What Should Americans Put First?

Posted on May 2, 2016 by Luke Ford

How about America? This makes some Jews nervous because gentile nationalisms often exclude Jews.

By:Srdja Trifkovic | May 02, 2016

Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech last Wednesday deserves at least a solid B+ and you can read my take on it in the June issue of Chronicles. It offered an eloquent argument for offensive realism, based on the fact that the international system—composed of sovereign nation-states pursuing their interests—is still essentially competitive and Hobbesian. Trump is the only candidate who understands this cardinal fact, and who unambiguously states America is not and should not be an exception to that timeless principle.

There was no room in the column to consider in detail one aspect of Trump’s speech which has elicited a chorus of mainstream media and Jewish disapproval: his use of the term “America First.” The CNN asserted that the phrase “refers to the America First movement in the early 1940s, in which some elements were associated with anti-semitism and U.S. nationalism in the lead-up to World War II.” Note how “anti-semitism” and “U.S. nationalism” are neatly banded together, with the implication that they are in the same political and moral league.

Bloomberg’s columnist Eli Lake explicitly connected “Trump’s new slogan” with the “Nazi era,” thus reviving this “toxic” phrase which had long been banished from “respectable discourse.” He even accused Trump of emulating Charles Lindbergh’s attacks on FDR in his “personal aspersions against President Obama.” Lake—an “Israel Firster” if there ever was one—went on to claim that “Trump’s Lindbergh-like instincts were apparent in his speech” when he said he would ask NATO allies to pay a fair share for their defense, or else “the U.S. must be prepared to let them defend themselves.” As a cynic commented on informationliberation.com, “The term ‘America First’ was associated with something different in the past, therefore it pretty much means the same thing today, even though it doesn’t. Understand?” (Perhaps nothing better was to be expected from a journalist who five years ago eagerly propagated the atocity lie that Russian agents had bombed the U.S. embassy in Georgia.)

The Anti-Defamation League urged Trump to “reconsider” using the phrase. According to ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, the America First movement was characterized by “the undercurrents of anti-semitism and bigotry” and “for many Americans, the term ‘America First’ will always be associated with and tainted by this history . . . associated with incivility and intolerance.”

“It doesn’t seem to matter to trump that America Firsters didn’t want to beat the Nazis,” tweeted Jeffrey Goldberg, an Atlantic columnist. He seems unaware that an overwhelming majority of Americans didn’t want to fight anyone in particular in yet another European war, that FDR won the 1940 election in part thanks to his pledge to keep the United States out of that war—more than a year after it had started—and that in the end it was “the Nazis” who declared war on the U.S. in December 1941, three days after Pearl Harbor. (Let it be recalled that Goldberg’s cover story for the April 2015 issue of the Atlantic was “Is it time for Jews to leave Europe?” As Antony Lerman, former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research has noted, with friends like Goldberg the Jews need no enemies.)

What we are dealing with is an example of the establishment’s reductive propaganda based on the logical fallacy of false equivalence. Along those lines, since the Deutschlandlied—proudly proclaiming that Germany stands “above all else”—is Germany’s national anthem today, just as it was during the Nazi era (1933-45), the Federal Republic equals the Third Reich. As infowars.com columnist has summarized it, “Trump is popular. Hitler was popular. Therefore Trump = Hitler. Trump promises to look out for America’s best interests. Hitler promised to look out for Germany’s best interests. Therefore Trump = Hitler.” The real objective of the campaign is to suggest that having the audacity to put one’s own country’s interests first is reactionary at best, and more likely indicative of “U.S. nationalism”—which is symbiotically linked to antisemitism and has a toxic history of bigotry, incivility, intolerance etc.

The antiwar movement of 1940-41 has been brazenly demonized, and the history of the America First Committee (AFC) systematically misrepresented for decades by the same people who simultaneously promote a depraved mass culture, multiculturalist indoctrination and mass immigration in order to neutralize the Americans’ sense of historical and cultural identity. Trump’s detractors believe that we should not feel a special bond for any particular country or nation (except, in Eli Lake’s case, to Israel), but transfer our loyalties and preferences to “the international community.” Such notions have been internalized by the American elite class and the establishment of both major parties. Back in 1999 then-Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott felt ready to declare that the United States may not exist “in its current form” in the 21st century, because the very concept of nationhood—here and throughout the world—will have been rendered obsolete: “All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary.”

Read more.

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WHY HAVE WOMEN BECOME LEFT-WING? THE POLITICAL GENDER GAP AND THE DECLINE IN MARRIAGE

Posted on May 1, 2016 by Luke Ford

Abstract: The last three decades have witnessed the rise of a political gender gap in the United States wherein more women than men favor the Democratic party. We trace this development to the decline in marriage, which we posit has made men richer and women poorer. Data for the United States support this argument. First, there is a strong positive correlation between state divorce prevalence and the political gender gap – higher divorce
prevalence reduces support for the Democrats among men but not
women. Second, longitudinal data show that following marriage (divorce), women are less (more) likely to support the Democratic party.

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Is There Anything Good About Men?

