Greg Cochran's "Size Matters: Common Sense about the Iran 'Threat'"

is the cover story in the 10/23/06 issue of The American Conservative:

"The usual suspects say that some state may eventually give terrorists an atomic bomb. That is, put the crown jewels of its national power into hands it doesn't control, in much the same way that the Great Powers at the end of the 19th Century were always handing out battleships to anarchists...

"As a practical matter, anyone who is all that willing to die for his principles seems to manage to do so early in his career, well before he achieves high office. Most of the people running Iran today could have easily become martyrs under the Shah if they'd felt like it. Somehow, they avoided it."

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

Pushtun Proverbs

With the Taliban back in the news, I have an excuse for posting more items about the tribe in Afghanistan and Pakistan that provides most of the Taliban's support. A reader writes:

Here are some Pukhtun (=Pashtun = Pathan = Pushtun) proverbs (from “Generosity and Jealousy: The Swat Pukhtun of Northern Pakistan,” Charles Lindholm, Columbia University Press, 1982. Also by Lindholm, and strongly recommended is The Islamic Middle East: Tradition and Change, Blackwell, 2002)

On war and peace (p. 31)

The Pukhtun is never at peace, except when he is at war.

On women (p. 113)

Women belong in the house or in the grave.

Women have no noses. They will eat s***.

One’s own mother and sister are disgusting.

On family life (nepotism and neposchism) (p. 161)

Where there is the sound of a blow, there is respect.

When the floodwaters reach your chin, put your son beneath your feet.

On friendship (p. 240)

God, grant me a true friend who, without urging, will show me his love.

Curiously, the Pukhtun have a strongly idealized notion of friendship. They say that it is honorable for a man to lie for a true friend, even with his hand on the Koran (which means that the liar goes to Hell!). While other Pukhtun are potential allies, and often must be avenged for the sake of honor, they cannot be true friends, because the element of rivalry is too strong. The ideal friend is a foreigner, providing he comes as a guest, rather than an enemy. Lindholm, although no sociobiologist, argues that a universal human nature is rearing its head here– the desire for human connection expressing itself in the cult of friendship, in what is otherwise a bitterly individualist and cutthroat culture.

My impression is that Pushtun support for the fundamentalist Taliban is tied into a vague feeling among tribe members that they have a dysfunctional culture which they hope could be improved by stricter obedience to the Koran. One of the precipitating events of the Taliban's rise to power in the mid-1990s was a small civil war between two non-Taliban warlords over a young boy they both fancied. A Taliban squad rescued the boy, which helped their reputation.

When the Taliban came to power, they implemented reforms to prevent this sort of thing, much to the amusement of Andrew Sullivan, who chortled in 2001:

THE TALIBAN'S DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL: All the rest of NATO may have given up on policing their militaries for homosexuals, but the United States can rest easy knowing that one military that still supports U.S. policy is the Taliban. Any consorting with beardless young men in the army is strictly forbidden. This story from the Daily Telegraph tells of a weird and fastidious obsession.

Uh, Andrew? Please tell us you didn't realize that "consorting with beardless young men in the army" is a euphemism for an old Afghan custom. James Michener's informative 1963 novel Caravans refers to it frequently, such as in a description of the butch-femme warrior couples Michener frequently saw. Call me "weird and fastidious," but on this one issue, I've got to come down on the same side as the Taliban against the alliance of Andy Sullivan and the armed pederast warlords.

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

Dating and Mating Advice from a World-Class Professional

The Daily Mail reports on ascot-wearing Oliver Killeen:

The man who had 14 wives

[Oliver Killeen] was so fond of weddings he had attended 16 of his own. Sadly, just like his marriage to education expert Margaret Curtin, then 43, all but two were bogus.

And as if that wasn't extraordinary enough, the university qualifications on which he had built his career as a relationship counsellor and psychologist were false, too.

Oliver Killeen, international fraudster, had simply culled his knowledge from self-help books he'd read while in prison.

Boasting a string of qualifications in psychology, his patients included lawyers, doctors and teachers. It was to take years before Margaret discovered the truth — that she was married to one of Britain's most prolific bigamists.

In June 2004, Killeen was jailed at Isleworth Crown Court for three years for bigamy.

At his trial, the judge recorded his horror at the 'cruelty and gross deception inflicted on the women in your life'. It's a tale that would be almost comical if it weren’t so tragic.

Behind the charm of the twinkly eyed Irishman lies a string of broken hearts, blighted careers, devastating debts and — perhaps worst of all — an arrogant, amoral man who feels absolutely no guilt.

"Why should I?" asks Killeen. "I gave women what they wanted. If they were foolish enough to marry me within a few weeks of meeting me that was up to them. They should have asked more questions.

"I always gave the same little speech at my weddings. It was like a template — but no one ever questioned it. That made me laugh even more.

"Conning women is easy. I studied psychology and behaviour patterns. I presented myself as a dashing, suave sort of guy and women fell for it.

"I have a strong personality and an air of total respectability. And, of course, I'm a good lover — that’s the sealing factor."

However, his career as a bigamist did not begin until he was widowed in his 30s. He had married his childhood sweetheart, Mary, when he was 18.

They left their native Ireland and moved to London before emigrating to Toronto, where they had eight children.

"I have always liked living on the edge," says Killeen. "So I never had boring nine to five jobs. I got involved in various scams, such as money laundering.

I served time in Canada for 178 fraud convictions. That's when I started studying psychology. I thought it would be useful." And so it proved. Mary died of septicaemia, aged just 38, in 1974. And it was then that Killeen decided to use his undoubted skills to con women.

Needing a new mother for his children, when he was 36 he married the first of what he rather chillingly calls his 'collection of wives'...

Brazenly, he had reinvented himself as a psychotherapist and relationship counsellor in London, dealing in cases of sex abuse and addictive behaviour.

He was particularly popular thanks to the marriage classes he offered to young couples referred to him by his local Catholic priest.

Styling himself Dr Killeen, he claimed he was American and boasted he had a degree in psychology from prestigious Berkeley College, California, and a doctorate from Toronto University.

"He overwhelmed me with compliments," says university educated Margaret, who worked for the education department of Harrow council. They had met when she came to Killeen for advice in changing her career.

"He made me feel I was the most beautiful, accomplished woman to ever walk the earth. He looked into my eyes and instantly I was transformed from a rather plump, ordinary woman into Elizabeth Taylor.

"Now I can see that all he was doing was telling me exactly what I wanted to hear. But he appears so completely honest and open it's impossible to doubt him.

"I was at work on Valentine's Day and a huge bouquet appeared. It was half the size of a florist's shop.

"I thought I had found this knight in shining armour who was going to rescue me from my ordinary, boring life."

Within weeks, Killeen had proposed. "His passion blew me away," she says. "He knew I was worried my biological clock was ticking. I was 43 and wanted a child. He's so clever that he played on that."

Killeen persuaded a local radio station to give him a slot and his gentle, bedside manner was an instant hit with listeners.

Even after he has been exposed as a fraud, former patients pay testimony to the help he offered them. One woman claims the caring Dr Killeen understood her so well he was able to cure the bulimia which had plagued her for more than 30 years.

Perhaps it's no surprise that he was extremely good at his job. Charming, intuitive and with a commanding presence, he was soon so successful he had a full appointments book and was able to charge £7.99 for relaxation tapes.

I checked Google to see if he was just making up stories of his success as a psychologist, but there are lots of media accounts from before his unmasking of him offering professional advice, which I must say, sounds just as plausible as all the advice I've read offered by real psychologists. Here, for example, is a 1998 account from the Irish Farmers Journal, of a talk he gave to journalists on how Irish farmers could deal with stress. He advised relaxation tapes and self-esteem.

