David Brooks wants Obama to announce in his State of the Union Address that America is no longer a nation, it's now going to be a cross between the Admirals Club at JFK and Amy Chua's house:
... The country wants a more precise vision of what a thriving America is going to look like in the 21st century... To thrive, America will have to be the crossroads nation where global talent congregates and collaborates.
Parents in middle-class nations around the world should want to send their kids to American colleges.
And where will middle-class American parents (assuming there are any left) send their kids to college?
... Entrepreneurs from Israel to Indonesia should be visiting venture-capital firms in San Francisco or capital markets in New York.
Maybe, David, you could talk Israel into testing this big idea of yours out for us first. How many people are there in China with 120+ IQs who would move to Israel if only given the opportunity? Think of how Israel would benefit from 20 million brilliant Chinese immigrants!
In this century, economic competition between countries is ... more like the competition between elite universities ...
Thanks goodness we imported all those tens of millions of high SAT score illegal immigrants and their descendants.
The new sort of competition is all about charisma....
Really? That must be why Germany is exporting so much these days. Everybody loves that German personality!
The nation with the most diverse creative hot spots will dominate the century.
I think he meant "the most vibrantly diverse creative hot spots," or perhaps "the most diversely vibrant creative hot spots."
... Finally, the government has to work aggressively to reduce the human capital inequalities that open up in an innovation economy. That means early and constant interventions so everybody has a chance to participate.
Aggressive early and constant government interventions ... Perhaps David would have Obama sign over the parental rights of all African-American mothers to Amy Chua?
What's the over-under line on when will come the official Stolen Generations apology from a future President for these now fashionable early and constant interventions? I'd put the over-under line at my 100th birthday.
President Obama exists because his father was drawn to study in the United States. Obama embodies America’s nascent role as the crossroads nation. Let’s see if he can describe the next phase of American greatness.
So, polygamists of the world, come to America, impregnate our 17-year-olds, and then abandon them!
Obviously Brooks can type one-handed.
ReplyDeleteBrooks is just a "modern liberal" posing as a "Conservative".
ReplyDeleteLiberals hate this country/ They hate all ot stands for nad has stood for. They hate the traditions, beliefs and culture that made ita great nation. The hate the race of the people that built it Above all, they hate the very notion of it being a "great nation".
They would have us be some sort of place were other pompous, self-important transnationalist elites would use it as some sort of base to n "prosper", mostly at the expense of its white middle class. The future is not about some PHP programmers creating extensions for Twitter. This is that hideous Lefty concept about the "creative economy", and economy that is mostly parasitic and trivial, and most certainly at odds with the actualities of real economies. Economies are not just about "innovation" or mere High tech. Moreover, American leadership in high tech was mostly home grown.
These people view the real source of our wealth (and innovation too), the American people (who for most of our history have been of Anglo or Scots-Irish descent, BTW), with utter contempt.
Why? Well this would appear to be a matter for mental health professionals, but one of the reasons for this is that they do not earn honest livings. Brooks would not know what "innovation" was if he tripped over it. He certainly would not kow what honest labor was.. They sit on the Upper West Side with these economically meaningless jobs and, to cover their vacuity and triviality, have these fantasies that they are a part of this new "creative economy".
And this "new economy" will be funded, no doubt, by the the very taxpayers that people like Brooks hope will be destroyed by it.
Opening the floodgates to the mass flow of global labor is ludicrous. Harder working and, maybe, smarter foreigners will just drive down wages for native-born Americans. It'll be like H1-B on steroids. Of course, Brooks, being Jewish and being unpatriotic, doesn't care about regular Joe Sixpacks on the street..... but he should at least pretend.
ReplyDeleteBeyond ignoring the impact on the average American, Brooks neglects the role that cohesion and a shared sense of community play in building a successful nation. Too much immigration will tamper with our social fabric. It'll also encourage lots of lower IQ immigration, as there will likely be chain migration of both the legal and illegal variety.
As for the assertion that America must open its borders to stay competitive, I would point out that many countries (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Germany) sustain dynamic economies in spite of conservative immigration policies. I do think an argument could be made that we should allow the immigration of extremely innovative and exceptional individuals, preferrably with high net worth, in limited numbers. I'll take Vinod Khosla or some Chinese/Indian PHD student doing truly groundbreaking researching, but these sort of people are highly limited in number - and we already let them immigrate anyway. What I don't want is a bunch of tech coolies pouring in and killing the American middle class dream of upward mobility. I wish David Brooks was as invested in the American dream as he has been in the Israeli dream.
In Israel, immigration policy is run by patriots. In America, immigration policy is run by the greedy and unpatriotic post-modernists. Of course, many of the diversitycrats also tend to be neoconservative Israel boosters too. That this is ideologically inconsistent is not something that concerns them.
Of course, karma comes around. All these Jewish immigration boosters will have to contend with hordes of anti-semitic Arab and Muslim immigrants that don't like them. There's also going to be decreasing enthusiasm for Israel, domestically, as our increasingly "diverse" population decides that America should have higher priorities than fighting Israel's enemies.
