Politicized Admissions

It's interesting to see them quantify the leftist prejudice against certain elements of society--apparently being in 4-H or high school ROTC programs is a black mark against applicants to elite schools. What these schools want to enroll is eager conformists and ass-kissers (as well as the lucrative legacy students, that is, the rich whites who stupidly finance this whole charade). I remember reading elsewhere that at a typical Ivy League school fully half of admissions are justified by affirmative action, legacies, or athletic scholarships--only half made it on merit. That's quite a heavy burden of corruption and quality dilution for any school to bear. http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/how_diversity_punishes_asians.html

America First Immigration Plan

We need an immigration system whose first goal is to benefit America. Until Islamic culture manages to join the civilized world, the presumption must be strongly against any Muslim applicants for entry. Until Mexicans prove that they are capable of something more than labor and high fecundity, they should face the same negative assumptions. What America should seek from its immigrants is simple: people capable of contributing and willing to assimilate. Too few Muslims and Mexicans (among many other inadequate groups we've let in, like Haitians and Jamaicans) have demonstrated either characteristic.

Thoughts on WWII Posters

These posters would no longer work in America. America was then a unified nation. It not only professed, but even ensured equality of opportunity for all except the blacks (whose subjection to Jim Crow would not long have lasted under any version of likely historical development). And the blacks were net contributors, instead of a net burden. Also, there was very little difference in religious and therefore moral assumptions. We have sacrificed strength and unity for "multiculturalism" and "political correctness."

 

The greatest lasting defeat we suffered in the sixties was political defeat at home: pervasive socialism that corrupted the character of the lower classes, affirmative action, racial and sexual quotas, radical feminism, uncontrolled immigration that benefits other countries but not America, undisciplined and unaccountable government spending, the massive unionization of all government workers, the regulation and legalization of every aspect of life. The sixties germinated or accelerated all of these misfortunes--and they are like incurable diseases.

Balkanising the Levant

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=179380 Israel is less and less sustainable, beset by internal and external enemies. I do not think this proposal will work. If it's lucky, Israel will predictably implode in a few decades. The other option is being overrun.

Possible Improvement

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/educated-women-opting-for-motherhood/ Of course, though not mentioned here, I think it's a fair bet that dumber women who have children have more of them--so the dysgenic influence remains largely in force.

Le Guin Unloosed

The Fantastical Canon: The Books and School of all Ages http://www.newstatesman.com/200612180040 Amongst more general edifications and pleasantries, a major clue to Le Guin's beautifully clean and clear English style reveals itself herein. I think she owes much in this regard to the best writers of "children's books." They have helped her to evade three serious temptations: excessive intellectualizing, vain verbal peacockery, and solipsistic obscurities. I, of course, am prey to all three. In some sense, though, her diction may constitute an availed luxury of her chosen genre, perhaps even a precondition of its success. Yet a clear river does not alone suffice. It must float one through the realms of gold, and in company of characters who do not beggar the imagination, but fulfill various of its finer latencies. Here, too, she finds mastery at her fingertips--in counterpoint to Tolkien, that arch-incompetent among fantasists. He keeps his river relatively clear, I concede. However, it slows to the degree that it seems sometimes a lake and the reader finds his company merely seems since Tolkien never persuades us that it could be. Mayhaps, though, in the end, we ought to be grateful to him for inspiring others to believe they could do his work, but better. After all, when an author achieves supreme transcendence in a given genre, he often manages thereby to kill it. Shakespeare's tragic plays (and not only his tragic plays) have so whelmed and pervaded the minds of his successors (especially those heir to his language) that they’ve scarcely so much as attempted to write such grand drama in the last 400 years. So too did Milton kill epic poetry with Paradise Lost, only excepting the exuberant eccentric Blake. Tolkien was a mere mapmaker, not a master. He reminded his successors of what might be found through new adventures and, unintentionally, fortified their self-confidence too.

The Lost Principle of Accountability

An excellent article, much after my own taste: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/opinion/24ricks.html   I especially liked the comparison of the private and the general. This is a pervasive and hugely destructive problem in our society at large. Leaders are simply not held to account for their failures. We see this in the Gulf oil spill, we saw it in the financial crisis, we see it perpetually among the management of unsuccesful publicly held companies. This is what America has lost in the last 50 years and what will ultimately destroy it if not recovered: the interlocking values of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and accountability.

Our Communist Bastion

This is an interesting article on the influence of the communists in Hollywood. It's telling that their greatest success in Hollywood appears to have been a matter of excluding anti-communist films from being made. They had virtually no success in popularizing pro-communist films. I attribute this partly to the visceral anti-communism in American popular consciousness and partly to the inherent difficulty of making any kind of political propaganda into entertainment or art. In the end, it's almost comical: communists have had an enormous presence in Hollywood since the 30s--but, their influence on the American people looks almost trifling given their control over the heart of American popular culture. They deserve failure. They have always been both intellectually and morally bankrupt.   http://reason.com/archives/2000/06/01/hollywoods-missing-movies/

BP Attacks America

There are two basic strategies to prevent these disasters caused by corporate or governmental incompetence:

1. Write and enforce effective regulations to minimize the risks and to adjust risks and rewards in a cost-effective fashion.

2. Impose accountability upon responsible parties, whether they are government officials, business executives, or any other decisionmakers.

Both ought to be followed. Natheless, as was the case with the financial meltdown, we have utterly failed to pursue either of these strategies.

Result: America is robbed blind by the Wall Street barons, leading to the election of Mr. Change--then, the oil barons destroy an ocean, with all the environmental, commercial, and cultural treasure that ocean once supported.

We've done nothing on financial meltdown risk-mitigation. How likely is it that anything will be done to ward off future oil spills?

Compared to Bush and Katrina, Obama has played the PR side more conscientiously--but, he has displayed even more incompetence than Bush. And, to me, this is a much more serious affair than Katrina was. BP looks absolutely abominable in their management of this crisis, with their endless stream of lies and continuous incompetence.

Affirmative Action in Action

check out the graph on the second page: http://iasp.brandeis.edu/pdfs/Racial-Wealth-Gap-Brief.pdf When you hand out undeserved high paid jobs to affirmative action beneficiaries, is it any surprise that they behave not according to their income, but according to their (mental) abilities? This goes back to the relationship between intelligence and time horizons--the higher the intelligence level, the longer the time horizon. In this context, this means white people invest for the future, blacks for the present. In other words, giving blacks high pay is a waste of money since they squander it instead of investing in the country's economic future.