Archive for February, 2013

Why Darwinism is more controversial than ever

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013

Darwin not only tells us that one individual is not equal to another, he also tells us that races are the origin of species, which means that in general races will be unequal in major and important ways.

Darwinism also tells us that men and women are genetically predisposed to different and unequal social roles, which implies that attempts to make their roles legally equal will not work very well.

Darwinism tells us that we have a moral sense evolved to further our self interest, leading to the proposition that people’s real moral theory is closer to that of Ayn Rand or the classic Greeks, and that claims to the contrary are lies and hypocrisy.  Darwinism tells us about our nature, and tells us about our moral sense, and what it tells us about our moral sense implies that the man who says he would hold a child’s face in  the fire to find the cure for malaria is apt to hold a child’s face in the fire and forget he was trying to cure malaria

If you believe that men were not created equal, that some races really are inferior, that most endangered species are overdue for extinction and need to be turned into fur coats and hamburgers, that women should stay in the kitchen and if they must work, do female work, lest their delicate souls be shocked by male crudity, because if they are in the male workplace doing male jobs, they are apt sue their coworkers and bosses for being males, then Darwinism looks mighty like common sense.

If you believe that most people raising money to help far away strangers are going to use it to rape children, then Darwinism looks like realism rather than nihilism.

Darwinism should not cause you to doubt all morality.  Darwinism tells us we evolved from killer apes by evolving towards more cooperation and more successful and effective cooperation.  It should, however, cause you to doubt the morality of the Pharisees.

Blacks are stupid.

Friday, February 22nd, 2013

Occidentalist has updated his survey of surveys.  Despite radical social changes and a wide variety of testing regimes, American black IQ always tests out one standard deviation below American white IQ.  Similar differences in character and criminal propensities are obvious.

How big is one standard deviation? (more…)

Teleology and Darwinism

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

Darwin freely used teleology as a metaphor for natural selection, that natural selection works as if an intelligent breeder was consciously pursuing a goal, as if aiming at horses, to take advantage of the grasslands, or as if aiming at men, to create a creature capable of planning and cooperating to defeat any creature less capable of planning and cooperation.

And by an interesting coincidence, whosoever hates the metaphor, hates natural selection. (more…)

The end of democracy

Sunday, February 17th, 2013

Winston Churchill quipped that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms.

Democracy worked when the franchise was restricted to property owning adult male heads of households, and when the population had high moral standards. Visitors to America frequently remarked that while democracy worked for Americans, Americans being virtuous and self reliant, it would not work for the corrupt and degenerate mob they had back in their home countries.

Today the white population is substantially fatherless, the other populations generally worse, those on some form of government benefit substantially outnumber those paying taxes, and the government is buying up huge numbers of low IQ voters from the third world and importing them.

We used to at least get Mexicans who wanted to work, but increasingly, these days we get the Mexican underclass, the ones that normal Mexicans do not want, people who lived on their votes in Mexico, and proceed to do the same in the USA. We used to get Mexicans imported by farmers to pick strawberries, but we now get Mexicans imported by politicians to vote left.

Now the voters are a corrupt and degenerate mob that votes for the highest bidder, resulting in insolvency and socialism.

The modern electorate is substantially composed of bastards (people who were not raised by their biological fathers) and is in substantial part composed of an underclass purchased by politicians and imported from foreign lands.

And so democracy votes for insolvency and socialism.

Government is not the solution to public good problems, but the rather the greatest public good problem of them all.  A public that cannot themselves produce public goods, cannot produce good government.

With a corrupt and decadent public, elections become advance auctions of stolen goods.  Everything is up for grabs, thus private property is insecure, hence is not used productively.  Everything is dissipated, spent on buying votes, thus public and private insolvency.  Toyota gets sued for practicing capitalism without being a crony.

Postmortem on Warmism

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

We are always moving leftwards, but not every leftwards program succeeds. Should one fail, they try something different.

