"Did anti-Semitism factor into the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords?"

The mainstream media had been working themselves up into a frenzy of hatred over the last year against the voters of Arizona, ever since the passing of the state's illegal immigration bill. Thus, the press was primed to flagrantly misinterpret the Tucson Massacre.

From The New Republic, a story that let's you get a glimpse of the irrational attitudes that have so much impact over how The Narrative gets framed in the mainstream media.

A Gnawing Worry
Did anti-Semitism factor into the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords?
by David Greenberg
   
The papers have mentioned it mainly in passing. Had this happened a decade ago, I would not have fixed on this detail. But Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish. And her alleged assassin, Jared Lee Loughner, is reported to have admired Mein Kampf

He also admired the Communist Manifesto and To Kill a Mockingbird. Most of his reading list pretty much reflected the kind of books that get assigned in schools.

and claimed ties to the anti-Semitic hate group called American Renaissance. 

No, he didn't. That's a libelous hoax. As is calling American Renaissance anti-Semitic or a hate group.

Was this an anti-Semitic attack? There is no significant evidence to conclude as much, since we know hardly anything about the suspected killer. And yet, I’m confident that I’m not the only one today with a gnawing worry.

... The news of the years since September 11 has been full of more anti-Semitism than any decade in my lifetime, from the murderous kind in Mumbai and the banlieues of Paris to the “genteel” variety espoused by Caryl Churchill and Stephen Walt and John Mearshimer [sic]. Much of it has been blithely tolerated.

Walt & Mearsheimer?

 ... My point is not to place blame but rather to call attention to the chill in the air, the silent worry—harbored, I suspect, in more quarters than we will hear from in the news media.

Forty-two years ago, when Sirhan Sirhan murdered Robert F. Kennedy because of his support for Israel, Americans everywhere despaired that the nation was coming apart at the seams, but Jews felt no special sense of fear. Today, in contrast, for all the Tea Party extremism, the streets are still calm. And yet, the sense of anxiety felt specifically by the Jews of America is, I suspect, considerably more acute.

Contributing Editor David Greenberg is a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for the 2010-11 academic year.

Both poor Rep. Giffords and the assassin have (reportedly) one Jewish parent, but why let facts get in the way?

UPDATE: The Jewish Telegraph Agency looks at Loughner's genealogy and rules out Jewishness for at least three grandparents, probably all four.

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

The Sane Assassin

To see just how crazy Jared Loughner is, it's useful, by way of contrast, to look at the Wikipedia page about Volkert van der Graaf, the leftist Dutch legal professional who assassinated anti-immigration Prime Minister candidate Pim Fortuyn in 2002. Here are excerpts:

During a second "pro forma" hearing on November 4, it was decided that the trial would be delayed while Van der Graaf was sent for seven weeks of psychiatric observation at the Pieter Baan Center, starting in the first week of January 2003.

In a press statement of November 23 the prosecution (Public Ministry) announced that Van der Graaf had confessed to the murder. He said that he planned it for some time beforehand and that nobody else was involved in the plans or knew about them. He said he saw Fortuyn as a steadily increasing danger for vulnerable groups in society. It was thereby a combination of Fortuyn's stigmatising views, the polarising way that he presented them and the great political power that Fortuyn was threatening to obtain. He saw no other possibility for himself than to end the danger by killing Fortuyn.

... The report from the PBC was complete by about March 21. It found that Van der Graaf could be held completely accountable for the killing. The report also stated that Van der Graaf had an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, which explains his rigid moral judgements. Menno Oosterhoff, a child psychiatrist from Groningen, publicly suggested that the Pieter Baan Centrum may have overlooked the possibility that Van der Graaf has Asperger syndrome. Oosterhoff later withdrew his theory. The PBC report stated that nothing could be said about the chance of another similar crime occurring, since the disorder had nothing to do with the murder. Van der Graaf agreed that he was accountable and that he had compulsive urges. The outcome of the investigation ensured that he would receive a prison sentence and not "TBS treatment".

... During the trial, Van der Graaf described again his reasons for killing Fortuyn. He said how he had hoped that the leaders of other political parties would deliver substantial critique on Fortuyn, but that it never happened. Instead, Fortuyn had the talent to channel criticism so that it never touched him. He said again that he had never spoken to anybody else about his plan to act against Fortuyn, and only made a definitive plan to act on the day before the murder. He said that he was wrestling with feelings of regret for the killing, finding the killing of somebody morally reprehensible, but that on May 6 he had felt himself justified, wanting to fight the danger of Fortuyn, not his person. He explained that his lack of outward emotion was due to being somebody who didn't find it easy to talk about feelings. Asked about the danger of accidentally injuring somebody other than Fortuyn in the attack, he said that he had been confident that that wouldn't happen. ...

