Luke Ford

Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes

Posted on August 18, 2019 by Luke Ford

Aurelian Craiutu (Ph.D. Princeton, 1999) is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, and Adjunct Professor in the American Studies Program. He is also affiliated with the Russian and East European Institute, the Institute for European Studies, the Ostrom Workshop, and the Lilly School of Philanthropic Studies. Prior to coming to Indiana, he taught at Duke University and the University of Northern Iowa. In 2010, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Paris-II, Panthéon-Assas and in 2005 and 2006, he was Visiting Professor at the National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania.
Craiutu’s research interests include French political and social thought (Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Constant, Madame de Staël, Guizot, Aron), political ideologies (liberalism, conservatism) as well as theories of transition to democracy and democratic consolidation (mostly Central and Eastern Europe). He is the author and editor of several books on modern political thought. His first monograph, Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires (Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington Books, 2003), won a 2004 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award. It was also translated into French in a revised and enlarged edition as Le centre introuvable: la pensée politique des doctrinaires sous la Restauration (Plon, 2006). His two most recent books are A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748-1830 (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Dr. Craiutu also published two books in political theory in Romanian, In Praise of Liberty: Essays in Political Philosophy, (1998), and In Praise of Moderation (2006), both with Polirom Publishing House, one of the country’s leading presses.
He has also edited six books: François Guizot, History of the Origins of Representative Government in Europe (Liberty Fund, 2002); Germaine de Staël, Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution (Liberty Fund, 2008); America through European Eyes (co-edited with Jeffrey C. Isaac, Penn State University Press, 2009); Conversations with Tocqueville (co-edited with Sheldon Gellar, Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings (with Jeremy Jennings, Cambridge University Press, 2009), as well as Dialog şi libertate: Eseuri în onoarea lui Mihai Şora [Dialogue and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Mihai Şora], edited by Aurelian Craiutu & Sorin Antohi (Bucharest: Nemira Publishing House, 1997) [in Romanian].
Dr. Craiutu’s articles and reviews have been published in many academic journals including American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, The Review of Politics, History of Political Thought, Political Theory, European Journal of Political Theory, and History of European Ideas. He served as Associate Editor of the European Journal of Political Theory (2004-14).
Professor Craiutu has received awards, fellowships, and grants from several institutions including the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the James Madison Program (Princeton University), the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Earhart Foundation. In 2000, he won the American Political Science Association’s Leo Strauss Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of political theory. In 2004, he received a Student Choice Award and an Outstanding Junior Faculty Award at Indiana University.
He is currently working on a book manuscript on moderation and the rise of democracy in France, 1830-1880 and is preparing for Liberty Fund a new translation and annotated edition of Jacques Necker’s On the Executive Power in Large States (1792).

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School Killers

Posted on August 18, 2019 by Luke Ford

David Grossman writes in his book On Combat:

