The single largest problem posed by global warming would be if the seas rose and increasingly inundated Bangladesh, an extremely densely populated (current population 156 million) and low-lying region long vulnerable to typhoons (e.g., George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh). One obvious way to mitigate this vulnerability would be to increasingly encourage Bangladeshis to use birth control.
Similarly, one of the most obvious causes of increased carbon emissions is mass immigration from the Third World to the First World (e.g., from Mexico to America). So, more stringent restrictions on immigration would be an obvious policy implication.
Somehow, though, I don't think Al Gore has ever gotten around to mentioning either of these bits of logic.
If Global Warming is such an all important topic, then surely these simple steps for mitigating it should be on the table, surely. And yet, they just never seem to come up. It's not so much as that they've been rejected as that they simply are, literally, unthinkable.
Similarly, one of the most obvious causes of increased carbon emissions is mass immigration from the Third World to the First World (e.g., from Mexico to America). So, more stringent restrictions on immigration would be an obvious policy implication.
Somehow, though, I don't think Al Gore has ever gotten around to mentioning either of these bits of logic.
If Global Warming is such an all important topic, then surely these simple steps for mitigating it should be on the table, surely. And yet, they just never seem to come up. It's not so much as that they've been rejected as that they simply are, literally, unthinkable.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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73 comments:
"Gloabal warming" has always been about bashing whitey.
Why do you think the Kyoto Protocol exempts nations like China (now the world's largest carbon emitter) and India? The obvious consequence of such a treaty is that carbon-intensive manufacturing will be shifted to such places, resulting in a massive transfer of wealth.
Heck, the total carbon emissions might end up being higher once you factor in the emissions from shipping more goods out of the third world.
By the way, the total land area in Bangla Desh has been increasing lately.
I encourage everyone here to go to climateaudit.org, which is kind of like the GNXP of the climate change debate.
People in Bangladesh are already using birth control. The birth rate has dropped every year since 2005. Lefties do push birth control and abortion in the third world - it's about "empowering" women. It's the religious right wing that's encouraging "browney" to have as many kids as possible.
Nuclear power would have a much greater impact on reducing global warming than stopping immigration. That's the real blind spot the left refuses to deal with.
Immigration is self-evidently a disaster for the environment even if there is no global warming. More people on finite land can never be a good thing. So the environmentalist hypocrisy on immigration is something we've known for a long, long time.
In case you are actually concerned about global warming the guys over at www.climateaudit.org are working hard at exposing the lies & misrepresentations involved in its promotion.
But to your point: This is just another of the inherent contradictions of liberalism, a political philosophy based on emotion.
Birth control for Bangladesh?
Tiny Bangladesh: 156 million, per capita gdp$1,500
population growing
Giant Russia: 145 million, per capita gdp $15,800
loses 800,000 people a year
What is it about the culture in Bangladesh that makes them want to live so much?
What is it about Russian culture that it has more abortions that births?
Obviously Russia has the resources to grow, yet it isn't. Bangladesh doesn't, but it is.
Maybe Bangladeshies should do what people always do when they find themselves in a bad place, leave.
Plenty of space in Russia, where the culture is committing suicide. Survival of the fittest.
"It's the religious right wing that's encouraging 'browney' to have as many kids as possible."
Exactly. Some traditionalists love to put stock in "old time religion." They shouldn't. Old time religion is just Liberalism 1.0. Why did Holy Mother Russia fall so hard for the commies? Think, think, think about this.
How about dike and damns.
What "Global Warming" needs is some comedy relief (and stop calling me Shirly). Hopefully Mike Judge's latest will help move that along.
Razib just had a post up on GNXP showing that Bangladeshis have a very low desired fertility rate. The problem is they also have a very high unmet need for contraception.
Here's a report showing that 90% of couples in Bangladesh with more than 3 living children do not desire another child, but 50% of such couples are not using contraceptives.
This was an issue in the Sierra Club some years ago. Then the Sierra Club got bought out. VDare has an article or 2 on it.
Ever since 1945, we should have made foreign aid to the third world contigent on birth control.
"It's the religious right wing that's encouraging 'browney' to have as many kids as possible."
The religious right is also encouraging whitey to have as many kids as possible. It seems to work better in some places than in others. I'm guessing the majority of whites with large families are religious Americans. I wonder how many secular white people in Europe have five children or more.
Generally the most successful of a species manages to outbreed the less able.
We humans are too smart for that.
I've been asking this question for a few years now.
Next time someone tells you we have to take drastic steps to reduce US carbon emissions by 50% or more by mid-century, ask them if they think it's still a good idea to grow our poupulation by 50% at the same time, almost exclusively through immigration (which is the Pew Research Center's estimate of US demographic patterns over the next four decades, based on current policies and trends).
And if they say that we should do everything in our power to reduce our energy consumption right away, no matter what the cost, point out that deportation of the estimated 15 million individuals residing here illegally (and their co-dependents) would result in a short-term 5% reduction in US carbon footprint. Long-term reductions would be even greater.
Time to force these folks to choose between their supposed priorities.
From the perspective of a 'global citizen,' neither step is acceptable. From the perspective of any universalist viewpoint, even one decidedly non-liberal, e.g. Christianity in the form of Roman Catholicism, both steps are more akin to acts of war --permissible but to be avoided if possible.
Real mitigation, real lessening of the ill effects of Global Warming such as it's claimed, is obvious: everyone, all together now, (1) cut emissions and (2) move towards the poles. The first won't happen because the emerging third world economies won't agree to it --can't agree to it. And the second won't happen for similar reasons.
I blame Canada.
My very good Very Good Liberal friend was weeping and gnashing his teeth about the global warming and the fate of the Bangladeshis.
I noted that the Dutch were building polders in the 11th century or whenever, and that with some fairly modern equipment, and a large and underutilized labor force, Bangladesh ought to be able to do something to protect themselves in a similar fashion. and that they only had 40 or 60 years to do so, so they'd better get crackin'.
