A genuine conspiracy

While the media is worked up over the ludicrous conspiracy theory in "The Da Vinci Code," Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has blown the whistle on a real life conspiracy to radically alter America without the public's knowledge. VDARE.com's blog quotes Sessions on the 620 page Senate immigration bill, and its "temporary" worker program that puts just about everybody on the path to permanent legal residence almost immediately:

In fact, if you read the bill, you will discover there has been a studied and carefully carried out plan to conceal how many people will come in under the temporary guest worker programs when, in fact, what they mislabel as a temporary program is in fact a permanent worker program that leads on a direct path to citizenship in fairly short order. …

We have an agreement here struck between the Chamber of Commerce and some political activist groups to move this bill through, and they are not concerned sufficiently about the interests of decent American citizens who may not have the highest skills.

Sessions' entire speech is quite good.

On the other hand, Larry Auster points me to this picture of Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), co-sponsor of this Hagel-Martinez immigration bill. I'd always assumed that Hagel, who has shown some admirable skepticism about the Iraq Attaq, was a smart man who had sold his soul to the Nebraska slaughterhouse cheap labor lobby. Yet, his insipid expression calls to mind the maxim often attributed to Napoleon: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."

Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation outlines the effects of Hagel's Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act in the NY Post:

THINK the immigration debate boils down to whether the 10 million illegal immigrants already here deserve amnesty? Think again. The leading reform proposal in the Senate is Sens. Chuck Hagel and Mel Martinez's Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA). If it becomes law, more than six times that figure will pour in - legally - over the next two decades. The original CIRA would've allowed as many as 100 million people to legally immigrate to the United States over the next 20 years. We're talking about a seismic shift of unprecedented proportions.

Facing criticism, the Senate has amended the bill - which now, if enacted, would "only" allow around 66 million new immigrants. That still more than doubles the rate, from 1 million a year now to 2.5 million per year.

Current law would let 19 million legal immigrants enter the United States over the next 20 years; CIRA would add an extra 47 million.

This flow of new immigrants would dwarf the Great Migration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In that period, foreign-born persons made up no more than 15 percent of the U.S. population. In 1924, Congress passed a law greatly reducing future immigration. By 1970, foreign-born persons had fallen to 5 percent of the population.

In the last three decades, immigration has increased sharply. The foreign-born now make up about 12 percent of the population. But if CIRA were enacted, and 66 million new immigrants entered over the next 20 years, foreign-born persons would make up 22 percent of the U.S. population, far higher than at any point in U.S. history.

Why such explosive growth? Consider how the new law would work. [More]

My guess would be that a small inner circle of lobbyists and staffers constructed this nightmare bill knowing reasonably well what it entailed. Everybody else went along with it without asking what it would do because, as everybody who is anybody knows, only shallow people think deeply about immigration. An insouciant attitude about radical demographic change shows that you are so high up the social ladder that you don't have to worry about how things like lower wages, increased crime, and crummier public schools will affect you and your family.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Swedish fury over miscegenation ... among falcons:

Nature and falconry writer Steve Bodio sends me this, which offers an amusing perspective on the "species does not exist" problem:

Here is the text-- from The Gyrfalcon, by Eugene Potapov and Richard Sale-- Sale is mostly a translator.

"There was panic in Sweden in 1999 when an escaped male Gyrfalcon x Peregrine Falcon hybrid from Denmark paired with a native Peregrine female in Bohuslan, the male bird being identified by its leg ring. The pairing made the headlines of Swedish newspapers...Falconry is, in general, prohibited in Finland, Sweden and Norway, and so the public reaction to this event was negative because of the potential for genetic pollution of the native species. The case was termed the 'birds of prey scandal' by the Swedish Ornithological society...Officials from Naturvårdsverket (the Swedish Ministry of the environment) killed the chicks produced by the pair and shot the hybrid. They also wished to kill the female as her willingness to mate with a non-pure bird caused concern that should another escape happen the bird might be equally willing a second time. However the female escaped and remained at large...”

This is also the opinion of the U.S. federal government. Well, not about people, but about red wolves. The red wolf is found in isolated spots in the South. Although the government lists it as an endangered species, it looks like a cross between a wolf and a coyote (which, just to indicate the depths of the confusion here, used to be called separate species, but generally aren't anymore). Indeed, as genetic tests have shown, that is exactly what it is.

In other words, the red wolf is not an endangered species but an endangered race. The main threat to the continued racial existence of red wolves is - miscegenation with the common coyote. So, in some parts of the South, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is pursuing an aggressive campaign of sterilizing or killing uppity coyotes that can't keep their cotton-pickin' paws off our precious red wolves.

This program of lynching Southern coyotes that don't know their place is pretty amusing in a sick way. But it probably is the only way to preserve the red wolf race. Being of conservative temperament, I tend to favor conserving things, because if we don't, we'll miss them when they're gone.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Huge opening day for "Da Vinci Code:"

$29.5 million. If that estimate holds up, that's the 12th biggest of all time, and the third biggest ever for a non-sequel.

Why do people like to go to movies in May when you think they'd like to go outside after a long winter? Why do people read my blog in May when they could be outside enjoying the beautiful weather?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

How to Fix Mexico

It's striking how the liberal media pays so little attention to one massive flaw of the Mexican state: not enough taxation of the rich.

A major reason that 65% of the Mexican population has no more than a 9th grade education is that Mexico can't spend enough on public schools. Richard Lynn found that , n general, Latin Americans do the worst on school achievement tests relative to their IQs than any other large group of people. Some of that is cultural -- Mexicans, especially, don't like to read and don't like to go to school, but a lot of it is financial. There's just not enough funds in the treasury to pay to send everybody to public school through, say, the tenth grade.

