tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post1499439751914122534..comments2024-03-27T18:24:19.683-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: Haidt, Derbyshire, and HateUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-70222445791443164232012-04-11T23:11:10.802-07:002012-04-11T23:11:10.802-07:00"Would someone explain "citizenism"...<i>"Would someone explain "citizenism" to me again"</i> - well, you're a big boy, seemingly capable of using a web browser or your Sidekick phone at the least. Why waste a full minute explaining anything you (as you've just advertised) have no desire to know... <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Avdare.com+citizenism" rel="nofollow">etc.</a>boilerplatenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-70178353600387387132012-04-11T22:02:11.513-07:002012-04-11T22:02:11.513-07:00"Arne Duncan! What have you discovered about...<i> "Arne Duncan! What have you discovered about the Racists, Duncan -- tell me. Why haven't we heard from you?"</i><br /><br />"My President... I suspect so much. I think they are the allies we seek... they are strong and fierce... they do not give their loyalty easily or quickly.... As you know, various governments have never been able to take a census of the Racists. Everyone thinks that there are but few -- wandering here and there in the South.... My President, I suspect an incredible secret has been kept on this planet... that the Racists exist in vast numbers... vast numbers... and it is they that control the Earth."<br /><br /><i>"But, they're Republicans Arne."</i>Autumn Statehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17733203182777623476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-70789653236789042252012-04-11T21:21:03.335-07:002012-04-11T21:21:03.335-07:00Where are the conservatives who advocate this?
R...<i>Where are the conservatives who advocate this?<br /><br /><br />Right here?</i><br /><br /><br />Really? Where?<br /><br />Would someone explain "citizenism" to me again?<br /><br />And how many conservatives, in general, advocate for "mono-ethnic states"?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-80993957365638236082012-04-11T21:20:14.709-07:002012-04-11T21:20:14.709-07:00Sorry for the 2x post, I'm just so stunned by ...Sorry for the 2x post, I'm just so stunned by it allAlcalde Jaime Miguel Curleohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11801154986193443160noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-4001888350104540602012-04-11T21:19:56.981-07:002012-04-11T21:19:56.981-07:00"where this will end"
The point-sputter...<i>"where this will end"</i><br /><br />The point-sputter singularity approaches: Elspeth Reeve briefly wrote for Takimag (<a href="http://takimag.com/contributor/ElleReeve/208" rel="nofollow">link</a>, 3 articles, comprising one TV review and two "edgy"/pop-fluffy celeb pieces). I don't know to assume it's the same woman and regret if I'm repeating someone else's discovery in this fast-evolving Watergate. Aw drat, where's James Kirchick when you need him?<br /><br />If I were among the Taki admins or staffers I wouldn't waste the daylight on publishing an explanatory note, a la "We've just learned about who has written for us and must dissociate ourselves from ourselves"Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11801154986193443160noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-43576155997446194302012-04-11T21:15:19.052-07:002012-04-11T21:15:19.052-07:00"where this will end"
The point n' ...<i>"where this will end"</i><br /><br />The point n' sputter singularity approaches: Elspeth Reeve briefly wrote for Takimag (<a href="http://takimag.com/contributor/ElleReeve/208" rel="nofollow">lnk</a>, 3 articles, all a bit on the "edgy"/pop-fluffy side). I don't know to assume it's the same woman. Drat, where's James Kirchick when ya need him?Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11801154986193443160noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48410979261385730082012-04-11T21:02:24.586-07:002012-04-11T21:02:24.586-07:00"Why not name Morris Dees editor and be done ..."