Washington Post: “AT THE heart of the Obama administration’s diplomatic engagement with Iran is the notion that the regime is divided among hard-liners who foment its terrorism and regional aggression and more moderate forces who are open to cooperation with the West.”
That’s nonsense. At the heart of any American regime relationship with another country is self-interest, other known as real politic. Who the good guys and the bad guys depend on circumstance. At what time, Stalin was our ally and then he was our enemy.
Right now, America tilts more towards Saudi Arabia than it does towards Iran, but that could change quickly.
Iran’s regime will mock the Holocaust as long as that is in its interest, as long as that shows it fighting the good fight against the moral claims of Jews and the Jewish state. If Jews make the Holocaust the moral crucible through which all foreign policy questions must be decided, then groups with different interests will have incentives to mock the Holocaust. For many, perhaps most, American Jews, the Holocaust is their primary religion.
Posted inIran|Comments Off on Washington Post Editorial: ‘Iran’s ‘moderates’ and the Holocaust’
The Jewish press can’t stop running anti-Trump pieces. The latest fashion is to get them from concern trolls all worried about the well-being of the Republican party.
Many Jewish conservatives are adrift, impotent and uneasy. Their intense opposition to Trump is not only based on policy but also the anti-intellectual, vulgar and angry culture he represents.
For many of conservatism’s most prominent Jews, the choice is already made. Over the last months, some of Trump’s most vocal and vociferous Republican opposition has come from Jewish figures. Writing in Commentary, Max Boot has labeled him “the single biggest threat to U.S. security” and announced that he “would sooner vote for Josef Stalin.” In the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens compared Trump to Mussolini and denounced those who reconcile themselves with him as “appalling” and lacking “mental maturity.” The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol’s Twitter feed has featured a storm of anti-Trump pronouncements that is positively Churchillian. Even the cautious and unflappable Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs and the GOP’s brightest intellectual, announced he “would never vote for Trump.” Instead, he is praying that “a serious conservative alternative emerges and makes it onto the ballot around the country.”
Over the course of the primary campaign, Trump made significant inroads into nearly every pocket of the Republican primary electorate. Despite his ideological fluidity and his playboy lifestyle, he won support from tea partiers, evangelicals, conservatives and moderates alike. Jews however, have remained — with near unanimity — implacably opposed.
There is, of course, one notable breach in this wall: Sheldon Adelson. Already months ago, Adelson signalled he could support Trump if he became the nominee. In the aftermath of Trump’s victory, Adelson and some of his associates — including Ari Fleischer — seem resigned to doing just that. But the contemptuous response they have elicited, and the eccentric magnate’s biographical similarity to Trump, simply highlight that Sheldon-land is the exception that proves the rule.
So what explains Jewish Republicans unyielding, overwhelming antipathy to the GOP’s presumptive nominee? In part, it is a matter of policy. The Jewish community’s leading conservatives are overwhelmingly foreign policy hawks. Many gravitated to the Republican Party inspired by Reagan’s confrontational stand against Communism. And many stayed because of the modern GOP’s continued commitment to American global leadership, a morally-grounded internationalism, and strong support for Israel. This is not the diplomatic vision of Donald J. Trump.
But the special opposition of Jews goes deeper than policy. Trump is not an ideological candidate; he is a cultural phenomenon. And the culture he represents — anti-intellectual, vulgar and angry — is not a Jewish one.
Jews are relative late-comers to the Republican Party. It was not until the 1960s, with William F. Buckley’s purge of the anti-Semitic Birchers, that the GOP could become a conceivable political home for even a significant minority of American Jews. Those who swung right during this era — including, most famously, many so-called “neo-conservatives” — were political converts; but they were never cultural assimilators. So Jews have, somewhat awkwardly, tried to find their place among wealthy Mayflower patricians, evangelicals and Second Amendment activists. But the coalition has always been a strange one, and I wonder whether Jews have ever felt fully at home. In a campaign that is about identity instead of policy, Jewish conservatives are left adrift and uneasy.
That unease is compounded by Trump’s independence. This nominee has burst onto the political stage fully formed. He is beholden to no one, and has no record to which he can be held. To a community that counts on its relationships with those in power, this is particularly disconcerting.
It is a feature of our political system that institutional leaders and prominent donors spend years educating and feeling out candidates on the issues that matter to them most. By the time politicians reach real power, interest groups know who they are, where they stand, and to whom they turn for advice and expertise. Within conservatism, those concerned with Israel and Jewish issues have been among the most successful at building such relationships.
