Comment: My thanks to Profs. Mankiw, Mansfield and Mutz for pointing out that anyone who questions free trade is a bigot, xenophobe and isolationist. I had thought that this heresy might spring from the life experience of Americans, unhappily not tenured at Ivy League schools, who have lost their jobs to trade or out-sourcing, or who have see their towns and cities devastated by these economic tsunamis, or who suspect that the benefits of unrestricted markets have bypassed them on the way to the 1%. Clearly, I was wrong. With so much else to worry about these days, I’m relieved that I no longer have to fret about these unwashed, unenlightened and uneducated losers who, in their ignorance and narrow-mindedness, deserve what they get. Unfortunately, as Mankiw points out, they have been left with nothing but their votes, and may get the last word.
Posted inEconomics|Comments Off on Is Anyone Who Opposes Free Trade A Bigot?
Over the weekend, I watched a couple of movies (My All-American and The Story of Darrell Royal) about University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal and was struck that all of his national championship teams were all-white.
By winning the 1963 national championship, Royal gained an enormous amount of prestige that he could have translated into bargaining power against anyone putting pressure on him to delay integration. He gained even more leverage in 1964 when the University of Oklahoma, his alma mater, recruited him to come home and become head coach. UT solidified Royal’s position in 1964 when it granted him tenureship, so he would not have risked his family’s financial security by going too fast on integration. Royal could also have used his position to pry open the doors of opportunity at UT by saying, “Either let me recruit the best qualified players regardless of race, or I’m going to OU.” An African-American finally played at UT only after Royal won another national championship in 1969 with an all-white team.
Remember, receiving a scholarship to play football at UT also meant winning an opportunity for an excellent education without paying tuition. Starting in 1964, Royal had the go-ahead to offer scholarships to blacks. How many did he give over the next nine seasons? Zero in 1964, 1965, 1966, and 1967. (He almost signed Mike Williams in 1967 but the deal fell through.) One in 1968, Leon O’Neal, who left after one year, and never played in a single game. One in 1969. One in 1970. Three in 1971. And in 1972 Royal did not sign a single black to a scholarship. E.A. Curry had walked on in 1967 but left after the 1968 season without ever getting a scholarship or playing in a varsity game. Nine years after the regents had approved integration, Royal had given just six football scholarships to blacks.
UT’s Little defends Royal’s foot-dragging as an act of compassion on behalf of prospective black players who might be set up for failure at lily-white UT. “Darrell’s concern was that he wanted someone who wouldn’t fail academically and who would fit into an environment that, let’s face it, was very vanilla,” he says.
But clearly, getting blacks on the teams was not a priority for Royal, or at least that’s what he told a reporter for Harper’s magazine in November of 1970. The Harper’s reporter asked Royal: “Is it important to you that you have Negro players on the team?” Royal replied, “No.” He told the story, “A bunch of Negro boys came to me a while ago and said I could solve all possible difficulties by hiring a black coach. Now that would be fine for them but I’ve got to look at the other side. I’d have a lot of white boys on the team coming to me saying they couldn’t play for a black coach. The family atmosphere of the team would be destroyed… Once the club harmony and spirit begin to deteriorate, I don’t care what kind of talent you have, you won’t win.” (Royal finally hired a black coach in 1971. UT still has not had a black head coach in any sport.)
Royal’s supporters claim there were two reasons he could not find any blacks to play on his team between 1963 and 1970: 1) High academic standards at UT and 2) blacks did not want to play for UT. As for the first excuse, Rice has higher admission standards than UT and it managed to find academically fit black athletes to play football before UT. LeVias excelled academically at SMU; he made the Dean’s List and won academic all-American honors each of his last three years. When he graduated in 1969, he received the prestigious “M” award given to 10 top seniors every year. Besides, UT had academically qualified black members on its track team as early as 1964.
As for the second excuse, a lot of blacks did not want to play at UT because Royal and UT had a reputation in the black community for being racist. While blacks at UT could not even get on the field in the 1960s, in other parts of the nation black athletes excelled on the gridiron. Three blacks won the Heisman Trophy at other schools before a single black ever played a down for UT: Ernie Davis of Syracuse in 1961, Mike Garrett of USC in 1965, and O.J. Simpson of USC in 1968.
Posted inBlacks, Football, Texas|Comments Off on Three Time National Champion Football Coach Darrell Royal Was No Leader On Racial Integration
Few escape petty hypocrisy when preaching the universal gospel of borderlessness. In 2011, open-borders advocate Antonio Villaraigosa became the first mayor in Los Angeles history to build a wall around the official mayoral residence. His un-walled neighbors objected, first, that there was no need for such a barricade and, second, that it violated a city ordinance prohibiting residential walls higher than four feet. But Villaraigosa apparently wished to emphasize the difference between his home and the street, or was worried about security, or saw a new wall as iconic of his exalted office.
While elites can build walls to insulate themselves, the consequences of their policies fall heavily on the nonelites who lack the money and influence to navigate around them. The contrast between the two groups — Peggy Noonan described them as the “protected” and the “unprotected” — was dramatized in the presidential campaign of Jeb Bush. When the former Florida governor called illegal immigration from Mexico “an act of love,” his candidacy was doomed. It seemed that Bush had the capital to pick and choose how the consequences of his ideas fell upon himself and his family — in a way impossible for most of those living in the southwestern United States.
Posted inNationalism|Comments Off on LAT: Why borders matter — and a borderless world is a fantasy
Steve Sailer writes: “Sometimes Krugman’s lack of sophistication has kind of a Trump-like little boy in Emperor’s New Clothes quality to it. I remember one of his columns about a decade ago about how he liked growing up in a middle class suburb on Long Island and why can’t we go back to that kind of America? Somebody must have gotten it through to him that because of Diversity and Immigration, he can’t go there, he just c-a-n-’-t.”
Comments at Steve Sailer:
* What is a nation? According to google it’s “a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.” I didn’t definition-shop, but I would argue the part about “particular country or territory” is weaker than the first part. A distributed people is often referred to as a nation e.g. Elijah Muhammad’s “Nation of Islam”. Or since I’d suppose Krugman is Jewish, that diaspora.
So yeah it’s OK to be loyal to your tribe. What’s the better patriotism — protecting your people, or protecting a specific area of dirt? They are both important, but to me the idealistic view of patriotism has more to do with the people than the land.
It’s hard for me to believe Krugman is missing this out of ignorance. He’s got an agenda and can’t think of good arguments for it, so he uses bad ones.
* He was right that Bush would be a disaster of a president and that the Iraq War would also be a disaster. He noted, before the war started, that it was exactly what Al Qaeda wanted us to do, and that Bush’s estimates for the war’s cost were absurdly low.
