"The moral of the recent melee at Middlebury College, where students shouted down and chased away a controversial social scientist, isn’t just about free speech, though that’s the rubric under which the ugly incident has been tucked. It’s about emotional coddling. It’s about intellectual impoverishment.
Somewhere along the way, those young men and women — our future leaders, perhaps — got the idea that they should be able to purge their world of perspectives offensive to them. They came to believe that it’s morally dignified and politically constructive to scream rather than to reason, to hurl slurs in place of arguments.
They have been done a terrible disservice. All of us have, and we need to reacquaint ourselves with what education really means and what colleges do and don’t owe their charges.
Physical safety? Absolutely. A smooth, validating passage across the ocean of ideas? No. If anything, colleges owe students turbulence, because it’s from a contest of perspectives and an assault on presumptions that truth emerges — and, with it, true confidence." Bruni
————-
SST exists to provide a space in which diverse ideas can be expressed, not as attacks on writers, but as a search for explanations of reality. If you insult people at SST you will be banned. If you are unnecessarily vile in your language you will be banned. You will not be banned on SST for having opinions that are outside the orthodoxy now emerging in the world. pl
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/opinion/sunday/the-dangerous-safety-of-college.html?ref=opinion
Colonel,
Here is a link to Murray’s take on the matter:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/03/06/charles-murray-into-middle-mob-what-happened-when-tried-to-speak-at-middlebury.html
The protesters seem to think that there will be no consequences of their actions. Just like our so-called government in Turkey where the beginning-of-the-end is in play.
Ishmael Zechariah
Here are some links dealing with Charles Murray’s aborted 2017-03-02 lecture at Middlebury College.
The subject of the attempted talk was his book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X/
A 43 minute video of the events in the auditorium, tagged to start with the introduction of Murray, is
https://youtu.be/a6EASuhefeI?t=18m42s
*** Video Recording of Charles Murray and Prof. Allison Stanger (1:15:10)
http://www.middlebury.edu/newsroom/archive/2017-news/node/545928
The first 25 minutes of this video is Murray giving the talk he planned to give to the students, and then
26:15 Allison Stanger begins her three questions:
•27:30 American “exceptionalism”
•35:20 free markets
•41:10 equality
53:25 Questions begin from Twitter
1:00:10 discussion of Ashkenazi Jews
Throughout this video the racket made by those trying to disrupt this conversation is heard.
Facebook post by Allison Stanger describing the events at the attempted Charles Murray lecture at Middlebury College
https://www.facebook.com/allison.stanger.5/posts/10209936010371446
Reflections on the revolution in Middlebury
by Charles Murray
AEI, 2017-03-05
http://www.aei.org/publication/reflections-on-the-revolution-in-middlebury/
Middlebury Students: College Administrator and Staff Assault Students, Endanger Lives After Murray Protest
beyondthegreenmidd.wordpress.com, 2017-03-04
https://beyondthegreenmidd.wordpress.com/2017/03/04/middlebury-students-college-administrator-and-staff-assault-students-endanger-lives-after-murray-protest/
This purports to be an anonymously written response from those who disrupted the event to the MSM coverage.
How Middlebury College Enabled The Student Riot During Charles Murray’s Visit
by Peter W. Wood, President, National Association of Scholars
The Federalist, 2017-03-07
https://thefederalist.com/2017/03/07/middlebury-college-enabled-student-riot-charles-murrays-visit/
Is Intersectionality a Religion?
By Andrew Sullivan
New York Magazine, 2017-03-10
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/is-intersectionality-a-religion.html
Does freedom of speech include the right to be heard?
Probably not.
However, while one is shouting down another, they obviously are not listening.
How much does that matter?
Probably not much.
These events are not designed for an actual exchange of ideas.
Nobody in the room is going to have their minds changed.
Rather, they are ritual performances to demonstrate status, power and social positioning. (both for the organizers, speaker and protestors).
IZ,
There have been no consequences to any of these protesters at any college unless the recipients of the harassment sued; then it is generally a modest financial penalty to the school in question. These are the types of colleges that provide the “best and brightest” to various government agencies, colleges and school systems around the republic. A self-indoctrinating educational system. They still wonder why Trump won.
It is great to see the student protest against a racist’s speech. It is disappointing to see how they did it.
On what basis is a claim made that anyone is racist?
Frank Bruni:
Only a few poor souls anywhere, at any time, interest themselves in the discovery of Truth – be it in programming, in theater, or in Art History.
The rest of the student body are in search of a meal ticket or something that would enhance their worth in the marriage market.
All of this is just a storm in the teacup.
“It is great to see the student protest against a racist’s speech.”
It would be indeed, if that’s what they were doing. They were trying to prevent it. I’m not arguing a constitutional issue, which applies only to government, I’m arguing the difference between open minds which result in discussion, and closed minds which result in a new dark age.
AEL,
Lmao at this equivocating mess.
Its not for you to decide what kind of exchange will go on. Nor for your side to throw stop signs at cars.
TonyL,
Its great to see that even in the face of getting BTFO you guys on the Left think calling something racist is your “I win” button.
Google “Alt Knight” if you want to see the right wing response to this kind of mob insanity.
Urban hoplite warfare is gonna be awesome.
Universities, colleges, & schools can & should be the places for civil debate & there’s no excuse for resorting to physical violence except in self-defense. Murray, Milo, & whomever else is best debated civilly
As for debating Murray, here’s a research article by US Army military intelligence Captain & Economics PhD (UCSanta Barbara) Kangas, who sources & foot notes data from actual geneticists & psychologists (the latest research shows that IQ & most personality traits are about 50% genetic, 50% environment mix — and
that actually the 2 greatest factors in ‘success’ for most people was not actual IQ but SocioEconomic status & ‘Emotional IQ’ aka EQ ‘social skills’ –see Trump, Reagan & Bill Clinton as examples of high social skills EQ.. with IQ being secondary factor]
that debunks Murray
–Murray himself is neither a geneticist nor psychologist but a professor of Political Science :
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-bellcurvescience.htm
Note also that Murray’s Bell Curve is flawed: ” the studies [Murray] cited are almost always ones funded by the Pioneer Fund, a neo-Nazi group whose founder advocated sending all blacks back to Africa. Even Murray himself seems embarrassed by some of his sources:
“Here was a case of stumbling onto a subject that had all the allure of the forbidden. Some of the things we read to do this work, we literally hide when we’re on planes and trains. We’re furtively peering at this stuff.” (16)
Murray’s life bio doesn’t sound racist, just misguided -he credits scoring very high on the SATs due to his own high IQ that got him out of his small town Republican life in Iowa into Harvard so he projects high IQ as the determining factor in life (though in really it’s high education because the ‘successful’ careers such as medical doctors, engineers, scientists, etc that are highly paid & require university educations & higher IQ)
Murray’s book Bell Curve actually ranks East Asians & Jewish as having the highest average IQs & success, though culture plays a huge part in it since East Asian culture values education above all else (and statistics show 80%+ of East Asians major in medical doctor, engineering, science, or math careers whereas most US major in business or liberal arts such as psychology, history, political science, English, etc)
Murray’s bio here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(political_scientist)
“Murray credits his time in the Peace Corps in Thailand with his lifelong interest in Asia.[13] “There are aspects of Asian culture as it is lived that I still prefer to Western culture, 30 years after I last lived in Thailand,” says Murray.[13]
[He married a Thai Buddhsit]
“Two of my children are half-Asian. Apart from those personal aspects, I have always thought that the Chinese and Japanese civilizations had elements that represented the apex of human accomplishment in certain domains.”[13]
His tenure with the Peace Corps ended in 1968, and during the remainder of his time in Thailand he worked for the American Institutes for Research (AIR), which was part of a covert counter insurgency agency run by the US military in cooperation with the CIA.[14][15]
Recalling his time in Thailand in a 2014 episode of “Conversations with Bill Kristol,” Murray noted that his worldview was fundamentally shaped by his time there. “Essentially, most of what you read in my books I learned in Thai villages.”
what, precisely, if possible, makes him a racist? In your eyes?
I believe that in all ordinary circumstances of communication courtesy surpasses disruption. Also, the best argument is an actual argument, not a volume change or adjective/noun combination.
(Semi-ironic note is that because of its second-to-none language schools, Middlebury has long fed grads into the intelligence community.)
Just like our so-called government in Turkey where the beginning-of-the-end is in play.
It no doubt looks a bit like Tayyib will succeed versus polls. Sadly.
He can and does use events around election campaigns here in Europe to his own advantage. Even if I ignore recent events in the Netherlands. Where the lady seems to have entered incognito. Upcoming elections!!! The one party, foundation (Pipes, Horowitz?) supported man with his bleached hair? Who hires and fires his supporters, if they don’t function the way they are meant to do.
Forget Tayyib’s Nazi charges against both Germany and the Netherlands as Nazi remnants… I am pretty used to that by now.
Without having looked closely into matters, in Germany and Switzerland there seems to be evidence that the organizers didn’t put their cards on the table. Rumors only? According to Swiss news a couple of days ago one such event seems to have been declared a family festivity. Seems to have worked over here similarly in some places. If true, this is deceptive. But if so, why? Council of Europe, Venice Commission’s take on the referendum?
Over here the UETD once again pulled quite a bit of attention as active behind the scenes. Both events in Cologne and nearby Leverkusen took place. In Leverkusen a prominent spokesperson of the UETD was present and caught on camera, while he had denied involvement before. In any case the political positions harden. Loads of German speaking members of the AKP on political talk shows recently.
http://uetd.org/
In the department of ‘politainment’ Anne Will had only two guests facing each other yesterday Akif Cagatay Kilic (AKP), who grew up in Germany but used both responses in German, his German sounds perfect, and in Turkish meeting the CDU head of the Chancelier’s office.
His probably best argument was that Merkel had been handed 5.000 of PKK terrorists in Germany at the G20(?) anyway some summit event. The CDU representative somehow doubted that, although Kilic affirmed that he had been present and thus knew it was true: 5.000 files handed to Merkel at such an event. Shouldn’t there have been boxes full of files?
And of course in the back of these events is the case of the German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel, whom Tayyib apparently charged with being a German spy.
*****
Without doubt the expats are important. They elected the ‘REIS/The Chief’ around 60 percent. And the film made it into the movies right in time to help a little. 😉
not proofread, and too long anyway.