Even now he has no guilt.

"Psychology isn't a true science anyway so I don't feel guilty admitting I don't have a single proper qualification," he says.

"I'm self-taught. I read lots of books because I wanted to understand myself. I wanted to know why I could be so impetuous and spontaneous. It just snowballed."

Perhaps most extraordinary of all, Killeen found himself in court — as an expert witness on the effect of sexual abuse on the psychological state of victims. For years, no one ever questioned his qualifications.

"I was even an adviser to the police on issues such as drugs, alcohol and suicide," he says.

"In the five years I practised in Ireland, I treated judges, GPs and other psychiatrists as clients. It was a joke. I never worried that I would be unmasked. These weren't serious crimes — they were just harmless escapades. I spoke persuasively and carried myself with authority. It was easy." Killeen was making £5,000 a week — money he used to indulge his passion for the good things in life...

At his trial, Killeen admitted three counts of bigamy and was sentenced to three years — one of the longest sentences for this crime. Released early, in June 2005, for good behaviour, he fled to Canada, where he now lives.

"I'm very happy here," he says. "I'm running several girlfriends who know nothing of my past."

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

Talkative Indians v. Taciturn Indians

The novelist Paul Theroux had a bestseller with his enjoyable nonfiction travel book about riding trains across Eurasia in 1973, The Great Asian Railway Bazaar. He followed it up with similar books about riding the rails around Latin American and China, but his dislike of those two places got on my nerves when I first read them.

I finally reread The Old Patagonian Express, which tells of his 1978 train journey from his home in Boston to a small town a thousand miles south of Buenos Aires. Maybe I'm just becoming as misanthropic as Theroux, but I liked it a lot more this time. His shtick is predictable but still fun: he goes to some deplorable place like Guatemala or Colombia and, sure enough, roundly deplores it.

Still, compared to his Asian travelogue, which centered around crossing the Indian subcontinent, his Latin American book is less entertaining. In fact, it's rather grim for the basic reason that, even though Theroux speaks Spanish, from the time he leaves central Mexico to the time he arrives in Argentina via the Andes, he barely can entice anybody on the train into an interesting conversation. (The book does have a happy ending -- in Buenos Aires, Theroux gets introduced to Jorge Luis Borges and spends a couple of weeks hanging out with the blind sage, who of course is very interesting to talk with.)

Theroux's problem was that in Latin America -- at least in 1978 -- the rich traveled by airplane and the working class by bus, leaving the aged and dilapidated trains to the poor. And the poor in Central America and the Andes are largely Indian. And, while Theroux has great sympathy for the plight of the Indians in these grotesquely inequitable countries, he can't figure out any way to overcome the Indians' deep-rooted taciturnity. This is the opposite of his more amusing Asian book where those other Indians, the loquacious ones of South Asia, talked and talked.

When staying in Quito, he did hear something interesting:

"'You must not judge people by their country," a lady advised me. 'In South America, it is always wise to judge people by their altitude.'

"She was from Bolivia herself. She explained that there were fewer national characteristics than high-level characteristics. The mountain people who lived on the heights of the Andes were formal and unapproachable; the valley people were much more hospitable, and the sea-level folk were the sweetest of all, though rather idle and lazy. Someone who lived at an altitude of about four thousand feet was just about ideal, a real good scout, whether he lived in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia or wherever."

Of course, what she's describing are racial differences that are sorted out by altitude. The barrel-chested Andean Indians can survive better above about 10,000 feet (pure whites have too many miscarriages to propagate themselves when the air gets extremely thin) and on the tropical sea coasts, Africans are better adapted to the heat and diseases (although Lima, with its moderate climate, is an exception).

Charles Darwin, who visited South America on the Beagle, wrote in The Descent of Man:

"Everyone who has had the opportunity of comparison must have been struck by the contrast between the taciturn, even morose aborigines of South America and the light-hearted, talkative negroes."

My vague impression is that individual mestizos tend to vary a lot on this talkative-taciturn dimension, depending upon whether they inherited the genes and/or culture influencing this from their Spanish or Indian ancestors. So, Mexican-Americans aren't generally stereotyped as either loud or quiet. In contrast, Puerto Ricans, who have more black and less Indian ancestry, are widely seen as quite talkative. (Of course, because Spanish typically requires more syllables to articulate an idea than English, Spanish-speakers on the whole tend to speak faster.)

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

The paradoxes of assimilation

One of the frustrations of the immigration "debate" is listening to neocons and libertarians assert that "assimilation" will cure any and all ills. It's some kind of magic Vitamin A for whatever ails you. So little thought is given to the topic of immigration, that they never notice that immigrants often assimilate toward dysfunctional aspects of the host culture. French Muslim teens, for example, have assimilated toward the old French custom of fighting in the streets, as they showed last year by burning tens of thousands of cars.

American Hispanics are assimilating toward some African American norms, such as illegitimacy, ethnic resentment. Further, corporate America, such as Viacom, is prodding Latinos toward racial touchiness and anti-white racism as a way to turn disparate Hispanics into a bloc loyal to their ethnic brands. A reader writes:

Ever since the quirky, video-heavy MTV en Español was reborn this month as MTV Tré3 (not available yet in LA), it’s gotten a huge infusion of ethnic self-consciousness. The old MTV-en-Español had liners where artists talked in polite Spanish about what music meant to them. The new MTV Tré3, targeting the English-dominant, “urban Latino,” instead urges artists to navel-gaze in English, or barrio Ebonics, about…yep, their ethnicity... MTV Tré3 thinks that sticking it to whitey will convince their target audience that this channel is for real.

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

The War Nerd on Afghanistan

Gary Brecher writes:

If your exterminator says he just killed 200 rats down in the basement, is that good news or bad news?

On the one hand, it's good those rats are dead. On the other hand, I thought we got rid of them years ago, and now there's hundreds? What's going on?

That's the Big Question everyone should be asking in Afghanistan. NATO's claiming we killed 500 Taliban near Kandahar this month. That's a mighty impressive body count, sure, but if Nam taught us one thing, it's that body counts are a bad sign. For all sorts of reasons, starting with basic common sense: if we're killing that many, how many more are running around out there? ...

We were spoiled by initial success in Afghanistan; we got the Taliban down and then just stopped paying attention. Dunno if you remember this far back, but after 9/11, when it was obvious we had to go in there and root out Osama, everybody was saying Afghanistan was unwinnable, "the graveyard of empires," etc. And the campaign seemed to stall at first, till we took Mazar-I-Sharif and sent the Northern Alliance rolling into Kabul. Boom, game over, victory party, let's go home.

Except the new wars just don't work that way. The tough part was really just beginning. The biggest problem once we took Kabul was tribal. Reporters are always calling the Taliban "Islamic extremists," but it's way simpler than that: the Talibs are Pushtun, and our allies in the Northern Alliance were their old tribal enemies the Tajiks, Uzbeks and a few free-agent Hazaras.

The Pushtun are the biggest tribe in the country, if you can call it that, by far. Afghanistan is 42% Pushtun, and the second-biggest group, the Tajiks, are only 27%. Pushtuns are -- now how can I say this nicely? -- insane. The craziest Taliban rules, like demanding every man have a beard that was at least ZZ Top length, aren't Mohammed's rules; they're just Pushtun tribal ways.

It's like if the Baptists took over in Fresno, they'd make it God's rule that every guy had to have an extended cab on his pickup, and if you asked where in Scripture it says that, they'd shoot you. That's the Pushtun way: total tribal insanity, all the time. They're so "sexist" that feminists might like them, because they don't even think of women as "sex objects." To a Pushtun guy, nine-year-old boys are the sexiest thing on earth.