I got that look that occurs when a trillion neurons start rioting in spasms of cognitive dissonance. Then his VGL id showed itself when he said something like, 'well the Dutch are a very accomplished people, and I'm not sure that the Bangladeshis could do that'.
I noted his soft bigotry of low expectations, and gently called him a racist. Exceptionally satisfying when a VGL steps into a trap like that.
Does anyone know why something like this wouldn't be technically possible? Seems like it's not that big of a place, you could build seawalls, etc. I imagine the West would chip in for a project like that.
The third leg of the global warming problem is that there are about two billion people in rapidly developing China and India who will want to live a life style similar to that of westerners with its attendent energy usage, consumption and waste.
U.S. leftists are already the biggest pushers of Third World birth control, as Peter notes, and have been since at least the 1960s. They may not link it with global warming, but if the idea ever occurred to them, they surely would.
"How about dike and damns."
Amen to that. Nothing like a good, strong and stout dyke. Not all that pretty, but they sure do get the job done.
Here is an editorial by two "professors of family planning" employed by British universities moaning about Britain's fertility rate of 1.7 children per woman being far too high:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/25/population.health
By contrast, although they are in favor of reducing population growth in the Third World as well they not that a child born to parents in Ethiopia will be 160 times less damaging to The Environment than one born in Britain. And that's all that matters.
Birth control would do nothing for Bangladeshi fertility rates -- there's actually experimental evidence for once in social science.
A bunch of population control people went to two areas in Bangladesh that were matched as closely as possible for important variables. One was left alone but had their fertility rate tracked. The other was inundated with birth control education, free birth control, the whole nine yards -- a pop control person's wet dream.
At the end of the study period, the area inundated with birth control stuff showed a lower fertility rate -- but it was no greater than the drop in the control area's fertility rate! All that free education, condoms, etc. made no difference.
This study and many others are mentioned in a review by Pritchett, "Desired fertility and the impact of population policies." Basically, if women want lots of children, they'll have lots of children -- no matter how freely available birth control is, no matter how much they've been told to limit their births, etc.
What is it about the culture in Bangladesh that makes them want to live so much?
What is it about Russian culture that it has more abortions that births?The simple answer is climate. Among other things, it's very cheap to have a child in a tropical climate, it's far more expensive to raise a kid in a subarctic climate - more shelter, more clothes, fuel, more difficult to procure nutritious food, etc.
There is no question that global warming is a convenient issue for the left to focus on exclusivly because it allows them to avoid talking about the main underlying problem which is overpopulation. When whites were breeding and doing all of the environmental damage it was still un PC to talk about these issues. Now that people of color are doing all of the marginal damage to the environment it has become a sticky wicket.
"Anonymous said...
Ever since 1945, we should have made foreign aid to the third world contigent on birth control."
Since 1945 we should have distributed NO foreign aid. Foreign aid has allowed Africa's population to balloon, despite famines, wars, and plagues.
"James Kabala said...
U.S. leftists are already the biggest pushers of Third World birth control, as Peter notes, and have been since at least the 1960s. They may not link it with global warming, but if the idea ever occurred to them, they surely would."
Yes, the left's campaign against overpopulation has been as successful as thier various campaigns against poverty. Which is to say - not at all.
I encourage everyone here to go to climateaudit.org, which is kind of like the GNXP of the climate change debate.
I take that as an indirect insult to GNXP. While liberals continually disregard the opinions of experts in relevant scientific fields in regards to questions of human biodiversity, conservatives do the same with climatology. Nonetheless, while liberals are willing to acknowledge anthropogenic climate change as a real environmental problem, they continually ignore overpopulation an environmental issue as it is ideologically problematic for its political implications on immigration policy.
As previously mentioned, The Sierra Clubs change in attitude on immigration policy was essentially bought by hedge-fund billionaire David Gelbaum, who is married to a Mexican-American women.
Overpopulation and biological inequality are the 2 big taboos in public discourse in our modern liberal democracies. Discussing either honestly will get you expelled from polite society.
B.B.
The reason for the seeming contradiction is that liberals have a hierarchy of values. Their values are:
1. Their own personal safety and wealth.
2. Non-discrimination.
3. Various pet causes: Global warming, save Darfur, save the whales, etc.
Normal people have a different set of values. For one thing, survival of the people and the nation are on the list.
Liberals don't have a problem with fighting population growth, though that item is substantially lower on their list than it was 20 years ago. They just don't mention it in the context of the USA, because it gets in the way of the more important goal of destroying white culture and white people.
Even the old Zero Population Growth (now called Population Connection) has stopped addressing population growth due to immigration. They will not mention it, will not fight it, even though it is the one single aspect of population that Americans have absolute control over.
Old time religion is just Liberalism 1.0. Why did Holy Mother Russia fall so hard for the commies? Think, think, think about this.
Religion has nearly as many interpretations as it has interpreters. Why did Holy Mother America not fall so hard for the commies? Why, in fact, has America - more religious than nearly anyplace in Europe - fallen less hard for socialism than Europe has?
Generally the most successful of a species manages to outbreed the less able.
In some ways we are more successful, except in the most important, that being the fact that we require more energy per person than they do. Critters requiring less energy to reproduce themselves, whether the need is real or perceived, will generally breed at a far higher rate than those who require more energy. The solution for the West will be when we accept less expensive lifestyles. Hopefully the current economy is leading us in that direction.
They may not link it with global warming, but if the idea ever occurred to them, they surely would.
You really think the idea hasn't occurred to them, over and over, in the form of conservatives mentioning population growth via immigration to them. That's why they don't mention it.
I imagine the West would chip in for a project like that.
No, the West will wait until we're suddenly "forced" to import 200 million Bangladeshis. That's why such a project hasn't been mentioned.
I'm guessing the majority of whites with large families are religious Americans.