<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/295729/regarding-robert-weissberg-rich-lowry#comment-542820" rel="nofollow">Why not name Morris Dees editor and be done with it</a>"actual comment at NRO right nownoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-9326403568934942592012-04-11T20:59:02.589-07:002012-04-11T20:59:02.589-07:00I saw the "Phi Beta Cons" announcement j...I saw the "Phi Beta Cons" announcement just now in Google News (Media Matters/CAP/Atlantic are piling on) and just guffawed for maybe a split second. I really can't imagine where this will end: their commenters are panicking that Michelle Malkin will be "fired" next (because of Bad Association). Really, now that the template is set how can you stop until you get to Jonah Goldberg who once bragged about a drink he'd invented called "the Marion Barry"--I am actually feeling sorry for Lowry now, and I do wonder how Steyn takes it, given his record of "noxious" Canadian infractions.cosmo-crunchy-metro connoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-36509607927229144222012-04-11T20:48:22.435-07:002012-04-11T20:48:22.435-07:00Regarding conservatives and change. I call myself...Regarding conservatives and change. I call myself conservative because I prefer an ordering of society more in line of the Constitution as it was interpreted prior to the New Deal. <br /><br />That ordering was radical and a break with centuries of the "older" order. <br /><br />The Asian despots, the Kings, the restraints of traditions, guilds, birth, operative for centuries were not swept away in Revolutionary America but certainly lessened. The individual simply had a much wider scope for self determination.<br /><br />When anyone mentions this, freedom itself is demonized. the rich use freedom to take advantage of the poor. People acquire unhealthy habits, fail to plan for their retirement or accident, shirk supporting the worthy needy, etc. They actually have to resort to quite convoluted arguments why we are all better off if we have less freedom than more freedom.<br /><br />Anyway, liberty and self determination are rare - brief flickers in Greece, Rome, the UK and the US. The norm is a minority dictating to everyone through physical force to the advantage of the minority. That is the norm of human existence. That is the conservative or status quo.<br /><br />I view myself as a radical, advocating a social order so rare that perhaps 0.01% of the people who ever lived, lived under anything like it.<br /><br />In America - given our general direction - it is a turning back of the clock. Looked at against human history it is a radical new idea.Munchnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-71960404183749226822012-04-11T17:50:53.980-07:002012-04-11T17:50:53.980-07:00Noah Millman writes,
Every one of these injuncti...Noah Millman writes, <br /><br /><i>Every one of these injunctions is bad advice. To be a good application of statistical common sense, it’s not enough to know that, for example, crime rates (on average) are higher in majority-black neighborhoods. You’d need to know that the disparity was large enough, and the variance around the average small enough, so that following such a rule would actually be a decent heuristic[.]</i><br /><br />Whoops - in the course of explaining the rule that Derb supposedly violated, Millman violated the same rule.<br /><br />He can't say Derb's advice is "bad advice" without performing the same statistical analysis he demands of Derbyshire. The most he can say is that Derbyshire has not proven that it's good advice. Instead, he goes further.ben tillmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-75590287701628859992012-04-11T17:25:10.089-07:002012-04-11T17:25:10.089-07:00How about proposals to privatize the postal servic...How about proposals to privatize the postal service and prisons and public utilities? Are those proposed by liberals, since conservatives want to keep things the same forever? Or the proposals to radically restructure the tax code, say by moving to a flat tax with few or no deductions? Or proposals to embark in a grand imperial adventure to remake the middle east in the image of western democracies? All those must be liberal plans. Right?NOTAnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-67501896990535520812012-04-11T17:19:53.568-07:002012-04-11T17:19:53.568-07:00So, the party that wants to re-engineer the 70 yea...So, the party that wants to re-engineer the 70 year old national retirement scheme to achieve ideological aims ("the ownership society"), they're liberals, right?NOTAnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-26817396299087562492012-04-11T16:51:28.848-07:002012-04-11T16:51:28.848-07:00Where are the conservatives who advocate this?