To the argument that Fortuyn would have been chosen through democratic means, Van der Graaf said that that was also the case for Hitler. Indeed he compared the rise of Fortuyn to the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.^[1] In his final argument he said that he had acted from his conscience, but that didn't justify it, and that it was absolutely not normal to shoot somebody to death.

Van der Graaf also said he murdered Fortuyn to defend Dutch Muslims from persecution. He claimed his goal was to stop Fortuyn from targeting "the weak parts of society to score points" and exploiting Muslims as "scapegoats" in an attempt to seek political power.^[3][4][5]

Basically, this guy just took seriously the stuff the EuroEstablishment had been saying about Fortuyn. Hell, some of the elites kept saying that Fortuyn had it coming even after Van der Graaf had gone and done it.

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

Mother Jones v. New York Times

In its top story on Tuesday, the New York Times continues to obsess over its own utterly discredited theory about the Arizona massacre. Adam Nagourney pursues the newspaper's year-old campaign of demonization against Arizona voters:

In Gifford's District, a Long History of Tension

This article was reported by Sam Dolnick, Katharine Q. Seelye and Adam Nagourney and written by Mr. Nagourney.

... Given its locale and its demographic mix, the Eighth District long offered a stage for a combustible mix of issues that have torn apart other parts of the country. But the divisions seemed particularly searing here. Because of efforts to more aggressively close California’s border with Mexico, Arizona has seen a surge of illegal immigration that has heightened tensions. “There was no question there were more and more illegal immigrants coming in,” said Mr. Kolbe, who had held her seat. “They were flooding in.”

Ms. Giffords was seeking re-election at a time when Arizona passed a tough law aimed at illegal immigrants, which Ms. Giffords opposed, and as the state faced a threatened boycott from parts of the nation for passing a law that many people saw as intolerant.

“Immigration, that’s the ingredient that makes Arizona unique in a very twisted way,” Mr. Grijalva said.

In sharp contrast, Nick Baumann of Mother Jones does good work interviewing a long-time friend of the Arizona shooter:

[Bryce] Tierney tells Mother Jones in an exclusive interview that Loughner held a years-long grudge against Giffords and had repeatedly derided her as a "fake." Loughner's animus toward Giffords intensified after he attended one of her campaign events and she did not, in his view, sufficiently answer a question he had posed, Tierney says. ...

Giffords was the target of Loughner's rampage, prosecutors say, and the sworn affidavit accompanying the charges mentions that Loughner attended a Giffords "Congress in Your Corner" event in 2007. The affidavit also mentions that police searching a safe in Loughner's home found a letter from Giffords' office thanking the alleged shooter for attending an August 25, 2007 event.

Tierney, who's also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended during that period. He's unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the charges—Loughner "might have gone to some other rallies," he says—but Tierney notes it was a significant moment for Loughner: "He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, 'What is government if words have no meaning?'"

Giffords' answer, whatever it was, didn't satisfy Loughner. "He said, 'Can you believe it, they wouldn't answer my question,' and I told him, 'Dude, no one's going to answer that,'" Tierney recalls. "Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her." ...

Obviously, this 2007 obsession was caused by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and SB1070 sending their thought rays of hate back from the future. 

Tierney notes that Loughner did not display any specific political or ideological bent: "It wasn't like he was in a certain party or went to rallies...It's not like he'd go on political rants." ...

Tierney, who first met Loughner in middle school, recalls that Loughner started to act strange around his junior or senior year of high school. ...

Tierney believes that Loughner was very interested in pushing people's buttons—and that may have been why he listed Hitler's Mein Kampf as one of his favorite books on his YouTube page. (Loughner's mom is Jewish, according to Tierney.) Loughner sometimes approached strangers and would say "weird" things, Tierney recalls. "He would do it because he thought people were below him and he knew they wouldn't know what he was talking about." ...

After Loughner apparently gave up drugs and booze, "his theories got worse," Tierney says. "After he quit, he was just off the wall." ... By early 2010, dreaming had become Loughner's "waking life, his reality," Tierney says. "He sort of drifted off, didn't really care about hanging out with friends. He'd be sleeping a lot." Loughner's alternate reality was attractive, Tierney says. "He figured out he could fly." Loughner, according to Tierney, told his friends, "I'm so into it because I can create things and fly. I'm everything I'm not in this world."