The up-and-coming generation of conservative politicians — Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, and Ted Cruz, for instance — have each counted the support of prominent Jewish backers. But with Trump, the Republican Jewish establishment finds itself strangely impotent. The candidate does not need them…
It is that public that, channeled by Trump, has stirred up old Jewish insecurity and fear. For at least a generation American Jews have happily buried their eternal feelings of political vulnerability. But Trump’s candidacy has unleashed a wave of aggressive populism that includes a non-trivial anti-Semitic element. As Jamie Kirchick, a younger Jewish conservative implacably opposed to Trump, has written: “He is the candidate of the mob, and the mob always ends up turning on the Jews.”
And we should also be proud. Jewish skepticism of the mob is not simply a product of self-interest. Jewish conservatives, no less than Jewish liberals, have adopted a politics of moral commitment born from the lessons of Jewish history. For the left, those commitments are to a certain vision of social justice; for many Jewish conservatives, it is to “never again.” We were all once strangers in the land of Egypt. For some, the lesson is to support Black Lives Matter; for others, it is to demand American intervention in the Syrian slaughter. But for none of us is the vulgar vilification of Muslims and Mexicans an acceptable method of political mobilization. For we have borne that burden too.
…The real focus will shift to protecting the core of the party whose values Jews can share. Energy and dollars that would have once been spent on the presidential campaign will flow to vulnerable long-time community allies, like John McCain and Mark Kirk. The struggle is no longer simply against Democrats, but to preserve an alternative vision of what the GOP should stand for. And despite the miracle of America, after millennia of diaspora, Jews are still experts of political triage. If the White House is already lost, perhaps the party can still be saved.
Here is the key phrase: “He is beholden to no one.” That’s what makes elites so uneasy. They are used to political candidates that they control. They do not control Donald Trump. He does not need their money. He does not seek their edifying education and guidance.
This election is about identity. Jewish identity is different from white gentile identity. Different peoples have different interests. That’s why Jews for 200 years have largely sided with the coalition of the fringe against the core. Donald Trump reflects America’s white gentile core.
This essay also mentions Jewish fears of populism. Jews have rarely been popular. They’ve relied upon alliances with elites to protect them from the mob. Yishai Schwartz is right that “Jewish skepticism of the mob is not simply a product of self-interest.” It is just 99% a product of self-interest. Neither the left-wing or right-wing concerns that the author mentions are part of Judaism’s concerns. They are simply tactical concerns of the various facets of organized Jewry.
As for the sentiment about saving the Republican party, saving it for whom? For the Jews? The Republican party should be the tool of Jews? If the Republican party should be saved for the preservation of universal human values or of conservative values, these sentiments are meaningless. There are no universal human values, unless you subscribe to a particular religion, and then those “universal human values” are simply the dictates of your particular religion.
“The Jewish community’s leading conservatives are overwhelmingly foreign policy hawks. Many gravitated to the Republican Party inspired by Reagan’s confrontational stand against Communism. And many stayed because of the modern GOP’s continued commitment to American global leadership, a morally-grounded internationalism, and strong support for Israel.”
Because Israel. That’s shorter, more truthful and more to the point. Because Israel.
“Trump is not an ideological candidate; he is a cultural phenomenon. And the culture he represents — anti-intellectual, vulgar and angry — is not a Jewish one.”
Because anti-intellectualism, vulgarity and anger are rare among Jews? Give me a break. The culture Trump represents that repels many Jews is gentile America, and yes, that is not a Jewish culture. The more you identify as a Jew, the more likely you are to find non-Jewish culture distasteful, even frightening just as the more you identify as a Christian or a Muslim, the more likely you are to find culture outside of that distasteful, even frightening.
This is basic social identity theory.
“Those who swung right during this era — including, most famously, many so-called “neo-conservatives” — were political converts; but they were never cultural assimilators.”
Yes, if a Jew assimilates, he ceases to be a Jew. As long as he identifies with his Judaism in any way, the Jew stands apart. He’s a stranger to his non-Jewish society. And not even angels like strangers.
“So Jews have, somewhat awkwardly, tried to find their place among wealthy Mayflower patricians, evangelicals and Second Amendment activists. But the coalition has always been a strange one, and I wonder whether Jews have ever felt fully at home.”