There are other howlers here:
ReplyDelete1. So-called "elite universities" are mostly chuck full of left wing con artists and frauds, and all one need do to affirm this is to attempt to parse the prose coming out of their "English Departments". If one took the typical ivy league faculty and forced them out into the real world with their "ideas", one would quickly find that they would be lucky to get work as mid level corporate flunkies. Compete like "elite universities"? They compete for hapless chumps who will pony up tens of thousands of dollars for what is actually an education of quite dubious value.
This too is part of the Liberal's vain-glorious, snobbish fantasies of himself as some sort of superior "mind" on the "vanguard of progress" already engaged in the "proper work of the 20th century". They are nothing of the sort. In the main, they are spoiled brats--when they are not out and out charlatans. The majority make there living by either directly or indirectly sucking the public tit. Their vision is certainly hindbound--it is just reflexive Socialism of the sort we saw in the Warsaw pact elites. They too made the same noise about "progress", the "economies of the future" and "government intervention".
2. If government is going to "intervene" (that is, inflict Marxist thievery and social engineering on us) then what possible incentive would there be to come here and create wealth?
3. There is no proof at all that all these "smart immigrants" produce either wealth or innovation, let alone a great nation. There is no proof, in fact, that they are all that "smart" in some sense broader that passing tests. If this all is true, why are the histories of the nations they come from so bleak. Moreover, the histories of "multi-ethnic and "multi-cultural" nations, in the very few cases that they actually existed, are rather bleak ones.
4. Their prestidigitations about how nations will "compete" in the future amount to mere wishful thinking. Nations will compete as they always have. In this century we could well have the most horrendous wars of history. We best prepare for them. Brooks formula deeply weaken us as a nation, which is, of course, the whole point of it. There formulation is just more tranzi "globalist" hogwash. What America must do is withdraw from this "globalist" mindset the elites have pushed on us this last 50 and reassess the whole project. So-called "globalism", that is, a international rationalization of the economic roles of nations ruled over by a technocratic elite, is one of our major problems. It must be overturned.
All this is just a new window dressing for the Left wing assualt on America and the civolization of the West. We should laugh at its very framing: We will dismantle the Western Civilization in the name of creating a "world class economy". In reality they are hell bent on destroying our Civilization and its world class economy.
I watched the "American Experience" about the building of the Panama Canal last night on PBS and went to bed profoundly depressed at what has transpired these last 1090 years.
ReplyDeleteEven the wife walked in and said, "Wow, they sure were confident in themselves back then."
"How many people are there in China with 120+ IQs who would move to Israel if only given the opportunity? Think of how Israel would benefit from 20 million brilliant Chinese immigrants!"
ReplyDeleteIsn't this cribbed from Svigor?...
Maybe, David, you could talk Israel into testing this big idea of yours out for us first. How many people are there in China with 120+ IQs who would move to Israel if only given the opportunity? Think of how Israel would benefit from 20 million brilliant Chinese immigrants
ReplyDeleteSteve, imitating the behavior of Svigor is usually considered a giant step backwards. Even Dennis Mangan has accused Svigor of being an anti-Semite, and we know that Mangan doesn't throw around that term lightly.
RKU said... Isn't this cribbed from Svigor?...
ReplyDeleteObviously yes, it is. But don't you basically crib from Brooks et al yourself?
"Think of how Israel would benefit from 20 million brilliant Chinese immigrants!"
ReplyDeleteActually that's probably the easiest way to bring peace to the Middle East.
Just what exactly is a 'middle-classed nation'?
ReplyDeleteHow do you define this silly phrase?, through average per capita GDP?, is an Englisg garbage collector (who has an annual income substantially higher than an Indian doctor), 'middle class' by this definition, but the Indian doctor is not?
Is the term defined by occupational status?, well in that case, not even the world's best educated nation can be 'middle class' as grunt workers will by necessity outnumber 'professionals'.
Just more silliness from a bad writer.
"President Obama exists because his father was drawn to study in the USA".
ReplyDeleteI've heard that kind of argument before from immigrations, but it usually involves players suchas Sergei Brin.
Anyway, as moment's reflection will tell you it's got to be one of the weakest and most ludicrous arguments ever advanced in support of anything.
If Adolf Hitler's parents had never met, Adolf Hitler and thus WW2 would have never happened.If the 'conjugal act' that lead to Josef Stalin was infertile (as 90% of such acts are), there would be no Josef Stalin - and untold millions of Russians would have survived to leave offspring.Similarly, Napoleon's grandparents etc etc, in fact ANYBODY in history , everything just turns on random chance and random chance alone.
Trying to base immigration policy on the infinite permutations of the tumbling of infinite dice is utterly brainless.
"So, polygamists of the world, come to America, impregnate our 17-year-olds, and then abandon them!"
ReplyDeleteGranted, I'm prone to hyperbole but is that the greatest line ever written?
Dan in DC
It's true that some weird, arguably very stupid stuff has been written at MR; my jibes at RKU are not meant to deny that. I'm appreciably closer to Auster than to MR. RKU on the other hand is nigher to the GOP than to Auster.
ReplyDelete"Human capital inequalities" - The most long-winded, verbose euphemism I've ever encountered for 'dumb'.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was at school, my English teacher would always reprimand my 14 year old attempts at being 'clever' by introducing long pompous phrases into my essays, by forcefully insisting that the general rule in 'good' English is to always use the simplest possible and shortest possible word or phrase whenever you can.
