Science?

http://www.thephysicsforum.com/trash-can/121-ctmu-b-s-brilliant.html
This is a thread on a grand theory of reality by Chris Langan, purported IQ 180+, which Langan claims is based on pure logic. Yet, I rather suspect some lapses in logic. Plus, it's deliberately written in a manner contrived to exhaust the reader. Nevertheless, the last post on the thread above quite annoys me: a debate on science is here ended because it is not based on "current scientific understanding." Does the moderator not realize that this understanding is always evolving when it is not revolutionizing? Science that stands still is dead. Also, the thread contains no substantive criticisms of the grand theory--that is, no indication that the theory is even out of the bound of current understanding. But, it's not PC--he claims to prove God's existence, and the big no-no that tends to follow, intelligent design. Also, he favors eugenics.

Chess Testing

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/hypothesis-iq-and-chess
I am surprised at this result, if accurate. Probably Kasparov, one of the all time greats, has a highly imbalanced intellect in terms of his natural talents. I expected a 150 (1 in 3000) or higher with significant imbalance. That he's only about 135 indicates much more imbalance than I'd expected. A genius, though, is by definition imbalanced--though typically even their weaknesses exceed the average.

Does Krauthammer Know He's a Leftist?

http://charlierose.com/watch/60306163

A smart guy, but his political positions resemble those of Democrats from the 60s through the 80s, depending on the particular issue. Can there be any serious doubt that the next generation of "conservative" columnists and opinionators will more closely resemble more recent generations of Democrats? I'd like to hear his response to these Moldbuggian tropes:

The great power center of 2008 is the Cathedral. The Cathedral has two parts: the accredited universities and the established press. The universities formulate public policy. The press guides public opinion. In other words, the universities make decisions, for which the press manufactures consent. It's as simple as a punch in the mouth.

The Cathedral operates as the brain of a broader power structure, the Polygon or Apparat - the permanent civil service. The Apparat is the civil service proper (all nonmilitary officials whose positions are immune to partisan politics, also known as "democracy"), plus all those formally outside government whose goal is to influence or implement public policy - ie, NGOs.
(There's a reason NGOs have to remind themselves that they're "non-governmental.")

....

For a hardened denialist such as myself, who has completely lost his faith in all these institutions, attempting to understand the world through the reports and analysis produced by the Cathedral is like trying to watch a circus through the camera on a cell phone duct-taped to the elephant's trunk. It can be done, but it helps to have plenty of external perspective.

And for anyone starting from a position of absolute faith in the Cathedral, there is simply no other source of information against which to test it. You are certainly not going to discredit the Times or Stanford by reading the Times or going to Stanford, any more than you will learn about the historical Jesus by attending a Latin Mass.

Leftism Eats Itself

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/penalty-marriage-obamacare_767194.html
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/01/the-new-federal-wedding-tax-how-obamacare-would-dramatically-penalize-marriage
This is just another transfer, a huge one, from the productive classes of society to the parasitic classes (esp blacks, mestizos). It might discourage gay marriages, though. The Left has gone from a philosophy of softening the blows of being an incapable and of making unproductive personal decisions--to a practice of encouraging willful incapacity and frivolous personal decision-making--not to mention luring them into the temptation of deliberately gaming the system. This both corrupts and infantilizes the population; it empowers the professorial-bureaucratic-media complex, the Cathedral. The Left has reached the point that it is now destroying wealth (not just spending it) faster than the private sector can generate it. This is the crucial inflection point that an unchecked Leftist tendency always reaches. In America, due to our innovation infrastructure and our lucky positioning in human history, and despite the concentrated, energetic, bipartisan Leftism of the last 70 years, it has proven to be an unusually long road.

Racial Profiling

Dost Doubt the Powers of Propaganda and Mass Delusion?

http://www.isegoria.net/2010/10/no-child-has-ever-been-killed-by-poisoned-cand/

Whaling on the Left

Guidebook to the vast corpus of Moldbuggian assaults:

http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/

 

I recommend reading one of the 3 introductory series he wrote: How Dawkins got pwned and A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations are superb--An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives is also good if you're desperate to dose yourself with another 50,000 words.

 

Moldbug will never be popular because he crushes cherished delusions Left, Right and Center--then Left again for good measure. But, when he turns his powers to interpreting U.S. history (for the last 100 years synonymous with world history) he sports like a killer whale at play, one that found passage from ocean to lake, now the only predator that matters among freshwater creatures that have never seen his like before. His activities may amount to a succession of executions, but there is an art on display and a power and a wonderful whale-sense for selecting victims that sustains the interest perhaps indefinitely.

Men's Rights and the Anatomy of Reaction

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/women-battle-online-anti-women-hate-manosphere/story?id=20579038
The Southern Poverty Law Center--a bunch of commies, jews, fags, and slags who've appointed and proclaimed themselves supra-Christian accusers of all evil in this world, holier than Jesus--think Chateau Heartiste and other assorted bloggers who operate from a realistic male perspective are evil, violent, malicious, mendacious. The "manosphere" is increasingly a branch of the "reactosphere" since (except the Christian reactionaries) both are grounded in reality--a reality which both political parties deny. When the leftist media comes down on you, it's a sign of headway. Also, a lesser light among the lefties just did a typically incompetent and inaccurate hit piece on Nick Land, the British philosopher who writes "Outside In." If you look at the map of Dark Enlightenment thinkers below, the connections are telling: with the exception of the Christians, all of these groupings revolve around some key aspect of reality that the Left denies or omits. Eight groups are listed, three count:

1. Techno-Capitalists,
2. Ethno-Nationalists,
3. Christian Traditionalists.

The relations among these three are predictably problematic. In theory the first and second or the second and third could come to terms in formulating a new dispensation--though difficulties abound. But, the first and third can only clash. Of course, 'twas was not always so. In centuries past capitalist and techno were not so tightly aligned, and capitalism itself is not an existential threat to Christian life and thought. Catallaxy is not anti-Christian. But, in these days of genetic engineering and evolutionary science, of neurological pharmacopeias and expanding machine intelligence--the technological underpinnings of twenty-first century capitalism represent conceptual catastrophes for Christian theology. In practice, it may be that two camps will coalesce--the Techno-capitalists with some sympathetic Ethno-nationalists, and the Christian Traditionalists with another contingent of Ethno-nationalists.

The future lies with the Techno-capitalists, whether they achieve more power in the West or not. The Christians cannot countenance the nano- and bio-tech revolutions. If empowered, they will crash the technoplex and render their realm geopolitically prostrate, as Land's "relentlessly self-enhancing" oriental realms scout new destinies. As to the Ethnos, though their present importance shines clearly through dusky leftist miasmas, what does the meaning of ethnicity reduce to when time comes that all humanoid inceptions aspire to become genetically engineered triumphs of power and aesthetics? Their perspective on reality would have to evolve so radically in face of such techno-leaps as to vanish their identity. Or, they could turn techno-denialist like the Christians. Either way, tide-taken relics of advancing storms, the time of the Ethnos draws down . Science has grown to the dimensions of a Demiurge--learned to throw lightning--and, cast under His dominion, the lesser deities will learn their place soon enough, or be new made in his image.

Vive la France?

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/10/marine-le-pens-eurosceptic-front.html


'Twould indeed be slightly ironic if the French were to lead the way out of the Brussels trap, this transnational bureaucratic dictatorship, successor disaster to the Soviet Union. It matters not a whit to me who leads, so long as it happens. And the French have been infatuated with the political about-face for 224 years. Also, they've frequently allied themselves with the Russians, who've returned to a semblance of strength and self-respect. Another incentive: to distinguish themselves from their great historical rivals, Britain (where Socialism is again on the march and only Muslims have free speech) and Germany (which is still prostrate with "national guilt" and reveling in masochistic denigrations of itself). And to snub the Americans, as this emphatically would, also forms a priceless triumph for the French, high and low--especially with a walking caricature of political correctness trying to perfect socialist tyranny from the White House. In any case, I'd rather contribute to "le Front National" than to either of the twin tools of cowardice and corruption "competing" America.