“Fascist” and “Neo-Nazi” also have their buttons. They are wired up to some powerful explosive charges too. Any of those buttons will get thousands out on to the streets and millions cheering them on. They are also guaranteed to work with almost all the intelligentsia and with most place-holders.
Only problem is that since 2014 it’s become impossible to look away from the fact that “Neo-Nazi”, “fascist” and “racist” are a dead accurate description of the people and policies all those millions and most of the intelligentsia have been supporting abroad.
Seems to me the so-called “left”, or “progressives”, or “Clintonistas” or whatever the current term might be, have wired themselves up to their own explosives.
As my pastor use to say repeatedly for you go away from my homily feeling comfortable then you have not been listening
jonst
“Try to imagine a GOP presidential candidate saying in front of the cameras, “One reason that we still have poverty in the United States is that a lot of poor people are born lazy.” You cannot imagine it because that kind of thing cannot be said. And yet this unimaginable statement merely implies that when we know the complete genetic story, it will turn out that the population below the poverty line in the United States has a configuration of the relevant genetic makeup that is significantly different from the configuration of the population above the poverty line. This is not unimaginable. It is almost certainly true.” – Charles Murray
That seems like a pretty classic example of racial biology to me.
I agree with TonyL, Bruni, and Col Lang regarding the protest. It wasn’t always like this. And it’s not always the left shutting down ideas it doesn’t like at colleges and universities.
https://www.juancole.com/2004/12/character-assassination-yes-im-aware.html
TexDeAtkine
Welcome aboard. pl
AEL,
In this case the students agreed with you as not only were their minds not going to be changed but they did not want an actual exchange of ideas. They also enacted the ritual performance which demonstrated their power and social position and the lack of it by both the conservatives students and the professor, the faculty in general and the college administration in particular. That is just the kind of conduct that should be rewarded by the taxpayers with an increase in federally funded grants and an assumption of all student loan debt.
Edward,
You are linking to a decade old article by juan cole that has zero references to Charles Murray. Is this guy beyond redemption too?
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-03-11/news/1995070104_1_marchers-montgomery-wallace
Edward,
I read Murray’s “The Bell Curve” several years after it was published. Found it in a used book store and recalled all the hoopla when it was first released and was curious. I found the research to be very well done – better than most on the topic – and the arguments supporting the findings and ramifications of them to be very solid. Actually, it all makes perfect sense.
Other than the findings going against liberal core beliefs, I can’t understand why Murray is so demonized. Murray has stated that he, himself, was surprised at the findings. I wasn’t what he expected.
This all reminds me of hardcore Islamics issuing a death fatwa against someone “insulting” their religion or a western scientist getting in trouble with the church for saying that the earth goes around the sun as opposed to the opposite.
If the students have a problem with Murray’s work they should debate the science and methodology with him. Not banish him and any mention of his work.
Perhaps it is my lack of due diligence which explains my frustrations with commentary about the “snowflakes” and their physical displays of moral outrage. Would it not be more interesting to attempt to deduce, if possible, how and why there are so many snowflakes. From whence did they spring? Did they get accepted at some college and turn into snowflakes once they arrived on campus? Or perhaps did their evolution from the age of 1 to 18 have something to do with their mode of thought? What events in their previous lives taught them to respond in such a manner? An intellectual archaeological dig through the past 18 years might be of more practical use. This is not to suggest finding someone or something to “blame” for their intellectual state. The purpose of the “dig” would be to understand and delineate the hows and whys. Here is one level down so to speak of the dig that I would suggest might have greatly influenced them – Do the math. What happened in this country when the 18 year olds were toddlers? I close my comment with this statement – I personally find the intellectual responses of the the snowflakes to be morally repulsive and without merit. But then I am an old guy who came of age in the late 60’s.
Tyler
Aye mate!! Malcolm Mcdowell and his
droogs don our bowlers every midweek
at our favorite tavern quaffing the latest local
craft suds polishing our tactics and conceal
and carry weapons waiting for the moment.
Comes spring and summer the time nears.
Tyler
Aye mate!! Malcolm Mcdowell and his
droogs don our bowlers every midweek
at our favorite tavern quaffing the latest local
craft suds polishing our tactics and conceal
and carry weapons waiting for the moment.
Comes spring and summer the time nears.
Fred
Sorry if I wasn’t clear, but the link refers to those on the right trying to shut down ideas they don’t like on campus. Both sides are doing it.
A number of people have been pointing out that how revealing the protests are as illustration of the problems Murray pointed to in his book, which I think is one of the most valuable and important contribution to understanding how the world works today.
The Middlebury students and faculty, the epitome of the “cognitive elite” that Murray described, don’t want to recognize that some people can’t afford cake, and that having someone point that out is an affront.
So much for intellectual curiosity.
One thing people should remember is that Murray was not at Middlebury to talk about Bell Curve, but Coming Apart–an entirely different book. Bell Curve’s methodology and data can be debated, and has been debated extensively, but, that’s not of (much) relevance here, and the argument in Coming Apart suggests has Murray’s thoughts on society has become much more subtle, at any rate, perhaps towards taking the idea of “intelligence” as socially defined, or at least, not moral justification for hoarding power, compared to his critics. (If anything, much more rampant justification of the crass “(allegedly) smart people shall rule” type arguments come from “cognitive elites” of Silicon Valley and NYC.)
Eric Newhill,
I agree with your last paragraph.
Regarding the rest. Murray’s been demonized, if that’s the right word, for providing a platform for post-modern racists, of providing a source of data to support many of their beliefs. Much of the data referenced in the Bell Curve was attributed to J. Phillippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen, who were funded by the Pioneer Fund.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2005/10/moral_courage.html
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45/049.html
EA
Did you ever read “Time on the Cross?” pl
Edward,
“both sides are doing it”. That is not true. Do you have some actual evidence besides Daniel Pipes’ actions against Juan Cole from over a decade ago during the run up to that war Hilary voted for?
Steve,
Tbh. I laughed pretty hard but my point still stands.
Bob,
Cultural Marxism as a mystery cult and everyone getting a trophy.
Edward,
Senator Moynihan was discredited and demonized too. That didn’t stop things from following the course he projected though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Family:_The_Case_For_National_Action
Edward,
Did you actually read “the Bell Curve” – some of the things the high priests of liberalism say about it aren’t true, or only so to minor extent, at least as I read the book, keeping a close eye on the science in it.
What concerns me more is this notion that if research has been contributed to by an organization that, anywhere in its past, might have had some ugly ideology associated with it, then everything that follows is automatically discredited. What about the Ford Foundation? Does it not do good works despite henry having held some racist views? An aside – oddly socialism and communism, despite much real world ugliness, is an ideological background that appears to be acceptable to the priestly caste that renders judgment on what is good and what is bad.
Apparently there are some links between Carnegie Institute and members and beneficiaries of the Pioneer Fund you refer to. Should we now burn anything connected to Carnegie too? You see where this little game leads to – witch hunts, purges and a closed minded limitation on what is acceptable to be read to only publications by authors who are themselves deemed “pure” as well as their families and lineages and connections.
This is the same moral superiority game the left plays with American society as a whole. They say it’s corrupt because of the original sins of slavery, Indians, etc.
I have never read the book though just now I bought the Kindle version. Not familiar with cultural Marxism. In fairness I must confess to a life long aversion to short phrases such as “cultural Marxism” or even something as benign as “democratic institutions.” Much is obscured by phrases where those in attendance nod their heads sagely conveying nothing but vacuous agreement.
As an accredited armchair psychologist, I believe that snowflakedom is fundamentally a psychological response to unrealistic expectations and overemphasis on material success.
The kids grow up being told that they can be anything they want, so long as they put their mind to it. Thus their self-worth is dependent on material success. Eventually they realize that their achievements will never make them as successful, famous, or important as they grew up expecting. This is where victimhood kicks in: by labeling themselves as victims, they create an escape clause that allows them to maintain their self-worth while not attaining the expected level of success.
The logic is this: for a normal person, there is nothing spectacular about walking a mile down the road. But to walk a mile while carrying heavy baggage under enemy fire is an achievement indeed. There is normally nothing spectacular about graduating from school, but to graduate after enduring severe trauma is more impressive. Victimhood and disadvantage create a heavy burden that makes mediocre achievements more impressive. Accordingly, they can be used to “boost” the value of one’s achievements.
For this reason, wherever real victimhood not available in sufficient quantity, it is necessary to create it. There are now whole academic disciplines devoted to defining the planet-sized burdens that the snow-Atlases are courageously holding up: the patriarchy, white privilege, ableism, etc. Individuals such as Murray are thus highly dangerous, because by arguing that the would-be victims are are not as oppressed as they imagine, they threaten the value of the victims’ achievements and accordingly their self-worth.
You will notice that such incidents appear concentrated mainly at the more prestigious universities–Yale, Berkeley, Middlebury, etc. I would not expect them so much at a community college. It stands to reason that this is because the students are the more prestigious colleges are the most self-conscious about the value of their achievements. Also to the credit of this theory is the fact that it seems to have jumped into high-gear after the 2008 crisis, which dashed quite a lot of expectations.
Bob Blake
I don’t think I have ever written anything about “Cultural Marxism.” Do you have a citation? Don’t attribute to me things I have not said. TotC is an economic analysis of American slavery as an institution. pl
Bob Blake, I spent 25 years of my life working (administratively) at a small liberal arts non-denominational Christian college. The snowflakes there arrived fully formed! Even though the level of seriously “different” debate and menu of speakers was lean and mild, the students’ first response was usually averse. Fortunately, after four years of rigorous classroom pushback, they left much tougher than they arrived.
The college, as a whole, however, still supported the snowflakes over the “cacti.” The “cacti”, as I came to think of them, often ended up in the chair in my office where they could vent without any pushback to how “Christian” they might be.
I graduated from a UC and I NEVER felt as circumscribed as I did at that small college–I also came of age in the late 60’s and am very glad that I did. My experience being “used” by leftist speakers and the politicians who railed against them made me completely resistant to D T’s diatribes. I do NOT like being used and recognize it in a nanosecond because there is nothing worse than being in a crowd of protestors when the fringe idiots behind you start burning police cars. It isn’t snowflake to stand against demagogues but it is a lesson best learned by each generation.
