The reason we study history is because certain patterns repeat themselves. And this is where our education system has been failing us so terribly for decades, in part because of “multiculturalism.” Circa 1990, it became fashionable to condemn the teaching of history in our society as too “Eurocentric” and this academic trend, along with a general contempt for “dead white males,” had the effect of demoting the study of the history of our own culture in favor of “inclusive” history about African, Asian and Latin American societies. But this involves a misunderstanding of why we study history at all. The peasant living under a hereditary monarchy, or a goat-herder in a nomadic tribal society, would have no use for the study of history. In a non-democratic polity, it is only the leadership caste which has need to study history, as a guide to statecraft. However, in a republic, where every citizen is eligible to participate in the decision-making process — at the very least, as a voter — the study of history as part of a general education becomes much more important. How are we to participate intelligently in politics if we don’t know history? And the reason we study ancient Greece and Rome, rather than the Mayans or the Chinese or some other culture, isn’t because of racism or “Eurocentrism.” It’s because Greco-Roman civilization produced the earliest models for representative government, and because these civilizations left behind a written record, including such valuable resources as Thucydides.
This is why the British University system as-it-was, which focused on ‘classics’ and mathematics, produced people who were competent to run significant portions of the world. The ‘classics’ curriculum dealt not only with the Greek and Latin languages — good training for the mind — but also with what was written in those languages and what was done by the people who spoke those languages — i.e. literature, poetry, history, biography, philosophy, and politics.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on History and the High Price of Forgetting
A bold claim about gorilla societies is drawing mixed reviews. Great apes, humans’ closest evolutionary relatives, were thought to lack our social complexity. Chimpanzees, for example, form only small bands that are aggressive toward strangers. But based on years of watching gorillas gather in food-rich forest clearings, a team of scientists has concluded the apes have hierarchical societies similar to those of humans, perhaps to help them exploit rich troves of food.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Gorillas Have Developed Humanlike Social Structure, Controversial Study Suggests
A critical component in the rise of market-oriented democracy in the modern era has been the dispersion of property ownership among middle-income households—not just in the United States but also in countries like Holland, Canada, and Australia, where it was closely linked with greater civil and economic freedom. In its early days, this dispersion was largely rural, but after the Second World War, it took on a largely suburban emphasis in the U.S., including within the extended metro regions of traditional cities like New York and Los Angeles. American homeownership soared between 1940 and 1962, from 44 percent to 63 percent.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on In Defense of Houses
‘Magic Dirt’ is, of course, where white people live; it is lack of Magic Dirt that causes poverty and crime among black and 0ther ‘disadvantaged’ minorities.
A Wall Street Journal editorial of July 10th lays out what the House Democrats’ most recent socialist scheme (H.R.3195 – Land and Water Conservation Fund Permanent Funding Act) is all about. In June, the Democrats who sit on the House Natural Resources Committee passed H.R.3195, which is currently winding its way through the House. This bill mandates permanent funding of $900 million to the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) each year. This would be a whopping two and a half times greater than the Fund’s average annual expenditures over the past 15 years. Just what does the LWCF do? The Fund was created in 1964. It is primarily funded by federal oil and gas drilling royalties. Its main activity has been to gobble up private land (read: nationalize) and put it under government ownership, management, and political control. Among other things, this means that the newly nationalized lands will be poorly managed.
In northeast Oklahoma City, you can find plenty of stores that sell groceries, but only two are grocery stores. Some are convenience stores or gas stations, and the rest are dollar stores—now more common in the United States than both Walmart and McDonald’s combined. This influx of dollar stores, according to the Oklahoma City city council, is a major public-health problem.
“Better options are necessary for our community, beginning with policy to prevent small box discount stores from saturating these areas in particular,” Councilwoman Nikki Nice, whose ward is about 23 percent low income, tweeted.
In May, Nice helped pass a moratorium on constructing or issuing building permits to convenience stores located within one mile of another, working on the assumption that, once dollar stores are banned, grocery stores will come. The ban lasts for 180 days, or until November of 2019, when the council plans to introduce a zoning ordinance to bring stores with fresh meat and produce to the district, the Journal Record reports.