Diversity Uber Alles

http://theden.tv/2013/09/23/the-diversity-racket-at-lehman-brothers/#sthash.M7wHEgZq.dpbs

 The parasite load in America is beginning to tell. Even without a major external threat, societies can stagnate or implode.


http://theden.tv/2013/09/27/benjamin-ginsberg-jews-have-undermined-wasp-america/#sthash.4dbU9jIb.dpbs

Those who have nothing to fear can speak the truth, including true jokes. It seems that in America diversity is merely a euphemism for Jew-rule. The immaculate chosen people kindly condescend to "reorganize" the rest of us so that we are all equal to each other, even as the chosen ones remain "more equal." The WASPs constitute a failed ruling class, a group who fell in the usual way: they no longer believed in themselves as the rightful rulers. This was also the deepest cause of the fall of the Soviet Union.

Rhetorical Strategies to Smite the Orwellians

An essay on how to live in a world of PC bullshit:
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

I was most impressed with these 3 sections: The Conformist Test, Pensieri Stretti, Viso Sciolto (though I do not consider the HUAC an incidence of "zealotry")

Known and Unknown Possibilities

 

A brief summary on why intelligent women should reproduce:
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/07/assortative-mating-regression-and-all.html
Note that the .5-.7 estimate is based on how much assortative mating has occurred among each parent's ancestors (more past assortative reproduction raises the estimate).

In the distance, thunderings and flashings of the overman:
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2012/06/plenty-of-room-at-top.html

Average person=1000 deleterious mutations affecting IQ. Top hundredth of a percent IQ=900 such deleterious mutations.

And if we did a few dozen rounds of in vitro eugenic breeding (iterated embryo selection, IES), how much might this number be reduced? Of course, other genetic goals would receive some priority as well (eg, girls should be blessed with Marilyn Monroe's physical attributes). The principle limit on this technology may well be lack of knowledge of the phenotypic effects of various genes and gene-gene interactions. Some mathematical problems cannot be solved--experiments become necessary. Extrapolating the recent rate of progress, I suspect IES will be feasible within 10 years, though it will be suboptimal at least with respect to the gaps in our knowledge of which genes do what. And on the non-linearity problem, Hsu said, "Most of the genetic variation in intelligence is additive...fortunately for us linear effects still dominate the population variation* of quantitative traits. As any engineer or physicist can attest, linearity is our best friend :-)" Inescapable non-linearity, tragically, renders climate predictions invalid.

One problem with Hsu's analogy of this process with plant breeding: the ethical environment is completely different. Blind alleys in plant breeding are merely a waste of resources; in humans, they may entail great suffering.
But, the potential effects, as derived from such analogies, are spectacular: 32 SD increase in corn oil production per plant (an effort still making progress), an increase in flying speed of certain flies from 2.2 to 170 cm/sec in 100 generations of directed breeding without significant downsides on other characteristics.

There is a prevalent sense among neurologists that human intelligence has already undergone intense evolutionary selection and that it is subject to certain physical limits. These points are relevant to neuro-eugenic prospects. Hsu in the comments responds to this: "the results imply lots of extant variation to work with. Just imagine flipping all the (-)'s to (+) in a particular person. You get a lot more than +5 SDs." Hsu in the comments: "One important aspect of the toy model I discuss in the talk is that if it is correct, then any couple has the potential of producing a nearly max IQ child, because there will be little overlap between the locations of their (-) alleles." Aha! The path around reproductively negligent female geniuses.


A finely compacted interview of Hsu on his genetics work:
http://intelligence.org/2013/08/31/stephen-hsu-on-cognitive-genomics/
Note that China is financing a major attempt to take the lead in practical human eugenics.

His recent intelligence and heritability presentation (less compacted):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgCSkGeBUNg&t=5m2s

In sum, this strikes me most forcefully--I had been unaware of the nearness of eugenic capacities--also unaware of their probable potential in the neurological realm. To paraphrase Boswell, my thoughts upon this awful change are in general full of wild apprehensions. This presages a Turn in human affairs, like to surpass all that came before. The implications are all-encompassing.

Two are One

From Mangan's blog in response to the RNC Chairman's statement that Republicans are against "self-deportation" of illegals:

The only thing the Republicans seem to be good for anymore is debating abortion and slightly lower taxes. I saw a remark the other day to the effect that the Soviet Union would still be around if only they had had an opposition party that was effectively identical to the Communists, except for their position on abortion. That is close to what we have today with our two major parties. So I guess that means that the country has a future.

In other words, the Republicans are what Moldbug calls the Outer Party to the Democrat's Inner Party--or, in old Communist terms, the Republicans are simply "useful idiots."

A Twist of Perspective

http://mangans.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-new-colonialism.html


This is not only true, but a curt, effective rhetorical counter to leftist diversity-mongreling.

Kerry on Egypt from Pakistan

John Kerry, Obama's traveling jester, exercising his Bushian semantic acuity on Egyptian developments:


“The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all of whom were afraid of descendance into chaos, into violence,” Kerry was quoted as having told Geo. “And the military did not take over, to the best of our judgment – so far. To run the country, there’s a civilian government. In effect, they were restoring democracy,” he added.



Hey, maybe its time for the Pentagon to restore democracy in America, to prevent further "descendance" into violence and disaster. I think this might mean the Cathedral is more enamored of democracy in theory than in practice. Which isn't to say that they're about to drop the pro-democracy propaganda shtick. Rather, it means that democracy will mean whatever they say it means. They are fairly fond of this trick, commandeering the language and reforming it for the purpose of moral betterment and good-thinking. What they call "amnesty" these days actually means get-out-of-jail-free for millions, and get-into-America-free for millions more. In the case of Egypt, since the army proved more friendly to good Egyptian friends of the Cathedral than the Muslim Brotherhood was, democracy means that the army resumes power. Now, do you think his Pakistani hosts quite follow these sophisticated involutions of intent and flights of interpretation? Who knows when the State Department's priests of permanent revolution may alight upon Islamabad as a promising new proving ground for their religion? When you consider that FDR inaugurated permanent revolution in America, could it be any way surprising that State translates this foundational stance into foreign policy? State's long struggle against colonialism, a struggle that catastrophized much of the third world, was certainly revolutionary and certainly stopped at nothing: they undermined the French in Algeria and the Pentagon in Vietnam, amongst many other glorious achievements against non-Marxists everywhere. Still, Kerry's bold turn of phrase shows the way for any adept dictatorship to keep State off its back. At least, that is, until State goes even further Left, as inevitably it must.



http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/170519#.UfyHDCIo6Rt

http://www.xenosystems.net/the-islamic-vortex-part-3a/

Minions of the Tyrant

http://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/hunting_innocent_patriots_on_a_pretext
Apparently Breivik, the right-winger who killed several dozen civilians in Norway, "liked" a letter this fellow Hamilton wrote. Consequently, British Counter Terror units came down on Hamilton and commenced smearing him and lying about his activities. His real crime was opposing the replacement of Englishmen in England with Muslims and blacks. I don't often hear about Muslim preachers being prosecuted when some terrorist "likes" their babblings toward a new Caliphate.

The Pope Decides to Tolerate His Priests

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-pope-francis-says-gays-should-not-be-judged-20130729,0,3689944.story
I suppose at this point the "Church" is just about ready to give up religious faith in order to ensure that it retains or recovers people's "moral faith." And the only way to acquire moral faith under the American hegemony is to follow the US Gov leftward. That is, it's more important for the Pope to be politically correct than Catholic.