As long as you identify as a Jew, you will only feel at home in Jewish culture and religion. As long as a Muslim identifies as a Muslim, he won’t feel at home in the West. The West is largely the product of white gentiles of Christian origins.
“He is beholden to no one, and has no record to which he can be held. To a community that counts on its relationships with those in power, this is particularly disconcerting.”
Bingo! Bingo! Bingo! Jewish survival and prosperity has long depended upon cutting deals with the elites to protect Jews from the mob.
“For at least a generation American Jews have happily buried their eternal feelings of political vulnerability.”
Not really. If American Jews were so secure, why would they make the Holocaust their primary religion?
Posted inDonald Trump, Jews|Comments Off on Haaretz: Can anti-Trump Jews Save the Republican Party?
Ann Coulter has been a reliable friend of the Jewish state of Israel for as long as she has been in public life. I can’t think of any pundit who has been demonstrably more pro-Israel over the past 20 years. If you are going to call her anti-Semitic, then the term has no meaning.
On the other hand, I do not think Cathy Young is totally out to lunch here. I do think Ann has increasing and understandable hostility about organized Jewry’s multiculti agenda for the diaspora.
Cathy Young’s arguments largely consist of put-downs such as “extremist” and “rabid” and “hater.” There are only two honorable forms of arguments — to dispute facts and logic.
The term “anti-Semitic” is just a slur. The exact term should be “anti-Jewish,” but that doesn’t sound as horrible. It does not have the mystical overtones of “anti-Semitism.”
How come you never hear the term “anti-gentile”? Just as gentiles can be anti-Jewish, so too Jews can be anti-gentile.
How come you never hear someone labeled “anti-white”?
Different groups have different interests. We are all competing for scarce resources. People will naturally hate those outsiders who are getting in their way and doing them harm. When all of the major Jewish groups in America push for immigration amnesty and for import of thousands of Syrian refugees, they are lobbying on behalf of policies that help some people and hurt others (such as whites who are increasingly strangers in the country they created). It would be natural and healthy for those hurt to react against those who are hurting them.
There are many factual and logical problems in Cathy’s essay. For one, the double standards argument does not originate with Kevin MacDonald. It’s been used against Jews for thousands of years.
Cathy writes: “But there’s an even more bigoted—and, well, deranged— subtext of nefarious Jewish conspiracy.”
That’s hardly an argument. That’s just the retailing of slurs. The so-called Jewish conspiracy she’s railing against is simply noting that like most groups, Jews tend to organize in their self-interest. What makes Jews special is that they are so smart and energetic. Thus they are formidable opponents.
Cathy writes: “McDonald argues that Judaism is a collective evolutionary strategy by which Jews seek dominance, and that, where they have minority status, this strategy is to subvert and weaken gentile majority culture…”
MacDonald argues that all groups and individuals and living organisms seek to maximize their interests. Jews understandably fear a gentile society unified by race, religion or nationalism because such identities will usually exclude Jews. Jews will be seen aliens. On the other hand, the individualist societies created by WASPs treat Jews well because Jews are primarily seen as individuals, not as members of a group. If Jews practice nationalism while the gentiles practice individualism, Jews will tend to have a competitive advantage. Group strategies tend to out-compete individualist strategies. Cohesive groups, when all else is equal, will out-compete multi-cultural groups.
A friend says: “Regarding Young’s smear of Coulter, this looks like a paid for hatchet job. The Daily Beast is anti Trump and anti Coulter and it is her way of proving her chops. Coulter is like an elephant and Young is like a pesky fly buzzing around trying to get a rise out of the elephant.”
In her heart, I think Ann Coulter looks at the world in a similar fashion to Steve Sailer.
The Trump cheerleader shares his habit of promoting ethnic nationalists and their ugly ideas.
The white nationalists of the so-called alternative right, an extremist movement that rejects mainstream conservatism as too gutless and too infected with liberal thinking, have been getting a lot of attention lately as Donald Trump’s most rabid fan base. While the alt-right is a fringe, its virulent bigotry is openly embraced by Trump’s biggest cheerleader—and, arguably, ideologue-in-chief—from mainstream conservative ranks.
That’s uber-Trumpista Ann Coulter, who caused a stir last year when she tweeted, “How many f—ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?” during a Republican debate she found too Israel-centric. It wasn’t an isolated comment.