Will someone explain how Brooks, who is not qualified to utter the word "conservative", can possibly identified as one?
ReplyDeleteAs of 2004, 80% of immigrants to the US came from Latin America, 57% from Mexico alone.
ReplyDeleteThe average number of years of schooling for Mexican immigrants in the US: 8.
I don't know the figure for Latin American immigrants more generally, but I suspect that it doesn't differ that much. What's more, these levels of education don't improve much in the second and third generations.
It's hard to see how such figures are going to lead to the Ivy League entrepreneurial playpen Brooks envisions as the America of the 21st Century. Seems to me that if Brooks were serious, he'd advocate policies attracting STEM grad students at top 50 universities, and that's about it.
Anonymous said... "Even Dennis Mangan has accused Svigor of being an anti-Semite, and we know that Mangan doesn't throw around that term lightly."
ReplyDeleteBut if he implied Jew-hatred with no more basis than a simple, reasonable comment like this, he would be tossing the accusation around lightly. As you are.
- Daybreaker
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete""Maybe, David, you could talk Israel into testing this big idea of yours out for us first. How many people are there in China with 120+ IQs who would move to Israel if only given the opportunity? Think of how Israel would benefit from 20 million brilliant Chinese immigrants""
Steve, imitating the behavior of Svigor is usually considered a giant step backwards. Even Dennis Mangan has accused Svigor of being an anti-Semite, and we know that Mangan doesn't throw around that term lightly."
So what's wrong with the question? If Brooks' suggested course of action would be so wonderful for the U.S., why would it not likewise be so for Israel, and why should he not likewise suggest it for Israel?
Or are we to just cower before your incantations of anti-semitism?
I agree with PacRim Jim:
ReplyDelete"Colonialism, communism, fascism, nazism, socialism, nihilism, and now multiculturalism. Each time Europeans are certain that a manifestly obvious idea transcends messy human experience, ditches fill with dead Europeans, by the millions."
The other week Brooks wrote about how inferior the Chua parenting style is to white parents' slumber party style. Why isn't he worried all those smart immigrants will bring their bad Chua styles with them? Why does he think the diminishing white parents will be able to impose their creative slumber party culture on the increasing shares of Chuas? Why do we need the Chuas if we already have that great slumber party culture he lauded in last week's column?
ReplyDelete"Think of how Israel would benefit from 20 million brilliant Chinese immigrants"
ReplyDeleteNever mind 20 million. Even a proportionate share to Israel's size (proportionate to our immigration levels) would freak out Israel and its loyalists like Brooks. And rightly so. As someone said above, immigration policy in Israel is set by patriots. Here it's set by traitors.
No, Steve is not imitating Svigor. He is merely applying the old adage that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
ReplyDeleteBrooks here reminds me of Dick Florida, who a few years ago was high on every big government liberal's dinner guest list. If a politician, say, wanted to double the per capita income in his city, Florida's basic argument for doing so would be 1) deport the current population; 2) import a population capable of earning twice as much.
Cities, states, and nations are not biological entities. It is irrelevant whether the geographic expression known as the "USA" grows, shrinks, breathes, or dies, as if it could even do any of them. What matters is how well the people who live in that country do. Our immigration policies should be based on what's in the best interests of our citizens. Importing tens of millions of people from abroad isn't likely to do that.
I say start with Israel. It's a small country and a good test tube. Israelis are great scientists, too, so they enjoy experiments.
In all seriousness I think David Brooks may be the best mainstream pundit. The conventional liberals are just loons. But because Brooks is a phantom Sailersphere satellite he often writes about real things like "human capital inequalities." And because he works hard to then force these Sailersphere realities to fit the fantasy that is liberalism he gives us an actual description of what the ruling class is really thinking (eg take 'em all from their parents and give them to Chua). All the regular liberals don't get that far because they won't even bring up phantom Sailersphere concepts.
ReplyDelete(Anyone who might remotely come close to being conservative in the mainstream, eg Will, doesn't really have much to say, or is unwilling to say it. Douthat is clever in the way he tries to say interesting stuff while keeping unobjectionable but it's inherently hopeless.)
"is an English garbage collector (who has an annual income substantially higher than an Indian doctor), 'middle class' by this definition, but the Indian doctor is not?"
ReplyDeleteNo, because the costs of living are so different in the two countries. The Indian doctor will have servants to cook, clean, launder and garden for him, maybe to take the kids to their private school. The garbage man won't. And the Indian doctor will be high in the occupational hierarchy.
To thrive, America will have to be the crossroads nation where global talent congregates and collaborates.
ReplyDeleteHo hum, another Jew who wants America to be New York City writ large.
"Brooks is just a "modern liberal" posing as a "Conservative"."
ReplyDeleteI'd say he is more of a lefty posing as a modern liberal.
RKU said ..
ReplyDelete"How many people are there in China with 120+ IQs who would move to Israel if only given the opportunity? Think of how Israel would benefit from 20 million brilliant Chinese immigrants!"
Isn't this cribbed from Svigor?...
Aren't your own arguments cribbed from the SPLC and The Nation?
I am trying to imagine what it will be like 40 or 50 years from now when Davos men pretty much run the Western world but have zero influence in China, the only politically and militarily unified superpower left.