And “his brainy technical specialties” is a pretty broad area. He was right, in advance, that the Euro would be a disaster, and he was right for the right reasons: monetary union without fiscal union and labor mobility (like we have in the USA) does not work.
He was also correct that the monetary policy of 2008-2011 of greatly increasing the monetary supply and fiscal deficit would not lead to high interest rates or inflation, which was very widely predicted and is the normal result of such policies.
He has studied Japan’s economy closely and is notable for being someone who writes on the topic without advocating Japan engage in mass immigration, very much contrary to the global elite and how The Economics, Foreign Affairs, etc. cover it. He also defends Japan’s economic performance by noting that it is not too bad if you adjust for the fact its working age population is declining.
* Steve cannot really comment on this because he honors his old confidentiality agreement, but I think he said a long time ago that Krugman was on his old HBD listserv.
I wonder if Krugman, who lacks social graces, got into some heated disagreements with Steve who still has a mild grudge over it. I also think after reading him for years that Krugman is not an IQ egalitarian but feels conflicted but its implications.
* Looks like K-thug is just flat out engaging in psychological projection of his own belief system. Amazing how he could be so blind to it as to publish it in a major news outlet, but such is the state of modern day American MSM. And to wag his finger at white Christians who are probably the group in the US showing the least tendency to act “for their tribe” while his own shows the most. Loved how he tried to put the ‘us’ in there, to try and fool anyone who might be reading into thinking he was a ‘white Christian’. Lotta work, this guy.
* According to the new narrative to be a patriot one must be an adherent of globalism, which is essentially supporting global government. I don’t think it will be too long before these tough guy acts will be using the words “global security” instead of “national security” to argue for conflict somewhere.
* From my perspective, I don’t care if Muslims feel alienated. I want them to assimilate or leave.
* The left has been going on like this for decades: “The only true patriot is the one who wants to dismantle his country and turn it into something completely different.”
* The thing is, the entire profession of elite academic economics, the Federal Reserve, and the financing of the Democratic Party are virtual Tribal monopolies at this point. None of this bothers Paul Krugman. I wonder why?
* Devotion and support for one’s country would make one desire less, not more foreigners to come on board, particularly those who massively change the fabric of the country itself, and want to turn it into New Mecca, or New Aztlán. Not to mention the crime, disease, violence, loss of social capital they bring or cause, or how adding more people who are ‘on the public dole’ brings us down.
What is the ‘celebration of diversity’, but just a round about way of saying less whites? Whites built this country. “Treasonous white nationals”? It would be like saying the Japanese are committing treason by not importing millions upon millions of African guest workers to become Japanese citizens, and take over Japan. As usual, you completely flip reality on its head.
“We progressives love America enough to point out the ways in which she is failing People of Color and to try for positive change, while the Republicans stand that premise on it’s head and claim that it “those people” who are failing America.”
– Why should the goal be how it ‘fails people of color”? Are people of color the majority of Americans? If we’re talking ‘love and devotion to one’s country’ (i.e. patriotism), then why do we give two sh*ts about doing more for a million illegal Guatemalans here? “People of Color” are the ones who are failing America. They commit more crime, they take more public assistance in net than they contribute, they are more likely to engage in politics that rip the country apart. Not to mention how an increasing percentage of them are in groups that literally want to make America into New Mecca, or New Aztlán. How is it ‘positive change’ to take away from the descendants of those who built the country, those who contribute the most still, and give it to those who take away from the country and who literally seek to make it into an extension of their homeland?
* I actually think Krugman gets it, in some flawed way (and with an unwillingness to do the electoral math), in a way that Mrs. Clinton and most of the Democratic mainstream does not.
This election is about identity and interests, not ideology and principles. Krugman may be unhappy that White America has returned to seeing itself as a nation worthy of inhabiting and preserving it’s own nation-state, but I’ll give him credit for figuring it out.
Of course, Trump also gets it, and has done the electoral math, and has no moral qualms with the idea of an American nation-state, which is why he stands a good chance of being the next President, and all Krugman gets is a column in the NYTimes op-ed page.
* Was it just his [part black, part white, part Indian] wife?
Pretty much.
The change tracks closely to the time of marriage, and she’s a radical feminist who “helps” him write his Times articles.
We’re the dog that Krugman kicks after his wife kicks him.
* If nothing else, the Trump candidacy has been a stalking horse outing the pseudo-conservatives in the Republican party as well as the anti-white elements on the left. He is yelling Little Marco, and everyone else has to yell Polo. The people are not realigning so much as the parties are. But there are a number of impostors who would have preferred to remain where they were, well hidden and well employed behind enemy lines.
* Steve — There is a Krugman blog post from 2013 where he reminisces about the way that public expression of racism became “utterly taboo” in his old neighborhood. I find really interesting; maybe you could do something with it? Here is the key paragraph:
“And while it didn’t literally happen overnight, it did happen fast. My personal memory: I grew up on Long Island in the 60s, and at the time many of the fancier houses (split-level ranches!) had little statues of coachmen in front. In my memory, at least, there was one summer — maybe 1965? — when, suddenly, everyone had the faces on their coachmen repainted; all of a sudden they were white. The message had gotten through: pretending that you were living in antebellum Tara was not OK.”
I find it kind of hard to reconcile assertions that America is a racist society with the fact that it’s been 50 years since it’s been possible for respectable members of society to risk the appearance of racism.
* Did anyone notice how Tim Kaine repeated a phrase at the convention: “Faith, Family and Work” — a translation of the Vichy France slogan “Travail, Famille, Patrie”?
Someone call the ADL.
* Krugman telling white Americans they should get over being dispossessed from the patrimony their forefathers built is like Mark Zuckerberg telling kids who lost their house in a fire they shouldn’t be so materialistic, it’s only stuff. Before slamming shut the door to his 50k square foot mansion. He shouldn’t be surprised to find one of them in his garage, playing with matches.
It’s easy for Jews to lecture whites – they’ve already got their homeland.
* It’s pretty clear that Israel is the only nation that David Brooks feels patriotic about:
Having acknowledged that, I nevertheless understand the complaints of those readers who are bothered by something they have recently learned about David Brooks: his son is a member of the Israel Defense Forces. In a recent Hebrew-language interview in Haaretz magazine, Mr. Brooks was asked about his worries as a father. The article noted that the columnist’s “connection to Israel was always strong.” It continued:
“He has visited Israel almost every year since 1991, and over the past months the connection has grown even stronger, after his oldest son, aged 23, decided to join the Israel Defense Forces as a ‘lone soldier.’ ” (The reference is to a soldier whose family is not living in Israel.)