These days, Coulter—who didn’t respond to emails asking for comment on the company she keeps—is remarkably upfront about her alt-right sympathies. On May 3, for instance, she retweeted a paean to herself from VDARE—a leading alt-right website that styles itself an “outlet for patriotic immigration reform.” (Coulter links to it from her own site.) Its founder and editor-in-chief, Peter Brimelow, has denied that it is racist or white nationalist, while conceding that it publishes white nationalist authors such as Jared Taylor.
Yet a look at the site—which rewards donations with a “Patriot pack” of Confederate flags, a rather quaint idea of American patriotism—leaves little doubt about its leanings. One recent VDARE blogpost mocks Jack McCain, Sen. John McCain’s son, for tweeting photos of himself and his African-American wife as a rebuke to people who objected to a mixed-race couple in an Old Navy ad; it also gripes about the “force-feeding” of interracial marriage to the American public. Meanwhile, an article celebrating Trump’s “nationalist revolution” argues that the American right can only survive if it embraces a “nationalist, identitarian future” (“identitarian” is the preferred term of alt-righters who realize that “white nationalist” goes over better with polite euphemisms) and warns that nationalism will “become more imperative as the country becomes increasingly ‘diverse’ aka non-white.”
Two days later, Coulter followed up with another retweet from VDARE’s twitter account, this one also touting two other sites: RadixJournal, which peddles unabashed white supremacism, and /pol/, a notoriously anti-Semitic 4chan board—have the dubious merit of making VDARE look moderate. It is also worth noting that immediately before this, Coulter retweeted a Trump-cheering tweet from “Ricky Vaughn,” one of the undisputed stars of alt-right Twitter and a rabid Jew-hater.
Coulter’s book, Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole, published in June 2015—and credited with shaping the anti-immigration theme of Trump’s campaign—channeled familiar alt-right rhetoric about the peril of immigration by the wrong ethnic minorities; but it also invoked a standard alt-right anti-Semitic trope which was quickly recycled back into a Twitter meme…
Those familiar with the alt-right will recognize one of its favorite talking points: Israel supporters—particularly Jews—are hypocritical if they support immigration into the U.S., since they don’t advocate large-scale non-Jewish immigration into Israel or the Palestinian right of return. (It is invoked, for example, in an unabashedly anti-Semitic primer on “How to Argue with Neocons” on an alt-right blog.) Regardless of what one thinks of immigration to the United States, or of Israeli policies, this is a remarkably bad analogy.
Israel was founded as an ethno-state (though it is worth noting that a quarter of its citizens are not Jewish); the United States of America was not. Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors; the United States is not. A Palestinian right of return would mean forcing a nation of eight million to accept as many as four to five million immigrants many of whom are hostile to its statehood; proportionately, that would be analogous to an influx of 150 million into the U.S. If such a proposal were on the table, Coulter and Trump certainly wouldn’t be the only ones to oppose it.
The “double standards” argument has blatantly anti-Semitic overtones, since it invariably invokes Israel and never other small nations, like Finland, that limit immigration and grant automatic citizenship on the basis of ethnic background. But there’s an even more bigoted—and, well, deranged— subtext of nefarious Jewish conspiracy.
This argument originates in the writings of Kevin MacDonald, a now-retired California State University-Long Beach psychology professor who has something of a fixation on Jews. In his 2003 book, The Culture of Critique, McDonald argues that Judaism is a collective evolutionary strategy by which Jews seek dominance and that, where they have minority status, this strategy is to subvert and weaken gentile majority culture—such as destroying Russia by engineering the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. In America, MacDonald believes, one of the chief Jewish strategies is to undermine white culture via unrestricted immigration.
>MacDonald is a regular contributor to VDARE—where, it should be noted, he is far from the only one pushing outlandish ideas about Jewish subversion; one of the site’s regular bloggers, Steve Sailer, has suggested that Jews “use their influence over the media” to “demoralize and divide” other groups. MacDonald is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The Occidental Observer, a “white identity” website that has some nice things to say about Nazi Germany—and where topic tags include “Israel Lobby,” “Holocaust Industry,” “Jewish aggressiveness,” “Jewish influence,” “Jewish wealth,” and “Historical anti-Jewish writings.” One of the largest tags, with over 50 articles, is “Jewish hypocrisy and double standards on immigration and multiculturalism in Israel versus the Diaspora.”