Professor Victor Davis Hanson might approve, because from what I've read, his classical Greek heroes felt the same way. The Pushtuns are so classical that to them, women are just labor-saving and baby-making machines.

And never mind peace; these Pushtuns may be gay but they sure ain't sissies. They love making war, and they're real good at it.

Also, they don't get the whole "literacy" thing. They're not interested in becoming entrepreneurs or learning self-esteem or personal hygiene or compassion or any of that crap. And let's be honest, the joy they felt running around Central Asia blowing up Buddhas and blasting infidels is the same joy a frat boy feels running around a 10-kegger party with a bra on his head. It's pure fun 'n joy, Pushtun-style.

So once we'd taken Afghanistan we had this leftover problem, which was that nearly half the population consisted of these lunatics who had no stake in "peace," didn't want "peace," and thought "peace" was a lot of newfangled nonsense only fit for heterosexuals, foreigners, and assorted sissies. Especially because "peace" came to their town on tanks and APCs driven by their old enemies the Tajiks and Uzbeks.

Worse yet, right behind those tanks came American do-gooders whose idea of pacifying the Pushtun was doing incredibly naive stuff like starting a TV news show with female anchorpersons or whatever you call them. I'm not making this up. First thing the US occupation officials did in Kabul was start a news station with some 19-year-old Pushtun girl as anchor. That was our idea of winning hearts and minds. That's what was going to calm down those bearded angry dudes: seeing a perfectly saleable daughter telling them the news, as if she was the one laying down the law.

I get tired of having to say it, but: not everybody thinks like we think. Not everybody wants what we want. The Pushtun want (a) somebody to kill; (b) women kept in their place, which is somewhere between the clay oven and the livestock; (c) nobody reminding them that there are other ways to live. [More]

Ah, the Pushtuns (a.k.a., Pashtuns, Pathans)! Life just wouldn't be the same without them.

I've used it before, but here's a quote from Churchill's great memoir for boys, My Early Life: A Roving Commission, about his experience in the 1890s in a punitive expedition against the Pushtuns near the Khyber Pass:

Except at harvest time, when self-preservation enjoins a temporary truce, the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician, and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress made, it is true, only of sunbaked clay, but with battlements, turrets, loopholes, flanking towers, drawbridges, etc., complete. Every village has its defense. Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud. The numerous tribes and combination of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one another. Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid… The life of the Pathan is thus full of interest…

Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts; the breech-loading rifle and the British Government. The first was an enormous luxury and blessing; the second, an unmitigated nuisance. The convenience of the breech-loading, and still more of the magazine, rifle was nowhere more appreciated than in the Indian highlands. A weapon which could kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it. One could actually remain in one's own house and fire at one's neighbor nearly a mile away.

One of the oddities of cultural anthropology is that, despite 2000 miles of rough country in-between, the Pushtuns are quite similar in many ways to the desert Arabs from whom Mohammed arose.

In my reductionist way, I see Mohammed as a public-spirited reformer trying to get his fellow desert raiders to stop being so bloody awful toward each other. The problem with living in the desert is there is no law and order. Recall the early scene in "Lawrence of Arabia" when Lawrence and his Bedouin guide spot camels on the horizon, so the guide immediately drops behind the brow of a sand dune to spy out whether his fellow Bedouins are his friends or whether they would try to kill him if they caught him. The life of the Bedouin is thus full of interest.

This jihad thing is a way to turn the violence outward, thus preserving a sphere of peace at home. It's been used a thousand times down through history all over the world, and it often works fairly well.

One problem with Islam, however, is that while it tries to curb the worst excesses of desert bandit cultures, it also, sort of by osmosis, also preserves those cultures and promulgates their values to places where they aren't inevitable in the landscape. For example, Egypt had been an orderly farming nation-state for 3,500 years when the Arabs showed up with their desert religion.

A reader writes:

In contrast to the silly ideas of people like Dawkins and Dennett, isn't this the real problem with religion, that its greatest strength, binding people together to do good, also shades into its greatest liability? Given what human nature is, you can only make people so good by preaching and teaching. Given also that the best way to make people get along is to have them fight a common external enemy, isn't any group or ideology that tries to make people good going to be tempted to take the easy way out and have its members go out an fight some common enemy?

Example. We've all heard of something called the Crusades. But what we seldom hear about is the Peace and Truce of God movement. During the Early Middle Ages the Pope spent massive amounts of energy across centuries trying to keep the warring rulers/thugs across Europe from fighting their fellow Christians. [The Peace of God exempted clergy, peasants, widows, and virgins from attack. The Truce of God required warriors to take weekends off, and ultimately reduced the number of legal fighting days per year to 80.]

Needless to say this was a lot more in keeping with the actual teachings of Christianity than Crusading, but, human beings being what human beings are, it was almost a complete failure. Then, Pope Urban II comes up with the wonderful idea of attacking the Muslims. In contrast to the reaction to Peace of God, this idea almost instantly captures the imagination of all Western Europe. While it didn't completely stamp out fighting among the Christian rulers, it did reduce it by quite a bit. Given the anti-religious polemics of our time, we tend to hear a lot about the Crusades and the wickedness of religious warfare, but we hear almost nothing about the much more massive efforts the papacy put behind its Peace of God initiative.

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

USA Today on the Republican-Democrat gaps in marriage and fertility

Reporter Dennis Cauchon of USA Today called me last week and we spoke for close to an hour about my work on the correlation between affordable family formation and voting. His twin articles on the marriage gap and fertility gap are up today, although he doesn't see fit to mention my name. Good stuff, nonetheless:

Marriage gap could sway elections

•Republicans control 49 of the 50 districts with the highest rates of married people.

•Democrats represent all 50 districts that have the highest rates of adults who have never married.

The political tug-of-war is between people who are married and those who have never been.

The “never married” group covers a variety of groups who form the Democratic base: young people, those who marry late in life, single parents, gays, and heterosexuals who live together.

The marriage divide drew attention in the 2004 presidential race. President Bush beat John Kerry by 15 percentage points among married people and lost by 18 percentage points among unmarried people, according to an exit poll conducted by national news media organizations.

Most serious Democratic challenges this fall are in Republican-controlled House districts that have lower marriage rates.

For example, the two seats most likely to switch from Republican to Democratic are Arizona's 8th District and Colorado's 7th District, according to the non-partisan National Journal. The districts — in which Republican incumbents are not seeking re-election — rank 251st and 307th respectively in marriage rates among the 435 districts.

Of the five Republicans who have the lowest rates of married people in their districts, four are in tough battles with Democrats. On the other side, Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., whose district has a high marriage rate, faces a strong GOP challenge.

Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., whose district has the highest marriage rate (66.1%), says the gap exists because “people get more conservative when they settle down.” Democratic pollster Mark Mellman says the gap is magnified because a greater percentage of married people vote than unmarried people.

[More, including tables of Congressmen with the most and least married constituents. Tom Tancredo has the fourth most-married residents. Most of the least-married Congressmen are blacks who represent districts gerrymandered under the Voting Rights Act to elect blacks. An important exception is Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.]

'Fertility gap' helps explain political divide

GOP Congress members represent 39.2 million children younger than 18, about 7 million more than Democrats. Republicans average 7,000 more children per district.

Many Democrats represent areas that have many single people and relatively few children. Democratic districts that have large numbers of children tend to be predominantly Hispanic or, to a lesser extent, African-American.

