and file Catholic in the US has a fairly good view on the immigration issue. Looking at the numbers, it'd also appear that Rubio might be a fairly decent vice-presidential candidate from our perspective.
http://www.cis.org/ReligionAndImmigrationPoll

Working Overtime to Manufacture Anti Semitism in the Supreme Court

2011-12-21T18:52:00.000-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

Presently the Supreme Court consists of 6 Catholics and 3 Jews. That's 1/3 of the SC with less than 2% of the population. Catholics, for their part, are overrepresented by a factor of 2 or 3.
Kagan, Breyer, and Ginsburg are Jewish, all of the rest of the Supreme Court Justices are Catholic.

The problem for the Jewish brand is that all 3 of the Jewish justices are hostile to White interests. It is practically a certainty that all will vote against the Arizona law when the case comes up, with the possible exception of Kagan recusing herself due to conflict of interest, since she was the Solicitor General on the case in the first place. If a 4-4 tie didn't have the same net effect as 5-4 against (since to overturn the previous court requires a majority), I doubt very seriously whether Kagan would recuse herself despite the blatancy of her conflict of interest. Sotomayer will also almost certainly vote against the law. In all likelihood, the decision will hinge on the vote of Kennedy.

Now, when things fall apart and the center does not hold, just WHO do you think is going to have absorbed the blame here? It doesn't matter who writes the majority or prevailing opinion, or who concurs in part. What matters is the end result and whether it tars the Jewish brand further. Breyer and Ginsburg have long been hated by many. Kagan creates the possibility of creating decisions that inspire vitriolic hatred on the back of a majority Jewish vote (3 Jews and 2 Catholics). Who do you think will be blamed here? Do you think this will inspire a pogram against Catholics? No, they'll be swept under the rug, and the fact that 4 Catholics voted on the side of 'righteousness' will be considered instead. There are presently several really significant issues on the Supreme Court's docket, issues that I guarantee will create lots more anti semites if they go the wrong way and might even if they go the correct way. The fact that all 3 votes can be predicted with a great deal of certainty in advance without even so much as a law degree by a layman is also very concerning.

Ginsburg and Breyer are both pretty old (born in 1933 and 1938 respectively). I'd suggest that when the time comes to replace them, that Jewish folks back a Jewish justice somewhere to the right of Justice Thomas for one seat and a white Protestant for the other. Holding a block of 3 seats in the SC is an extremely dangerous lightning rod. It's not in your interest to have the average Joe in the US think of those 3 when he thinks 'Jew'.

Manufacturing Anti Semitism in the Senate

2011-12-21T13:16:00.000-08:00

Jews in the US represent around 2% of the population, concentrated heavily in urban areas on the coasts, especially in the Northeast. Therefore an awful lot of people don't know personally any significant number of ordinary Jews. This makes the public perception of the Jew in America particularly heavily influenced by the famous or infamous.

Today, we'll consider Jews in the US Senate, taking stated religious affiliation rather than attempting to research ethnic background (Hillary Clinton, for instance made much of her 1/64th Jewish ethnicity when running for Senate in NY, but she's not considered Jewish for these purposes, nor would be a person of Jewish ancestry who professes to be a Christian).

From Wikipedia

Jewish - 12 - Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), Barbara Boxer (D-California), Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), Dianne Feinstein (D-California), Al Franken (D-Minnesota), Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin), Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey), Carl Levin (D-Michigan), Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut), Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Charles Schumer (D-New York), Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) (10 Democrats, 2 Independents).

So first off, we have about 12% of the Senate being Jews, which is a 6x factor of overrepresentation, comparable, but probably higher than the overrepresentation of elite Protestant denominations.

Next let's consider what these Senators are doing for the Jewish brand. For this, we'll go to numbersusa.com

We'll consider recent activity (2009-2011).

Blumenthal-F-

Boxer-D

Cardin-F-

Feinstein-D

Franken-F-

Kohl-F-

Lautenberg-F-

Levin-F-

Lieberman-F

Sanders-F-

Schumer-F

Wyden-D

So we have 3 D's, 2 F's, and 7 F-

This is pretty damned abysmal considering that the average grade in the Senate is a C. These 12 Jews are doing an awful lot to manufacture anti-semitism among Americans who are against the loss of demographic hegemony. Senators are pretty high profile figures, and there is NOT A SINGLE ONE on this list that possesses even a marginally passing grade.

Here's the huge disconnect:
http://www.cis.org/ReligionAndImmigrationPoll
Approximately 60% of Jews in America are perfectly acceptable on the immigration issue. Granted, this is lower than the population at large, but the claim that Jews in general want to racially replace Whites as the demographic hegemon is difficult to support. What is happening is a massive betrayal of non-elite interests by elites (you see this also among most of the mainline Christian denominations).

Here's my warning to Jews in America. Unlike, say, Methodists, you are defined in the public eye by your leaders. Almost everyone knows Methodists that they think are great folks, ditto Catholics---and frankly, even Mormons are more recognized by their rank and file than by their supposed leadership. Whether this is fair or not is frankly irrelevant, suffice it to say this it is simply so. As a group you desperately need to stop your leadership from destroying your brand. In 2010, there was an opportunity to do just that (Kaus ran against Boxer in the Democratic primary for her CA seat in the US Senate), and unfortunately, you blew it. Even one or two A or B rated Senators would go a long way towards improving your image among ordinary Americans.

Why is it important to avoid getting branded on this issue (and others, such as gun rights or abortion)?
Given the unfortunate history of the Jewish ethnicity do I really need to go there? Suffice it to say, that if the center does not hold, and things fall apart, there will ALWAYS be a search for scapegoats. It is human nature and can't be repealed by any act of Congress. It is always more appealing to punish an 'Other' than members of one's own radically extended family. I'd prefer that the next scapegoat not be 'the Jew', but your leaderships is making that difficult. It is also manufacturing a lot of new 'anti semites' every time someone connects SOME of the dots.

Next time we'll consider the Supreme Court.

The Evolution of Atonement

2011-12-19T19:15:00.000-08:00

Back in Old Testament times, a follower of God who had sinned had a fairly organized rubric for what he needed to do in order to get 'back right with God'. Basically he had to sacrifice an assortment of animals through approved clergy and make restitution to whoever besides God that he had injured through his actions. Since there hasn't been a properly consecrated temple for a very very long time (AD 70ish), if you're still observing that covenant there exists a massive sin backlog.

If you're a Christian, you believe that God replaced that covenant with a new and improved version, where Jesus served as the sufficient and perfect sacrifice for all sins that were, are, or are yet to come. God still commanded, though, that Christians were to make restitution to those besides Him that they had injured, and to confess their sins to one another and thereby take the social status hits associated with such confession. A very very dim view of gossip was taken though, so in a functional Christian community this wouldn't have been quite as scary as it might sound to modern ears. The Catholic church later formalized this into the sacrament of confession, appealing to Jesus' grant of power to forgive or retain sins to Peter, upon whom he would build His Church. There, instead of confessing your sins in what might amount to a neighborhood prayer meeting, you instead confess to a priest who has lots of experience maintaining confidentiality and who has probably heard far worse than the tawdry sins you're confessing. I find this far less intimidating, as do most people, which is probably why the practice caught on so strongly.

Sometime later on, some brilliant theologian got the idea that the Saints had built up SO much 'good works capital' that lots of it could be sold in the form of indulgences (the Catholic church still grants indulgences, they just don't sell them anymore). Here, people with unresolved guilt could purchase indulgences, which would be used to fund the magnificent architectural and cultural contributions of the Church at the height of its temporal power. Of course this didn't last, it lead fairly predictably to the Reformation, and few Protestants today have anything remotely like either the free for all confession of the Early Church or the organized confession sacrament of the Catholics.

Interestingly enough, few Catholics these days go to confession either---the matter is considered scandalous. So there's all kinds of unresolved guilt that people have in modern America. And how do they resolve it?
Well, there's a new step in the evolution of indulgences. Instead of doing penance for one's sins, or paying for an indulgence for the same, we now, in our upper middle class SWPL segments, outsource the penance and payment for the indulgences instead to other groups that we don't like or who compete with us for status.
So, instead of giving to the poor, we lobby for income redistribution away from other groups. Instead of living simply so others could simply live, we lobby to force other people to live more simply. To expiate the perceived sins of racism, we lobby for Section 8 housing in OTHER people's neighborhoods, and for the discrimination in terms of allocation of society's goodies against OTHER people's children.

Frankly I think I prefer the medieval version---oh, how did it go? When the coin in the bottom of the coffer rings, the soul, from Purgatory springs? At least the sinners in question usually paid with their own money.

A Visit to the Gun Show, Taking the Pulse of Folk Reactionaries

2011-12-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

Gun shows have always been hotbeds of what I'll call 'Folk Reactionaries' in the US. This morning, my wife, our kids, and I went to one of the larger gun shows around these parts to see what might be seen. My wife has been expressing a desire to gain cultural familiarity with arms, and I was considering getting either a 38 special revolver, 9 mm automatic pistol or a 22 target pistol to serve that end. Normally we go to a gun show every year or so, usually the same one down in the Expo Center.

Here are a few of the things I noticed:
The place was busy---really busy. It felt much more crowded than in years past. My wife says that this is partially explainable by the season. Apparently a lot of people want a Luke 22:36 Christmas in Oregon.

The crowd was somewhat less male than normal. Granted, my youngest draws women, especially of grandmotherly age, like a magnet, but there were a lot more women around than is usually the case. I take this as an indication that gun purchasing demographics are broadening. We even saw a couple of small groups (2 or 3) of just women to add to the usual leaven of wives and girlfriends. In addition, we saw a reasonable number of booths selling hand-crafty things that is probably aimed at that demographic.

The explicitly political material on offer was substantially reduced from years past. Sure there were the usual anti-gun control and generally wonderfully politically incorrect t-shirts and tracts, but much less so than is the norm.

Instead, much of the booth and floor space that such material generally occupies appears to have been converted instead to preparedness and survival material. Some examples---When There is No Doctor (medical field manual), When There is No Dentist, Nuclear War Survival Skills, tons of water filtration and freeze dried/otherwise highly preserved rations, and the like. This can be taken as a sign that this section of the population has raised its estimate of the probability of civil disorder.

On the guns and ammo, this year appeared to be more rifle than pistol centered, and a lot of the ammunition was being sold in larger lots than I recall the norm being. I saw considerably fewer SKS rifles than I'm used to seeing, and quite a few more AR-15s. Perhaps there's a desire to have ammunition compatibility with the NATO standard?

Without Illegal Immigrants to Pick the Crops, We'll All Starve, Right?!