Similarly, the Mexican state can't pay cops enough in salaries to persuade them not to shakedown people for bribes.

Why not?

Because Mexico's rich cheat like crazy on their taxes.

Here's a study by the CEPR that shows that Mexico's tax revenue as a share of its GDP is less than half of America's. And, even though the top 10% in Mexico get a larger share of the national income than in America (e.g., the world's third richest man, Carlos Slim, is Mexican), a larger percentage of Mexican tax revenue comes from regressive sales taxes.

My impression is that the American media now sees criticism of the Mexican government as being vaguely racist and anti-immigrant, and thus largely off limits.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Coming to a falafel stand near you:

I hope Iraqi cuisine is tasty, because Iraqi restaurants may be the only thing we'll get out of our Mesopotamian adventure. (Of course, the neocons may eventually wonder why they were so enthusiastic for a war that ended up bringing lots of anti-Semites to the U.S.) The NYT reports:

In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country. In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country's estimated middle class.

The school system offers another clue: Since 2004, the Ministry of Education has issued 39,554 letters permitting parents to take their children's academic records abroad. The number of such letters issued in 2005 was double that in 2004, according to the director of the ministry's examination department. Iraqi officials and international organizations put the number of Iraqis in Jordan at close to a million. Syrian cities also have growing Iraqi populations.

A reader writes:

Not if you read this article by Lawrence Kaplan in The New Republic from the 4/3/06 issue:

Some highlights:

While over 40,000 Iraqi Christians have fled their homeland since the invasion, last year the United States permitted fewer than 200 Iraqis to immigrate.

...but "the policy since the war began is, 'We're not granting asylum.' ... There is no processing of refugees from Iraq." The reasons derive from post-September 11 security restrictions and, in the telling of a senior administration official, from the fiction that Iraqis, now liberated, no longer endure systematic persecution.

Sorry to hear that about the Arab Christians, who typically have assimilated well in the U.S., but, overall, that shows more sense than you'd expect from this government. We may still get the big airlift off the roof of the US embassy of American collaborators, although I can't say we've seen all that many enthusiastic collaborators in Iraq compared to South Vietnam.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The demographics of 2100

The Opinionator offers some rough forecasts of what the make-up of the US and the world will be like in 2100.

I have been musing about cultural change recently. I'm increasingly under the impression that brilliance is in decline, that the high point of genius was roughly 1913, and that our current era, even before the huge demographic changes discussed by the Opinionator fully slam home, is increasingly dominated by pastiche, triviality, and lack of ambition. Perhaps all the talent is just going into things I will never, ever care about, like video games, but that doesn't seem to be a reason not to be curmudgeonly. When I imagine the culture of the future, two words come to mind as what will be the predominant interest of humanity: celebrity gossip.

If we're lucky, perhaps the future will look like the Roman Empire in the 2nd Century AD under the "five good emperors." Gibbon called it the happiest era in human history, but I suspect he would have been bored, and that he himself was much happier living in the 18th Century.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

How to get rich off of being wrong

There are a lot of ways to get rich off of making correct predictions, but if you want to get rich off being wrong about the near future, be a pundit. Nobody ever cares how many times you've been wrong in the past. People just like hearing you make gutsy predictions. They'll never call you to account for them.

For example, NYT op-edster Tom Friedman announced to Chris Matthews on TV on 5/11/06 that in regard to Iraq:

"Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out."

Sound pretty sensible and persuasive, huh?

The only problem is that Friedman said back in 2003:

"The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time." (New York Times, 11/30/03)

Well, actually, that's not the only problem.

See, Friedman has said basically the same thing about the next six months or so being crucial in Iraq a dozen other times in between these two statements.

Leon Hadar has got the goods on him here.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Better buzzwords for Tom Wolfe's "fiction-absolute:"

A reader suggests the following potential replacements for Wolfe's important concept that "Each individual adopts a set of values which, if truly absolute in the world--so ordained by some almighty force--would make not that individual but his group . . . the best of all possible groups, the best of all inner circles."

Hopefully one of these buzzwords for "fiction absolute" might pull it off:

Vanity paradigm

Group-hype

egocosmos

hypeomology

This little insight would explain much about why Black-American media culture so adamantly condemns assimilated, by-the-book blacks as "acting white". If a critical mass of blacks decides to abide by the White egocosmos, it will damage the credibility of its black counterpart, and thus compell (eventually) blacks to accept being in second place in the dominant paradigm. Thus where going by the book might be the better individual strategy, the preservation of group vanity requires the instillment of an alternative paradigm reflecting the endowments of African-Americans, where they come in first and whites in second.

Any other suggestions?

Reader comments:

I think that 'egocosmos' takes it. A nice, smooth neologism that emphasizes the rootedness of the social myth in the inner urges, anxieties, and will-to-power of the subjects.

*

Thinking about Wolfe's idea, I like the terms "group primacy," "club primacy," or to come at it differently "The Perfect Circle." It could be given a more scientific note if we Latinzed it "Orbis Superbia."

*

What the heck is "hypeomology?"

*

"Ideal type" I know, Max Weber used it in another sense, but since it has zero recognition in the general culture I say it is open.

How about three-word phrases? This isn't an easy concept to get across, so maybe we should try being a little more expansive.

Tribal narcissism

"Tribal" is very good. "Narcissism" is close, but it sounds too self-contained, too aloof, whereas this phenomenon is more competitive, more relative, more needing to put other groups down to promote your own.