ReplyDeleteAt what point do these guys realize they've turned themselves into a bunch of castrated eunuchs with no power to resist Chines encroachments in Central Asia, Africa, Austrailia, or on the world's oceans?
It will be one nation state against cosmopolitan capital: a headless chicken run like the E.U.
Once again Sailer and his white nationalists alienate the cognitive elitist element of the HBD crowd. Human capital is always a good thing. Race is secondary to IQ.
ReplyDeleteBrooks: President Obama exists because his father was drawn to study in the United States.
ReplyDeleteSailer: So, polygamists of the world, come to America, impregnate our 17-year-olds, and then abandon them!
Man, I tell you what: If you want a sure-fire way to get your posts censured by Komment Kontrol, then just be sure to include the words "Hawaii" and "Birth Certificate".
You can argue Brooks is more likely to get what he wants if society is not inclusive.
ReplyDeleteIf there is exclusion, minorities distantly emulate the traits (some negative, many positive) of the ruling class.
Where there's inclusion, minorities gradually impose their traits on the mainstream.
The former can continue no matter the size of the population outside the ruling class, the latter loses its urgency once all of the people inside are like Vikram Pandit.
If there are positive traits to be had in America, others are more likely to learn if they don't come here. If they come, they will impose their ways over our ways and newcomers won't know what is original or foreign.
In this century, economic competition between countries is...more like the competition between elite universities....
ReplyDeleteElite universities DON'T compete; they form cartels and collaborate.
"Entrepreneurs from Israel to Indonesia"
ReplyDeleteindonesia doesn't really have any entrepreneurs. most of the world doesn't. this is just another call from a jewish guy to turn the US into brazil.
let israel answer the call on this one, dave. let israelis get in on the ground floor of all these wondrous, vibrant entrepreneurial ideas.
Perfect take down Steve. David Brooks is obviously one of those columnists who feels he's not doing his job if he doesn't offer a positive vision rather than just giving a negative critique every week, like George Will. He's bright but not very bright so he struggles with this goal and winds up giving readers idiotic visions conveyed through poorly written sentences.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe he realizes he has to hide the fact that he's not really bright by offering up these positive visions--"at least he's giving us something positive"--so that he can keep his job.
This will be bad for other countries due to the brain drain. They need all the brains they got to build up their own economies which have a long way to go. If US were to attract the smartest people from all over the world, it will be the permanent brain center of the world and the rest of the world will be reduced to being intellectual satellites. US will be the brain and head. Rest will be the body parts of the US. Maybe it was a good thing for Japan than its emigration to the US was halted early in the 20th century. Some may have called it 'racist' at the time, but many more smart people stayed IN Japan.
ReplyDeleteIf we could end mass immigration of low-IQ people and increase immigration of only high IQ people from around the world, it may well boost and secure American power. Not only will US gain brains but others will lose brains. Imagine if China lost 50% of its top brains who came to settle in America and become US citizens. Our gain, their loss. This is especially crucial in the post-industrial high-tech info age.
I wonder if Brooks is really trying to undermine nations like China and Iran by attracting their smartest people to the US. After all, if Iran had more brains, it would made the bomb already.
In the US, since smart immigrants will still be less smart than the supersmart Jews, they'll essentially work for Jews or marry Jews(with their children being raised with Jewish consciousness).
Of course, Brooks cannot spell this out, so he speaks of it in rosy terms of global good, but it could be his brand of cold-eyed Machiavellian nationalism. What Jews say publicly and what they think privately are two different things.
The thing is, plenty of people with some degree of influence and power will think what Brooks is saying makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteI'm waiting for Steve to admit that our Jewish elites are not merely annoying. They are a problem.
I heard ABC’s Matt Gutman tell one of the dopes at Chicago’s WGN radio that post-earthquake Haiti’s streets were “vibrant”.
ReplyDelete"Human capital is always a good thing".
ReplyDeleteFirstly I just hate that phrase 'human capital', as we know 'capital' is from the Latin 'caput' and just means 'head' as in 'head of cattle'.
Secondly the idea of a rich state imorting 'human capital' from a poor state is just economically illiterate.An elementary ana;ysis tells us that actual physical capital (ie hard cash)would be better served by transferring, invisibly, to the poorer nations from the richer nations where the low wage 'human capital' available there would bring a much greater return on the investment, in cash terms, (which is after all the name of the game), than the marginal returns made by importing people into the rich nations.That, in a nutshell, is the case for free trade.It's just a crying shame that the ignorant and the opportunists deliberately confound this (the movement of goods and capital across borders), with unrestricted immigration (ie 'the import of human capital').The idea behind free trade is that goods and money move so that people don't have to.
Unfortunately that idea seems to be lost on a lot of people.
Anonymous - elites are a problem. Many elites are Jews, but not a majority by any means.
ReplyDeleteGinsberg warned in The Fatal Embrace what was coming.
ReplyDeleteBut in all fairness to the Jews, they are not being inconsistent by preventing goyim immigration to Israel and encouraging alien immigration to America.
Therefore your comment about doing to Israel what the Jews would do to us is unfair.