Coulter’s accusation of hypocrisy in the passage from Adios, America! is not overtly directed at the Jews; but the implications of her taunt are unmistakable. Nor does she propose a “white homeland” or a right to self-determination for American whites as a group, as do many alt-rightists; she is simply quite explicit in her view that massive immigration should be opposed for racial reasons—because it “changes America’s ethnicity.”
Coulter has a long history of saying odious things, often sneaking them in under the cover of she-can’t-really-mean-that edgy humor. (Writing about Adios, America in The Daily Beast, Lloyd Grove wondered if she was “merely engaging in perverse, albeit attention-getting, performance art.”) But now, Coulter doesn’t really bother to hide the fact that she does mean it—and her brand of odiousness is fueling the revolt that has made Donald Trump the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Posted inAnn Coulter, Anti-Semitism|Comments Off on Cathy Young: ‘Ann Coulter’s Anti-Semitism Runs Deeper Than You Know’
A few years ago, I would have wanted to believe this essay. It is much more pleasant to think that good values created this country rather than a particular genetic mix.
Now I just think this values argument is silly. Culture is downstream from genes.
The United States of America would not have become the United States of America if its founders were predominantly Chinese or black or Arabs or Jews or Catholics or Japanese or Australian aborigines. It was the product of Anglo-Saxons, the same type of people who created the glorious countries of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and England.
One you have a political faction that is “conservative”, you have already lost. Your society is going to hell. Conservative values should be like the water fish swim in — taken for granted. When you are an Orthodox Jew and you practice Orthodox Judaism with other Orthodox Jews, nobody says, oh, what we’re doing and how we approach life is really conservative. You just take it for granted. Once you start thinking about whether or not you’re going to practice Orthodox Judaism, or if you are conservative in your practice or beliefs, you’re already halfway out the door.
There are many reasons why Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The four most-often cited reasons are the frustrations of white working-class Americans, a widespread revulsion against political correctness, disenchantment with the Republican establishment, and the unprecedented and unrivaled amount of time the media afforded Trump.
They are all valid.
But the single biggest reason is this: The majority of Republicans are not conservative.
Conservatives who opposed Trump kept arguing — indeed, provided unassailable proof — that Trump is not a conservative and has never been one. But the argument meant little or nothing to two types of Republicans: the majority of Trump voters who don’t care whether he is a conservative, and the smaller number of Trump voters who are conservative, but care about illegal immigration more than all other issues, including his many and obvious failings.
So, then, what happened to the majority of Republicans? Why aren’t they conservative?
The answer lies in America’s biggest — and scariest — problem: Most Americans no longer know what America stands for. For them, America has become just another country, a place located between Canada and Mexico.
But America was founded to be an idea, not another country. As former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher put it: “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.”
Why haven’t the past three generations of Americans known what America stands for?
The biggest reason is probably the influence of left-wing ideas.
Since its inception, the left has opposed the American idea, and for good reason. Everything the American idea represents undermines leftist ideas. And the left, unlike most Americans, has always understood that either the left is right, or America is right.
America stands for small government, a free economy (and therefore, capitalism), liberty (which therefore allows for its inevitable consequence: inequality), the melting pot ideal and a God-centered population rooted in Judeo-Christian values (so that a moral society is created by citizens exercising self-control rather than relying on the state to impose control).
Only America was founded on the idea of small government. But the left is based on big government.
America was founded on the principle that human rights come from the creator. For the left, rights come from the state.
America was founded on the belief that in order to maintain a small government, only a God-fearing people can ensure a decent country. The left opposes God-based religions, particularly Judeo-Christian religions. Secularism, as much as egalitarianism, is as at the core of leftism.
The American Revolution, unlike the French Revolution, placed liberty above equality. For the left, equality is more important than all else. That’s why so many American and European leftists have celebrated left-wing regimes, from Stalin to Mao to Guevara to Castro to Chavez, no matter how much the regimes squelched individual liberty. They all preached equality.
A friend says: “Prager continues to toe the Neo-Con, Republican establishment line, while promoting his own lament over “values.” Of course Prager wasn’t lamenting George W. Bush’s values when he launched the totally unnecessary war against Iraq. Never forget that Iraq was a secular nation before we attacked in the 13 years since, over 90% of Christians who had lived in Iraq since the initial spread of Christianity, have either been killed or fled the country. Where are Prager’s precious values when it comes to preserving Christianity in Iraq?