Mr. Brooks described the situation as “worrying.” He added: “But every Israeli parent understands this is what the circumstances require. Beyond that, I think children need to take risks after they leave university, and that they need to do something difficult that involves going beyond their personal limits. Serving in the I.D.F. embodies all of these elements. I couldn’t advise others to do it without acknowledging it’s true for my own family.’”
As far as I’m concerned, serving in a foreign military is an act of treason, and David Brooks’ son should be stripped of his American citizenship.
* Interesting to note how touchy John Podhoretz is about people noticing that David Brooks’ son serves in the IDF:
John Podhoretz @jpodhoretz 8 Oct 2014
Everybody who thinks David Brooks has to “reveal” his son, who’s 23, has joined the Israeli army can go f[***]himself.
Will Stokes @William_Stokes 8 Oct 2014
@jpodhoretz not trying to be antagonist. Don’t you think having your son in a military would at least unconsciously effect your beliefs?
John Podhoretz @jpodhoretz 8 Oct 2014
@William_Stokes his son is an adult and it’s nobody’s fu[***** business. And he’s a writer, not a politician. It’s naked anti-Semitism.
Will Stokes @William_Stokes 8 Oct 2014
@jpodhoretz for me, if someone was a writing a piece on Afghanistan and Iraq and had a son serving there, I’d want to know.
John PodhoretzVerified account
@jpodhoretz
@William_Stokes it’s none of your business. NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.
* Krugman the loony lefty likes just about the only openly Republican hair band while Trump favors globalist gay boy piano man. Opposites can admire each other I suppose.
I think Krugman’s piece about Republicans serving the tribe is just another example of Steve’s conjecture that Jewish intellectuals tend to project Jewish intramural conflicts onto the gentile world. I can’t imagine any of Krugman’s relations being happy that he married a schvartze, lopping off a branch of his own family tree and in effect refusing to serve his own tribe.
* I have taught my children that whenever you read something by someone who’s promoting something decidedly disastrous for our people, something counter-intuitive turning nature inside-out and upside down, just google their name and add “Jew”. 9 times out of 10 it’s a Jew. I call it Jew bingo.
My eldest came home one day and said “You know how you said to google someone’s name and add Jew whenever you read something nasty and anti-White? Well, I did it all day and guess what? You were right!” It was a great moment in family bonding.
That night we went through the history of feminism and the bingos were going off like you wouldn’t believe. If I can turn this into a board game I reckon I could retire on it.
* I do think it is odd that any American citizen would serve in another nation’s army. I would consider that grounds for forfeiting citizenship. (I think some of those early 20th Century idealists were willing to do so, and/or otherwise break the law.) However, the SCOTUS determined in 1967 that service in a foreign army is not incompatible with citizenship, and that definitely creates a gray area in the War on Terror where we do not have any clearcut national entity that we have declared war on. (Supposedly you forfeit citizenship if you serve in the army of a nation we are at war with.)
The problem with making these kinds of exceptions, even when your heart is in the right place, is that you open the door to dual citizenship of all kinds. I object to this. Right now, apparently, there are millions of American citizens in the Southwest who also have Mexican citizenship (because Mexicans who become American citizenship do not lose their Mexican citizenship). I think that is insane.
I think holding David Brooks’ son to account for serving in the IDF rather than the armed services of the United States is valid, and not anti-semitic, because the US is de facto at war (something not applicable in your contrary examples) and thus failure to serve, but to serve a foreign country, suggests that the loyalties of Brooks’ son lie more with Israel with the United States. I wouldn’t call it treason but I wouldn’t mind having Brooks, Jr. called to account.
For all that, the sins of the son should not be visited on the father, either.
* The thing that gets me most about how Democrats are all in a dither over Russia is just how petty and immature their attitude toward Russia is, given that it is still by far the most fearsome nuclear power in the world, ourselves excepted.
We’re supposed to worry about Trump bringing us to nuclear war when Obama and Hillary did just about everything they could to gin up tensions with Russia? And over what, for God’s sake? Because Russia made Obama look weak and rather stupid in his idiot program to oppose Assad (which program, rather embarrassingly, enabled the rise of ISIS)? Because Russia and the Ukraine (a former republic in the Soviet Union)– were trying to smack each other around over territory? Because Russia gave the gay rights movement, for Christ’s sake, some disrespect?
I’m sure Obama’s feelings, the feelings of a black man, were hurt, and Hillary’s feelings, the feelings of a woman, were hurt as well, and those are some very important feelings. But are those feelings of such awesome significance that we should be antagonizing the one power in the world that could actually blow us to kingdom come if it had a desire to?
Again, is there anything more petty, more childish, or more foolhardy than the Democrats’ attitude toward Russia?
Posted inAmerica, Jews|Comments Off on Paul Krugman: The GOP’s National Security Stance “Serves the Tribe”
Compare this with what Trump actually said in his response:
While I feel deeply for the loss of his son, Mr. Khan who has never met me, has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution, (which is false) and say many other inaccurate things.
What honest reporter can describe that statement as Trump saying the man has “‘no right’ to criticize me”? Trump is saying that the man was saying something false about him, and had no right to do so; how is that possibly equivalent to Trump saying that the man in general had no right to criticize him?
These reporters are just disgusting. They lie and distort worse than the politicians.
* Mr. Kahn’s son was killed by Muslims in one of Hillary’s wars. Why is he mad because Trump doesn’t want to let the people who killed his son into the country?
* More Muslims would be alive today if Trump had been President from 2000-2008. I am glad Trump’s not backing down. Mr. Khan’s tribe discovers niceties like the Constitution and secular living only when it is in the minority.
As for the media freakout, Kate Steinle’s parents were invisible to the MSM ponces.
* So you have 14 out of around 6,000 American military combat deaths since 2001 or around 0.23% of American combat deaths vs. around a 0.9% overall Muslim population. So they are underrepresented by a factor of almost 4x. But they are nevertheless the Gold Star parents Hillary chose to bring on stage. Just more Coalition of the Fringes – they live in their own reality and facts and statistics mean nothing to them. And these folks are the posterboys – I can only imagine what some of the others were like. I wish I had the audition tapes where the other 13 sets of parents would get upset and shout Kill Bush or whatever.
* Two US Muslims, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez and Major Nidal Hasan killed more US soldiers (18) than US Muslims soldiers died in the WoT (14).
* Remember Dyan’s advice for guaranteed military victory……always fight Arabs.