Since hearing of the rampage, Tierney has been trying to figure out why Loughner did what he allegedly did. "More chaos, maybe," he says. "I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what's happening. He wants all of that."

I think we have a pretty good understanding by now of the killer. So, why does the NYT continue to humiliate itself like this? Have you no shame, sir?

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

A certain lack of self-awareness

It was only natural during the early hours of Saturday for liberals to hope that the Arizona shooter would turn out to be their Marinus van der Lubbe. Yet, within a few hours, it was obvious that the killer was a long-term loon who didn't fit into the usual political categories. (VDARE has the facts. Link fixed.)

Those facts dissuaded quite a number of commentators, who have since moved on to gun control as their salient for squeezing some advantage out of the massacre. (Of course, in a country with 200,000,000 or so existing guns, gun control is hardly much of a deterrent to this kind of -- fortunately, quite rare -- homicidal maniac. Gun control can play a role in dissuading criminals who don't want to get caught, but not much of one in slowing down the few who have thought things through and don't care about consequences.) 

But, the editorial board of the New York Times, which led a campaign of opprobrium against the voters of Arizona for most of 2010 over SB1070, is trying to rewrite history through sheer control of the bullhorn. From the Monday edition, long after the facts were out:

Shooting in Arizona
Editorial: Bloodshed and Invective

Arizona should take the lead in quieting the voices of intolerance and imposing sensible gun control laws.

In  other words, No Tolerance for anybody we can't tolerate.

... It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. 

But ... we don't care, so we're going to do it anyway:

But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats.

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman is, not surprisingly, enraged about what he sees as a climate of hate.

Climate of Hate
By PAUL KRUGMAN

When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?

Who cares about facts? What is important is how Paul feels about things. Because Paul is such an even-tempered individual who always has a kind word for everybody, Paul is just furious -- furious -- about hate. Paul hates hate. Paul smash hate!

(By the way, it's instructive to compare press coverage of this massacre to that of the Omar Thornton massacre last August.)

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

Who's the leading leading man?

Movies made by Robert De Niro in the late 1970s include Godfather II, Taxi Driver, Deer Hunter, and Raging Bull. That's a pretty good stretch. 

From 1982-1986, Gerard Depardieu starred in (amongst much else -- he pretty much carried the French film industry on his broad back during the 1980s),  Return of Martin Guerre, Danton, and Jean de Florette.

From 2000-2005, Russell Crowe starred in Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Master and Commander, and Cinderella Man. 

These kind of halcyon periods for leading men (when they're both at the top of their acting and their movie star games) never last terribly long. Perhaps the star gets tired, or audiences just get tired of him. By the time you get around to realizing so-and-so is the top dog, he's probably over the hill.

Anyway, that's just an intro for my new movie review in Taki's Magazine, in which I give my guess as to who is the best right now.

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

Immigration controversy leads to political assassination

As I wrote on May 8, 2002, 

More than a few members of Europe's political establishment appear to believe that Pim Fortuyn -- the frank anti-immigration Dutch politician who was assassinated Monday, allegedly by a leftist activist -- had it coming.

... In response to his killing, El Mundo, a leading Spanish paper, cast much of the blame on the victim in convoluted but clearly angry prose: "A criminal response to the incendiary racist calls of these distant heirs of Nazism, introduces a terrible new element in a Europe that is fearful and harassed by demagoguery: that of vengeful violence, which can only engender more violence."

... Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel implied that the dead man had been just too darn democratic for a modern Euro-democracy: "Democratic parties have to campaign in a very cautious way, and in a balanced and serene way to try to orientate the debate toward democratic values.

... The Irish Times editorialized, "It is the very essence of democracy to allow anti-democratic views to be expressed." Apparently, trying to win an election on an anti-immigration plank is inherently "anti-democratic."

... Mainstream newspapers and politicians hinted that Fortuyn was a racist, a fascist or even a Nazi. The Irish Times went on: "Nevertheless the murder will serve to highlight the rise of the far right in European politics and may in the long run gain votes for those involved in simplistic, racially-motivated campaigns. Today, on the 57th anniversary of the defeat of fascism, such trends strike a sad note."

... Norman Lamont, the former Tory chancellor of the exchequer, wrote, "Britain has been fortunate to avoid the rise of extreme Right-wing, hateful politicians like Jean-Marie Le Pen and Pim Fortuyn, the Dutchman who was murdered in Hilversum."

... Aftonbladet, the leading circulation Swedish newspaper, weighed in with, "The brown parties of Europe have a new martyr." Brown was Hitler's color.