Every politician thinks that he or she has a better idea than the free market for how you ought to spend your money.
This sort of thinking is why California is a train wreck and likely will continue to get worse.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on To Save a Neighborhood, Ban a Dollar Store?
Totalitarians always want to control the language. If you can’t talk about something, eventually you stop thinking about it, too.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on ‘Words Matter’: Democratic Congressman Wants to Officially Abolish the Words ‘Illegal Alien’
Is it possible to create an internet meme that could be embraced by both the left and the right? Charles Pierce, the extreme TDS politics writer for Esquire magazine, might have created one on July 15 while in a fit of fury over the incredibly fast pace of Trump administration Federal judiciary appointments which now numbers 43 since his term began according to this report.
As a result, Pierce went off the deep end yet again. However, the good news for all is that he might have created what could be destined to be a popular internet meme: “Larval Scalias.”
I’ll drink to that.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Esquire: ‘Effort to Salt the Judiciary With Larval Scalias Is Close to Complete’
Fly over a reconstruction of one of history’s greatest cities to experience Rome as the Romans knew it. This reconstruction is based on two decades of research and the input of dozens of specialists.
I served on active duty in the U.S. Air Force and currently serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. Yet I still experience people telling me to “go back” to China or North Korea or Japan.
Perhaps it’s because you’re a fucking communist. Perhaps it’s because you’ve never acted as if you were an American.
“Manners maketh man.”
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on ‘I have served in the Air Force and in Congress. People still tell me to ‘go back’ to China.’
Smart cities make two fundamental promises: lots of data, and automated decision making based on that data. The ultimate smart city will require a raft of existing and to-be-invented technologies, from sensors to robots to artificial intelligence. For many this promises a more efficient, equitable city; for others, it raises questions about privacy and algorithmic bias.
But there is a more basic concern when it comes to smart cities: They will be exceedingly complex to manage, with all sorts of unpredictable vulnerabilities. There will always be a place for new technology in our urban infrastructure, but we may find that often, “dumb” cities will do better than smart ones.
Cities are only as smart as the Democrats who run them (think about it), and that’s not very.
Sherlock Hibbs, a wealthy Wall Street financier with ties to the University of Missouri, died in 2002. A fan of free market economics, the Austrian School, and Ludwig von Mises in particular, Hibbs specified in his will that $5 million would go to the university for the purposes of hiring “dedicated and articulate disciples” of this philosophy.
There was an interesting catch. If Mizzou failed to use the money to fund acolytes of Mises, the donation would instead go to Hillsdale College, a conservative institution in Michigan. Hibbs seemingly did not trust Mizzou to fulfill his terms and thus structured the gift so that an ideologically sympathetic college would have an incentive to hold the Mizzou accountable.
Hibbs was apparently right to worry. Hillsdale is now suing Mizzou, and alleges that the university willfully misspent the funds on faculty members who have nothing to do with either von Mises or Austrian economics.
Trudeau did a series of Doonesbury cartoons on this very subject.
I don’t know why he didn’t just cut to the chase and give the money to Hillsdale.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Mizzou Received $5 Million to Hire Austrian Economists. A Lawsuit Claims It Misspent the Money.
David French: Backwards Beliefs and Islamic Propaganda Didn’t Radicalize Ilhan Omar.
You Did.
David French is an ignorant fool. He represents the Platonic Ideal of the modern cucservative. The fact that he has a respected place at National Review tells you everything you need to know about the Washington Generals of politics.
Rich Lowry in the New York Post. Even a blind pig can find an acorn now and then.
Beto O’Rourke — the losing Texas candidate for the US Senate who bootstrapped his way into becoming a losing presidential candidate — had a message for refugees who had come to America: Your new country is a hellhole.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Woke Assimilation: Teaching Our Politicians to Hate America
We live, as the Indian essayist Saeed Akhter Mirza has put it, in “an age of amnesia.” Across the world, most notably in the West, we are discarding the knowledge and insights passed down over millennia and replacing it with politically correct bromides cooked up in the media and the academy. In some ways, this process recalls, albeit in digital form, the Middle Ages. Conscious shaping of thought—and the manipulation of the past to serve political purposes—is becoming commonplace and pervasive.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is releasing quarterly reports of illegal immigrants accused of crimes in an effort to highlight the dangers posed by “sanctuary city” policies after local police denied retainer requests.