This different treatment follows inherently from Judaism. For at least 2000 years, Judaism has been a two-caste religion: (1) Jews, and (2) everyone else. Everyone on the face of the earth is to follow the Law of Judaism (halacha), it's just that that law applies differently to the Jews than it does to us goyim.
As the lower caste, the goyim or gentiles (us) are to follow the Noachide laws (the biblical laws given to Noah), but are not to follow (nor to learn or study) the 613 laws that Jews are commanded to follow.
The goyim are to submit to Jewish religious authority and go to rabbis for direction. Studying Judaic law all on our goyische own is punishable by death.
A big piece of the 613 commandments for the Jewish tribe are rules regarding the impermissibility of race mixing and socializing. How else to maintain the two castes separate?
So Jews are not hypocritical.
It's just that their religion (which applied to everybody on the entire earth) provides for two different castes of people that are to be treated differently by God's direct orders.
Harvard Law Prof. Noah Feldman explains the difference well in his article in the New York Times:
As young elite Jews are taught in Boston, a Jew can violate the Sabbath to save a Jew, but can only violate the Sabbath to save a gentile on the Sabbath if letting her die would cause gentiles to get p!ssed off and hurt Jews. This is the only justifiable reason for saving goyim on the Sabbath. As Noah says, "intention matters".
So just because God commands Jews to take over (they call it "redeem") the Holy Land from the goyim, what on earth does that have to do with American immigration?
God told the Jews to preserve themselves and their race. He did not tell Americans to do so.
So don't blame the Jews. They are doing what God commanded them to do. What part of "God's chosen people" don't you understand?
"Finally, the government has to work aggressively to reduce the human capital inequalities..."
ReplyDeleteDid he just come out for eugenics? ;-)
Someone should tell Brooks that SWPL is satire, not geopolitical policy. Actually, his views are very 1990s. People used to talk like this when they were all gooey about the Internet and the End of History. All of life would one day be like an episode of Seinfeld.
ReplyDeleteGilbert Pinfold
I really hope that, as rumored, Brooks is a regular reader.
ReplyDeleteObviously Brooks can type one-handed.
ReplyDeleteExtended LOL.
Ted Kennedy, the scum who pushed hardest for our national suicide
ReplyDeleteNo, that would be Emanuel Celler, who fought for over forty years (successfully, alongside a cadre of open-borders co-ethnics) to multiculturalize immigration to the U.S. Back in 1924 when we shut off most immigration he was the one in Congress stomping his feet the loudest. Ted Kennedy wouldn't even be born until eight years later. Kennedy essentially stumbled on the scene by the time Celler's wrecking crew got the 1965 bill ready to go.
Steve, imitating the behavior of Svigor is usually considered a giant step backwards. Even Dennis Mangan has accused Svigor of being an anti-Semite, and we know that Mangan doesn't throw around that term lightly.
ReplyDeleteYou can sign in Kato, everyone knows it's you.
I can't recall Dennis ever calling me an anti-Semite, but it's not like he'd be wrong. Anti-Semitism is one of those bait-and-switch things, like racism in general. Someone brilliantly described it here a few months ago. Basically, it has two parts, the bait, and the switch.
ReplyDeleteBait:
Gas chambers, hatred of Jews for being born Jewish.
Switch:
Too many people you name on a list are Jewish; you point out that Jews don't take the medicine they recommend; you can use such revolutionary accounting practices as subtraction, not just addition; et cetera.
Not particularly clever, but the addle-pated fall for it over and over.
I'm a "switch" anti-Semite. I violate the "switch" definition (nebulous) so I'm accused of the "bait" (concrete).
Sure, I could belabor the issue OVER and OVER and OVER, but why bother? The DEFINITION of anti-Semitism is a bait-and-switch. This is not "misuse" or "abuse" of the term - a feature, not a bug; this is the official meaning.
In short, "anti-Semitism" is a virtue.
Once again Sailer and his white nationalists alienate the cognitive elitist element of the HBD crowd. Human capital is always a good thing. Race is secondary to IQ.
ReplyDeleteAlienating frauds and crooks is a good thing.
"Cognitive elites" don't do what they recommend.
China? Nope.
India? Nope.
Israel? Nope.
Why should we take Chinese, Indian, or Jewish recommendations seriously when they avoid them like the plague?
I like the comment section better when Steve is more aggressive with "komment kontrol."
ReplyDeleteAnti-semitism is boring, repetitive, declasse, and wrong, though Svigor is clever at times.
Blather about how "Liberals hate this country" is something already found on about 100,000 other blogs.
This will be bad for other countries due to the brain drain.
ReplyDeleteYep. Steve might as well start taking bets on the over/under for the "lost generation"/"resource plundering"/"evil colonists" analogue here. IF "cognitive elites" are like oil fields with legs, you can bet your ass we'll be the bad guy for "stealing" them from China, India, and the rest of the world, with demands for restitution and reparations to follow.
I hate to say this, but there's no need to look at Israel - there's already Singapore as an example.
ReplyDeleteOnly about 60% of the local population are citizens, and we've increased our population by 20% in 20 years via immigration alone, following Florida and Glaeser's prescriptions.
There is a resultant surge of sheer anti-immigrant sentiment, so strong that it even bleeds over to attacking real foreign talent that we do need.
Our upcoming local elections are gearing up to be one of the most heated ever, and interestingly, not led by opposition parties, but by a groundswell of citizen resistance.