* Inviting Muslims into your country is like playing a game of Russian roulette with your country. Yes, most of the chambers are empty but if something does go wrong the consequences are disastrous. The standard leftist drivel is, “Well, most Muslims aren’t terrorists, most Muslims aren’t suicide bombers. ” Would Liberals let their children play Russian roulette knowing that most of the chambers are empty and therefore harmless? No, of course they wouldn’t. So the effect of Muslim immigration is that you are no better off or dead. Cost-benefit analysis says keep Muslims out.
Remember legal Muslim immigration is why we have a huge surveillance state; it is why we have been on a perpetual war footing since 9/11; and why the nations of Western Europe seem to suffer a terrorist attack each week now.
* I’m confused. I thought the Left officially gave up on patriotism. The more patriotic people feel, the less likely they are to vote Dem. And celebrating soldiers of today’s army is patriotic, no matter how weak it has become.
What gives?
* I must have missed this guy at the DNC, what with all the other memorable speakers (transgender, illegal immigrants, little people, mentally handicapped…). Hey, did you know that the white house was built by slaves? Tolerance!
* Will someone, please, help us American voters understand why the DNC didn’t seek out Nidal Hasan’s dear old mama & papa to speak Convention Invective to White Supremacist Power?
* The analysis I’d really like to see is whether a Muslim in the western world is more likely to become a soldier for their host nation or a soldier for ISIS.
* “Global empire would not be so costly if we weren’t actively dispossessing the Palestinans from their homeland.”
Why don’t we get terrorist attacks from Tibetans? After all China is occupying their land and using an ethnic cleansing strategy to displace the native Tibetans with Han Chinese. In addition they have killed over a million Tibetans.
Why don’t we get terrorist attacks from Papuans. After all Indonesia is occupying their land and using an ethnic cleansing strategy known as Transmigrasi to displace the native Papuans with Indonesians. In addition they have killed over half a million Papuans.
To put this in perspective, Israel has killed 22,000 Palestinians since the conflict in 1967 to the present day. China has killed 1 million Tibetans since occupation in 1951 until today. Indonesia has killed 500,000 million Papuans since the occupation began in 1963 until today. China has been occupying Tibet longer and has done 40X the killing Israel has. Indonesia has been occupying Papua longer and has done 20X the killing Israel has.
* The logic is simple: If a single American Muslim dies fighting foreign Muslims, the only solution is more Muslims. If the Arab Spring has shown us anything, it’s that there is a genuine grassroots love of democracy in the Muslim world. There are millions and millions of future patriots in the Middle East, tossing and turning at night as they dream of a shining city on a hill. Many of them are brassy, outspoken feminists like Mrs. Khan.
* I feel sorry for the guy whose son died in the armed services.
However, the father is the one who took his son’s sacrifice and tried to make a political issue out of it. Therefore, he deserves to be treated as someone who turned his son into a political football, not as a grieving parent.
Some Muslim who dies in the armed services doesn’t validate anything. It doesn’t validate open door Muslim immigration, it doesn’t validate Hillary, it doesn’t validate “Religion of Peace”, and it doesn’t validate hating Trump.
It would be no different than if the father of some generic white kid killed by an IED appeared in Cleveland to talk about how all Muslims are evil, or of the mother of one of the cops murdered in Austin showed up and talked about how all blacks are evil. That would rightly be condemned as fomenting racist hatred. In this case, we are promoting a kind of racist virtue.
Both arguments are illogical and should be condemned by anyone who is rational.
* To continue your point, one could argue that more racists have fought and died for the USA than any particular minority group. Racists helped to found this nation and contributed mightily to its founding documents and its war of independence. I am sure they landed on Normandy Beach, helped to liberate the camps and are quietly serving to this day.
Yet you won’t hear the democrats or the republicans making the case that racists should be openly welcomed in society. Rather, anyone accused of being a racist is subject to social shunning and a loss of status and employment.
* Trump could have easily responded by saying:
1. It is sad that this man’s son died in a war Hillary started.
2. It is ghoulish for Hillary to exploit a tragedy she helped bring about.
3. Let’s learn a lesson from this man’s tragedy and stop Hillary from bringing his son’s killers to this country to kill more sons.
Its easy really. You don’t attack a victim, because he’s not the enemy. You attack the perpetrators of the tragedy and show how your policies will help.
* A single anecdote doesn’t prove anything, but large numbers of anecdotes pointing in the same direction does make for a stronger case.
You’re correct- a lone Muslim soldier proves nothing, and certainly doesn’t justify opening the gates and letting in all Muslims.
That being said, thousands of Westerners getting raped or murdered by Muslims, and millions of immigrants biting the hand that feeds them, does make a pretty good case about whether or not we should allow them into our country.
* … there’s difference about being prudent in your conduct because of data reinforced stereotypes about certain groups of people, as opposed to claiming authority because you lost a loved one and/or are a “survivor” of something or other.
But we take it for granted these days that someone who is titularly black, or gay, or what have you has a special insight, a special wisdom, and special authority to lecture the rest of us on what it means to be black. Just as we take it for granted that anyone who is a survivor of sexual assault is automatically an authority on sexual ethics.
To see how ludicrous this is, imagine a white guy or a white woman who is a documented “survivor of black crime” speaking at a convention to lecture everyone about black people. See what I mean? #BlackCrimeSurvivor — yeah, that’s a hashtag with a future.
* Khan kerfuffle blowing up even more. I hate to say it but all the other Republicans really are cucks. My only hope is that the public was really thinking what Trump voiced out loud and is not as fake-insulted as the press and the cucks pretend to be.
* If Trump defends himself from the attacks of this father, and declares that what the father had said about him, Trump, was false, how does that constitute “continuing an attack” on him, or, as you put it, “taking a swipe” at him?
* Why did these people come to America? More importantly, why do we allow people like them to come here? Is our population collapsing? Not that it’s a good idea, but at least it’s possible to understand the misguided justification of allowing immigrants to come from south of the border to do the work Americans won’t do (for extremely low wages). But, why the hell do we need people from halfway around the world?
* In some ways, I just wonder how the public can possibly take these faux outrages seriously, at this point in the election cycle, when the media seems to invent every single day a new thing they can attack him with.
There does come a point at which the daily gotcha just doesn’t do anything anymore, and at which the public starts to lose any remaining respect they had for the media.
The media really doesn’t seem to understand that they can lose this battle themselves by trying way too hard to bring Trump down. They have their own credibility at stake, but don’t seem to realize it.
And they will never bring Trump down if they have no credibility.
* It seems to me this family should be more upset that establishment politicians, not Trump, sent their son to die in a stupid war.
And while the Constitution prohibits treating Muslims as second class citizens, it does not prohibit restricting Muslim immigration.
That said, I’m very sorry for their loss.
* Lots of people were already secretly wondering about why Mrs. Khan just stood there, didn’t even say one word about her son. Why go up to the podium if she wasn’t going to say anything? Just to be seen in a hijab?