Psychologist and FBI consultant, Dr. James McGee has conducted the most definitive profile of the school shooters, using extensive data collected from 17 cases. Dr. McGee calls these kids, “Classroom Avengers,” and his superb research has been extensively used by local, federal and international law enforcement organizations.
There are many myths about these killers. For example, some individuals claim they were all on Ritalin or Prozac, which is wrong. The truth is that very few, if any, of these school shooters was on these drugs when they committed their crimes. Dr. McGee says there is a lot of “bad” info out there, and even most of the media reports were wrong, based on rumor that cannot be refuted because the reporters do not have access to the juvenile offenders’ medical records. McGee had access to the FBI data in these cases, and he believes that one or possibly two of the school shooters was had been on antidepressants and one or two had been on Ritalin, but in most of cases they had been taken off those medications prior to committing their crimes. It may be useful to ask ourselves how many kids (and how many adults) would have committed violent crimes if they were not on powerful, modern antidepressants.
Very few, if any, of the school shooters were on medication, but according to the FBI, all of these Classroom Avengers did have something in common: All of them had refused to participate in any disciplined activity or sport, and all of them were obsessed with media violence.
Consider these facts. When they committed their crimes:
-None of the school shooters was in varsity sports.
-None of them had trained extensively in the strict discipline of a martial art. (One had
earned a yellow belt, the lowest rank which took only a few weeks, and after dabbling
briefly he dropped out.)
-None of the school killers was in Junior ROTC.
-None of them was a competitive shooter, a very demanding sport with draconian
punishments if you fire at the wrong time or in the wrong direction.
-None of the school killers had a hunting license, another activity that requires strict
discipline and adherence to the law. (Did you know that if you shoot at a deer from your
car, you would lose your car, your gun, your money, and your hunting license? For all you
golfers, what would happen if the first time you cheated, they took your clubs and your
cart, and banned you from golfing again? There wouldn’t be any golfers left! Such
draconian discipline and severe punishment is present in hunting because the activity
involves deadly weapons, and hunters wouldn’t have it any other way.)
-None of them had been avid paintball players, a demanding sport that requires
discipline, and one in which the player can get hurt. (You may note that paintball does
provide military quality conditioned reflexes and combat inoculation, but no one is
attacking this sport, nor should they. The entire medical community–AMA, APA, American
Academy of Pediatrics, and many others–has warned us about the health impact of
violent video games, but not one scholarly study has indicated that paintball is harmful
for kids. Again, discipline seems to be the safeguard.)
The video game industry is particularly incensed by this school shooter profile, and have gone to extreme levels to provide some exceptions. For example, they claim that the Columbine killers were reported to have gone bowling. Which is a pretty pathetic example, and I believe it simply proves the point if this is the best they can come up
with. The primary point to remember is that it is not me saying this about these killers. It is the FBI.
(It should be mentioned that there was one disciplined activity in which several of the school shooters did participate (although several of them later dropped out), and that was band. But no one is sure what to make of that. I am not taking a cheap shot at band, an excellent activity in which all three of my sons participated. This is a puzzle that many good people have examined with sincere concern, developing theories involving such
factors as the absence of discipline in some band programs, possible bullying in the band environment, and the non-athletic nature of this activity.)
With a few minor exceptions, none of the school shooters were willing to participate in disciplined, structured, adult led activities, but all of them were infatuated with media violence. In the end, the profile of the school killer is that of a sad, pathetic little kid who is obsessed with violent movies, TV, and/or video games, but who will not participate in an activity in which he might be hurt or have to submit to discipline. I am not necessarily recommending any of these activities for children, nor am I condemning them. But I am joining our medical community in stating that, from the perspective of my area of expertise in enabling killing in combat, the impact of violent TV, movies, and (most especially) video games on kids should be condemned. Like the AlQaida terrorist, or the kamikaze pilot, or the Nazi SS, these kids have immersed themselves in a sick culture, and they have convinced themselves that what they are doing is good, appropriate and necessary. The school shooters are all products of our sick culture, and those who immerse themselves in the sickest part of our sick culture have potential to be very sick indeed.

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The Steve Sailer Diet

Posted on August 14, 2019 by Luke Ford

He stands 6’4″ and weighs 175 pounds.

Steve writes:

Don’t eat sugar or starch. I really, really like sugar and starch, so don’t put myself in positions of temptation around sugar/starch. Don’t rely on willpower: e.g., “Oh, I’ll just eat one slice of pizza and then when I’ve reminded myself of how much I like pizza, I’ll totally stop at just one slice and NOT eat 3 more.”
Nah, just don’t let yourself be near pizza or ice cream or pastries etc. etc.
My particular metabolism is such that the first hit of sugar/starch makes me hungrier for more of the same, so a strategy of moderation and willpower involving sugar and starch doesn’t work well. Instead, eat meat and vegetables. It’s like how teetotaling works better for an Irishman with a drinking problem while an Italian finds it easier to drink moderately.

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Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?

Posted on August 12, 2019 by Luke Ford

Here are some highlights from this 2009 edition:

* We noted earlier that in sociology there is a problem known as the “co-option” of scholars, particularly by cults and New Age religions, in which a scholar, after entering a group and spending considerable time with its members, publishes a paper or book that is not as objective it might be. It is something like the Stockholm Syndrome, where one begins to sympathize with one captors, albeit it in this case it is voluntary. Reinforced by the members of the group one is studying feels good and one wants to reciprocate. Since Irving was getting no positive reinforcement from academic circles and scholarly historians, he naturally began to identify with those who were providing him with primary source documents—old Nazis and Hitler insiders. Irving allowed himself to be used, and he, in turn, used his subjects. It was a win-win arrangement that resulted in a serious loss for David Irving in the form of his reputation as a reliable historian. Recall Irving’s comments on Hitler and his Nazi followers: “I carried out major interviews with all these people on tape. And what struck me very early on … is that you’re dealing with people who are educated people.” Hitler, Irving continued with admiration in his voice, “had attracted a garniture of high-level educated people around him. The secretaries were top-flight secretaries. The adjutants were people who had gone through university or through staff college and had risen through their own abilities to the upper levels of the military service.” These Hitler confidants were well educated and they spoke highly of their führer. Who was Irving to argue? “Coming as I did with an as-yet-unpainted canvas, this was really the seminal point, the seminal experience—to find twenty-five people of education, all of whom privately spoke well of him. Once they’d won your confidence and they knew that you weren’t going to go and report them to the state prosecutor, they trusted you. And they thought, well, now at last they were doing their chief a service.” Here was the shift from deception to self-deception, the co-option of David Irving by Hitler’s Magic Circle. Hitler’s war became Irving’s war. The Faustian bargain was made, and David Irving shall forever pay the price. Yet, with his background and temperament, it is a pact he could not help but form and a cost he is only too willing to incur.