Off topic, but Razib posted some graphs the other day on birthrates vs. IQ for people of various ideologies, from very liberal to very conservative. Among liberals birthrates fell as IQ climbed. Among conservatives, birthrate increased with IQ. Discuss.
A rare miss, Steve.
First, as Peter and James have pointed out, overpopulation has long been one of the Left's fashionable worries. Indeed, the consensus against Bangladesh in particular and the Third World in general was so overwhelming that when P. J. O'Rourke set out to gore liberal sacred cows in All the Trouble in the World, he chose to write about Bangladesh, in a chapter that begins with "just enough of me, too many of you." Driving home his point: the chapter's most memorable line was: Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free — indeed, sanctimonious — way for "progressives" to be racists.
A powerful race card if there ever was one, and you can't blame leftists for shrinking back in fear.
Second, isn't your proposed solution akin to committing suicide to avoid getting killed? Worried about federal debts getting passed on to your kids? Just don't have kids. Problem solved!
This highlights another missed opportunity - that of allying greens with immigration restrictionists. The problem is that the anti-immigration folks also tend to be largely from that camp that seems to think it impossible for puny men to change gods creation - earth, and therefore alienate many possible allies.
I agree with the larger point: if global warming threatens the livability of the planet, perhaps the very existence of mankind, then why is unilateral economic disarmament the solution?
Such policies will drive production and jobs overseas where, as pointed out in earlier comments, they will likely create more pollution rather than less. This would likely lead to trade wars based on both environmental and nationalist principles. Trade wars would achieve the result of lower economic output, which could certainly dampen emissions. That's a partial win for environmentalists, but it doesn't give them explicit control over emissions around the globe.
In order to achieve that goal, a more direct approach would be diplomacy followed by outright warfare. If the issue as is serious as its advocates would have us believe, paying high electric bills and driving tiny cars is not nearly enough. We must stop other nations from endangering the planet, just as surely as we must stop ourselves.
Of course, if it's not that serious, or if nobody really knows, then let's not ruin our own standard of living based on incomplete information.
As far as overpopulation...
The problem is not an overabundance of births. The problem is a lack of deaths. Fertility is a natural state, extending life is not.
We cannot expect 3rd world countries to use birth control as a means to limit their growth. Nor should we expect that we can limit their growth by pouring millions of private and public monies to save them from starvation and disease.
But Mr. Sailer is right, there has been a huge disconnect between the global warming scare and overpopulation. The habits identified as increasing global warming are the same habits we encourage the rest of the world to adopt. And Gore, and those like him, simply ignore that fact.
A Green argument should be focusing on keeping people in poverty if they want to be successful - reaching their goal of less CO2.
When something breaks, it gets fixed.American society's problems with immigration are just beginning to bring it to the breaking point. I expect a national dialogue on immigration and national destiny to commence rather soon; the demise of California is just too obvious and obnoxious.
I'm just worried that the next Concert for Bangladesh will be an acoustic show without George Harrison. I mean, George Harrison is dead, but more importantly, with the sea level rising, I'd be worried about electrical shorts.
Just sayin, not specifically trying to be tactless.
"Why do you think the Kyoto Protocol exempts nations like China (now the world's largest carbon emitter) and India? "How about a different answer than bashing whitey (not that there's anything wrong with that). How about, because the left-wing/environweenies are scared of people that don't suck up to them like whitey does (present company excepted, of course)? They have not even come to China to talk their crap to the government or Chinese business. Why? They would be told to go to hell.
I'm not sure what the Indians would say. They aren't as tough and smart as the Chinese. I think the conversation would go: "Tank you veddy much sir. Now, everyone over to my place for blueberry squishies and microwave burritos!"
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"Nuclear power would have a much greater impact on reducing global warming than stopping immigration" ... if there were such a thing as global warming, then, yes indeed.
"Immigration is self-evidently a disaster for the environment even if there is no global warming. " Absolutely!
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"Maybe Bangladeshies should do what people always do when they find themselves in a bad place, leave.
Plenty of space in Russia, where the culture is committing suicide."There's a mighty big mountain range in between, unfortunately - hell of a trek over the roof of the world. Oh, and the Russians have more nukes and guns. Plus, why leave before the next (acoustic and non-George-Harrison-featuring) Concert for Bangladesh?
Steve Sailer says:
One obvious way to mitigate this vulnerability would be to increasingly encourage Bangladeshis to use birth control.
If Global Warming is such an all important topic, then surely these simple steps for mitigating it should be on the table, surely.Not to sound finicky but Steve you are using the wrong word in describing human behavioural changes as "mitigation". Generally AGW responses boil down to:
- mitigation: changing our ecological profile. Usually by reducing carbon source outputs or increasing carbon sink inputs.
- adaptation: changing our sociological responses. Usually "to reduce the vulnerability of natural and human systems against actual or expected climate change effects".
Population control in Bangladesh is obviously mostly adaptive since the Banglas have very small carbon footprint to begin with.
Reducing immigration from low-carbon to high-carbon jurisdictions is largely mitigative as it constrains sources of carbon outputs.
Obviously there are occasions when a policy can be both mitigating and adapting. Thus the PRC's one-child policy mitigated CC by reducing carbon outputs. But it also adapted to CC by reducing the population who might otherwise have crowded into vulnerable coastal cities.
My own view is that the only way to avoid a polar ice-cap melt down is for the OECD to pay the BRIC countries to install wind, solar and nuclear power plants, financed by a massive carbon tax.
SOmehow the political will for this seems lacking. Although I greatly respect the PRC for its political intelligence and generally responsible behaviour. That govt's one-child policy has certainly been the single most effective CC initiative.
"U.S. leftists are already the biggest pushers of Third World birth control, as Peter notes, and have been since at least the 1960s."
Well at least they've managed to get something right.
The real problem though, is that both liberals and religious conservatives don't have a sense of balance. It's either "breed baby breed," or "die, baby die," rather than "lets all try to aim for 2.1."
Nothing sanctimonous about striving for balance.