You may have noted that no where among the reasons that he provides for Trump’s success has been Trump’s position on illegal immigration and especially immigration from Mexico, something which Prager was exceedingly sympathetic to until recently.”
Luke: You have to give Prager credit for not supporting the invasion of Iraq in 2003, though once the US went in, he said we had to stay in and do the place right.
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Paul Sperry writes: Hillary’s rumored running mate, Housing Secretary Julian Castro, is cooking up a scheme to reallocate funding for Section 8 housing to punish suburbs for being too white and too wealthy.
The scheme involves super-sizing vouchers to help urban poor afford higher rents in pricey areas, such as Westchester County, while assigning them government real estate agents called “mobility counselors” to secure housing in the exurbs.
Castro plans to launch the Section 8 reboot this fall, even though a similar program tested a few years ago in Dallas has been blamed for shifting violent crime to affluent neighborhoods.
It’s all part of a grand scheme to forcibly desegregate inner cities and integrate the outer suburbs.
Anticipating NIMBY resistance, Castro last month threatened to sue suburban landlords for discrimination if they refuse even Section 8 tenants with criminal records. And last year, he implemented a powerful new regulation — “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” — that pressures all suburban counties taking federal grant money to change local zoning laws to build more low-income housing (landlords of such properties are required to accept Section 8 vouchers).
Castro is expected to finalize the new regulation, known as “Small-Area Fair Market Rents” (SAFMR), this October, in the last days of the Obama presidency.
It will set voucher rent limits by ZIP code rather than metro area, the current formula, which makes payments relatively small. For example, the fair market rent for a one-bedroom in New York City is about $1,250, which wouldn’t cover rentals in leafy areas of Westchester County, such as Mamaroneck, where Castro and his social engineers seek to aggressively resettle Section 8 tenants.
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on Obama’s last act is to force suburbs to be less white and less wealthy
* Maybe it’s just about the right time to ask the signatories of the letter to the NY Times denouncing Nicholas Wade whether they’d like a Mulligan.
Hysterical obfuscation and conspicuous moral posturing isn’t really a good look for a scientist. They might try to save themselves a little dignity while it’s still possible.
* Problem is, there’s been lots of immigration into England in the last 100 generations. I’m not talking about the recent overflow of Pakistani Muslims, etc, who have come in during recent generations, though they probably are having an effect. They’re just not analyzed here since they focused on people with deep roots in England. I’m thinking alot of this is due to immigration and domination by Germanic peoples over the last millenia or so. Vikings, Danes, the Normans, hell, even the Windsors- They of course would directly bring in many of these phenotypes- blonde hair, blue eyes, lactase, etc- but also if they conquered, set themselves up as kings and leaders, then there would be selection for their traits. They would secure the best resources for themselves, they would probably take many native women for their wives, and likely as they came to be accepted as the local authority many native women would prefer them as they tend to chase after wealth and power. So question is, how much was directly imported in, and how much is selection from within the earlier population? If someone said Americans have evolved over the past few generations to be more brown, is that what actually happened?
* Were you, Steve, the one asking what a preprint is?
A preprint is an article prepared for publication. It is designed to get results out into the conversation, stake ground on certain research, and informally spread ideas. Preprints exist and are in the form of an article that would be submitted to a journal or conference, but often in longer format.
Perhaps no journal will publish it. Perhaps publication takes four years. In certain branches of physics research, like string theory and quantum computing, there were only 2 possible journals to publish in. Waiting for publication was useless for interesting results. More, so few “peers” exist, and all of them want to know what you’re doing anyway, that why bother with the fiction that journaled “peer review” is anonymous or somehow more noble than just letting people read and critique your work.
So preprint archives were invented.in part, to kill off the monopoly of publication, or to get out ideas otherwise unpublishable.
* Rosie, what first attracted you to multi-millionaire Jason Statham?
* When I grew up in the East, Persians had a specific look olive skinned (sabz) with dark hair and dark eyes (prominent nose) with a minority on the lighter side.
Then around early-mid naughties there came a huge wave of well-to-do Persians studying in London from directly from Iran. I was shocked to see that a vast proportion (plurality) had a new “Northern” (Caspian-Azeri) look of much lighter colours.
I thought nothjng of yet but then a friend from Kerman (sort of central-south Iran, the heartland of the Persian people) once randomly exclaimed to me “is it just me or are the new generation of Iranians much whiter?”