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How disaster made conversion harder – There is a link between Tishah b’Av and attitudes towards converts

Posted on August 11, 2019 by Luke Ford

David Aberbach, a professor of Jewish studies at McGill University, Montreal, writes:

The unprecedented growth of Islam in the West, despite prejudice and hatred, contrasts with the demographic stagnation of the Jewish people – several million fewer now than in 1939. Conversion to practically every other religion remains considerably easier than conversion to Judaism. Why is traditional conversion to Judaism so hard?
There is a close link between Tishah b’Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, and rabbinic discouragement of gentiles from conversion after the Roman-Jewish wars (66-70, 115-17, 132-35 CE). Roman concern with Jewish conversion began prior to the destruction of the Temple. Though not a missionary religion (early Christians such as Paul, Barnabas and Peter are the only first-century Jewish missionaries known by name), pre-70 Judaism was highly varied and expanding in the Roman empire. It attracted sympathisers and adherents among the underprivileged, powerless, persecuted classes of the empire, especially slaves and women.
The Oxford scholar, Martin Goodman has written that conversion to Judaism was unique in the ancient world as converts were accepted as equals by Jews.
Many spiritually hungry pagans, drawn to Judaism by its moral code, its valuation of human life and charity, and hope of messianic salvation, adopted Jewish customs, particularly the Sabbath and the dietary laws; but Judaism spread also among upper-class Romans. Privileges granted to the Jews by Julius Caesar encouraged proselytisation: freedom from emperor worship and army service as well as the right to congregate as a religious group. According to the historian, Louis Feldman, conversion was the single most important issue on which the emperors legislated in the entire history of Roman-Jewish relations.
The Midrash takes pride in legends that famous Romans such as Nero converted to Judaism. Some of the most eminent talmudic rabbis, including Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Meir, were allegedly descended from converts; their Jewishness was not questioned. In any case, many biblical characters, including the children of Moses and Solomon, were born to foreign women. Acceptance of Judaism was a private matter for the convert, not a public process fixed by religious authorities. The Temple was a site of pilgrimage and sacrifice not just for Jews but also for many others who were drawn to Jewish religious and national distinctiveness.
Prior to the destruction of the Temple, there seems to have been no unified standard of conversion, no refusal to accept conversions or prolongation of the process. On the contrary, the often-violent rivalry between Judaism and Greco-Roman culture meant that conversion to Judaism could be seen as a sign of its superiority.
Judaism reached the peak of its expansion in the years prior to the 66 CE revolt. Salo Baron, in his monumental A Social and Religious History of the Jews, points out that the Jews – comprising as many as 10 percent of the Western Roman empire and 20 percent of the Eastern Roman empire – were seen by Rome as a threat to the unity of the Roman empire, whose universal culture was Greek, not Jewish. Too-rapid expansion, concludes Baron, had endangered Judaism, for it had “made too many compromises, and flirted with too many alien ways of life and thought. The results were those sharp sectarian and political divisions which had almost brought it to the brink of extinction.”
The Roman-Jewish wars led to depopulation of Jews both in the Land of Israel and in the diaspora and transformed the Jews into a homeless, persecuted, semi-pariah people until the modern period.
The Jewish perception of conversion changed as the forces which brought about the expansion of Judaism also contributed to Greco-Roman antisemitism and, ultimately, the destruction of the Jewish state.
After the final, disastrous Jewish war against Rome, the Bar Kochba revolt (132-5 CE), Jewish leaders were no longer kings and politicians, Temple priests and messianic warriors, but rabbis dedicated to the survival of the Jewish people and Judaism in the Roman empire. The Romans approved organised rabbinic authority as the rabbis regarded Torah study – not proselytisation and anti-Roman messianic militancy – as the highest good, essential to Jewish survival.
The rabbis dealt with the Roman ban on Jewish proselytisation and the continued attraction of Judaism by making the process of conversion harder and warning of the hazards of Judaism: “What is your motive?” they would ask the prospective convert. “Don’t you know that Israel is suffering, persecuted, oppressed, harassed and beaten down with a multitude of sorrows?”