2011-12-15T19:34:00.000-08:00

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/12/crops-rotting-in-fields-due-to.html

Apparently, in the wake of all of these 'mean-spirited' state immigration laws (Arizona, Alabama, several other Southern States), crops must be rotting in the fields and farmers must be truly suffering, right?
Apparently not, farm profits are up about 28%. Obviously those laws calling for the ejection of illegal immigrants aren't bringing about the Armageddon that the media breathlessly speaks of on every chance they get.

I've seen numbers before indicating around 6% of the cost of produce in the US is from farm labor. This means that if you doubled their total cost, you'd expect to see a @6% increase in the price of produce. As of 2007, the average family spent about $1 per day on produce, so their yearly produce budget might be busted by around $20 or so if the labor shortage resulted in a doubling of farm labor wages (farm wages were @$9.06/hour, doubling them would push them to $18.12/hour, which would exceed nonfarm wages, which were $16.75/hour). These numbers are pulled from the Center for Immigration Studies

http://www.cis.org/no_farm_labor_shortages.html

Doing a little independent research of my own, I went to the US Department of Agriculture's site. CIS's numbers could plausibly be painted as biased, so here we go to the horse's mouth.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/farmincome/data/pe_t4.htm

From this chart, we can see that total labor costs, both contract and hired labor, make up around 10% of the total production cost on farms. Note also that this is only the farm's production cost---it doesn't get the produce to the shelves of your local Safeway or Costco. So the estimate of 6% by the CIS is probably pretty accurate. Looking, for instance, at the Tillamook milkshed, the farms seem to receive a little more than a dollar a gallon for their milk (according to their material posted around their Cheese Factory in Tillamook), and the lowest cost sellers of milk (i.e., Costco or Winco), sell it for about $2.50 a gallon in this area, so assuming that the later levels of distribution and sales add at least half of the cost also appears reasonable.

As expected, by everyone but mainstream economists, Alabama's law has resulted in significant decreases in unemployment, as documented by Le Cygne Gris.
http://cygne-gris.blogspot.com/2011/11/jobs-americans-wont-do.html

It remains to the several states to continue calling the media's bluff on this matter, much as the 'blood running in the streets' predictions of the 1990s as the CCW movement gained steam.
It's in circumstances like this that I really envy the Old Testament Hebrews' convention for dealing with false prophets.

The Supreme Court Plays into Our Hands Once More by Granting Cert on the Arizona Immigration Law

2011-12-13T12:10:00.000-08:00

Once again the Supreme Court plays directly into our hands, this time by granting cert on the Arizona immigration law case. They really have two options:
1) Uphold the law in substantive terms. If they do this, we win, as it will embolden more states to do likewise or
2) Strike down most of the law. If they do this they will bleed TREMENDOUS amounts of prestige from their institution, especially if they do it by a narrow vote, like 5-4. It is a terribly difficult thing to sell to ordinary people that no, YOU can't enforce one of our laws while WE refuse to enforce it ourselves. That is, we refuse to do our job and we refuse to let you clean up the mess resulting from us failing to do our job as well. That infuriates people. Since as reactionaries, we are long both anger AND volatility, this might actually be the preferred outcome---if only we could get something that looked like 2 but effectively was 1.

It is getting easier and easier for me to convince ordinary people---not networked reactionaries---that the judicial and political system is rigged against them and that they are no longer required to play by the 'gentleman's rules of engagement' in said arenas. This is all to the good, the existing order must collapse before Reaction can proceed, and we can't score all the goals needed ourselves. The System must score lots of 'own goals', which fortunately it seems to be managing quite nicely.

Smart is a nice to have, but loyalty is of existential import in a leader

2011-12-12T14:50:00.000-08:00

I see a terrific amount of ink spilled talking about how Newt is 'smart', or Romney is intelligent and highly competent in a managerial way. These things are nice to have in a leader, but they are not the elephant in the room.

Before I can care about how much a prospective leader knows, I need to know WHO he actually cares about. Are me and mine part of his who, are are we rather the WHOM?

In that regard I view neither Romney nor Newt as acceptable, although Romney is probably a little closer to tolerable than Newt. If Palin was actually solid on demographic hegemony (which unfortunately, she is not), I'd happily support her despite the fact that she's likely on the very low end of the Second Sigma or near the high end of the middle of the First Sigma. Intelligence is only a discriminating factor between candidates if they can pass the Who...Whom test. If the candidate is your enemy at the existential bottom line, honestly, a reasonable man would prefer that they be stupid and of dubious competence.

Macy's and the Transgendered: Time to Heighten the Contradictions?

2011-12-09T19:42:00.001-08:00

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2011/12/texas-macys-employee-fired-for-allegedly-violating-stores-lgbt-policy/

Just recently Macy's has fired one of its employees for refusing to allow a man dressed in women's clothing to use the women's dressing room. Allowing anyone who says they're a woman, physical evidence not withstanding, to use the women's dressing room, is apparently a Macy's policy.
My wife of course points out that a crossdressed man would creep her out were she in such a dressing room. In that feeling, she's hardly atypical, just perhaps a bit more honest about her opinions than most. Judging from the comments on the story, her decision to avoid patronizing Macy's isn't abnormal either.

It occurs to me that perhaps the way to deal with this sort of thing is to deliberately heighten the contradictions. Hire some actors to be incredibly obnoxious, but legal crossdressers---think fat guys in floral dresses, and have them parade around through wherever such policies are in place, creeping out all of the customers with similar feelings to my wife. After all, Macy's and similar establishments shouldn't want business from such wanton bigots as my wife, should they?

Generational Animus

2011-12-08T19:21:00.001-08:00

No doubt our profoundly unnatural educational system with its extreme age segregation has aggravated the degree of generational animus in the US.
Let's enumerate, I'm sure many of my readers can help fill in the gaps...
Greatest Generation <-> Boomers
Boomers say their parent's generation was distant, materialistic and never paid enough attention to them
Greatest Generation says the Boomers are selfish, ungrateful, and narcissistic. Generation X agrees with their grandparents' claim.
Boomers <-> Generation X
Boomers say that Generation X are cynical, lazy slackers. Generation X strongly resents the Boomers for failing to stay married (about half of Gen X'rs have experienced the divorce of their parents, with a majority of such divorces NOT being for one of the 3 A's)
Millennials are viewed as being lazy and entitled by the older generations. In turn, they greatly resent the bill of goods they've been sold as regards college degrees and employment (exceptionally high unemployment in this set right now)

The Greatest Generation by far has the best PR, escaping blame for many of the things that can rightfully be attributed to them. Millennials have by far the worst PR---few taking their grievances seriously even when they are actually legitimate. Boomers have by far the greatest political clout and control most of the engines of indoctrination. X'rs will hopefully step up to the plate as they gain political ascendancy and stop enforcing edicts that they don't really believe in but go along with out of fear of sanction or ostracism.

Don't Check Asian: Who...Whom?

2011-12-07T11:22:00.001-08:00

http://mangans.blogspot.com/2011/12/dont-check-asian.html

It's not a surprise to anyone who is paying attention that colleges and similar institutions discriminate against Asians, particularly those of Chinese or Japanese ancestry in admissions. Likewise, they discriminate against whites (especially non-elite whites with non-elite activities like FFA, 4H, or JROTC).

But should we be against this practice as primarily white reactionaries? Well, once again, I ask the question...who...whom?

White people would be stupid to end only this discriminatory practice because 'it is wrong' while leaving intact all of the discrimination against their own children. This isn't to say that some sort of bargain couldn't be reached, but it is very difficult for the non-elite whites and non-elite Asians to reach a bargain that they can enforce, even through referendum or initiative. Simply put, if a large amount of admissions are set aside for NAMs, legacies and the connected, those of us who are none of the above have to scrap for the scraps.

I know a lot of us in the HBD sphere have a dream world where, like many Euro elite universities, every applicant takes a totally transparent test and the top N scores get the N spots. There's no way in hell that will fly in the US, even if we had no diversity.

There's nothing that is actually sacred about GPA and SAT scores. Yes, they predict reasonably well, and, the SAT score at least is pretty hard to game by standards of the other sorts of things colleges and other institutions consider. But relying on them is largely a value judgment---specifically, it's placing value on efficiency. Society can choose whatever values it likes. I'd just prefer that it stop pretending to attach moral significance to its more arbitrary decisions and do so more transparently.

Perhaps we're going about this the wrong way. Perhaps we should DEMAND transparency and relative objectivity in our metrics for determining such goodies. If we want to make elite college admissions based on military press, 40 yard dash, and test scores for men and attractiveness, overall fitness, and test scores for women, so be it. I must say I'd be amused at the spectacle of something like an NFL combine being held each year for graduating high school seniors and homeschoolers. The key for reining in the institutions here though in my opinion is starving them of any discretion. Every last decision must be numerical and someone other than the institution in question must produce the numbers. What should the numbers be about? I don't know, and honestly I don't care all that much. But they must be advertised and transparent and consistently measured. I think young people would vastly prefer the externalities associated with college admission application padding under my system.

Looking for information to update priors

2011-12-05T20:02:00.001-08:00

I've a few questions that perhaps some of my readers could answer.

Question #1: Are Denver/Colorado churches reporting significant upticks in attendance relative to the same time last year?
For which priors---I'm interested in whether there's a 'Tebow effect'. My gut says there probably is due to a 2nd order memetic entanglement, i.e. I'm a Broncos fan, therefore I have to be a Tebow fan, therefore I ought to go to church more frequently.

Question #2: Has recruitment in the upper levels of the various Norwegian Socialist Parties suffered now that Norway has had a chance to partially digest the impact of the Brevik slayings
For which priors---I'm interested if my estimation that the sort of people that inhabit the middle and upper levels of bureaucracies have fairly low morale and thus will be deterred from seeking positions by the possibility of retaliation against their teenage and young adult children is correct. What probability of retaliation against my children would be sufficient to deter me from practicing engineering for a given company? The probability wouldn't have to be very high. My current take is that political candidates are likely to be relatively undeterred but bureaucrats and other 'lifers' are much more likely to be intimidated.

A Mea Culpa from the Greatest Generation

2011-12-04T20:33:00.001-08:00

Some time ago, I got to talking with my grandfather (WWII generation) about the Baby Boomers. I was somewhat surprised by his generational admission---not so much by what he said, but by the fact that he essentially said mea culpa for the Greatest Generation as a whole.

