Please read my response to Mr. Yglesias' contention that he wasn't a victim of "Knockout Game" because he was only knocked down, not out, here.
I wrote on May 15, 2011 upon hearing of the beating:
I'm terribly sorry to hear about this crime. Yglesias should make sure to take it easy for a few days after being punched in the head in case there is some delayed reaction affecting his balance -- e.g., don't ride a bicycle in traffic.
Beyond physical injuries, well, I've never been the victim of street violence, but judging from the psychological trauma I've felt merely from being the victim of burglars -- the reminder of one's own insecurity, the insult to one's self-respect -- that aspect of crime shouldn't be overlooked. And being punched and kicked by strangers is far worse.
Like me, Yglesias greatly enjoys walking, and being mugged while out walking can ruin a wonderful hobby.
No details on the attackers, but, with no apparent monetary motive, this might have been a racial hate crime.
It will be interesting to see whether this despicable violence against perhaps the leading opinion journalist of his young generation creates much media attention, or whether it's dropped down the memory hole as too uncomfortable to think about. Yglesias, with his enthusiasm for promoting urban living and walkability, is a leading spokesman for a broad movement I feel warmly toward -- well-educated younger people who are attempting to reclaim urban areas for the urbane. But this crime against a public face of the movement -- while he was walking through an urban space, no less -- demonstrates the risks involved.
For more on whether this could be considered a racial hate crime, see my post of May 16, 2011.
May 16, 2011
Thinking about hate crimes
The apparent random racial beating over the weekend of Matthew Yglesias, perhaps the most influential political blogger of his generation, raises questions about what ought to be considered a hate crime.
There's a vast amount of confusion in our society because the megaphone is routinely seized by hate-filled pundits who denounce everybody they hate as being driven by hate. So, the concept of a "hate crime" is murky, to say the least.
But, society does have an interest in deterring through harsher penalties crimes not of passion but of premeditated malice, cold-blooded crimes that occur only because of animus toward groups. Quite possibly, "hate crimes" is the wrong term completely for these types of actions, but that seems to be what we are stuck with.
My view is that motivation for a crime should matter some in punishing the crime.
For example, by way of analogy, I particularly loathe witness-murdering.
Consider two homicides:
- A man comes home and finds another man in bed with his wife. In a jealous rage, he strikes the man with a blunt object. He immediately calls 9-11 and asks for an ambulance for his victim.
- Two men are robbing a liquor store with a confederate. One robber realizes that the lone customer in the store went to school with him and could identify him. He tells his colleague (in a conversation recorded on a hidden security camera's microphone) that because he already has two strikes against him, if that customer testifies, he'll go to jail for life. So, he then shoots the customer and the clerk to silence them. There are no other motives for the murders.
I think that in an era of long sentences, the death penalty can play a useful role in stigmatizing and deterring cold-blooded witness-murdering, but it wouldn't be right in the first case, a classic crime of passion.
Similarly, consider two crimes that might be subject to additional hate crime penalties:
- A man comes home and finds another man in bed with his wife. In a jealous rage, he calls her a "bitch" and punches her.
- Two men are sitting around bored and decide to go "polar bear hunting," planning to punch any random white man they see walking through their neighborhood in the back of the head, then kicking him.
Now, it's not uncommon for prosecutors to attempt to pile on hate crime penalties in cases where a member of a less legally privileged group uses, during a fit of rage, an epithet for a member of a more legally privileged group. But, clearly, the cuckolded man didn't sock his cheating wife because she was a woman, but because she was cheating. Punishing him extra for saying the epithet "bitch" is severely confusing cause and effect for no good purpose in deterring future violence.
In contrast, the second case is one that the law might well use additional penalties to deter because, like witness-murdering, it's rational and malign. There's no other motive for attacking a random white man other than the satisfactions of attacking a random white man.
Or consider, these two cases:
- Two men are sitting around talking angrily about their neighbor who dissed them yesterday and might be making time with one of the guys' woman. Then they see a man who kind of looks like the neighbor walking by in the dark. Enraged, and under incorrect apprehension of his identity, they punch random passerby Matthew Yglesias in the back of the head.
- Two men are sitting around bored and decide to go "polar bear hunting" and thus punch in the back of the head the first white guy they happen to see walking by, who happens to be Matthew Yglesias.
The first case seems to me like a pretty average screwed-up crime among the screwed-up classes, which should be punished in a pretty average fashion -- fairly harshly, according to my views, but there's no obvious reason for incremental penalties. It wouldn't be the kind of crime that strikes other as worth imitating.
The second case, however, seems like a classic racist hate crime. There was no motivation whatsoever for this violence to occur other than boredom and racial animus. Society has an interest in punishing more heavily in the name of deterrence otherwise pointless crimes carried out not in the heat of passion but with malice aforethought.
At minimum, society has an interest in keeping stuff like this from becoming fashionable. Say, or example, a third person videoed the attack on Yglesias, and the whole point of the attack was to have something cool to post on YouTube.
Granted, proving in court the lack of any other motive is often difficult, and so be it. Better ten guilty men go free and all that. But, it is reasonable to have the threat of additional penalties for violence carried out for rational but malign reasons, such as witness-murdering or polar bear hunting.
Of course, all this logic chopping isn't very relevant to how most people think about hate crimes, which is in Who-Whom terms. Matthew Yglesias is extremely well-plugged into the world of Washington punditry, but it doesn't occur to his peers that this attack on him could possibly be a hate crime ... because he's white.
From my review in Taki's Magazine:
I wrote on May 15, 2011 upon hearing of the beating:
I'm terribly sorry to hear about this crime. Yglesias should make sure to take it easy for a few days after being punched in the head in case there is some delayed reaction affecting his balance -- e.g., don't ride a bicycle in traffic.
Beyond physical injuries, well, I've never been the victim of street violence, but judging from the psychological trauma I've felt merely from being the victim of burglars -- the reminder of one's own insecurity, the insult to one's self-respect -- that aspect of crime shouldn't be overlooked. And being punched and kicked by strangers is far worse.