This "fertility gap" is crucial to understanding the differences between liberals and conservatives, says Arthur Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. These childbearing patterns shape divisions over issues such as welfare, education and child tax credits, he says.

"Both sides are very pro-kids. They just express it in different ways," Brooks says. "Republicans are congenial to traditional families, which is clearly the best way for kids to grow up. But there are some kids who don't have that advantage, and Democrats are very concerned with helping those kids."

Children in Democratic districts are far more likely to live in poverty and with single parents than kids in GOP districts.

Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y., has 227,246 children in his Bronx district, the 10th most in the House. Only 29% of those children live with married parents.

By contrast, 84% of children live with married parents in Cannon's central Utah district.

... Marriage and parenthood define what's different about Democratic and Republican districts even more clearly than race, income, education or geography, USA TODAY's analysis of Census data found.

For example, Republicans represent seven of the 50 districts that have the highest concentrations of blacks. Both parties are well represented among affluent and well-educated districts.

Democrats control only one of the 50 districts with the highest marriage rates.

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who represents the most-married

... Pelosi says in speeches that her most important concern is "the children, the children, the children," says her spokesman, Drew Hammill. That's why she wants to raise the minimum wage to help low-income parents, he says.

The stay-at-home mom is uncommon in all congressional districts. Mothers work at the same rate — about 71% — in Republican and Democratic districts.

Nevertheless, a big difference in family life is clear:

• Democrats represent 59 districts in which less than half of adults are married. Republicans represent only two.

• Democrats represent 30 districts in which less than half of children live with married parents. Republicans represent none.

"The biggest gaps in American politics are religion, race and marital status," says Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg. [More]

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

Declaring war on Iran?

A reader writes:

I agree with you 100%. But I think war with Iran really would be different from the other recent failures to declare war.

Congress has managed to get out of its obligation to declare war in part because the post-WWII operations of the American military were - ostensibly or actually - either small operations not worth dignifying with the name of "war" (e.g., Grenada), or defensive operations undertaken pursuant to treaty obligations and/or explicit acts of Congress (e.g., Vietnam), or authorized by a supra-national body such that they arguably were *not* wars in a legal sense, but police actions (e.g., Korea, the first Iraq war).

The second Iraq war was an exception to the above, in that the United States initiated an aggressive attack on another country without either an explicit declaration of war or an emergency that required rapid response by the executive branch or an explicit authorization from a supra-national body to conduct a police action. But we could still rope Iraq back into the familiar categories under which Presidents have initiated hostilities by pointing out that America had been continuously in action in Iraq between 1991 and 2003 (enforcing the No-Fly Zone, for instance), and that Iraq had violated the terms of the 1991 cease-fire in a variety of ways, such that America still (arguably) had the authority to take action to enforce the terms of that cease-fire. Given those unique conditions, perhaps an "authorization" to use force such as Congress *did* pass was sufficient constitutional warrant for Executive action. This might seem tenuous, but it's not nothing.

Kossovo and, ironically, Afghanistan are much tougher to bring under the rubric of "traditional" exceptions. The war in Kossovo was not authorized by the U.N., and hence was not a police action; it was not a response to aggression against a NATO state, and hence was not pursuant to a treaty obligation, so the fact that it was a collective action on the part of the NATO alliance does nothing to add to its legal justification. As the legislature never declared war on Serbia, the Kossovo war was most likely unconstitutional. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, America - quite rightly - went to war in response to a surprise attack on American soils, and on civilians to boot. The war was about as just a war as could be imagined - but it was not undertaken in a constitutional manner because there was no declaration of war, when we were plainly *going* to war and there was plenty of time to issue a declaration. I note in this regard that President Bush was widely quoted at the time as having "declared war" on September 11th - by which he seems to have meant that he "recognized" that a state of war "existed" because we were attacked, but be that as it may: he used the language that the constitution explicitly reserves for the legislature.

War with Iran would mean crossing the last bridge, and would mean the final Caesarian transformation of the American Republic. There is, as you say, no chance that Congress would declare war on Iran. (Any "use of force" authorization by Congress would give them plausible deniability and hence would constitute an evasion of their constitutional responsibility, as you note; Congresscritters could perfectly well claim after the fact that they did *not* vote for war, but only to give the President the "freedom of action" to go to war *if necessary* which, the Congresscritters could assure us, the Congress had confidently hoped would be sufficient to *avert* war!)

There is also no chance that such an attack would be authorized by the U.N. as a police action, and hence (arguably) not require a formal declaration of war by Congress, but only an authorization to use force (since, after all, in such circumstances, there arguably was no state of war between America and the country in question, but rather a state of outlawry on the part of the country in question, with America playing the part of the head of the posse bringing the miscreant to justice). There is also no chance that the President could honestly articulate a reasonable justification for hasty action in the face of an imminent threat such as would leave no time for him to obtain a declaration from Congress. Hence, if we do attack Iran, a precedent will have been set that the President can go to war whenever and wherever he wants, without any authorization from anyone.

As it happens, I don't think we're going to war with Iran. I think Bush would face actual, public insubordination if he tried it. I also think he doesn't have time before November, and he won't have a compliant Congress after that to give him a fig-leaf of authorization. But I do agree that an undeclared war against Iran would be unconstitutional - and more plainly so than the other undeclared wars of the last 60 years.

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

Good grief, more dating advice

Readers have lots more to say (lots more than I have to say on the subject, having been happily removed from this harrowing experience for eons):

Your statement that political opinions are fashion statements for women has clarified a few things for me. It has also cleared up why working in women only public sector PR offices - as I do - is like working in a one party state. It is not that they do not get other arguments. It is that they think other arguments are superfluous when placed against the need to fit in. It is social intelligence of a high order – or intellectual corruption depending how you look at it.

I remember becoming aware of this when a co-worker insisted on imposing Fairtrade coffee on the rest of the office. I attempted to get her into an argument about the merits of Fairtrade…bogus economics, unfair on other coffee farmers, tendentious reasoning etc etc. She was just puzzled that anyone would ever want to argue about it. There was a general consensus that it was a good and fashionable thing and the details are irrelevant.

*

In my college classes I've noticed that when I gain respect from women due to a performance in discussion respect it is generally proportional to the degree to which I have beaten other males rather than the strength of my actual points, whereas respect from my male peers has sometimes come from their recognition that I argued for a losing side brilliantly. However that never seems to impress the ladies very much.

Well, not the female readers of iSteve.com!

*

My experience in the undergraduate dating scene, such as it is, has been that Feynman's admonition against paying compliments to women is somewhat outmoded. He was writing at a time when chivalrous traditions in America were still relatively strong, everyone thought that the way to woo and wed was trhough whispering sweet nothings. Not to be melodramatic but today chivalry is dead or at least in a persistent vegetative state. What this means for the women in my social circle is that they almost never receive compliments from men. I noticed this and have found that when I do issue a compliment they are remarkably greatful. Obviously compliments alone don't do it, you have to show enough 'machismo' to be in the game, but their rarity has allowed compliments to regain a certain amount of value today. In sometimes competitive situations you have to operate by means of the law of reverse public opinion, if everyone is trying to attain a goal by one means, try to attain it through a different way. The path will be less crowded.

*

I have been doing my own research into dating, romance, seduction etc. and have come across a whole lot of material that backs up the be-a-jerk-and-the-women-will-flock-to-you theory. But even though most of my sources site this as a successful strategy, I think they are only half right and, more often than not, lead men to get things totally wrong.

My theory is that the reason bad boys get the girls is not that they are bad per sé, but that they are totally confident and have respect for themselves. I believe this is mostly because they are stupid and unreflective. Since they have no idea how worthless they are, they can act in the world with total self assuredness.