At the oil and energy blog The Oil Drum people do discuss the need to do population control and population size reduction due to resource depletion and environmental impacts of the huge and growing human population.
Loads of environmentalists already support measures to reduce population growth in the third world as a way to stem climate change. Look up "Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble" by Brown. These people aren't retarded; you would do yourselves some good to actually read opposing views.
Also Bangladesh has undergone some cultural changes recently. The micro-financing company that Muhammad Yunus set up to spur development in Bangladesh promotes many social changes such as empowering women and encouraging women to have smaller happier families.
I googled and found this page
http://www.racjonalista.pl/kk.php/s,2441
The Reagan administration, overwhelmingly the most Catholic in American history, proceeded to further the agenda of the Vatican. [ 19 ] First, Reagan took the unprecedented step of granting formal diplomatic recognition to the Holy See, headquarters of the Catholic Church at the Vatican, and shortly thereafter, in 1984, instituted the „Mexico City policy," reversing U.S. commitment to international family planning. He withdrew funding from both the U.N. Population Fund and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, [ 20 ] a policy later endorsed by the first President Bush, and now reinstated under George W. Bush.
http://www.therationalist.net
By the way some of these posters are scary...
From Gapminder: the miracle of Bangladesh.
Religion has nearly as many interpretations as it has interpreters. Why did Holy Mother America not fall so hard for the commies? Why, in fact, has America - more religious than nearly anyplace in Europe - fallen less hard for socialism than Europe has?Why has America fallen harder for anti-racism than any other place on earth?
B.B.
Please do take a look at Climate Audit. If you are interested in statistics and can mess around with R, all of their source code and datasets are downloadable and executable. They are truth seekers, not crazies.
In reference to your cite, I wouldn't call the people at Climate Audit "conservatives" any more than I would call Steve Sailer or GNXP "racists". Popular discourse attempts to put you in one of two categories -- either you are a denier/racist or a good person. But there is a third category, namely a scientist who goes where the data leads him. I believe in evolution because that is where the data leads. That means I don't believe in heaven and I don't believe in human neurological uniformity. So be it.
The accusations of conflict of interest also go both ways -- yes, energy companies have an interest in the climate debate, but Climate Audit is not funded by them and moroeover "climate scientists" directly benefit (research money + status) as more attention is devoted to global warming.
Finally, I encourage you to read this paper by Carleton Putnam:
www.jrbooksonline.com/PDFs/Race_and_Reason.pdf
The same tactics of creating an overnight "consensus" were used to shut down discussion of race and IQ.
Just like with stereotype threat and so many other leftist egalitarian inventions, the lie got around the world before the truth got its boots on. And even today, the number of experts in psychometrics who can state the experimental evidence for hereditaranism is far less than the number of "experts" in sociology, economics, and related fields who vociferously deny any mention of the same.
B.B. --
Here is one more example of "consensus invention":
http://agonist.org/lambert/20090510/nprs_adam_davidson_assaults_elizabeth_warren
ELIZABETH WARREN: No it is not my crisis! That is America's crisis! If people cannnot pay their credit card bills [Davidson tries to interrupt] if they cannot pay their mortgages --
DAVIDSON: But you are not in the mainstream of views on this issue. You are not --
ELIZABETH WARREN: What, if they can't pay their credit card bills the banks are gonna do fine? Who are you looking at?
DAVIDSON: The [sputters]--
ELIZABETH WARREN: Who says a bank a bank is going to survive -- Who is not worried about the fact that the Bank of America's default rate has now bumped over 10%? That's at least the latest data I saw. So the idea that we're going to somehow fix the banks and then next year or next decade we're going to start worrying about the American family just doesn't [Davidson talking over] make any sense.
DAVIDSON: The American families are not -- These issues of crucial, the essential need for credit intermediation are as close to accepted principles among every serious thinker on this topic. The view that the American family, that you hold very powerfully, is fully under assault and that there is -- and we can get into into that -- that is not accepted broad wisdom. I talk to a lot a lot a lot of left, right, center, neutral economists [and] you are the only person I've talked to in a year of covering this crisis who has a view that we have two equally acute crises: a financial crisis and a household debt crisis that is equally acute in the same kind of way. I literally don't know who else I can talk to support that view. I literally don't know anyone other than you who has that view, and you are the person [snicker] who went to Congress to oversee it and you are presenting a very, very narrow view to the American people.
ELIZABETH WARREN: I'm sorry. That is not a narrow view. What you are saying is that it is the broad view to think only about trying to save the banks [Davidson sputters] and say Hey! the American economy will recover at some point and we'll worry about the families [Davidson talking over]. I think that is the narrow view and I think I have the broad view. The broad view is that these two things are connected to each other. And the notion that you can save the banking system while the American economy goes down the tubes is just foolish.
Notice the common tactic: you are not in the mainstream, you are paranoid, you are not part of the consensus, expert opinion is against you, your analysis means nothing, give up now.
It's too repetitive a message to be an organic thing that just arose in the context of the climate change debate.
Why did Holy Mother America not fall so hard for the commies? Overt communist revolution did not occur in the US because of the accident of history called the Palmer Raids, in which 10000 anarchists were deported before they could pull a Russian Revolution in the US. Many of them subsequently went to Russia to "build socialism", with all that entails.
However, FDR's ascension was a soft communist revolution. He ruled for life until his death, just like Stalin. Dig into what actually went on during the Depression -- FDR's policies *caused* the great depression, turning a standard recession into an economy killing crisis by stealing money from the productive and forcing farmers to destroy crops to "keep prices high".
I think I finally started to understand American history when I realized that FDR's rule was basically soft communism, minus the mass killing but full of comparable deprivation.
The split with the Soviets after 1945 can be thought of as the "Anglo-Soviet split", just like the Sino-Soviet split. We have PC, they have Leninism & Stalinism, the Chinese had Maoism...but they are all taxonomically related fruits of the egalitarian tree with many common individuals.
The strategies are different but many of the features are the same.