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Diversity & Virtue

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Luke Ford

Link:

Diversity increases social adversity.

A 10% increase in diversity doubles the chance of psychotic episodes.

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/201/4/282.abstract?etoc

Diversity reduces voter registration, political efficacy, charity, and number of friendships.

Ethnic diversity reduces happiness and quality of life.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/abstract;jsessionid=279C92A7EB0946BBA63D62937FC832A9.f04t03

Diversity reduces trust, civic participation, and civic health.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/?page=full

Ethnocentrism is rational, biological, and genetic in origin.

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/4/1262.abstract

Ethnic diversity harms health for hispanics and blacks.

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2012.300787

Babies demostrate ethnocentrism before exposure to non-whites.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01138.x/full

Ethnocentrism is universal and likely evolved in origin.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~axe/research/AxHamm_Ethno.pdf

Diversity primarily hurts the dominant ethnic group.

http://www.theindependentaustralian.com.au/node/57

Ethnic diversity reduces concern for the environment.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10640-012-9619-6

Ethnic diversity within 80 meters of a person reduces social trust.

http://curis.ku.dk/ws/files/130251172/Dinesen_S_nderskov_Ethnic_Diversity_and_Social_Trust_Forthcoming_ASR.pdf

Ethnic diversity directly reduces strong communities.

https://www.msu.edu/~zpneal/publications/neal-diversitysoc.pdf

Ethnically homogenous neighborhoods are beneficial for health.

https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/living-ethnically-homogenous-area-boosts-health-minority-seniors

Diversity in American cities correlates with segregation.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-diverse-cities-are-often-the-most-segregated/

Races are extended families. Ethnocentrism is genetically rational.

It is evolutionarily rational to be friends with someone genetically similar to you.

http://www.livescience.com/46791-friends-share-genes.html

Racism and nationalism are rational and evolutionary advantageous strategies.

http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/16/3/7.html

Homogeneous polities have less crime, less civil war, and more altruism.

http://www.theindependentaustralian.com.au/node/57

States with little diversity have more democracy, less corruption, and less inequality.

http://www.theindependentaustralian.com.au/node/57

There is extensive evidence people prefer others who are genetically similar.

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/n&n_2005-1.pdf

Our analysis shows that peace does not depend on integrated coexistence, but rather on well defined topographical and political boundaries separating groups

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0095660

The more integrated a neighborhood is, the less socially cohesive it becomes, and vice versa.

http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2013/study-asks-is-a-better-world-possible/

The more ethnically diverse the people we live around, the less we trust them.

http://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/benediktsson2013/files/2013/04/Putnam.pdf

Ethnocentrism, often thought to rely on complex social cognition and learning, may have arisen through biological evolution.

http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/16/3/7.html

Diversity experiments in Germany end in disaster

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany-s-immigrants-integration-in-theory-alienation-in-practice-a-433006.html

Immigrants in Norway are a net loss to the economy

http://www.emnbelgium.be/publication/report-norwegian-welfare-and-migration-committee

Immigrants in Sweden are a net loss to the economy

http://www.amid.dk/pub/papers/AMID_48-2006_Jan_Ekberg.pdf

Denmark saved billions by restricting immigration:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/putting-a-price-on-foreigners-strict-immigration-laws-save-denmark-billions-a-759716.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/denmark/8492822/Denmarks-immigration-laws-save-country-6-billion.html

Increases in diversity correlate with problems worldwide, and the downsides of diversity effect everyone, it’s a universal human problem:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/the-downside-of-difference/story-e6frgcjx-1111112914289

More diversity in police departments correlates with more abuse, poorer performance and less trust:

http://www.mediafire.com/?1fe8x0egftpbp6f

Decreased community spirit, decreased altruism, and depressed social capital, less ethical behavior, more crime, fear, isolation and depression:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-06-25jl.html

Also, a nice little study from Cornell University about how segregation creates peace:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1409