Like me, Yglesias greatly enjoys walking, and being mugged while out walking can ruin a wonderful hobby.
No details on the attackers, but, with no apparent monetary motive, this might have been a racial hate crime.
It will be interesting to see whether this despicable violence against perhaps the leading opinion journalist of his young generation creates much media attention, or whether it's dropped down the memory hole as too uncomfortable to think about. Yglesias, with his enthusiasm for promoting urban living and walkability, is a leading spokesman for a broad movement I feel warmly toward -- well-educated younger people who are attempting to reclaim urban areas for the urbane. But this crime against a public face of the movement -- while he was walking through an urban space, no less -- demonstrates the risks involved.
For more on whether this could be considered a racial hate crime, see my post of May 16, 2011.
May 16, 2011
Thinking about hate crimes
The apparent random racial beating over the weekend of Matthew Yglesias, perhaps the most influential political blogger of his generation, raises questions about what ought to be considered a hate crime.
There's a vast amount of confusion in our society because the megaphone is routinely seized by hate-filled pundits who denounce everybody they hate as being driven by hate. So, the concept of a "hate crime" is murky, to say the least.
But, society does have an interest in deterring through harsher penalties crimes not of passion but of premeditated malice, cold-blooded crimes that occur only because of animus toward groups. Quite possibly, "hate crimes" is the wrong term completely for these types of actions, but that seems to be what we are stuck with.
My view is that motivation for a crime should matter some in punishing the crime.
For example, by way of analogy, I particularly loathe witness-murdering.
Consider two homicides:
- A man comes home and finds another man in bed with his wife. In a jealous rage, he strikes the man with a blunt object. He immediately calls 9-11 and asks for an ambulance for his victim.
- Two men are robbing a liquor store with a confederate. One robber realizes that the lone customer in the store went to school with him and could identify him. He tells his colleague (in a conversation recorded on a hidden security camera's microphone) that because he already has two strikes against him, if that customer testifies, he'll go to jail for life. So, he then shoots the customer and the clerk to silence them. There are no other motives for the murders.
I think that in an era of long sentences, the death penalty can play a useful role in stigmatizing and deterring cold-blooded witness-murdering, but it wouldn't be right in the first case, a classic crime of passion.
Similarly, consider two crimes that might be subject to additional hate crime penalties:
- A man comes home and finds another man in bed with his wife. In a jealous rage, he calls her a "bitch" and punches her.
- Two men are sitting around bored and decide to go "polar bear hunting," planning to punch any random white man they see walking through their neighborhood in the back of the head, then kicking him.
Now, it's not uncommon for prosecutors to attempt to pile on hate crime penalties in cases where a member of a less legally privileged group uses, during a fit of rage, an epithet for a member of a more legally privileged group. But, clearly, the cuckolded man didn't sock his cheating wife because she was a woman, but because she was cheating. Punishing him extra for saying the epithet "bitch" is severely confusing cause and effect for no good purpose in deterring future violence.
In contrast, the second case is one that the law might well use additional penalties to deter because, like witness-murdering, it's rational and malign. There's no other motive for attacking a random white man other than the satisfactions of attacking a random white man.
Or consider, these two cases:
- Two men are sitting around talking angrily about their neighbor who dissed them yesterday and might be making time with one of the guys' woman. Then they see a man who kind of looks like the neighbor walking by in the dark. Enraged, and under incorrect apprehension of his identity, they punch random passerby Matthew Yglesias in the back of the head.
- Two men are sitting around bored and decide to go "polar bear hunting" and thus punch in the back of the head the first white guy they happen to see walking by, who happens to be Matthew Yglesias.
The first case seems to me like a pretty average screwed-up crime among the screwed-up classes, which should be punished in a pretty average fashion -- fairly harshly, according to my views, but there's no obvious reason for incremental penalties. It wouldn't be the kind of crime that strikes other as worth imitating.
The second case, however, seems like a classic racist hate crime. There was no motivation whatsoever for this violence to occur other than boredom and racial animus. Society has an interest in punishing more heavily in the name of deterrence otherwise pointless crimes carried out not in the heat of passion but with malice aforethought.
At minimum, society has an interest in keeping stuff like this from becoming fashionable. Say, or example, a third person videoed the attack on Yglesias, and the whole point of the attack was to have something cool to post on YouTube.
Granted, proving in court the lack of any other motive is often difficult, and so be it. Better ten guilty men go free and all that. But, it is reasonable to have the threat of additional penalties for violence carried out for rational but malign reasons, such as witness-murdering or polar bear hunting.
Of course, all this logic chopping isn't very relevant to how most people think about hate crimes, which is in Who-Whom terms. Matthew Yglesias is extremely well-plugged into the world of Washington punditry, but it doesn't occur to his peers that this attack on him could possibly be a hate crime ... because he's white.
From my review in Taki's Magazine:
On May 14, 2011, Matthew Yglesias, a prominent Washington, DC liberal blogger and proponent of urban living, was walking home alone after a dinner with fellow pundits when he became the victim of an apparent anti-white racial hate crime. In what sounds like a game of Knockout King or Polar Bear Hunting, “a couple of dudes ran up from behind, punched me in the head, then kicked me a couple of times before running off” without stealing anything. This shameful attack happened merely a mile north of the US Capitol Building.
Four decades ago, a popular witticism was that a neoconservative was a liberal who had gotten mugged by reality. Today, the rules of crimethink have grown rigid enough that even getting mugged in reality doesn’t seem to have put much of a dent in Yglesias’s worldview, judging from his new e-book The Rent Is Too Damn High. ... Yglesias argues that if only real estate developers were freed to Build, Baby, Build, we would enjoy a low-rent golden age.
But, there's a problem with living in a low-rent neighborhood ...
Read the whole thing there.