To quote from my VDARE article later:

Holland's flamboyant gay immigration reformer had been gunned down on the verge of what later proved  to be a major electoral breakthrough - just after Jean-Marie Le Pen's surprise second place finish in the opening round of the French presidential election had set off a continent-wide two-week campaign of virulent hatred toward immigration reformers.

When reports emerged that the leftwing lawyer who had shot Fortuyn was an animal rights activist, the European Establishment breathed a sigh of relief. The gunman was just some animal rights loony. Vilification of immigration reformers had nothing to do with it.

Whew!

Well, guess what? The assassin, Volkert van der Graaf, finally made his confession in court this last week. And—what do you know! – he says he killed Fortuyn largely for opposing Muslim immigration.

The London Daily Telegraph reported:

"Facing a raucous court on the first day of his murder trial, he said his goal was to stop Mr. Fortuyn exploiting Muslims as 'scapegoats' and targeting "the weak parts of society to score points" to try to gain political power. He said: 'I confess to the shooting. He was an ever growing danger who would affect many people in society. I saw it as a danger. I hoped that I could solve it myself.'"

The Boston Globe noted:

"Van der Graaf said that he had sensed an increasingly unpleasant and anti-Muslim atmosphere in society after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States—a time when Fortuyn's star was beginning its meteoric rise. Van der Graaf said Fortuyn, 54, had tried to use that atmosphere for his own aggrandizement. 'I saw him as a highly vindictive man who used feelings in society to boost his personal stature. The ideas he had about refugees, asylum seekers, the environment, animals. . . . He was always using or abusing the weak side of society to get ahead.'"

Reported Expatica.com:

"Van der Graaf claimed, according to the Algemeen Dagblad, he was greatly influenced by politicians who compared Fortuyn with Austrian far-right leader Jorg Haider and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini."

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

"Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior"

Here's an article from the Wall Street Journal by Amy Chua of Yale Law School on Chinese mothers. She's from the Chinese economic elite of the Philippines, a "market-dominant minority" to use her term in the book World on Fire, which I reviewed for VDARE.com here.

I must confess that while I was reading the article, I thought it was by the author of The Joy Luck Club. But that is not Amy Chua, but Amy Tan. That's because the first story I ever read by Amy Tan was Two Kinds in The Atlantic in 1989, which is about what it's like to have a Chinese mother for a mother. It's well worth reading.

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

Jets 17 - Colts 16: The Sailer Legacy in Action

Placekicking coach Chris Sailer's legacy, that is. His pupil Nick Folk connected on a field goal with zero time left for the New York Jets to send them into the second round of the NFL playoffs over Peyton Manning's Indianapolis Colts.

I mention this because in the past, in discussing how nature and nurture -- selection and training -- often work together (leading to the Matthew Phenomenon of "To those who have, more shall be given"), I've often used the example of the microtradition of outstanding football field goal kickers such as Folk at my old high school, Notre Dame in Sherman Oaks, CA. This goes back to Chris Sailer (no known relation) 16 years ago when he kicked four field goals of at least 50 yards in the playoffs. After making All-American at UCLA, Sailer washed out of the NFL, so he started up a successful placekicking and longsnapping tutoring business. 

This combination of expert coaching, advertising, and channeling has meant that NDHS has routinely had for the last decade field goal kickers who have connected on 50+ yard field goals. That would have been extremely unlikely for any high school a generation ago before all this specialized tutoring and channeling of talent got going.

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

Advanced Advanced Placement

The spread of Advanced Placement tests has been mostly a success story in recent decades (e.g., they provide a fashionable rationalization for tracking), but Advanced Placement classes tend to be forced marches to try to get high school students to more or less memorize a lot of material: lots of worksheets, little time for class discussion.

From the NYT:

Rethinking Advance Placement

by Christopher Drew

As A.P. [testing] has proliferated, spreading to more than 30 subjects with 1.8 million [high school] students taking 3.2 million tests, the program has won praise for giving students an early chance at more challenging work. But many of the courses, particularly in the sciences and history, have also been criticized for overwhelming students with facts to memorize and then rushing through important topics....

All that, says the College Board, is about to change.

Next month, the board, the nonprofit organization that owns the A.P. exams as well as the SAT, will release a wholesale revamping of A.P. biology as well as United States history — with 387,000 test-takers the most popular A.P. subject. A preview of the changes shows that the board will slash the amount of material students need to know for the tests and provide, for the first time, a curriculum framework for what courses should look like. The goal is to clear students’ minds to focus on bigger concepts and stimulate more analytic thinking. ...