I think it is the confidence and self respect that women are attracted to, whether it is in bad boys, football stars, actors, presidents, tycoons, princes, or whatever.

If you tell an introspective nerd that he needs to be a bad boy to get the girl, Ithe plan will probably blow up in his face. I'd bet most women will easily see through this because all you've done is change what men see (i.e. the physical and tangible) and not what women see (i.e. that which is implied).

This could also be why when looking for a used motorcycle there tend to be a disproportionate number of nearly new Harleys for sale.

*

That letter from the woman whose single brother was into mountain biking and vintage tractors got me thinking ... in my experience, men who are involved in stereotypically male-oriented hobbies and activities don't seem to have any particular difficulty finding women. These would include things like sports, cars, outdoor recreation, and manual crafts such as woodworking. One could say, as a general rule, that women have no trouble with men involved in activities that don't normally interest women, so long as the activities are conventionally masculine, guy-stuff things.

There's a flip side to this, however. Women have a much harder time accepting men who are involved in interests or activities that appeal mostly to males yet at the same time are perceived as not fully masculine. Examples would include Star Trek, science fiction in general, Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games, certain video games (especially Warcraft and its ilk), Lord of the Rings and other forms of fantasy, and (somewhat paradoxically) military history and especially re-enactments. Given this, it should come as no surprise that the percentage of men who are single and unattached at, for example, a Star Trek convention is almost certainly going to be higher than the single and unattached percentage among a group of NFL season ticket holders.

Over the last million years or so, there has emerged a dichotomy between the Big Man, the leader of the hunting and war parties, and the Nerd, who makes the stone axes for the Big Man to use. I'm not sure that the evolution of female sexual desire has caught up with the fact that the tool-makers can make a lot of money these days.

*

"The way for women to put themselves more deeply in the guy stream is to take up golf."

My impression is that males are most fanatical about golf from their mid-20s through about age 40 -- i.e., prime marrying years for middle class white guys. Golfers tend to be closer to the Big Man than the Nerd pole, but not so much so that they are too masculine to be housebroken. So, they are good husband prospects, but you seldom see women much shy of menopause taking up golf as a way to put themselves around a lot of potential husbands.

*

If you have spent any time at these dating websites, some very interesting trends stand out which are a better reflection of who we are and what we think than the PC inflicted world we live in.

For example, white women with children are more likely to state their preference for a white man than white women with no children who usually do not specify the ethnicity in their preferences.

So dating non-white men is considered 'risky behavior' by white women when they have children! Overweight white women are more likely to be open to all ethnicities than average weight white women while really overweight white women usually put down black men or sometimes even hispanic men as their preferred mate. So Black men are more open to over weight white women than white men!

I am no social scientist but some very clear trends emerge from the preference section of these dating websites. Someone with more time needs to do some number crunching and figure out this data. It will be an interesting read.

Good idea. I'm not sure, however, that my wife would be as enthusiastic about my personally doing the research, so I will cede this opportunity to whichever of my readers is interested.

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

Sacrificing smart black kids on the altar of "diversity:"

A friend of mine graduated from Pepperdine Law School after the usual three years of classes, then, while working as a hospital orderly, spent a nightmarish seven years or so trying and repeatedly failing to pass the California bar exam before finally giving up. In other words, he devoted about a decade of the prime of his life (age 22-32) to a fruitless quest to become a lawyer.

He just wasn't smart enough and diligent enough at the kind of hard, boring mental labor that the law demands. He had more smarts than the average person, but not enough to be a California lawyer. A charming fellow, if he'd become a salesman out of college instead of going to law school, he might have been making six figures within that decade. His total costs, out-of-pocket and opportunity, for this decade-long misadventure must have been in the half million dollar range (in current dollars).

He is a white guy, so nobody was pushing him to go to law school to bring the benefits of diversity, such as they are, to their institutions. But getting lured into going to law school by white liberals happens all the time to young black people who are smarter than the black average. And a lot of them end up like my friend: with huge student debts yet with no license to practice law.

UCLA law school professor Richard Sanders has been quantifying the racial gaps in law school graduation and bar exam passage rates.

Here are his estimates from the Empirical Legal Studies blog:

	2004 Era (my estimates)
	Whites	Blacks
% of entering law students who graduate	90%	78%
% of graduates who take the bar	94%	93%
% of bar takers who pass on first attempt	78%	47%
% of bar takers who ultimately pass	90%	65%
% of entering law students who graduate and pass bar on first attempt	66%	34%
% of entering law students who ultimately become lawyers	76%	47%

In other words, 53% of the black students who enter law school fail to qualify to become lawyers, versus 24% of white students.

I'm particularly concerned about a number that he doesn't specify but is calculable from his data: the percent of students who graduate from law school but never pass the bar exam. These are the young people who had enough brains and work ethic to graduate from law school but not enough to pass the bar exam. They wasted at least three years of their lives at law school, and usually several more while studying for and failing the bar exam over and over again.

That percentage of law school graduates who never pass the bar exam appears to be about 40% for blacks versus about 15% for whites.

So, the legal establishment is luring a sizable number of the black race's more promising young people (not the very best and brightest blacks, but the one or even two standard deviations above the African-American median blacks) into a career cul-de-sac.

According to the Supreme Court Grutter decision okaying the U. of Michigan to discriminate against whites and Asians in law school admissions, the purpose of affirmative action isn't to help the black and Hispanic students admitted preferentially, but to spread the blessings of "diversity" on everybody else at the school. But that warm fuzzy feeling that liberals get from "diversity" comes with very real human costs.

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

Dating advice

Readers have lots more to say (lots more than I have to say on the subject, having been happily removed from it for eons):

Your statement that political opinions are fashion statements for women has clarified a few things for me. It has also cleared up why working in women only public sector PR offices - as I do - is like working in a one party state. It is not that they do not get other arguments. It is that they think other arguments are superfluous when placed against the need to fit in. It is social intelligence of a high order – or intellectual corruption depending how you look at it.

I remember becoming aware of this when a co-worker insisted on imposing Fairtrade coffee on the rest of the office. I attempted to get her into an argument about the merits of Fairtrade…bogus economics, unfair on other coffee farmers, tendentious reasoning etc etc. She was just puzzled that anyone would ever want to argue about it. There was a general consensus that it was a good and fashionable thing and the details are irrelevant.

*

My experience in the undergraduate dating scene, such as it is, has been that Feynman's admonition against paying compliments to women is somewhat outmoded. He was writing at a time when chivalrous traditions in America were still relatively strong, everyone thought that the way to woo and wed was trhough whispering sweet nothings. Not to be melodramatic but today chivalry is dead or at least in a persistent vegetative state. What this means for the women in my social circle is that they almost never receive compliments from men. I noticed this and have found that when I do issue a compliment they are remarkably greatful. Obviously compliments alone don't do it, you have to show enough 'machismo' to be in the game, but their rarity has allowed compliments to regain a certain amount of value today. In sometimes competitive situations you have to operate by means of the law of reverse public opinion, if everyone is trying to attain a goal by one means, try to attain it through a different way. The path will be less crowded.

*

I have been doing my own research into dating, romance, seduction etc. and have come across a whole lot of material that backs up the be-a-jerk-and-the-women-will-flock-to-you theory. But even though most of my sources site this as a successful strategy, I think they are only half right and, more often than not, lead men to get things totally wrong.

My theory is that the reason bad boys get the girls is not that they are bad per sé, but that they are totally confident and have respect for themselves. I believe this is mostly because they are stupid and unreflective. Since they have no idea how worthless they are, they can act in the world with total self assuredness.