Vanity Paradigm

"Vanity" pays tribute to Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities," although there Wolfe was using "vanity," I would assume, in the sense of Ecclesiastes and/or Savonarola, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," rather than in the more contemporary sense of egotistical.

I think Wolfe is drawing an analogy to Kant's philosophically sophisticated version of the Golden Rule, the Categorical Imperative, which says "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law." (Another version: "Act so that the maxim ... may be capable of becoming a universal law for all rational beings.")

Wolfe's "fiction-absolute" is the evil twin of the categorical imperative: "Each individual adopts a set of values which, if truly absolute in the world--so ordained by some almighty force--would make not that individual but his group . . . the best of all possible groups, the best of all inner circles." In other words, "Act so that if the maxim became a universal law for all rational beings, your group must be seen as best."

So, maybe some term calling attention to the contrast with Kant's categorical imperative might help, such as "competitive imperative." I kind of like "tribal competitive imperative."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Electing a new people

Eunomia on the Senate Bill:

Not only does this wave the white flag on illegal immigration, which we assumed the Senate bill would do, but may as well have a prologue that says, 'We, the United States Senate, have determined to elect a new people.'" [More]

A reader suggests a political cartoon:

Bush is standing before a chart titled “The Xenophobian Mandate” on which are down trending graph lines titled "presidential approval," "spending approval," "Iraq approval," and "immigration approval," an up trending dashed line titled "xenophobia level," and one horizontal line bisecting them all titled "Xenophobian Mandate." Karl Rove: “And this is the beauty of the plan, Mr. President, there is a level of immigration at which you attain a moral mandate to import a new people.”

Meanwhile, PoliPundit writes:

As I’ve said before, The president’s approach to immigration is hard to counter because:

1. It’s bad in so many ways that it’s hard to list all of them

2. It’s deceptive in so many ways that it’s exhausting to point out all of them

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Hey, at least somebody liked it!

"Bush's Immigration Speech Hit All the Right Notes"
By Dick Morris

No mention that Vicente Fox is a client of Dick's.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Debacle of the Economists:

The immigration debate is bringing out the worst in many economists: their devotion to assume-we-have-a-can-opener models over reality, their utter lack of interest in vast areas of empirical data, their unthinking allegiance to their political prejudices, and their desire to further their own self-interests without mentioning how their own behavior confirms economists' traditional skepticism about people's motivations.

Exhibit A right now is Marginal Revolution, where NYT columnist and GMU economist Tyler Cowen's desire to Hispanicize America in furtherance of Tyler's own exotic aesthetic tastes has led him to claim that he'll look for "useful" data on Mexican assimilation rates, then today ignore the enormous amount of useful data displayed in his own comments section, apparently on the grounds that it is not "useful" for furthering his policy desires.

Now, Tyler's co-blogger Alex Tabarrok is pushing "an open letter on immigration reflecting the consensus opinion of economists on the major issues," which is a compendium of sentimental clichés worthy of Oprah.

The bad news is that Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok are are among the best of the bunch: smart guys, sensible and open-minded about most things, whom I read them every day. But, clearly, on immigration, as this impressive comment thread demonstrates, they've gone out of their way not to learn the facts and are allowing their emotions, tastes, and self-interests to drive their policy recommendations.

And Tyler and Alex are among the best of the bunch.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Wall Street Journal: It's Sailer's fault Bush's speech was a relative failure

James Taranto, editor of the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com website, notes in his "Best of the Web Today" blog on the WSJ site that CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider said, ""But that wasn't the best response he's gotten compared to other speeches, in fact it was lower than any speech we've measured since he took office."

So, who is to blame for Bush's relatively poor reception? According to Taranto:

One reason for that is that the nativist right is as implacable as the Angry Left. "If the purpose of the speech was to shore up the president's standing with conservatives, it failed," declares an editorial in National Review. "The speech . . . is likely further to demoralize conservatives and harden opposition among House Republicans to the Senate amnesty proposal."

Michelle Malkin, who has actually written a book defending Franklin D. Roosevelt's internment of Japanese-Americans, remarks: "The only good thing about watching the speech was getting to watch it in the Fox News green room with Colorado GOP Rep. Tom Tancredo, a stalwart immigration enforcement advocate. It was nice to have someone to shake heads along with as empty platitude after platitude was laid on thick."

Steve Sailer on VDare.com writes: "The Bush Administration has seemed never to notice that Mexico is not the 51st state, but a foreign country--one that is engaged in a slow-motion invasion of America. . . . Why is Bush doing this? I have suggested that his motives are dynastic--that he is selfishly sacrificing the GOP to build a family vehicle, much like Brian Mulroney sacrificed the Canadian Progressive Conservative party in a vain effort to build a personal fief in the French-speaking province of Quebec. Brenda Walker speculates he is a 'MexiChurian Candidate.' What he is not is an American patriot."

The political effect of the president's speech will depend on how influential voices like these turn out to be among congressional Republicans.

Indeed.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Occam's Butterknife in action

Missing the point: A press release from UCLA trumpets:

"Students Feel Safer in Ethnically Diverse Schools, UCLA, UC Davis Psychologists Report"

Middle school students are more likely to feel safer, less bullied and less lonely in ethnically diverse schools, psychologists from UCLA and UC Davis report in a new study of more than 70 sixth-grade classrooms in 11 Los Angeles public middle schools with predominantly minority and low-income students.

"Bullying happens in every school, and many students are concerned about their safety," said Jaana Juvonen, UCLA professor of psychology, chair of developmental psychology and lead author of the study. "However, our analysis shows students feel safer in ethnically diverse classrooms and schools."