Media Omissions

http://rochester.ynn.com/content/top_stories/490926/jury-finds-roderick-scott-not-guilty/
Just a little companion piece to the trayvon fiasco. Note that this case got no national publicity. Lies of omission are the media's best weapon, because they are the most difficult to discover--and the majority have no time for it. The omissions are legion and sprawl all over the spectrum of topics. Essentially, if you have not acquired independent expertise in a given topic, the fair assumption is that the media has manufactured your opinion on it--the only question is which media did formed your mind for you, that is, which generation of media (the 40s, the 60s, the 90s). In the long run, which media brand you consume hardly matters at all. Fox follows MSNBC with an average 20 year lag, just as republicans follow democrats.

Unthinkable Patterns

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-hunt-for-great-white-defendant.html

Most people have only a subconscious awareness of this pattern--and all that their subconscious actually picks up is that white men are evil. Consider that the time factor may be The Cathedral's crucial advantage. These "great white defendants" are typically smeared by the media for months before they are vindicated. Not being especially bright or rational in any of us, the subconscious ineluctably absorbs months of anti-white propaganda. Is this long training in "good thinking" supposed to be effectively counterbalanced by one day of articles that offer quiet, subdued, coldly factual confirmation--not of innocence, of course--but of dubious acquittal? The Cathedral can fail every attempt to generate its ideal defendant--that is mere tactical failure--the powerful subterranean current of its endless propaganda will continue to win the war, will continue to erode away the foundations of Western civilization.

And didn't Sailer provide a convenient collection for us? Do you know of anyone out there today--or even any publication--that does better journalism, within such a range of specialization, than Steve Sailer?

Maverick Wisdom

This is my rather lengthy selection from an interview of Edward Luttwak in Tablet Sept 2011
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/76739/qa-edward-luttwak?all=1

I'm especially interested in his interpretation of the trajectory of Iranian society, his compare/contrast of intelligent government with "innocent" leaders against ineffective government with clever leaders, and his insight into the typically third world government of Pakistan, a government with "no institutional integrity":


Why are so many Jews so stupid about politics?
They have not had a state for 2,000 years, they have had no power or responsibility and it will take centuries before they catch up with the instinctive political understanding that any ordinary Englishman has. They don’t understand politics, and of course they confuse their friends and their enemies, and that is the ultimate political proof of imbecility.

When you look at the current conduct of American policy in the Middle East, do you see any coherent policy or strategy?
Obama is no different than most previous administrations that come into office with ready-made solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Jimmy Carter was the first one, and his plan was redacted by Zbigniew Brzezinski. It led to Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem because his brilliant idea was to subject Egyptians and Israelis to a Soviet-American condominium, which was a terrible idea, and so Sadat created his own reality. It was really one of the funnier moments in history. The national security adviser officials, and I believe Brzezinski himself, came out with a lot of negative statements when Sadat first made his announcement because he was ruining their policy scheme, which was, of course, impossible.
Obama is in that tradition. He came in with an impossible policy scheme, which is first you get Israelis to stop agreeing to settlements, and then you proceed. Of course, that doesn’t make any sense. When you draw a border that is what matters. The Israelis removed all the settlements from Sinai without any American involvement in two minutes after the agreement was made with Egypt.
There’s nobody involved who is anti-Israeli like there were in the past, when there was a strong Arabist position in the State Department. The people in the Obama Administration read the New York Times and they don’t know Arabic, and therefore they are operating systematically with false categories. The fundamental error with regard to settlements is a very simple one: When borders are established, borders are established, and settlements are neither here nor there. This notion that when some faction of Israelis puts a camper on a hilltop that this changes anything is a fantasy.

A fantasy both on the part of the people who put the campers on the ground and also American policymakers.
They’re both equally deluded.

Do you anticipate violence this fall between the Israelis and the Palestinians?
I don’t anticipate violence this fall. War leads to peace. Peace leads to war. So, now logically we should have war. And the Iranians, of course, would love to pay for one. But the moment there is an intifada, the Palestinian regiment collapses and gangsters take over. So, the moment the violence escalates they stop fighting and they start talking peace. The moment the talking appears to be approaching an actual peace, they start an intifada.

Do you think the cost of the violence and other social ills that come out of the stalemate you are describing is something Israeli society can easily afford, or do you think there is any alternative to it?
I’m not sure it’s a cost.

Because the strategic depth that it affords and the control over those borders is more important?
Listen, my wife is a very good cook. And we have a housekeeper, who is an even better cook. It’s a weird situation, but I think my housekeeper is a better cook than any restaurant in Washington. She is a simple woman with no education, from Chile, and she just happens to have a superhuman talent. She being such a good cook, she achieves wonderful effects with very strange ingredients, and strange combinations of ingredients. Israel’s success as a state has been made possible by Arab threats of different kinds. Arab violence or threats of violence are part of the Israeli soup. There are certain levels of violence that are so high that they’re damaging, and there are also levels that are so low they are damaging. There is an optimum level of the Arab threat. I would say for about nine days of the 1973 war, the level of violence was much too high. Even when Israelis were successful, the level of violence was destroying the tissue of the state. Most of the time, the violence is positive.

When you say that the effects of Arab violence are positive, you mean that they generate social cohesion inside Israel?
Lenin taught, “Power is mass multiplied by cohesion.” Arab violence generates Jewish cohesion. Cohesion turns mass into power. Israel has had very small mass, very high cohesion. If only the Palestinians understood that, they would have attacked the Jews with flowers.

Shimon Peres says, “Iran is a decaying corpse of a country and the idea that they are any long-term threat to anybody, based on demographics and based on the rickety state of their economy, is a joke. So yes, it would be terrible if they ended up with an atomic bomb, but otherwise, Iran is not a long-term strategic threat to anybody.”
I think to get a good view on Iran you have to put yourself in the shoes of Hezbollah. Hezbollah is wholly dependent on Iran. Without Iran, Hezbollah is just a band of hotheads with a few thousand highly trained men. So, view Iran from Hezbollah’s point of view. What do you see? It’s a regime that has been around since 1979 in one way or the other. Is it consolidated? Is it functioning better and better and getting more and more support? It’s not. Is it getting more dependent on police repression or less? The answer is more. So, from the Hezbollah point of view, you realize that your days are counted because the regime is in a downward spiral.
There is a good measure of social control in Iran, and that is the price of genuine imported Scotch whiskey in Tehran, because it’s a) forbidden, and b) has to be smuggled in for practical purposes from Dubai, and the only way it can come from Dubai is with the cooperation of the Revolutionary Guard. The price of whiskey has been declining for years, and you go to a party in north Tehran now and you get lots of whiskey. And it’s only slightly more expensive than in Northwest Washington.
But on the other hand, the regime is doing something for which they will have my undying gratitude—that is, they have been manufacturing the one and only post-Islamic society. They created a situation in which Iranians in general, worldwide, not only in Iran, are disaffiliated. They are converting Muslim Iranians into post-Muslim Iranians.