I think it is the confidence and self respect that women are attracted to, whether it is in bad boys, football stars, actors, presidents, tycoons, princes, or whatever.

If you tell an introspective nerd that he needs to be a bad boy to get the girl, Ithe plan will probably blow up in his face. I'd bet most women will easily see through this because all you've done is change what men see (i.e. the physical and tangible) and not what women see (i.e. that which is implied).

This could also be why when looking for a used motorcycle there tend to be a disproportionate number of nearly new Harleys for sale.

*

That letter from the woman whose single brother was into mountain biking and vintage tractors got me thinking ... in my experience, men who are involved in stereotypically male-oriented hobbies and activities don't seem to have any particular difficulty finding women. These would include things like sports, cars, outdoor recreation, and manual crafts such as woodworking. One could say, as a general rule, that women have no trouble with men involved in activities that don't normally interest women, so long as the activities are conventionally masculine, guy-stuff things.

There's a flip side to this, however. Women have a much harder time accepting men who are involved in interests or activities that appeal mostly to males yet at the same time are perceived as not fully masculine. Examples would include Star Trek, science fiction in general, Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games, certain video games (especially Warcraft and its ilk), Lord of the Rings and other forms of fantasy, and (somewhat paradoxically) military history and especially re-enactments. Given this, it should come as no surprise that the percentage of men who are single and unattached at, for example, a Star Trek convention is almost certainly going to be higher than the single and unattached percentage among a group of NFL season ticket holders.

Over the last million years or so, there has emerged a dichotomy between the Big Man, the leader of the hunting and war parties, and the Nerd, who makes the stone axes for the Big Man to use. I'm not sure that the evolution of female sexual desire has caught up with the fact that the tool-makers can make a lot of money these days.

*

"The way for women to put themselves more deeply in the guy stream is to take up golf."

My impression is that males are most fanatical about golf from their mid-20s through about age 40 -- i.e., prime marrying years for middle class white guys. Golfers tend to be closer to the Big Man than the Nerd pole, but not so much so that they are too masculine to be housebroken. So, they are good husband prospects, but you seldom see women much shy of menopause taking up golf as a way to put themselves around a lot of potential husbands.

*

If you have spent any time at these dating websites, some very interesting trends stand out which are a better reflection of who we are and what we think than the PC inflicted world we live in.

For example, white women with children are more likely to state their preference for a white man than white women with no children who usually do not specify the ethnicity in their preferences.

So dating non-white men is considered 'risky behavior' by white women when they have children! Overweight white women are more likely to be open to all ethnicities than average weight white women while really overweight white women usually put down black men or sometimes even hispanic men as their preferred mate. So Black men are more open to over weight white women than white men!

I am no social scientist but some very clear trends emerge from the preference section of these dating websites. Someone with more time needs to do some number crunching and figure out this data. It will be an interesting read.

Good idea. I'm not sure, however, that my wife would be as enthusiastic about my personally doing the research, so I will cede this opportunity to whichever of my readers is interested.

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

Dating advice

Readers have lots more to say (lots more than I have to say on the subject, having been happily removed from it for eons):

Your statement that political opinions are fashion statements for women has clarified a few things for me. It has also cleared up why working in women only public sector PR offices - as I do - is like working in a one party state. It is not that they do not get other arguments. It is that they think other arguments are superfluous when placed against the need to fit in. It is social intelligence of a high order – or intellectual corruption depending how you look at it.

I remember becoming aware of this when a co-worker insisted on imposing Fairtrade coffee on the rest of the office. I attempted to get her into an argument about the merits of Fairtrade…bogus economics, unfair on other coffee farmers, tendentious reasoning etc etc. She was just puzzled that anyone would ever want to argue about it. There was a general consensus that it was a good and fashionable thing and the details are irrelevant.

*

My experience in the undergraduate dating scene, such as it is, has been that Feynman's admonition against paying compliments to women is somewhat outmoded. He was writing at a time when chivalrous traditions in America were still relatively strong, everyone thought that the way to woo and wed was trhough whispering sweet nothings. Not to be melodramatic but today chivalry is dead or at least in a persistent vegetative state. What this means for the women in my social circle is that they almost never receive compliments from men. I noticed this and have found that when I do issue a compliment they are remarkably greatful. Obviously compliments alone don't do it, you have to show enough 'machismo' to be in the game, but their rarity has allowed compliments to regain a certain amount of value today. In sometimes competitive situations you have to operate by means of the law of reverse public opinion, if everyone is trying to attain a goal by one means, try to attain it through a different way. The path will be less crowded.

*

I have been doing my own research into dating, romance, seduction etc. and have come across a whole lot of material that backs up the be-a-jerk-and-the-women-will-flock-to-you theory. But even though most of my sources site this as a successful strategy, I think they are only half right and, more often than not, lead men to get things totally wrong.

My theory is that the reason bad boys get the girls is not that they are bad per sé, but that they are totally confident and have respect for themselves. I believe this is mostly because they are stupid and unreflective. Since they have no idea how worthless they are, they can act in the world with total self assuredness.

I think it is the confidence and self respect that women are attracted to, whether it is in bad boys, football stars, actors, presidents, tycoons, princes, or whatever.

If you tell an introspective nerd that he needs to be a bad boy to get the girl, Ithe plan will probably blow up in his face. I'd bet most women will easily see through this because all you've done is change what men see (i.e. the physical and tangible) and not what women see (i.e. that which is implied).

This could also be why when looking for a used motorcycle there tend to be a disproportionate number of nearly new Harleys for sale.

*

That letter from the woman whose single brother was into mountain biking and vintage tractors got me thinking ... in my experience, men who are involved in stereotypically male-oriented hobbies and activities don't seem to have any particular difficulty finding women. These would include things like sports, cars, outdoor recreation, and manual crafts such as woodworking. One could say, as a general rule, that women have no trouble with men involved in activities that don't normally interest women, so long as the activities are conventionally masculine, guy-stuff things.

There's a flip side to this, however. Women have a much harder time accepting men who are involved in interests or activities that appeal mostly to males yet at the same time are perceived as not fully masculine. Examples would include Star Trek, science fiction in general, Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games, certain video games (especially Warcraft and its ilk), Lord of the Rings and other forms of fantasy, and (somewhat paradoxically) military history and especially re-enactments. Given this, it should come as no surprise that the percentage of men who are single and unattached at, for example, a Star Trek convention is almost certainly going to be higher than the single and unattached percentage among a group of NFL season ticket holders.

Over the last million years or so, there has emerged a dichotomy between the Big Man, the leader of the hunting and war parties, and the Nerd, who makes the stone axes for the Big Man to use. I'm not sure that the evolution of female sexual desire has caught up with the fact that the tool-makers can make a lot of money these days.

*

"The way for women to put themselves more deeply in the guy stream is to take up golf."

My impression is that males are most fanatical about golf from their mid-20s through about age 40 -- i.e., prime marrying years for middle class white guys. Golfers tend to be closer to the Big Man than the Nerd pole, but not so much so that they are too masculine to be housebroken. So, they are good husband prospects, but you seldom see women much shy of menopause taking up golf as a way to put themselves around a lot of potential husbands.

*

If you have spent any time at these dating websites, some very interesting trends stand out which are a better reflection of who we are and what we think than the PC inflicted world we live in.

For example, white women with children are more likely to state their preference for a white man than white women with no children who usually do not specify the ethnicity in their preferences.