The changes, which are to take effect in the 2012-13 school year, are part of a sweeping redesign of the entire A.P. program.

Instead of just providing teachers with a list of points that need to be covered for the exams, the College Board will create these detailed standards for each subject and create new exams to match. ...

The new approach is important because critical thinking skills are considered essential for advanced college courses and jobs in today’s information-based economy. ..

WHEN A.P. testing began in 1956, memorization was not yet a dirty word, and it was O.K. if history classes ran out of time just after they finished World War II.
 
... And it did not take long for instructors to start teaching to the test, treating the board’s outline as the holy grail for helping students achieve the scores of 3 or higher, out of 5, that might earn credit from a college.
That obviously became harder to do as breakthroughs in genetic research and cellular organization, and momentous events like the cold war, the civil rights movement, Watergate and the war on terror, began to elbow their way onto the lists. College professors could pick and choose what to cover in their introductory survey classes. But because the A.P. test can touch on almost anything, high school juniors and seniors must now absorb more material than most college freshmen.

So perhaps it is no surprise that while the number of students taking the A.P. biology test has more than doubled since 1997, the median score has dropped to 2.63, from 3.18.

One critical thinking skill that should be taught in schools is "selection."

I doubt if the increase in the amount of biological knowledge in the world between 1997 and 2010 is the main cause of the decline in average AP score. Instead, the expansion of the number of test-takers would be a much more plausible candidate for primary reason.

On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time looking into this, and it appears to me that diminishing returns have not yet badly hit AP testing. As I wrote in VDARE.com in 2009:

Although the quantity of AP tests taken by whites grew 155 percent over the last decade, their mean score dropped merely from 3.04 to 2.96. The fall-off for Asians was even less, from 3.10 to 3.08. ... The “pass rate” (the percent of test takers scoring 3 or higher) is almost the same for whites (62 percent) and Asians (64 percent). But Asians are much more aggressive about signing up for AP tests, taking almost three times as many per year (1.79 per capita per year versus 0.63 among whites). 

There has been a big push to get more NAMs to take AP tests, with predictable results:

The tremendous growth from 1998 to 2008 in Hispanics taking AP tests drove down their average score on the 1 to 5 scale from 2.99 to 2.42. Their passing rate dipped from 60 percent 42 percent.

(And keep in mind that Hispanic mean scores are exaggerated because so many native Spanish-speakers take the Spanish Language test, which ought to be, but isn’t always, a free throw for them. Indeed, 56 percent of all 5s earned by Hispanics in 2008 came on the Spanish Language exam. Excluding it, Latinos in 2008 averaged a 2.17 score with a 35 percent passing rate.) ...

Black scores fell a comparable amount over the last decade, from a mean of 2.21 to 1.91 (with the passing rate dropping from 35 percent to 26 percent).

Still, despite depressingly diminishing returns, more than quadrupling the number of AP tests taken by blacks from 1998 to 2008 helped the absolute number of tests passed by blacks to triple.

So, even with blacks, the number of passing scores is still rising rapidly, so we don't seem to have topped out yet.

In general, there's a big blue state - red state divide in AP testing that goes back, in part, to the regional divide between states on taking the SAT (which, like the AP, is sponsored by the College Board -- and is most popular on the coasts) and the ACT (run out of Iowa and most popular in the middle of the country). The ACT part of the country could probably try taking more AP tests without much harm.

Back to the NYT article:

For biology, the change means paring down the entire field to four big ideas. The first is a simple statement that evolution “drives the diversity and unity of life.” The others emphasize the systematic nature of all living things: that they use energy and molecular building blocks to grow; respond to information essential to life processes; and interact in complex ways. Under each of these thoughts, a 61-page course framework lays out the most crucial knowledge students need to absorb. 

This seems reasonable at first glance. What do you think?

However, I suspect there's a lurking ethnic agenda that's one motivation for this change: there's a common assumption that a shift away from memorization toward critical thinking will narrow the racial gaps that currently exist between Asians and whites and between blacks/ Hispanics and Asians / whites.

But, is there much evidence for this widespread assumption?

I don't know. Asians do well on the AP tests, but they also do well on the Ravens Progressive Matrices, too.

In general, educationalists tend to assume that because they are for (at least in theory) critical thinking skills and against (at least in theory) disparate impact, that, therefore, upping the critical thinking demands of a test will lower the disparate impact. This often turns out to be untrue.

Another questions is whether memorization shouldn't be a dirty work in high school. Maybe that's a better age for memorizing, while grasping the big picture best waits until college. I don't know...