Fred,
This link’s pretty up to date. Tactics are slightly different than the left’s but the intent’s the same.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/11/turning-point-usa-launches-professor-watchlist.html
I was an undergrad at the U. of Chicago in the 1960s, an English major. A politically/socially turbulent era at times, but I don’t recall anything like this Middlebury mess. For one thing, the underlying (if you will, pity-party) conceptual framework that seems to be at work here was not present in the thinking either of students or the administration back then. Yes, there were vigorous anti-war protests at the U. of C in the late ’60s in which a school administratiin building were occupied (or if you prefer, “occupied”), but the students who did so were expelled. One could argue as to whether that response was too harsh or not, but there was a certain cleanness and seriousness to it — it was as though the school was saying, in effect, “We take your protest seriously, and this is our serious response. Shutting down this school is not an option. Get on with your lives elsewhere.”
I wasn’t in the “‘Let’s take over the Ad Building!’ crowd — in part because I was determined to do all I could to graduate (the U. of C. was a tough school), in part because that wasn’t my style (for one thing, I’d earlier met some people who were leaders in the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, and they struck me as manipulative ass—–).
The point made above about ” the students [at] the more prestigious colleges [being] the most self-conscious about the value of their achievements” is interesting. There’s truth to that, I’m sure, especially these days, but thinking back to my time at the U. of C., the toughness of the curriculum more or less kicked the arrogance out of us ( at least it licked it out of me). OTOH in later years I’ve found U. of C. alumni to be a remarkably smug and prideful crew by and large.
Eric Newhill
You found the research so well done, others not so much. Charles Lane delves pretty deeply into the tainted sources of the Bell Curve here:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1994/12/01/the-tainted-sources-of-the-bell-curve/
“A huge number of well-meaning whites fear that they are closet racists, and this book tells them they are not. It’s going to make them feel better about things they already think but do not know how to say.” That’s Charles Murray on another one of his books, this one called “Losing Ground.” Are you beginning to see a theme?
Col., Tyler used the term “cultural Marxism” up thread.
Ironic that it’s an abomination for immature college students to have “demonized” and attempted to prevent Charles Murray from speaking, evoking cries of outrage from their wiser elders, but those same elders still rely on “neo-Nazi” as an all-purpose disqualifier. Isn’t it time mature men & women disabused themselves of such prejudices and, instead, sought to inform their thinking on the basis of facts and evidence rather than shop-warn propaganda?
Germar Rudolf conducted scientific tests that provided sound evidence that gas chambers were not used to kill Jews. For this he was fined, jailed, his home searched, his doctoral program at Max Planck Institute terminated, he was exiled from his homeland, Germany; he lives in tenuous exile in first amendment-protected USA. Amazon has de-listed books that Rudolf has published; free speech only goes so far.
Why is one topic — the one Rudolf has researched– such a complete taboo in the USA (and Europe)? I recently listened to a panel discussion of the causes of World War I that concluded with the earnest exhortation that “new information and new interpretations are constantly being made known; historians must revise their thinking and teaching accordingly.”
Shouldn’t that apply across all fields of study, whether planetary motion, or racial biology and intelligence, or the history of a war?
In my judgment, a genuine patriot would insist on the right and even responsibility to demand critical analysis of historic events, particularly since so much of foreign policy-making relies on interpreting US claims emerging from World War II. If the underlying analysis is unsound, policy based upon it cannot possibly be productive.
A woman I know teaches special education classes, writes about it for journals and tests students abilities. She says they are by law not allowed to test student’s IQ, or even use a test with the word intelligence, but instead measure the grade he tests at–such as the grade level he is able to read at. The concept of intelligence is considered racist and has been discarded even though it still measures cognitive ability.
Even more interesting is New York State is dropping its requirement that teachers have to quality by passing a literacy test because only 46 percent of Hispanics and 41 percent of blacks pass the test on the first try while 64 percent of whites pass. In other words, the test must be racist. And we wonder why our educational system is failing our children when teachers are hired according to their skin color instead of their ability.
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/education/2017/03/11/test-meant-screen-teachers-instead-weeded-out-minorities/99050796/
How can someone who believes in evolution not realize that after tens-of-thousands of years of adapting to different environmental demands each ethnic group will inherit its own unique physical, emotional and intellectual traits? This doesn’t mean one group is superior to another, though each tribe thinks it is. It’s a basic ingredient of tribal mythology many still cling to.
What happened in this country when the 18 year olds were toddlers?
9/11.
And the ramping up of the whole ‘we must keep our children safe’ syndrome. The rally cry behind the word safe has become a crescendo. Anything was and is justified in its name. Including producing boring kids who have the individuality and spunk of spent shells. (Look at the cars on the road. Can’t tell the difference between a Suburu and a Porsche. Boring. Mundane things designed in a wind tunnel, but still not allowed to go more than 70-80 mph on a freeway.)
Got to be driven to school, picked up from school. Clutched to the family nuclei because danger abounds just beyond the garage door. Every moment supervised, “play dates,” then recitations at the family dinner table about who and what is a danger to society. The who and what now include ideas.
I wouldn’t be asking what happened to the kids 18+ years ago. It’s what happened to their parents.
In the Golden Age of Islamic Science (700 Ad to ~1500 AD), it was the Whites, the European whites, who were considered stupid and subhuman. The Christian monks and Jewish scribes would make pilgrimages to Cordoba to get Latin translations of Arabic science texts. (All of this has been preserved in monasteries and synagogues, which is how British historians were able to write about this in the early part of the 20th C.)
Europe was still in The Dark Ages. European kings and queens still lived in single-room barns with their animals and a central hole in the roof so that cooking smoke could leave.
Cordoba, on the other hand, was a city of 1.5 million with paved roads and raised sidewalks. They had invented a method of irrigation from the Sierra Nevada mountains–never replicated until the 1930s–that fed the fields and vineyards (yaaas, the Muslims produced wine) and permitted magnificent courtyards with fountains long before the idea was even a ding-dong in the European mind. Just google Al-Hambra to see what they produced in 874 AD. The Al-Hambra is a protected UNESCO building now. However, all of their other creations were renamed Christian creations and absconded with by the Spanish King after 1500 AD., so we don’t know about the real history.
Whites were considered dumb and dumber. They were unkempt. They didn’t wash. They had no education, certainly nothing in comparison to Islamic Sciences, didn’t come close. The Arabs were generous in their hospitality to them, but they considered them luddites. While Europe was still scratching its head trying to figure out Euclid’s Fourth Principle, the people of Cordoba were doing trigonometry and calculus on the streets in 900 AD.
MRW,
Are you intimating, then, that the European civilization was started via the affirmative action policies of the Andalusian elites?
Ishmael Zechariah
Edward,
Which colleges and universities does the 503C group Turning point run? Oh, yeah, zero of them. Try again.
And all these muslim wonders “miraculously” turned to the deep shit we now witness, curious no?
MRW,
Could you give us some insight on how the plebiscites to decide which religion to adopt and which to abandon were held in the lands from which this great Golden Age sprang? They did vote didn’t they, to adopt Islam rather than remain Christian as they had been for a few centuries, these people in what is now Spain?
Euclid was Greek , who was it that read and transcribed his works, written more than 3 centuries before the birth of Christ (thus a BC rather than the AD in your date) so that the people of Cordoba could do trigonometry and calculus on the streets?
Bob, I willingly outed myself here as “cultural Marxist” on Pat’s blog. Partly, maybe, since it is used here mainly as slogan, symbolizing the enemy out there, on this blog, among its people, the fifth column in the States, that is what it feels like to me, a slogan, a fighting term: US VERSUS THEM? At least as far as I am concerned.
But I haven’t really managed to wrap my head around what for some here seems to belong into the larger box. Apart from the issues, I clearly understand do.
Although, considering my field, I never really bothered to find out if for Tyler, e.g. among others New Historicism would be a part of what “Cultural Marixists” are about.;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Greenblatt#New_Historicism
After all the only time I recall that art caught his attention here, was a more or less rare event.
IQ alone cannot account for what we have observed empirically over the last 800 years, namely the Rise of the West.
Jews, Indians, and Far Easterners were going nowhere until the Western Civilization took them out of their own slumber of centuries.
You take an Indian – usually Hindu – and put him in US Silicon Valley and boy, that guy starts going places that he could never reach in India.
Even today, in China, one witnesses overwhelming careerism among the academic staff – to the point of falsifications of data and outright cheating while, in the West, one has men and women who have devoted their lives to the humble study of animal songs and the origin of musicality (as an example).
Fred
Yes, Moynihan’s book was controversial at first, but over time many of his findings were affirmed. That’s not been the case with Murray’s assertions.
Sorry that this has gotten way off track. I gave a reason why I think that Murray is a pseudo-scientific racialist. He went to Middlebury, a college with approximately 35% minority students, to explain why he thinks that blacks are, on average, less intelligent than whites. The pushback he got should have been intellectual, not physical.
LeaNder
Since you are one, explain to me what “cultural Marxism” means. pl
The so-called Desert Religions spread more by force than reason.
IMO cultural Marxism is found by those reading Marx but not becoming believers in that religion.
MRW
In the Middle Ages the Arab considered himself to be the superior man based on his skin color which was a a cross between the white and the black man. The white was considered a great warrior but stupid and the black was considered very intelligent but a lousy fighter. The writer that wrote this thought the Arab displayed the best of both races and somehow avoided the other races’ defects.
I did say every tribe thinks it’s superior to all others. I think in some ways we are just primates fighting for dominance–either as individuals within a group or as a group against all other groups.
Greece and Rome had already come and gone (the latter almost) and contributed much to the advancement of civilization by the time Islam appeared. Paved roads and irrigation were not new.
I wish I could Pat, maybe William S Lind can? Not not wander off into the more esoteric or philosophical. Or Marx challenge of Hegel’s idealist tradition.
http://www.marylandthursdaymeeting.com/Archives/SpecialWebDocuments/Cultural.Marxism.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Lind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism#Historical_background
Croesus
Germans don’t consider the Holocaust a matter for debate, it is considered a historical fact: there is testimonial evidence, documentary evidence, and physical evidence of of mass murder by gassing at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany.
Col Lang
No.
Edward,
First, there is hardly a scientific theory or an academic work that is without its critics. Pointing out that someone questions a work, even a well credentialed someone, proves nothing. It’s all part of the healthy process of working towards understanding things; which one of my points – that a discussion of the science should be what occurs as opposed to a silencing of ideas, even if the ideas make some uncomfortable.