Can't tell if it's a good or bad thing yet.
Once again Sailer and his white nationalists alienate the cognitive elitist element of the HBD crowd. Human capital is always a good thing. Race is secondary to IQ.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why Israel is about to allow 20 million high IQ Chinese to settle. Any time now.
Great column Steve. And of course, your comment on Israel hit it right on the nose. Brooks, like a lot of American Jews doesn't really care that much about America.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, if the USA goes belly-up, Dave can move to Israel, or maybe China, the new up and coming country.
"I'm waiting for Steve to admit that our Jewish elites are not merely annoying. They are a problem."
ReplyDeleteElites, certainly. Perhaps Jews are a special part of the problem, perhaps not. Feel free to search for actual evidence of such. But the more you make it about their religion/ethnicity and not their attitudes, the more harm you do a worthy cause. I think I might be perfectly happy with a Congress consisting of 535 Jews - if they were all like Mickey Kaus and Ira Mehlman.
"After all, if the USA goes belly-up, Dave can move to Israel, or maybe China, the new up and coming country."
ReplyDeleteOr maybe he considers himself so intelligent and adept that he will thrive no matter how immigration harms the country. People living on high ground don't much worry about floods. I've lived on high ground nearly all of my life. Flood insurance is the farthest thing from my mind.
This will be bad for other countries due to the brain drain. They need all the brains they got to build up their own economies which have a long way to go. If US were to attract the smartest people from all over the world, it will be the permanent brain center of the world and the rest of the world will be reduced to being intellectual satellites.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great point. Brooks & Co. argue that we should invite high-IQ immigrants to this country because it would be good for us. An implicit premise is that the pursuit of self-interest is perfectly legitimate.
Brooks says we should let other nations nurture and educate someone, and then we should steal him away when he reaches his productive years so as to deprive his fellow countrymen of the resources they have invested in him and the positive externalities he is supposed to produce. The only way to justify such a program morally is to have a moral system in which the question of right and wrong is the same as the question, is it good for the "self"?
At the same time, however, the self-interested decision by most Americans to tell wannabe-immigrants to keep the hell off our property is not legitimate in the eyes of Brooks & Co. -- even though Brooks would have us believe that his "self" is the same as ours.
This equation of self-interests is thus a sham. Brooks must be part of a different "self". And he must not believe that the pursuit of self-interest is morally acceptable regardless of which "self" is doing it.
We are forbidden from pursuing our self-interest, and this proscription rests not on any principle but on raw particularism. Our actions are judged according to whether they are good for a "self" other than our own.
And that's wrong.
Much kneejerking here. Everyone, Steve included, assumes that Brooks calls for more immigration. That's not my impression at all. Rather, he seems to suggests that, given the coming rise of foreign technical and business elites, we need to get them educated in America. And after that get them to collaborate using America as a center, a hub. That's how we would retain influence in the future.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure if this will work or not but it's not a stupid idea on its face.
Wobbly Guy
ReplyDeleteI hate to say this, but there's no need to look at Israel - there's already Singapore as an example.Only about 60% of the local population are citizens.
At least, from what you imply, Singapore doesn't let long-staying legal immigrants easily become citizens and thus voters. The U.S. does. (The debate here is about whether to let illegal ones do so.)
And where will middle-class American parents (assuming there are any left) send their kids to college?
ReplyDeleteIf a bunch of foreign student suddenly flood in, then, short term, American kids will get squeezed. But longer term? Nearly all foreign students pay full tuition; the academic MSRP, so to speak. So, foreign students may end up subsidizing college spots for the natives.
"Imagine if China lost 50% of its top brains who came to settle in America and become US citizens. Our gain, their loss. This is especially crucial in the post-industrial high-tech info age."
ReplyDeleteNot so fast. Who's "our"?
Because if that many Chinese moved in to become "Americans" (defined as possessing American citizenship) but still felt loyalty to their own people, the Han Chinese -- as you can be sure they would -- then we real Americans could find ourselves well and truly screwed when those Han elites start sending for their people in China to move in by the hundreds of millions, nicely reducing China's overcrowding -- and taking America completely away from us.
US citizenship is no guarantee of loyalty to *us,* the real Americans, when those immigrants come en masse.
And without loyalty to the prior inhabitants, it's just colonization.
Strange that the example of Singapore has been brought up.
ReplyDeleteSingapore, of course, was entirely ethnically Malay, until British colonialists arrived and started importing alien populations en masse.
"I hate to say this, but there's no need to look at Israel - there's already Singapore as an example.
ReplyDeleteOnly about 60% of the local population are citizens, and we've increased our population by 20% in 20 years via immigration alone, following Florida and Glaeser's prescriptions."
And your economy is going gangbusters, with an unemployment rate of about 2%. But there are a couple of big differences between Singapore and America that change the impact of immigration where you are:
1) Singapore doesn't offer generous welfare benefits to the poor, so there's no incentive for economically unproductive immigrants to stay there.
2) Singapore isn't a real democracy. So there's no risk of immigrants changing the dominant political/economic system.
Tom V,
ReplyDeleteActually, it was pretty easy for them to get our version of the H1B (Permanent Residency), but citizenship is much harder.