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

"Business Background Defines Chief of Staff"

The New York Times explains the "background" of Obama's new chief of staff, William M. Daley:

He is a top executive at JPMorgan Chase, where he is paid as much as $5 million a year and supervises the Washington lobbying efforts of the nation’s second-largest bank. He also serves on the board of directors at Boeing, the giant military contractor, and Abbott Laboratories, the global drug company, which has billions of dollars at stake in the overhaul of the health care system. 

Funny, I always thought Bill Daley was a big shot (e.g., he's head of JP Morgan Chase's "Office of Corporate Social Responsibility") because his father had been mayor of Chicago for 20 years and his brother for 22.

Obama's chief of staff picks (first, Rahm Emanuel, now a Daley) suggest he still doesn't seem to know many people outside of Chicago. It's not like he knew Emanuel or Daley well in Chicago, it's just that he knows them less less well than non-Chicagoans. Who will be Obama's next chief of staff? Mike Ditka? Oprah's friend Gayle? Stedman Graham?

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

"The Rise of the New Global Elites"

Chrystia Freeland writes in the Atlantic:

The Rise of the New Global Elite

... But today’s super-rich are also different from yesterday’s: more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to the nations that granted them opportunity—and the countrymen they are leaving ever further behind.

... I heard a similar sentiment from the Taiwanese-born, 30-something CFO of a U.S. Internet company. A gentle, unpretentious man who went from public school to Harvard, he’s nonetheless not terribly sympathetic to the complaints of the American middle class. “We demand a higher paycheck than the rest of the world,” he told me. “So if you’re going to demand 10 times the paycheck, you need to deliver 10 times the value. It sounds harsh, but maybe people in the middle class need to decide to take a pay cut.” 

... Wilson’s distinction helps explain why many of America’s other business elites appear so removed from the continuing travails of the U.S. workforce and economy: the global “nation” in which they increasingly live and work is doing fine—indeed, it’s thriving.

For the super-elite, a sense of meritocratic achievement can inspire high self-regard, and that self-regard—especially when compounded by their isolation among like-minded peers—can lead to obliviousness and indifference to the suffering of others.
 
Unsurprisingly, Russian oligarchs have been among the most fearless in expressing this attitude. A little more than a decade ago, for instance, I spoke to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, at that moment the richest man in Russia. “If a man is not an oligarch, something is not right with him,” Khodorkovsky told me. “Everyone had the same starting conditions, everyone could have done it.” 

By the way, just because Khodorkovsky is an SOB doesn't mean that his jailer, Mr. Putin, isn't an SOB-squared.

Though typically more guarded in their choice of words, many American plutocrats suggest, as Khodorkovsky did, that the trials faced by the working and middle classes are generally their own fault. When I asked one of Wall Street’s most successful investment-bank CEOs if he felt guilty for his firm’s role in creating the financial crisis, he told me with evident sincerity that he did not. The real culprit, he explained, was his feckless cousin, who owned three cars and a home he could not afford. One of America’s top hedge-fund managers made a near-identical case to me—though this time the offenders were his in-laws and their subprime mortgage. And a private-equity baron who divides his time between New York and Palm Beach pinned blame for the collapse on a favorite golf caddy in Arizona, who had bought three condos as investment properties at the height of the bubble.

... The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth. 

Not surprisingly, the word "immigration" never comes up in the article. Dissent suppression seems to be working fine.

I've argued for citizenism as an alternative to the reigning ideologies in part because globalism is so endlessly vulnerable to manipulation by clever elites.

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

Hall of Fame and Steroids and Naked Ballplayers

Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar got voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame today. Nate Silver wonders if too few players are getting in these days, what with there now being 30 teams and larger populations to draw from. In his first year of eligibility, Houston Astros slugger Jeff Bagwell didn't get in. Silver says:

Steroid use — actual or suspected — is another issue. Rafael Palmeiro, whose case was debatable on the statistical merits anyway, and who was actually suspended by Major League Baseball for steroid use, would not have made my ballot. Like Tyler Kepner, however, I cannot understand docking Bagwell for mere suspicion of steroid use when there is no evidence of it. 

I can. For one thing, players have 15 years of eligibility to get voted into the Hall (and if they fail there, can get picked by a Veterans Committee later). But they can't get kicked once they're in. So, what's the rush? Blyleven had to wait 15 years to get voted in. Why not wait awhile to see what shakes out? Let's see what turns up. This would only be a major injustice to Bagwell if he suddenly drops dead before he gets in. And if he suddenly drops dead ...