I watched it live and thought it was weird. I thought it was bad optics for the Hillary campaign and that the weirdness of it undermined the intended “Muslims are patriotic too” point.
I was glad Trump noted she didn’t speak. No one else in the media said anything about it, although it was legitimately bizarre.
* Impossible for the Republicans to control the media narrative, wikileaks merely confirmed what we all knew already about them taking their orders from the left. They still claim Trump mocked a disabled reporter for being disabled when he was mocking the reporter for lying and confusing the issue around his story after 9/11 of people in NJ celebrating the attack. Flailing his arms around to impersonate confusion and dissembling. The only reason Trump is still going to win is the media is completely distrusted and disliked and that the internet exists.
Of course, that said, Trump should have counter attacked better.
* Khan said to Trump. “I will gladly lend you my copy [of the Constitution]. In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law.’
You will also find references to slavery, which was then legal. The Constitution was not the naive, Kumbaya, “Give me your wretched refuse” style of document we would purport it to be – and as leftists are thrilled to remind us, when they’re talking down about America’s racist past. They also love to talk about the immigration law that restricted naturalization to free white people, passed within a decade of the Constitution’s ratification, and the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by the generation that freed the slaves.
When they talk about immigration, though, they pretend that racist past didn’t exist, and that of course mass immigration by anyone, from anywhere was exactly what the Founders had in mind.
Posted inAmerica, Donald Trump, Islam|Comments Off on Steve Sailer: Invade the World / Invite the World in a Nutshell: The Khizr Khan Kherfuffle
TURKEY has sent police to surround the Incirlik air base it operates with the United States — and where a large stockpile of NATO nuclear weapons is held — ahead of a visit by a senior US official tomorrow.
Unconfirmed reports out of Turkey suggest all entrances to the air base have been blocked by heavy vehicles and police sent to secure its perimeter.
The unusual nigh-time move sparked rumours of a second coup attempt on Turkish social media.
The move comes less than a week after a top US Army general was accused by Turkish media of ‘leading’ the uprising against President Erdogan earlier this month.
But Turkish Minister for European Affairs has since reportedly sought to reassure media, stating the mission was just a “safety inspection”.
* This weekend Erdogan is flying supporters from Turkey to Cologne on the national airline to join a counter-demonstration against anti-Erdogan Turks living in Germany. Up to 30K people are expected on the streets of Cologne later today (Sunday). Nearly 3K local and federal police with water cannon are preparing for street clashes. The authorities also expect local far right activists to show up too. We’ll see if it makes Sunday night’s news.
* He’s flexing his muscles.
He’s giving the U.S. the middle-finger and scaring the pants off those effeminate Europeans. He knows we won’t do squat and neither will Europe because we failed the test he gave us – namely dumping all those Muzzie bums on us.
Politics abhor a vacuum and he’s filling it.
It would not be surprising if behind the scenes he’s demanding hush money from us and Germany. He has to look at the U.S. and Germany being nothing more than a bunch of fat, rich clowns given the way we do things. Do any of you think he has respect for that moldy old lunatic female in Berlin or that snide clown in the White House? He doesn’t.
Really this was bound to happen as the U.S. began to implode politically. I think he’s figured out the U.S. is run by Ivy League imbeciles.
* Thank you Mr. Sailer for keeping us abreast of this issue. I would think that the sequestering of one of our bases (even if shared, still, a base with our personnel and equipment including nukes) by the host country would qualify as leading news, but what do I know? I never went to one of those high faluting J schools. I’m sure the families of these troops want to see and hear their loved ones again, soon. Please continue.
* I’m pretty sure that in the US, if the USCIS knew that hundreds of foreign tourists were flying in from overseas to join possibly riotous demonstrations in the streets of, say, Philadelphia, that they would be refused admission upon landing and sent back. Even here in our very tolerant system, the First Amendment doesn’t apply until you are inside the border.
* Turkey is actually of some strategic importance. It’s the only way in or out of the Black Sea. And the over reaching NATO expansion has just brought more baggage. But Turkey is actually important.
* The weapons have Permissive Action Links (PALs) that prevent their use without a code, and disable the weapon if the code is not correctly entered after a certain number of attempts.
The weapons are part of the US nuclear NATO guarantee. Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey provide delivery systems, and the US stores the weapons on host country bases, guarded by US personnel, with US PALs and under US command and control. If the Rooskies invade the US provides the codes and the NATO allies deliver the weapons.
The intent is to both discourage nuclear weapon development by the likes of Italy and to provide them with reassurance that the US nuclear umbrella extends to them.
The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff is on the way to Turkey. If the nukes at Incirlik are withdrawn that would be a pretty good sign that the Turks are planning on leaving NATO. Needless to say, that would be a strategic debacle for the US, and probably indicate a Russian/Turkish agreement about the Middle East that is not favorable for the US.
The Turks seizing the weapons is about half a step short of Armageddon. Maybe a quarter step.
Posted inTurkey|Comments Off on Reports Turkish troops have sealed off Incirlik US/NATO nuclear air base
Every minority group should ask if they are an asset to their country. Is it true that with Jews/blacks/Muslims/ etc, you lose or do you win?
All groups are in a competition for scarce resources and to propagate their genes. Such competition is often zero sum.
Every form of life reacts violently to that which threatens its survival.
In a free country, different groups will usually rise to the top in areas most congenial to their talents. Do majorities want to be ruled by minorities in various parts of life?
On the other hand, the ability to respect excellence is a measure of how excellent you and your society can become. If you instinctively hate an outsider who excels you, you are headed towards a miserable and mediocre life. Nobody, however, wants to be ruled by malicious outsiders working a corrupt system.
I am thinking about Godwin Smith’s essay on The Jewish Question back in 1892:
Mr. Arnold White, Baron Hirsch’s commissioner, says, in a plea for the Russian Jews (“The Truth about the Russian Jew,” Contemporary Review, May 1892), that “almost without exception the press throughout Europe is in Jewish hands, and is largely produced by Jewish brains;” that “international finance is captive to Jewish energy and skill;” that in England the fall of the Barings has left the house of Rothschild alone in its supremacy; and that in every line the Jews are fast becoming our masters. Wind and tide, in a money-loving age, are in favor of the financial race….
A community has a right to defend its territory and its national integrity against an invader, whether his weapon be the sword or foreclosure. In the territories of the Italian Republics the Jews might, so far as we see, have bought land and taken to farming had they pleased. But before this they had thoroughly taken to trade. Under the filling Empire they were the great slave traders, buying captives from barbarian invaders and probably acting as general brokers of spoils at the same time. They entered England in the train of the Norman conqueror. There was, no doubt, a perpetual struggle between their craft and the brute force of the feudal populations. But what moral prerogative has craft over force?