Nevertheless, just the number of PRs granted in the past decade was staggering, and many of the admitted PRs were, shall we say, less than talented. But even working as clerks and lower-middle class jobs, they already put a squeeze on our less skilled workers.
Illegal ones? We send them out. But when legal immigrants are accepted in such numbers, does it really make much of a difference?
" So, foreign students may end up subsidizing college spots for the natives."
ReplyDeleteeconomist-think
Andrew:
ReplyDeleteColonialism involved lots of dead non-Europeans, killed at the hands of Europeans. (Other non-Europeans did okay from it, and there were some substantial offsetting benefits from getting better legal and administrative systems imposed on you, but there were definitely also piles of bodies involved.)
Communism killed lots of Europeans, but I think it killed far more non-Europeans, and mostly at one anothers' hands. China, Cambodia, and Vietnam all had some serious bloodletting going on under the banner of communism, and Europeans were mostly not involved.
Captain Jack has it right, I think. I also live on high ground, as he put it.
ReplyDeletePlenty of people live on lower ground. Policies that seem very sensible to elites, that visibly make the lives of me and most people I associate with better, sometimes utterly screw over people living on lower ground.
And just because I live on high ground, doesn't mean I always will (a serious illness can move you down into the water damned fast), and certainly doesn't mean my kids will be able to find a spot up at the top of the hill. Regression to the mean happens: in my family, my generation of cousins is overwhelmingly educated professional class, ranging from school teachers to executives and researchers. But a few of our generation just didn't get the same roll of the IQ and mental health dice. They're delivery drivers, property managers--people living a little further down the hill, a little more vulnerable to the floods.
And beyond that, the people born right smack in the middle of the flood plain are still people. Policies that make people like me 10% better off and screw them to the wall are just lousy policies, even if they don't land on me or my family. Policies that amount to pulling the ladder up behind me are still worse.
IMO, a great deal of elite policymaking (all policymaking--plumbers and truck drivers are rarely consulted) utterly ignores the invisible folks living on the floodplain or down in the valley, other than perhaps a few carefully sanitized mascots.
Brooks has one of the densest, most mediocre minds ever granted to a man. This is the person who followed Safire? I didn't read Safire consistently, but he did seem to make sense when he put words together. Is anyone who reads Brooks fooled into thinking that his babblings have any meaning?
ReplyDeleteThere's also going to be decreasing enthusiasm for Israel, domestically, as our increasingly "diverse" population decides that America should have higher priorities than fighting Israel's enemies.
ReplyDeleteDon't kid yourself. Wanna bet that the Jew will figure out how to get into the heads of all those Muslims in this country and other Third World varieties, and change their mentality in favor of the Chosen People? Wanna bet? After all, they successfully got into the heads of you white folks.
There's something obviously wrong with this list. Colonialism's body count weighed rather more heavily on the people Europeans encountered than on Europeans themselves.
ReplyDeleteDid non-Europeans starve millions of Irish to death in the 1840s?
David Brooks should move to the favelas of Rio De Janiero so he can experience the future of the U.S. Don't worry, I hear that the city is very "vibrant" (ie there's a drug war going on).
ReplyDeleteDid non-Europeans starve millions of Irish to death in the 1840s?
ReplyDeleteNo, no one did. If you're talking about the several hundred thousand that died, it was crop failure, not 'genocide'. by you're reasoning WASPs are responsible for the immigrants who died in the 1919 influenza epidemic.
the telegraph had an article that an Indian engineer sold the tech that made china's stealth fighter possible. He's now in jail. when we are as 'vibrant' as Brooks wishes, he won't be, WE will be put in jail for spreading 'hate' for pointing out he, an indian was selling secrets to china. it's almost reached that point with the israeli lobby already.
ReplyDelete"Because if that many Chinese moved in to become "Americans" (defined as possessing American citizenship) but still felt loyalty to their own people, the Han Chinese -- as you can be sure they would -- then we real Americans could find ourselves well and truly screwed when those Han elites start sending for their people in China to move in by the hundreds of millions, nicely reducing China's overcrowding -- and taking America completely away from us.'
ReplyDeleteSome people today view a country and a people like a pro sports team. Today I am a Yankee and tomorrow I am a Cardinal after being traded.
America is an empty jersey waiting to be filled.
2) Singapore isn't a real democracy. So there's no risk of immigrants changing the dominant political/economic system.
ReplyDeleteYup. One of these days I'm going to figure out how to drag Saudi Arabia into this discussion. SA has LOTS of immigrants. And they're treated like slaves.
THAT'S the kind of country that can survive large numbers of immigrants.
(I think I just found my argument)
"THAT'S the kind of country that can survive large numbers of immigrants."
ReplyDeleteWe've had large numbers of immigrants for 150 years...and I think we've "survived."
Too dumb to choose a name said,
ReplyDeleteEven Dennis Mangan has accused Svigor of being an anti-Semite
and then Svigor said,
I can't recall Dennis ever calling me an anti-Semite, but it's not like he'd be wrong.
In fact, Svigor is wrong. Israel has no better better friend than Sviggy. How can we figure that out?