Second, I think you are maybe too absorbed in your own righteousness to see that you are doing exactly what you agree shouldn’t be done. You are labeling Murray and some of funding sources as “racist” without considering the possibility that just maybe there really are racial differences in intelligence. To you that possibility is verboten, too dangerous to be discussed. On the one hand you call for open discussion and on the other you wish to see Murray demonized and silenced.
Third, I don’t think you read the book. Rather you have been going about the internet looking for selected quotes to demean Murray and his work. I’d be much more interested in hearing what your take away from a careful reading of the book is. Like I said, we can all find people to take down just about anything for us if we are so inclined.
Edward,
You wiggle more than a fish on a hook. When called out on your lack of evidence of “… the right trying to shut down ideas they don’t like on campus.” you change the subject.
California bar exam is too tough so there is a push to lower the passing score.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/California-bar-exam-s-passing-score-should-be-10999240.php
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Cultural_marxism
Cultural Marxism is a term used by critics and even self-admitted Marxists are unlikely to use the term to describe their own ideology. Also, Cultural Marxism has its origin in Marxist ideas but those promoting the ideas of Cultural Marxism today may not always know of this or consider themselves to be Marxists.
Instead, promoters of Cultural Marxism may use terms such as critical theory, postmodernism, deconstruction, or similar terms. Many do not know the origin of their own somewhat Cultural Marxist ideas and may, for example, describe themselves as social liberals.
Since culture is considered the primary factor which sustain inequalities, Cultural Marxism is opposed to other explanations for inequalities such as religious explanations, individual choices, or genetic factors.
Unlike Marxism which primarily focuses on economic inequalities and economic classes, Cultural Marxism see culture as a main cause for many different kinds of inequalities:
Race (Whites/non-Whites)
Culture (Western/non-Western)
Family (nuclear family/non-nuclear family)
Religion (Christianity/atheism and religious minorities)
Gender (men/women)
Sexual orientation (heterosexual/LGBT)
Cultural Marxism places great emphasis on analyzing, controlling, and changing the popular culture, the popular discourse, the mass media, and the language itself. Seeing culture as often having more or less subconscious influences on people which create and sustain inequalities, Cultural Marxists themselves often try to remove these inequalities by more or less subtle manipulation and censorship of culture.
A term describing such censorship is political correctness where all views on equality that disagree with the Cultural Marxist view are avoided, censored, and punished.
…The idea that a culture may be problematic is not new but Cultural Marxism in its current form originates in the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School is a neo-Marxist school which originated around 1923 at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany.
The Frankfurt School developed critical theory in order to analyze and explain how culture creates inequalities. It has been extremely influential and today has branches in numerous fields such as critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, critical gender studies, critical criminology, critical legal studies, etc.
… Leftist sources often dismiss Cultural Marxism not by using factual arguments but instead by labeling it a “conspiracy theory”. … The Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt was/is no secret conspiracy group but open regarding its intents and had/has many similarities to modern think thanks/”policy institutes” which openly advocate certain ideas/ideologies and try to influence and shape public discourse, culture, and society.
————
Fred
I provided evidence. Here’s more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-right-shuts-down-free-speech-too/2016/12/15/745fa352-c30d-11e6-9578-0054287507db_story.html?utm_term=.dfbc76d10caa
EA
I would like your review of “Time on the Cross” It was re-printed in 199. The 2nd volume with the math is particularly interesting. pl
Eric Newhill
Absorbed in my righteousness? I thought we were trying to avoid personal attacks.
I am aware of the book, having read it (a lot of it anyway) a long time ago. The idea that Murray’s Bell Curve is too dangerous to discuss is ridiculous. It has been discussed ad nauseum and has not held up well over time — especially now that genetics research suggests race is a sociologic phenom, not biologic.
EA
Race is a social construct? Have you had your DNA type sorted? pl
Related to this is Antonio Gramsci and his theory of cultural hegemony.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony
Col Lang
Yup, we’re all members of the same species. Races aren’t biologically distinct groups. And no, I haven’t had my DNA sorted, although it might be interesting to see more precisely where my ancestors came from.
MRW — Thank you for this. A lens I hadn’t considered and a powerful influence that we all need to consider as we view the current cultural and political landscape.
Col Lang
That’s your area of expertise and interest, so I’ll leave it to you.
EA
But the question of the conditions of slavery bear upon the character of contemporaneous America. Do not Black Lives Matter? pl
EA
It is a characteristic of the Left to deny the variety of Man. Since I spent my working life dealing with the variety of Man and those who usually disastrously would not admit it, I am not sympathetic to your POV. pl
Col Lang
Sorry, no comment. I know nothing about the book, Time on the Cross.
EA
Yes, by all means avoid an expansion of the intellect. pl
Col Lang
Whoa…I’m not denying variety among humans. I’m just saying that races aren’t subspecies, that human variety is due to socioligical, not biological factors.
Col Lang
I’d be interested to hear your take.
pl,
I have not read “Time on the Cross” either. Just from a few short reviews, I gather that the author’s point is that slavery was a rational economic model in the American South at that time rather than an illogically depraved system of oppression with no economic value. I have never heard a view contrary to that. Is there a deeper meaning to the book?
EA
That is a real cop-out, a denial that both nature and nurture matter in people. pl
TTG
According to the economic scholar authors, the system of forced labor was quite efficient, many planters were well educated people devoted to agronomy. Pofits were high but the chief beneficiaries were the ultimate consumers of things like cotton goods much like the ultimate consumers of Chinese manufactured goods which are produced with what amounts to slave labor. Economic analysis also yields the inputs expended by planters on slave welfare in terms of housing, food, clothing, medical care. these were important capital assets and the authors demonstrate that agricultural slave were on the average better provided for than Northern industrial workers of the same period. pl
pl,
That’s all in line with what I was taught during the Civil War centennial in a New England grammar school. I distinctly remember Mr. Gray explaining in detail the life of a worker in a northern mill compared to the life of a slave on a southern plantation. BTW, Mr. Gray flew an OSU-2 reconnaissance float plane off a cruiser during the war in the Pacific. I guess I enjoyed an especially blessed and enlightened childhood.
TTG
Skilled workmen had productive capabilities greater than that needed on the farm and there were a lot of blacksmiths, coopers, masons, etc. who were allowed to work in town on a profit sharing basis with a future manumission contract in the deal. Nevertheless, the slave labor system paid well for the planters and led to the sort of pseudo-English manorial life that is part legend and part true. I don’t remember if it is in the book that the introduction of farm machinery would probably have ended slavery in the second half of the 19th Century. tractors, etc., don’t have to be fed, medicated, etc. pl
Col Lang
The system of forced labor may have been efficient, but WEB DuBois wasn’t buying the contention that slaves had it better than northern wage slaves.
Edward,
You are actually getting me chuckling a little.
I’m sure you are one that would call anyone believing in intelligent design – or any kind of spiritual related influence on the development of living creatures in this world – “stupid”, “backwards”, “deplorable”, etc. For intellectuals of your caliber we are all biological robots that have our distant roots in some primordial pond scum.
And yet, at the same time, you want to deny the influence of the very units of robot programming according to your science; genes.
I have a genetic marker that is known only in Armenians, Ashkenazi Jews and some Arabs. You don’t have it. How are we the same then? What are those genes doing there? What are they turning on or off in me that isn’t happening in you? Or are you now going to back off on your science and say that genes don’t influence anything important?
What of mental illnesses that have a demonstrated strong family line correlation, even in separated at birth twin studies?
I know from thoroughbred breeding that personality traits are definitely passed down. There are some stallions I would never put a mare to b/c they tend to produce real a-holes that are simply too challenging, and dangerous, to break and train. Horses, but not humans?
There is a lot of mixing of races and strains in America. In other parts of the world, not so much watering down. Also, in other parts of the world, where life has been harsher, a lot of nature selection.
EA.
ROTFL. WEB Dubois was hardly objective about this. In terms of material living, IMO he was incorrect. IMO deprivation of liberty was the main argument against this system. Remember, as soon as slavery ended the planters stopped providing anything for former slaves and share-cropping began. pl
“affirmative action policies” I wouldn’t know, but by their presence, yes. The Black Africans brought culture and knowledge to Europe: science, architecture, mathematics, medicine, literature, astronomy, jurisprudence, civil engineering, etc.
To this day, our western civilization uses their pharmacopeia in our medicine, the diagnoses etc. We still use the exact same instruments they designed for eye surgery and operations in the 9th and 10th C in our modern hospitals, like Cedars Sinai in LA or the New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell in Manhattan. They invented the scalpel and speculum, for example, and the use of cat gut to sew stitches, over 1,000 years ago.
They invented double-entry accounting (Ibn-Khaldun) and the heliocentric view of the world (which Copernicus purloined from translated documents a friar named Luca Forget-His-Last-Name brought back from Cordoba in the 1400s). Another proof of the example of Christians claiming Islamic discoveries as their own: instant history and stardom for Europe. Double-entry accounting is today presumed to be an Italian invention, and the heliocentric view of the world to be that of a Polish Monk Who Lived In A Monastery’s invention. Hell, we even subscribe the discovery of flight to Leonardo da Vinci from his notebooks, when all he was doing was copying the Latin-translated docs Luca Forget-His-Last-Name brought back from Cordoba, because they were strapping wings to their backs and jumping off mountain cliffs in the 12th C, one of whom maintained flight for 10 minutes.
They did more in those 800 years to advance world knowledge in such a short period of time than anyone or anything before in the entirety of history. But since none of us, except the Colonel, speak or read Arabic (or Persian), we wouldn’t know about any of this, and fewer still, today, are apt to believe it. Such is the state of our general education in this country and generosity of thought and attribution, preferring instead the soporific of American exceptionalism without examination or dreary tedious study.
Instead, we give a bunch of fundamentalist madmen the force of nature and claim it represents the whole. We are our own worse enemies.
Eric Newhill
Again, races aren’t sub-species so there’s no basis for making claims about the general intelligence of a particular race. Yes, intelligence is inherited, but how genes contribute to *individual* differences in intelligence isn’t fully understood yet. Sociology, health, nutrition, education, drinking, etc probably also factor in in a big way.
Col Lang
Yes, but DuBois said that deprivation of liberty had an affect on slaves’ material living: “No matter how degraded the factory hand, he is not real estate. The tragedy of the black slave’s position was precisely this; his absolute subjection to the individual will of an owner and to ‘the cruelty and injustice which are the invariable consequences of the exercise of irresponsible power, especially where authority must be sometimes delegated by the planter to agents of inferior education and coarser feelings.'”