Mr. Arnold White tells the Russians that, if they would let Jewish intelligence have free course, Jews would soon fill all high employments and places of power to the exclusion of the natives, who now hold them. Russians are bidden to acquiesce and rather to rejoice in this by philosophers, who would perhaps not relish the cup if it were commended to their own lips. The law of evolution, it is said, prescribes the survival of the fittest. To which the Russian boor may reply, that if his force beats the fine intelligence of the Jew the fittest will survive and the law of evolution will be fulfilled. It was force rather than fine intelligence which decided on the field of Zama that the Latin, not the Semite, should rule the ancient and mold the modern world.
In 1934, as the guarantees of the minority treaties of the Versailles settlement proved utterly illusory and as Hitler consolidated power in Germany, C. A. Macartney, the secretary to the Minorities Committee of the League of Nations published a detailed analysis of the minority problem in Europe and came to the conclusion that “the real root of the problem lies in the philosophy of the national state as it is practiced today in central and eastern Europe. . . . It is true that the [minorities] Treaties provide in general terms for the equality of all nationals of the contracting state before the law, and as regards enjoyment of civil and political rights, and for the same treatment and security in law and fact. . . . [However], since the whole conception of the national state implies a violation of the principle of equality to the detriment of the minorities, the guarantee of equality might be construed as involving the renunciation by the state of its national character. . . . A national state and national minorities are incompatibles.'”
The “philosophy of the national state” referred to by Macartney was that the state, a territory with a government, is an expression of the sovereignty of a “nation,” a group that is in American terms defined ethnically (even religion being considered more a matter of heritage than necessarily of faith). He also noted that the new states after Versailles defined themselves constitutionally in national terms, each as the state of the single nation that forms the majority of its population. Macartney noted that when a minority exists in such a state, only three solutions are possible: the revision of frontiers to match the distribution of populations, the elimination of the minorities by emigration “perhaps through exchange of populations,” or the altering of the basis of the state, so that it is no longer a national state. He also noted that a fourth possibility could be seen in “physical slaughter,” but that “although this most effective of remedies is still in vogue in certain countries it shall not be discussed in this humane Macartney’s position was echoed almost sixty years later in my analysis…
Posted inNationalism|Comments Off on How long will minority groups rely upon the kindness of strangers?
My peers at high school (I graduated in 1984) often did SAT preparation and the like. Their parents often went over with their homework. As a result, they usually got much better scores than I did. I occasionally asked my parents a question but it never occurred to them review my homework or to get me tutoring.
I would not have liked it if my parents had been more involved in my life.
They did review my report card and until 10th grade, they were rarely happy about my grades. From 10th grade on, I had a B+ average or better.
* In America, you have a lot of public spirited people. For the Hillery dump to Wikileaks I suspect an honest player who got fed up with what he was seeing. Sort of like Snowden who didn’t destroy his life to empower some fraction over another. I suspect that someone just got pushed to the edge seeing too much nastyness and squealed. They were on a team and would like to win but not at the cost of seeing institutions trashed.
I doubt operatives for the Republican Party hacked computers and leaked emails. Who would have directed and organized that? Trump barely influences the Pub Party. Does Ryan have a huge bureaucracy at his beck and call? Can any Pub call in CIA, FBI or NGO people and give them clandestine orders?
In places where raw power rules, like Turkey or the Middle East or the Far East, perhaps everything is subordinate to how it hurts or benefits the actor. If you live under a sort of despotism where power determines everything about your life, pursuit of even little slivers of power becomes all encompassing, requiring abandoning integrity to self interest. Not America yet. I am able to make a living and avoid legal trouble without joining any [prison] gang for survival.
* And why can’t we think and behave like this? The American right either thinks too wildly (revolutionary fantasies) or too timidly (making sure our soft spoken arguments comply with Aristotelian logic). Identifying and manipulating choke points is the sensible middle.
* There have been a few with your mindset, but it seems to have petered out over the years. Getting the alt right on board for a pragmatic long march has proven to be akin to herding cats. Many of us soldier on in our own way, but without an effective organizational framework I am not optimistic.
* The CIA has long supported Islamists as long they’re pro-US and anti-Soviet/Russia, similar tactics have been used by Israel, Mossad supported the creation of Hamas to weaken the secular/leftists PLO who was seen as a bigger threat, the Sunni terrorist organizations aren’t a threat to Israel as the secular Dictators like Saddam, Gaddaffi or Assad, I heard from a Israeli that their biggest fear was someone like the secularist Nasser uniting the Arab world against them.
* This certainly goes along with alt-right themes about the “Cathedral,” at the center of which are the elite universities. Most talk about beating the progressives at their own game surround building our own, alternative Cathedral. But that’d take generations. We abjure the black/hippy method of gaining power through outright violence and scofflawry. Cheat-prep lies in the middle ground.
It had occurred to me to game the system, because it’s obvious. But I never thought of doing so in such an organized manner. Home schooling is a start. We need also to develop pseudo-progressives, CIA-style, who can take down the Cathedral from within. Sorta like how the progressives took it over in the first place, then rolled over for a series of lesser leftists, who degenerated into the PC, zombie-morons who run it now.
* If those of you reading this and are so concerned would like to manipulate one of those choke points, here you are: Chobani yogurt. I’ve already gotten a mom and pop grocer my mother always uses and I sometimes use to take it off their shelves and cancel their distribution contract. Now, I’m working on St. Louis’s prominent big box grocer to do the same.
Why Chobani? Its Kurdish ethnic Turkish national CEO working in the United States loves to import refugees (“–”) to work in his yogurt plants. One of them is in Twin Falls, Idaho. Refugees in Twin Falls quasi-raped a five year old white girl recently.
I read in WND that the girl’s parents are at a loss for what to do. Because they don’t think they have any option. They (and we) can’t take on the Federal government who brought the refugees here, because it’s too big, powerful and abstract. We can’t do anything about the refugees themselves, because refugees are considered sympathetic downtrodden figures. Voting? Spare me. However, not all hope is lost here, because the choke point is Chobani and its CEO, because while the force of the Feds is used to bring the refugees in country, they need a business or NGO or humanitarian org partner to find a specific place within the country to settle them where they can have amenities and work. If we can do the Jack Ryan strategy (OD’s Jack Ryan, not the Clancy novels’ Jack Ryan), and make it personal against those people, make them suffer consequences and feel some sort of pain, then they’ll knock it off. Hurting Chobani’s business is an ideal way, another good way is to make its CEO’s personal life a living hell.