One way to look at the place of Israel in this landscape is “Wow, you have a functioning neo-liberal state with a tech economy second to Silicon Valley amidst the rubble of all these failed Arab states. Imagine the Syrian army trying to attack anybody. Egypt’s army is incapable of doing anything despite $10 billion worth of American weapons, Iran is falling to pieces, Lebanon is still a mess, Jordan is a joke of a country with a Palestinian majority.” On the other hand, you could look at it and say, “Israel is a tiny country in a chaotic neighborhood where it will always get sucked into conflicts with its neighbors and will never have a moment of peace.”
Yes, everything you say is correct, but there is a third element you are omitting. The very innermost circle of Israeli security is actually within the 1967 borders. And there you have almost 1.5 million Arabs, some Christian, some Muslim. The current situation is helping consolidate their loyalty to the Israeli state. If you ask them, “Are you loyal to the Israeli state?” They will say, “Oh no, we hate them all.” Are they involved in terror plots? The answer is that out of the 1.5 million, the ones involved in terror plots or even plain criminality of any sort, they could all sleep in my house. Or if not, they could sleep in a motel.
But there is even a more fundamental issue within Israel, which is the functioning of the Israeli economy and its impact on Israeli society. What’s happened, as you know from these latest demonstrations, is that the Israeli economy has become so successful that it has generated big numbers of millionaires, which means that four-room apartments in Tel Aviv cost as much as they do in New York. Israel is becoming Aspen, Colo., where normal people have to travel 20 miles to go to sleep because they can’t live anywhere within Aspen proper.

Are strategic minds nurtured through upbringing and education, or is the ability to think strategically an inborn gift, like mathematics?
It’s a gift like mathematics. The paradoxical logic of strategy contradicts the logic of everyday life, it goes against all normal definitions of intelligence we have. It only makes sense if you understand the dialectic. If you want peace, prepare for war. If you actively want war, disarm yourself, and then you’ll get war. Virile and martial elites understand that kind of thinking instinctively.

Here’s an easily falsifiable statement, but there’s something in it that interests me and I want you to pick it apart. I would start with the moment when George W. Bush met Vladimir Putin and said, “I looked into his eyes and saw this was a man I could really trust.” So, my thesis is this: If you’re Vladimir Putin, and you rise to the top of this chaotic and brutal society after going through the KGB, you must be some kind of strategic genius with amazing survival skills, because the penalty for failure may be torture or death. This kind of Darwinian set-up exists in many countries around the world. What does it mean to be head of the security services in Egypt? It means that you had to betray your friends but only at the right time, and you had to survive many vicious predators who would have loved to kill you or torture you, or otherwise derail your career. By the time you become Vladimir Putin or Omar Suleiman, your ability to think ahead and analyze threats has been adequately tested.
By contrast, what does it take to become a U.S. Senator? You have to eat rubber chicken dinners, you have to impress some rich people who are generally pretty stupid about politics, and smile in TV commercials. The penalties for failure are hardly so dire. And so, American leadership generally sucks, and America is perennially in the position of being the sucker in the global poker game. That’s the thesis. So, tell me why it’s wrong.
Even if your analysis is totally correct, your conclusion is wrong. Think about what it means to work for a Putin, whose natural approach to any problem is deception. For example, he had an affair with this athlete, a gymnast, and he went through two phases. Phase one: He concealed it from his wife. Phase two: He launched a public campaign showing himself to be a macho man. He had photographs of him shooting a rifle, and as a Judo champion, and therefore had the news leaked that he was having an affair. Not only an affair with a young woman, but a gymnast, an athlete. Obviously such a person is much more wily and cunning and able to handle conflict than his American counterpart. But when such a person is the head of a department, the whole department is actually paralyzed and they are all reduced to serfs and valets. Therefore, what gets applied to a problem is only the wisdom of the aforementioned wily head of the department. All the other talent is wasted, all the other knowledge is wasted.
Now you have a choice: You can have a non-wily head of a department and the collective knowledge and wisdom of the whole department, or else you can have a wily head and zero functioning. And that is how the Russian government is currently working. Putin and Medvedev have very little control of the Russian bureaucracy. When you want to deal with them, and I dealt with them this morning, they act in very uncooperative, cagey, and deceptive ways because they are first of all trying to protect their security and stability and benefits from their boss. They have to deceive you because they are deceiving their boss before he even shows up to work. And they are all running little games. So, that’s the alternative. You can have a wily Putin and a stupid government. Or an intelligent government and an innocent head. There’s always is a trade-off. A Putin cannot be an inspiring leader.

You believe the story about the courier who led us to bin Laden?
I believe it and I believe it categorically. Look, the Pakistanis had been sheltering Bin Laden. But in these matters, the only way to proceed is to develop thoughts that are based only on uncontroversial facts. Any analysis of the Bin Laden story tells you that there was active Pakistani complicity simply because people cannot go to Abbottabad and live in a compound without somebody asking questions. For one thing, Pakistan has this system where foreign citizens have to obtain the residence permits and renew them, and there are foreigners including Arabs living there, and they would be asked to show their papers. Pakistani complicity is certain. That’s point one. Point two: The guy uses couriers. Therefore, if you’re going to find him, you had to find the courier. The courier story is not the cover story.

Why kill him?
They were under orders to kill him.

Wouldn’t Osama Bin Laden be a source of useful intelligence? Alternately, one good reason to kill him is that you have a deal with the Pakistanis—“we’re gonna get rid of this problem”—then you need to kill him, because otherwise he might start talking about who protected him for the past 10 years.
There was no deal with the Pakistanis. There’s no institutional integrity. Therefore you cannot make deals with the Pakistani system. They would betray each other. There was no deal.

They killed Bin Laden simply because of the inconvenience of a trial?
They killed him because of the fact that if we captured Bin Laden, every Jihadist in the world would have been duty-bound to kidnap any American citizen anywhere and exchange him for Bin Laden.

The Tide Comes Back In

From the Wire Services:

Former President George W. Bush wants Republicans to consider immigration on its own merits, not just as a party saving piece of legislation, he said during an interview on ABC's This Week. "Sometimes, it takes time for some of these complex issues to evolve. And it looks like immigration, you know, has a chance to pass," Bush said. "The reason to pass immigration reform is not to bolster a Republican Party -- it's to fix a system that's broken. Good policy yields good politics as far as I'm concerned." The bill's uncertain future in the House after the Senate passed it last week is causing some concern. But Bush argues the bill is too important not to pass. "It's very important to fix a broken system, to treat people with respect and have confidence in our capacity to assimilate people," Bush said. "It's a very difficult bill to pass because there's a lotta moving parts. And the legislative process is-- can be ugly. But it looks like they're making some progress."

Jeb Bush came out in favor of this amnesty + new immigration wave not long ago.
And I'm sure Bush Sr. supports the notion as well--he certainly did not oppose Reagan's amnesty in 86'. That amnesty produced the largest immigration wave in American history, and a baby-boom among the immigrants.
This is seen by "La Raza" (the race), as Mexicans prefer to call themselves, as an invitation to the Reconquista--the reconquering of the territory lost in the Mexican-America War. Here is the progress they've made so far in the states that we formed out of our conquest of Northern Mexico in 1848:

Pop % Hispanic
CA: 38M 39%
AZ: 6.5M 31%
NM: 2.1M 47%
TX: 26.1M 38%
NV: 2.8M 27%
UT: 2.8M 13%
CO: 5.2M 21%

Total: 83.5M 36%

Whether they try to make a clean break with the Union or not (and I do hope they provide the Western World with a lesson sorely needed), they will have at least de facto political control over most of the old Mexican Cession within 10 years. Considering how Mexicans run Mexico, optimism here would be a lie so large that only our elite could get away with it. And, remember, La Raza recovers its lands with or without the pending amnesty. As usual in America, it's merely a question of whether leftist results are achieved quickly or slowly. The direction is always Left. We live in a one party state that showers the blessings, and only the blessings, the rewards without the risks, of capitalism upon the elite and inflicts socialism upon the vast remainder. The only decent political position that remains to us is dissidence, outright opposition to the sick alliance of egalitarian moral fanatics and crony capitalists who now run the country untrammeled.

Leviathan Their Puppet

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/our-american-pravda/
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-journalism-official.html

Like the authors of these two articles, I too believed, and for a long time, that I was savvy enough to "interpret" the press--that I could discount the known prejudices of press institutions and writers. But, in the course of a few years in my early thirties, the truth came to me. It is a thing impossible to accomplish. And the most insidious category of lies of which the press stands guilty--a category fully functional only in an atmosphere in which no effective opposition exists--are the lies of omission.