One advantage that working sportswriters have over statistical analysts like Silver in voting on whether players who hit a lot of homers during the steroid years should be entrusted with permanent Hall of Fame membership is that many of the sportswriters, unlike the stats analysts, saw these players naked in the locker room. For example, when Jeff Bagwell went from a .516 slugging average at age 25 to a .750 slugging average at age 26, how much different did he look with his jersey off? Statistical analysts like Nate don't know. I don't know either. Some of the sportswriters who get to vote for Hall of Famers do know, and have, I would guess, talked to other voting sportswriters about it.

Personally, I don't know, I've never heard any rumors about Bagwell. 

Tyler Kepner in the NYT says he's voting for Bagwell and all the other sluggers who haven't gotten official caught:

Circumstantial evidence can be used against anybody. Mike Piazza might have been the most productive offensive catcher in baseball history. But suspicion of steroid use has dogged him, even though, like Bagwell, there has never been a tangible link.

Did Piazza use steroids? I don’t know. He denied it in 2002 by explaining, “I hit the ball as far in high school as I do now.” [Piazza was drafted in the 62nd round out of high school by the LA Dodgers, and he was the brother of Tommy Lasorda's godson, so he wasn't all that awesome in high school.]

All I know for sure is that Piazza played like a Hall of Famer and should be enshrined for that. The New York Times does not allow its writers to vote for the Hall of Fame, but to me, the playing record is the only fair way to measure those who were never suspended for using steroids. 

The rumor I heard in the 1990s was that sponsors often wanted to feature Piazza shirtless in ads, but his back acne was so bad this made for a major issue. (Acne on the back is one possible symptom of juicing.) I recall finally seeing a commercial of Piazza shirtless, but with so much backlighting he was more or less in silhouette.

To me, the tough question is Barry Bonds, who was a first round Hall of Famer before, evidently, he started juicing in 1999. A lot of these other guys might not have gotten close to the Hall without the juice. Rafael Palmeiro, for example, was traded away by the Cubs because they had Mark Grace to play first base instead of him. Grace is the model of the pretty good player, the slick-fielding firstbaseman who never hit more than 17 homers in 15 seasons in little Wrigley Field, who doesn't belong in the Hall. He got only 4% vote for the Hall in 2009 and was dropped from consideration.

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

Copyright News: Gerry Rafferty, RIP

Scottish pop-rocker of the 1970s (Stuck in the Middle with You and Baker Street with the unforgettable sax solo), Gerry Rafferty, has drunk himself to death at 63.

"In the 2009 interview, Mr. Rafferty called the music industry “something I loathe and detest.” Nevertheless, he earned nearly $125,000 a year in royalties for “Baker Street” alone." 

So,  his daughter or her heirs will collect on Baker Street until 2081.

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

What were the best movies of 2010?

Put your recommendations in the comments.

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

Does spending more on education improve test scores?

Conservatives have been saying for a long time that spending more on schools doesn't raise test scores: just look at how much D.C. spends per student or how much the U.S. spends versus Finland.

But Tino at Super-Economy crunches the test scores (PISA internationally and NAEP in the U.S.) after adjusting for demographics, and finds positive correlations between spending and test scores:

However the left in the United States doesn't use this argument, because they are ideologically averse to demographic adjustments having to do with race and ethnicity (most of them consider all statistical generalizations about race and ethnicity somehow offensive, regardless of why you are doing it).

The result of liberals' political correctness is that they are depriving themselves of a very important argument in a very important debate.

True, but there are other adjustments that need to be made, such as for cost-of-living and/or wealth. Compared to Mississippi, New Jersey has expensive public schools, but then it's an expensive place to live full of expensive people. In Tino's comments, I suggest a few methodological wrinkles he should add.

In general, Americans spend a lot of money on schools. The architecture and landscaping of American colleges, for example, is often absurdly lavish. Do expensive buildings raise, say, LSAT scores among individual undergrads, as opposed to attracting better applicants? 

Probably not much. Other reasons are more important, such as social climbing, monument building, regional pride, and so forth. One reason that's often overlooked is that school isn't just preparation for life, it is part of life. For example, Rice has a lavish campus due to the generosity of some rich people and I appreciated my four years admiring the aesthetics that they had arranged for my edification. Similarly, one point of hiring high quality teachers is to have your kids talked to by high quality people.

A reader writes:

http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/gre_0910_guide_extended_table4.pdf

Of the 8,320 people who took the GRE between July 1, 2005, and June 30, 2008, and indicated that Secondary Education was their chosen field of graduate study, exactly *zero* scored an 800 on the verbal test.