Juvonen and her colleagues studied classrooms with lower and higher diversity among African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Caucasians. The researchers classified classrooms as diverse when multiple ethnic groups were represented in relatively similar proportions. The findings of the study held even when classroom differences in academic performance were taken into account.

The researchers were able to examine the effects of diversity on African American and Latino students — the two ethnic groups that were represented across all the classrooms in this sample of public middle school youth in the Los Angels area. However, co-author Adrienne Nishina, an assistant professor of human development at UC Davis, said she expects that students from other ethnic backgrounds would experience similar benefits from ethnically diverse schools.

"Other research at the college level has found that students from all ethnic backgrounds may benefit from ethnically diverse environments," Nishina noted.

Yes, that is what Occam's Butterknife would imply. Occam's Razor, on the other hand, would imply that they've merely proved that the more whites and Asians there are in a classroom (and thus the fewer blacks and Hispanics), the safer students feel.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Ah, the sweet life in Latin America!

Real life is making the Brazilian gangster cult film "City of God" look like "Sesame Street."

Wave of Violence in Brazil Claims 133

By VIVIAN SEQUERA, AP, May 16, 2006

With guns drawn, plainclothes police in a suburb of South America's largest city stopped and frisked motorists in a hunt for gang members who set off a five-day wave of violence that left at least 133 dead by Tuesday.

The crime spree showed the strength of organized crime in the financial and industrial heart of Brazil, and it sent fear rippling through the metropolis of 18 million...

Using machine guns and grenades, gang members attacked dozens of police installations, burned scores of buses and vandalized 15 bank branches. Inmates took over 73 prisons and held more than 200 guards hostage. The violence finally ebbed Tuesday morning, but Sao Paulo residents said they were still stunned.

"It's a civil war," said Manuela Nascimento, a 24-year-old newsstand worker. "Now I leave my house scared and go to work scared."

I can't wait for the Senate immigration bill to pass so we can start importing more Latin Americans.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Reactions to the Bush immigration speech

The VDARE.com blog is covering the Senate as it shoots down common-sense amendments to the Hagel-Martinez 103 Million Legal Immigrants act.

Mickey Kaus is on fire.

That John Stuart Mill of the 21st Century, JPod, is concerned about intellectual intolerance over immigration policy: "The Inability to Stomach Dissent." Irony is not JPod's strong suit, as Eunomia points out.

A reader of Manhattan Transfer objects to the word "temporary" in Bush's "Temporary Worker Program."

Economist Tyler Cowen tries to justify his LA Times op-ed counseling insouciance about the effects of low-skilled immigration. He writes:

"David Card and others have plenty of data on how well the second and third generations of Latinos do in assimilating and entering the mainstream of American life. I find the overall portrait a reassuring one. I will look for data on Mexicans per se and let you all know if I find anything useful."

Mean Mr. Mustard points out that letting millions of Muslims into Europe also seemed like a good idea at the time.

Alexander K. McClure on PoliPundit defends the speech and concludes, stirringly:

"If you think that is amnesty, then you are either a moron or a liar. If you ar truly a Republican to begin with, if you are truly a conservative, then you will applaud this speech and support the reforms he has articulated. Otherwise, you are not a Republican. You are not a conservative. You are a LIAR. A LIAR"

Udolpho summarizes Bush's speech (and offers what is, in my completely objective opinion, a practical and idealistic suggestion for how to respond):

"Well I would like to address your concerns. Here is how I will prove to you that you can trust me: by repeatedly saying you can trust me. Would I say it while looking so sincere if it weren't really true? Look, my underlip is quavering."

Dennis Dale responds to the NYT article on the Mexican government's protest to Bush and comments on the NYT article about how Bush has (unlike other conservatives they could mention) always been nice to Mexicans:

"What I love about this quote is how it reveals just how completely subsumed is the ritual of a Caucasian proving his moral worth by engaging his dark-skinned brethren." [More]

Chris Roach at BrainWash is not impressed.

Andrew Sullivan thinks Bush's speech was fine.

Thrasymachus speculates on why Bush so much wants to Mexicanize America:

Maybe a nation where the wealthy elite lord it over a poor peasant class appeals to him. Servants are cheaper and better behaved in Mexico. It's always clear just for whom the laws exist and are enforced in Mexico. Bush looks south and sees a paradise.

Mac Johnson notes in Human Events:

The President’s promise of enforcement as part of a “comprehensive” plan is thus simply unbelievable in light of past performance. But worse yet, it is now just plain irresponsible. Every one of the President’s proposals for increased security could be passed quickly, if they were not tied to a guest worker amnesty. Indeed, all of them could have already been passed and signed into law if they weren’t being used as sugar to coat the bitter pill of legalization for millions of illegal aliens. But the President and Senators John McCain and Teddy Kennedy (as well as others) want the amnesty giveaway so badly that they refuse to allow the Senate to vote on the enforcement measures as a separate bill, as the House of Representatives has done.

PrestoPundit points out that even Hugh Hewitt is expressing skepticism over the President's sincerity.

Pytheas comments on the Senate's rejection Tuesday of Sen. Johnny Isakson's sensible amendment to postpone a guest worker program until the border is secure.

Surfeited with Dainties writes:

So now they are not guests but "temporary workers." I'm sure this poll tested better. So what is temporary about it? Does the program wrap up at some point? When do the workers return to their home country - or rather - who returns them?

No one. It is not a temporary worker program - it is an American replacement program. Bush is obviously tired of us so he's importing as many people who don't read the NY Times as he can find - whether by multiplying the number of legal immigrants by five or by opening up a new stream of immigrants called "temporary workers."

