A Sense of Those Who Matter

http://www.vdare.com/articles/graduate-school-admissions-race-and-the-white-status-game

This is particularly damning:
"Data gathered by Richard Sanders of the UCLA Law School shows that 53% of the black students who enter law school fail to qualify to become lawyers, versus 24% of white students. About 40 percent of black law school graduates (many of whom will have taken out crushing loans to pay three years of tuition) never pass the bar exam, compared to 15 percent of whites. Some will also waste additional years working dead-end day jobs while paying to take bar exam review courses at night, before finally giving up in despair."

Anywhere intellectual standards are imposed, major racial differences appear. Ideally, the analysis would also include Jews, who are not a comfortable fit within the white category. Their numbers are doubtless even better than those of the Asians. My first thought in seeing numbers like these is to wonder whether a sufficient number of men in the top IQ percentile are pursuing the ideal of progress, rather than just the idol of Mammon.

A Metaphysical Metamorphosis

The contemplation of God, and heaven, is a kind of burial, and sepulchre, and rest of the soul; and in this death of rapture, and ecstacy, in this death of the contemplation of my interest in my Saviour, I shall find myself, and all my sins interred, and entombed in his wounds, and like a lily in Paradise, out of red earth, I shall see my soul rise out of his blade, in a candour, and in an innocence, contracted there, acceptable in the sight of his Father.

John Donne

Riffing the 60s

This country began a process of self-destruction in the 60s, under pressure of the Cold War, from which we have not even begun to recover. Indeed, the vicious developments of that era have transformed into a vicious circle of perpetual decline and degradation. The Johnson-Nixon socialist axis, the interpretation of the war as a moral crime by the intelligentsia, the Johnson-Nixon civil rights laws which placed the federal government in the novel position of enforcing racist laws (previously racist laws had been state prerogatives), the Johnsonian decision to import Mexico, with its impervious traditions of corruption and ignorance--all of these shocks struck home in just a few years and all constituted overreactions to legitimate problems (except the immigration issue). And today, respectively, socialism grabs ever more of the economy and our liberty, political correctness has fully blossomed into entangling vines that encumber us all, government mandated racism (added to socialist paternalism) has further submerged the black race in sordid pathologies and has damaged the lower orders of all races, and one third of Mexico now resides in America, traditions largely intact, though increasingly succumbing to the lowest temptations offered by a government promoting socialism, racism, family dissolution, and, generally, the cause of the unproductive members of society against the productive. 

The Truth: A Firing Offense

http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_nonblack_version_john_derbyshire/print#axzz1rp99cmCG

 This respectable old journalist was fired from the National Review for this. Also, it seems to have set the hearts of the PC mob aflame with fury. But, it's merely a rather mild, even bland compendium of common sense in black dealings. It says that blacks, relative to whites, are stupid and violent: take corresponding precautions. Oh, and our blacks have a racist bent, driven by historical resentments and an inferiority complex.

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/12/save_date

Some important intangibles are left out:

Most are in our favor (we beat them at innovation, IP culture, lower corruption, better environment protection, political and economic and intellectual freedoms, lingering traditions of liberty and freedom and individualism)

Some are in their favor (we're hurt by political correctness and blacks and mexicans and government unions and a parasitic, morally corrupt lower class and a "financialized" upper class of similarly low character).

Also, it's not just us vs. them. China is encircled by a number of medium powers (Russia, Japan, S. Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia) and one medium power with potential to become a great power (India). The only one of those nations with a China infatuation is Russia--and Russia is still in rapid decline, with an economy entirely dependent on natural resource extraction (a dumb economy) that recently lost its position among the top ten world economies. Top 17 economies circa 2011(notice that Brazil is almost in the top 5):

			GDP
Nation	Rank	Population	Total
U.S.	1	313	14800
Japan	3	126.5	5500
China	2	1337	5880
Germany	4	81.5	3380
France	5	65.3	2600
U.K.	6	62.7	2250
Italy	8	61	2070
Russia	11	138.7	1500
Spain	12	46.7	1400
Brazil	7	203	2200
Canada	10	34	1600
India	9	1189	1650
Mexico	14	114	1080
Australia	13	21.8	1270
Netherlands	16	16.8	790
Korea, South	15	48.8	1050
Turkey	17	78.8	780

Three of these have been on a rapid growth trajectory, doubling in size every 7-10 years:

China for 30 years

India for 20 years

Brazil for 10 years

A Documentary on Taxation

It might be useful to literalize the notion that we pay a third of our income to the government. In this vein, a film depicting people working directly for all the government departments instead of paying taxes (indirect work) could also be amusing. Four months total for the government, eight months for one's family. That would be 3-4 weeks under a drill sergeant or commanding officer, another 4 weeks under orders from the local nursing home or retirement resort, 2-3 weeks attempting to impart knowledge and values to the new and rising generation, a delighful 2-3 weeks supporting the duskier races in their slums and ghettoes and prisons, and on and on and on... Being assailed by the hundreds of federal agencies one after another, then by hundreds of state and local agencies could create a memorable image.   