Global Warming has all sorts of wild implications, if you take it seriously instead of using it as a stick to beat whoever you are currently arguing with.
http://anomalyuk.blogspot.com/2007/07/internationalism.html
Fortunately, nobody with any power does take it seriously - they only pretend to for support.
One of the larger displays of hypocrisy out there is how so many liberal elites really do vote with their feet for low population density. They purchase huge "ranches" out West or sprawling, gated estates back East.
--Doug
Capt. Jack said
"Religion has nearly as many interpretations as it has interpreters. Why did Holy Mother America not fall so hard for the commies? Why, in fact, has America - more religious than nearly anyplace in Europe - fallen less hard for socialism than Europe has?"
It has caught up to us now. We're a young civilization that had to conquer a continent. But now we have Obama and socialism - and this kind of thing, which is ubiquitous. (How many churches dedicated to keeping immigrants out?)
A rotten body doesn't go rotten all at once everywhere; but it all goes rotten eventually. The most vibrant neighborhoods are full of people named Jesus.
I don't see why you can't believe in both global warming and h-bd; there's scientific evidence for both.
I know people who do, but they're close-mouthed about h-bd.
Why has America fallen harder for anti-racism than any other place on earth?To understand why America and Russia both fell so hard, I strongly recommend Yuri Slezkine's book.
http://www.alumni.berkeley.edu/Alumni/Cal_Monthly/November_2004/QA-_A_conversation_with_Yuri_Slezkine.asp
A few years ago, historian Yuri Slezkine set out to write a book about the early Soviet elite. He focused on a residential building in Moscow that housed the leaders of the Soviet Union of the 1930s. When he figuratively looked inside that building, a prototype of communist living, he found that it had been occupied in large part by Jewish immigrants from the Pale of Settlement, the restricted region in which Jews were allowed to settle in the Russian Empire. In attempting to understand their internal movement, and the two other great migrations of Russian Jews in the 20th century--to the United States and Israel--he was forced to step back and examine more broadly the role of Jews in the modern age.
The result, The Jewish Century (published by Princeton University Press), has been called “a passionate and brilliant tour de force” and “an extraordinary book with continual surprises” about modernity, the 20th century, and the history of the Jews. One of Slezkine’s metaphoric points is that all of us have had to become “Jewish” in the modern age because Jews have long been urban, mobile, literate, articulate, and occupationally flexible--traits the 20th century demanded. Slezkine uses the characters and writings of Pushkin, Joyce, Proust, and the Yiddish writer Sholom Alecheim to illuminate his beautifully written book.
In your book, you say that Jews experienced three Paradises and one Hell in the 20th century. Hell of course refers to the Holocaust. What are the Paradises?These are the destinations of the three great migrations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are the two we all know about--from Eastern Europe, mostly the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, to America and to Palestine. Then there is the one I am particularly interested in: from the Pale of Settlement to the Soviet cities. Most of the Jews who stayed in Russia moved to Kiev, Kharkov, Leningrad, and Moscow, and they moved up the Soviet social ladder when they got there. This third, invisible or less visible, migration was much bigger than the one to Palestine and much more ideologically charged than the one to America. And, for the first 20 years or so of the Soviet state, it was also seen by most people involved as the most successful. But, by the end of the 20th century, it was seen by most people involved--the children and grandchildren of the original migrants--as either a tragic mistake or a non-event.
All three migrations were, in a sense, pilgrimages, and all three represented different ways of being Jewish, and of being modern, in the modern world: non-ethnic liberal statehood in the United States; secular ethnic nationalism in Israel; and communism--a world without capitalism or nationalism--in the Soviet Union. That, plus the Holocaust, of course, which stands for the dangers of not going on one of those three pilgrimages, represents much of the 20th century, I think.
Why were Jews so successful in the early Soviet state?The story of the Jews in the early Soviet Union is similar to the story of the Jews in America. That is, they were especially successful in the realms of education, journalism, medicine, and other professions that were central to the functioning of Soviet society, including science.
Jews in the Soviet Union were much more literate than any other group, they were untainted by any association with the imperial regime, and they seem to have been very enthusiastic about what the Communist Party was doing. This was to some extent a conscious commitment to ideology, but mostly it was just because there were no more legal barriers against Jews. The doors opened, and they flooded in and did exceedingly well in the 1920s and the first part of the 1930s.
My belief is that you can’t understand the second part of the Jewish story in Russia--the anti-Semitic policies, and what happens to Soviet Jews later, their desire to emigrate, for example--unless you know the first part of the story, which is mostly about amazing success.
You write that Jews were important members of both the secret police and those who ran the gulag. This was news to me.The fact was not known to me when I was growing up in the Soviet Union. Most people found out about it when they read Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. He didn’t make a point of it at the time, but he talks about the people who were running the White Sea Canal labor camps, and they were virtually all ethnic Jews.
What was your reaction?Mostly surprise, because it seemed so incongruous to those of us who thought of Jews as the primary victims and primary opponents of the Soviet regime. But later I discovered that the role of communism in modern Jewish history was tremendously important. I don’t think you can understand modern Jewish history without considering the Russian Revolution or understand communism without considering the role of the Jews.
Slezkine is half Jewish, by the way.
Waxman-Markey p.781:
“Title IV, Subtitle B, Part 2, Section 426, of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 states: ‘An eligible worker (specifically, workers who lose their jobs as a result of this measure) may receive a climate change adjustment allowance under this subsection for a period of not longer than !156 weeks!…80 percent of the monthly premium of any health insurance coverage…up to a maximum payment of $1,500 in relocation allowance…and job search expenses not exceed[ing] $1,500.’”
'Green jobs', what a crock!
Will Komment Kontrol allow me to point out that not only is there no such thing as "global warming", but that the "globe" has been cooling for eleven years now [since 1998], and that the cooling has accelerated so much in the past recent year [coincident with the sun's decision to quit making sunspots] that we are facing the very real danger of entering into a new mini-Ice Age?