Brooks' plan for the US, importing a a "cognitive elite" is good for the US, the exact same plan for Israel must be good for Israel. To accept that Svigor is anti-Semitic leads to the conclusion that David Brooks is anti-American. Not just Jews live in Israel. Too Dumb didn't call Svigor anti-Arab as well. He must think there's a connection between a country and it's majority and founding ethnic group.
If Svigor wanting to apply Brooks' plan to Israel shows he hates Jews, Brooks' wanting to apply it to the US shows how much he hates white gentiles. Were you not only too stupid to pick a handle, you were too stupid to see that?
The US has a 4 point IQ advantage on Israel. If the US needs to import aliens to think, Israel needs to even more.
"IMO, a great deal of elite policymaking...utterly ignores the invisible folks living on the floodplain...other than perhaps a few carefully sanitized mascots."
ReplyDeleteWell thanks for the compliment. As I've said here before, Democrats care more about - and grant more moral authority to - a black single mother on welfare than to a white man in a blue collar job. Carefully sanitized mascots, indeed.
"No, no one did. If you're talking about the several hundred thousand that died, it was crop failure, not 'genocide'. by you're reasoning WASPs are responsible for the immigrants who died in the 1919 influenza epidemic"
ReplyDeleteA million died, a million emigrated. Not exactly genocide, but the effects of the crop failure and the peasantry's dependence upon the potato was largely due to policies enacted by absentee Anglo-Irish landlords.
Using the Brooks logic; "importing High IQ foreigners is always good" China should be STOPPING their High IQ types from emigrating and Germany/Switzerland/Korea/Japan/Israel/Sweden should all be competing with the USA for High IQ Chinese.
ReplyDeleteWhy isn't anyone doing this? The answer of course, is that David Brooks is smart and the Chinese, Japanese, Swiss, Israelis, Germans, Swedes and Koreans are all stupid.
USA -We're No. 1!!
We've had large numbers of immigrants for 150 years...and I think we've "survived."
ReplyDeleteYou're right, of course. Every terminal patient is surviving - right up until he isn't.
Everything dies eventually, Svigor That is part of the universal cycle.
ReplyDelete"Did non-Europeans starve millions of Irish to death in the 1840s?"
ReplyDeleteNo, no one did. If you're talking about the several hundred thousand that died, it was crop failure, not 'genocide'.
It was not really "crop failure", was it? There was an abundance of food in a country in which a million people died of starvation. That's politics at work, not "crop failure".
Colonialism's body count weighed rather more heavily on the people Europeans encountered than on Europeans themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe historical record says that you are wrong. Colonialism was a net plus for the people the Europeans encountered, at least in terms of body count.
what "Truth" knows about america's history of immigration could fit on an index card
ReplyDelete>Steve, imitating the behavior of Svigor is usually considered a giant step backwards. Even Dennis Mangan has accused Svigor of being an anti-Semite, and we know that Mangan doesn't throw around that term lightly.<
ReplyDeleteAddress the point. Here it is again:
"Maybe, David, you could talk Israel into testing this big idea of yours out for us first. How many people are there in China with 120+ IQs who would move to Israel if only given the opportunity? Think of how Israel would benefit from 20 million brilliant Chinese immigrants."
The point is that Brooks is a two-faced hypocrite. He pushes "diversity for thee (and thy people), nationalism for me (and mine)."
That point is true, and all your intimidation tactics - name-dropping ("Dennis Mangan") and name-calling ("antisemite") - are an obvious and contemptible attempt at smokescreening. What have you to hide?
>Human capital is always a good thing.<
ReplyDeleteReligious fanatic alarm bells are going off.
Is Chinese human capital good - for Filipinos? (Or vice-versa?)
Is Hutu human capital good - for Tutsis? (Or vice-versa?)
Which humans? The rising-tide-lifts-all-boats idea is not universal and probably can't be universal.
"Human capital" is a meaningful term only to bankers.
>Not so fast. Who's "our"?<
ReplyDeleteAnswer: Brooks clones to whom all other ethnies, including Chinese, are mere cattle - or in their terms, "human capital."
>Some people today view a country and a people like a pro sports team. Today I am a Yankee and tomorrow I am a Cardinal after being traded. America is [viewed as] an empty jersey waiting to be filled.<
Excellent. For good writing and thinking this beats hollow anything Brooks wrote in this column.
>So Jews are not hypocritical.
ReplyDeleteIt's just that their religion (which applie[s] to everybody on the entire earth) provides for two different castes of people that are to be treated differently by God's direct orders.<
LOL. You have a fine satirical hand, sir.
>he effects of the crop failure and the peasantry's dependence upon the potato was largely due to policies enacted by absentee Anglo-Irish landlords<
ReplyDeleteYou could, with equal logic, blame the tribes who originally chose that inauspicious area to settle in; or blame the inventors of agriculture per se (think how much misery they have caused, how many thumbs lost in threshers!); or even pin Hurricane Katrina on the white race, your bete blanc, as well. Me, I take a middle-of-the-road position on these questions. I blame Julius Caesar, a black man.
"Julius Caeser, a black man"
ReplyDeleteYeah, so was Albert Einstein.
Just going over old posts and found this non-sequitor that nobody bothered to resond to because, I guess, it makes no sense.
Why didn't I realize that there was a nego on all those coins stamped Julius Caesar.
Man, you have some weird people commenting here.