I ought to note that I have not read all the material on the anthrax, POW, and nuclear espionage stories in the first article. The other matters mentioned there are well-known.

Of the second article, may I submit that I do not frequently happen upon a writer possessed of an almost egregiously superlative talent--but, when he turns his talents to the provisioning of my entertainment and edification by means of firing a forest of dead lies and clearing the land for new growth, and prophecies rebirth in allusive, many-tentacled, metaphor strewn prose, I count myself blessed. Consider his comparison of official journalism to its predecessor, an implicit admission that no simple solution to the problem of accurate information exists. Yet, as a de facto branch of the civil service, the pseudo-apolitical caretakers of the people, see how we find ourselves closely mewed up in a statist circle of thought. State education and the state-adjunct press determine (with condolences to Emerson) the horizon beyond which almost no one can think. From within that horizon an occasional chink of light only may sparkle from the great beyond, to be interpreted by most inmates as a random reflection of the real world within the horizon, since either they do not realize an horizon exists or they believe what lies beyond it is mere madness; but in fact the potentially saving light emanates either from the internet or an old book.


Examples of journalistic fraud and negligence:

No press outlet thought through the meaning of the real estate bubble before it burst, though some saw the bubble (eg The Economist).

"Paleo" nutrition was excluded from the press, though convincing scientific literature extends back 100 years, and the world grows obese.

The press carefully excludes the real effects of immigration policy in the white world, though America is threatened with socialism economically and a recapitulation of Brazil's social experience--while Europe faces submission to the Caliphate.

Reporting on trade policy ignores the collapse of strategic industries in the US and Europe, in process of being systematically overrun by state-financed corporations of the Far East.

Crime reporting ignores the black on white race war in America: blacks commit 83% of violent inter-racial crimes between blacks and whites, and 20,000 black-on-white rapes occur per year compared to less than 10 white-on-black rapes per year.

Reporting of racial inequalities ignores the IQ differences, the cultural differences, the different criminal propensities, different levels of accomplishment--or ascribes black/mestizo deficits in each area to racism, thereby inciting racial animosity among both the superior and the inferior.

War reporting tilts against the US at every opportunity, while giving the enemy the benefit of the doubt. Also, war reporters rarely explain that a "humanitarian" counter-insurgency is just another way of saying "guaranteed failure with profoundly anti-humanitarian consequences."

The list of mindlessly idealistic official wisdom and state-sanctioned-and-sanctioning bullshit never ends--is there a field of thought or action in which the official press is actually right?



The unexampled power of the press in pseudo-demotic society is similar to that which Hobbes ascribed to state officials who "resembleth the Nerves, and Tendons that move the severall limbs of a body natural," one of whose responsibilities it is "to teach the people their duty to the Sovereign Power." Hobbes also remarks on the ultimate spiritual guides directing the goals of his Leviathan, men such as Jesus and Paul, and those with authority to expound upon these men. Our ultimate guides today, though, our cultural Marxists, deem themselves holier than these, present themselves as supra-Christians and Platonic philosopher-kings, presume themselves, in short, more idealistic than their forerunners and more consciously divorced from (transcending?) reality. Oh, and godless as well, since their ascetic stance and posture would be incomplete if they were to nestle themselves under the warm, comforting promise of divine succor.

Vigorous Intertwinings

Even the purest abstractions cannot escape the contingencies of reality, math and physics as co-dependents:

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2013/06/horizons-of-truth.html

Across the Universe

Cleverly concise and creative comment on this article: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/universe-size/

Most people perhaps imagine themselves to be in the centre of an unfathomable sphere with an 'outside', (familiar to the concepts we have evolved as a species in our everyday environment).
However, the 'shell' of that sphere is actually the single point source of the big bang.
So, for any observer anywhere in the Universe, all directions lead back to the source and are the same distance.
1. This means that an observer is always at the centre of their Universe, wherever they are.
2. In their respective reference frames, they are also the furthest away from the big bang, so in terms of time, they are also at the edge.
Because of relativity, you will be at the centre and at edge at the same time, wherever you go.
There is no "outside", except time before the big bang, and time beyond the present.
I imagine the Universe as a sphere turned inside out. In 3D the surface becomes the centre, while in 4D the centre is the 'edge'.
Imagination can ignore relativity and consider 'now' at anywhere else in space, but reality is constrained by it. Any civilisation evolving from the 'red blob' looking back at us 'now' may see the same kind of redshifted blob destined to produce us!

A Fine Summary of the "Gay Marriage" Gambit

I found this in a comment (5-13-08) on this blogpost-- http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/05/ol4-dr-johnsons-hypothesis.html
Needless to say, virtually no one in America actually understands the context "Michael S." elucidates:

The "gay marriage" issue can be understood as a consequence of the redefinition of marriage under a regime of income taxation, the welfare state, and private sector tax-incentivized non-cash employee benefits. This originally took place without the slightest consideration of homosexual relationships.

For most of its history marriage was an institution intended to provide stable conditions for the rearing of children and orderly procedures for transfer from parents to children of marital estates at the time of death of one of the spouses, with an appropriate provision for support of the surviving spouse through dower or curtesy. Homosexual relationships being sterile by definition, marriage had nothing to do with them. Even in societies that did not stigmatize homosexuality in the way Judeo-Christianity does, there was never any historical instance of "gay marriage." Harmodius did not marry Aristogeiton; Hadrian did not marry Antinous. Such a thought would have been risible to them, as well as to the rest of the society in which they lived.

Relatively recent legal and economic changes have tacked onto marriage certain aspects of which it never partook in the past. Spousal and family insurance benefits, tax advantages (in some cases) to being considered as a couple rather than as two individuals, etc., now indeed may outweigh in their economic importance the traditional legal consequences of marriage. Dower and curtesy, primogeniture vs. gavelkind, etc., all were more significant in a time when most deaths were intestate. Today most people with enough assets to worry about take care of such concerns via prenuptial agreements, wills, and trusts. Given all this it does not seem surprising that people in homosexual relationships want to climb aboard the insurance and welfare benefits-driven gravy train that marriage has become for heterosexual couples.

Marriage is a touchy issue because it is a nexus of civil society, religion, and the legal imprimatur of government. Most people are happy with the former two remaining as they are, whereas those that are not happy with them want to use the last of them to force a change in the others. Add to the mix the Frankfurt-school objective of demolishing the patriarchal family as a prerequisite to the total rebuilding of society. See, for example, Marcuse's "Eros and Civilization." I suspect it is more due to the influence of the Frankfurt school than we credit that "gay marriage" has become so significant as a focus of cultural warfare.

Thought Control by Enforced Mendacity

One of the reasons PC is considered to be a facet of or even simply synonymous with cultural Marxism:
http://my-ear-trumpet.tumblr.com/post/45260346809/in-my-study-of-communist-societies-i-came-to-the

The Sage Presages: Triple Threat

https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/sustainability/

1. Sub-replacement birth-rate in high-IQ nations
2. Dysgenic fertility pattern in high-IQ nations
3. Historically unprecedented continuous accumulation of mutational load throughout the population in high-IQ nations

=Civilizational collapse if left uncorrected


Cochran's corrective to apocalypticism:

"Again, I don’t believe a word of it [referring to a commenter's claim that average English IQ levels have dropped 15 points (1 std dev) in the last 120 years]. As for the declining rate of innovation, you have to have a really wide-ranging understanding of modern science and technology to have any feeling for what the underlying causes are. I come closer than most, and I probably don’t know enough. You don’t know enough. Let me tell you one thing: if genetic potential IQ for IQ had dropped 1 std, we’d see the end of progress in higher mathematics, and that has not happened at all.
Moreover, the selective trends disfavoring IQ all involve higher education among women and apparently nothing else – a trend which didn’t really get started until much more recently.
Not long enough, nor is dysgenic selection strong enough."