I have not published much on warmism lately, because they were defeated by Climategate, even though every academic institution, every government institution, and every group of organized scientists swore fealty to Warmism, officially proclaimed that Climategate was no big deal, and have been trying to carry on as if Climategate was no big deal. But now they are subsiding, so time for a post mortem on the warmist movement, which has pretty much gone the way of the communist movement, where fans of the proletariat have shrunk down to few little academic circles holding reality at bay from behind their little Berlin walls, while the rest of the communist movement substitute females and minorities for the proletariat, and continue business as usual. (more…)

In favor of Obama’s drone strikes

Saturday, February 9th, 2013

Congress has declared war on Al Quaeda, its affiliates, its franchisees, its allies, and its sponsors, a vague and ill defined group, a nebulous category.  This gives the president the legal authority to assassinate lots of people in lots of places on the basis of vague and secret evidence, some of them American citizens.

But it does not, however, give the president authority to assassinate abortion clinic bombers, or even Islamic terrorists who are not allied or affiliated to Al Quaeda, for example Hezbollah terrorists.  Seems narrow enough to me.  Congress could have, and arguably should have, declared war on Islam.

If anything government does is legal, if there is any legitimate purpose of government whatsoever, that purpose is making war.  Congress has declared war in a completely constitutional fashion in response to an extraordinary act of aggression.  Thus nothing the US government does could be more legal, more properly constitutional, than Obama ordering a drone strike on a US citizen on the basis of Obama’s reasonable and plausible suspicion that that US citizen is an Al Quaeda franchisee.

Just about everything the US government does is illegal and unconstitutional.  Assassinating America’s enemies in accordance with a congressional declaration of war is one of the very few legal and constitutional things it does. (more…)

Boots on the ground are insufficient

Saturday, February 9th, 2013

Joe Huffman estimates that in civil war, the right would have overwhelming military superiority.

As, of course, it would. Obviously. But boots on the ground are insufficient. As Stalin said “Ideas are more powerful than guns”. The problem is not that the federal government has tanks and artillery. That is not doing it much good in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the rest. The problem is that progressives have intellectual dominance.

The majority of voters are illegitimate and/or non white and/or female and/or illegal immigrants.  What do you do when a violent, corrupt, despotic, and tyrannical government is more or less freely and fairly elected?  For example, the Nazis in Germany, Allende in Chile, Chávez in Venezuela, or … Jerome Cavanagh in Detroit. (more…)

Scalzied

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

Author John Scalzi’s propensity for terrified whimpering grovelling before leftists has led Heartiste to coin a new word “Scalzied”:

When men are scalzied manboobs and women are manjawed feminists, the bedroom is an arid wasteland of dashed passion.

(more…)

Civilization: Hold back the darkness

Sunday, February 3rd, 2013

It is often said, and is true, that progressivism is in revolt against nature, but it is only true because progressivism is in revolt against the past and past knowledge, and a large part of our accumulated wisdom is knowledge of the nature of man, what humans naturally are.  Progressives are not only in revolt against nature, but revolt against civilization. (more…)

People of negative economic value

Friday, February 1st, 2013

The racial problem is that stupid people can vote, that incentives for good behavior are weak or nonexistent, and that some people are unresponsive to incentives.  Stop voting, ensure that everyone has good incentives, and then the problem is reduced those people unresponsive to incentives, a markedly smaller problem.

Nations with slightly higher IQ are markedly wealthier than nations with lower IQ, but individuals with markedly higher IQ are not markedly wealthier than individuals with markedly lower IQ.

The difference between nations is well approximated if we suppose that people with an IQ above 105 all have roughly comparable productivity, and are responsible for producing almost everything, and people with IQ below 105 have negligible productivity, and are all parasites.  But individual wages do not fit this picture. Obviously a low IQ person who is working for a living in private enterprise must be producing value at least equal to his wages.

Moving from a nation with low average IQ to a nation with high average IQ substantially benefits the migrant.  No one wants to move in the other direction.

This only makes sense if people with high average IQ produce large benefits to those around them, and people with low average IQ produce large costs to those around them, negative externalities.  (more…)