Posts
95 comments:
This is nothing new. Many liberals who got mugged by reality remained liberals... just like many Christians mugged by reality remained Christians. For many, liberalism is more than an ideology. It is a faith system. Rejecting liberalism would be like spitting on the holy image of MLK. Prior to the deification of figures like MLK, it was easier for liberals to lose the faith. But now that liberalism has its sacred icons, it's more difficult for liberals to let go of the One True Faith.
That was also why it was so difficult for so many to let go of communism. It wasn't just an economic theory... not even just a grand unified theory but a religion with its sacred icons like Marx, Lenin, and others--some of them holy martyrs to the cause. So, it would have been spiritually painful for many people to let go of the faith.
To be fair Steve, Yglesias never revealed the demographic profile of his attacker(s)
Well, didn't Yglesias become even more enthusiastic about the benefits of large-scale foreign immigration after his unfortunate occurrence?...
Speaking of affordable family formation, maybe it's time for Americans to reconsider the possibilities of living in small country towns?
At least we have the communications technologies and the transportation infrastructure to make it thinkable, I think.
"But we only rarely ask why it is that poor families can’t afford to move to nice suburbs. It’s not because construction costs are higher in the suburbs. It’s because it’s frequently illegal to build the kind of dense apartment buildings that could accommodate lower-income families."
Hey, Matt, you mean you'd like people like the ones who lived in Cabrini Green in Chicago to live in the suburbs with me? Actually, many do, on my dollar via Section 8.
Take 'em. You can have 'em. I'm willing to give up some of my community's and my neighborhood's diversity. I've been enriched enough. I'll share with you so that you don't have to endure being thought of as damned hypocrite, which you are, of course.
It's really hard to trump the girl who got raped in Haiti by a native who didn't even care that she was a Malcolm X scholar.
"To be fair Steve, Yglesias never revealed the demographic profile of his attacker(s)"
No, several months later he did mention on his blog that they were both black.
He mentioned it in the first post. You just need to know the code.
Gilbert Pinfold
Are all crimes against white people now "anti-white hate crimes" or are you being tongue-in-cheek, Steve?
"Just think how these good schools will be able to salve their scholastic goodness all over the poor children who have moved into the new Blade Runner-like tower blocks in once exclusive suburbs."
Priceless, just priceless. I really have to rummage around for some change for your tip jar, Steve. Your blog is an institution, it's a shame to think that you won't be writing forever. At least your articles will live on.
It's logically consistent once you realise the preferred solution is using hispanics to ethnically cleanse the black people.
I'd guess if you checked property values in Harlem since black people started to be pushed out by New York's policy of zero tolerance to black people living on Manhattan they would have risen to some midpoint between the average black value and the average white value in inverse proportion to the drop in average violent crime to some similar mid-point.
Once that first cleansing is complete then maybe replace the hispanics with asians then when it's relatively safe get all those rich Wall St and federal government types to gentrify it and the original pioneer gentrifiers get to make a fortune.
Simples.
Still can't donate.
Every article you write for TakiMag reads like the final page is missing. Not your best.
This is nothing new. Many liberals who got mugged by reality remained liberals...
Reminds me of an old R. Crumb cartoon showing a liberal getting mugged by a bunch of young black men. He shouts "I'm completely on your side!" as they smash his face into the ground.
To think, in the Sixties Crumb could draw unflattering images of blacks and still remain a counterculture hero. How far we've come.
It’s not because construction costs are higher in the suburbs. It’s because it’s frequently illegal to build the kind of dense apartment buildings that could accommodate lower-income families.
Ooh, that's a tad risky, isn't it? I thought I'd read somewhere that housing poor people in "vertical structures" is what makes them commit crimes and have illegitimate children.
Are all crimes against white people now "anti-white hate crimes" or are you being tongue-in-cheek, Steve?
You know what, it'd be a step up for people like you to simply acknowledge that some (not all) crimes against whites are anti-white hate crimes. I mean, sheesh dude, you really want dispute that "Knockout King" or "Polar Bear Hunting" are not anti-white hate crimes? If you do dispute it, then here's a newsflash: whites are people, too, you know! God Almighty, just imagine the uninhibited rage that would erupt if a pack of white boy yokels started up a game called "N-word Hunter."
Hey, bad news everyone. John Derbyshire has cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy.
http://takimag.com/article/life_at_half_speed_john_derbyshire#axzz1p4t1MsqE
In Brazil to have a non-favela house in the city you need ALOT of personal security or know the "kids in the community".
Apartaments are the prison of the middle-class.
Duplicate of my comment to the article in TAKI:
What a pity that the publications, where Steve Sailer is accepted, are not dominant in US press yet !
No sarcasm, pure pity.
Respectfully, Florida resident.
But, there's a problem with living in a low-rent neighborhood...
Too much 'vibrancy' keeps one awake at night?
As it happens Ive just been on Reddit looking at the various US city pages. Most of them have threads on moving to NYC, moving to LA etc etc.
One has to bear in mind that the state mandated religion of reddit is pure race-blind SWPL liberalism (I suspect if we could see pics of everyone on reddit it would look like the Tea Party in racial terms).
So, looking at the moving threads - where are all the requests for the most vibrant areas, the most diverse parts of town where one can really be enriched?
Well you'll never guess . . . no one wants to move to those places!
The trick is, of course, to find out which the most enriched areas are and avoid them without ever clearly stating that is an issue. Its fascinating to read the dance around the issue. Property taxes, crime, good schools all of that.
Why on earth does he want more highrises? They work well for elderly Jewish white, and Oriental people, but not so much for Mexicans, and very poorly for blacks.
Furthermore, America has an absolute glut of almost-free housing. What with baby boomers retiring and no NAMs to take their place and buy their huge houses, combined with the massive number of property currently in shadow inventory, I don't see what his beef is.
Is he that out-to-lunch? Or does he suffer from beltway-itis like so many of his peers do?
As one of the handful of areas where the median income has risen in the last few years (thank you Prince Obama!), I expect it is more DC beltway-itis.
He is, of coruse, correct about high housing prices retarding growth. People cannot afford to pay $300K for a ghetto two bedroom house surrounded by spiked palisades next to a car wash in Compton.
So why doesn't Iglesias tell his President right there in Washington to stop bailing out the banks and trying to keep house prices stratospheric?
We are now trillions of dollars in debt in an ultimately fruitless attempt to prop up bubble prices.
To prop up bubble prices for the banks, our President started his regime with cheap almost-no-money-down loans for first-time house buyers (poor kids!) to get them hooked and in debt. And they immediately stated defaulting.
People are not buying houses or paying rent because there are no jobs.
Y. is wrong from every angle. Yes, a mushrooming of low-rent neighborhoods isn't desirable, so he's wrong there. But he's also wrong in assuming the truth of the libertardian notion that lifting regs and laws and restrictions that govern builders will result in low-rent neighborhoods. It will not; it will result in *high*-rent neighborhoods. Builders will build for what the market can bear: shorn of restrictions, they will maximize profit. Y. assumes that regulations are frustrating the fundamental benevolence and charity of businessmen, who only want to give a brother (or a liberal) a home for a modest price.
The easy solution that no one mentions (occams butterknife strikes again) is to repeal civil rights legislation and allow landlords to discriminate freely and openly. That will allow low income residents to live in safe affordable neighborhoods away from black dysfunction
"This is the oft-expressed complaint among affluent whites moving into DC’s once-black neighborhoods that the diversity that attracted them in the first place is disappearing, and that, really, something ought to be done about it before every black household in Washington, other than maybe the Obamas, has moved to Baltimore."
Yeah, I agree, something damn well better be done about this, and soon!
Signed,
Mel Torme
Baltimore, Maryland
My God, this Yglesias customer outdoes even James Howard Kunstler in his yearning for ultra-dense housing.
Leftists hate the idea of individual anything, including single-family houses on their own land, with space around them. But mention the word "mass" (mass transit, mass movement) or "density" and they get a tingle up every limb.
It must be truly painful for Yglesias -- assuming he ever gets out of Washington -- to see suburbs and small towns with no vertical human filing cabinets. And zoning laws! It's a sin against the leftist Holy Ghost that mere people should have some say in what kind of dwellings are built in their neighborhoods -- that's a job for planners.
I've been thinking about how much is wasted with overdone housing in trying to escape poor people. It hit me that green housing that is totally off the grid can increase front end expense while reducing waste... as long as government doesn't subsidize it aggresively on the front end.
Speaking of diversity, I've just started reading a novel, Shanghai, by Christopher New. It paints a picture of what society was like in that city in the first half of the 20th century, when it was a cosmopolitan polyglot hell-hole of noise, squalor, construction, crime and corruption ruled by the British and the French. It was the third largest port in the world apparently, even back then (1903) according to the author(I have a hard time believing that), whose principle import was opium.
People are carted about the streets in sedan chairs, giant wheelbarrows, and of course rickshaws, a hundred corpses on average are floating in the harbor every morning, and the beheading of convicted criminals in the public square a form of popular entertainment.
My favorite aunt Jenny lived there 1946-1947 as an American school teacher and always told a lot of good stories -- there were 30,000 Jewish refugees during the war, a lot of them fleeing the old Soviet Union as well as the Nazis, the police are Sikh, etc., so I decided to find out more.
One cannot save a fool from his folly.
I thought Y normally chanted the 'regulate, regulate, regulate' mantra. Has he become a libertarian?
I agree with the commenter who thinks everything you write for Taki's magazine reads short and shallow.
I'm not a big MattY fan, but this is not engaging with his idea at all.
As you well know, there's nothing radical about his notion. In basically every part of the country other than Bos-Wash, Chicago and the west coast, builders are free enough to build that housing prices never rise much above $200 a square foot.
Keeping prices so low does not require anything like tower-in-the-park urban dystopias. Dallas has a 20 block downtown and then ranch houses for 40 miles. Even in the most desirable areas, you don't have to build high. Paris, which has almost no buildings more than six floors high, packs in 50,000 people per square mile, more than any American city AND any other major European city, in a space that doesn't seem particularly congested.
There are, of course, pros and cons to allowing builders to build. The pro is you don't need two people working 60 hours a week to afford a decent amount of space in a neighborhood with nice housing. Hell, two educated people working not that hard can afford a great house with a tiny fraction of their income, have a lot of money left over for travel and eating out and still retire early. It's a major plus.
The downside is that there's a much better chance of undesirable neighbors when housing costs $100 a square foot than when it costs $1000 a square foot.
On the whole, I'd say the cheap housing model is better. The primary concern about neighbors hinges on the public schools. There are many people who can afford $100 a square foot housing with kids that I want to keep far away from my kids.
Fortunately, there's an easy solution to this, as they demonstrate in Texas. Have really big school districts and track the kids early. That's why a functional family in Garland Texas can feel pretty good about sending their kids to a district that's 70 percent black and hispanic. The district is so big that if your kids are competent, it will place them with other kids who are competent and they'll do fine.
There are other downsides to the cheap housing model. Mixing people of different social classes makes it hard to create a true density of support infrastructure for any one class. The extraordinary homogeneity of Manhattan creates a world that is great for people who live in Manhattan (provided they have the money to live there).
Anyway, it's a much more serious argument than you give it credit for — as you clearly know given your talk of affordable family formation and your clear understanding of its importance. But if you're not going to engage fully, then don't bother. MattY is an easy guy to effectively mock, but it's not really worth my time to read said mocking.
To be fair Steve, Yglesias never revealed the demographic profile of his attacker(s)
Yes, I'm sure they were Anglo-Saxons, and he's held onto their profiles despite the race-realist taunting/schadenfreude/toldyasos because he's above that kind of petty point-scoring. Snark aside, I suppose it's possible he's betrayed his faith (let's not pretend "oh yeah! Well guess what? They happened to be WHITE!!!" isn't a libtard article of faith), but I wouldn't want to bet on it.
This Fall:
Training Day 2: Pile 'em High. Tim Libby (Matt Yglesias), fresh from college, turns up for his first day in the urban planning department, babbling about his plans for a high-rise charter city on Fire Island. Grizzled veteran Chang (Lee Kuan Yew) wastes no time in showing Tim it's a long way down from the 31st floor.
"Just think how these good schools will be able to salve their scholastic goodness all over the poor children who have moved into the new Blade Runner-like tower blocks in once exclusive suburbs."
This paragraph conjures up an image of US cities after the UN's Agenda 21 has been fully implemented. It also reminds me of my first visit to Scarboro, Ontario, a former girlfriends old suburban neighborhood just outside of Toronto. It is now populated mostly with African and Arab immigrants, and the strip mall resembles an Oriental Bazaar.
Like many people of his ethnic background he is fearful of 'nature' and people 'into nature' - that's different from 'environmentalism' which is a left wing movement...
conservation, nature loving, outdoorsmen - that's all suspect goy stuff.
Many people of his ethnic background see absolutely no value in nature and are dumbfounded by it. on the other hand, chances are uncle Irv is in the develop-pa biz.
Whites: don't have kids, save the planet..
don't build big homes,
then...open borders... screw the environment.. how transparent does it have to be?
My God, this Yglesias customer outdoes even James Howard Kunstler in his
Except Kunstler doesn't ever advocoate "ultra-dense" housing, you stupid idiot.
Kunstler is Kunstler, but why do his most rabid critics never pay attention to what he actually says? UHHHRGGGG CAR GOOD KUNSTLER BAD
"To be fair Steve, Yglesias never revealed the demographic profile of his attacker(s)"
Exactly.
The dog didn't bark in the night. Matty boy didn't throw a fit about the race of his attackers. The absence of a fact can be strong evidence itself.
Tall housing, short housing, spread out housing, congested housing, it does not make one bit of difference. The vibrant community will insure a high crime rate outcome. But hey all that activity is good for business.
"Well, didn't Yglesias become even more enthusiastic about the benefits of large-scale foreign immigration after his unfortunate occurrence?.."
Brown buffers against black thugs? That way, blacks will be too busy fighting with Hispanics to mess with Yglesias.
"Are all crimes against white people now 'anti-white hate crimes' or are you being tongue-in-cheek, Steve?"
Never been walking in all or predominantly NAM neighborhoods as non-NAM, I see. Go try it.
Are all crimes against white people now "anti-white hate crimes" or are you being tongue-in-cheek, Steve?
Wow.
Yes, every battery by a Black on a White stranger is a hate crime.
I don't see any necessary negative association of the right with high density housing (or mass transit for that matter). Jerry Pournelle, a man with excellent rightist credentials (he advised Ronald Reagan on SDI), wrote Oath of Fealty (with his Californian millionaire pal Larry Niven) about Todos Santos, a giant arcology rearing like colossus over the skyline of Los Angeles. Designed, built and operated by a private company naturally and widely resented by the local poor (who cannot afford to live in it) & politicos. Ayn Rand admired skyscrapers and modernist architecture (e.g. The Fountainhead) as well as having a passion for trains. Some rightists would like to live at the centre of the civilization they control like the boss of Metropolis or Eldon Tyrell in Blade Runner.
Steve,
You left out that the title of Yglesias's book comes from a catchphrase of gimmick NY gubernatorial candidate Jimmy McMillan, who looks like a cross between Samuel L. Jackson and Civil War general Ambrose Burnside.
McMillan became a favorite of a lot of the commentariat and TV talking heads, despite his questionable views on Jewish people. Bravo reality TV host Andy Cohen is a particular fan of his, despite acknowledging on-air some of his uncool views.
So there we have it. While a Beck or an Easterbrook get fried for much less, if you're a funny, gregarious, bufoonish black guy there's no end to the extent the elites will patronizingly indulge you.
To think, in the Sixties Crumb could draw unflattering images of blacks and still remain a counterculture hero. How far we've come.
Kind of like in the movie " The Last Waltz " where The Band is seen hanging up Confederate flags everywhere, and yet The Band is quite popular with counterculture types such as Emmylou Harris and Neil Young. Even in the late 1970's, a Confederate flag was considered part of Americana, even by dyed in the wool liberals, now it is viewed as on the same level of as a flag with a swastika. Steve as also pointed out the incongruity of Robert Redford making what some people would be considered a movie with Confederate sympathies " The Conspirator ". Redford comes from an older generation of liberals who didn't reflexively assume all southern whites were angry bigots.
I was in Glasgow ~20 years ago, and every high rise I entered had some indication of crime. Broken windows, burned garbage, graffiti, urine, drug paraphernalia, you name it.
High rises are not the answer, unless you can convince the very rich to live there.
seriously you guys? not a single youtube link to where he stole the title of his book?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4o-TeMHys0
Steve, I think that you make a very good point about high real estate prices keeping violent and dysfunctional people out of your neighborhood. And your argument holds well when it comes to your own neighborhood of Studio City, or a neighborhood you are familiar with like Lincoln Park in Chicago.
But I don't think it is as relevant to Manhattan.
Steve I happen to know that in Studio City a decent condo costs about $400 - $600 a square foot and in Lincoln Park a similar condo costs around the same.
You as a resident of Studio City may be pretty happy in some ways to keep condo prices at that level, it keeps most violent types from living in your neighborhood. Violent types priced out of your neighborhood in my opinion decide to live in Palmdale or Lancaster, or some place where prices are much lower.
However, The average condo in Manhattan South of 96th street now costs around $1100 a square foot.
Steve, you don't need prices of $1100 a square foot in order to keep out the violent and dysfunctional people,
In my humble opinion, zoning could be eliminated in Manhattan South of 96th, new high rises could rise from the Hudson to the East river, and average condo prices in Manhattan would drop to $750 a square foot, and the population of violent and dysfunctional people would not go up a lot.
Steve I don't know how much time you have spent on the periphery of Manhattan but there is a tremendous ammt of near empty space. Ever go walking around the Javitz Center neighborhood? block after block of empty land or marginally used things like UPS and Fedex truck storage, auto repair shops, and etc.
Similarly, ever go walking around the South Street Seaport? block after block of crummy suburban mall low rise stuff. Eliminate zoning and the whole thing can be replaced with a large number of 60 story condo buildings
All in all, there are perhaps 700 thousand people living in Manhattan south of 96th street today and with a complete elimination of zoning you could get that up easily to 1.3 million. That would dramatically cut the cost of condos down to 750 bucks a square foot, without causing crime and dysfunction.
Steve, I know that many of your readers enjoy living in places with affordable family formation, and wouldn't care to move to Manhattan even if prices fell to 750 a square foot. But I respectfully think that there is enough interest on this topic that you should start a more focused thread to discuss this idea for getting condos down to 750 a square foot.
You've seen the Obama Flag, with Obama's picture replacing the Stars in the Stars and Stripes? Yes it is a religion. Literally.
Lifting regs and laws and restrictions that govern builders will result in low-rent neighborhoods. It will not; it will result in *high*-rent neighborhoods. Builders will build for what the market can bear: shorn of restrictions, they will maximize profit.
Builders will build new, expensive housing, which will put downward pressure on rents of existing housing, so long as the supply of housing rises faster than the supply of jobs. Eventually they'll overbuild, and have to discount all but the latest and greatest housing.
The effect of the bailouts of the likes of Goldman-Sachs was to centralize real estate wealth in the hands of those in a position to enjoy the bailouts by foreclosing on those not in a position to enjoy the bailouts.
This isn't to say the folks foreclosed upon were innocents -- its just to say that there is no honor among thieves when it comes to ethnic log rolling.
gentric cleansing
"To be fair Steve, Yglesias never revealed the demographic profile of his attacker(s)."
To be fair, Anonymous, he didn't need to.
"in the Sixties Crumb could draw unflattering images of blacks"
That was amazing..and think of Archie Bunker's lines in All in the Family.
I knew an old racist, an otherwise kindly retired officer, and we younguns used to harass him no end - "hey Bill, let's watch n*****s playing basketball - " "UGH!" and so forth. You could never get away with that kind of banter now.
Looking back, I am amazed at the freedom we had.
Highrises if done right are great. Yes, even for families with kids -- especially for families with kids. We tend to associate highrises with black dysfunction; but of all people the HBD-ers should understand that it's not the buildings that are to blame.
"Anyway, it's a much more serious argument than you give it credit for"
The argument is about how to finesse the ethnic cleansing of black people from Los Angeles, Washington DC and New York - especially Manhattan - while simultaneously promoting forced integration of black people into middle class whitopias elsewhere without the people in those middle class whitopias realising the double standard.
To the anonymous saying that blacks are the problem with high rises,
The yobs in Glasgow were a huge problem, and there was nary a black to be seen.
"Highrises if done right are great."
If that were true then all over the world there'd be highrises full of rich people.
.
"Yes, even for families with kids -- especially for families with kids."
Triple nonsense.
.
"that you should start a more focused thread to discuss this idea for getting condos down to 750a square foot."
Diversity and integration for Manhattan.
"The argument is about how to finesse the ethnic cleansing of black people from Los Angeles, Washington DC and New York - especially Manhattan - while simultaneously promoting forced integration of black people into middle class whitopias elsewhere without the people in those middle class whitopias realising the double standard."
Uh, no. Taking steps to radically cut the cost of renting or purchasing housing will, in fact, make it easier for black people (and everyone else who doesn't make $250k/year) to stay in neighborhoods that become attractive to wealthy whites/asians.
"Like many people of his ethnic background he is fearful of 'nature' and people 'into nature'"
If we all lived in towers there'd be more nature--and it'd be much closer to you.
"Taking steps to radically cut the cost of renting or purchasing housing"
Stop immigration then. Job done.
The reality...
The ethnic cleansing of black people from LA using hispanic gangs or the ethnic cleansing of black people from Harlem via zero tolerance for black people has been effective but SLOW.
The DC solution seems to be planting densely packed highrise colonies of hispanics right in the middle of black neighborhoods which would be FAST.
Once the black people were gone and more gentrifiers had moved in the pioneer gentrifiers could cash in their chips and the hispanic blocks blown up for urban renewal.
In the meantime you need somewhere for all the cleansed black people to go - hence forced integration of whitopias - and all the media spotlight goes on that and not on the cleansing of LA, DC and New York - especially Manhattan.
"So why haven’t nice, well-educated white liberals told the hinterlands to give them their tired, their poor, their Size XXXL masses yearning to live cheap? Why instead have they erected countless roadblocks to cheap housing?
Because the trouble with living in a low-rent neighborhood is having low-rent neighbors.
Therefore, most of the bugs that the Yglesias Plan intends to fix are instead its features."
Classic. This is one of those truths that stares us right in the face, and everyone ignores.
I'd love to hear Boulder, CO residents fess up to their real motivations.
Just like Steve, I live in the Los Angeles area. I respect what others are saying here, but I see no ethnic cleansing in the neighborhoods in which my friends live. My friends are spread all over the city and so I get to travel to different neighborhoods.
The overall trend I see is that of average IQ founding stock European Americans priced out of neighborhoods by groups with higher IQ.
For example, only thirty years ago Manhattan Beach was filled with firemen, sports coaches, surfers, waiters, and others who earned a middle class living without having to be too intellectual.
Today, land in Manhattan Beach costs an average of more than $11 million an acre (I know - hard to believe for our readers in the red states) and the majority of people moving in are ones with the high IQs needed to sustain incomes of more than $500 thousand a year
yes still a few professional athletes and others of average IQ are moving in, but in general the story is of average IQ founding stock Americans displaced by those with higher IQ
Similarly, San Marino was well known throughout the USA as a bastion of colonial stock, social register types. The children and grandchildren of these types selected spouses based on good looks instead of selecting spouses based on genetically high IQs as a result the average IQ never rose.
As Steve has pointed out, Chinese immigrants with genetically higher IQs have now almost completely displaced the old line founding stock average IQ European Americans in the schools of San Marino.
So again, I respectfully don't see whites displacing blacks, I see super high IQ people displacing average iq people
I think Steve has frequently commented on how he sees founding stock average IQ Americans leaving Los Angeles and moving to Utah, Idaho, and Colorado.
Lots of people don't care for cars and freeways, not many feel the need to advertise it to such an excruciating degree as does Kunstler.
That's a point in Murray's book: that the DC era has off the charts white people, and they keep moving in.
San Marino was the setting for the George Segal/Denzel Washington movie "Carbon Copy"
Just like Steve, I live in the Los Angeles area. I respect what others are saying here, but I see no ethnic cleansing in the neighborhoods in which my friends live. My friends are spread all over the city and so I get to travel to different neighborhoods.
In the longer run I dont see how elite whites are going to survive as an elite without a more sold white powerbase beneath them. Thats the essential problem with elitist liberal whites the world over.
First they came for the working class whites. But I said nothing because I wasnt a working class white.
Then they came for the middle class whites. But I said nothing because I wasnt a middle class white.
Finally they came for the elite high IQ whites. But there was no one left to speak for me.
Add this tile to the vibrant and diverse mosaic of urban living that Matt Yglesias so devoutly desires - Tide Theft:
http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/03/12/031212-news-tide-theft-1-4/
Anonymous said...
Just like Steve, I live in the Los Angeles area. I respect what others are saying here, but I see no ethnic cleansing in the neighborhoods in which my friends live. My friends are spread all over the city and so I get to travel to different neighborhoods.
....
Similarly, San Marino was well known throughout the USA as a bastion of colonial stock, social register types. The children and grandchildren of these types selected spouses based on good looks instead of selecting spouses based on genetically high IQs as a result the average IQ never rose.
Funny, this guy posted the exact same comment over at Mangan's even though it was completely off topic. It comes across as a guy who wants to rub certain people's noses in the dirt. After all, how can you complain about being replaced since your IQ is inferior, etc.
Question: anon are you the infamous commenter Yan Shen who spent many months here and at Mangans? The comment fits your style.
"The process in places like Manhattan is to use hispanics to cleanse black people first and then [etc.]"
I have to wonder how precisely this plan is formulated at the highest level. Try as I might, I just can't see, in today's society, high-powered lawyers, financiers, politicians etc. sitting around in some boardroom and saying to each other: "OK, let's figure out how we're going to get the black underclass out of our city."
Yet the evidence suggests something like that is happening, right under our noses, without too much of an outcry. How do they do it without getting sued, shunned, and attacked by media and the civil rights industry?
Heliogabulus
"I have to wonder how precisely this plan is formulated at the highest level."
You can discuss anything you like as long as you talk in euphemisms.
Disparate impact is for thee and not for me.
Presumably, it's done by paying off NAM leaders. The amount of money that can be siphoned off big city development projects looks enormous to the head of the Black Fist Strike Force, or whatever.
What I most admire about Steve is that he finds holes in other peoples' arguments - and writes a lot himself, without making too many logically flawed statements.
However, I do agree more with Sowell that zoning barriers are more to protect real estate values by creating scarcity. Keeping neighbourhoods safe is a secondary consideration.
I say this because even cities in Australia with no appreciable violent minorities are crippled by a plethoria of zoning restrictions. That have made Australia's most abundent resource, land, inordinatley expensive.
The dog didn't bark in the night. Matty boy didn't throw a fit about the race of his attackers. The absence of a fact can be strong evidence itself.
Its all part of decoding the media in our go-ahead modern world of information!
More often than not no ethnic description is an ethnic description itself.
I dont know who coined the term but its applicable to crime news stories. Crimes are often committed by:
MONA - Men Of No Appearance.
Or
MONDEO - Men Of No Discernible Ethnic Origin.
Last year in the British looting/rioting some asian muslims were killed by a car full of MONAs. The race of the victims was well known but the MSM/police went to strenuous efforts not to say anything about the perpetrators. Thus telling the more discerning to work out exactly who they were.
The reason being TPTB were concerned not to inflame ethnic tensions and thus tread carefully and sensitively. One is tempted to wonder why they didnt apply the same thinking when importing these two groups in the first place.
"I say this because even cities in Australia with no appreciable violent minorities are crippled by a plethoria of zoning restrictions."
It's all relative. The frequency of violent traits varies among social classes too.
I'd expect there's a more or less precise mathematical formula relating zoning housing price differentials with the differentials in violent crime rate so in towns where the difference in violent crime rate is relatively low then the price differential will be relatively low but it will still be there.
I looked at the Tide theft link. I note they are careful to balance the pic of the black perp with one of a white guy.
See - everybody is doing it.
Yes. Yes, I'm sure they are.
"You can discuss anything you like as long as you talk in euphemisms."
So probably something like: "We need to attract more Creative Class people downtown, and also bring in lots of fresh, hard-working immigrants who deserve a shot at the American Dream." As long as it sounds positive...
My vague impression is that Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel would like to drive hundreds of thousands of poor blacks out of Chicago. Black leaders seem to think that he will make sure that they get paid, so it's okay.
That's been happening for a while. Chicago's black population declined by almost 20% over the last decade. I wonder if Chicago will ever have another black mayor?
The word "urban" is often used as a euphemism for black, such as "urban radio." In another generation, they'll probably still be using that term, but young people won't understand why blacks are described as "urban" because by then most of them will be living who knows where.
"So probably something like..."
And don't forget "urban renewal." That's a classic one.
.
"My vague impression is that Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel would like to drive hundreds of thousands of poor blacks out of Chicago"
Yes, both processes at once in Chicago, a mixture of hispanic gangbangers and inner city gentrification providing the push and the demolition of housing projects plus section 8 to the white suburbs as the pull creating a more Paris style solution in time for peak oil - benign elite in the center surrounded by an asian ring then a hispanic ring then a black ring.
Lots of money incoming for the black community leaders.
"The word "urban" is often used as a euphemism for black"
Which in this context makes "urban renewal" the perfect euphemism.
The yobs in Glasgow were a huge problem, and there was nary a black to be seen.
You only seem to find these concentrations of highly dysfunctional Euro-whites in parts of the UK and parts of the former USSR.I Wonder why?
My vague impression is that Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel would like to drive hundreds of thousands of poor blacks out of Chicago. Black leaders seem to think that he will make sure that they get paid, so it's okay.
Then he would just be continuing what his predecessor did. The bi-coastal media failed to take notice that Daley II was an early and especially ardent supporter of illegal immigration. I don't know if it's recently dropped to third place, but for many years Chicago was the number two Mexican city in the US.
In the latter years of Daley II all the major public housing projects (Robert Taylor, Cabrini-Green, Stateway Gardens, etc.) were torn down and the residents given Sec. 8 vouchers to take to the suburbs and downstate.
"Paris style solution in time for peak oil"
This can be fun
I have to wonder how precisely this plan is formulated at the highest level. Try as I might, I just can't see, in today's society, high-powered lawyers, financiers, politicians etc. sitting around in some boardroom and saying to each other: "OK, let's figure out how we're going to get the black underclass out of our city."
Yet the evidence suggests something like that is happening, right under our noses, without too much of an outcry. How do they do it without getting sued, shunned, and attacked by media and the civil rights industry?
Anti-White CONSPIRACY THEORY!!! RACIIISSSTS!!! YEARGH! Where's my White Ethnic Cleansing Conspiracy Membership Card? Where do I collect my checks? Lulz, you're all just jealous of White People!
Sorry. I read it so much from you know who, some of it must've rubbed off.
The reason being TPTB were concerned not to inflame ethnic tensions and thus tread carefully and sensitively. One is tempted to wonder why they didnt apply the same thinking when importing these two groups in the first place.
Libtards hate it when you point out that ethnic conflict is their fault, what with all the work they did - and continue to do - to create ethnic diversity, the necessary precondition for ethnic conflict.
Kind of like in the movie " The Last Waltz " where The Band is seen hanging up Confederate flags everywhere, and yet The Band is quite popular with counterculture types such as Emmylou Harris and Neil Young.
Not to mention Bob Dylan. And Robbie Robertson himself was half-Jewish (father) and half-Mohawk (mother). What a great song "The Weight" was!
Even in the late 1970's, a Confederate flag was considered part of Americana, even by dyed in the wool liberals, now it is viewed as on the same level of as a flag with a swastika.
Speaking of which, what about Jorma Kaukonen (Finnish father/Jewsih mother) wearing a swastika medallion on stage at Woodstock?
"The yobs in Glasgow were a huge problem, and there was nary a black face to be seen."
So Scotland should import blacks to have even higher crime rates?
Jorma Kaukonen (Finnish father/Jewsih mother) wearing a swastika medallion on stage at Woodstock?
IF he was finnish than there is a chance it was a Finnish military symbol.
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?31449-The-Finnish-swastika
I agree about the Confederate flag- and even more ridiculous is St. George's cross in the UK.. next up the American flag (some liberals are already working on that) and the cross, which the scot-irish have been hard at work on for several decades now..(their first victory was removing the cross from NYC ambulances and now the rest of the country has followed suit..
@svig, but the more problems they create with diversity the more they can say we need more diversity and more 'tolerance' training..
Per President Obama's very 1st entry on Wikiquote, he was "not interested in the suburbs" (because they bored him). Tough break for workaday folks less amply supplied with a suave demeanor and consummate SWPL signaling technique, the kind of losers who thought the suburbs provided a useful buffer between living on a mountain in Idaho and pushing through the squeegee men downtown. Exporting the rabble out of the gleaming metropolis is not incidental to Obama's program of caudillismo, it's instrumental.
But, there's plenty more where he came from
(cf. e-book above)
My vague impression is that Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel would like to drive hundreds of thousands of poor blacks out of Chicago. Black leaders seem to think that he will make sure that they get paid, so it's okay.
Been meaning to post this one at iSteve:
Emanuel Disavows 25% of School Kids, Says CTU
By Mary Ann Ahern
Tuesday, Feb 28, 2012
nbcchicago.com
Karen Lewis, the Chicago Teacher's Union President, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel have a testy relationship at best.
But it wasn't always that way.
The two leaders met privately last year ahead of Emanuel's inauguration. They went for dinner and to attend a dance - both are fans of the art form - and to develop a working relationship.
"We were both seeing who the other person was," she said.
Lewis said she got her answer about Emanuel's character rather quickly.
"In that conversation, he did say to me that 25 percent of the students in this city are never going to be anything, never going to amount to anything and he was never going to throw money at them."
She said the comment took her aback, and she looked at him askance...
The classic text is Jones's Slaughter of Cities. He shows urban blight was the result of a real conspiracy to diminish Catholic political solidarity by breaking up white ethnic neighborhoods. Blacks were the muscle then. Now the latest generations of blacks are being phased out, as other commenters here point out.
Rather reminiscent of the "Simpsons" episode where the short-sighted town authorities try to get rid of different kinds of natural pests by bringing in rivalrous pests. For example, to free the town of Kudzu the authorities simply import Kudzu-eating tigers (or some such thing). When the tigers pose problems more significant than the Kudzu ever posed, the authorities import something bigger and more dangerous that eats the tigers, and so on. In the end, the town is lost.
Another good text is the bio of Robert Moses by Caro.
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