So dating non-white men is considered 'risky behavior' by white women when they have children! Overweight white women are more likely to be open to all ethnicities than average weight white women while really overweight white women usually put down black men or sometimes even hispanic men as their preferred mate. So Black men are more open to over weight white women than white men!

I am no social scientist but some very clear trends emerge from the preference section of these dating websites. Someone with more time needs to do some number crunching and figure out this data. It will be an interesting read.

Good idea. I'm not sure, however, that my wife would be as enthusiastic about my personally doing the research, so I will cede this opportunity to whichever of my readers is interested.

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

Declaring war on Iran?

A reader writes:

I agree with you 100%. But I think war with Iran really would be different from the other recent failures to declare war.

Congress has managed to get out of its obligation to declare war in part because the post-WWII operations of the American military were - ostensibly or actually - either small operations not worth dignifying with the name of "war" (e.g., Grenada), or defensive operations undertaken pursuant to treaty obligations and/or explicit acts of Congress (e.g., Vietnam), or authorized by a supra-national body such that they arguably were *not* wars in a legal sense, but police actions (e.g., Korea, the first Iraq war).

The second Iraq war was an exception to the above, in that the United States initiated an aggressive attack on another country without either an explicit declaration of war or an emergency that required rapid response by the executive branch or an explicit authorization from a supra-national body to conduct a police action. But we could still rope Iraq back into the familiar categories under which Presidents have initiated hostilities by pointing out that America had been continuously in action in Iraq between 1991 and 2003 (enforcing the No-Fly Zone, for instance), and that Iraq had violated the terms of the 1991 cease-fire in a variety of ways, such that America still (arguably) had the authority to take action to enforce the terms of that cease-fire. Given those unique conditions, perhaps an "authorization" to use force such as Congress *did* pass was sufficient constitutional warrant for Executive action. This might seem tenuous, but it's not nothing.

Kossovo and, ironically, Afghanistan are much tougher to bring under the rubric of "traditional" exceptions. The war in Kossovo was not authorized by the U.N., and hence was not a police action; it was not a response to aggression against a NATO state, and hence was not pursuant to a treaty obligation, so the fact that it was a collective action on the part of the NATO alliance does nothing to add to its legal justification. As the legislature never declared war on Serbia, the Kossovo war was most likely unconstitutional. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, America - quite rightly - went to war in response to a surprise attack on American soils, and on civilians to boot. The war was about as just a war as could be imagined - but it was not undertaken in a constitutional manner because there was no declaration of war, when we were plainly *going* to war and there was plenty of time to issue a declaration. I note in this regard that President Bush was widely quoted at the time as having "declared war" on September 11th - by which he seems to have meant that he "recognized" that a state of war "existed" because we were attacked, but be that as it may: he used the language that the constitution explicitly reserves for the legislature.

War with Iran would mean crossing the last bridge, and would mean the final Caesarian transformation of the American Republic. There is, as you say, no chance that Congress would declare war on Iran. (Any "use of force" authorization by Congress would give them plausible deniability and hence would constitute an evasion of their constitutional responsibility, as you note; Congresscritters could perfectly well claim after the fact that they did *not* vote for war, but only to give the President the "freedom of action" to go to war *if necessary* which, the Congresscritters could assure us, the Congress had confidently hoped would be sufficient to *avert* war!)

There is also no chance that such an attack would be authorized by the U.N. as a police action, and hence (arguably) not require a formal declaration of war by Congress, but only an authorization to use force (since, after all, in such circumstances, there arguably was no state of war between America and the country in question, but rather a state of outlawry on the part of the country in question, with America playing the part of the head of the posse bringing the miscreant to justice). There is also no chance that the President could honestly articulate a reasonable justification for hasty action in the face of an imminent threat such as would leave no time for him to obtain a declaration from Congress. Hence, if we do attack Iran, a precedent will have been set that the President can go to war whenever and wherever he wants, without any authorization from anyone.

As it happens, I don't think we're going to war with Iran. I think Bush would face actual, public insubordination if he tried it. I also think he doesn't have time before November, and he won't have a compliant Congress after that to give him a fig-leaf of authorization. But I do agree that an undeclared war against Iran would be unconstitutional - and more plainly so than the other undeclared wars of the last 60 years.

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

USA Today on the Republican-Democrat gaps in marriage and fertility

Reporter Dennis Cauchon of USA Today called me last week and we spoke for close to an hour about my work on the correlation between affordable family formation and voting. His twin articles on the marriage gap and fertility gap are up today, although he doesn't see fit to mention my name. Good stuff, nonetheless:

Marriage gap could sway elections

•Republicans control 49 of the 50 districts with the highest rates of married people.

•Democrats represent all 50 districts that have the highest rates of adults who have never married.

The political tug-of-war is between people who are married and those who have never been.

The “never married” group covers a variety of groups who form the Democratic base: young people, those who marry late in life, single parents, gays, and heterosexuals who live together.

The marriage divide drew attention in the 2004 presidential race. President Bush beat John Kerry by 15 percentage points among married people and lost by 18 percentage points among unmarried people, according to an exit poll conducted by national news media organizations.

Most serious Democratic challenges this fall are in Republican-controlled House districts that have lower marriage rates.

For example, the two seats most likely to switch from Republican to Democratic are Arizona's 8th District and Colorado's 7th District, according to the non-partisan National Journal. The districts — in which Republican incumbents are not seeking re-election — rank 251st and 307th respectively in marriage rates among the 435 districts.

Of the five Republicans who have the lowest rates of married people in their districts, four are in tough battles with Democrats. On the other side, Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., whose district has a high marriage rate, faces a strong GOP challenge.

Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., whose district has the highest marriage rate (66.1%), says the gap exists because “people get more conservative when they settle down.” Democratic pollster Mark Mellman says the gap is magnified because a greater percentage of married people vote than unmarried people.

[More, including tables of Congressmen with the most and least married constituents. Tom Tancredo has the fourth most-married residents. Most of the least-married Congressmen are blacks who represent districts gerrymandered under the Voting Rights Act to elect blacks. An important exception is Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.]

'Fertility gap' helps explain political divide

GOP Congress members represent 39.2 million children younger than 18, about 7 million more than Democrats. Republicans average 7,000 more children per district.

Many Democrats represent areas that have many single people and relatively few children. Democratic districts that have large numbers of children tend to be predominantly Hispanic or, to a lesser extent, African-American.

This "fertility gap" is crucial to understanding the differences between liberals and conservatives, says Arthur Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. These childbearing patterns shape divisions over issues such as welfare, education and child tax credits, he says.

"Both sides are very pro-kids. They just express it in different ways," Brooks says. "Republicans are congenial to traditional families, which is clearly the best way for kids to grow up. But there are some kids who don't have that advantage, and Democrats are very concerned with helping those kids."

Children in Democratic districts are far more likely to live in poverty and with single parents than kids in GOP districts.

Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y., has 227,246 children in his Bronx district, the 10th most in the House. Only 29% of those children live with married parents.

By contrast, 84% of children live with married parents in Cannon's central Utah district.

... Marriage and parenthood define what's different about Democratic and Republican districts even more clearly than race, income, education or geography, USA TODAY's analysis of Census data found.

For example, Republicans represent seven of the 50 districts that have the highest concentrations of blacks. Both parties are well represented among affluent and well-educated districts.

Democrats control only one of the 50 districts with the highest marriage rates.

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who represents the most-married

... Pelosi says in speeches that her most important concern is "the children, the children, the children," says her spokesman, Drew Hammill. That's why she wants to raise the minimum wage to help low-income parents, he says.

The stay-at-home mom is uncommon in all congressional districts. Mothers work at the same rate — about 71% — in Republican and Democratic districts.