He explained to me that growing up during the Depression was really hard. City kids frequently had to keep cows and such (in the city no less) and really scrounge to make ends meet. Because of this, they really really wanted to make sure that their own kids in the future would never have to do anything like that. This of course led them to ask very little if anything of their own kids (the Baby Boomers), probably contributing heavily to that generation's narcissism. I suppose it shouldn't be terribly surprising that the Great Depression had profound psychological effects on those who lived through it. Perhaps that's the reason why most of us give the Greatest Generation a pass from the animus held against the Boomers, despite the fact that the Greatest Generation raised them. Most likely my generation would have acted similarly, given similar conditions. Depending on the current fiscal and monetary train wreck, we may well get a chance to see how other generations deal with similar circumstances.

A Luke 22:36 Christmas?

2011-12-03T22:20:00.001-08:00

Or, All I want for Christmas is an AR-15...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/black-friday-gun-sales-break-records

(For those unfamiliar with Luke 22:36, here's the King James)
Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

Apparently the population is continuing to arm itself at record rates, and taking Jesus' recommendation to his disciples at face value (two versus later, the disciples, demonstrating that they're a 'heavily armed cult', display 2 assault weapons, to which Jesus replies, it is enough).

I've written on the record sales of guns, and in particular, ammunition before, but this is fairly noteworthy.

From the article
"Gun dealers flooded the FBI with background check requests from shoppers, smashing the single day record with a 32% increase from last year." USA Today has more: "Deputy Assistant FBI Director Jerry Pender said the checks, required by federal law, surged to 129,166 during the day, far surpassing the previous high of 97,848 on Black Friday of 2008."

That's pretty hardcore, and the article notes that's just the number of checks, not the number of firearms sold (buying 10 guns for instance still results in only one check).

This speaks to a population that at least in its gut knows that something is very wrong.

Governmental Involvement in Education: What Forms of Government is this Actually Appropriate For?

2011-12-02T19:57:00.001-08:00

By now it should be fairly clear that education in practice is also indoctrination. Even if you're not consciously trying, as an educator, you will wind up profoundly influencing the worldview of your students. This is especially true if you're a member of a class that has a decisive advantage in terms of amount of access time, like, say, public school teachers.

But, back to the original question---for what sorts of government is it actually appropriate for the government to have a role in public education?

Certainly, in the case of a monarchy, theocracy, or dictatorship, it is consistent with the form of government for the government to control public education.
But it is quite obviously incorrect for a democracy to control the education of large numbers of its future electorate. Controlling education is to a great extent battlespace control---it defines to a great extent the limits of acceptable discourse. It is obviously inappropriate for a democracy to engage in propaganda about who should win elections. It can be argued pretty strongly that it is inappropriate for a democracy to EVER tell its electorate what to think, since it is supposed to obey them in the classic 'voice of the people is the voice of God' sense. I suppose if you had an actual republic, with limited franchise, it'd be acceptable for the State to educate those without possibility of gaining the franchise, but even there it is problematic. For this reason I advocate the separation of School and State, at least as long as we insist on making the pretense of democracy.

What Can Society Do for the Neurotypical?

2011-12-01T19:34:00.001-08:00

Commenter In asks whether it is possible for neurotypicals to transcend their state to become not neurotypical. At first blush, this seems a strange question, as most people would prefer to be neurotypical---or at least to have available a very good emulation capacity.

But it is true that the garden variety neurotypical mind is vulnerable to a lot of exploits. Game and salesmanship exemplify a lot of these, and value investing as a strategy relies on the fact that the neurotypical mind feels a loss of X approximately as negatively as it feels positively about a gain of 2X. That 2:1 risk aversion isn't common to all primates btw, some species have nearly no statistical risk aversion. Human beings have been coming up with these hacks for thousands of years, in some cases writing them down like Ben Franklin, Carnegie, or a myriad of other practical manuals for selling goods, services, and status.

But what can we, or society, do about this?

The Bible, in the Old Testament, is the long story of God attempting to get the Jews to love him---God is a lover who wants to be loved, reading the bible, particularly the accounts of the prophets like Hosea, and the cycle of degradation and partial redemption played out in Judges, Kings, and Chronicles should give you some empathy for His position. God is essentially trying to teach the Jews to be grateful---to have gratitude for the many gifts he has given them. But gratitude isn't in our neurotypical nature. We don't like people better that do use favors, or who we owe a great deal to, we like the people WE have done favors for. The stereotypical complaint of the neurotypical about the non-neurotypical is that they are selfish (and don't get it). The stereotypical complaint of the non-neurotypical about the neurotypical is that they are ungrateful (and don't get it). In my more lucid moments I realize both are correct.

Interestingly, when God brings the pain---shows the Jews His 'hand', in the Old Testament, they tend to fall back into line, repent, and beg Him to deliver them. He loves them, and it terribly pains Him to do so, but he does what is necessary.
In the New Testament, God seriously doubles down on His strategy to teach human beings gratitude, basically allowing a member of the Trinity to be dismembered on and after the Cross. Pretty extreme stuff, when you think about it, but how many folks, even fairly devout Christians, act as if they are truly grateful?
Not many, which IMO is a big part of the reason why Tim Tebow makes many of us so uncomfortable.

So on the gratitude count of the indictment, even the Master of the Universe is having grave difficulties. He says His is a work in progress though, and that he'll finish what he started. I believe Him, but I recognize from the fact that He is having so much trouble that anything I, or a society, could do will have even less fruit.

On a lot of the other aspects of being neurotypical, most Western societies prior to around 1960 were considerably more functional. Conservative sexual morality and the fairly harsh consequences for bearing children out of wedlock kept many of the worst problems associated with hypergamy largely in check. Society collectively practiced what you'd call 'Game' on most of its immigrants---fairly mild hazing promoted far more actual assimilation and loyalty than the present coddling approach. One of my great-grandfathers, for instance, immigrated from Sicily and lied about both his age and place of birth to get INTO WWI, and such behavior was more the norm than the exception. Men were encouraged to be reasonably dominant, or at least not unreasonably timid or deferential in their romantic relationships, which counter to the the modern intuition, made women happier in general. Divorces were very hard to obtain and required cause, which made them considerably more rare. Obviously there were costs associated with all of this, any good reactionary recognizes that every system or decision will suck for somebody, but the overall effect was far more functional. Back in the early 60s, less than 1 in 4 blacks were born out of wedlock, less than the rate for white people today. Today, being born IN wedlock is unusual for black people, and the rate for white people is similar to that experienced by blacks in the 60s.

Sowell Gets Down to Brass Tacks on Immigration Policy

2011-11-30T18:53:00.001-08:00

by way of Le Cygne Gris
http://cygne-gris.blogspot.com/2011/11/crux-of-matter.html
Let's go back to square one. The purpose of American immigration laws and policies is not to be either humane or inhumane to illegal immigrants. The purpose of immigration laws and policies is to serve the national interest of this country.

There is no inherent right to come live in the United States, in disregard of whether the American people want you here. Nor does the passage of time confer any such right retroactively.

This is coupled nicely with
http://cygne-gris.blogspot.com/2011/11/jobs-americans-wont-do.html
Discussing the salutory effect on unemployment that Alabama's anti illegal immigration act has had since its passage.

Why is it that only Black Republicans are allowed to speak most of the truth regarding immigration issues without being totally demonized? I suspect this is a part of the appeal of Herman Cain, many Republicans think him immunized against the charge of racism for the horrible crime of advocating, in some cases, their interests as non-elite white people.
Sowell comes awfully close here to advocating my demographic hegemony thesis---damn, listen to this:

When you import people, you import cultures, including cultures that have been far less successful in providing decent lives and decent livelihoods. The American people have a right to decide for themselves whether they want unlimited imports of cultures from other countries

Once again, thanks to Le Cygne Gris for bringing these items of news to our attention.

Getting the Money out of Politics, Who...Whom?

2011-11-28T16:13:00.001-08:00

It is pretty clear to me that there are two main beneficiaries to 'getting the money out of politics'

The first group is, of course, the mainstream press. Obviously they can't be stopped by any such law from favoring, subtly if necessary, the candidates that they favor
The second group are entrenched incumbents. Incumbency is a huge advantage

Since we, as reactionaries, are not fond of either group, it follows that we shouldn't be too enthusiastic about any campaign finance reform. Frankly, I'm not at all surprised that money buys policies. What I am surprised about is the fact that the policies are so damned cheap---politicians are the highest ROI investments going for big corporations. Under more rational circumstances, we'd expect to see the costs of such bid up until the rate of return normalized with ordinary investments. But politics is far far from the idealized free market.

Another key point is that any rules you write ARE going to be circumvented. When regulating or legislating, you CAN NOT match the decision and action speed (the OODA loop if you're fond of such terminology) of your opposition---frankly not even if you're a tyrant with little respect for the rule of law. Making rules in such fuzzy and vague areas simply advantages the glib and those inclined to game the system. Sound familiar?

Here's one thing that we CAN do though. Insist that every politicians investments be put into a blind vehicle prior to them taking office---say, an S&P index fund or the like. The insider trading exemption Congress gets is obscene---does ANYONE really believe the rate of growth increase that Representatives get and Senators get more of is actually due to investment acumen? No, it's due to (charitably) the fact that they have advance knowledge of how the rules of the game are to change, because they have a fair bit of control over such and (more likely) the fact that corporations can give them inside information as a means of currying favor.

But any belief that politics can be separated from graft is folly. As long as they regulate buying and selling, they'll be the first ones bought and sold. The rules gaming weasels WILL find a way, no matter what roadblocks you set in their way. And this is to say nothing of the fact that the rules WILL be selectively enforced against us---ever see the Fairness doctrine used against liberals?

A Little Encouragement for those who despair that redheads may perish from the Earth

2011-11-26T12:57:00.001-08:00

There's been quite a bit of noise in the news about redheads becoming extinct. It has even reached me 2nd and 3rd hand from total strangers in places like Costco, shopping malls, and the grocery store. They see my two little ones in the cart with their 'Eric the Viking' style red hair and big blue eyes and are drawn to them as if by a magnet. Frequently they'll say something about the way that redheads will all be gone by some year---2050 is the popular one---while talking and playing with the little ones. Usually I'll reassure them that my wife and I are doing our best to insure that there are little redheaded children around for future generations. Sometimes they'll even encourage us to have more beautiful children, which is a surprisingly positive sign of cultural health when you think about it.

Here's the thing though---both my wife and I are redhead carriers---having a fairly significant number of redheads in our respective families, but neither of us are redheads ourselves, although we both do have blue eyes. My wife does have some strawberry in her blonde, which does create the question of whether our children had a 50/50 shot or merely a 1 in 4 chance of being redheads. As it is though, both of them are. So we've successfully increased the frequency of redheads, and may further increase that frequency with a child to be named and determined later. Besides the redheads born to redheads, there are quite a few born to redhead carriers like ourselves.