Posted on May 1, 2016 by Luke Ford

Roy Baumeister writes: You’re probably thinking that a talk called “Is there anything good about men” will be a short talk! Recent writings have not had much good to say about men. Titles like “Men Are Not Cost Effective” speak for themselves. Maureen Dowd’s book was called “Are Men Necessary?” and although she never gave an explicit answer, anyone reading the book knows her answer was no. Brizendine’s book “The Female Brain” introduces itself by saying, “Men, get ready to experience brain envy.” Imagine a book advertising itself by saying that women will soon be envying the superior male brain!

Nor are these isolated examples. Eagly’s research has compiled mountains of data on the stereotypes people have about men and women,which the researchers summarized as “The WAW effect.” WAW stands for “Women Are Wonderful.” Both men and women hold much more favorable views of women than of men. Almost everybody likes women better than men. I certainly do.

My purpose in this talk is not to try to balance this out by praising men, though along the way I will have various positive things to say about both genders. The question of whether there’s anything good about men is only my point of departure. The tentative title of the book I’m writing is “How culture exploits men,” but even that for me is the lead-in to grand questions about how culture shapes action. In that context, what’s good about men means what men are good for, from the perspective of the system.
Hence this is not about the “battle of the sexes,” and in fact I think one unfortunate legacy of feminism has been the idea that men and women are basically enemies.I shall suggest, instead, that most often men and women have been partners,supporting each other rather than exploiting or manipulating each other.
Nor is this about trying to argue that men should be regarded as victims. I detest the whole idea of competing tobe victims. And I’m certainly not denying that culture has exploited women. But rather than seeing culture as patriarchy, which is to say a conspiracy by mento exploit women, I think it’s more accurate to understand culture (e.g., a country, a religion) as an abstract system that competes against rival systems— and that uses both men and women, often in different ways, to advance its cause.
Also I think it’s best to avoid value judgments as much as possible. They have made discussion of gender politics very difficult and sensitive, thereby warping the play of ideas. I have no conclusions to present about what’s good or bad or how the world should change. In fact my own theory is built around tradeoffs, so that whenever there is something good it is tied to something else that is bad, and they balance out.
I don’t want to be on anybody’s side. Gender warriors please go home.

Men on Top
When I say I am researching how culture exploits men, the first reaction is usually “How can you say culture exploits men, when men are in charge of everything?” This is a fair objection and needs to betaken seriously. It invokes the feminist critique of society. This critique started when some women systematically looked up at the top of society and saw men everywhere: most world rulers, presidents, prime ministers, most members of Congress and parliaments, most CEOs of major corporations, and so forth — these are mostly men.
Seeing all this, the feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society is set up to favor men. It must be great to be a man.
The mistake in that way of thinking is to look only at the top. If one were to look downward to the bottom of society instead, one finds mostly men there too. Who’s in prison, all over the world, as criminals or political prisoners? The population on Death Row has never approached 51% female. Who’s homeless? Again, mostly men.Whom does society use for bad or dangerous jobs? US Department of Labor statistics report that 93% of the people killed on the job are men. Likewise,who gets killed in battle? Even in today’s American army, which has made much of integrating the sexes and putting women into combat, the risks aren’t equal.This year we passed the milestone of 3,000 deaths in Iraq, and of those, 2,938were men, 62 were women.
One can imagine an ancient battle in which the enemy was driven off and the city saved,and the returning soldiers are showered with gold coins. An early feminist might protest that hey, all those men are getting gold coins,half of those coins should go to women. In principle, I agree. But remember,while the men you see are getting gold coins, there are other men you don’t see, who are still bleeding to death on the battlefield from spear wounds.
That’s an important first clue to how culture uses men. Culture has plenty of tradeoffs,in which it needs people to do dangerous or risky things, and so it offers big rewards to motivate people to take those risks. Most cultures have tended to use men for these high-risk, high-payoffs lots much more than women. I shall propose there are important pragmatic reasons for this. The result is that some men reap big rewards while others have their lives ruined or even cut short. Most cultures shield their women from the risk and therefore also don’t give them the big rewards. I’m not saying this is what cultures ought to do, morally, but cultures aren’t moral beings. They do what they do for pragmatic reasons driven by competition against other systems and other groups.

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Why Men Gave Up Polygamy

Posted on May 1, 2016 by Luke Ford

Dr. David J. Ley writes: A question I’ve pondered over recent years, has been why men in so many cultures gave up the right and tradition to have multiple wives? Historically, polygyny has been one of the most common and prevalent forms of marriage, worldwide. But, in modern Western culture, men with multiple wives are seen as sinners and lawbreakers.

This flies in the face of increasing evidence that for many men (though not all), there are genetic, biological and psychological factors that dispose them to not be monogamous. As my colleague Eric Anderson argues in his new well-researched book, The Monogamy Gap, there is increasing evidence that monogamy is not a natural state for males, a dilemma which contributes to high rates of pornography use, infidelity, and marital difficulties. Anderson makes a clever point, suggesting that infidelity actually is a “part” of monogamy, asserting that for such men, sexual infidelity is a way to stay monogamous to a single partner. Remember that monogamy as a term does not describe sexual fidelity, but merely the act of marriage to a single person. In our current usage, we blur the concepts though, especially in the world we live in, where sexual fidelity is seen as the ultimate expression of love and commitment.