Leftism is Inversion

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/06/the-gay-guide-to-wedded-bliss/309317/





Our leftists are not stupid. Banal, yes, but not stupid. This gay train started quietly down the tracks several decades ago, mostly traveling nights, colors subdued. Gradually all were exposed to the sight of the ugly thing and, despite a particularly dark and dangerous run of track encountered soon after it left the station, its course thereafter became ever more promiscuous and visible, with a visibility perhaps slightly enhanced by some friendly cosmeticians, stylists, tailors, and most of all strategic concealments--what scoffers may have misapprehended as propaganda. Observing this generation of dark passages, the Obama team, with exquisite acumen in temporal judgment, then announced to the expectant gathered gay world that the time is come, a glittering runway to the future awaits--the Big Apple, Showtime, Broadway! Free at last, free at last, great Obama almighty, free at last! And the train bears down on us brilliant, garish, violet, pink, mauve, lavender most of all--yes, all the hues so much beloved of the heavy-boned-and-browed, bristle-faced unimpregnable female, this enduring, ever-renewed insult to Darwinian fitness. And a huge phalanx of cheerleaders lines the track, Harvard, the USG, the NYT, The Atlantic, the American Federation of Teachers, Hollywood, the Donkeys leading the Elephants and their "churchly" friends as always to the mire. And the people, well, the people somehow no longer think what they used to think of this train, their aversion somehow (who knows how?) turned to welcome, to "tolerance," or, at least, to submission. How gay is that?

On Colonial Redemption

When we fail to oversee the natives, our Africans remember how Africa works (and yes all 4 baby mamas are black): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2313882/Tavon-White-Murderer-fathered-FIVE-children-FOUR-guards.html





Ah, the psycho-pathology of African life. No wonder the Cathedral wants to flood us with mestizos--eventually these mestizos will presumably do what they did in Mexico: literally breed the Africans out of existence. Africans once roamed the wilds of Mexico. Now they're gone. Except, it happens that your average mestizo has 3% African DNA. The question then arises, what is the maximum amount of African blood consistent with a manageable race? Perhaps Brazil holds some answers to that one, with its wide ranging racial experiments.

Biomedical Innovation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb15kf7W1wk

 

If they can make this happen, a technological pursuit I've been tracking for 15 years, it would shift the paradigm for valve repairs. The younger the patient, the more important and advantageous this would be. Lacking this innovation, as is currently the case, patients who are not full-grown face multiple surgeries to ensure that the size of the valve keeps pace with the growth of their hearts. The benefits even for adults are considerable: the 2% yearly mortality/morbidity resultant from the artificial valve is eliminated--repeat surgery is unnecessary--and the need to take harmful medications ad infinitum is avoided. In theory, this would place the patient, post-surgery, in the position of a person with a healthy, natural heart. Researchers in this field, therefore, deem tissue engineered valves the holy grail. Given that this remains at least a year out, even in Europe, and that younger patients would presumably (and justly) receive priority over adults. The relatively high frequency of valve issues in the population means this would impact hundreds of thousands a year just in Europe and America--it would constitute the most important triumph for tissue engineering so far.

A Quondam Reaganite, Now a Cassandra

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/sundown-in-america.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

This assessment is reasonably accurate overall, but a bit too pessimistic medium-term. He implies virtually no jobs will be created in the next ten years because so few were created in the last ten. Given the nature of the recent job losses, their concentration in certain sectors unlikely to be knocked so hard again, I think the CBO estimate of 16 million new jobs in the next ten years is only moderately optimistic. Stockman also overestimates the damage done by money printing, in whatever esoteric form it occurs. It does economic damage. But, not of an apocalyptic nature in such a situation as ours. Inflation results. Financial bubbles consequent upon inflationary policies produce investment climates with significant amounts of uneconomic investment--which hinders economic growth. But all of these missteps are matters of degree.

The structure of our political economy, however, generates a long-term trajectory that is catastrophic: inflationism, welfare statism, militarism, open immigration,  the manifold delusions of political correctness and the arbitrary restraints it imposes upon thought and action,  a trade policy that causes the loss of strategic industries,  a trade policy that causes the loss of strategic industries, crony capitalism (especially for the benefit of Wall Street). All but the last two of these are natural outgrowths of a political philosophy grounded in cultural Marxism--crony capitalism simply represents corruption, whereas our trade policy derives from a combination of this more insidious form of Marxism and simple elite corruption. The scale of this corruption is unexampled, and it may be argued that the Cathedral's determination to debase the currency is inextricably linked to this cronyism, that the two are even symbiotic. The cronies, after all, just do the Cathedral's bidding for the benefit of both.

A few headwinds, here unmentioned, are out of our control. China and the high growth states will drive up resource prices, and we will pay those higher prices. Sustaining reasonable employment levels in face of increasing automation, leaving aside trade policy, makes for a challenge, particularly given the political implications of the disproportionate incapacities and pathologies of American blacks, Indians, and, to a lesser degree, mestizos. And these are the growth demographics, also coddled, excused, and enabled by the PC ideology.

The solutions he proffers, excising most of the democratic political elements that remain in Washington, would scarcely cure our elite of cultural Marxism, the largest problem--the problem which, if not cured within the next generation will make an end of Western civilization. Requiring a balanced budget is foolish, counterproductive, and practically infeasible. Theoretically, though, his reforms would at least reduce corruption. Yet, ignoring cultural Marxism in favor of an anti-corruption crusade is like giving water to comfort and strengthen a man who was just shot in the gut, but ignoring the wound that threatens his life.

Some Holdouts Speak

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/stupidity-a-malady-of-the-cultural-elite

 

This is a Catholic take on the course of Western decadence. I have noticed that intelligence and erudition are not often lacking in the Catholic intellecto-sphere. Even the comments maintain a standard.

 

I might riposte with the sense that a true tracing of our moral decline rounds right back to Christianity itself, especially the Puritan branch which eventually produced that fleur du mal, New England's Christian Socialism. It is this Christian Socialism that infected our elite more than 100 years ago, claiming the title of "Progressivism," and which morphed and melded, under increasing Jewish-cosmopolitan influence, into a mode of Europeanized thought better termed cultural Marxism. What we now have, then, is a hyper-egalitarian form of Christianity minus God. And this set of values not only determines the political and social trends of America, but is exported aggressively to the world. Our first target, Western Europe, is notable for being even more thoroughly dominated by cultural Marxism than we are--not surprising if one considers that we played Dr. Frankenstein to their corpse-monster after the War. They are our creatures; our elite made them what they are, without any interference from elements like the masses--nor even from powerful residual institutions (like the Catholic Church), such as slow down leftist reforms in America. Our elites availed themselves of the tabula rasa they'd created--one reason FDR determined upon unconditional surrender at war's end.

 

In considering of this article, I reflected further upon the value system in which our elite places its faith and for which it exercises its power. One of the handful of pivots is the spiritual and material benefits of diversity upon which they presume.

 

Supporters of diversity presuppose uniformity of human talents across groups, at the genetic level at least, and consider that all signs of non-uniformity of talent indicate different cultural and other environmental conditions. They do not believe in meaningful genetic diversity across groups. They therefore deem cases in which a group is underrepresented to be proof that there is prejudice against that group in the particular field. They seek, then, to achieve cultural/racial/sexual diversity in each field, at whatever cost to other factors, such as competence. The problem arises from the initial presupposition of equal human talents across groups: this is quite clearly not the case. There is in the world both genetic and cultural diversity across groups, to different degrees and variously intermixed. In other words, to achieve "diversity" these diversocrats ignore real genetic diversity and seek to include diverse cultures in every field at equal levels of representation, which has the effect of reducing real cultural diversity. The attempt to equalize the interests and achievements of every culture guts the particularity of each culture, its essential character. So they seek to ignore one form of natural diversity (the genetic) and reduce the other (the cultural). It's a nice Orwellian game for the religiously earnest devotees of diversity to deny one major form of human diversity and suppress the other.