Edward Amame,
You can also take the word of General Henry Thomas as to there being something damnably wrong about the institution of slavery in the South no matter how economically efficient it was. He was the son of a Virginia plantation owner who barely escaped being killed in Nate Turner’s slave rebellion. The lesson he took from that experience was that there was something inherently wrong with slavery no matter how well the slaves were treated. Later in the war, he suggested that emancipated slave should serve a tour in the Army to prepare themselves for life as freemen. The man loved the Army.
Euclid was Greek , who was it that read and transcribed his works.
The East. They were knowledge nuts. Knowledge crazy. They travelled across upper Africa with camel-trains of books and entire libraries. Don’t forget that Timbuktu had three universities in the 14th C., one of which had 22,000 students. If anything did in their societies, it was the proclivity of their civil servants to abandon threats to their existence by–for example the conquering spirit of Queen Isabella who wanted the Pope to relocate the Catholic Church to Spain–by spending their time buried in their individual libraries. Spain had 114 of them before Europe knew what the hell they were. I forget the guy’s name, but one guy spent 40 years studying one botanical species; his detailed work prevails to this day. What the Greeks theorized and failed to materialize, Islamic Science proved centuries later with study and real knowledge.
Paved roads and irrigation were not new. True, Optimax. But nothing on the scale and ingenious design seen in Cordoba. Our civil engineers were not able to replicate what they did bringing water from the Sierra Nevada mountains until the 1930s.
jlld, one quarter of the world’s population is Muslim. We’re dealing with a faction of it so tiny–that we helped create–and calling it the whole. It’s like insisting that the snake-wavers or speak-in-tongue folk represent Christian thought worldwide. Ridiculous.
Edward Amame and Eric Newhill,
Edward, I’m with Eric in accepting the genetic influence on behavior. There’s still much to learn in this field, but it’s real. But I also agree with your point that race is largely a social construct. It’s much like many other cultural concepts. For example, there are real differences in how some cultures view and categorize color even though the physics of light and color do not change across cultures. Genetic differences exist across populations and within populations. The Australian Aborigines have less in common genetically with Subsaharan Africans than with South Asian caucasians. Race is just how we culturally categorize some of these real and perceived differences.
OTOH, some who readily accept the genetic differences in races refuse to accept the genetic influence in such things as homosexuality or transsexuality. These things are no more a matter of choice than being black or white. Of course that blonde, white clown who was passing herself off as black seemed to make that a matter of choice. An absurd situation, but who really cares.
How these sexual anomalies survive natural selection is a mystery. My guess is that genetic mutations of this type are occurring at a far greater rate than what most think.
Sounds more like “cultural Bol’shevism” to me, e.g. “creating the ‘new Soviet man’ from the Russian peasant.
TTG
GH Thomas was short listed with TJ Jackson in the competition for the professorship at VMI that Jackson was awarded. I doubt that if he had been sitting in Jackson’s chair at the outbreak of war he would have done differently than Jackson. “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” pl
EA
“especially where authority must be sometimes delegated by the planter to agents of inferior education and coarser feelings.'” Unfortunately, most overseers (foremen) on substantial plantations (agribusinesses) were Black and usually slaves themselves. pl
pl,
If Thomas stayed with the Confederacy, they may have won. I think Thomas had skills that would have complemented Lee nicely.
MRW
To characterize the inhabitants of the Islamic culture continent in the Middle Ages as “Black Africans” is so absurd as to make you sound like Marcus Garvey. There was a place in medieval Muslim societies for “Black Africans” and it was on the bottom. Much the same is true now no matter what Islamic protestations of brotherhood among the Believers may be. Bandar bin Sultan? His mother was an Ethiopian slave concubine
(jarriya)and he will NEVER be king. He knows that. pl
TTG
Yes. I have long maintained that he and Grant were the only people who could beat Lee. You realize of course that he was never fully trusted by the Union? pl
Col Lang
I did not know that. Nevertheless, overseers must have been under a lot of pressure from the owners to maximize profits. Do you know what mortality rates among the slaves were compared to the rest of the populations in the slave states?
pl,
I greatly admire Thomas for his perseverance in the face of all that mistrust and pettiness. He was definitely a class act and a damned fine officer.
Edward,
If you actually read Murray’s “The Bell Curve” instead of summarily dismissing it as deplorably racist, you would know that Murray repeats throughout the book that he is NOT speaking to individual differences, but to trends and tendencies; just as you said yourself. In fact, that is what a bell curve is all about. The mean and the distribution from the mean of the standard deviations. Murray consistently reminds that reader that there will be individuals in all groups that exceed or fall behind the group mean as well as individuals from other groups.
Murray also makes it clear that how genes impact intelligence is not well know. He is merely showing the evidence that there is an effect when potentially confounding variables are controlled. He cites the literature pertaining to confounding variables very well and has robust discussion of all of that as well as where his research might be challenged. Among the potential confounds are the very ones you mention.
And that’s kind of the point here, right? denying the man the opportunity to speak – especially when you haven’t really read the material he’s produced – isn’t the right way to go about this. I know you said you don’t approve of that either, but then you kind of character assassinate the guy and wave off his work.
To your point about races not being subspecies, I’m not understanding what difference that makes. People living in the mountains of Afghanistan (or Armenia) aren’t interbreeding too much with people from Africa and vice versa and they certainly weren’t for millennia between 5,000 BC and say, 1900. Nor too much with people from Sweden. There has been a lot of genetic isolation. Cultures get built up around that. Outsiders, non-believers, etc. are further shunned as mates. Natural selection kicks in. The traits needed to live up in the mountains are different from the traits needed to live in a tropical jungle. There’s a feedback loop culturally. People that exhibit the traits consciously or subconsciously recognized to be best suited for success in the given environment are going to reproduce with like members of the opposite sex and, being better fit, are going to have more surviving offspring. This, in turn, reinforces the perceived goodness of cultural archetypes. Round and round it goes until you have a very distinct people, both culturally and genetically. Valued – and therefore more prominent – inherited traits in these isolated cultures aren’t always going to be intelligence of the type that makes one successful in 21st century industrialized societies. Murray stresses that humans all have the ability to learn the same things. It’s just that some breeds will be at least marginally better at it than others and those breeds that have at least a slight advantage will eventually win out.
This is simple stuff Edward, at least to people who have ventured outside the cosmopolitan utopia of NYC.
Mind you, I do not like racism when it’s used to do evil and most certainly do not think that Murray’s work should be leveraged to justify enslavement or genocide. Murray makes that point himself several times in the book. He states that his work should be continued by others and that his hope would be that it leads to societal solutions that work to make life better and more fair for all.
EA
Foremen are always under pressure to maximize production. If you are not responsive to the bottom line you will be fired or in the case of Black foremen returned to field labor. This is in the nature of humanity to behave thus toward subordinates. A colleague of mine once called it “The Mescalero Apache School of leadership and management.” The method is simple. First you ride the horse until it lies down and then you build a fire next to it so that it gets up. BTW this method is applied in both capitalist and socialist systems like the Army. What kind of work do you do? pl
TTG,
I think genes and how they express are a physical manifestation of characteristics of the soul. Matter is merely energy at a low vibrational rate. Souls exist in groups of like types of higher vibrational being in the other dimensions. Like types b/c thoughts and emotions are also energy and have their own vibrational rate.
EA
As the years have passed more and more leftist scholars have claimed higher and higher slave mortality rates as higher than those of whites. I can’t find my copy of TontC so I don’t know what they say, but I remember that the traffic in slaves imported from Africa very nearly stopped after 1806 but the number of slaves and free Black people kept rising. This in contrast with the Caribbean where slaves had to be continuously imported from Africa to keep the numbers up. At the time of the CW/WBS a Black American was more likely to have been born in the US than a White American. pl
The Union Navy named a gunboat for him after Chickamauga. It should have been a Capital ship IMHO.
If he hadn’t married an upstate NY girl while teaching at West Point, he might well have contributed to a Confederate victory.
TTG
Agreed that genetics (and environment) play a role in behavior. But regarding intelligence. It’s a fairly abstract concept and scientists haven’t found a single gene for IQ (unlike hair/skin color, body type, etc) that differentiates race/population from each another. Scientists think that intelligence is determined by a group of thousands of different genes. Which again suggests that it’s fairly ridiculous to try to push the idea that one race is, on average, less intelligent than another.
(Col Lang — Apologies in advance if this already went through, but I don’t think it did.)
MRW,
You have avoided answering my question.
Col Lang
Thanks. Mortality rates of native born American slaves would seem like a pretty good indicator of their material living.
Col Lang
I don’t know about workplace rules on a plantation in the antebellum South, but I do know that my boss absolutely cannot whip me, shackle me, or force me to wear metal and wood neck collars in front of my co-workers for not producing.
EA
Ah, what is this called? “Virtue signaling?” I think it is unfair to compare your situation now to that of a Black slave or an Irish wage slave at that time. In fact the Irish were treated like dogs and that is why they rebelled against the draft during the WBS. Know anything about that? pl
EA
OK. I will research this. pl
mike
So, you think he would have resigned a chair at VMI to fight for the Union? pl
Eric Newhill,
I understand your concept. I’m not there yet, I find your explanation intriguing and worthy of exploration.
KHC:
Thank you for making this all-important point. The Bell Cuve is not “Murray’s book”: he’s the second author, and some of the problematic chapters of that text show the kind of absolutism that followers of B.F. Skinner are noted for, and that one would expect from Herrnstein.
Murray’s Coming Apart is a whole different story, and it’s arguably one of the better pieces of social science writing of late, in large part because it’s remarkably predictive, and predictiveness is a key characteristic of science that is all-too-often lacking in the social sciences.
The idea that the purported sins of Herrnstein’s past should be visited upon Murray’s present and future is patently ridiculous, but unfortunately, ridiculous is what passes for scholarship in too many universities these days.
Edward Amame,
Yes, intelligence is a nebulous concept. Murray and many others seem to tie it to the ability to accumulate material wealth. That is very narrow definition. I can think of several other ways to define it other than that. How about pursuit of enlightenment or maintaining an equilibrium of sufficiency. Perhaps a mind which cannot grasp and appreciate these concepts lacks intelligence. And learned behavior, culture, plays a critical role how this all plays out.