Or does that observation constitute hatethought/crimespeak at iSteve?
"How about, because the left-wing/environweenies are scared of people that don't suck up to them like whitey does "
It's not so much fear as knowledge that they won't accomplish anything.
It's the same reason we are constantly reminded of black slavery in the United States (even though it is long over) compared to black slavery in Africa/the Middle East (which is still in existence and much bigger).
There is a lot of money to be made (and power to be grabbed) by bashing whitey.
"I don't see why you can't believe in both global warming and h-bd; there's scientific evidence for both."
It depends what you mean by "global warming."
If you mean that global surface temperatures have increased over the last 50-100 years, then yes there is plenty of scientific evidence.
If you mean that mankind has had some impact on those global surface temperatures, then yes, there is evidence.
If you mean that CO2 emissions will cause dangerous levels of warming, then no. There is essentially no scientific evidence. I cover this on my blog:
brazil84.wordpress.com
We're a young civilization that had to conquer a continent. But now we have Obama and socialism - and this kind of thing, which is ubiquitous. (How many churches dedicated to keeping immigrants out?)
True enough. But the most liberal churches are the most political, and they're shrinking rapidly - the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the Unitarians and so on. Despite common misperception, most fundamentalist Christian churches hardly mention politics in their services at all. I know. I've been to dozens of services in both kinds of churches.
With the liberal religions the politics is in their services and on their web pages. But, as I said, liberal religions are shrinking. Their congregations are filled with old people and eunuchs. You are more likely to hear a Pete Seeger song than to hear a baby cry; more likely (way more likely) to see a diversity poster than to see a toddler with a bag of cheerios.
Why has America fallen harder for anti-racism than any other place on earth?
Not religion, but Marxists and their useful idiots. Most of the Multicult's leaders are openly derisive of religion, at least of the traditional kind.
Religion has historically been about two things: good behavior and compassion. When a nation is rich and reasonably stable it obsesses about the caring aspects - the New Testament. When everything is going to hell it worries more about sin - the Old Testament. That's one reason why third world countries are more religiously conservative. It's not just that their populations are more superstitious, though that may be part of it. That's why Mestizo illegitimacy rates soar after relocation to America.
Lefty religionists have done their part to destroy this country - William Sloane Coffin, MLK Jr., etc. - but when all is going to hell there is good reason to remind people of the wrathful God we find in the Old Testament; a God who is very, very racist; a God who believes in kinship, who believes in nationhood, who believes in war, and who believes in sin.
U.S. leftists are already the biggest pushers of Third World birth control, as Peter notes, and have been since at least the 1960s.
Yes - Third World birth control. The vast majority of them do not, do not, do not want to slow population growth in the US - at least not by slowing immigration, and immigration is both the only aspect of population growth we have absolute political control over and that does not require authoritarian measures to change.
When something breaks, it gets fixed.American society's problems with immigration are just beginning to bring it to the breaking point. I expect a national dialogue on immigration and national destiny to commence rather soon; the demise of California is just too obvious and obnoxious.
The way the Roman Republic got fixed? The way Russia got fixed? Things don't always get fixed. Among things that frequently don't get fixed are broken countries, because the short-term costs of the solution are higher than many idiots are willing to accept.
Yeah, it would be nice if we suddenly got reasonable about immigration. But if we do, it won't be because of a "dialogue" but because of a stampede by people who have been hearing this shit for ages and whose eyes suddenly were opened. "Hey - there's a reason I don't want to live in more and more neighborhoods, even though I can't really afford to live anywhere else!" That sort of stuff. It may happen, it may happen. Let's just hope.
All I can say is that if we have to rely on our current crop of politicians for it to happen then it most certainly won't. I have never been more disturbed and disappointed in our political leadership. Not one f-ing one of them has had the balls to stand up and accept the blame for the mess he's caused. Not a damn one. And now they all want to run our healthcare industry.
And we're gunna let them do it.
Oh and again I'd like to ask: can't more people here learn how to embed an HTML link. Please, oh please? Pretty please? It ain't too tough. You'll be glad you did?
This idea that the church was 100% good but suddenly became bad in the present age is debateable. The church has has tilted left for a long time, if not since its inception. People are saying, that its just the protestant churches that are rotten, but then I think about Jesuit missionaries going around converting the Indians. The same messianism, desire for a univeral monoculture, and evident blank statism that we see today was present back then. Either you can deny it or claim that these tendencies were outweighed by good ones, but either way to say that church theology did not have elements of the things typically decried in this blog is not the truth.
The church has has tilted left for a long time, if not since its inception...going around converting the Indians...The same messianism, desire for a univeral monoculture...elements of the things typically decried in this blog.
Darn that leftist Jew named the Apostle Paul for converting Gentiles! What blank slatism, monoculturalism, and anti-nationalism he shamelessly displayed!
to say that church theology did not have elements of the things typically decried in this blog is not the truth.
You're absolutely right, but I didn't deny the church's culpability, merely the extent of that culpability.
I think it's a matter of reminding Christians that in that big thick bible of theirs there is more talk decrying sin and celebrating nationhood than there is about universalist compassion. In fact I kind of wonder if one of the reasons some lefties bash the Fundamentalists on Genesis so much is not that they want them to abandon religion so much as abandon the Old Testament and focus more on the socialistic aspects of the New Testament.
Finally, I encourage you to read this paper by Carleton Putnam:
www.jrbooksonline.com/PDFs/Race_and_Reason.pdf.
I'll check it out when I have some free time.
The same tactics of creating an overnight "consensus" were used to shut down discussion of race and IQ.
Well, apparently it completely failed because the consensus amongst psychometricians is that IQ tests are valid as shown in Snyderman and Rothman's polling.
Just like with stereotype threat and so many other leftist egalitarian inventions, the lie got around the world before the truth got its boots on. And even today, the number of experts in psychometrics who can state the experimental evidence for hereditaranism is far less than the number of "experts" in sociology, economics, and related fields who vociferously deny any mention of the same.