Nevertheless, a big difference in family life is clear:

• Democrats represent 59 districts in which less than half of adults are married. Republicans represent only two.

• Democrats represent 30 districts in which less than half of children live with married parents. Republicans represent none.

"The biggest gaps in American politics are religion, race and marital status," says Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg. [More]

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

The War Nerd on Afghanistan

Gary Brecher writes:

If your exterminator says he just killed 200 rats down in the basement, is that good news or bad news?

On the one hand, it's good those rats are dead. On the other hand, I thought we got rid of them years ago, and now there's hundreds? What's going on?

That's the Big Question everyone should be asking in Afghanistan. NATO's claiming we killed 500 Taliban near Kandahar this month. That's a mighty impressive body count, sure, but if Nam taught us one thing, it's that body counts are a bad sign. For all sorts of reasons, starting with basic common sense: if we're killing that many, how many more are running around out there? ...

We were spoiled by initial success in Afghanistan; we got the Taliban down and then just stopped paying attention. Dunno if you remember this far back, but after 9/11, when it was obvious we had to go in there and root out Osama, everybody was saying Afghanistan was unwinnable, "the graveyard of empires," etc. And the campaign seemed to stall at first, till we took Mazar-I-Sharif and sent the Northern Alliance rolling into Kabul. Boom, game over, victory party, let's go home.

Except the new wars just don't work that way. The tough part was really just beginning. The biggest problem once we took Kabul was tribal. Reporters are always calling the Taliban "Islamic extremists," but it's way simpler than that: the Talibs are Pushtun, and our allies in the Northern Alliance were their old tribal enemies the Tajiks, Uzbeks and a few free-agent Hazaras.

The Pushtun are the biggest tribe in the country, if you can call it that, by far. Afghanistan is 42% Pushtun, and the second-biggest group, the Tajiks, are only 27%. Pushtuns are -- now how can I say this nicely? -- insane. The craziest Taliban rules, like demanding every man have a beard that was at least ZZ Top length, aren't Mohammed's rules; they're just Pushtun tribal ways.

It's like if the Baptists took over in Fresno, they'd make it God's rule that every guy had to have an extended cab on his pickup, and if you asked where in Scripture it says that, they'd shoot you. That's the Pushtun way: total tribal insanity, all the time. They're so "sexist" that feminists might like them, because they don't even think of women as "sex objects." To a Pushtun guy, nine-year-old boys are the sexiest thing on earth.

Professor Victor Davis Hanson might approve, because from what I've read, his classical Greek heroes felt the same way. The Pushtuns are so classical that to them, women are just labor-saving and baby-making machines.

And never mind peace; these Pushtuns may be gay but they sure ain't sissies. They love making war, and they're real good at it.

Also, they don't get the whole "literacy" thing. They're not interested in becoming entrepreneurs or learning self-esteem or personal hygiene or compassion or any of that crap. And let's be honest, the joy they felt running around Central Asia blowing up Buddhas and blasting infidels is the same joy a frat boy feels running around a 10-kegger party with a bra on his head. It's pure fun 'n joy, Pushtun-style.

So once we'd taken Afghanistan we had this leftover problem, which was that nearly half the population consisted of these lunatics who had no stake in "peace," didn't want "peace," and thought "peace" was a lot of newfangled nonsense only fit for heterosexuals, foreigners, and assorted sissies. Especially because "peace" came to their town on tanks and APCs driven by their old enemies the Tajiks and Uzbeks.

Worse yet, right behind those tanks came American do-gooders whose idea of pacifying the Pushtun was doing incredibly naive stuff like starting a TV news show with female anchorpersons or whatever you call them. I'm not making this up. First thing the US occupation officials did in Kabul was start a news station with some 19-year-old Pushtun girl as anchor. That was our idea of winning hearts and minds. That's what was going to calm down those bearded angry dudes: seeing a perfectly saleable daughter telling them the news, as if she was the one laying down the law.

I get tired of having to say it, but: not everybody thinks like we think. Not everybody wants what we want. The Pushtun want (a) somebody to kill; (b) women kept in their place, which is somewhere between the clay oven and the livestock; (c) nobody reminding them that there are other ways to live. [More]

Ah, the Pushtuns (a.k.a., Pashtuns, Pathans)! Life just wouldn't be the same without them.

I've used it before, but here's a quote from Churchill's great memoir for boys, My Early Life: A Roving Commission, about his experience in the 1890s in a punitive expedition against the Pushtuns near the Khyber Pass:

Except at harvest time, when self-preservation enjoins a temporary truce, the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician, and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress made, it is true, only of sunbaked clay, but with battlements, turrets, loopholes, flanking towers, drawbridges, etc., complete. Every village has its defense. Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud. The numerous tribes and combination of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one another. Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid… The life of the Pathan is thus full of interest…

Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts; the breech-loading rifle and the British Government. The first was an enormous luxury and blessing; the second, an unmitigated nuisance. The convenience of the breech-loading, and still more of the magazine, rifle was nowhere more appreciated than in the Indian highlands. A weapon which could kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it. One could actually remain in one's own house and fire at one's neighbor nearly a mile away.

One of the oddities of cultural anthropology is that, despite 2000 miles of rough country in-between, the Pushtuns are quite similar in many ways to the desert Arabs from whom Mohammed arose.

In my reductionist way, I see Mohammed as a public-spirited reformer trying to get his fellow desert raiders to stop being so bloody awful toward each other. The problem with living in the desert is there is no law and order. Recall the early scene in "Lawrence of Arabia" when Lawrence and his Bedouin guide spot camels on the horizon, so the guide immediately drops behind the brow of a sand dune to spy out whether his fellow Bedouins are his friends or whether they would try to kill him if they caught him. The life of the Bedouin is thus full of interest.

This jihad thing is a way to turn the violence outward, thus preserving a sphere of peace at home. It's been used a thousand times down through history all over the world, and it often works fairly well.

One problem with Islam, however, is that while it tries to curb the worst excesses of desert bandit cultures, it also, sort of by osmosis, also preserves those cultures and promulgates their values to places where they aren't inevitable in the landscape. For example, Egypt had been an orderly farming nation-state for 3,500 years when the Arabs showed up with their desert religion.

A reader writes:

In contrast to the silly ideas of people like Dawkins and Dennett, isn't this the real problem with religion, that its greatest strength, binding people together to do good, also shades into its greatest liability? Given what human nature is, you can only make people so good by preaching and teaching. Given also that the best way to make people get along is to have them fight a common external enemy, isn't any group or ideology that tries to make people good going to be tempted to take the easy way out and have its members go out an fight some common enemy?

Example. We've all heard of something called the Crusades. But what we seldom hear about is the Peace and Truce of God movement. During the Early Middle Ages the Pope spent massive amounts of energy across centuries trying to keep the warring rulers/thugs across Europe from fighting their fellow Christians. [The Peace of God exempted clergy, peasants, widows, and virgins from attack. The Truce of God required warriors to take weekends off, and ultimately reduced the number of legal fighting days per year to 80.]

Needless to say this was a lot more in keeping with the actual teachings of Christianity than Crusading, but, human beings being what human beings are, it was almost a complete failure. Then, Pope Urban II comes up with the wonderful idea of attacking the Muslims. In contrast to the reaction to Peace of God, this idea almost instantly captures the imagination of all Western Europe. While it didn't completely stamp out fighting among the Christian rulers, it did reduce it by quite a bit. Given the anti-religious polemics of our time, we tend to hear a lot about the Crusades and the wickedness of religious warfare, but we hear almost nothing about the much more massive efforts the papacy put behind its Peace of God initiative.

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