Colonel –
Who knows what he would have done if he had been at VMI. I tend to stay away from WBS history. I have only read bios on Jackson and Thomas whom I both admire, and Grant’s memoirs.
What I was alluding to is that his Upstate New York wife and her family may have influenced his decision. As to mistrust of Thomas that is undoubtedly why he was assigned in the west, so he would not have to fight against his fellow Virginians.
By the way, the job at VMI that Thomas had applied for was Commandant, not a professorship. And that was in 1860. So perhaps there was some mistrust of him in the South also because of his NY connections?
Thomas was not alone. Farragut was a Southerner who stayed with the Union Navy. There were many more I am sure on both sides.
mike,
My wife’s family has a plot close to where Thomas is buried in Oakwood cemetery in Troy, NY. I’ve stopped by his grave and had a conversation with him a few times.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2015/05/atque-in-perpetuum-frater-ave-atque-vale-ttg.html
mike
I had not known that Thomas competed for the commandant as opposed to superintendent job against Scott Shipp in 1860. In any event he had also competed against Jackson for the new professorship in Experimental Philosophy (physics) in the early1840s,and lost. As Scott Shipp commanded the Corps of Cadets at New Market do you still think Thomas could have defected to the North if he had been Commandant of Cadets? A lot of people had Northern wives. It had been one country. pl
pl and mike,
Thomas was also offered the position of chief of ordnance for the Virginia militia by the governor. He turned that down.
Edward,
The US was not the only place slavery existed. What was his opinion on former slaves work within the bureaucracy of the Roman Empire?
Babak,
“IQ alone cannot account for what we have observed empirically over the last 800 years, namely the Rise of the West.
Jews, Indians, and Far Easterners were going nowhere until the Western Civilization took them out of their own slumber of centuries.”
I am fascinated by your statement, because I was thinking very similarly – and my explanation was circling around the idea of religious influence, the acceptance and adoption as ethical matter – the commandment “you shall not lie” , this in turn led in my maybe naive reasoning to the rise of true science, based on facts, where a falsehood can be proved. That led to the science conducted in monasteries by christian monks. This code of the “honesty” was transferred to and influenced to some imperceptible way the daily lives of people.
I think that Oswald Spengler idea about human races (maybe I am thinking too much of myself to say that!) possibly circled around the ethical lines as well – he said:
“Rasse, die man hat, nicht eine Rasse, zu der man gehört. Das eine ist Ethos, das andere – Zoologie”
“race which one has, not race to which one belongs. The one is Ethos, the other – Zoology”
(Jahre der Entscheidung, 1933)
TTG and Mike
Jackson was never Commandant of Cadets at VMI. When he died he still held his chair at VMI and had announced in writing that he would return to it when peace was achieved. If Thomas competed to be either commandant or chief of ordnance in 1861 he must have known what was coming. That was the year Lincoln was elected. The VMI class that year had the motto “Let Virginia decide” on their rings. I consulted Robertson’s book and the VMI archives. He was a major of the 5th Cavalry, USA at the time he applied for these jobs? pl
William,
Venessa’s link is quite interesting. Metapedia’s Leitmotiv/guiding theme. Founded in 2007. Some active German speakers present. The most active seem to be the Hungarians or the Magyars.
http://www.metapedia.org/
Sun Tzu’s Art of War, X Terrrain, 31
[Hence the saying:] If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.
*******
Here a fast translation of a chapter of the German version of the article Valissa links to. Second paragraph is a bit clumsy in the original, I did my best:
“Cultural marxism” versus “cultural Bolshevism”
“Culture-bolshevism”, did and does refer to the standard revolutionary approach of Marxist cadre-parties that follow the ideological and fighting patterns of the 1st to 3rd Communist International.
Cultural Marxcism has long been established in the Anglo-American world but was introduced into the German area only recently. As one of several meanings it signifies specific political and social phenomena that were called “Neomarxism” or simply the 68-culture-revolution over here. Compared to Culture-Bolshevism, Cultural Marxism describes political influence strategies which differ formally and methodically from the world of the revolutionary model of the Communist International, but not as far as content is concerned.
The now accepted world-wide definition of the term “Cultural Marxism” goes back to the Norwegian Web-Diary of Fjordman (real name: Peder Jensen, born 1975) who was pulled out of the anonymity of the web by the Brevik-attack. By now his texts have been translated into several languages.
pl and mike,
Yes he was acting commander of the 2nd Cavalry for over two years as a major and took a Commanche arrow in the chest in 1860 before going on a leave of absence late that year. I don’t think he competed for the chief of ordnance position. He was offered the position by the Virginia governor.
TTG
I think the 2nd was renumbered as the 5th before he left. In 1861 that would have been Governor Letcher. the position would probably have led to him being a full general. pl
pl,
What would that chief of ordnance position entail? Would Thomas have been raising and equipping forces? He was damned good at that task throughout the war.
Very likely.
n Behistun inscription the Great King says:
“…You who would be king hereafter, protect yourself mightily from the Lie, the man who would be a liar, punish him well…”
And the Great King’s inscription at Persepolis concludes with the invocation:
“May Ahura Mazda protect this country from a hostile army, from a bad year, and the Lie.”
This Southern Iranian fellow went to Tehran a few years ago, he was as black as soot; and he related how children would touch him to see if their fingers would get stained.
TTG –
Thanks for the link. That story was a great memorial to your bride’s father.
Although I did have to look up ‘Rice Cook Bull’. I thought at first it was a typo. But the good sergeant did exist.
“plebiscites?” Muslim armies conquered Andalusia (mainly the south eastern section of Spain) in the 8th C., 700-Something. Cordoba was the capital, and the Sultan (or whatever their leader is called) made Cordoba the Caliphate. It’s a beautiful warm section of Spain; I spent a lot of time there and love it.
Queen Isabella’ Spain was in the northwestern section of Spain. She got it in her head that she wanted Rodrigo Borgia (formerly a cardinal in Spain) who had become Pope to move the Vatican to Spain. That would assure her reign because the Holy See was all powerful, and Italy, to her, was just a bunch of un-united duchys. Anyway, the Arabs weren’t paying attention and didn’t really have the army when she made her move. First she purged the Muslims during the 1480s–most went to Constantinople, some returned to Africa–and then she purged the Jews in 1492. Nothing personal. They could stay if they converted to Catholicism. They were called conversos.
Just did. Scroll up.
OK, how about the more correct “Moors.” And Ethiopia was never part of the Maghreb, or greater Maghreb, which was only west of Egypt.
But the term “Black Africans’ has been used interchangeably with Moors in early 20th C history books. To make a distinction between the Dutch running around Africa then drumming up the gold and slave businesses? Even Shakespeare made his Othello black.
All of them lost favor with almost everyone after 1500 AD.
Thanks Valissa for your insightful comment!
MRW
“Moor” is better but inexact. The Moors who invaded Hispania from N. Africa were mainly Berber with Arab leadership. These are White people. Some of the “Arab” leadership was from the family of the Prophet and included among them were people from the ethnological mix-master of the pre-Hijra Middle East, necessarily including Greeks, Kurds, Persians, etc. British usage as to who is White influences the language to this day. As I have observed here before, a lot of people who the Brits do not consider White would be thought White in the US. Oddly I have had trouble in the past convincing visiting Arabs that to Americans they don’t seem much different from a lot of Italians and other Mediterranean “White people. pl
TTG
Governor Letcher was then trying to put together a government for a seceded Virginia that had not yet joined the confederacy. RE Lee had resigned from the US Army and his resignation had been accepted by the Buchanan Administration. Letcher offered Lee command of Virginia’s independent forces and he accepted. IMO Lee influenced Letcher to offer Thomas the job of Chief of Ordnance which I imagine was to be a part of organizing independent Virginia’s army. Virginia joined the Confederacy several months later and Virginia officers pretty much automatically became CSA officers in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States unless they resigned again. As I wrote the job offered to Letcher would most likely have led to very high rank in the PACS. the Confederate government was dominated by West Point grads in the military side; Jefferson Davis, RE Lee, (Davis’s adviser initially), Joe Johnston, Samuel Cooper (the adjutant general, then a much bigger job), etc. This alignment of the planets resulted in many doubtful appointments during the war but in Thomas’ case the result would have been excellent. pl
Col Lang,
“Virtue signalling?” I don’t think so. My point was to suggest that because of the rules of the times, owners/overseers/slave drivers all had a lot of leeway when it came to maximizing production, and that would almost certainly have had a negative impact on their material living. Wage slaves in the north suffered too, but not from the whip or having their families separated, sold down the river.
I’m 3/4 Irish and yes, familiar with NYC’s Draft Riots, and for that matter, with the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.
Othello – عطاالله – God’s Gift; like Natan-Aeil.
“Moore” – likely from – المرابطون – A Berber tribe
And I remain Beige.
When Enrico Fermi went to see US Secretary of the Navy, the sergeant who was his secretary went to his office and said: “There is a dago to see you.”
I am not sure what the cause of this prejudice has been; anti-Catholicism?
Or is this a species envy since Italy and Spain have had an actual and deep connection to Rome which the Northerners lacked?
EA
How much actual beating and selling down the river do you think actually occurred? If you beat a man he is likely to kill you when he gets a chance. Servile insurrection was always a possibility. My information is that slaves were generally not sold off unless a business disaster had occurred or a family estate had to be divided after a death. Were families sometimes separated? Yes. IMO your criteria for population welfare by life expectancy has merit and I am researching that. The immigrant Irish were thought of as less than human by the Anglo population (look at the political cartoons of he day) and especially by he Protestant owners of industry and banks. The full severity of the law was applied to them (to include whipping) to break their rebellious spirit. Compulsory elementary public education was introduced in the NE in attempt to destroy their culture, teach them English and enforce regular habits. St. Patrick’s Cathedral is dedicated to their memory. As you know the free Black population of New York City was singled out for special brutality by the largely Irish mobs. Union Army officers were murdered in the street by the mob and the government essentially lost control of the city until Troops were brought back from the Gettysburg battlefield to suppress the rebellion. pl
Colonel –
Samuel Cooper was a reverse case of Thomas. He was born and raised in upstate New York but married a Southern Belle and sided with the Confederacy.