On the other side, there's my brother, who is a full-on Irish redhead (his hair is VERY red and he's regularly asked for directions in Ireland when he visits with his wife and kids). His wife is one generation out of Spain, with the archetypical very dark, almost black hair, dark eyes, and fair skin. None of their children are redheads, looking much like their mother, but all of them are redhead carriers. They will quite likely produce a fair number of redheaded grandchildren. Since they've got 3 children, the genetic frequency of my brother's redhead genes has increased, and it's likely to show up in the phenotype going forward.

So don't despair. Redheads will not perish from the Earth---especially as long as the opposite sex continues to find them compelling. Even as mere toddlers, they're positively totemic in the fertility sense, having apparently touched off a minor baby boom among our church and close circle.

The National Conversation We Desperately Need to Have Regarding Health Care, But Probably Never Will

2011-11-25T19:26:00.001-08:00

Most of the population in the US (probably honestly everywhere else to, but I can't speak as definitely of them) remains in abject denial of the fundamental axiom of reaction
http://chariotofreaction.blogspot.com/2011/04/fundamental-axiom-of-reaction-every.html

Put simply: every decision in a political arena WILL suck for at least some real persons.

This greatly complicates our health care debate---causing us to fail to actually ask the questions and determine the answers that could drive a policy that could improve things somewhat, or at least, create a policy that a supermajority of us could live with going forward.

Here's the first question, I'll put the premises of the question in parenthesis:

What fraction of our governmental budget are we willing to spend on the subsidy of health care? (Premise: Health care desires are unlimited, should we wish to, we could easily spend our entire budget in this area). How much money are we willing to spend--that's the first and most important question. Get a supermajority answer to this question and you can actually approach the next questions reasonably confidently.

Who do we want to subsidize, and how much?---In crude terms, how will we divide the loot from question number 1? Do we think particular medical procedures are deserving of more subsidy? (e.g., delivery of babies). Do we think that particular people are deserving of more subsidy? How do we feel about injuries/illnesses that are largely self-inflicted? (e.g. Type II diabetes). How do our answers to all of these questions change as the income/social status of the recipient changes? (e.g., should we subsidize a Type I diabetic with impeccable self-discipline in caring for himself who makes more than 200K per year?). Do we want to insist that anybody we subsidize makes lifestyle changes to prevent further self-inflicted issues? How do race and sex play into these questions? Do we want to subsidize those with more years of life remaining more?

How do we want to pay for all of this through taxes? Who...whom?

If we could actually ask these questions, and debate them honestly and without attempts at shaming, we could probably reach a compromise that most of us wouldn't have any grave issues with. That compromise would probably entail something like a subsidized catastrophic coverage policy with something on the order of a 10k/year cap (my guess is on the order of a 5K deductible with a fairly long transition to full coverage). That's probably about as generous Americans are willing to be when they're made aware of the fact that they actually have to pay for it. But the question is a moot one, perhaps because the whole constellation of them can't be debated openly because we're collectively in such denial.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T21:41:00.001-08:00

In my house we are thankful for many things. Goods of material sustenance are terribly cheap by historical standards.
For instance, at your local Costco, you can buy approximately 4000 calories worth of white rice for a dollar. Alternately, you could buy 2000 calories worth of Adams Peanut Butter or dried beans for that same dollar. In terms of pain relief, one can buy 40 or 50 pain relievers for about the same amount of money. And even at the present price of gasoline, for $1 you can buy a truly obscene amount of power, enough to make kings of bygone days drool.

Most of these things are the products of technology and engineering. Much of the dysfunction of our present age's government has been papered over and masked to some extent by said infrastructure. Can't be bothered to actually maintain law and order in the center of the cities? No problem, we'll just migrate to the suburbs powered by our armies of petrol minions. I'm thankful for these glorious hordes of BTUs made available to me, and hope you are as well. The day will likely come when they're nowhere near so cheap nor so numerous.

The Undercounted Economic Benefits of Low Diversity and Trust

2011-11-23T14:31:00.001-08:00

My wife and little ones are big fans of going to the beach, even though beaches in Oregon and Northern California aren't about swimming. On the way to many of our favorite spots though, we pass through lots of extremely white small towns on the coast. One thing that jumps out is the very high levels of trust that persist there (the second being the celebrity treatment my two little tiny redheads get from the many grandparents that inhabit such places). Here is an example---it strikes me as profoundly alien every single time I pass it because of all the things it implies.
In the middle of a very small parking lot---really more of a spot where one could pull off the coastal highway than a parking lot honestly---there are stacks of bundles of firewood, and a sign advertising them for sale for the customary $5 or so. Next to the sign is a bucket where you can put your payment. That's it. No watchman or clerk, no cameras...Nothing. But it's been here for years now, so apparently the guy who cuts the wood must not get ripped off often. This speaks to positively alien levels of trust by the standards of the societies that I've been a part of. I recall visiting relatives with my great-grandmother in Northern Idaho as a preteen and being similarly floored when I was told NOT to lock the front door and that the sofa in the foyer was to be kept made up in case some passer-by needed a place to crash during the night, and even more so when I confirmed with their neighbors that my relatives were NOT just weird, that this was a social norm.
From an economic standpoint, whoever runs this gets the $5 per bundle of wood that people (usually campers) expect to pay for cutting and stacking the wood, and the customers pay the going rate. But all the usual middleman costs are totally absent. Most of said middleman costs would be calculated in as part of what economists call GDP. Something to think about when one hears that economists say that 'immigration is good for the economy'. How can one take them seriously when they have not even a mechanism to measure how much the degradation of trust created by diversity costs? You could probably even argue that increasing diversity creates an artificial economy of scale benefiting larger firms versus the guy---probably a retiree, who likely enjoys cutting wood.

So what are the advantages of being a (non-elite) white person in the US anyway?

2011-11-21T19:47:00.001-08:00

A lot of ink is spilled talking of the mythic creature known as 'White Privilege'. Normally these arguments say---hey, these elite guys, who happen to share the same skin color as you, have a lot of things going for them and the system cuts them obscene amounts of slack. Therefore you, Mr Non-Elite white person shouldn't grumble about you or your kids being discriminated against for the benefit of Mr. Present or Future Elite non-white person. Obviously this is a crock, and, even if we DID enjoy a substantial advantage by way of something shady, we'd be fools to volunteer to reverse that advantage. But let's investigate just what a non-elite white person has going for him in the US today.

An observer can reasonably infer that your IQ, conscientiousness, executive function, etc are drawn from the white distribution. Which is to say, in the case of IQ, 100 mean with approximately 15 as a standard deviation. Whether you want to toss in the fact that, as a non-elite white person, your 'attributes' are generated in the first place using that sort of distribution is something of a philosophical point, and not one I'll go into in this post. The point is, when an observer is analyzing your capabilities, and doing that little regression towards the mean thing to correct for his fairly low r-squared in his estimate, that's the underlying distribution he's using for his priors. He'll likely do a similar computation when estimating how criminal or antisocial you are. Were you, a black guy, his prior estimate of the probability of you being, say, a murderer, and thus potentially very dangerous, would be around 9x higher (if he had a set of priors informed by the FBI UCR or reality).
One can infer that this is probably reasonably advantageous in most cases, although someone visibly Jewish or Japanese/Chinese might in fact do slightly better in terms of the priors.
Ironically, the better the tests you've got available in your battery, the less said priors matter. If you've got, say 95% reliability or more, like a lot of the most popular psychometrics on intelligence, the correction for regression towards the mean is pretty small. On the other hand, if you're doing what I'll call folk psychometrics (and people are actually not half bad at this), that correction is pretty large. So having a lot of tests and such pervasively applied actually reduces this advantage, insofar as it exists.

The next big advantage is the places wherein you look out of place are usually a lot less desirable than if you were, say, a NAM. You are likely to fit in culturally in a considerably larger fraction of reasonably functional neighborhoods.

The final big advantage is that you presently enjoy demographic hegemony. Hopefully you're not so foolish as to fail to defend it.

Debt, the Reason Reactionaries Can be Optimistic in the Medium Term

2011-11-19T20:48:00.001-08:00

Presently the US' debt at the federal level has just crossed over GDP. This of course doesn't actually count federal obligations in the future, such as Medicare and SS, or debt at the state and lower levels, which in many cases is far worse.

There are a lot of similarities with the 70s right now, but there's one glaring difference. In the 70s debt was down around 40% or so GDP. To get debt levels comparable to now, you've got to go back into WW2. The situation is clearly unsustainable. Either action or inaction will result in continuing and widespread damage to the legitimacy and prestige of the existing order. As reactionaries, this is cause for great optimism. The US has never been able to effectively tax more than around 20% of the GDP of the country, so owing 1x GDP is, from a governmental standpoint, a lot like owing 5x one's yearly income. That would be bad bad news indeed for any sane loan officer.

Are the bond vigilantes on the way, or are they still busy in Europe?

Heads I win, Tails they Lose: The Supreme Court and Obamacare

2011-11-17T20:06:00.001-08:00

The individual mandate and Obamacare is up for consideration by the Supreme Court. In essence, the Supreme Court is to decide whether the Commerce Clause actually means anything (hint, if it always applies, it is meaningless). I find the situation rather encouraging. Here's why:

A slight majority of the population wants to see it struck down by the Supreme Court. If that happens, it will cost the Court quite a bit of institutional prestige. I suspect this is what will happen, probably on a 5-4 vote.
If the Court on the other hand decides NOT to strike it down, it'll cost tremendous amounts of prestige as well---again, it'll probably be a 5-4 vote--at least as much as Roe v Wade. Since I'm all about the delegitimization of the Judicial System, this is a no-lose situation, unless the court can pull something truly Solomonic out of its hat. I'd prefer they strike it down---considering I have zero confidence that a Republican administration would, even if it had both houses of Congress and the executive.

REAMDE imitating life, or vice versa perhaps?

2011-11-15T11:34:00.001-08:00

I've recently started reading Stephenson's latest opus, and enjoying it thus far. One thing that really jumped out at me was the War of Realignment, which strikes me very much as a virtual assault by the Vaisya/non-SWPL white/Spartans/Red Staters against the Brahmins/SWPL/Athenians/Blue Staters---depending on whose social schema you prefer to think within. Basically, there's plenty of bottled up animus out there (something I think that explains the OWS crowd and the Penn State riot pretty well), and the features of a virtual world allowed the sides to organize to smite their respective 'Others'. The particular colors involved are accidents, not essence, much like the Greens and the Blues of historical fame.