Posted inEducation|Comments Off on He Who Controls Test Prep Controls the Future
My parents had no idea I would convert to Orthodox Judaism when they named me “Luke Carey Ford.” They feared the other kids at school would call me “Elsie” (LC), but that never happened.
I think Luke Ford is an awesome name. I could not have come up with a better one. I had to move to LA and become a blogger with that name.
A name shapes your life.
I would have had a different life with a different name, perhaps stayed a Seventh-Day Adventist and become a pastor.
“Melvin Ford” does not inspire.
Would Donald Trump be just as Trumpian with a different name?
When I converted to Judaism, I chose “Levi Ben Avraham” because “Levi” is close to “Luke” and “Ben Avraham” means child of Abraham. I quickly learned that “Luke” marked you out in Orthodox Jewish life so I quickly adopted “Levi,” but whenever my rabbi was mad at me, he would call me “Luke.” When Orthodox Jews like me, they usually call me “Levi,” but when they don’t accept my conversion as real, they call me “Luke.”
According to the Talmud, “Luke” is one of the names that marks someone as a goy.
I never correct anyone between “Luke” and “Levi.” If Orthodox Jews push me, I say I have a preference for “Levi,” but with my goyisha punim (gentile face) and goyisha mannerisms, I’m obviously a ger (convert).
Thinking of giving your baby an unusual name? Think about the effect it will have on their life, says Phoenicia Hebebe Dobson-Mouawad
My name is Phoenicia Hebebe Dobson-Mouawad. No, I’m not kidding. This is the name my parents chose for me 19 years ago and it is the reason I don’t go to Starbucks. Choosing a name for your baby can seem like a way to determine what type of parents you will become – many aim for trendy rather than traditional. However, faced with the resentment of your grownup offspring, who have endured a childhood of being embarrassed by their unusual name, you may wish you could turn back time.
My experience of living with an unusual name has been, to put it lightly, difficult. There has not been one occasion when making a new acquaintance has not resulted in a remark about it, or some degree of confusion.
… Have you heard the name before? If not, no one else will have.
Can you pronounce it without having to look it up? Because if you need to look it up, I can tell you firsthand that you will be the only person your child ever meets who has taken the time to do so.
Avoid hyphens unless both names are easily pronounceable. Dobson – that’s fine. Mouawad – more than enough effort on its own. Dobson-Mouawad – no comment.
Can a child of primary school age say it? If they look confused and say, “What?”, take that as a strong no.
Remember that your child’s name is for their happiness alone and not to prove to the world how cool and creative you are. That’s what Instagram is for. Take it from someone who knows or in 19 years’ time your child will be as fed up as I am.
* I use Steve Sailer mostly because it’s easier for other people to spell than Steven Sailer.
There are other writers with almost identical names: I co-wrote a National Review article in 1997 with an academic named Stephen Seiler. And there’s a novelist named Steven Saylor who writes detective stories starring a gay detective in Ancient Rome.
* According to David Hackett Fischer, onomastic creativity in America comes from the (real) Scots-Irish, the blacks learned it from them.
* Another consideration that is increasingly relevant in the Internet age is making your name unique enough that you can track it on the Internet.
This is especially important if your surname is common.
I know a journalist who changed the spelling of his first name because one of the most famous journalists in his country already shared both his name and surname, so “making a name” for himself with that name would have been very hard to impossible.
Do not however be overly autistic and/or ideological about it. That gender-denying SJW with whom Sailer engaged with on that question reminds one, in his attitudes, of the 1920s Bolshevik freaks who gave their children names like “Iskra” and “Barrikada.” Won’t do his child any good under the Trumpenreich! 😉
If I had to summarize, keep it: Short, simple, unusual, timeless.
* If someone is named Hiram, dad was probably a Mason and hoped the son would be too.
The best research tool for this is Wolfram Alpha. It will give a graph of popularity of most any male or female given name.
It’s also worth mentioning that adults have no excuse for being too upset with a given name because they can change it. Or use a middle name. Or, if Catholic, their confirmation name. On and on.
* I’m actually happy that there are a number of people called exactly the same as I am, so that it’s a little bit more difficult to track me down. Not that it makes a big difference to intelligence services etc., but it might protect me somewhat from some lone nuts.
* Working with large numbers of Black people as I do, I have encountered some real creativity in first names: Sitting Bull (for a black Hispanic man), two Geronimos, and Lexis…my absolute favorite was Twatia (pronounced “Twasha”).
* Parents don’t name their daughters with male names to be feminist or push “gender equality” or whatever. They do it because it sounds hot. A beautiful woman with a man’s name is like a beautiful woman in a man’s shirt; the contrast of femininity is amplified. The problem is these parents who are secretly trying to create a gorgeous popular girl with their word choices, have far less influence than biology. Nobody ever leaves room for the possibility that their daughter won’t be a beauty.
So James King, when she still went by that name, was extra hot with that name. But if someone who looked like Rosie O’Donnell was named James, it would be extra pathetic. Once James King started going by Jamie King, everyone began to notice she was actually kind of average looking and had pound puppy fangs.
People should be careful trying to pick the name which they think at the time sounds most like a head cheerleader, because you can overshoot it. A hot name won’t fix ugly, but if you are pretty it might give you that extra psychological push to choose a life of stripping. I knew a very beautiful stripper named Honey. I did not believe that was her real name until I saw her license. Her parents overshot the mark on that one.
One simple rule: picture your kid as the fattest loser in high school. Is their name a source of added torment? Then pick something else. Pick something that works equally well for a jock as a nerd, because you don’t get to choose what your kid is.
* Is saying “Christian name” common in Germany? In the US we say “first name” with “given name” a distant second. Virtually no one would understand “Christian name” especially given how much Christianity has disappeared, although occasionally people say “christening” to mean “naming a child”.
* What this all really signifies is the rapid decomposition of the highly connotated, form-rich world of organic society, and the consequent loss of understanding of what a name actually is.
A name is fundamentally a spacial designation that marks the “place” of an individual within society. Thus, our a priori notions about how the world is ordered are mirrored in our conception of the individual and are expressed in our naming conventions. Social order supervenes on individual identity, therefore there can be no change in the social order without a parallel change in the role of the name.
A glance at the past (and at foreign cultures) reveals an adequate sampling of how names are applied in traditional societies. One commonly recurring feature is the family or clan name, the most basic marker of identity. Often this family name (corresponding to our “last” name) is expressed first, as in Chinese or Japanese. The name Sakai Hiroyuki, spoken proudly, conveys the sentiment, “I am the clan Sakai personified in the man Hiroyuki.” In cultures where the family honor is paramount, there is really no other way to identify oneself. The individual is a sort of bud or flower on the family tree. To suffer the family name to be disgraced or lost is a fate worse than death. It is the obliteration of one’s entire identity.