I would expect people in irrelevant fields of research to be wrong on scientific issues, especially when the field they work in is of questionable validity in itself (e.g. sociology).
Here is one more example of "consensus invention":
http://agonist.org/lambert/20090510/nprs_adam_davidson_assaults_elizabeth_warren
Notice the common tactic: you are not in the mainstream, you are paranoid, you are not part of the consensus, expert opinion is against you, your analysis means nothing, give up now.
It's too repetitive a message to be an organic thing that just arose in the context of the climate change debate.
It is a common tactic because people will always be illiterate in almost all fields of knowledge, with exception to their narrow professions and hobbies. But since the public holds influence on the government in democratic societies, it is important that they know the right position on scientific issues, but since it would be a futile endeavor to attempt to make everyone literate in every single field of knowledge, the only thing that can be done is to encourage the public to defer to expert opinion.
Your example of Adam Davidson is irrelevant as his claims about consensus are entirely baseless, while I did establish my claims about consensus in AGW were accurate with a hyperlink to poll data demonstrating it to be true.
Offtopic, but I am curious, are you Mencius Moldbug?
B.B.
I'm more worried about Global Cooling, which means 30 million Canadians would move to California and give us socialized medicine and gun control.
Wait, Obama is doing that anyway.
Another good blog that takes a critical look at global warming hysteria: Watts Up With That (http://wattsupwiththat.com/)
Zillions of comments on overpopulation and not a single mention of infant mortality? It's like watching blind men box, guys.
Infant mortality is at a global all-time low. 2006 was the first year since stats have been kept on the subject that fewer than 10 million children died. This is something much, much more unprecedented in human history than women being economically independent and refusing to have sex with guys like T99.
*Fewer than 10 million worldwide.*
If people would refrain from meddling, global population would stabilize by the independent actions of women. Pregnancy, birth and caring for infants is rewarding but also gruelling, painful, and humiliating. If people simply understood female experience as within the range of human experience, as opposed to existing in some kind of mystic lady world that is simultaneously super- and subhuman, they would have the following series of thoughts: huh, give enough people enough other options, and the vast majority won't choose to shit a watermelon more than 3 or 4 times in their lives. Would you? Of course not. Women are human beings just like you. We are rational and driven by self-interest, just like you. Hardly anybody is going to have 11 children if they have a stable banking system so they can save money for their old age. Hmm. We don't have a stable banking system anymore, do we.... good thing I'm pregnant.
Anonymous (I wish this blog has numbered comments or required screen names):
There's an interesting question there--what will happen to population as wealth and social stability and birth control and abortion all become available to pretty much everyone? I don't think it's obvious.
In some sense, what's happening right now in the rich countries is that there is massive selection going on for desire to have children. Only a small fraction of people seem to want a large family, most couples that have kids at all have only one or two, people tend to marry later (and if you're a woman who starts your childbearing at 35, you're just not going to have a big family), and lots of couples never have kids at all.
If this is genetic, or if it's cultural in a way that is passed reasonably well from parent to child, then I expect that we'll see a huge rebound over time. The genes or beliefs that lead you to have few or no offspring will become more and more rare, over time, and most people will be descended from couples that decided to have a large family.
If there's little or no effect passed from parent to child, then it's possible that the world population will hit a maximum and then start to fall, perhaps for a very long time. Conditions may change in such a way that having more kids is more appealing, but absent that, we may eventually have a human population in the millions. (But that will take a really long time, long enough that other technological developments will almost certainly change everything about this kind of prediction.)
Anonymous: give enough people enough other options, and the vast majority won't choose to shit a watermelon more than 3 or 4 times in their lives... good thing I'm pregnant...
And let's hope that in the coming months, you come to view the birth of that child as something just a little more profound than the shitting of a watermelon.
If not, then may I suggest adoption?
[Or maybe your entire post was sarcastic? If so, then I apologize - sometimes my sarcasm meter doesn't work very well.]
"Anonymous: give enough people enough other options, and the vast majority won't choose to shit a watermelon more than 3 or 4 times in their lives... good thing I'm pregnant..."
Shitting a watermelon? Talk about hyperbole! More like a small cantaloupe. ;>) And if you don't feel like 'shitting' your child out then you can always get a c-section instead.
I suppose this is also a good time to mention that a major reason more and more White men are turned off by modern White women (in addition to the fatness epidemic) is because of their vulgarity, their sarcasm (which is very unfeminine and unattractive), and their increasingly mannish attitudes/behavior/speech.
Lucius, your ability to understand women meter is permanently damaged, that's why you don't have one.
Global Warming is about two things only:
1.)Innumeracy
2.)Apocalypse fascination
Innumeracy - most people are poor at math. Global warming hysteria relies on that inability.
For example, this week we have another report on the danger of tropical diseases from Global Warming. This fear would evaporate if peope would just stop to calculate. I live near San Francisco. You Steve, live near Los Angeles. LA is about four degrees warmer than SF. If Global Warming actually returns, then at some point SF will be as warm as LA - maybe 50 or 100 years largely depending on whether those are four Fahrenheit or Celsius degrees.
That means that after Global Warming the malaria rate in SF will be as high as that in LA. What is the malaria rate in LA? You may ask.
Zero. The only people in LA who have malaria are those who get off a plane at LAX with it.
Most of the current hysteria stems from the famous "hockey stick" graph first shown in MBH 98. The subsequent metodological criticism of this graph involved a discussion of the misuse of principal components analysis (PCA).
This sounds tricky and esoteric but in fact the argument is simple and easy to follow. Look up PCA in Wikipedia. There is a "cookbook statistics" set of seven steps outlined. Did Michael Mann follow those steps? No he didn't (check the second step). The established procedure is calculate based on the full data set. Mann divides the data set in two. The first part becomes the handle and the second part becomes the blade. The hockey stick is an artifact of a statistical manipulation that imposes a pattern on raw data that is not there.