Post-revolution the country became much more integrated and the different regions started mixing; the old olive skinned Persian look (which even the Zoroastrians of Yazd sported) became increasingly diluted with mixture of the north (and the Azeri/Caspians of North Iran are particularly fair though ironically the Azeris of Azerbaijan are said to have a more Olive look).
This could be sexual selection on a mass scale in a generation or so. This of course happens in Latin American and especially Pakistan (as you scale up you marry light) but also in Iran the same general principles are operating (rich southerners marrying pale northerners in Tehran).
* Btw, whatever happened to Nicholas Wade and Troublesome Inheritance.
Maybe lack of overly hostile reaction buried it.
Despite the controversy, Bell Curve has entered the contemporary pantheon on discussion of sociology/biology cuz it stirred up so much discussion.
In contrast, Troublesome Inheritance was buried by polite disagreement by MSM.
Say BELL CURVE, and people know the book even if they disagree with it.
Mention Troublesome Inheritance, and it’s like… huh?
* In the fullness of time, truth will out, even very embarrassing truth.
One thing that this result is making obvious is that the truth of ongoing, and significant, selection in human groups is going to be verified from many angles, not just one. The most direct approach of course is to find the set of alleles that lie behind, say, IQ, and show that they are differentially distributed across human groups. Another way is now to show that in certain groups certain areas of the genome connected with IQ show signs of recent selection. I have little doubt that there will other methods to come to the same sort of conclusions.
There will come a time, likely within 5 years from what I’ve been hearing, in which it will be as discreditable for a geneticist or evolutionary biologist to dispute these conclusions as it became for physicists early in the 20th century to dispute the theory of relativity.
Which brings to mind the disgraceful letter sent to the NY Times by a number of geneticists and evolutionary biologists denouncing Nicholas Wade.
How will the signatories of this letter look come this new paradigm? Very much like those dogmatic physicists who rejected relativity. It may be that the single thing they are best remembered for is this disgraceful act of ignorance and suppression: they will be laughingstocks for the ages, a lesson taught to children to warn them of the dangers of ideology and dogmatism.
It really is time for them to get on the other side of this before their reputation and legacies are beyond repair.
* A quadruple bypass IS the surgery, not something you get after surgery. This in itself is quite hard on the body but he apparently had complications after the surgery – he didn’t really fully recover from it. Some people do OK after the surgery and are able to more or less resume their former lives and some people are never quite the same again. Clinton is in the latter category. The way the heart surgeons keep score, if you survive the surgery, it is a “success” for them. They don’t make any promises as to what kind of shape you will be in afterward.
Being a vegan isn’t that great for your appearance either. It’s hard to get enough iron in your diet without red meat and without it people tend to look pale and anemic. Also having a little fat on you makes you look better as an older man – the wrinkles show less.
Bill also has rosacea which creates that horrible looking redness around his eyes and nose.
We are used to seeing celebrity photos that are posed, with makeup and airbrushing and proper lighting, so a brutal flash photo like that is going to be shocking in comparison. In the old days kings used to get their portraits painted and the guy in the painting always looked a lot better and younger than actual man.
Posted inRace|Comments Off on A Troublesome Inheritance
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This article is hilarious. Jamie Weinstein is a thought leader? Who exactly does he lead? Who does he influence? Whatever stature he has seems to have been bought by his parents.
All these so-called Jewish conservatives opposed to Trump show that they were never conservatives. They simply used the conservative movement to advance the interests of Israel.
This article vastly understates Trump’s Jewish support. It’s from common Jews, not the Jewish elites. Do you really think regular Jews want more Muslims, more Mexicans and more Africans in America? I don’t think so.
I think it is great that these so-called Jewish conservative who refuse to vote for Trump have been unable to stop his nomination and have been unable to throw Trump supporters out of the conservative movement. Instead, they’re getting left behind by America’s newfound nationalism. Good riddance to them!
This article is about 80% anti-Trump and yet there is much Jewish support for Trump, including among intellectuals. Jews were among the first to board the Trump bandwagon. Loren Feldman and Mike Cernovich were early Trump boosters. Trump’s campaign has always included Jews as his closest advisers. The Jewish role in Trump’s rise is an article yet to be written.
Trump has spent most of his life in New York and he knows the Jews, likes the Jews and they tend to like him.