Whatever happened to him post-war?
mike
“Southern Belle!” What BS! Why don’t you just say useless decorative woman? Yes. He married George Mason’s daughter or grand-daughter. I forget which. Samuel Cooper was the most senior officer of the Confederate Army, a full general and senior to all the others. He had been Adjutant General of the US Army and lived about a mile from my house here for decades as he was assigned to the AG office in DC for all that time. As AG he played a critical role in making recommendations for promotion in both armies as well as running the CSA signal Corps which was the army’s intelligence agency. At the end of the war he boxed up the War Department records except for the intelligence records and surrendered them to his son in law who was a major general in the Union Army. Yes, he let his daughter marry a Northern man. That is why the US National archives has such a vastcollection of confederate War Department records. The Union occupation of Alexandria burned his house during the war and re-named Quaker Lane (present name)as “Traitor’s Lane.” He and his wife lived in slave quarters behind the ruins of his house until he died some years later. A new house was built which faces onto Quaker Lane. I used to know his grandson Scooper Dawson who lived in the house. He said that his father had burned a couple leather bound trunks full of documents in the ’20s. Dawson and I presumed these were the Signal Corps records. Cooper was not the only northern man who “went South.” LTG Pemberton the CSA commander at Vicksburg was also Northern in origin as was MG Martin Luther Smith Lee;s chief of engineers. He it was who built the parallel plank and corduroyed road that enabled Lee to beat Grant to Spotsylvania Court House in the Wilderness. pl
EA
BTW, “Dagger” John Hughes, the bishop of New York City told the leaders of the Union League and the pro-Union politicians of the city during the riots that they had been indifferent to the Irish poor and that putting down the revolt was their problem, not his. pl
Colonel –
SWMBO and I and our nephew and his bride visited St Patrick’s when we were in Manhattan right after 9/11. I was not raised catholic but was awestruck. Not only by the building itself, but by the Rose Window, the many altars, and especially the huge bronze door dedicated to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha and Father Jogues among others. I understand that door was just recently renovated and is (or was?) being reinstalled.
Our niece’s great or great-great? grandfather was one of the Irish masons who helped to build it. Or maybe he helped renovate it at a later date, she was not sure in her family’s oral history. But when she mentioned that to the deacon acting as a tour guide, he sort of adopted us and gave us the VIP tour and treatment.
Colonel –
During my many years stationed in Coastal Carolina I was acquainted with several very capable yet genteel Southern ladies. None of them were useless and solely decorative. If still around and listening they would probably rip your heart out for your remark.
mike and pl,
I downloaded Samuel Cooper’s manual published in 1836 by following the links on his Wikipedia page. It’s available as a pdf file from the Library of Congress. It’s fascinating in its detail and must be a boon to reenactors and historians. It brings to mind the formality and detail that went into the daily mounting of the guard at Schofield Barracks in the 70s. The title of the manual says it all:
Concise System of Instructions and Regulations for the Militia and Volunteers of the United States, comprehending the exercise and movements of The Infantry, Light Infantry, and Riflemen; Cavalry and Artillery: together with the manner of doing in Garrison and in Camp, and the forms of Parades, Reviews, and Inspections, as established by authority for the government of the Regular Army.
Prepared And Arranged By Brevet Captain S. Cooper, Aid de Camp and Assistant Adjutant General
Col Lang.
I’m not sure how many whippings/sellings down the river happened because the numbers are all over the map and — this is really your area of expertise — it’s not possible for me to discern who has/doesn’t have an agenda when providing numbers.
I’m curious as to why slaves didn’t revolt in the south in greater numbers than they did. DuBois said that although the big slave owners were a pretty small class, poor whites greatly outnumbered the slaves and were used to police the slaves, and that gradually the South became an armed camp to keep blacks in slavery and to kill black rebels.
My uncle on my mother’s side (100% Irish) was a Jesuit with a mission to pass along to us kids how Irish Catholics were treated in their home country and here. Considering the other discussion, maybe rebellion’s in our genes
Mike
It was a rebuke to you. they would have recognized that. You are a bit tone deaf. There is a mystery in the first volume of my novel. Southerners recognize its solution instantly Northerners seldom. pl
Col Lang
Bishop Hughes did help, though. He meet with leaders of the rebellion to ask them so stand down.
He’s the same Bishop who threatened the mayor of NYC that the city would be burned to the ground if city cops allowed nativists to attack NYC’s Catholic community and their churches. Here’s the quote: “should one Catholic come to harm, or should one Catholic business be molested, we shall turn this city into a second Moscow.” Balls!
Edward Amame
IMO DoBoise is wrong and I would point to the relative rarity of slave revolts. The just about complete absence of that during the WBS when White men were largely absent would indicate that there was not a lot of hostility in spite of the enslavement. Some people left the farm to follow the Union Army but violence against slave owners was rare. l
MRW,
A fine piece of revisionist history. The 1480s are just few centuries after the 700s. You talk a great deal about Isabella, leaving out what Muslim armies did to the conquered and how they treated all those that did not convert.
EA
Yes. He did do that, but it was late in the game after most of the damage had been done. The prods called him “Dagger” because an RC bishop draws a little cross in front of his signature. He is buried behind the main altar in the cathedral. He went down to DC to plead for Mary Surratt’s life with President Johnson and was reused an audience. John Hughes never pretended to be neutral about anything. IMO she was guilty as charged. IMO several Catholic clergymen perjured themselves at the military commission trying to save Dr. Mudd and she. Black Dave Hunter, the aforementioned miscreant was president of the Commission. pl
Colonel –
Although raided in the north, my father was a Virginian. I have considered myself a Northerner. One of the happiest times of my life was when I was in North Carolina. I was also in Northern Virginia for awhile, but even in the seventies that was more like living well above the Mason Dixon line than below it. I imagine it is much worse now.
And why would you rebuke me for using the term Southern Belle? I never thought of them as useless and never considered them as the stereotypical image that you seem to think I think. I realize you get a lot of grief from some quarters and that has given you a thin skin. But IMHO you quite often see disrespect or insult where none exists.
Edward,
That’s just another year old WAPO op-ed which points to zero colleges or universities being shut down. Somebody put a list of speakers they don’t like together? Santa has a naughty list too.
mike
I am about tired of having you tell me how thin skinned I am. Either take it quietly or leave. IMO “Southern Belle” is a disparaging term. Its use demonstrates how Northern you really are. The women so described are more aptly called Iron Butterflies. pl
My surmise was that they have been charming urbane & cultivated women who were raised to be good mothers and wives; the epitome of hospitality – knowing how to be pleasing to men (as opposed to be confrontational and cold) as well as gracious hostesses and competent managers of a family’s affairs.
The world could surely use more of them, especially North of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Col Lang
Looking up the Nat Turner revolt showed that he had about 40 men and about 3,000 white men put down the rebellion. That put-down killed over 200 blacks. I’m certain that sent a potent message. It also seems that slaves had very limited access to weapons and (supposedly) slave states require white men to take part in mounted, armed patrols of the slave population. Your point about a complete lack of slave insurrection during the war is interesting.
(Hopefully this isn’t a double post – I’m still having browser issues, sorry).
EA
Yes, the Nat Turner revolt in the 1830s was a traumatizing event and ad a result it was made much more difficult to manumit slaves and it was forbidden by law to teach them to read. The event was so traumatic because it was so rare. The law about teaching slaves to read was often ignored and fines paid as necessary. Stonewall Jackson taught slaves who attended the First Presbyterian church in Lexington to read because he wanted then to be able to read scripture and hymnals. He wasn’t interested in their general literacy but he wanted their souls saved. The Commonwealth’s Attorney Told him to stop and Jackson said that the CA had his duty to do and so did he. he continued teaching literacy. pl
Edward,
How about shortening your life expectancy by adding to your heart attack risk due to stress by changes to things in the employers control such as: employee evaluation criteria, supervisory assignments and changes to reporting locations? Or changing insurance provider options which would result in increases to insurance co-pays, changes prescription coverage and costs; increase in deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses; changes to 401K plan options, matching funds, vestment payout dates and cancelling pension programs? Or just plain outsourcing the jobs but first bringing in your replacements on H1B visas for you to train first?
in his search for answers about the incident at Middlebury College, Frank Bruni shifted considerable blame to the religious impulse — an increasingly popular recycling of a tactic favored by Marx and Lenin, as you can see in Andrew Sullivan’s framing of the Middlebury incident for New York Magazine. (“Is Intersectionality a Religion?”)
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/is-intersectionality-a-religion.html
(H/T SST commenter Keith Harbaugh.) Follow the links in Bruni’s NYT editorial for more illustrations of the modern version of the old commie tactic.
The Middlebury incident has nothing to do with organized religion or the religious impulse, nor do countless incidents that have happened on American campuses since the 1960s. Two friends and I were accosted by a little gang of students — children of privilege all — while we were walking across the Harvard campus in the early 1970s, and simply because we were adults wearing business suits who looked as if we might be on our way to an auditorium where Ayn Rand was to give a lecture.
What happened at Middlebury is the outgrowth of an educational environment that’s reversed the natural order of things for humans in two key ways.
1. Small children form their respect for a teacher’s authority based on what they see of massed numbers of humans — a very basic way of assigning importance. If they see more Big Humans than Little Humans like themselves massed around them in the classroom, they respect the authority of the Big Humans and the teacher speaking for the Big Humans. If the opposite holds, they place their peers in the supreme position of authority.
Yet a small child’s acceptance of his peers as the authority can easily lead to the kind of incident that happened at Middlebury College.
There are exceptions to the rule that small children should always be outnumbered by adults in a formal learning situation. However, I think the exceptions only apply when a clan/tribal society or stand-in for such (e.g., life on a military base) has a strong influence on a child.
Otherwise it’s folly to place only one adult teacher in command of a roomful of small children.
2. The natural order is also reversed by an education system that presses small children to make intelligent remarks and give ‘correct’ answers.
There is wisdom in the adage “Children are to be seen and not heard.” It so happens that small children learn best under such a condition because they’re free to concentrate on what is being said by the teachers and their peers, rather than having to listen with an ear to how they’re going to reply. In the latter situation a big part of their attention is consumed with coming up with questions or remarks that make them sound smart, or at least not stupid, in front of the class.
Yet such split attention is a big reason many graduates of the modern education system have the attention span of a gnat and concentrative power of a jumping bean.
The act of constantly splitting attention also leads to all kinds of behavioral and learning disabilities.