Don't believe me. Don't believe Steve McIntire. Don't believe the professional statisticians organization. Trust yourself. Look at the math. Its easy to see that the hockey stick is an artifact of of strange math. It is the equivalent of deducting your cat on your taxes.
ApocalismCurrently the History Channel is running a series on "After Man". This show answers the question - "How long after every human is killed will the freeways and skyscrapers stand?"
This is a popular theme on TV. Last night the SciFi Channel had a movie about polar reversal. If you missed it, don't worry its almost exactly the same as "The Day After Tommorow" or any of the many meteorite collision films - lots of destruction and death. People are strangely comforted by the prospect of natural catastrophe.
Getting people upset by the prospect of Global Warming isn't easy. It's rather like the dilemma facing hooror movie producers when all the really creepy animals had already been used. In desperation the produced "The Night of the Lepus" - attack by bunny rabbits.
All the objective measures show that the air, water, and soil are cleaner than ever before. But our ears are deafened by cries to "Save the Planet".
If the planet is in danger it is self inflicted. Environmentalism is an auto-immune disease.
"It is the equivalent of deducting your cat on your taxes."
You, uh, don't think this is going to be a problem for me, do you? I mean if anyone is a dependent, she is! Dog too!
I suppose this is also a good time to mention that a major reason more and more White men are turned off by modern White women (in addition to the fatness epidemic) is because of their vulgarity, their sarcasm (which is very unfeminine and unattractive), and their increasingly mannish attitudes/behavior/speech.Maybe I'm subconciously trying to get laid by defending the female. I can't prove that I'm not so I thought I'd just suggest it before moving on to the rest of my post...
Why would you expect that a female coming to a male-dominated blog is going to act all dainty and ladylike? It's like asking a woman a chess match to lose on purpose. (Note: women don't take much interest in chess, but any woman that does may as well play as aggressively as the men).
And Lucius all that talk of of nihilism being the wests downfall is completely wrong. The nihilism of leftists, (if you mean something like "an extreme form of skepticism: the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth.") is basically a rhetorical feint which is usually accompanied by contradictions. Leftists do have some pretty fixed beliefs of their own which they may be coy about. Its just that destruction of western civilisation is among their chief values, and they'd rather not say it. If leftists really were nihilists they wouldn't be nearly as dangerous. In fact serious nihilism poses no threat to anyone and may have a legitimate place in conservative ideology. Skepticism and doubt aren't at all sexy, which is why leftists do not in fact promote nihilism. Fervent believe expressed with great conviction is what sells.
Paranoid Bitchy Incessant Whiner: Will Komment Kontrol allow me to point out that not only is there no such thing as "global warming", but that the "globe" has been cooling for eleven years now [since 1998], and that the cooling has accelerated so much in the past year [coincident with the sun's decision to quit making sunspots] that we are facing the very real danger of entering into a new mini-Ice Age?
If you read between the lines of this highly PC, edited & sanitized article, then the implications are pretty terrifying:
New Solar Cycle Prediction: Fewer Sunspots, But Not Necessarily Less Activity
By Tony Phillips
May 27th, 2009
physorg.com
...Right now, the solar cycle is in a valley--the deepest of the past century. In 2008 and 2009, the sun set Space Age records for low sunspot counts, weak solar wind, and low solar irradiance. The sun has gone more than two years without a significant solar flare.
"In our professional careers, we’ve never seen anything quite like it," says Pesnell. "Solar minimum has lasted far beyond what we predicted in 2007"...
If a radical Leftist outlet like PhysOrg is willing to allow something like that through its censorship infrastructure, then you know that we have a serious problem on our hands.
Maybe we ought to be thinking about painting all those rooftops black instead of white.
[I mean - seriously - just how much of a moron can you be and still win a Nobel prize in physics?!?]
You know, if you start with a trillion dollars in TARP bailouts to try to right the listing CRA/redlining ship, then add a trillion dollars in nonsense "stimulus" spending, then add the weight of a trillion dollar per year ball & chain called "Cap-N-Trade", then throw in another several trillion per year to socialize medicine, then, starting in 2011, attempt to absorb the retirement of a veritable tidal wave of Caucasian baby boomers [who failed to breed at replacement-rate fertility] - well, at that point, you've got a darned good recipe for total & unalterable & irremediable societal collapse.
But if you add a mini-Ice Age to the mix, then you're looking at the Israelites huddling & shivering & starving to death in the desert - walking a trail of thorns, bereft of any manna from heaven - for not 40 years, but maybe something more like 400 years.
You global warming eco-pagan lunatics better get down on your hands and knees and beg the Flying Spaghetti Monster to turn up the ovens in that star of His [which our sorry little planet is said to be orbiting], or we could be looking at a SHTF scenario of biblical proportions.
"Obviously Russia has the resources to grow, yet it isn't. Bangladesh doesn't, but it is.
Maybe Bangladeshies should do what people always do when they find themselves in a bad place, leave.
Plenty of space in Russia, where the culture is committing suicide. Survival of the fittest."
And turn Russia into a Bangladesh? I am Asian and I remember in my debates with Africans, even Africans would often pick Bangladesh as an example of an failed backward Asian society.
And would you seriously trust Muslim Bangladeshis with all those thousands of nukes even though Bangladeshis tend to be less fundamentalist than others? Come to think of it Russia could just nuke of Bangladesh and make them extinct which is a potential population rival. That is a type of survival of the fittest.
Anonymous: all that talk of of nihilism being the wests downfall is completely wrong... Leftists do have some pretty fixed beliefs of their own...
All belief systems are forms of Nihilism.
And Nihilism is always the cause of the downfall.
I think I finally started to understand American history when I realized that FDR's rule was basically soft communism, minus the mass killing but full of comparable deprivation.Having lived in both Russia and the US, I think I'm qualified to say this is the single most stupid comment I've ever read in the blogosphere. Congratulations.
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