I suspect pretty strongly that an MMO that allowed such affiliation and conflict on a grand scale would be pretty popular. Even the old Dark age of Camelot game got a good dose of ersatz nationalism going on early and there was a pretty strong geographic bent to the three realms in terms of their players in the real world (e.g., the Pacific Northwest was disproportionately Hibernian). There may be some possibilities in this for reactionaries to precipitate a supersaturated suspension, as it were.

What is Cheap and What is Dear in the Marriage Market

2011-11-12T13:55:00.001-08:00

Continuing the thread from my last post, let's discuss what will cost you serious 'currency' in the marriage marketplace and what will not. Readers should be warned that there is some reductionism here as well as more than the usual dose of candor.

Whether this constitutes something akin to value investing depends greatly on what you, the reader, actually value (actually value, not say for public consumption that you value). Since we're writing primarily for the benefit of the non-neurotypical male, we'll look at the marketplace from that perspective. Readers with other perspectives will need to translate accordingly.

By far and away the most 'expensive' thing is her looks---as in, the approximate percentile where she falls relative to women her age when viewed from a male perspective. This is what will cost you dearly. The only thing even close to as pricey as this is her age relative to yours. If you know these 2 things, you know probably 90% of her value in the marriage marketplace viewed by the average male participant.

The good thing for you is that if you followed my advice in previous posts, you've accepted enough first dates that you now have a pretty good idea just how desireable you are in the marketplace yourself. My personal observation is that, when dealing with marriage-minded women (i.e., women who are consciously aware that they're in the marriage marketplace and not merely the sexual marketplace), women who are of similar marketplace value to you will actually tend to react the most favorably towards you. It's actually NOT the women who are lower on that hierarchy than you that will usually do so---they'll avoid investing too much if they see you as nearly unobtainable. Note also that the mere fact that you're 'interviewing' lots of applicants will improve your status in the whole process, and it'll probably also protect you from becoming overly committed too early.

Here are some things that will cost you a little---they're not free in the marriage marketplace but you might be interested in them.
Her grace in movement: The classic example is the woman who did ballet when she was younger and probably still enjoys dance, yoga, or similar pursuits now. This does command a bit of a premium in the marketplace.
Particular hair/eye/skin coloration combinations that some, but nowhere near all, guys have a minor fetish for: e.g., blue eyes/blond hair, fair skin or red hair/green or blue eyes/fair skin with a few freckles
How pleasant and agreeable her disposition in general is and her overall level of mental stability: This, IMO, is seriously undervalued. I give it a strong buy regardless of who you are.

Here are some things that cost almost nothing---this is to say, a woman with them experiences only a trivial increase to her average value in the marriage market
Intelligence: In general she ought to be within 2 sigmas of you, and most women prefer that you be the smarter one. But in itself this doesn't make her any more marketable, although it may make her harder to find.
Artistic ability: Only will cost you much if its pretty seriously out there--e..g. 3-4 sigma ability in singing
Cooking and other domestic ability: Again, only costs you if its seriously out there, and even then, not much
Height: Won't cost you much at all---it doesn't seem to matter much for women unless they aspire to be models. This isn't true of guys, who seem to get the maximum bonus around 6' to 6'2"--tall enough to be noticeably taller than the average, but not to trigger any uneasiness
Athletic ability: Again, this costs you almost nothing (although any woman who has a significant amount of it nearly guarantees herself around 60th-70th percentile in looks by the simple expedient of NOT being significantly overweight). This also isn't true of guys, who actually do get fairly significant mileage out of being visibly athletic.
Quality of her family, especially her parents: This costs you almost nothing, most guys aren't even smart enough to consider it early on. If her relationship with her father is solid, and her mother is married to her father still and treats him with consistent respect, this is a VERY good sign, and one that the marketplace IMO seriously undervalues. STRONG BUY once again
Level of Religious Commitment: Unless she's an Amish or the like, this costs you almost nothing. As before, I've advised readers that generally only women who have strong, credible, and expensive signals of piety are good risks in the present marriage environment. The good news is that the marketplace hasn't caught up to that recommendation (IMO, that reality) yet, so you won't need to pay much for it.
Non-neurotypical tolerance: I'm guessing you want this quite a bit also. You're in luck, it's practically free. Being an 'engineer's daughter' like my wife doesn't tend to make you significantly more or less desired by the average man, but for you, gentle reader, such a woman is likely to be a much better fit.

Some people like to say that a house is likely to be the most highest stakes negotiation you'll ever be involved in---I disagree, I think selecting your mate is by far.

Is an Efficient Marriage Market Hypothesis Supportable?

2011-11-11T14:51:00.001-08:00

By this I mean, is there a very strong correlation between the percentile rank of the groom's desirability with respect to the female population and the bride's desirability with respect to the man population.
By this, we'd expect 70th-80th percentile males to marry 70th-80th percentile females most of the time, with outliers being rare and noteworthy.

I'm inclined to think that the evidence for this is pretty strong, although I'll concede that measuring the bride's desirability with respect to the male population is amenable to much more rigor than the reciprocal. In the vernacular that neurotypicals use, we say that the two are almost always 'in the same league', and refer to a partner as 'out of his or her league' if there's a serious mismatch---sometimes also---'what does she or he see in him or her'.

Clearly also we see substantially higher rates of divorce when one partner's effective desirability shifts significantly with respect to the other's. The classic examples include a formerly fat wife losing a lot of weight and suddenly noticing that her market position has changed and a husband whose career really starts to take off and thereby gaining a large push in status looking at younger women. It is also clear that as the number of potential marriage partners for the average marriage market participant increases, we should expect to see the market become more efficient over time, since that vastly increases the pool of people that each partner is ranked against.

We could reasonably model these circumstances as saying that each potential bride or groom has a certain amount of 'currency' in the marriage market with which to purchase their opposite number. Oddly, one could reasonably expect this would apply in polygamous circumstances also, since the quality of mate willing to be a 2nd spouse will be lower on average than that willing to be a one and only.

It is this model that I'm going to attempt to develop in more detail with the aim of extending my remarks in

http://chariotofreaction.blogspot.com/2011/02/solutions-that-dont-scale-decline-of.html

The goal is to provide a useful framework for the non-neurotypical contemplating seeking a suitable partner for marriage, although I suspect it will have value to neurotypicals as well.

More things difficult to explain from a Darwinian or a folk animal husbandry frame

2011-11-08T20:06:00.000-08:00

Most people who think seriously about HBD tend to view it from either a Darwinian frame of reference or from the frame of what I'll call folk animal husbandry. Folk animal husbandry tends to talk about things like 'the apple not falling far from the tree'---an expression, which, if you think about it, implies pretty strongly a strong central tendency based on genetics with some variation due to randomness and environment, especially when the modifier, the wind wasn't blowing too hard when that apple fell from the tree, is applied. In addition the expressions about 'good stock' (sometimes 'good pioneer stock', with the stipulation that 'the cowards never came, the weak died along the way' applied) abound in the language.

For most practical HBD purposes, these frames are equivalent. Honestly, creationists are more likely to agree to the practical application of HBD than are evolutionists, probably due to memetic entanglements.
Most creationists, for instance, will not dispute the claim that the races are partially inbred families writ large. The ones who know their Old Testament will even point out the particular pedigrees involved going back to Noah. Most also won't dispute the claim that different families have different tendencies towards large or small endowments in various attributes. The ones who are lower case o orthodox won't even balk when one points out that said endowments are not fair in any human sense of the word---there's no point-based character generation going on here, God is not a Champions or Hero system gamemaster. Those with a good practical command of Scripture will quote 'Hath not the potter power over the clay, to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?' It's also not unlikely that the Parable of the Talents will be shared with you. The creationist feels no need to pretend equality in any human sense, because he is confident that human beings are of equal (or at least inestimable) value to God.

But whichever frame one chooses, one has two huge problems to deal with---two huge brute facts that challenge our frame.

The first is alluded to by a commentator on the 'Final Judgment of Darwin' on homosexuality. The evidence that the trait is partially influenced by genetics is reasonably strong, but the depression in TFR that it causes is extremely strong. Using either frame of reference, one would predict that it would be rapidly extinguished from the population, even leaving aside the impact of various 'social diseases', pograms, or the like.

The second one is the massive differences that exist between women in terms of fertility and ability to safely carry a child to term. Presumably, if Darwin or animal husbandry optimize ANYTHING, they optimize the ability to produce offspring. That's about as fundamental as it gets. Yet we have women like, say, my wife, mother, or great great grandmother who have had no significant difficulties whatsoever bringing a fair number of descendants into the world. On the other side, we have women like two of my sisters in law who have had a great deal of such difficulty, one of whom would not survive a pre-modern childbirth. Similar differences exist in terms of ability to conceive in the first place. Given that even the youngest of Young Earth Creationists believe that humanity is around 300 generations old, that's plenty of time for natural/artificial selection and/or animal husbandry to optimize this pretty key capability and to largely fix whatever genetic variants promote such throughout the population. Compare, for instance, lactose tolerance, which took very little time to become near universal in populations where cattle were common.

Both of these problems point to the conclusion that we don't understand this portion of reality anywhere near as well as perhaps we think we do. This isn't to say that we know nothing, or that what we know is not useful (look to the radically increased yields we've been able to squeeze out of plants, for instance, even before modern 'genetic engineering' or, for instance, the incredible amount of intellectual talent the first wave of psychometrics was able to mine out of unexpected sources). But it does tend to indicate that we should try to avoid straying too far from the actual data.

Further Encouragement for Reactionaries: The Ongoing Tide of Shall Issue CCW

2011-11-06T20:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.moccw.org/map.html
Depicts a map of the states in the US by their Carry Concealed Weapon laws.
Things have come a long way since newspapers were breathlessly reporting on the 'Gunshine State', and predicting apocalyptic bloodbaths on the streets of Miami and Tampa if Florida opened CCW to ordinary, non-politically connected people. Indeed a lot of states even give full faith and credit to several other states' CCW permits.

There are all sorts of reasons people support CCW laws, ranging from the totally prudential (the belief, probably justified by the evidence, that the proliferation of CCW holders in the general population will reduce crime and/or possessing a CCW myself will improve my own safety) to the idealistic (the right to life entails the right to reasonable provision to defending such) to the purely tribal (I strongly detest the people that are against the CCW initiatives and would like to put a stick in their eye). It turns out that I actually agree and support CCW for all of these reasons. But there's another very large reason I find encouragement in this trend, and it's not a reason one hears talked about much.