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Can we blame Elizabeth Warren, socialism, anime, or the Devil, for Connor Betts’s massacre? No.
What about Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook killer? There was nothing political in his madness. He was autistic — but millions of people are, and they don’t kill other people. Like El Paso killer Patrick Crusius, he was a child of divorce, but so are tens of millions of others, who never lift a finger to hurt other people.
These guys were all white. You know which mass killer wasn’t white?
Seung-hui Cho, the Virginia Tech mass killer from 2007.
Omar Mateen, the Pulse nightclub shooter. Mateen swore allegiance to ISIS just before he went on his rampage. It’s the fault of Islamic radicalism, then. Right? Probably not: it emerged that Mateen had been an awkward loner with a violent temper, and would toggle between fits of Islamic piety and drinking booze. He was divorced, and evidence emerged that he might have been struggling with his own homosexuality.
Micah Xavier Johnson, who in 2016 ambushed and slaughtered five police officers in Dallas. He was black, and explicitly said he wanted to kill white people in revenge for police killings of blacks. Also in 2016, Gavin Eugene Long, also a black man, ambushed and killed police officers in Baton Rouge, as a political protest.
My point is that people love to take these horrible events as validating the political narrative they prefer, but these narratives can keep us from understanding what really happened.
I remember when the Pulse shooting happened, because it was a gay nightclub, some gay rights groups, media outlets, and other liberals blamed homophobia. The New York Times published an editorial blaming Republicans’ “prejudice,” and Slate blamed conservative Christians. And then we learned that the killer had pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Lots of people today are eager to blame Donald Trump for El Paso. I think Trump’s rhetoric does nothing to tamp down these passions, at the very least, and he ought to have the decency and intelligence to recognize that as president, he has a responsibility to speak with wisdom and balance. That said, it’s simply too convenient to blame Trump for things like this. Patrick Crusius, the El Paso shooter, was a Trump fan (according to his social media), but he was also, according to those who knew him, an extreme loner who had a bad temper, and had grown up in a divorced family with a father who was a drug and alcohol addict for 40 years.
It could be that Crusius, like Omar Mateen, seized a violent ideology that gave him an excuse for acting out the violence in his heart over the fact that he was a failure. We don’t know yet. We’ll know more in the trial. Don’t forget the incel mass killers, who slaughtered people as a form of revenge on women who wouldn’t sleep with them. Those wicked men aren’t driven by Donald Trump. They are driven by rage, and their own failure and impotence.
And look, if you’re determined to kill people, you don’t need a gun. The Toronto incel mass murderer ran down people with his van (a technique that Islamists in France have used.)

I asked a Jewish friend for a response to the latest killer manifesto. He responded:

As is typical, the reporting on the manifesto runs from the left where anything which might exculpate Trump is skipped, to the right where everything that doesn’t exculpate Trump is minimized. Others dismiss the manifesto as incoherent. To some observers it is just evidence that among a certain class of shut in young man who spends his days playing video games, this is just viewed as another extension of gaming to see how many big a body count can be produced.
From the author’s perspective and those sympathetic to him is makes sense, although it doesn’t really hang together. The Manifesto condemns corporations who put profits ahead of promoting policies that have hollowed out industrial America for the benefit of illegal immigrants, and have also spoiled the environment. He holds both political parties responsible and explains he held these views before Trump was elected.
Its pretty clear he models himself after Tarrant and Brevik, although Brevik slaughtered innocents to try to spark a political movement and Tarrant targeted Muslims specifically to scare them out of New Zealand. I suppose Crucius might have thought that by killing Latinos in a WalMart that might make Latinos fear that they are never safe and move back to Mexico. I do think this was a political statement and not a statement about white supremacy. I do think it was a cry from the heart expressing nostalgia for an America he never knew that can never be resurrected. He sees himself as the heir to western civilization, and now he is being told that Western civilization is worthless. In the meantime he wants to lash out at them. Them being the despoilers of the country, both in its natural state and in its general philosophy, , the elites of both parties, the enablers of illegal immigration. Crucius is making a statement. It is a big fuck you to the enablers of illegal immigration, to those who are destroying western civilization and seeing Hispanics as the unwitting foot soldiers for these “elites” he is killing them as well.
Instead of paying attention and evaluating whether they have any culpability. their tactic is to diminish Crucius although they are sending two different messages. The first message is he is a nut. The second is that he is part of this mass movement of white supremacists.