Gideon argues that keeping the border open bails out Vicente Fox, and that that's a good thing.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The American Conservative issue of May 22, 2006

New American Conservative issue semi-online:

May 22, 2006 Issue



The Weakness of Empire
By Michael Vlahos
The power of an imperial state resides in the person of the emperor—and rises or falls with his political fortunes.



Immorality Play
By Bill English
Duke’s lacrosse scandal gives leftist ideologues a field day.

Looking Out for Numero Uno
By George W. Grayson
Not all jobs south of the border pay poorly. Take a look at the politicians’ salaries.

It’s Not Just the Economy, Stupid
By W. James Antle III
The fundamental question in formulating immigration policy is not who gets jobs but what it means to be an American.

Populist Professor
By Bill Kauffman
Daniel Patrick Moynihan voted with the liberals but provided talking points for conservatives.

Special Relationship
By Uri Avnery
The U.S. uses Israel to dominate the Middle East, and Israel uses the U.S. to dominate the Palestinians.



Mr. Quaid Goes to Washington
By Steve Sailer
Hugh Grant and Dennis Quaid in “American Dreamz”

How Whitey Bulger Bought Boston
By William Norman Grigg
The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century by Howie Carr

Try 5 FREE Issues of The American Conservative Today

The High Cost of Low Prices
By Marian Kester Coombs
The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works—and How It’s Transforming the American Economy by Charles Fishman

It’s A Man’s Man’s World
By Clark Stooksbury
Manliness by Harvey C. Mansfield



Can We Win An Insurgents’ War?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Defeating ourselves in Iraq

Guilty Until Proven PC
By Taki
Not all Duke news is fit to print. Just ask the New York Times.



Fourteen Days: Howard Dean, Immigration Restrictionist?; Foreign Service Desperately Seeks Dissent; James Baker to the Rescue

Deep Background: Even TSA’s Director Is a Critic; Iran Comes First With Shi’ites; There She Goes, Miss Iraq

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"How a Bill Becomes a Law" question.

A reader writes:

"Do you happen to know if funding for putting the National Guard on the border is appropriated in the Senate bill? (I suspect it is.) If so, the House would have to vote for a guestworker program to get any hope of enforcement, no?"

A reader responds:

I'm a regular reader of your site who happens to be in the congressional appropriations business. The short answer to his question is no. Appropriations are in a process entirely separate from the immigration bill. If the Guard were required to carry out this mission, however, it raises a lot of questions about funds, since activating Guard units typically carries considerable personnel costs and other needs. There has been a lot of discussion up here on the Hill this spring about the Guard being underfunded--the Administration sent up a budget proposal that assumes a far lower end strength for the Guard than will likely be the case. But the other fact to consider is that the appropriations process could give opponents of enforcement another crack at the issue after any immigration bill is passed, by proposing amendments that would block the use of funds for the Guard to carry out the mission. And even if they fail, there's no guarantee the Guard could sustain the mission without compromising overseas deployments and natural disaster responses.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Is Bush our first Latin American President?

A reader writes:

"Having spent some time in Latin American countries, one of my biggest fears regarding the current immigration issue has been that Latin-style political corruption will work its way into the U.S. However, when I look at the current administration I wonder if that hasn't already happened. In fact, I wonder if Texas' proximity to Mexico corrupted its political culture along time ago, hence our current president. People used to say that Bill Clinton was the first black president. Bush may very well be our first Latino president."

As New York Times correspondent Alan Riding wrote in his 1984 bestseller Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans, in Mexico, "[P]ublic life could be defined as the abuse of power to achieve wealth and the abuse of wealth to achieve power."

As I've been explaining since early 2001, The Bush dynasty has had extensive business, personal, and political ties to Mexico's ruling class, and at least two of Bushes's closest rich Mexican friends have been so corrupt or vicious -- even by the standards of Mexico -- that they've served long prison terms in Mexico.

Meanwhile, the President's politically ambitious nephew, George P. Bush, who is the son of Gov. Jeb Bush and his Mexican-born wife, will be old enough to run for President in 2012.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The American Conservative issue of May 8, 2006

The new issue of The American Conservative:

May 8, 2006 Issue

The Politics of Amnesty
By W. James Antle III
The Senate’s guest-worker legislation is dormant but not dead.

New Republican Majority?
By Steve Sailer
The future of the GOP lies not with the Hispanic vote but with overlooked middle-class Americans.

Big Brother Watches Britain
By Peter Hitchens
While our soldiers attempt to export freedom to the Arab World, it perishes in the birthplace of the Magna Carta.

Is It Civil War Yet?
By Robert Dreyfuss
Iraq has entered a new and perhaps irreversible stage of chaos—the emergence of a Shi’ite insurgency.

The Old College Try
By Peter Wood
What happens when an evangelical college moves into the Empire State Building

Why Trade Deficits Matter
By Robert Locke
Trading ourselves into poverty

Grand Coalition
By Neil Clark
Strange bedfellows or not, Left and Right find common ground against military adventurism.

Maid in the Shade
By Steve Sailer
Jennifer Aniston in “Friends With Money”

The Case for Peace
By Daniel McCarthy
Neo-conned! Just War Principles: A Condemnation of War in Iraq edited by D.L. O’Huallachain and J. Forrest Sharpe

Try 5 FREE Issues of The American Conservative Today

Dueling Banjos
By Marcus Epstein
Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music by Chris Willman

How the West Won
By Gerald J. Russello
The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark



Regime Crisis
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Why Bush’s approval rating is 38 percent

Twilight in America
By Paul Craig Roberts

Case of the Missing Moon
By Taki
Manliness is next to godliness.