An effective monopoly on the means of defense and violence is the central pillar of governmental prestige. Since that government is largely our enemy, and having tons of citizens with CCWs reduces that prestige, it is therefore a very good thing. Call for an ambulance, call a cop, and call for a pizza, which will arrive first in a big city? Having lots of people trained to look only perhaps after the fact to the almighty State for protection serves the cause of Reaction. And, ironically, all the training and certification that several of the states put into place in the attempt to mollify opponents and the 'cultural elite' has only succeeded in making CCW holders more effective in all of these aims, the spoken ones and the unspoken ones. Couple this with the incredibly high gun (and more importantly) ammunition sales figures and things start to smell somewhat like an aroma some of my great great great grandparents would have recognized.

Just to add salt into Leviathan's wounds a few years back, Katherine Harris (yes, that one from the whole 'hanging chad' affair) recognized that the CCW fees in Florida (which were quite reasonable already), exceeded the cost to administrate the system, which had astonishingly become more efficient as it scaled upwards. So she cut the price of the CCW permit. That sort of behavior is so alien to government that it is clearly contra-Cathedral.

Concept for a Reactionary Cartoon: The Last Judgment of Darwin

2011-11-05T17:15:00.000-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Judgment_(Michelangelo)

Take the original work, place the standard image for Darwin in the Throne of Judgment.
On Darwin's right, place representative examples of groups with high total fertility---Mormons, Amish, traditionalist Catholics, partriarchal extreme natalist Protestants and the like

On Darwin's left, place various examples of the converse--SWPL's with single or no children, reform Jews, and various winners of Darwin awards. Those who infamously lobby their own ethnicity to control its fertility while leaving other groups alone would figure prominently among the wicked. Those who worked against the relative fertility of OTHER groups and NOT their own would instead be on the right.

And above all, the figure of Darwin: Depart from me ye barren, ye never knew me.

Feel free to steal this concept if you like it. I've also been contemplating a 'Darwin's Inferno'. This of course is all satirizing the replacement of God with Darwin and the irony that Darwin, like the several versions of Baal in the Old Testament, loathes his followers far more than his nominal opponents.

A quick and easy way to identify a (lower case o) orthodox church

2011-11-03T20:48:00.000-07:00

I'm often asked by reactionaries the question: how do I find a church that is actually orthodox and isn't a bastion of mere churchianity? How do I find a church that actually respects and reveres that masculine and not just the feminine? A lot of folks among the MRA/MGTOW crowd have become profoundly alienated from their foundational faith for pretty much this reason. Fortunately, there exists a remnant of churches that do not hate men for being men, and they're sprinkled throughout a wide variety of denominations. Identifying said churches is pretty easy. Here's how you do it.

Count the approximate number of men in the congregation. Count the number of women who aren't obvious elderly widows. If the two numbers are very close together, you almost certainly have a lower-case o orthodox church that will give a damn about your personal and spiritual well-being before you. The dead giveaways are the lack of large numbers of obviously married women without their husbands and the presence of comparable numbers of single men to single women. There's really nothing mystic here---men go where they're wanted and stay where they're appreciated. Churches that don't hate men are also extremely unlikely to hate the authority of Scripture and usually don't shy away from preaching the whole Bible, not just those portions that modern society likes to hear about.

Some Suggested Tax Simplifications

2011-11-02T19:43:00.000-07:00

Since several candidates for president have weighed in with portions of their tax plans, I'll toss a few suggestions in as well. The overriding theme of these suggestions is simplification with minimal impact on aggregate taxes collected---revenue neutral in the language politicos like to use.

1. Make health plans fully taxable. Increase the personal exemptions by the average amount presently exempted by health plans being effectively above the line. People with exceptionally high health care costs during a year can continue to use the itemized additional deduction.
Benefits: This has the potential to effectively disentangle health care plans from employment, which will make labor more mobile. Also, it will tend to reduce the complexity of health insurance in general since there will be no temptation to cram things into an insurance paradigm simply because they can then be paid with pre-tax dollars. Insofar as winners/losers, this will benefit the younger versus the older.

2. Make dividends deductible as an expense (like interest is) for corporations that pay them out. Make them fully taxable as ordinary income (also like interest) for those that receive them.
Benefits: Removes the distortion of incentives for corporations and stockholders insofar as how to return money to the shareholders. Dividends are also a lot harder to game than the other ways and tend to keep companies more honest. In addition, because dividends are antithetical to stock options (because granting a dividend of x cents immediately drops the price of the stock by x cents), this will tend to reduce the amount of options companies will have an incentive to grant. Options can create all kinds of perverse incentives, because if you hold an option, you want the price of the stock to be volatile and tend to care most about the highest spike of stock price rather than the long term value. Consider also how this interacts with stock buybacks (another method of returning value to the customer). Do heavily option-loaded executives have a strong incentive to 'buy low' when executing a stock buyback? Or is the incentive rather to attempt to juice the stock price prior to exercise of options?

3. Seriously consider trashing the Mortgage interest deduction and using the average amount to increase the personal exemption. Winners: renters and those who have paid off their houses already---people who don't care: those who don't itemize---losers: those with large mortgage interest payments. This will also deflate the housing market prices somewhat because people won't be paying for houses with artificially cheap dollars anymore. The college loan fiasco should provide an object lesson as to what happens when everyone is bidding with subsidized dollars (hint, the prices inflate far faster than inflation).

4. Get rid of phase outs. If you want to charge people higher tax rates at higher AGI levels, just charge them higher tax rates. Don't create a bunch of knuckles in the marginal tax curve by phasing things out over various 10k and 20k wide bands thereby increasing the complexity of the tax code (and, in particular, increasing the complexity of optimizing one's behavior and timing so as to pay less).

5. Get rid of customer-side tax credits. If you really HAVE to give a tax credit on, say, Toyota Pious V's or holy light bulbs and washing machines, give it to the seller, not the customer. The ultimate effect will be similar but you'll inflict the complexity of compliance and record keeping narrowly instead of widely.

6. Seriously consider getting rid of the deduction for state, local, and other taxes paid. Instead, once again just raise the personal exemptions by whatever that would average out to. In theory at least, people who live in higher tax areas receive higher services in return for their taxes.

7. Seriously consider moving charitable contributions above the line and having the charities automatically furnish the year end statement to the IRS as well as to the taxpayer, much like employers already do. This would probably remove most of both fraud and unnecessary audits (since the IRS could just add the numbers up themselves) from the present itemization process. Charitable mileage deductions could be eliminated at the same time, helping revenue neutrality and reducing the record keeping and audit complexity at the same time. In addition, if items 3, 5, and 6 have been implemented as well, this will remove most of the remaining taxpayers that itemize.

All told I suspect that these changes would at minimum cut the compliance cost in time by average taxpayers at least in half. Turbotax would, of course, be upset, because very few taxpayers would require anything more than Turbotax basic.

A Central Support of the Moldbug Cathedral: The Civil Service Bureaucracy

2011-11-01T19:33:00.000-07:00

Frequently well-intended semi-reactionary politicians win the fight in the polls and in the majority opinion, but fail to achieve any actual victory. Part of this is the resistance of the Judiciary, which we've discussed at length in earlier posts, acting essentially as a diode blocking reactionary current while permitting current in the 'progressive' direction. Most reactionaries and conservatives are aware to some degree of this dynamic. Victory will eventually require the destruction or short-circuiting of this diode.

But most are not aware that the civil service bureaucracy is an even more central support of the Cathedral. It is probably its oldest and most powerful edifice. Politicians struggle against it largely in vain, and it deliberately leaks embarassing things when it feels itself under attack, things which are invariably blamed on the attacker. When budgets are cut---and in the newspeak, simply reducing the projected rate of increase is deemed a 'cut'---it ensures that the most near and dear things to the public suffer the ax first. It is a bit of a Gordion Knot problem, since the existence of a heavily entrenched civil service prevents any semblance of accountable governance or meaningful movement of the US in non-progressive directions.

However, it so happens I've got a sword to offer you for this turbulent knot. Here it is:

Return to the Spoils System...the bad old days solution where offices were used to buy votes and key supporters---wait a minute? You say that sort of stuff still goes on today, to an even greater extent? Amazing how the civil service acts, intended to act as a brake on governmental corruption simply made said corruption more subtle but vastly more pervasive.

To do this you'd have to repeal all of the civil service acts, and make every single employee of the federal government fire at will---by which I mean they could be fired for ANY reason, and mass firings would be the expected norm when a new administration took power. They would have to enjoy not even the protections that people in the private workplace enjoy regarding 'cause' or discrimination.

From a practical standpoint, to get there from here you might need to do a bit of counterintelligence work---deliberately manufacture totally inflammatory cases where a handpicked person is totally unsympathetic to the population at large but they can't be fired because of the letter of the civil service law.

Now some say that the spoils system is far more democratic than the existing civil service system. That's true, but that's not the reason why I support it. I support it because the existing system is totally in the hands of the enemy and therefore needs to be destroyed or subverted. This is the way in which that can be accomplished. Selling this to the population will require a fair bit of propaganda, probably invoking the fact that the civil service system prevents any actual accountability and is profoundly undemocratic. Weakening the bureaucracy through budget and staff cuts is probably also necessary as battlefield preparation. Fortunately the economic and budgetary conditions give us good tailwinds in that endeavor.

A Free Suggestion to the Catholic Church Regarding Marriage

2011-10-31T15:06:00.000-07:00

I've recently written about the need to synthesize a Marriage 3.0, one that is closer in spirit to Marriage 1.0 than the Marriage 2.0 that prevails in most Western countries today. The Catholic Church's orthodoxy and tradition, if perhaps not its current praxis, almost certainly agrees on these points.

Here I have a suggestion for Pope Benedict. You almost certainly have, through the prestige of your organization, the ability to get the sort of marriage covenants I talk about here:
http://chariotofreaction.blogspot.com/2011/10/mens-rights-activistsmgtow-would.html
enacted in at least several of the states of the US, and possibly in some European countries as well.

You've also got some other cards in your hand that other reactionary elements do not. For instance, you could decide that the only marriages that your churches will celebrate will be the hardcore form described previously. If that's too harsh for your sensibilities, there's another option---you could discount the tuition of any child attending a Catholic school whose parents are in a 'covenant' marriage. I bet you wouldn't even have to discount it much to get quite a bit of adoption of the new marriage standard, especially if you got the ability to easily upgrade an old standard marriage into the relevant statutes. 10% would probably be more than enough to entice the faithful (and frankly, lots of the less than faithful), into it. You've also got the ability to orchestrate peer pressure that most reactionaries can only dream of, and, should you choose to employ it, even a fairly strong measure of moral authority.

One other note, because divorce is one of the most financially devastating mistakes most people make, I bet you'll more than make up the cost of the tuition discounts in increased tithes and offerings anyway. Sometimes the correct moral and doctrinal choice is also the correct financial one.