Of the 5,901 people who indicated that Elementary Education was their chosen field of study, *zero* scored an 800 on the verbal test.

And of the 1,521 people who indicated that Early Childhood Education was their chosen field of study, *zero* scored an 800 on the verbal test. 

If you widen the net to catch those in the 700-790 range, the results aren't much better. I think this supports the conventional wisdom (or is it the conventional unconventional wisdom?) that teaching in the U.S. is low-status and low-pay, so it inevitably attracts the low performers among the college-educated. Improving the quality of our public schools is contingent upon changing the composition of the teaching pool.

I scored an 800 on the GRE verbal section, but I attend, however improbably, a mid-tier education school in a master's program. Most classes are a waste of time, and insulting to my intelligence, to boot. I was dismayed enough last fall to send off a fusillade of applications to law schools and PhD programs in history. I will do a round of student teaching at a Chicago public magnet school, and then probably bolt.  

I think this is a big, unspoken problem: teacher indoctrination in  Ed Schools and in professional development can be painful to self-respecting intelligent, independent minded people. It's hard to get first rate people to be teachers when they have to put up with so much inanity to earn their credentials.

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

Intellectual Property Rights

Reading up on how Rep. Howard Berman (D-Disney) works to extend copyrights (while many others, such as Lawrence Lessig, consider copyright laws the work of the devil), I was reminded that I've never been persuaded why I should much care pro or con about the copyright controversy. Every time I try to think it through, it all seems to come out a wash.

For example, Matthew Yglesias today laments all the books and movies from 1954, such as Lord of the Flies, Horton Hears a Who, and On the Waterfront, that would have entered public domain these days if the old 56 year copyright had been maintained.

Today, copyright extends for 70 years after the date of the author's death. This length seems pretty absurd, and it creates a tiny gentry of people who have inherited lucrative copyrights. For example, Hugh Grant's selfish character in About a Boy has never bothered to work because his father composed the 1950s novelty Christmas song Santa's Supersonic Sleigh.

But, I have a hard time seeing how length of copyright does much, pro or con, for the quality of entertainment.

I went to the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain and was underwhelmed by their vision of a utopia in which Creature from the Black Lagoon enters public domain this year:

Think of the movies from 1954 that would have become available this year. You could have showed clips from them. You could have showed all of them. You could have spliced and remixed and made documentaries about them. (You could have been a contender!)

Or you could mash up your favorite movies from 1954 and release Creature from the Waterfront. But it all sounds pretty tedious.

It seems to me that a lot of the anti-copyright enthusiasts are stuck in an adolescent fan-boy stage where you just want to remake your favorites and you don't feel worthy of making up your own stuff. 

I'm reminded of this story that Keith Richards likes to tell about how the early Rolling Stones just wanted to perform cover versions of American songs, but manager Andrew Oldham kept telling them about how much money there was in writing original songs. So, he locked Mick and Keith in a kitchen until they'd written a song. After they'd eaten all the food in the kitchen, they decided they might as well try writing a song. So they came up with "As Tears Go By."

Warning: not all of Keith Richards' memories are wholly reliable.

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

Gerrymandering

In VDARE this week, I compare two examples of how the press has treated two Members of the House of Representatives who have been major beneficiaries of racial gerrymandering: the media has portrayed Howard Berman's gerrymandering with appropriate cynicism but Luis Gutierrez is repeatedly profiled with near-complete credulity.

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

Canadian Border Alert

In the NYT, Nicholas Kristof writes:

Professors Wilkinson and Pickett crunch the numbers and show that the same relationship holds true for a range of social problems. Among rich countries, those that are more unequal appear to have more mental illness, infant mortality, obesity, high school dropouts, teenage births, homicides, and so on.

They find the same thing is true among the 50 American states. More unequal states, like Mississippi and Louisiana, do poorly by these social measures. More equal states, like New Hampshire and Minnesota, do far better. 

So, it's not the ice hockey that's behind Moynihan's Law of Proximity to the Canadian Border, it's the inequality.

Now, it could be that the Rich Getting Richer is, overall, a bad thing. I don't know. But, the single most obvious quantitative example runs in the opposite direction.

Here's one historical experiment in the effects of the Rich Getting Richer that ought to be familiar to subscribers to the New York Times: homicides in New York City.

New York City always had a lot of income and wealth inequality, but it really took off with Wall Street's boom that started part way through 1982. The rich in New York City became unbelievably rich in the 1990s and 2000s. And what happened? Homicides in New York City hit 2,245 in 1990, then dropped 79 percent by 2009.

 

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