Horizon Shifters

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/jewish-genius/ An excellent piece on what strikes me as a fascinating mystery: why has a small Semitic tribe had such vast influence over mankind's intellectual development? Note particularly the statistical oddity that, for a normal distribution (like IQ), a modest advantage in averages translates into a great advantage at the far ends of the distribution. For example, assuming the Ashkenazim possess average IQs of 110 and gentiles run at 100--this means that a member of the former group is 13 times as likely as a member of the latter group to manifest a 160 IQ (which is 1 of 30,000 gentiles and 1 of 2,300 Ashkenazi). The ratio would be 7:1 at 145 IQ and 4:1 at 130 IQ. You see the pattern. This may largely explain the huge disproportion in Jewish Nobel prizes and Fields Medals relative to any other group. Also, these numbers match what I recently found in looking at gentile vs. Jewish acceptance rates at the top 10 American universities. Supposedly, half of such students are accepted on academic merit. This means the top tenth of a percent of gentiles are accepted--their average IQs exceed 146. At that level, statistics would lead to the expectation of a 7.5:1 acceptance ratio. Jews have a 14 fold greater acceptance rate, meaning the top 1.4% make it in. This would instead imply a 13 point gap in average Jewish-gentile IQs, assuming meritocratic standards are applied equally to Jews and gentiles. But, it's likely that the Jews work harder and have more admissions through legacies and university employee preferences--so the gap probably is closer to 10 points after all. I may post some of the stats I gathered later.

On Iran

I think it would be worth a try to finance insurrection by Iran's powerful non-Persian minorities, though I doubt it would work. Our real options, I suspect, are an air war with a minor dilatory effect on their nuke program or a ground war that dismantles it (and perhaps installs a proper regime)--to make things simple we should also break up the country on ethnic lines, to achieve stability and an American exit, and to weaken post-war Iran. The other road is to appease our way into a nuclear arms race among the Middle Eastern nations. 

The CIA Factbook says there are 15 million Azeris, 8 million Kurds, and 5 million other non-Persians in Iran. The total population is 78 million. Without the Kurds and Azeris it would be 55 million. If the Kurds in Iran, Iraq and Syria united, the new Kurdistan would contain about 15 million, a respectable force, especially given their substantial oil resources. There are 15 million more Kurds in Turkey, who might also break away in future. New Kurdistan's main weakness is a lack of access to the ocean if the new state's borders are set according to current population distributions. And the new Azerbaijan would have 24 million, also with oil. Both of these new nations ought to be sustainable and would weaken Iran and Iraq. The Turks derive no benefit beyond pride from controlling part of Kurdistan. They would be spared the expense of borders with Iran and Iraq, and the expense of fighting the endless Kurdish insurgency. Unfortunately, on this plan, the Iranians would not lose any significant part of their oil and gas reserves.

Criminal Law Reforms: African Style

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/books/michelle-alexanders-new-jim-crow-raises-drug-law-debates.html?ref=books Basically, she's saying that if arrest rates do not adhere to disparate impact standards, they're racist. She claims that the only major reason more blacks are arrested is racism and that drug laws must be repealed because blacks have disproportionate arrests under those laws. I will pass over her idiot imputations about the whole system being an anti-black conspiracy. This entire line of reasoning signally fails to break with the long tradition of blaming white America, and only white America, for black problems. Instead of constructive criticism of the black community, black leaders persist in destructive criticism of black-white relations. Blacks have chosen to adopt a parasitic role in America. It's unhealthy for them. It's unhealthy for their hosts.

The Conservative Climate

This climate change denial is just a case of anti-science populism, driven by the fact that conservatives believe reductions in emissions will rob them of their last freedoms. Aggressively opposing efforts to conserve the environment is not conservatism, it is selfish stupidity. Keep in mind this problem could largely be solved by going nuclear--especially by using either fast breeder reactors or liquid flouride thorium reactors, for both of which we have effectively unlimited fuel supplies. A massive system of nuclear reactors could also produce liquid fuels for transport and allow America to be energy independent and environmentally responsible. The military certainly believes in climate change and has policies in place to guard against the international security contingencies it will create.

As a general principle of thought and action, conservatives ought to think of ways to improve the world, rather than inflexibly hold to all that is just because it is. If conservatives continue their present braking strategy, the socialists will once again take the initiative on an inescapable issue and transform it into another step toward dystopia. Instead of choosing a conservative response to the threat, they will be run over again by the socialists. The current conservative "leadership" deserves to be run over.