Question for Readers: Why is such a high fraction of what we teach culturally about the minds of others far more true of non-neurotypicals than of neurotypicals?

2011-10-30T16:08:00.000-07:00

First, let me explain what I'm referring to when I ask this question. As a culture, we implicitly or explicitly teach a model of 'other mind'---that is, a model of how OTHER people think and an estimate of how their internal diplomatic models work. Those models cover things like what sorts of actions or behavior are likely to ingratiate, intimidate, befriend, or embitter the person they are employed on or with.

A pretty crudely summarized version of the diplomatic model that our culture teaches (I won't speak to any other cultures, because I lack sufficient information and experience within them to do them justice) is as follows:

The diplomatic model that most people use is like an integrator. Doing them favors slowly builds up their positive feelings towards you and receiving favors deducts from it, like it was money in a savings account.

This model is fairly simple, easy to understand, and, unfortunately, also nearly 180 degrees from reality. However, it is a fairly good model if you're dealing with fairly non-neurotypical people---e.g. a reasonable fraction of the geek population.

So my question to readers is this: How in the hell did our culture start promulgating such a model? Do the neurotypicals actually think they're non-neurotypical? :-) Or is most of the writing of such topics conducted by the least neurotypical among us, with the exception of such extremely practical literature such as salesmanship training?

More encouraging developments for Reactionaries: The Populace Reloads

2011-10-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/gun-ownership-soars-18-year-high-47-americans-admit-owning-gun

This is fairly significant because of what it says about the population's actual mood. This is particularly so considering that there's a significant fraction of the population that for operational security reasons will ALWAYS lie on such a question if it is asked by someone without a 'need to know'. My family fits in that category. Every question asked by anyone with even a hint of officialdom has an implicit 'that I have a need and a right to know about' appended onto the end of it before it is answered. I understand there's a long tradition of this among English Catholics, and I'm perfectly happy to be a bit ecumenical.

I recall back in the Clinton years joking that Bill was the best firearm salesman in US history. Obama, the chosen One, has clearly excelled him. The prospect of new federal gun control was looming quite a bit more in Clinton's day---right now it is temporarily in the dead letter pile in the DC post office. So the population is sending quite a different message through its increased gun purchases than it was during the 90s.

But there's another piece to this puzzle. In addition to buying tons of guns, the population is buying literally billions of rounds of ammunition. The volumes of ammunition purchased sends a very distinct message. That message certainly doesn't indicate confidence in the Cathedral. I suspect pretty strongly that if such statistics were kept back then, we'd have seen similar spikes in the early 1770s and late 1850s.

Occupy Wall Street's First Potentially Effective Action Against the Banksters

2011-10-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2011/10/bank-transfer-day-gains-momentum-on-facebook/

The OWS folks are pushing to get folks to pass their bucks into banks and credit unions that don't apply monthly fees to their accounts and debit cards (BoA being the most notorious present example). It so happens that there's movement in this direction from hard right circles as well. Just this morning before worship several folks were talking of moving their accounts out of BoA and Wells Fargo for similar reasons.
Now, of course I'm not against the right of any bank to make any contract with its customers that they agree to willingly. However, I'm also strongly in favor of the right of their customers to tell them where they can go with their new fees and what they can do when they get there.

Also, the major banks, with the possible exception of BB&T, are our cultural enemies. They provide vast amounts of money and prestige to the various foundations that are anathema to us. So anything that hurts them is favored. The time to boycott is when a target is already weakened and under assault from other sources as well.

Men's Rights Activists/MGTOW: Would the Following Tempt You?

2011-10-20T19:24:00.000-07:00

Some time earlier this year I inquired of the MRA/MGTOW crowd what they wanted in order to be willing to play the marriage and child rearing game once more.
http://chariotofreaction.blogspot.com/2011/08/mens-rights-activistsmgtow-what-do-you.html

From the various comments, I believe that a reasonable accomodation could be reached between this group and the social conservatives at large. Here's what I suggest:

Create a new available class of marriage. This will have a lot of similarities to the 'Covenant Marriage' that is available in several states in the US. The specifics would include:

1. Much more difficult divorce--basically only the 3 A's (adultery, abuse, abandonment). Nothing like no-fault divorce would be permitted. MRA/MGTOW know very well that most divorce is initiated by women, but this could be sold pretty easily I suspect to social conservatives and would-be white knights as making it more difficult to dump a faithful wife for a newer model.
2. In the event of a divorce, the children will default to the full custody of the father. This could be sold based on statistics (children with only a father do better on most metrics than children with only a mother) and as nipping the whole 'deadbeat Dad' meme in the bud. MRA/MGTOW will of course realize that this puts some shackles on the rationalization hamster by increasing the perceived cost of a divorce to the female partner.
3. Prenuptial agreement would be mandatory. In addition, filing for divorce in a state without this flavor of marriage recognized in statute would trigger a provision in the prenup making is VASTLY more unfavorable to the one so filing. Basically, if you try to get around Provision 1 by divorcing in a state that doesn't recognize this flavor of marriage, the prenup will punish you severely. The arbitrating agency for the prenup should also probably be required to be defined at time of signing, be it a secular or religious agency.

So would this arrangement tempt you sufficiently? One could probably get a reasonable facsimile of this via contract + covenant marriage in the states that have covenant marriage presently, and getting something like this codified into law in at least one state is probably not an unachievable goal.

More unwitting allies in the great struggle against the Cathedral: Amazon

2011-10-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2011/10/amazon-cutting-out-publishers.html

Now Amazon is almost certainly not a diehard reactionary organization. But it is serving our ends by hastening the demise of the publishing industry's business model. It is seriously unlikely that it is an accident that nearly all literature published today has what I call 'authorial affirmative action' and 'histogram distortion' (by this I mean significantly skewing the demographics of who does what in fiction or news relative to the actual frequencies in the real world). They are in fact effectively part of the mainstream media and their destruction through slowly choking their lines of supply only helps us. All hail the heroes of Reaction!
Only the founder of Craigslist is higher in our constellation of stars.
Our regular readers know, of course, that I favor gaining support from people by appealing to their actual interests rather than attempting to spin a web of cosmic justice and prancing unicorns over my cause. Many of our most useful allies not only will not like us as persons or as a group, but will actively dislike us. So be it. Those reactionaries that are Christians like myself can use this as an opportunity to love some of those that consider us enemies.

999 and other Tax Plans that will never happen

2011-10-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

Presidential Candidate Herman Cain, whom I dislike less than Rick Perry and probably less than Mitt Romney, has been talking a lot about his 999 tax plan. In short, he'd like to replace nearly all federal taxes with a 9% sales tax, a 9% income tax, and a 9% corporate tax, all of which he'd greatly reduce any deductions and exemptions for in the attempt at rough revenue neutrality.

I give him credit for recognizing that our current tax system is an abomination, dragged up from the hells of complexity that the Elders of the Second Sigma find congenial. It is precisely because these Elders of the Second Sigma, as represented by lobbyists, tax attorneys, lawyers, et al are so invested in the complexity of the tax system that I predict nothing of the sort will happen on this side of a total collapse of governmental legitimacy and authority. In their attempt to defend the infernal complexity of the existing system, they benefit from the Fundamental Theorem of Reaction---which is to say that any significant change WILL have winners and losers, and if you control the cultural battlespace, it is easy to provide a parade of sympathetic losers and implicitly demand that no change be made unless it is actually perfect, with no losers. Reactionaries know that this is impossible, and generally view this practice with contempt, but it wins elections and useful idiots.

But, since we're on the topic of taxation, let me present---only half-jokingly---a proposed Jehu tax plan. My prediction is that rich neurotypicals, like present day Americans, will loathe this plan because of its open and transactional nature. Here it is:
Create a ladder of classes, possibly even several ladders that branch off the first ladder. For instance, your ladder might look like this

Lower lower class, middle lower class, upper lower class, lower middle class, middle middle class, upper middle class, lower upper class, middle upper class, and a ton of flavors of upper upper class.

This class ranking would be 100% A-OK for discrimination. You could have neighborhoods that living in them required class X or lower, class Y only, or class Z or higher. There would also be perks associated with upper classes, like the police would ACTUALLY bother to investigate identity theft claims you made if you were of class X or higher, for instance. You'd also have a few sumptuary laws as well, so you could effortlessly display what class you were for the social and romantic marketplaces.

Now for the tax. You, the taxpayer decide what class you want to be for the next year. Your net payment to the treasury determines what class you're going to be rated as---perhaps with a sliding window function covering the past decade or so. And there you have it, a tax system that has very low complexity and requires next to nothing in the way of auditors. In addition, it acknowledges the fact that there is a hunger for discrimination---such is just inherent in our status-seeking natures--and chains it to a useful purpose. It also makes status displays a lot less subtle and costly. Everything is pretty transparent and above the board. Historically speaking, this isn't even all that odd of a tax system---it's like a head tax where the upper classes have a surcharge. I predict this same transparency and open nature would cause most neurotypicals to run screaming in terror.

If Anti-Racism were in practice more than just anti-white, what would 'Hate Crimes' laws look like in action?

2011-10-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

Imagine, for a second, that the anti-racists who control mainstream media and politics were actually something more than just an anti-white group...imagine that they were bona fide universalists rather than the glib hypocrites that we've come to know and loathe. So what would one of their favorite causes, the 'Hate Crimes' law, look like?

Such seems pretty obvious to me---it would be a sentencing enhancement that kicked in any time the victim and offender were on different sides of an accredited line of potential hatred. For instance, if the offender was white and the victim black, or vice versa, it'd kick in. If the offender was Jewish and the victim non-Jewish, it'd kick in. No determination of whether particular, as opposed to general, hatred was involved would be made, the sentence would just get the enhancement if a conviction was made. The theoretical justification would be that such crimes, in addition to being unpleasant to the victims, also increase the level of tension on both sides of the accredited line of potential hatred. Someone who is actually anti-racist, as opposed to anti-white, wouldn't lose any sleep over the fact that the number of black offender sentences thus enhanced would be much greater than the number of white offender sentences similarly augmented.

But obviously, this isn't what we see. Hate crime statutes are applied with much much greater frequency as a fraction of interracial crimes when the white person is the offender. It takes a massive hue and cry to even get such considered when the offender is black, and it is rarely applied even then.

The take away here for any honest anti-racists or universalists---assuming any such even exist, is that you're in a bootleggers/baptists alliance with anti-whites, and they outnumber you so incredibly massively in that alliance that it makes no sense to call it a Baptist concern. Some years ago, when I was in college, I proposed exactly such a hate crime law to many bootleggers from the first and second sigma. Needless to say, they weren't enthusiastic at all about it.