Fourteen Days: Bush Takes Time to Read Sy Hersh; A General’s Regrets; Tom DeLay’s Legacy

Deep Background: Bush’s Iran Contras; Ghorbanifar is Back; Italy Keeps an Eye on Michael Ledeen

Purchase an online edition of this issue immediately!

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

More on why multicultural societies tend to be uncreative:

In response to my post yesterday, Jim Kalb at Turnabout offers four more thoughts:

* High-level creativity needs a coherent setting and tradition to give it materials and possibilities. That’s why there is no Shakespeare of pidgin. As Sailer points out, ethnic cuisines developed in monocultural settings.

* In multicultural society the only principles of order are arm’s length contract and top-down management. There’s not enough of a network of ties and common understandings for anything else to work. Neither allows for much creativity, because they’re too simple and single-minded.

* Then there’s the obvious point, that if you have a multicultural society that has to pretend to be free, equal and democratic you have to control thought and expression in boring ways to keep the whole house of cards from collapsing. “Celebrating diversity” means refusal to deal with any important issue in an interesting way, because you might end up saying that something is better than something else.

* Don’t evolutionary biologists talk about the importance of isolated niche situations for speciation? Whatever its status in biology, the reasoning suggests that cosmopolitan societies would be uncreative.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Tom Wolfe's concept of the "fiction-absolute:"

In Wolfe's recent Jefferson Lecture, he wrote:

Each individual adopts a set of values which, if truly absolute in the world--so ordained by some almighty force--would make not that individual but his group . . . the best of all possible groups, the best of all inner circles.

I only wish Wolfe had come up with a catchy name, which he, the coiner of "radical chic," "the Me Decade," and "the Right Stuff," is certainly capable of. A reader writes:

Tom Wolfe's "fiction-absolute" structure of the mind has tremendous explanatory power.

Regarding (racial) groups with significantly different innate abilities, it would suggest that the 2 groups cannot ever live together in harmony. No group would ever agree to take part in a society that valued traits that would ensure that their group was valued less. Even though their group overall well being might be materially better, and any individual might gain status and prestige within this system, if it decreased the status potential of the group they will rebel and create their own values.

I have been waiting my whole life for someone to systematically explain this to me. It seemed intuitive but I wasn't smart enough to systematically understand it.

It would also explain the phenomenon of political correctness. It never made sense to why telling the truth was such a big deal. Maybe the liberals understand the human mind better than I do. Maybe each particular group must feel that they have a theoretical chance to dominate or else there will be a psychological schism too large to bridge without overt domination of one group over another.

A diverse society therefore has two options: living a lie that every group is equal in ability (eventually backed by force as it fails) or a caste system backed by force.

This would seem to argue against neoconservative color blind society that ignores group differences. It would also argue against your citizenism where we are all aware of our differences but get along fine and only think about the nation as a whole.

What happens is that people are perfectly capable of living happily in a society where their group is below average ... until they think about it. The problem is that as time goes on, people general get more time on their hands to think about things like this, and more "ethnic leaders" to encourage them to dwell on the insult of it all.

The funny thing is that your group doesn't even have to be below average for you to be outraged. Indeed, it appears to be a general pattern that the closer your group gets to being the top dog today, the angrier you get over slights to your group in your great-grandfather's day, as JPod's tantrum over immigration last Friday on NRO's "The Corner" showed.

Let me add, thought, that the point of citizenism is not that its natural or easy but that it's necessary to head off trouble caused by natural divisiveness.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Warren Buffett as public policy analyst

Yesterday I quoted zillionaire Warren Buffett on how little he pays in taxes. Several readers objected. One responded:

Don't be fooled by Buffett's schtick. He's a genius investor, but his policy prescriptions are one more proof of Derbyshire's line that political stupidity is a special kind of stupidity, not well-correlated with other kinds.

First of all, the reason Buffett pays so little in taxes is that he never sells anything, and hence has no realized gains to tax. Do you - does he - favor taxing unrealized gains? I'm unaware of anyone who thinks that's a good idea. So what's the point of him making the comment?

Second, the thing about Buffett is his motivation for pretty much everything is the search for new investment opportunities. In an economy with relatively easy credit and efficient markets, it's hard to find such opportunities. Hence Buffett's continuing complaint - stretching back at least a decade - that credit is too easy and the state needs to intervene more in the economy. Buffett made piles of money in the late 1960s and 1970s when our economy was much more of a mess. His policy prescriptions frequently harken back to the nostrums of that era - not because they were good for the economy, but because they were good for Buffett's particular skills of finding undervalued businesses. I'm not saying he consciously wants the economy to tank. I'm saying he thinks a "good" market is one with lots of things for him to buy, whereas that is emphatically not a "good" economy for most people.

Third, while Buffett is certainly not wrong that the wealthy have benefited disproportionately from the economic growth of the last 5, 10, or 25 years, this is not something unique to America. It's happening in Europe, in Asia - pretty much everywhere. Why this is happening is a good and interesting question. It also happens to be something Buffett is not especially interested in. There is a mountain of evidence that tax policy is a very poor mechanism for reducing income inequality, evidence that Buffett never even bothers to dismiss much less refute.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Bush Theory:

In the 21st Century, the nation with the most unskilled labor will control the universe!

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Doctors strike against affirmative action in India:

The big IQ differences within India are causing increasing problems. The AP reports:

NEW DELHI - A doctors' strike that began in the capital to protest an affirmative action program at medical colleges spread Sunday, threatening to cripple services at major government health care facilities.

Medical students demonstrated across the country, angered by police violence Saturday against doctors protesting at government hospitals in the capital, New Delhi, and Bombay.