...<i>Where are the conservatives who advocate this?</i> <br /><br /><br />Right here?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-72304849836813876562012-04-11T15:41:20.001-07:002012-04-11T15:41:20.001-07:00What about the conservative vision of mostly mono-...<i>What about the conservative vision of mostly mono-ethnic countries in which government answers to the people rather than the other way around?</i><br /><br /><br />Where are the conservatives who advocate this?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-74394657521336523282012-04-11T15:07:08.337-07:002012-04-11T15:07:08.337-07:00A conservative victory is preventing the liberals ...<i>A conservative victory is preventing the liberals from doing something, or undoing something that liberals have already done.</i> <br /><br /><br />And a liberal victory is preventing the conservatives from doing something, or undoing something that conservatives have already done.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-11174511463730203702012-04-11T15:01:27.969-07:002012-04-11T15:01:27.969-07:00I should have looked up the name first--Bryan Garn...I should have looked up the name first--Bryan Garner, not Brian Gardner. (Who wrote a great book on Scalia, btw.)<br /><br />In any case, I think the Prescriptivist:Conservative::Descriptivist:Liberal comparison is most apparent when you look at Constitutional Law. Something like Scalia's originalism versus Breyer's idea of "active liberty."<br /><br /><i>"Consider The Gap, in test scores, crime, etc. Conservatives seem more inclined toward descriptivism (i.e., empiricism), while liberals lean toward prescriptivism ("It says in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, so that's that!")"</i><br /><br />I think you're giving Conservatives, as a whole, too much credit. Plenty of Conservatives, to my unending consternation, willfully ignore what they observe, just as Liberals do, if it's politically/socially prudent to do so. <br /><br />The major difference to me, is how the two groups go about explaining The Gap et al. <br /><br />Liberals, because of a descriptivist tendency (I think), will invent complicated and abstract cultural/social/economic theories to explain away these inequalities.<br /><br />Conservatives, on the other hand, when they are being honest with themselves, because of a prescriptivist tendency, will attribute these differences to more fundamental "law," -- i.e. biological determinism.Mr Lomezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07043467547490085497noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-21673479662898740012012-04-11T14:59:15.578-07:002012-04-11T14:59:15.578-07:00Look, I can find you many examples of liberal visi...<i>Look, I can find you many examples of liberal visions of society that are fundamentally very different than anything currently existing.</i> <br /><br /><br />Can you? Go ahead and do it then. I really want to hear this "fundamentally very different" vision.<br /><br /><br /><i>Can you name me one such conservative vision? </i> <br /><br /><br />What about the conservative vision of mostly mono-ethnic countries in which government answers to the people rather than the other way around? <br /><br /><br /><i>Was it (abolition of slavery) a conservative undertaking? That would seem to be a strange view.</i> <br /><br /><br />It is only a strange view to you because you start with the axiom that conservatives oppose any and all change while liberals support it.<br /><br />Spend two seconds looking around modern America and it should be obvious to you that your axiom is false. One of the complaints which "liberals" throw against "conservatives" is that they (conservatives) fail to respect and want to preserve what liberals have done in the past. This apples to the Civil Rights Act as well as to Social Security.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-40593503487615977202012-04-11T14:42:28.290-07:002012-04-11T14:42:28.290-07:00Okay, but the liberals of Marin County (78% for Ob...<i>Okay, but the liberals of Marin County (78% for Obama in 2008) don't seem to want change in Marin County. It's only change they want at some leapfrogged distance from their own group</i><br /><br />Steve, I write from Marin County, and I think you're shortchanging the libs here. The reason they've been against the Lucas development is all about traffic, nothing more. They've been consistently 'consistent' regarding the presence of the dark-skinned among them. For example, the county recently completed a new health center that's delivering, inter alia, free dental care to non-whites.played with eichelbergernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-45510005137897636262012-04-11T14:40:05.488-07:002012-04-11T14:40:05.488-07:00Millman's responses were sensible enough, but ...Millman's responses were sensible enough, but he, too, left out some stuff. The questions you care about in various situations like this are:<br /><br />a. How big a risk am I taking? (What's the probability of bad outcomes times the cost of those bad outcomes?)<br /><br />b. How big a reward am I getting?<br /><br />Different people simply value these things differently. In my job, I get to travel quite a bit. Now, travel involves risks of bad outcomes--you're much more likely to get mugged in a strange city than someplace you know, you're exposed ro more disease by traveling, you can get lost someplace where you don't speak the language, etc. But the benefits are much bigger, to me, than the costs. <br /><br />I have a coworker who just comes down the other way on this. He finds traveling a hassle he will put up with if he has to, rather than a joy. <br /><br />Neither of us is right or wrong. It's just a matter of taste. <br /><br />If you have to give someone a very quick heruistic for deciding if a neighborhood is safe or not, say a foreign grad student visiting from Japan or Gemany, racial composition of the people on the streets is one of the easiest and best ones to use. (Also, are there things worth stealing out in reach? Are there bars on the windows? Are people out with their kids?) <br /><br />Any such heruistic is wrong much of the time, but it's a first cut and it's the kind of advice I'd give to a foreign grad student or postdoc, someone not familiar with the local culture, in order to keep them mostly out of trouble. Whether the cost of following that heruistic is worth the benefit depends on your values. If Derb doesn't really enjoy much of black culture, then the cost is pretty low for him. If you are a big jazz fan, OTOH, the cost is really high.NOTAnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-26651440661410827412012-04-11T14:32:48.631-07:002012-04-11T14:32:48.631-07:00De-centralizing the USA would seem to be the recip...De-centralizing the USA would seem to be the recipe for political innovation; States and municipalities could try out their own projects.