Faced with Donald Trump as his party’s presumptive nominee in this year’s presidential election, Jamie Weinstein, senior editor for the conservative Daily Caller website, said he may have to “take a Tums” and vote for Hillary Clinton — assuming Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee and there’s no third-party conservative alternative.
“Given that you have to vote, and my options are only Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, that’s what I’m left to choose from,” Weinstein said in a recent interview. “And I think Donald Trump is a threat to the American system, whereas Clinton is a threat to our economic wellbeing for four years.”
Weinstein, like many Jewish thought-leaders in the conservative world, says he not only will not support the inevitable Republican nominee — he would prefer another four years of a Democrat in the White House if Trump is the only alternative. And this is not only because of the danger he believes Trump poses to America; he also sees Trump as a long-term threat to conservatism and fears the movement may not recover from a Trump presidency.
Among Jewish #NeverTrump-ers are some of the most prominent voices of conservatism: Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard; Jonah Goldberg, senior editor for the National Review (the magazine ran an entire anti-Trump issue in February); Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby; Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire; nationally syndicated talk-show host Mark Levin; Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin; Elliot Abrams, a former George W. Bush adviser and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR); Max Boot, also a CFR fellow and a former John McCain adviser; John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary Magazine; Seth Mandel of the New York Post; Bethany Mandel, senior contributor at The Federalist; David Bernstein and Ilya Somin, both law professors at George Mason University and both also writers for the Washington Post’s “The Volokh Conspiracy” blog, run by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh; and Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University and also a Volokh blogger…
“He is every horrifying stereotype of Republicans that those of us who are actually Republican have been fighting against for years,” Bethany Mandel said. “He’s already destroying all of that work, but he will likely do irreparable damage to the brand.”
Mandel, who lives in New Jersey, said she was particularly turned off by two of Trump’s antics. The first was when he told CNN’s Don Lemon in August that Fox News host Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever,” in describing Kelly’s performance during a Republican debate in which she challenged Trump about past misogynist comments. The second was at a November rally when Trump mocked and imitated the disability of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a congenital joint disorder.
Shapiro had his own decisive #NeverTrump moment: “The point where I said, categorically, I will never vote for this human being was when he refused to denounce the KKK on national television two days before the Louisiana primary,” said Shapiro, who supported Senator Ted Cruz. “He panders to legitimately the worst elements in American life.”
…Trump supporters include some prominent people, such as billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, New York Congressman Lee Zeldin and nationally syndicated talk-show host and Jewish Journal columnist Dennis Prager. The Republican Jewish Coalition also came out in favor of the presumptive candidate, issuing a statement on May 4 congratulating Trump after Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich suspended their campaigns, saying Clinton “is the worst possible choice for a commander in chief.”
…Radio commentator and Jewish Journal columnist Dennis Prager has, since early in the nomination process, opposed Trump, but said he would vote for him if he became the nominee. “I said from the outset that if my darkest dreams were realized, and he became the Republican nominee, I would vote for him,” Prager wrote in an email. “The reason is that there is one thing that frightens me more than Donald Trump being elected president, and that is Hillary Clinton being elected president.”
He said Trump’s behavior and positions made him unsure “almost every day” whether he could maintain that position. Asked what Trump would have to do to lose his vote, Prager said, “He tries almost every day.”
Among the many distinctions Prager sees between a Trump presidency and a Clinton presidency: the Supreme Court, natural gas extraction (known as “fracking,” which Clinton has come out hard against during her campaign against Bernie Sanders), and, as he said, “An ever-expanding government taking over more and more of the American economy.”
Prager fears Clinton appointments to the Supreme Court could, for a generation, allow judges to “use the court to pass laws” otherwise not achievable with a Republican-controlled Congress or White House. Asked to respond to #NeverTrump conservatives’ fear that Trump is redefining—or has already redefined the Republican Party—Prager said that will only happen if he “succeeds as president, and doesn’t do so by adopting conservative policies.”
“Then he may indeed redefine Republican and conservative,” Prager said. “I’ll worry about that then. And if he fails, he will give new impetus to the traditional understanding of Republican and conservative.”
…What put Weinstein, the Daily Caller editor, over the edge was an incident in which Michelle Fields, Weinstein’s girlfriend and a former Breitbart reporter, was grabbed at a Trump event by campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as she tried to approach Trump to ask him a question. A Florida prosecutor charged Lewandowski with battery, and then later dropped the charges, but eyewitnesses corroborated Fields’ account, along with audio and video footage.
"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)