Closely associated with clan names is the idea of patronymic or matronymic names, which describe lineal descent. It is significantly more insular and “nuclear” than the clan name, though, and serves rather to aggrandize the parent than the entire tribe. Essentially it denotes a time horizon delimited by two generations. Johann considers himself to have discharged his duty to posterity when he sires “Johann’s son,” and little Sven Johansson is constantly admonished by his very moniker to live up to the deeds and righteousness of the mighty Johann. For this reason, patronymics are almost always used in either an affectionate or authoritative tones of voice. Their purpose is that of chain wherewith to bind another in either love or servitude, especially among the Nordics and the Slavs. Among the Semitic peoples they serve almost exclusively as parental adornments. Abdul bin Mohammed, one of a sprawling horde of sons by multiple wives, is just another jewel in Sultan Mohammad’s tiara.
From the feudal order and settled village life of the traditional West there emerged two immensely significant themes: the place-name and the trade-name, the former predominating among the aristocracy and the latter among the peasantry. We cannot overstate the symbolic importance of these developments, for an entire world is expressed thereby. It is impossible to understand a name like Comte d’Orleans if one considers it to be a mere job title; in fact it is a contemplated vision of the social order which contains several important characteristics. First, there is a place called Orleans. This is taken to be a metaphysical fact that needs no further explanation. It has perdurance, it has boundaries, it has a quality and flavor all its own; and intrinsic in the conception of such places, of which Orleans is one, is the idea that there be a man to rule and protect it, the Count. So necessary is the man to this place that he cannot be thought of without it, nor the place without him. Out of this vision grew the medieval maxim “no land without a lord,” and it is from this that we are able to truly understand King Louis XIV’s famous “L’etat, c’est moi.” Modern people take that phrase to be the very height of arrogant absurdity, but it is actually a profound and pithy expression of the metaphysical basis of all political power.
And down in the village there are the Millers, the Smiths, the Weavers, the Coopers, toiling away at their assorted tasks, perhaps presided over by a Burgermeister, while in the manor house the Count is attended by the Chancellors, Chamberlains, and Reeves. A whole organic society springs into being and is girded by these identities, which are all connected by the Great Chain of Being to the King and the Emperor, to the priest and the Pope, and to God Himself. Even the lowliest Porter or Carter has a role to play. The organic society, like the Ptolemaic universe, is driven by wheels within wheels, from the highest to the lowest. In such a world even the secular order is suffused by sacred rays. Work is a blessing, a vocation, and dishonest trade an offense against the whole civitas, to be punished harshly with the approval of onlookers. Added to this of course is the person’s “Christian name,” the name of some saint or apostle that the child receives at christening, which grafts him into Holy Church and the society formed in its image.
At the present time this world no longer exists. In the modern age, the metaphysical basis for societal order is undergoing constant assault. There are today no more lords, no more priests, no more families, no more clans, no more titles—only atomized individuals and their “jobs.” The modern American space-concept is at best boringly and tritely Cartesian, our “first” and “last” names being merely the x and y coordinates that locate us, however transiently, in a boundless Euclidean plain. Nowadays “James Fowler” is just a point in the American phase-space. He does web analytics for the local hospital association. He doesn’t know a thing about raising chickens and he has no idea whether he is the son of Zebedee or the brother of Jude. The burning void that is his identity is temporarily tranquilized by Comicon and fantasy sports, but deep down inside he is forever nobody.
The “creative names” spoken of in this post represent the final stage of irony. It is the ultimate recidive of a form-filled world into arbitrariness and chaos. Throughout the Cartesian plain there are weeds growing up through the cracks. Deshawn and Shaniqua are aberrations, colorful monsters, overfed carrion birds feeding off our detritus—a bit of African animism blown off course by civilizational gales, now living as exotic interlopers in our poorly-tended parks. The process has its parallel everywhere you look these days. Nihilism and ennui are the defining characteristics of our time, from the girl with the pink dreadlocks to the guy with anime tattoos. Open borders, globalism, and political correctness are the same phenomena on a vast scale. Nobody has any identity except the freaks.
Upon all who aspire to a better future it is incumbent to change our identity by changing how we view the world, and to beseech Heaven for a superior vision. He who can believe in himself literally has a nation inside him waiting to be born. To those who find their true names belong the future.
Posted inAmerica, Personal|Comments Off on How Not to Name Your Child
Everything good depends upon discrimination to survive, but for those who don’t think, “discrimination” is a dirty word.
Every living thing should be expected to seek their self-interest and to try to preserve their world from invasive species. Why would birds want to allow cats in their habitat to kill them? Why would deer want to allow lions in? Why would dolphins welcome killer sharks? Why would non-Muslims want to allow Muslims in? Why would Europeans welcome a migration of Africans?
The aim of a state’s immigration policy has to be one that would-be immigrants ought to accept as reasonable (even if in practice they disagree with it). For example, it is legitimate for a state to admit only high-skilled immigrants if this serves its economic goals, despite the fact that this policy may be unpopular with low-skilled migrants. By contrast, it is illegitimate for a state to admit only people of a certain skin color, or to have a “temporary” migrant policy (say, for guest workers) that in actuality creates a semi-permanent two-caste system. An unfortunate policy is O.K. An unfair one is not.
Does that distinction seem as if it might get blurry in practice? The early history of immigration policy in America, as told by the historian Douglas C. Baynton in DEFECTIVES IN THE LAND: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics (University of Chicago, $35), suggests so. Traditionally, scholars have divided that history into two periods: a “selective” phase starting in 1882, which in large part (aside from the Chinese Exclusion Act) involved screening out individuals with any “defect” that would render them “likely to become a public charge”; and a “restrictive phase” starting with the passage of a literacy test in 1917, which marked the beginning of a series of proxy measures for keeping out whole nationalities or races. Using Miller’s principles, you might condone much of the first phase but condemn the second.
Yet Baynton, challenging the conventional historiography, argues that the selective phase of American immigration policy, despite its heavy reliance on the sensible-sounding “public charge” standard, was no less discriminatory. During those years, he demonstrates, immigration officials could and did customarily invoke this standard to rule out such “defectives” as women unaccompanied by male providers and members of races with supposed “predispositions” to criminality. Even those with “objective” physical impairments (as the Americans with Disabilities Act would underscore many years later) were incapable of work only if you made certain assumptions about how workplaces were to be structured. So beware “reasonable” justifications for immigration policies, Baynton warns.
Posted inImmigration|Comments Off on DEFECTIVES IN THE LAND: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
