- Jehu on smart rednecks and low church libertarians
- Is Julia the New Soviet Woman? If not, why exactly?
- Mark Steyn: "I’ve no use for Robert Mugabe but I did rather enjoy it when he called Tony Blair a ‘gay gangster’ leading ‘the gay government of the gay United gay Kingdom.’" (HT)
- Rod Dreher thinks George Zimmerman is going to walk. In reality, it will probably depend on the racial make up of the jury. Jury trials in diverse societies aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
- IQ and the wealth of nations may be censored, but it’s still going strong
- The Elusive Wapiti reviews The Closing of the American Mind.
- The glory of "independence"
- I’ll believe it when I see it
- Simon Grey on the infantilization of society
- Borepatch on DC home rule
- Charlton on libertarians, open borders and welfare
- Charles Murray on Fishtown (HT: Chuck, who seems to be everywhere these days)
- Alkibiades on democracy and freedom
Fun fact: in the late 90s, a group of people and I were talking with Camille Paglia, and someone asked her what she thinks of Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind.” She gave some thought to her answer, didn’t reply quickly. She said something very positive about the book, but added that its dour tone is a weakness.
What makes the moment powerful in my line is the fact that I believe that the alt-Right — not just a few blogs we all read, but a major nascent intellectual movement — is a synthesis of Pat Buchanan and Camille Paglia. When answering that question, she was facing her inscrutable fraternal brother.
By the way, that evening I also talked with her one on one. She is a very nice, engaging person. She listened attentively (to my then-clueless 20-someyhing self) and came across as genuinely pleasant. High energy too, if I need to add that.
A couple of comments about IQ.
1. Ability to do tests (any kind of test) is an acquired skill.
Cultures which require children to do a lot of tests
(such as Eastern cultures)
naturally will have a great advantage.
2. Italy 102, Germany 98??
1. Ability to do IQ tests is also highly heritable and IQ scores are strong predictors of educational and job outcomes, health, and much more.
2. I wouldn’t pay much attention to a few points’s difference in Lynn’s data. It’s not a significant difference.
Over the 80 or so generations that China has been using examinations we can expect selection to have improved greatly the gene pool in the direction of more individuals having the genes for taking those exams and mastering the material.
Even if such genes only improved outcomes by five percent per generation (more surviving offspring), that is a lot of generations.
Re Bloom’s book: Reviewer seems to think Rousseau lived before Locke; also, lots of bad grammar.
Re Dreher: isn’t he the fellow who once wrote an editorial for Dallas paper proclaiming Mex illegals to be “Texan of the year” and then failed to understand why anyone would take issue…”I was just doing my job, folks.”
“Jury trials in diverse societies aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.” That’s why they have often had to be abandoned in Ireland.
Back then the Irish were actually Irish instead of being multicultural,
multiracial secular hedonists.
The Irish were (are) mostly Roman Catholic, but with large minorities of Presbyterians and Anglicans Mind you, even if everyone involved in a case was Roman Catholic, the fear that witnesses and jurors would be routinely dishonest was also a problem.
Whether all the child buggering has led to the rise of a Continental-style anti-clerical faction, I do not know. It bloody well ought to have done. If the catholic Irish had any balls they’d leave Rome and form an Irish Catholic Church.
Or possibly thats what they’d do if they had no balls.
I have zero faith in “crackdowns” on government employees actually improving efficiency. Far more likely it will increase politiking, make-work (increased regulation), and CYA. That’s been my experience with it.
Civil service protection is one of the fe
w things that gets government workers to take chances.
Attacking Bloom’s masterwork has been one of Paul Gottfried”s favorite projects for many years:
http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1211&theme=home&page=2&loc=b&type=cbbf
http://www.truthinliving.org/Withering_Family.php
New Soviet Woman. From 1953. Remind me who won the cold war again.
Too soon to tell
From 1953.
Very interesting; thanks for the link.
We tend to think of the 1940′s and 1950′s as an American “golden age.” Back then morality and truth was hip – or so we are told. Sometimes our naive nostalgia gets the better of us.
This strikes me in relation to Frost’s argument that God is “dead”. People keep insisting that he is in comparison with the past, yet I assert that the very reason we see the past through rose-tinted glasses is that we can’t stop looking for a God that we wish was present now.
I’d be interested to see some analysis on the likely jury composition. What population pool does the jury have to be proportional to? If it has to match Sanford, Zim might be in trouble: 30% black = 3 or 4 black jurors. If Seminole county: 11% black = 1 or 2 black jurors.
Handy chart at this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford,_Florida#Demographics
According to my rough calculations, the US minus the Hispanic and Black population would score at 103 or so, placing it right after China, and highest among European / European descended nations. (IQ scores from Murray, demographics from wiki)
I wish the US were a plutarchy; at least then I’d know how to ally with.
The US is a loosely affiliated conglomerate of power-holders who play nicely with each other such that each party might attain more and more power.
Eventually, yes, this might break down into a plutarchy, but for now it is neither important how wealthy you are nor do wealthy people regularly get into low-level conflicts with each other (not in the US, anyway. One could argue that Russia or Mexico actually were plutarchies).
Thanks for the link, brother Foseti