It is cruel, verging on inhumane, when an education system presses small children to think they must sound intelligent. The cruelty also creates children who dislike and even fear debate and other challenges to their assertions as they grow older.
There are other important factors that make the modern education system unfriendly to the development of a child who is well prepared to enter adulthood. But the above two factors are the biggest ones, and they both have relatively simple solutions.
Now I return to Frank Bruni’s editorial. He writes, “The protesters didn’t use [Charles] Murray’s presence as an occasion to hone the most eloquent, irrefutable retort to him. They swarmed and swore.”
How does Mr Bruni plan to extract eloquent, irrefutable retorts from children who’ve been trained not to listen and live in fear of the authority of their peers?
More importantly, why does he expect children to come up with eloquent — and irrefutable, no less — retorts to the ideas of adults?
Or does he see the “work to end racism, sexism, homophobia and other bigotry” as a children’s crusade? If so he might want to read William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies.” That is, if he can muster sufficient concentration for the act of reading.
Col Lang
Thanks, I’ve been finding this discussion with you really fascinating, and have been navigating around the web reading all day…
There are some historians who are saying that if you define “revolt” in a particular way, that the number of revolts may have been over 200. Nevertheless, a guy who seems to make a lot of sense to me is historian Eugene Genovese, who puts forward the theory that is was simply pragmatism that kept slaves from revolting. That uprisings would have been basically considered suicide, especially post-Turner. I’m also wondering how many slaves escaped to fight for the north during the WBS.
During my web travels, one book in particular caught my interest: The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist. He agrees with you that “the system of forced labor was quite efficient.” In fact, Baptist says that it drove the evolution and modernization of the US. Do you know it, would you recommend it?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/046500296X/?tag=saloncom08-20
Don’t worry Fred. Trumpcare will fix everything.
EA
It is useless to argue with you . You have a closed mind. I started out with the standard Northern oriented belief that the south was not only regressive and primitive but a concentration camp for Blacks in the Antebellum period and not much better in 1958 when I came to school. I learned that I had been wrong. you will not. pl
correct, Babak, IQ alone is not enough.. what made Western civilization dominant was & is science & technology that it pioneered, advanced & discovered electricity, physics, chemistry, medicine, etc with it’s network of scientific research universities first established by the gov of Germany, France, England, Canada & later copied in the US .. more details from the book ‘Guns, Germs, & Steel’ –large excerpts here
http://www.cloverport.kyschools.us/userfiles/3/Classes/308/Jared%20Diamond%20-%20Guns%20Germs%20and%20Steel.pdf
or full book here:
https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393061310/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=
.. even
though China invented gunpowder (but had only fuse-lite guns), crossbow, compass, rudder, printing press, mortar/concrete, & mass production
&
giant naval ships centuries to decades before Europe & became the leading technology until about the 16th century, it remained insular & did not develop a network of scientific universities like Europe did
Moreso, most people didn’t realize that the Soviet Union & pre-1990s China used to be on a gold/silver standard & had no commercial banking industry –
.. thus, their economies were starved of money & did NOT have enough funds/capital to fund/finance much gov/business investment, production, research & development nor consumer demand
In contrast, commercial banking in Europe/US since the 1800s relies on the ‘fractional reserve lending’ principle where banks create money about 10x (or whatever ratio determined by law) as much money as they have in deposits
–ie, banks create money whenever they create loans/credit at 10x the ratio of deposits, which further increased the money supply, capital & fund various projects, business investment, research & development, demand & spending & production
–but
because of private banks need for profit & private sector’s inability to sustain long-term debt, it created boom & bust cycles ..
This important because stats show that 80%+ of all economic activity of the US in real estate development, construction, auto sales, business investment, etc is dependent on money creation (aka as bank loans/credit) –hence the boom & bust cycle .. hence why fed gov’s role during recessions is step in & provide funding/deficit spending during recessions
US & Europe which during & after WW2 after going off the gold-standard, the massive ‘deficit spending’ aka as money creation by the federal gov, which invented the
internet, antibiotics,
nuclear power, MRI’s,
hired 16 million military (giant jobs program!) & spent enough on defense contracts to hire everyone & their sister to build jeeps, tanks, planes, reducing the unemployment rate down to 2% aka as ‘full employment’
&
the GI Bill passed in 1944 put capital in the hands of most Americans
by
guaranteeing every 16 million military (about 33% of USA’s 48 million households)
gov-guaranteed, subsidized low interest mortgage (thus for the 1st time creating a huge middle-class when before only the wealthy could afford to own a home in the suburbs & creating & stimulating huge demand for homes)
&
a gov-guaranteed, subsidized low-interest BUSINESS LOANS to start or expand their own businesses
(thus, increasing supply & stimulating increased PRODUCTION of homes since many of them used their business loans to start or expand into real estate development/construction & contracting companies)
&
e in addition to gov-guaranteed, gov paid ‘free’ University education (of which 50% of military accepted)
that
trained MILLIONs into becoming engineers, scientists, doctors, etc , including the founders of Intel,, Hewlett-Packard, etc
The gov also created money via the Marshall Plan loans (aka as money creation) to Europe & Japan to rebuild using similar polices
Singapore also did & does similar policies as well as modern China using MMT-Lite policies via it’s gov banks
&
gov creating TRILLIONs of dollars to fund & finance it’s trillion dollar building cities, infrastructure, factories, bullet-trains etc as a giant jobs program as well as migrate it’s millions of rural into modern cities
–in the process, it’s working since China now has 400+ million middle-class to wealthy, 2nd only to the US in number of billionaires & millionaires
&
now produces & buys 28+ million new cars a year & 400+ million smartphones & HDTVs
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/04/21/the-myth-of-chinas-ghost-cities/
ie, this is standard Post-Keynesian economic policies that helped create & advance any country’s economy until the 1970s
What’s causing the backlash in US & Europe & rise of populism that popularizes Trump & Sanders is that the “austerity, balance budget, cut deficit spending, ‘free trade’ mantra” of the Chicago School & Milton Friedman economic policies adopted by both Republican & Democrats —
because
the ~70% of the US population who don’t have university educations are left behind as manufacturing is offshored to Mexico where the mininum wage is 50 cents per hour & 18 new car factories are paying autoworkers as low $1 to $2 per hour to $5 per hour
http://www.mercurynews.com/2015/04/21/mexico-attracts-auto-plants-jobs-thanks-to-low-wages-trade-deals/
Since the 1970s politicians in the US adopted Milton Friedman’s Chicago School Economic policies (aka as ‘neoliberalism’ of ‘free trade’, austerity, & ‘cutting deficit spending’, balanced budgets)
&
abandoned Keynesian policies due to the high inflation caused by the OPEC oil embargoes of the 1970s, when OPEC jacked up oil prices 400% & also did oil embargoes, causing much stagflation which was falsely blamed on gov deficit spending
https://mythfighter.com/2009/09/24/is-inflation-too-much-money-chasing-too-few-goods/
&
https://mythfighter.com/2010/04/06/more-thoughts-on-inflation/
The ‘father’ of capitalism Adam Smith wrote that what a nation can’t produce, it should welcome trade for it but what products a nation needs (such as food or steel), it should produce itself for independence
or
else be it will subject to & hostage to the whims of foriegn nations for your food & necessities
http://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/innocent-frauds/
TTG –
Thanks. I’m grabbing a copy now. It even has musical scores for drum and bugle. Lots of detail in the daily regs. But five roll calls a day is a bit too extreme even for 1836. Were they that worried about AWOLs?
Great selection Keith,
Sullivan sent me on a long journey around what he called the latest academic craze. On to Intersectionality, the lady, a video, some texts, then on to her foundation. …
Thanks
Genetics is no longer set in stone. Gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR will make new-borns into Einsteins, Mozarts, super-soldiers. Not only new borns: change inside people who are already born will be common within our lifetimes. In fact it will extend our lifetimes. The science is exploding in all directions.
Before this, predetermination by genes was never what people thought it was. Intelligence increases (as measured by IQ scores) over the generations happens too fast, for example the “Flynn effect” (not related to Mike Flynn). Even today, success in life is less due to “The Bell Curve” and more due to loving & challenging environments for the education of kids (which is related to the fuzzy concept of “social capital”). Anyway, science has made the concept of “lifetime genetic determination: you are stuck with it” to be obsolete, finished.
All
When I was at the War College I took advantage of the presence on post of the Army Institute for Military History to look at Cooper’s record. He was an AAG in the 1830s and was sent to Europe on a study mission. The US military establishment had become sufficiently self aware by then to know that it lacked a lot of institutional knowledge and infrastructure. He spent a lot of time with the British and returned to recommend the adoption of British staff structure. His book resulted from that trip. BTW, Mike included in a comment that I have not posted that he “would consider it an honor to be banned.” And so, I have honored him as he wished. pl
No, no, no.
You do not understand this, many traits are due to strings of condones with varied lengths. And then there is the issue of how the organism develops, it may or may not develop in such a way as to the desired state. Not everyone who has genes for this or that cancer develops that cancer, for example.
Furthermore, like any system, if you change one set of parameters in order to improve a certain feature or features, you would be compromising some other aspect of the organism; a very intelligent man who cannot work in group – let us say.
What CRIS-PR makes possible, in my opinion, is the creation of subhumans – with souls – that could be exploited for pleasure and profit. Just imagine a production line of sub-human females of the right proportions; there would be an insatiable demand for them.
And so on and so forth…
Croesus, I have witnessed others being taken in by Germar Rudolf and his diverse colleagues, US comrades in spirit following their hero-victims to Germany to report live from the scene. People from all over the world sending me their condolences about the state of affairs I was forced to live under. After all, if he was such a poor victims mustn’t I be regretted somewhat too?
They live well off people like you.
Beyond that I am pretty tired of the debate and the issue. Thus, please, please don’t expect any further comment on it.
Scientists can already edit genes in fully grown adults.
This is being actively researched for many applications, including cures of various diseases. Investigation of a gene-editing cure for lung cancer was just announced about 2 weeks ago. Doctors can sequence any individual’s genome easily, making applications completely individualized.
CRISPR is already automated by computers, making it possible to edit gene sequences of any length.
We hardly know whether “some other aspect of the organism would be compromised” if you change a set of parameters — much less whether it can be corrected, if it happens. This is a false inference about stability, from the study of complex systems.
It could be that humans can have varying numbers of genes, and the number that we have is an accident.