The protests were sparked by the government's decision to increase the percentage of low-caste Indians at state-run medical colleges to 49.5 percent of the student body. Currently, 22.5 percent of admissions entries are set aside for low-caste Hindus and students from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Similar affirmative action programs already exist in other state-run educational institutions, aimed at creating equal opportunities for low-caste Hindus, who have faced discrimination for centuries.

Emergency health services at New Delhi hospitals were the worst hit by the strike. Television stations showed dozens of patients on stretchers lying unattended outside emergency rooms, many of them poor people unable to afford private hospitals...

The government showed no sign of budging. Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said the government was committed "to affirmative action because we have to ensure growth that is inclusive."

Despite laws against discrimination, India's lower castes — 80 percent of India's 1 billion people by government estimate — are still at the bottom in most social indicators, such as education, income, employment, asset ownership and debt.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Chuck Hagel Presidency, RIP:

The Republican Senator from Nebraska has won some admiration for his skepticism about the Iraq Attaq. Yet, if the analysis by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation that the Hagel-Martinez bill, Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611), that Senate leaders have agreed to pass is close to accurate -- that it would increase legal immigration over the next 20 years from 19 million to 103 million -- then Hagel has forfeited all the good will he has built up, and should be run out of elective office by the voters of Nebraska.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Senate Bill to add 103 million legal immigrants

Senate immigration bill tantamount to open borders:

Senate Immigration Bill Would Allow 100 Million New Legal Immigrants over the Next Twenty Years
by Robert Rector WebMemo #1076
Heritage Foundation
May 15, 2006 | |

If enacted, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611) would be the most dramatic change in immigration law in 80 years, allowing an estimated 103 million persons to legally immigrate to the U.S. over the next 20 years—fully one-third of the current population of the United States.

Much attention has been given to the fact that the bill grants amnesty to some 10 million illegal immigrants. Little or no attention has been given to the fact that the bill would quintuple the rate of legal immigration into the United States, raising, over time, the inflow of legal immigrants from around one million per year to over five million per year. The impact of this increase in legal immigration dwarfs the magnitude of the amnesty provisions.

In contrast to the 103 million immigrants permitted under CIRA, current law allows 19 million legal immigrants over the next twenty years. Relative to current law, then, CIRA would add an extra 84 million legal immigrants to the nation’s population.

The figure of 103 million legal immigrants is a reasonable estimate of the actual immigration inflow under the bill and not the maximum number that would be legally permitted to enter. The maximum number that could legally enter would be almost 200 million over twenty years—over 180 million more legal immigrants than current law permits. [More]

***

Senate immigration bill even more catastrophic than previously understood:

Reform bill to double immigration
By Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES May 15, 2006

The immigration reform bill that the Senate takes up today would more than double the flow of legal immigration into the United States each year and dramatically lower the skill level of those immigrants.

The number of extended family members that U.S. citizens or legal residents can bring into this country would double. More dramatically, the number of workers and their immediate families could increase sevenfold if there are enough U.S. employers looking for cheap foreign labor.

Another provision would grant humanitarian visas to any woman or orphaned child anywhere in the world "at risk of harm" because of age or sex.

The little-noticed provisions are part of legislation co-sponsored by Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Mel Martinez of Florida, which overcame some early stumbles and now has bipartisan support in the Senate. The bill also has been praised by President Bush, and he is expected to endorse it as a starting point for negotiations in his prime-time address to the nation tonight

All told, the Hagel-Martinez bill would increase the annual flow of legal immigrants into the U.S. to more than 2 million from roughly 1 million today, scholars and analysts say.

These proposed increases are in addition to the estimated 10 million to 12 million illegal aliens already in the U.S. whom the bill would put on a path to citizenship. These figures also do not take into account the hundreds of thousands of additional immigrants who would be admitted to the U.S. each year under the guest-worker program that is part of the bill.

"If there is anyone left in the world, we would accept another 325,000 through the guest-worker program in the first year," said NumbersUSA's Rosemary Jenks, who supports stricter immigration laws.

The numbers have emerged only recently as opponents studied the hastily written 614-page bill in the five weeks since it was first proposed. It quickly stalled over Democratic refusal to allow consideration of any amendments to the bill, but debate resumes today after Senate leaders reached a compromise on the number of amendments. "Immigration is already at historic levels," said Ms. Jenks. "This would double that at least." The figures have been provided by Ms. Jenks, the Heritage Foundation and several Senate lawyers who have studied the bill since it was proposed.

One of the most alarming aspects of the bill, they say, are the provisions that drastically alter not only how many but also which type of workers are ushered into the country. Historically, the system that grants visas to workers has been slanted in favor of the highly educated and highly skilled. Currently, a little less than 60 percent of the 140,000 work visas granted each year are reserved for professors, engineers, doctors and others with "extraordinary abilities." Fewer than 10 percent are set aside for unskilled laborers. The idea has always been to draw the best and the brightest to America.

Under the Senate proposal, those priorities would be flipped. The percentage of work visas that would go to the highly educated or highly skilled would be cut in half to about 30 percent. The percentage of work visas that go to unskilled laborers would more than triple. In hard numbers for those categories, the highest skilled workers would be granted 135,000 visas annually, while the unskilled would be granted 150,000 annually.

What's more, the Hagel-Martinez bill would make it considerably easier for unskilled workers to remain here permanently while keeping hurdles in place for skilled workers. It would still require highly skilled workers who are here on a temporary basis to find an employer to "petition" for their permanent residency but it would allow unskilled laborers to "self-petition," meaning their employer would not have to guarantee their employment as a condition on staying.
[Read the rest]

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Live-Blogging the Apocalypse

The VDARE.com blog is all over today's immigration events in real time.