I envy the True Finns the quality of their leadership

2011-10-12T20:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlsNRa7vqVw
Timo Soini addresses the world in English regarding the Greek bailout. He speaks to us like we're adults. He clearly lays out the toxicity of allowing banks and corporations to socialize their losses while privatizing their profits.

So you say you want to end zero sum competitions?

2011-10-11T14:59:00.000-07:00

Aretae over on his blog writes:

Incidentally...why I disagree wholeheartedly with the pro-white folks:
Race-based group conflict is fundamentally zero sum, which sucks. If you play zero-sum, you are making the deep problem worse. Trying to make an improvement in your current game position while making the game worse for everyone (including yourself) is a position I universally oppose.

http://aretae.blogspot.com/2011/10/potd_10.html

Obviously I disagree pretty strongly with his position. I'll explain why I disagree first, and then, in the spirit of charity, offer a potential mechanism with which to make his position work.

First, Race-based group conflict being zero sum. I'll actually go further than that---nearly all group conflict resulting in transfers of wealth isn't just zero sum, it is actually negative sum, if for no other reason that it requires resources to defend against it and to administer and enforce the transfers. So I have no particular reservation to saying that such competitions suck. Indeed, I'll go on the record as saying that this is the primary reason why diversity (in the sense that most people today use the word) sucks---it virtually guarantees tons of negative sum conflicts like this.

But here's the rub, you only get to decide (to high efficiency) what YOU will do in such conflicts, and to a much lesser extent what your group will do. You have very very little influence over what other groups are going to do. This is why tribalism is interested in you. If you have another group competing with yours in your society and it doesn't do as well as yours according to some metric, which need exist only in their own minds, it is a good bet that it is going to try to go negative sum on you. If you're not organized to resist it, you're going to get rolled. This is why so many transfers take place away from non-elite white males---they're forbidden socially from organizing for their interests as such. It leads to such pathetic spectacles as MLK or Herman Cain worship, where white males feel compelled to launder the legitimate expression of their own group interests through a minority front man. Compelling white people (and only white people) to couch their interests in universalist terms when they clearly don't believe in them has resulted in an epic harvest of hypocrisy.

If you actually wanted to clamp down and eliminate such competitions, as Aretae professes to desire, you'd need a stable majority who were willing to precommit to punish severely any attempt at such intergroup transfers, even when such punishment was costly to them. Aretae cites the example of the gun rights war, and such is actually fairly instructive---Gun Rights were only advanced when the NRA, GOA, and others stopped relying on moral suasion and cranked up the punishments for their enemies. By basically saying any politician that stands in our way is our enemy, and we'll pursue you into every area feasible to do your career harm, they made the issue largely radioactive for the Democratic party and took it off the big screen legislatively. Such an aggressive consensus doesn't exist for ending racial transfers. Even the most anti affirmative action types rarely pursue the issue personally against their political enemies, and if they did, they'd be villified as...guess what...Racists. And a group willing to punish white people who attempt to tribalize defensively already exists---it's called, nearly everyone in mainstream media or politics, and such onesided mobilization is worse than useless. So while perhaps not an Impossible Dream, it is a highly improbable one.

Steve Sailer's Strategy

2011-10-10T09:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.vdare.com/articles/the-sailer-strategy-updated-three-steps-to-save-america

I don't identify much with the Republican party, and the Republican party doesn't employ Sailer as a campaign consultant, but that's because the Republican party is the stupid party. Sailer's strategy is the best strategy available to them in the short term (because it would be wildly popular) and in the long term (because it would drive demographics towards a state more favorable to their party). It is extremely doubtful they'll embrace it openly though, at least at the elite level, because they're afraid of being called nativists and racists.

His strategy, in brief, is:
Promote affordable family formation in groups that vote for you. Obviously I agree with this---it's also the central pillar of the Reactionary Plan for Victory.
Get most of the Hispanic category to self-identify as white. I've previously suggested peeling away white people with Spanish surnames. His proposal is to demolish the category as a whole for AA purposes, which is considerably more ambitious. What can I say except Amen?
Stop importing people who are going to vote against you. Here Sailer acknowledges the electoral importance of demographic hegemony.

Lee Atwater, were he to rise from his grave and pronounce campaign strategy, would almost certainly give Saler's strategy two big undead thumbs up. Atwater, you see, actually probably had a positive expected value as a strategist for the Republican party, something few modern consultants for the Republicans can claim.

How Violent are Anti-Choice Christianists Anyway?

2011-10-06T20:19:00.000-07:00

First let's start with an estimate of how many of these folks there actually are in the US. Anti-Choice and Pro-Death split close to 50/50, so we can estimate that there are somewhere on the order of 150 Million anti-choicers. Note, for the purposes of this discussion, I'm using the more derogatory name for both sides.
The article below by Gallup indicates that a little less than half has self-identified as pro-life, but only between a quarter and a third supports abortion for any reason. By many people's definitions, this would make 2/3 to 3/4 of the population anti choice. But we'll go by their self-description on the poll where they were asked to make a binary choice.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/118399/more-americans-pro-life-than-pro-choice-first-time.aspx

This shouldn't be terribly surprising. The pro-deathers have generally had to defend their gains and make advances through the courts, something they wouldn't have to do if they had a majority.

Now, a lot of attention gets paid to anti-abortion violence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence
Since Roe v Wade in 1973, there have been 8 murders of abortionists, abortion employees, or escorts of same. On Wikipedia you can read about every single case, making this a terribly accurate statistic---it is an actual enumeration.

From our friends in the FBI's UCR---they've made their stats available back to 1960 through
http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/

Estimated murder rate * Year United States-Total
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1973 9.4

1974 9.8

1975 9.6

1976 8.7

1977 8.8

1978 9.0

1979 9.8

1980 10.2

1981 9.8

1982 9.1

1983 8.3

1984 7.9

1985 8.0

1986 8.6

1987 8.3

1988 8.5

1989 8.7

1990 9.4

1991 9.8

1992 9.3

1993 9.5

1994 9.0

1995 8.2

1996 7.4

1997 6.8

1998 6.3

1999 5.7

2000 5.5

2001 5.6

2002 5.6

2003 5.7

2004 5.5

2005 5.6

2006 5.7

2007 5.6

2008 5.4

2009 5.0
Notes: National or state offense totals are based on data from all reporting agencies and estimates for unreported areas.

* Rates are the number of reported offenses per 100,000 population

United States-Total -

The 168 murder and nonnegligent homicides that occurred as a result of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 are included in the national estimate.

The 2,823 murder and nonnegligent homicides that occurred as a result of the events of September 11, 2001, are not included in the national estimates.
Sources: FBI, Uniform Crime Reports as prepared by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data

From this we can see that the homicide rate per 100k is between about 5 and 10 throughout the period of interest. A reasonable average estimate might be 7.5 per 100k. We're also talking about a period of approximately 37 years. So the expected number of homicides per 100k people over this span of time would be about 7.5*37, or about 277.5.

Now, let's further assume that anti-choicers are like motorcycle gangs---i.e. only 1% are HARDCORE. That gives us a radical anti-choice population of 1.5 Million. We'll assume the other 148.5 million are just poseurs.
So if we assume that this radical anti-choice population is as murderous on average as the average American, we'd expect them to produce 277.5*15, or 4162.5 murders. If we further assume that this group's murderous rage has only a tithe directed at abortionists and their collaterals, we'd expect to see 416 murders. These are terribly weak assumptions when one considers them---I mean---only 1% of the group being considered at all, only having a murder rate equal to the population as a whole, and only directing 10% of their total red-handed wrath at their supposedly hated foes?

So how many abortionists and minions of abortionists did they actually kill again?
8.
That's it, less than 1/50 of what we'd expect even under these ridiculously low assumptions.

Clearly this group is a LOT less violent than they're given credit for being. One would almost think there was an organized media effort to skew the public's histogram of perceived violence by groups.

Tyranny of the Glib, Scourge of the Second Sigma

2011-10-04T20:12:00.000-07:00

Nearly all major politicians in the US fall into that band of intelligence between around 120 and about 135, in short, the second sigma. You can add to this most major cogs in the bureaucratic section of the Cathedral. Both Bush the Younger and Kerry, for example, fell in this band per their military IQ tests.

People can generally relate and communicate effectively within about a two sigma range, so it shouldn't be too surprising that so many politicians are clustered here. I know it's popular in this section of the blogosphere to say that 2 sigma isn't very smart, but let's be real here---2 sigma is about 98th percentile. Someone at that level is the smartest person an awful lot of people know personally. It is a lot smarter than the average. A person at this level honestly can aspire to pretty much any profession with reasonable chances of success.

Of course there's a serious dark side to this...the tyranny of the glib.
People in this range are NOT like average people, but they don't trigger the 'scary smart' defensive mechanisms of said ordinary people. So they don't typically have it rubbed in their faces on a daily basis that are not representative of the set of average people. Most people in this range also have no significant daily contact with anyone of below average intelligence, and a lot of people in this range have no significant contact with anyone below about +1 sigma of intelligence. I don't begrudge them this, as I enjoy it myself but it has huge implications when you consider that this is the class that rules America.

They generate a tax code and other rules of unholy length and complexity. Even the agencies that enforce their rules don't understand them. They generally think that if they can handle or outsource the complexity, that everyone else can too. Excessive complexity is a poison in society, and they pour it out by the barrel---probably not realizing that it hurts them also, although not as much as it hurts the center of the bell curve, let alone the left tail.

They believe that anyone can handle college if they're willing to work moderately hard at it, so everyone should. This is mostly true in the segments of society where they dwell, but a woeful mistake elsewhere. They also believe that everyone's kids can learn like theirs do---and nothing could be further from the truth, different methods work for each range of intelligence, and 1950s and earlier teaching textbooks at the college level will actually tell you this. In short, a lot of the contradictions of the PC, blank slate view of man in the educational sphere are largely invisible to them.

They're at the optimal range for glibness, and they love to morally posture and erect shibboleths that are painfully ridiculous to anyone in tangential contact with reality while imposing the costs of their moralizing on their lessers. Ever notice how nearly everything they do just HAPPENS to favor them in status competitions?

It is rare to find a politician or major bureaucrat who is smarter than this---most people who are 3 sigmas or above rarely have such roles, partly because they are alien to the general population and they know it, hell, most of them aren't even neurotypical. They don't expect the experiences of the general population to match theirs, so they're on the whole a good bit more humble about the prospects of reshaping their fellow man.

I believe that there is profound wisdom in the general population's distrust of any politician that does not fairly strongly profess a fair bit of religiosity. How else is one to constrain someone far smarter and more glib from running roughshod over you? I suppose there are always pitchforks and torches.