 

"Diversity," as used by these people, our elite, actually means uniformity. They want uniformity, at least in the masses. They believe this will render the world more politically stable and also make people easier for them to mold because more interchangeable. They fear that the scientifically confirmed genetic differences between human groups, races especially, will exacerbate the usual tensions caused by cultural contrasts. Of course, they have a point here. But, one may well question both the means and the ends of their workings. Is uniformity really a superior human future to one featuring conflict and competition? Have they failed to notice that China, like all healthy nations, seeks primacy, and not merely of the primus inter pares sort? And this egalitarian fantasy combines with the infatuation with pity-motivated and -justified government social supports to create a society which inflicts equality by leveling down. After all, the standard may always be lowered, but the more it is raised the more exclusionary it necessarily becomes. The decline of standards throughout society follows ineluctably. Anyone who disagrees with this interpretation of the meaning and priority of diversity is rigorously excluded from the elite. Intellectual diversity is proscribed.  

 

This is the wrong way. The incapables ought to be discouraged from breeding, and if an entire group manifests disproportionate incapacity, then that group ought to move to a nation dominated by its type--or submit to its fate, as determined by talent and effort, among superior people.

A Simple Solution and a Less Simple

http://www.morganwarstler.com/post/44789487956/guaranteed-income-auction-the-unemployed

If our governing class were competent and had some sense of noblesse oblige, we might see a program like this instituted. Of course, they are incompetent and ignoble. Result: problem people (those with negative economic value under our current system) become more problematic--and their problems become contagious, instead of being contained and ameliorated.

 

The second discussion is less simple, much-much much-much longer, more entertaining and intelligent--and more realistic in assessing the likely elite response to the "dire problem":

 http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/03/sam-altman-is-not-blithering-idiot.html

Perhaps he overestimates the difficulty of solving the problem under the current dispensation. Paperwork may easily be created for anyone who can even marginally read--what do you think our regulators do other than create mostly superfluous paperwork requirements? The problem is the failure of our Marxist overlords to make clear the distinction between the lifestyles of workers and those of welfare cases. They prefer to integrate these opposing types into "diverse" communities with virtually identical effective incomes. The bottom quarter or so of our society has insufficient incentive to work. And this temptation to idleness is inflicted upon precisely those limited human types who are least capable of independently discovering the value of work, its saving characteristic of offering a point, a goal to the life beyond crude hedonism and recreational criminality. The Marxists, being atheists, ought to understand this issue all the more clearly for their lack of supernatural faith--which is one of the other two main sources of purpose in human life, along with family. But, at best, their idealistic preconceptions foreclose any such insight. At worst, they're playing a most cynical political game. Make-work is thus the most realistic of the solutions on offer to save the increasing numbers of economically useless Americans from degeneration. The guaranteed income idea above is one well-considered form of this make-work option. It would likely produce lower birth rates among the make-workers as well, a happy Darwinian benefit.

"The Latitude is Complete"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnLo2XJY2qU

 

If justices were appointed by merit, judge Posner would be on the Supreme Court. This is an excellent summary of how Constitutional law actually works and why it ought really to be called "Supreme Court law" instead.

 

I quote below the crucial lines:

"Almost the entire body of constitutional law was created by the Supreme Court justices by free interpretation or no interpretation of the Constitution, just using the Constitution as a jumping off point...The text doesn't impose a limit; precedent doesn't impose a limit. There's obviously something circular. Supreme Court justices make up some principle.[which becomes a precedent] If judges follow that [precedent], they're just following the law, they're not making anything up. But, they're applying something which was itself made up by judges. And the Supreme Court's not bound by its precedents. It can always overrule them or distinguish them to death or distort what they say. So they have a complete free game, except for public opinion."

 

How the Constitution is overridden, based just on examples given in the interview (many others could be provided):

invert meaning (searching with a warrant)

ignore ($20 amount in dispute or creation of air force or right to bear arms)

change meaning of terms (cruel and unusual punishment, right to counsel, self-incrimination clause)

 

Most of these are crucial provisions of the Constitution. They are emptied of their meaning at the will of the Court. This is why the Court is the unassailable pinnacle of our permanent government. And almost everyone in the government is permanent--the Presidency is the only remaining position with any power that is non-permanent. Congress is de facto permanent, the Court de jure permanent. The professoriate is permanent. They tell the government and the media what to think. The media is permanent. Government and the media together manufacture consent among hoi polloi. And big business plays nice with the government because, when the government is permanent and powerful, this is simply good business.

 

All this amounts to a vast web of interrelations that was produced, per Moldbug, by adaptive evolution--not, for the most part, conscious planning. (Admittedly, there are periods when adaptation occurs more quickly, like the American Colonial Revolt against the King, the shredding of the Articles of Confederation in favor of the Constitution, the War of Northern Aggression, the FDR leftist coup, the LBJ-Nixonian conspiracy to explode welfare spending, open the borders to elect a new people, and regulate everything still standing). Of course, conscious planning on such a large scale has historically produced mostly bad results--the Soviet Union being the largest example (though the French Revolution remains the archetype of this fallacy and Burke's book the archetypal critique). Nevertheless, it's worth asking: for whom is this system of ours adaptive? Cui bono? The intellectuals determine the permissible range of thought, the mind space within which the functional rulers operate and to which they confine their subjects. The bureaucrats and plutocrats play the practitioners to the professors' theoreticians. And the (state-sponsored) media and state-run schools convey the parameters of existence to hoi polloi. Our Dear Leader Obama would inform us that all well-intentioned people, not just Americans, benefit from this system. Our Dear Leader might then compare our system to the ideal republic of Plato, led by the philosopher-king, a disinterested genius who would ensure the (perhaps Procrusteanized?) equality of his subjects and peace (submission?) among them all. How could anyone doubt the beneficence of Our Dear Leader, or question the feasibility or desirability of his particular Utopian vision?

  

But, still, really, Our Dear Leader aside, cui bono? It's generally a useful principle to assume that whoever end up with the most power in a given social configuration are the ones with the most bono. And this would be, to varying degrees, the elements of the Polygon (or the Cathedral), as summarized by Moldbug:

The Polygon might be defined as the "extended civil service." It consists not [only] of those who hold actual formal GS rank, but those whose position demands a sense of civic responsibility - real or fake. The major vertices of the Polygon, by my count, are the press, the universities, the judiciary, the Fed and the banks, the "Hill" (congressional staff), the civil service proper, the NGOs and transnationals, the military, the Beltway bandits (defense and other contractors), and corporate holders of official monopolies (such as "intellectual property").

To which I would only add Congressmen, since they're virtually guaranteed reelection and may therefore be deemed part of the permanent government and not mere democratic contingencies. Note that the Presidency is excluded for being a dependency of the electorate, a relic of democracy, an amateur and a temp, and too minutely constrained by public opinion and overexposure in the media to have significant power.

 

I rather like this clip too,  in which Posner explains that Leftism is a non-theistic religious movement, which is to say, it is driven by irrational and moralistic passions:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYa5y8IkUMk This is why Moldbug denominated our ruling class "the Cathedral." It is the secular church of Leftism, which happens now to rule us. The problem is that all moral thought is irrational, a function of the passions and tastes (including the taste for religion), not of logic. Therefore argumentation does not work in this realm. Propaganda works. Appeals to emotion work. And, as always, the display of power is an excellent form of emotive propaganda. The Left has the power. Moreover, only those whose moral tastes appear sufficiently Leftist are permitted to form the next generation of the power elite, the priests of the Cathedral. Since the Reformation, at the latest, the Left always has outrun the right in mastery of propaganda--hardly surprising given that the essence of propaganda is mendacity and the very foundation of leftism (human equality) is a lie. When you're naturally predisposed to idealism (what I call lies), when your thought process is inherently delusional, when you instinctively retreat from the "is" and desperately embrace the "ought," when you are your first and most fanatical convert---with such a psychological character you are a natural, even an involuntary, propagandist. Socialism: the party of involuntary propaganda. Of the right, though, it may be said that "its nature is subdued to what it works in, like the dyer's hand." And what it works in is reality, not the seductive fantasia of ideal forms. But, the communication of reality is generally perceived as quite crude and rebarbative propaganda--keen apprehension is required to notice that it's not propaganda at all, since it's the awful truth (without the saving grace of Cary Grant & co).

 

How can the right attain power in such a system as ours? It cannot. Only the ideas most attractive to intellectuals (which are mainly a matter of social status games) win the competition for preeminence, and thence that for political application, in our system. Not the most truthful ideas, not the most useful in any utilitarian sense, but those ideas most attractive to this audience prevail. These ideas define the Overton window. The intellectuals then repackage their favored notions in a form that will appeal to hoi polloi (the manufacture of consent). Big business and permanent government then determine how to action the ideas. Where, you may wonder, is the "Right" in this process? Watching. Sometimes complaining. Then submitting. Finally, forgetting that the given idea--first theoretical, then novel, now simply reality--was Leftist in the first place. Its reality inclines the Right even to defend it against any new changes. The "Right" exists for two reasons: to legitimize the claim that we live in a two party democracy, and to provide political entertainment and distraction from reality.

 

The only avenue for the Right to attain power is a military coup. The only chance of this happening involves some decidedly unattractive preconditions, like Brezhnevite stagnation for at least a generation or some form of extreme crisis, like nuclear war. The former option, though it looks increasingly likely, may yet be evaded by major technological advances. But, does the Right nevertheless have some use today? Well, it might slow the Leftist advance. Another possibility: sustain a level of dissident intellectual discourse that is high enough to tempt the ruling Leftists occasionally to purloin a useful idea (eg, Carter's administration did considerable deregulation based on intelligent Rightist analysis). Such discourse might benefit those nations that attempt to buck the American example (like Singapore or potentially China or Russia). Highly successful Rightist regimes overseas may provide a counterexample to our Leftist morass just as we formed a counterexample to the Soviet morass and catalyzed its transition to "an improved infancy." A third use might be to prepare for a Leftist collapse, perhaps already an inevitable fate for the West--to have ready to hand an intelligent, considered, current plan to form a Rightist regime on the mouldering ruins of yet another Leftist failure.

America and Its Fate

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/02/13/singapores-lee-kuan-yew-talks-americas-strangths-and-weaknesses/

The most successful world leader of the last 50 years informs the Obamite degenerates that their two great dream-delusions, "multiculturalism" and socialism, will destroy America. He is precisely correct. But, I wonder if he understands the underlying power dynamic which has produced this hegemony of "Progressive" ideology in America. I judge that it is undergirded by a prevailing moral philosophy of cultural Marxism actioned by the Polygon or, as the great Mencius Moldbug has renominated it, the "Cathedral." This is Moldbug's concise demarcation of the Cathedral:

The Polygon might be defined as the "extended civil service." It consists not of those who hold actual formal GS rank, but those whose position demands a sense of civic responsibility - real or fake. The major vertices of the Polygon, by my count, are the press, the universities, the judiciary, the Fed and the banks, the "Hill" (congressional staff), the civil service proper, the NGOs and transnationals, the military, the Beltway bandits (defense and other contractors), and corporate holders of official monopolies (such as "intellectual property").

These are the people who "manufacture consent" in America, and they are the people who write the rules by which all elements of society are to abide, and the people who dispose of the sums annually redistributed by the government. And they believe or pretend to believe in political correctness, which is a kind of pacifist-Marxist version of Christianity minus God.

How to End-Run the Ripoff Machine

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323301104578255992379228564.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

 

In time, this may produce the tragic consequence of fewer communists--I mean professors--lounging away on tenure and spouting PC garbage. A few of their fellow fifth column buddies in the sprawling higher-ed bureaucracy might also find the end of the road. It may even come to pass in a generation or two that the only remaining campuses in America will be those focused on science and engineering, which require physical labs, or the truly elite schools, which can afford the outrageous expense.

Rhetoric or Realism?

Herewith a chart of black-white IQ differences by standard deviation and year. The over 18 line is more reliable, ranging from .95 to 1.2. The avg difference looks to be about 1.1 (ie, 83 IQ for blacks). Note the green line is lower--blacks fall further behind as they get older. Also, the data reveals not a single case of black adults scoring higher than 88 IQ.

The lack of improvement despite extreme left-wing efforts ought to be discouraging--but that's the saving grace of idealism: reality may be set at nought so that the rainbow dream may shine on. Africans need some Chinese medicine (cough, eugenics, cough cough).

Die Uber-Chinese

http://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838

 

Leftism is the flight from reality.

Reality may take many forms.

 

China has undertaken to provide us with our mandatory reality dose in this century.

Imagine if Nazi Germany had been run by Heydrich (relatively sane and smart) instead of Hitler (who squandered his potential) and its natural ethnic territory had been the size of America. This approximates the threat China will pose within a generation.

 

Leftism only knows one direction and ever intensified leftism either collapses in on itself--or those powers still in possession of their will to power crush its hollowed-out carcass and institute a new dispensation.

Murder as It is Caused

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/337929/war-against-black-men-lee-habeeb

If the "real cause" of murders is fatherlessness, why do blacks commit 8-10 times as many murders per capita as whites? After all, the black rate of fatherless boys is only twice the white rate. I think one of the largest causes is indeed fatherlessness, if one includes all the factors associated with that condition, including the high rate of criminality and unemployment among absconded fathers. However, it's notable that IQ is low and violence is high wherever one finds (free) blacks. Of course, blacks in mostly gunless Europe do less damage, but their violent propensities are well attested. Under Jim Crow, the problem was much reduced by economically-induced sustenance of black family integrity and by a degree of intimidation that was mainly salutary to all concerned.

Reminds me of a recent Steve Sailer note (check out the map, it covers the whole country):

 

Next door neighbors: Oak Park and Austin

The Austin neighborhood on the far west side of Chicago and Oak Park, IL are contiguous neighbors. The border is the yellow stripe in the middle of Austin Boulevard.

According to this NYT map (http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer) of homicides in Chicago neighborhoods over the last 12 years:

Austin: More than 450 homicides have happened in this neighborhood in Chicago’s West Side, one of the city’s deadliest places

In contrast, over the last dozen years in Oak Park, which has about half as many people as Austin, there have been six murders.

It must be the lack of gun control laws in Chicago.

America's Economic Inflection Point?

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/america-in-2012-as-told-in-charts/

The most informative are the graphs for:

declining real median incomes

healthcare costs driving deficits

social security benefits growing faster than incomes

 

Note that last one: social security benefits have tracked inflation since 2000, but median incomes have declined 9%. Is it possible that the year 2000 was the American equivalent of the year 1970 in Soviet history--the time when stagnation and decline set in? We still have a trickle of productivity growth, but it all goes to the rich, the welfare class (including the largest welfare class, old people), and the health care sector. The remainder of the economy languishes. And the politicos and propagandists continue to spout their politically correct lies (also reminiscent of the old Muscovite empire's Orwellian inversions and concealments).