Here is the transcript of Bush's speech.

Random notes on Bush's immigration speech:

If this speech reassures conservatives, we definitely are the Stupid Party, just like John Stuart Mill claimed.

- There was no call for a border fence, just "We will construct high-tech fences in urban corridors and build new patrol roads and barriers in rural areas," which is not at all the same thing.

- Let's do the math on sending 6,000 National Guardsmen to the border for one year. At an average of 21 hours per week on sentry duty, that's 750 men for a border that is almost 2,000 miles long, or about one per 2.6 miles of border.

- And anyway, "Guard units will not be involved in direct law enforcement activities." [Emphasis mine]. And the National Guard force will be drawn down after one year.

- Bush denounced "catch and release" treatment of "other-than-Mexican" border crossers. Congratulations to Juan Mann of VDARE.com for introducing this issue to the national discourse.

- Bush has renamed his "Guest Work Program" as a "Temporary Worker Program." Presumably, this is intended to confuse the public, to make them assume that both the program and the workers are only temporary. Of course, neither is true. The idea that the workers would only stay temporarily in the U.S. is a total joke. All Bush says about this is: "And temporary workers must return to their home country at the conclusion of their stay." In other words, he doesn't have any plan to deport temporary workers once their years are up. And once the program gets going, the lobby for perpetuating it ad infinitum would be rich and powerful.

- What happens when the "temporary workers" have children during their "temporary" years in America, children, who, under the current reigning (although dubious) interpretation of the 14th Amendment are instantly American citiizens.

Bush's non-amnesty amnesty:

"Fourth, we must face the reality that millions of illegal immigrants are already here. They should not be given an automatic path to citizenship. This is amnesty, and I oppose it. Amnesty would be unfair to those who are here lawfully, and it would invite further waves of illegal immigration."

Bush has been obfuscating for years on this subject. Amnesty is not about citizenship, it's about residence. Very, very few illegal aliens have a burning desire for citizenship so that they can start, say, doing jury duty. Plenty of them who were amnestied due to the 1986 bill never bothered to become citizens. What they want is residence.

- Bush's "wait-in-line" scam:

"I believe that illegal immigrants who have roots in our country and want to stay should have to pay a meaningful penalty for breaking the law … to pay their taxes … to learn English … and to work in a job for a number of years. People who meet these conditions should be able to apply for citizenship. But approval would not be automatic, and they will have to wait in line behind those who played by the rules and followed the law. What I have just described is not amnesty..."

It's important to understand that Bush is trying to pull the wool over our eyes through the use of the phrase "will have wait in line behind those who played by the rules." This sounds like illegal immigrants would have to go home and wait in line behind those from their own countries who have applied for legal residence in America. But what he's actually saying is that illegal immigrants should get legal residency here right away but then have to wait in line for citizenship (i.e., mostly the right to vote) behind legal immigrants.

- Don't you love how politicians, when they are on side of the elites against the voters, always say things like, "We cannot build a unified country by inciting people to anger, or playing on anyone’s fears, or exploiting the issue of immigration for political gain"? Isn't exploiting issues for political gain an essential of republican government?

- The response by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) was basically like Br'er Rabbit asking the fox to throw him in the Briar Patch. He desperately wants Bush's plan to pass to produce more Democratic voters. The American Establishment wants the Senate bill bad. The networks should have had Rep. Tom Tancredo give the response.

- I tabulated how Bush's speech did on Gateway Pundit's "Open Borders Drinking Game" and found you would have needed to chug four Dos Equis beers, down 8 tequila shots, and do something called a "beer bong." You can see the details here on VDARE's blog.

-The VDARE.com blog is all over today's immigration events in real time.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Bush's Immigration Speech

My new VDARE.com column on Bush's immigration speech this Monday night is up.

It is rumored that the President will announce that National Guard troops will be headed to the border.

My question: Exactly how can the Bush Administration round up enough National Guardsmen when so many are deployed—as VDARE.COM’s own Allan Wall was—in Iraq?

The answer: it can't.

The Washington Post reports:

"One defense official said military leaders believe the number of troops required could range from 3,500 to perhaps 10,000, depending on the final plan. Another administration official cautioned that the 10,000 figure was too high." [Bush Weighs Deploying Guard to U.S. Border, by Lolita C. Baldor, May 13, 2006]

Sounds impressive!

But let's do the math…

• Our Mexican border is 1952 miles long.

• There are 168 hours in a week, so each Guardsman would be on duty on the border for, say, one quarter of that or 42 hours per week. Even that is unreasonably optimistic, because many members of a National Guard unit would not perform sentry duties, but would instead be back at the base being commanders, clerks, support personnel and the like. And even the sentries wouldn't be on the border full time, considering how much work time these days is devoted to training, leave, sexual harassment seminars, diversity sensitivity workshops, and the like.

So, if each one of the 3,500 National Guardsmen was on patrol an average of, say, 21 hours per week (which is 1/8th of the 168 hours in a week), that would provide one soldier per 4.5 miles of border.

For some reason, I'm not reassured.

Particularly because this deployment would certainly be withdrawn as soon as Bush feels what might be called a "decent interval" has elapsed.

[More]

Indeed, the Los Angeles Times now reports on Monday morning that:

Bush Seeks to Assure Fox Over Border

As the White House prepared to announce deployment of National Guard troops along the nation's southern border to stanch the flood of illegal immigrants, President Bush tried to reassure the president of Mexico on Sunday that the move was temporary and did not amount to militarization of the border.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer