From the New York Times, an op-ed by Jacqueline Stevens, a professor of political science at Northwestern who is the author of States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals. Professor Stevens argues that we should "open the borders" and "abolish inheritance" because "the entire body of laws around families and inheritance, embody societies’ collective flight from death." Okay ... My first thought, by the way, was that this op-ed was an elaborate hoax perpetrated upon the NYT by that commenter on my site who is always going on and on about how everybody he disagrees with is a death-loving Nihilist. But, a little research suggests this essay is not a parody, although my diligent Googling has also revealed that there may be more than one Jacqueline Stevens on the Internet at present. Either that, or there's only one Jacqueline Stevens and she is definitely one of the most well-rounded of contemporary intellectuals.
Citizenship to Go
By JACQUELINE STEVENS
CITIZENSHIP laws are in the news again. ...
The real problem with citizenship laws is not their manipulation by lawmakers or entrepreneurs, much less by mythical “anchor babies.” The problem is more fundamental: the age-old, irrational linkage between citizenship and birthplace.
From ancient Athens to South Sudan, birth to certain parents, or in a certain territory, has been the primary criterion for citizenship. The word “nationality” comes from the Latin nasci, or birth. America is no exception, notwithstanding the enlargement of citizenship to encompass non-Europeans and women.
Archaic membership rules have made life miserable not only for Mexican migrants in the United States, but also for people who cannot persuade their governments to accept their claims of citizenship ...
... The problem is not bad science, poorly trained officials or even ethnic hatred. The problem is the dubious reliance on birth for assigning citizenship.
Why does the practice endure? ...
Citizens are created by politicians, the citizen-makers. And they are created because the nation, and hence birthright citizenship, exists to alleviate anxieties about death.
Belonging to the nation or any other community by birth, including one’s family, sustains fantasies of immortality, as these groups persist after one’s own life has ended. Birthright citizenship, and indeed, the entire body of laws around families and inheritance, embody societies’ collective flight from death.
Libertarians and economists have long questioned the usefulness of national boundaries. In 1984, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page proposed adding a constitutional amendment: “There shall be open borders.”
For some on the left, the abolition of birthright citizenship evokes the nightmarish prospect of a labor glut in wealthy countries, the global lowering of wages, and capitalism run amok. But greed and corruption have challenged good governance in all ages, not just in the modern capitalist era. Moreover, too many on the left overlook how inheritance laws perpetuate inequality, as well as the disparity in wealth among countries because of restrictions on migration.
Karl Marx predicted that the demise of feudalism would mean that wealth would be created anew in each generation. Instead, intergenerational transmission of money and property remains the main culprit for inequality in wealth. Abolishing inheritance would help end inequality within countries; abolishing birthright citizenship would help end inequality among countries, by letting people move for greater opportunity.
Impossible? Utopian? That was the response to those who proposed the elimination of slavery, a persistent feature for most of the world’s history and, like nativism, defended by some because its abolition would benefit Northern capitalists and increase factory exploitation.
Instead of using birth for assigning citizenship, why not keep the boundaries of current countries, open the borders, and use residence to define citizenship, as the 50 states do? ... People should be free to move across borders; they should be citizens of the states where they happen to reside—period.
Back in 2005, I pointed out that about five billion people live in countries with lower per capita GDP's than Mexico's. Since almost a quarter of all Mexicans in the world now live in the United States, the implication from that example is that Open Borders would bring hundreds of millions of poor foreigners to the U.S., as was confirmed by a subsequent Gallup Poll in over 100 countries.
But, who cares about numbers? Anyway, crunching numbers to refute Open Borders enthusiasts is like breaking a butterfly upon the wheel.
Open the borders of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Then we'll follow. Promise.
ReplyDeleteOpen the borders of Seattle and Portland by eliminating apartheid "Smart Growth" restrictions that have disparate impact, and we'll follow. Promise.
ReplyDeleteHow the hell are anchor babies 'mythical'?
ReplyDeleteSteve, you cut her off before she got to the good part!
ReplyDelete"
In early modern Europe, vagabonds without passes were hanged, imprisoned, branded and shipped off to the colonies, including America. Requiring a birth certificate to document citizenship is no less irrational. We need governments, but we don’t need nations. People should be free to move across borders; they should be citizens of the states where they happen to reside — period.
Swell idea, Jackie! How about Israel leads the way and shows the rest of us how it is done!
This woman, Jacqueline Stevens, is she retarded?
ReplyDeleteMy first thought, by the way, was that this op-ed was an elaborate hoax perpetrated upon the NYT by that commenter on my site who is always going on and on about how everybody he disagrees with is a Nihilist.
ReplyDeleteWow.
I'm flattered.
You just made my day.
My week, really.
But no, it wasn't me.
PS: THEY REALLY ARE NIHILISTS!!!
It's not just some silly rhetorical device on my part.
This woman, Jacqueline Stevens, is she retarded?
ReplyDeleteNo she is a professor at one of our elite universities that should tell you something about the state of our elite universities
Funny entry on her blog:
ReplyDeleteThe New Jewish Eugenics, Just as Dumb
The pseudo-scientists have done it again: successfully pitched an inane argument dressed up as "new research" to a middle-brow audience of journalists and editors always happy to unveil a "controversial" fake discovery legitimating racial and ethnic genetic inequality. One of the co-authors has made equally absurd claims before, arguing, the LA Times writes, that "some unidentified pathogen prompts a hormonal imbalance that makes babies more likely to become gay."
Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran wrote a book that ignores a ground rule of statistics, not to confuse correlation with causation, especially when the correlation is likely to be entirely spurious.
(...)
Why should I leave my property to strangers? Does this woman have children? Did she acquire her position as a political "scientist" on merit? How does one define merit in political "science"?
ReplyDeleteAbolish the social "sceinces". I have never met a sociologist who could compete with a turnip in terms of IQ.
I was actually rather pleased by the op-ed! Anything that reminds people that the Wall Street Journal endorsed a "There Shall Be Open Borders" amendment to the Constitution strikes me as more good than bad. It makes it just that much harder for the open-borders lobby to deny that there is an open-borders lobby.
ReplyDeleteYou first Israel
ReplyDeleteThis can't be real.
ReplyDeleteThere isn't much difference between WSJ and the NYT.
ReplyDelete***"PS: THEY REALLY ARE NIHILISTS!!!
ReplyDeleteIt's not just some silly rhetorical device on my part."***
Yes it is.
Nihilists may exist, but there are far fewer of them than you think. Your use of the word "nihilist" is so broad and slap-dash as to be meaningless.
Congratulations, your idiocy is annoying enough to get a mention from iSteve himself. You are probably the only anonymous poster who is instantly recognizeable without using a unique name.
"You are probably the only anonymous poster who is instantly recognizeable without using a unique name."
ReplyDeleteNo, he's not. Prose styles are distinctive and surprisingly consistent.
Throw her to the lions.
ReplyDeleteI think this shows how close we are to Amnesty and complete open borders (we're 90 percent there already).
ReplyDeleteThat the NYT could publish such crazy tripe, without any blowback, except from Steve, shows they don't even have to pretend to care about the USA anymore.
Next the NYT invites 10 million Zulu's to settle here, and America nods in approval.
She says "collective flight from death" likes it's a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteLike Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang said:
ReplyDelete“Wages in rich countries are determined more by immigration control than anything else, including any minimum wage legislation. How is the immigration maximum determined? Not by the ‘free’ labour market, which, if left alone, will end up replacing 80-90 per cent of native workers with cheaper, and often more productive, immigrants. Immigration is largely settled by politics. So, if you have any residual doubt about the massive role that the government plays in the economy’s free market, then pause to reflect that all our wages are, at root, politically determined…”
http://books.google.com/books?id=qUqoS7MTwPwC&pg=PA5&dq#v
"No, he's not. Prose styles are distinctive and surprisingly consistent."
ReplyDeleteFor example, Steve Sailer always puts a superfluous comma after the word 'but' when he opens a sentence with it. This is strictly speaking speaking incorrect. But, it allows us to recognize Sailer's comments anywhere!
Do you suppose this has something to do with the PUTIN FACTOR?
ReplyDeleteSailer mentioned that NY Times was for border enforcement up until the late 90s or even early 2000s but then reversed positions. What could have been the reason? With stuff like this, there is no single reason, but a big part of it surely had to do with Jewish fears. So, why did Jewish fears suddenly rise in the late 90s?
During the 90s, Jews took control of Russia. Almost all the oligarchs were Jewish and they were making deals with globalist Jews in EU and US to forge NWO. Jews controlled the Russian government, media, banks, entertainment, natural resources, academia, and etc. And non-Russian Jews were working hand in hand to lend support to Russian Jews. With the fall of communism, Jews all over the world believed RUSSIA IS IN OUR HANDS. And Yeltsin, as a stereotypical drunken boorish Russian, seemed like putty in Jewish hands. He was to Jews what Indians were to white man. Just give him fire water, and he'd do as Jews 'advised' him. He was their dubya.
So, in the 90s, Jews were feeling super and masterful. Clintonomics seemed to be working(making super-rich Jews super-duper-rich), economy was booming, Russia was in Jewish hands, and maybe even Palestinains would cut a deal with Israel. But everything unraveled in the late 90s and early 2000s. Israel-Palestine deal fell apart. Economy imploded. And Putin rode the tide of Russian nationalism to gain power and oust Jews from power. What did international Jews learn from the rise of Putin? No matter how powerful the Jewish elite may be, if the majority goy nation comes together as one people and if a leader arises who represents the will of his people, even the richest and most powerful Jews can get it in the neck.
Thus, after what happened in Russia--Putin taking power back from Jews in the name of Russian pride and power--, maybe Jews figured they must make work extra hard to ensure that US and EU will no longer has a majority goy population that could come together as an overwhelming force to take on the Jews.
So she seems to argue that laws should prevent people from seeking meaning in immortality through children or in immortality through the continued existence of their people. Death is good, immortality is bad, those seeking immortality should be punished by the law.
ReplyDeleteHey, where are you running? Officer, there is a guy running for the fence! Quick, quick, give him a good one!
I'm sure that as a woman she's mostly concerned about saying the right thing. Everyone in her social circle is for open borders, so that's obviously the right thing to say. But what about the idiots who say the wrong thing, what's their excuse? Ah, they say that they want to perpetuate a bit of themselves through the continued existence of their ethnicities. They don't want to perish entirely, they'd like leave a bit of themselves behind on this Earth. So that's stupid then! And evil.
Whiskey is as always wrong - women aren't central to leftism, they aren't even central to feminism. They're born followers. Leftism was invented by men. But most men would have thought harder about building an argument for leftism than Ms. Stevens did. The fact that open borders are popular in their social circle wouldn't have by itself proven to them that only idiots could possibly defend any idea that conflicts with open borders. So the average leftist man would have tried to build a more complicated argument for it. He would have tried to involve economic efficiency or he'd have denied that members of the same ethnicity are closer to each other than to people of other ethnicities.
"If the unpopular people like X, then obviously X is wrong and bad" - that reasoning wouldn't have sufficed.
Anthony Smith, from "The Ethnic Origins of Nations":
ReplyDelete"The return to the past is necessary because of our need for immortality through the memory of posterity which the seeming finality of death threatens. In our descendants' memory lies our hope. In this sense, history is the precondition of destiny, the guarantee of immortality, the lesson for posterity. Since we must live through our posterity, the offspring of our families, that history and its lesson must belong to us and tell our collective tale."
The moral paradox of blame for slavery...
ReplyDeleteFunny that the people who did most to call foul on slavery and end it all over the world got blamed most for slavery. Yes, I mean the Anglos and Anglo-Americans.
It's funny when you think about... all the world practiced slavery... but one people finally did something to end it... but that people got blamed most for it.
Shouldn't that people have gotten the most credit for ending it?
Yet, in a weird way, it makes sense. Anglos and Anglo-Americans, having been the first people to see slavery as a great evil, could only come to be burdened with that realization.
It's like this. Suppose a bunch of people are naked and feel no shame. But then, one person says, "I'M NAKED!!! HOW SHAMEFUL!! WE MUST ALL WEAR CLOTHES!!" And then he goes about making clothes for eveyone. But HE is the one who will be tagged with the SHAME OF NAKEDNESS since he notice it first and made a big fuss about it.
The danger of being morally righteous.
Having babies is a flight from death. The problem is not birthright citizenship, its any births period.
ReplyDeleteLiberalism is a mental disorder(TM)
Such are the wages of sin. As they apply to persons, they apply to nations.
ReplyDelete"But most men would have thought harder about building an argument for leftism than Ms. Stevens did."
ReplyDeleteGranted, this may well rank high in the lists of the most hilariously awful arguments, but notice that it didn't excite a lot of derisive commentary because this is where much of the intellectual world is headed: bleeding heart liberaltarianism.
The point is to unmoor the proles from all moorings.
ReplyDeleteThe New World Order wants us stripped of all identity: without nationality, religion, ancestry, heritage, tradition, race, etc.
Without identity there is no will to fight, or resist.....
i'm begiging to think Alex Jones is kinda onto something. Why when so many people are unemployed in the NYT pushing open borders? Americans don't want it. so why? I don't understand our elite. What they want, etc.
ReplyDelete"The point is to unmoor the proles from all moorings.
ReplyDeleteThe New World Order wants us stripped of all identity: without nationality, religion, ancestry, heritage, tradition, race, etc.
Without identity there is no will to fight, or resist....."
This reminded me of something. From the Wikipedia article on Mbuti, a Pygmy tribe:
"Bambuti societies have no ruling group or lineage, no overlying political organization, and little social structure. The Bambuti are an egalitarian society in which the band is the highest form of social organization.[20] Leadership may be displayed for example on hunting treks.[21] Men and women basically have equal power."
On many occasions I've seen Central African Pygmies described as slaves of the Bantu. They are the lowest people not just in stature and in R. Lynn's rankings, but socially as well. And just think: two pieces of leftist utopia in one paragraph - political atomization and gender equality.
"No, he's not. Prose styles are distinctive and surprisingly consistent."
ReplyDeleteReminds me of a scene from a Vonnegut novel which went something like this, "The person who wrote this book is obviously a homosexual." "How do you know that?" "I can tell by the index."
"Back in 2005, I pointed out that about five billion people live in countries with lower per capita GDP's than Mexico's. Since almost a quarter of all Mexicans in the world now live in the United States, the implication from that example is that Open Borders would bring hundreds of millions of poor foreigners to the U.S., as was confirmed by a subsequent Gallup Poll in over 100 countries."
ReplyDelete- There are simpler logic puzzles for the Dr. Stevenses of the world- Just take it to its 'logical' conclusion using their logic.
Why stop at open nations? Why not allow free access to your home? In essence your windows and doors are an artificial barrier that prevents 'letting each man take according to his needs'.
If personal wealth is a gross inequity, then why do you accept a 6-figure salary as a professor? Why not donate 40% of it to the janitor who works for your academic office building and equalize yours and his standard of living?
"I can tell by the index."
ReplyDeleteIt seems plausible that a smart guy like Vonnegut could do considerably better than random at guessing the sexual orientation of authors by perusing the indices of their books.
The one index that might have thrown him was the fake index in "Pale Fire" that Nabokov made up for Charles Kinbote.
@steve - "...although my diligent Googling has also revealed that there may be more than one Jacqueline Stevens on the Internet at present."
ReplyDeleteyou did a google image search, didn't you? (^_^)
this jacqueline stevens is a lunatic. it's amazing and fascinating how far from reality people can manage to get themselves when they really try.
What a great pleasure to find here some Anglophone recognition at least in passing of Miguel de Unamuno, my favorite Spanish author by far. I would urge anyone who loves great literature to read his Niebla, among other things.
ReplyDeleteAs for the horridly incoherent writings of Ms. Stevens...while it's very kind of her to remind us of the Latin root of the word "nation," as though that's not obvious to anyone with a brain, her next sentence is stupid enough to call into question anything further in her essay: "America is no exception, notwithstanding the enlargement of citizenship to encompass non-Europeans and women."
I'm sorry, but what the fuck could she even think that means?!
Following Niles, if we are not to bequeath our goods to our children, then to who? If to the government, an artificially-created device which can remake itself at whim, then every generation could redecide where it goes. Does Jackie have any logical ground for preventing the next generation from declaring that no women are eligible for any of it? I'm pretty sure that's not where she wanted to go, but it flows rather naturally (not that she would perceive that).
ReplyDeleteSure, one can remove birth and genetics as arbitrary. To be replaced by what, exactly, that is not equally arbitrary? She has dimly absorbed the idea that we are not going to live forever and our eventual effect a century from now may not be easily discernible. She has figured out that there is some arbitrariness to other people's values. It hasn't dawned on her that her own are equally vulnerable.
Is this woman a disciple of the Marquis de Sade? From the paragraphs Steve quotes I was immediately set to thinking of the Revolution francaise-- then Niles' thinking along the lines of "property is theft" reminded me of Sade's (and Foucault)'s notion that sexual resistance itself is "theft": the body, everyone's body, should be communal property, free for the use of whomever.
ReplyDeleteOpen borders dogma is one thing (bad enough), but this screed truly does deserve the epithet "lunatic." And "nihilist". Are humans to be allowed no connection to futurity at all? No nations, no peoples, no families-- rape as true equality must surely be a reasonable capstone to this madness.
For Plato's Diotima, the urge to continue in our progeny is the beginning of the road to God, or the Good. For this academic, it's to be abolished to reduce us to-- no, even animals take some concern for the progeny.
To what: dead matter? Or robots?
"We need governments, but we don’t need nations."
ReplyDeleteI would rather have a nation with no government, than a government with no nation.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWhy should I leave my property to strangers? Does this woman have children?"
Based on her appearance I would guess "probably not":
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TGYRUgfiokM/0.jpg
She appears to be everybit the disconnected academic who despises everything normal.
Jews seem to be juggling two opposing forces...
ReplyDeleteWhat do Jews fear most? There are two things:
1. Economic crisis.
2. Goy majority power.
Why did Nazism happen? Economic crisis + goy majority unity/power.
So, Jews wanna avoid economic crisis--cuz it leads to mentality of 99% vs 1%, and lots of Jews are in that 1%.
But Jews also wanna undermine goy majority power cuz if Germany had been less than 50% German, Nazis wouldn't have come to power.
The problem is... the more Jews undermine white goy majority power, it's more likely that the West will fall into economic turmoil.
This woman is not a nihilist. She's a lesbian (assumption based on photographic evidence).
ReplyDeleteNo, Donnie, this woman is a nihilist.
ReplyDeleteOpen the borders of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Then we'll follow. Promise.
ReplyDeleteYou first Israel.
Don't worry, anonymii. Not only Jackie agrees with you on opening Israeli borders, she hates Israel as much as you do.
http://stateswithoutnations.blogspot.com/search/label/israel
Ive actually read this book. On page 56 she proposes a poll tax and literacy requirements for
ReplyDelete"active citizenship." She's so left wing that she veers into the policies of the segregationist south. The best proposal though was to put drug addicts in charge of drug treatment centers - what could go wrong?
I think both Stevens and the anonymous commenter are backup pseudonyms for Spengler, David Goldman's primary pseudonym
ReplyDeleteProfessor Stevens argues that we should "open the borders" and "abolish inheritance" because "the entire body of laws around families and inheritance, embody societies’ collective flight from death."
ReplyDeleteShe must read David P. Goldman aka "Spengler". She is basically paraphrasing him here. Goldman frequently writes about how all gentile nations are doomed to collective death soon and how nationalism is a futile attempt to escape this collective death. He seems to suggest it is futile because any serious nationalism will be smashed down by some imperial project or another that is acceptable to Goldman. Only the Jewish nation will survive (and deserves to survive, according to Goldman, because of the covenant i.e. bc/ yahweh said so). It's a nakedly malevolent, hostile, supremacist attitude that's right there for everyone to see, but it seems to go over most readers' heads.
All the gentiles are doomed to death (he literally labels them "zombies", "the walking dead" from time to time in his pieces), Goldman smugly says, but if you want to be "saved", the only salvation is via some sort of non-nationalistic, universalistic, pro-Jewish/Israel Christianity or secular imperial neoconservatism acceptable to Goldman.
Stevens seems to argue similarly that all societies are doomed to death, that borders, laws, families etc. are futile attempts to escape it, and that the only salvation is via some sort of global, unitary leftist world state.
She wants the U.S. to turn into what Teddy Roosevelt feared it would become during the Great Wave - a "polyglot boardinghouse."
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, anonymii. Not only Jackie agrees with you on opening Israeli borders, she hates Israel as much as you do.
ReplyDeleteJews are a diaspora nation. Most Jews live outside Israel. Opening the borders to Israel does not damage the Jewish nation as much as more territorial, non-diaspora nations. This is why many liberal Jews aren't always that pro-Israel.
Can one realistically abolish inheritance? I imagine that if inheritance were abolished tomorrow, my father would have all his assets in his children's names by the nightfall.
ReplyDeleteAs I've long maintained the social 'sciences' are just a complete waste of money, a pile of bullpoopy that stretches from here to infinity and they should all be closed down and the money spent on real science.
ReplyDeleteThey are just a platform for a lot of second-raters to talk shit and impersonate 'intellectuals'.
But seriously, after viewing the video footage of Mexicans beheading each other with chainsaws and blunt knives (the red, raw primal aggression that silly little pampered princesses like the female author have been sheletered from for centuries - due to the sacrifice of white men may I add), one cannot be more impressed of the need for nation states, and the need to keep certain people out.
If borders and boundaries are just silly, man-made irrelevancies etc etc why doesn't the princess female author go down Mexico way and live amongst the cut-throats she cherishes so much?
The answer of course is 'not on your Nelly!' - as the English say.
How the Hell do you abolish 'inheritance'? - surely this woman isn't aware that substantial sums of money can be transferred during lifetimes? - and of course there would be no capital formation whatsoever as no one would want the state to seize their assets.
ReplyDeleteAnyway - the love of one's children (which is all inheritance really is), is the strongest force in nature. Interfere at your peril.
Am I the 'nihilist'? - I just contributed the last two posts.
ReplyDelete'Cut-throat Mexicans,not on your nelly, and 'How the hell do you stop inheritance'.
- and I also made a comment a few days ago about the Republican party leadership wanting to transform the white American middle class into hyaena dung and hyaena DNA.
ReplyDeleteFair comment, one would think, not 'nihilism' at all.
"Am I the 'nihilist'? - I just contributed the last two posts.
ReplyDelete'Cut-throat Mexicans,not on your nelly, and 'How the hell do you stop inheritance'."
I don't know, but I imagine that whoever you're addressing would have an easier time judging if you had some sort of a name other than "hey you". How about "Sparky"? Sweet Cheeks? Chum-chum?
It's pretty obvious that parents are the biggest perpetrators of discrimination once you have factored in the race, sex, ethnicity, etc.
ReplyDeleteConsidering the leftist narrative of how SES trumps all other variables, it's surprising that they are coming to this conclusion this late in the game. Or I am missing out on a lot of history.
Throw out fathers, make mothers enlightened career women who dump their kids in child-care, and it's easy to move one step to 'everybody starts equal from birth' than government policies like AA.
Imagine John Lennon's Imagine, only with newer buzzwords like white privilege, patriarchy, one-percenter etc.
Why hasn't some leftie made something like this their 'national' anthem already?
"Citizens are created by politicians, the citizen-makers. "
LOL what am I reading?
PS- found one of her books, and it sounds, interesting.
Spengler is good fun
ReplyDelete"Throw out fathers, make mothers enlightened career women who dump their kids in child-care, and it's easy to move one step to 'everybody starts equal from birth' than government policies like AA."
ReplyDeleteFathers who aren't worthless to begin with are kind of hard to throw out. In most cases, it would take a professional hitman. Mothers who are worth the title take it upon themselves to instill values into their own kids, even if they have careers and utilize some form of child-care.
Yes it's satire. Jaqueline Stevens is Mencius Moldbug. Has anyone seen him lately?
ReplyDeleteGilbert Pinfold.
Jews are a diaspora nation. Most Jews live outside Israel. Opening the borders to Israel does not damage the Jewish nation as much as more territorial, non-diaspora nations. This is why many liberal Jews aren't always that pro-Israel.
ReplyDeleteDo you really see that much support for the Palestinians coming out of Hollywood? For the BDS movement?
What's "the BDS movement?"
ReplyDeleteBondage / Domination / Submission?
Sounds creepy. No wonder I don't know what it is ...
Bondage / Domination / Submission?
ReplyDeletePaging Albertosaurus...
World has changed a bit since 2005. Third world has done quite well since then.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
Looking at those latest numbers, Brazil is now richer than Mexico. And China has a per capita GDP 50%+ of per capita of Mexico.
5/18/12 6:13 PM: Nihilists may exist, but there are far fewer of them than you think. Your use of the word "nihilist" is so broad and slap-dash as to be meaningless.
ReplyDelete*****
EYE OF HORUS: However, that assumes that these people are unaware of this upside down inversive reasoning, and are simply deluded or insane. But, what if these people are insincere? What if they realize that they are inverting reality and misrepresenting it? Are they not then EVIL? Leftists must either be Mentally Ill or Evil! Do not assume they are being honest with you or themselves, and consider that they just might be Evil!
*****
Nihilism is the ultimate instantiation of evil - the absolute intellectual and spiritual death to which all evil aspires.
And if the nihilism of our opponents [they ARE your opponents, aren't they?] isn't abundantly obvious to you, then you must have glossed over Naval Gazing 101 back in grade school.
At the heart of PaleoConservativism is supposed to be the acknowledgement of the existence of things which deserve to be conserved [and God forbid, actually nurtured and even propagated] accompanied by a willingness to sacrifice in order to save these things from that which desires otherwise.
At the heart of Leftism is the desire to destroy.
To destroy everything.
To leave nothing in its wake.
And that's what nihilism amounts to.
The absolute exinction of life, and the triumph of death.
"EYE OF HORUS" is starting to get it - starting to wake up to the horror which is staring us in the face, and starting to realize what we are up against.
But I'm hearing a lot of intransigence out of "6:13 PM" - I fear that he may be lost to us.
What's "the BDS movement?"
ReplyDeleteI think that answers my question.
http://www.bdsmovement.net/
In 2005, Palestinian civil society issued a call for a campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights. A truly global movement against Israeli Apartheid is rapidly emerging in response to this call.
"She wants the U.S. to turn into what Teddy Roosevelt feared it would become during the Great Wave - a "polyglot boardinghouse.""
ReplyDeleteYou have to have the same fears of a man who lived before the space program, DNA discovery, the internet, mass global travel, civil rights, etc. etc. etc.?
I guess the US really needs to refer to Plato's political thoughts to get in order. A man who believed the earth was flat and wasn't aware of the existence of Asia or Africa, even massive parts of Europe.
Professor Stevens argues that we should "open the borders" and "abolish inheritance" because "the entire body of laws around families and inheritance, embody societies’ collective flight from death."
ReplyDeletedestroying the family and nation is the goal of any imperial project, any totalitarian state. AS Peter Hitchens points out, they have to smash or radically alter religion as well.
Ive actually read this book. On page 56 she proposes a poll tax and literacy requirements for
ReplyDelete"active citizenship." She's so left wing that she veers into the policies of the segregationist south.
If we replace "active citizenship" with "party membership," she sounds a lot like a Soviet-style communist. The State is everything. Traditional attachments -- to family, religion, culture, etc. -- are "bourgeois" vices to be eradicated. The few individual rights are merely a "generous gift" from the State to the people.
- A Solid Citizen (so Steve doesn't think I'm some other anonymous commenter)
Why don't we do away with names and surnames? I didn't get to pick my slave name.
ReplyDeleteI love the title of Stevens' work, linked to, "Reproducing the State." Nothing like Post-Modern wordage.
And we can set up all government payment methods at distribution centers. I could go into one of the distribution centers multiple times, each time saying, with all honesty because we are now free of artificial constraints,"hello my name is: Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Mr. Haliburton, Farmer Jones, or Jacqueline Stevens, and I'm here to pick up my check. What? How do you know I am not the Jacqueline Stevens the check is made out to? Stop en-stating me! Don't define me, I define myself. Gimme my money!"
By temporarily using her name and cashing in Professor Stevens' paycheck I would, to quote Derrida, engage in a sort of sort of "participation without belonging—a taking part in without being a part of, without having membership in a set." Isn't that what Open Borders is really all about?
Hacienda, Plato understood the earth to be a sphere:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth#Classical_Greece
Plato was also, you must understand, quite aware of the existence of Egypt which, for all I can tell, is (in its ancient phase) the only corner of Africa in which today's SWPL could've felt reasonably comfortable.
This is strictly speaking speaking incorrect. But, it allows us to recognize Sailer's comments anywhere!
ReplyDeleteI think this works better:
This is, strictly speaking, incorrect. But it allows us to recognize Sailer's comments anywhere!
"Hacienda, Plato understood the earth to be a sphere:
ReplyDeletePlato was also, you must understand, quite aware of the existence of Egypt."
Good on him. He knew about Egypt!
Don't need to insults the ancients, because truly they were all ignoramuses compared to anyone with access to Wikipedia. Plus Plato is a good racket for liberal arts $$$. And the US economy is hurtin'.
Why do I bother with this lost contentious crowd of ISteve commentators, anyways? Boredom.
English is arguably many foreign languages contained within one super language called "English". Don't sweat the small. Bye, for now.
Why don't we do away with names and surnames? I didn't get to pick my slave name.
ReplyDeleteYou joke, but Chang and Halliday have a picture of an experiment by Mao wherein the peasants were ordered to do away with their names and to wear only numbers on their clothing as a means of identification.
I kid you not - buy their book and give them a little revenue in the process - if anyone deserves it, they do.
Plato has got to be one of the top five minds who has ever lived.
ReplyDeleteBehold, the blooming flower of first-wave feminism in all its nurturing glory:
ReplyDelete"Children will, of course, be the greatest gift possible to the State, and the woman who produces them will provided for, protected, and honoured. After all, this is a question of education."
These old muscles and bones, I see, were on the road to Megara to feed a troll . . .
ReplyDelete"This woman, Jacqueline Stevens, is she retarded?"
ReplyDeleteNo she's just a woman.
Women don't do group loyalty. Maybe because most societies (and all European societies) are traditionally patrilocal. Group solidarity is a Patriarchal creation, as feminist author Ursula Le Guin once observed quite correctly:
>>>>>
The power of male group solidarity must come from the control and channeling of male rivalry, the repression and concentration of the hormone-driven will to dominate that so often dominates men themselves. It is a remarkable reversal. The destructive, anarchic energy of individual rivalry and competitive ambition is diverted into loyalty to group and leader and directed to more or less constructive social enterprise.
Such groups are closed, positing “the other” as outsider. They exclude, first, women; then, men of a different age, or kind, or caste, or nation, or level of achievement, etc. — exclusions that reinforce the solidarity and power of the excluders. Perceiving any threat, the “band of brothers” joins together to present an impermeable front.
Male solidarity appears to me to have been the prime shaper of most of the great ancient institutions of society — Government, Army, Priesthood, University, and the new one that may be devouring all the others, Corporation. The existence and dominance of these hierarchic, organized, coherent, durable institutions goes back so far and has been so nearly universal that it’s mostly just called “how things are,” “the world,” “the division of labor,” “history,” “God’s will,” etc.
>>>>>
Of course the conclusion one must draw from this, and Le Guin will never admit, is that women could never have made a civilization. And they have no idea how to sustain one, either.
What about erecting borders in order to protect yourself against the effects of immigration of undesirables for WHILE YOU'RE STILL ALIVE?
ReplyDeletemuch less by mythical “anchor babies.”
Well, since our brave genius -- courageously challenging established NYT opinion, lol -- is in such a mythbusting mood, how about taking on one of the biggest myths (aka despicable lies) going, that of racial equality?
Open the borders of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Then we'll follow. Promise.
I think it's time to throw in the towel. Stop resisting. Let's all become Israel Firsters.
Endless immigration is a splendid idea! Of course it is, but I don't think it's right for America to hog so much of it. How about giving America's greatest ally in the world in the fight against umm... well, whatever.. how about giving Israel a shot? More immigration? Sure, but Israel first.
More diversity is always good! Of course, but Israel first.
Open the borders! No problem, but Israel first.
Let's dissolve our identities in the global melting pot! Absolutely, but Israel first.
How the Hell do you abolish 'inheritance'?
ReplyDeleteThrough the implementation of a totalitarian state.
- surely this woman isn't aware that substantial sums of money can be transferred during lifetimes? - and of course there would be no capital formation whatsoever as no one would want the state to seize their assets.
I don't imagine that she has thought about the possible consequences of such a plan. Even leftist historian Sheila Fitzpatrick admits that revolutionaries have no understanding of what their political actions will do. They're unable to see the negatives, blinded by their assurance that they are in the right.
Anyway - the love of one's children (which is all inheritance really is), is the strongest force in nature. Interfere at your peril.
Yes, it is instinct to love one's own children. That these people are seemingly blind to this is instructive with regards to how they experience the world. They don't experience life - they live in a world of concepts and ideologies.
This is the 'humanity' of the future, soulless and wretched.
Abolishing inheritance would help end inequality within countries....
ReplyDeleteAbolishing inheritance, of course, means abolishing life. Has she never heard of DNA?
Instead of using birth for assigning citizenship, why not keep the boundaries of current countries, open the borders, and use residence to define citizenship, as the 50 states do? ... People should be free to move across borders; they should be citizens of the states where they happen to reside—period.
ReplyDeleteThis is profoundly stupid. Ecologist Garrett Hardin explained this more than 40 years ago, with his "tragedy of the commons". An open-borders policy turns a country into a commons.
Moreover, we know that the imposition of an open-borders policy on bacteria -- through the use of penicillin -- causes death. Why would an open-borders policy for a human population not produce exactly the same result?
Open borders means death for the American nation, and -- amazingly -- she kind of admits it!
Open the borders of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Then we'll follow. Promise.
ReplyDeleteMs. Stevens won't even open the borders to her own personal living space (house/apartment/whatever), so you know her opinion regarding national living space is based on a double standard whereby what's hers is hers and what's ours is hers.
"These old muscles and bones, I see, were on the road to Megara to feed a troll . . ."
ReplyDeleteMegara- an ancient trade port of Greece.
Maybe it is time for Greece to exit the Eurozone. Greece and Germany make poor partners. Germany will always oppress Greece as EU is currently consistuted.
"Plato has got to be one of the top five minds who has ever lived."
ReplyDeleteSurely a great mind. But still an ignoramus compared to any competent person living today.
My original point about T. Roosevelt still stands. This insipid habit people have of referencing long dead ignoramuses for political guide. Just because in their time, era, they were great.
"Moreover, we know that the imposition of an open-borders policy on bacteria -- through the use of penicillin -- causes death. Why would an open-borders policy for a human population not produce exactly the same result?"
ReplyDelete- ????????
"Archaic membership rules have made life miserable not only for Mexican migrants in the United States."
ReplyDeleteSo miserable, in fact, that they keep coming here!
On page 56 she proposes a poll tax and literacy requirements for
"active citizenship."
That's a bad thing? Consider: the left holds significant majorities of the left and right halves of the bell curve: high school dropouts and folks with graduate degrees lean heavily Democratic. The right owns the majority of the middle, with high school graduates, college graduates, and those with some college voting Republican. Lop off the far left end of the bell curve and you're mostly eliminating Democrats. There's a reason Dems are fighting tooth and nail to make it ever easier for idiots and thugs to vote.
America practically has open borders now. If we went all the way, this country would be finished in 10 years instead of 50 to a 100 that it is going to take now.
ReplyDelete"You have to have the same fears of a man who lived before the space program, DNA discovery, the internet, mass global travel, civil rights, etc. etc. etc.?"
ReplyDeleteCaveman ancestor fear be eaten by big, sharp-toothed cat. Me fear be eaten by big, sharp-toothed cat, too.
I do like the connection this woman makes between citizenship and financial inheritance. For the average middle and lower-middle class American, their citizenship in the USA is the largest inheritance they'll ever receive. The Wall Street Urinal wants to abolish that form of inheritance while letting Haim Saban's and David Kock's children inherit every last penny.
"Can one realistically abolish inheritance? I imagine that if inheritance were abolished tomorrow, my father would have all his assets in his children's names by the nightfall."
ReplyDeleteYou can make it illegal to give assets away. If I wanted to give my children 1 billion dollars before I died I would have to pay a gift tax on it now. You could make it a 100% tax if you wanted to.
People could try to evade but they could be arrested etc.
Even in this country now the govt forces you to live with people and associate with them when you don't want to and won't let you do what you want with money over a certain amount.
It certain countries like England you can't even say what you want now.
I would rather have Franco running America. I doubt he would have given the country away and screwed white people over.
Hacienda, you make me doubt the intelligence of Azns. Truth trolls better than you, and he is a terrible troll, a quota troll. S Korea is embarking on a multicult future of its own. How u feel bout dat, yo?
ReplyDeletedo you eat fude? Doncha know that that's wut ppl did before the spaceprogram and junk?
You have to have the same fears of a man who lived before the space program, DNA discovery, the internet, mass global travel, civil rights, etc. etc. etc.?
ReplyDeleteIt would take a two page essay to unpack all the errors of logic and of fact crammed into that one brief remark.
"Of course the conclusion one must draw from this, and Le Guin will never admit, is that women could never have made a civilization. And they have no idea how to sustain one, either."
ReplyDeleteReally? That conclusion might work on our side. Leslie Fielder said all major male American authors blamed women for race prejudice, the spread of western civilization, taking white men away from living the American indian life, and slavery. I think your conclusion frees the ladies from a lot of projection. Better to be overlooked completely than looked over too much.
But still, women are half the human race. They provided half (or more) of the genes, and probably quite a bit of impetus. Writing them totally out of development of civilization is laughable. Still, I guess it depends on what you care about.
LeGuin was a fantasist. She cared more about extraterrestrials than people here. I, too, sometimes feel a lack of group loyalty to earthlings. To paraphrase Woody Allen, "how can I believe in my group when there is war, famine, and day time tv."
I am really interested in understanding what the commenter Charlotte meant. Can she restate her comment more clearly? Especially this part:
ReplyDelete"Really? That conclusion might work on our side. Leslie Fielder said all major male American authors blamed women for race prejudice, the spread of western civilization, taking white men away from living the American indian life, and slavery. I think your conclusion frees the ladies from a lot of projection. Better to be overlooked completely than looked over too much."
"You can make it illegal to give assets away. If I wanted to give my children 1 billion dollars before I died I would have to pay a gift tax on it now. You could make it a 100% tax if you wanted to."
ReplyDeleteSo this would make people extremely oriented towards the family clan. If a father can't count on leaving his house to the kids, he'll make it a priority to build a bigger house where the kids could live with him until he dies, and share in his ownership of the house as early as possible. If the father can't save the money he earns for his family by using a government sanctioned bank, he will keep his savings inside the home, which would require a strong, well built house and enough family members to defend it from robbers. Trust between relatives would become of supreme importance. If the government won't support the parents', children's and siblings' rights, people will look towards their own families for justice, and we'll revert to the Afghanistan model.
"S Korea is embarking on a multicult future of its own. How u feel bout dat, yo?"
ReplyDeleteNo problem. As long as Korea keeps it's Korean character. At least the one I know. Love of children, spontaneous play, even roughhouse or raw. And there are excesses of Korea that multi-culti could actually do away with, which would be fine with me, too. Over academicism, for one.
But Korea is NOT America or even Italy. It's idiotic to make immigrant comparisons b/w Korea and
pointy fingered Western countries.
"The Communist Manifesto made the attack on family loyalty perfectly clear. The Manifesto spoke of, "The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child."
ReplyDeleteAccidentally pressed the publish button before. Found this:
ReplyDelete'The Withering Away of the Family
By Elton and Pauline Trueblood - 1953 '
The Communist Manifesto made the attack on family loyalty perfectly clear. The Manifesto spoke of, "The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child."
"Can one realistically abolish inheritance? I imagine that if inheritance were abolished tomorrow, my father would have all his assets in his children's names by the nightfall."
You are working with the assumption that there will be a father, or mother for that matter.
and how many of the 99% generation is going to leave an inheritance?
Once children have reached the age of reason — generally agreed to be about 7 — they should be recognized as the ultimate experts on their own lives. ...
I am really interested in understanding what the commenter Charlotte meant. Can she restate her comment more clearly? Especially this part:
ReplyDelete"Really? That conclusion might work on our side. Leslie Fielder said all major male American authors blamed women for race prejudice, the spread of western civilization, taking white men away from living the American indian life, and slavery. I think your conclusion frees the ladies from a lot of projection. Better to be overlooked completely than looked over too much."
oh, ok. Crystal clarity eludes me at the moment, the hour is late....but
Two very common traditional attitudes towards females are, one: they represent nature and do not enter into the rational aspects of developing civilization. This appears to be the opinion of the commenter to whom I was responding. If she represents nature and the irrational, of course she doesn't have "group loyalty" because she didn't organize the groups that demand it.
The other attitude is that women are the ones who are responsible for "civilization" and the metaphorical necktie strangling individualistic men into conformity.
The latter opinion has been especially rampant in the 20th century.
.
I prefer the former; better a force of nature than to be seens as Nurse Ratchet.
That's as clear as I can get about.
As for the ETs (the referenced author, LeGuin wrote sci-fi), well, it was conservative Reagan who opined that they might be the agent of world unity since we'd unite against them if they attacked planet earth. I was just saying that I'm exasperated enough with earth people to want to see if ETs are any better before we assume we must unite against them.
This seems wise to me, then I remember all those dreary liberals with their platitudes about accepting everybody into one's circle of social intimates, because we're all the same. Except that only works if EVERYBODY feels the same way and revels in self-loss. Surrenduring your own racial identity while someone else is honing their's to increasing sharpness is like throwing down your gun while the oppoenent keeps his. I think I've just made an argument for group loyalty.
Thanks for the reply, Charlotte. But I have a remaining question. what did you mean by, the "women were responsible for race prejudice" part?
ReplyDeletebleach, your comment is quite good and I may put it in a documentary. but is your generalization true of African women? They seem rather ethno-centric? European women this is more true of in part because of europe's greater indivualism.
ReplyDelete