So, as I’ve seen this rising evidence that demanding sexual fidelity of men is challenging, to say the least, I’ve wondered why and how it is that societies came to adopt monogamy (meaning sexual fidelity to a single person, and men having only one wife). If Western culture and American society really have been dominated by patriarchal control (I’m not so sure this as true as we think; Baumeister’s book Is There Anything Good About Men is a delightful challenge to this assumption), why would these men in charge give up the right to have multiple wives?

And now, here’s the answer. In “The puzzle of monogamous marriage” (see, I wasn’t the only one puzzled by this) by Henrich, Boyd and Richerson, the authors present evidence that monogamy actually has significant social benefits. In polygyny, powerful men gather the most desirable women for themselves. And less powerful men “go hungry,” wifeless. In fact, throughout human history, while 80% of women have reproduced, only 40% of men have. Those men who couldn’t compete, didn’t get to have even a single wife, and thus didn’t have children. So, what did those men do with their time? According to Henrich, Boyd and Richerson, it appears they got into lots of trouble. Societies where polygyny has been (and still is) practiced, have higher rates of violent crime, poverty, and other types of crime such as fraud. Apparently, if you can’t get a wife, what’s the point of following the rules?

In fact, other research shows that polygynous cultures also end up with men caring less about the needs of their children, contributing less overall to family subsistence needs, and placing higher value on male aggression.

So, through a (probably unconscious) social process, societies have gravitated towards emphasis and requirement of monogamous marriages, because it smoothes out some significant social problems. By “sharing” out the women amongst a society’s men, and allowing all men a democratic chance to get married, men spend more time worrying about looking like good potential mates, and have less time and energy to break the rules and get in trouble.

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New study finds our desire for ‘like-minded others’ is hard-wired

Posted on May 1, 2016 by Luke Ford

NEWS: A path-breaking new study on how we seek similarity in relationships, co-authored by researchers at Wellesley College and the University of Kansas, upends the idea that “opposites attract,” instead suggesting we’re drawn to people who are like-minded. The study could lead to a fundamental change in understanding relationship formation—and it sounds a warning for the idea that couples can change each other over time.
The investigation’s findings are presented in “Similarity in Relationships as Niche Construction: Choice, Stability, and Influence Within Dyads in a Free Choice Environment,” in the current issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the field’s most respected journal. Assistant Professor of Psychology Angela Bahns (Wellesley College) and Professor of Psychology Chris Crandall (University of Kansas) are the paper’s lead authors.
In what might be considered a paradigm shift, the study’s most surprising discovery is that people in relationships change each other over time. Instead, Bahns and Crandall’s evidence places new emphasis on the earliest moments of a relationship—revealing that future friends or partners are already similar at the outset of their social connection, a major new finding, say the authors.
“Picture two strangers striking up a conversation on a plane, or a couple on a blind date,” says Bahns. “From the very first moments of awkward banter, how similar the two people are is immediately and powerfully playing a role in future interactions. Will they connect? Or walk away? Those early recognitions of similarity are really consequential in that decision.”
Whether or not a relationship develops could depend on the level of similarity the two individuals share from the beginning of their meeting. “You try to create a social world where you’re comfortable, where you succeed, where you have people you can trust and with whom you can cooperate to meet your goals,” Crandall said. “To create this, similarity is very useful, and people are attracted to it most of the time.”
Bahns adds, “Though the idea that partners influence each other is central in relationships research, we have identified a large domain in which friends show very little change— personality, attitudes and values, and a selection of socially-relevant behaviors.” She explains, “To be clear, we do not mean to suggest that social influence doesn’t happen in relationships; however, there’s little room for influence to occur when partners are similar at the outset of relationships.”
The data also suggests our drive to select like-minded others may be far stronger than previously assumed. “We’re arguing that selecting similar others as relationship partners is extremely common—so common and so widespread on so many dimensions that it could be described as a psychological default,” explains Bahns.
Bahns and Crandall stress the research shows people are not seeking shared similarity on one or two particular topics. “People are more similar than chance on almost everything we measure, and they are especially similar on the things that matter most to them personally,” Bahns said.
The study has major implications for how we grasp the foundations of relationships and approach relationships when the partners are different. Its findings were derived from real-world relationships. Data came from a field-research method dubbed “free-range dyad harvesting,” in which pairs of people interacting in public (romantic couples, friends, acquaintances) were asked questions about attitudes, values, prejudices, personality traits or behaviors that are important to them. The data were compared to see how similar or different the pairs were, and to test whether pairs who had known each other longer and whose relationships were closer and more intimate were more similar than newly formed pairs. They were not. Additionally, the researchers surveyed pairs who had just met (in a college classroom setting), and then surveyed the same pairs later. This allowed the benefit of longitudinal data, painting a picture of the same pairs over time.

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