<br /><br />Experimentation being the key to discovery, and all.<br /><br />This recipe for innovation is anathema to libtards.Svigorhttp://svigor.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-55053004448560522602012-04-11T14:31:15.416-07:002012-04-11T14:31:15.416-07:00"Live and let live" would be pretty inno..."Live and let live" would be pretty innovative. Right-wingers seem to be the only ones advocating it.Svigorhttp://svigor.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-44506493348495781712012-04-11T14:30:34.714-07:002012-04-11T14:30:34.714-07:00Mr. Lomez:
Thanks. Most helpful. I've seen th...Mr. Lomez:<br /><br />Thanks. Most helpful. I've seen the DFW letter and it's quite good. (By the way, you can look up reviews of the late David Foster Wallace as a college teacher on Rate My Professors. Some of the reviews are pretty funny.)<br /><br />On the other hand, is it really true that liberals are descriptivists and conservatives prescriptivists. Consider The Gap, in test scores, crime, etc. Conservatives seem more inclined toward descriptivism (i.e., empiricism), while liberals lean toward prescriptivism ("It says in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, so that's that!")Steve Sailerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11920109042402850214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-16803472821718055862012-04-11T14:26:10.461-07:002012-04-11T14:26:10.461-07:00I like this concentric circle idea as a baseline f...I like this concentric circle idea as a baseline framework for political preferences. Looking around at the people I know and associate with (mostly SWPL Libs) I'd say this framework works for about 80% of people.<br /><br />This article also brings to mind an article by David Foster Wallace called Authority and American Usage which ostensibly is a review of Brian Gardner's newly edited OED, but is really a tract on political philosophy.<br /><br />Wallace's thesis, more or less, is that conservatives and liberals can be distinguished, as a baseline, by their linguistic preferences. Conservatives are what he calls prescriptivists, whereas liberals are what he calls descriptivists.<br /><br />Prescriptivism is a strain of linguistics that begins with Wittgenstein and follows strict logical rules, even if those rules may be arbitrary or outdated.<br /><br />Descriptivists--Chomsky the most famous among them--instead rely on a natural language that arises out of culture. The rules of a descriptivist language are constantly in flux, bending and changing to fit a particular cultural or historical context.<br /><br />There's one part of the essay that readers here may find particularly interesting. Wallace, who taught English a Claremont Mckenna, includes a letter he wrote to black students explaining that they would have to forgo Urban Black English in favor of Standard White English if they were to get an A in his class. It's a beautiful piece of writing that gets the point across without being insulting, a lesson those of us who wish to promote these kinds of ideas could learn from.Mr Lomezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07043467547490085497noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-91682819250230514152012-04-11T14:05:51.467-07:002012-04-11T14:05:51.467-07:00You strike me as rather resistant to new ideas you...<i>You strike me as rather resistant to new ideas yourself. Using your definitions, you are a "conservative".<br /><br />What you write is only true if you get to decide which changes are "radically different" and which ones are "tweaks".<br /><br />There is nothing "radically different" about any part of the leftist project. National healthcare? It's old hat in many parts of the world.</i><br /><br /><br />Look, I can find you many examples of liberal visions of society that are fundamentally very different than anything currently existing. Can you name me one such conservative vision? Groups like libertarians and fascists have had grand social plans, but then these groups are often not considered to be conservative, which sort of makes my point.<br /><br /><br /><i>You keep repeating your assertions as if doing so makes them true. Was the abolition of slavery "advanced by liberals"?</i><br /><br /><br />Was it a conservative undertaking? That would seem to be a strange view. Abolitionism had a long, complex history and was in any case largely the extension of a system (i.e. the absence of slavery) that already existed in the north. It's telling that this is the only example you can come up with.<br /><br /><br /><i>if you say "yes" then you are simply defining as "liberal" all people who make social innovations.</i><br /><br /><br />I'm saying that if you look at it, this is obviously the basic rule. A conservative victory is preventing the liberals from doing something, or undoing something that liberals have already done.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-23468403269839834572012-04-11T13:49:18.767-07:002012-04-11T13:49:18.767-07:00And though I admire Weissberg, it sickens me that ...<i>And though I admire Weissberg, it sickens me that he attended a conference(of American Renaissance)</i> <br /><br /><br />Thanks for that insight into the "liberal" mindset.<br /><br />It sickens me that Bush attended a meeting of the NAACP. I still voted for him though.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com