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One of the core concepts of calculus is known as the “derivative”, which is a ratio between two types of changes. For instance, your car’s speedometer gives the you speed in “miles per hour.” This is a derivative—a ratio of the change in distance and the change in time. You can also have a “second derivative,” or a derivative of a derivative. For instance, acceleration is the ratio between the change in speed and the change in time.
However, the notation for the second derivative has always been strange and usually baffles students. In most mathematics textbooks, the notation is presented without explanation for the reasons for why it looks the way it looks. In an effort to provide more background for his students, Jonathan Bartlett decided to pursue the matter further, and figure out why the notation is the way that it is.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Tulsa Teacher Discovers Calculus Flaw
Do I think Trump is playing four-dimensional chess here? Did he carefully calculate the possible ramifications? No, I think this was his gut instinct, but those instincts are usually rather shrewd. Because he doesn’t think in the predictable terms of standard-issue politics, sometimes Trump wins by doing what would seem to be the wrong thing, but which turns out to be effective in the long run. If Hayward is correct in his estimation, what Trump has done here will have the effect of making radicals like AOC and the Somali immigrant Ilhan Omar the “face” of their party, and make it impossible for Pelosi (or Chuck Schumer, or whoever the Democrats nominate for president in 2020) to distance themselves from these unpopular radicals. At a press conference today, Trump doubled down, saying these Democrats “hate our country” and “many people agree with me.” (Analysis: True.)
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Blunder or Genius?
Back in May, CNN’s United Shades of America ran an episode which glorified a Washington-based Antifa chapter called the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club (JBGC), describing them as the “good guy[s].” On Saturday, a member of that group was killed by police for attempting to burn down a migrant detention center in Tacoma, Washington while armed with a rifle and incendiary devices. But as of 4:00 p.m. EDT on Monday, CNN still have yet to inform viewers of that man’s affiliation with the organization they so highly praised.
There’s a reason Planned Parenthood likes to challenge pro-life laws on the West Coast. It knows the cases will eventually bubble up to the most liberal bench in the country—the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
There’s just one problem. After almost three years of President Donald Trump, their favorite appeals court isn’t exactly liberal anymore. And that’s throwing a major wrench into the abortion industry’s plans.
Well what if I told you a Policy Director at Facebook was Nancy Pelosi’s Chief of Staff before taking said job directing policy at Facebook? What if I told you the head of algorithm policy at Facebook worked for Hillary at The State Department? Or that the Head of Content Policy worked for the Hillary presidential campaign? What if I told you the person in charge of privacy policy at Facebook used to work for Al Franken, before he worked for Senator Bonoff, before he worked for Congressman Oberstar? Or that the Director in charge of “countering hate and extremism” at Facebook came from the Clinton Foundation? Did you know that the person at Facebook who currently “oversees programs on countering hate speech and promoting pluralism”, and “develops internal third party education and drives thought leadership on hate speech and content moderation” was one of Obama’s policy advisers at The White House? Do you even know what “pluralism” is? Let me help you out:
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Welcome to Social Government
Canadian Medicare, our northern neighbor’s universal health care system, generally receives rave reviews from proponents of nationalized or socialized health care, but the Fraser Institute found that more than 63,000 Canadians left their country to have surgery in 2016.
As Americans contemplate overturning our health system in favor of one similar to Canada’s, we must ask why so many leave.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on American Health Care Treats Canadians Who Cannot Wait
We have previously discussed the growing intolerance on campuses over those who speak or write from a more conservative perspective. The latest such target is Laura Tanner, a doctoral candidate in its Department of Feminist Studies. Tanner has written against transgender status and ideology. Her tweets have led students and alumni at the University of California-Santa Barbara to demand the termination of Tanner’s association with the university.
Tanner is a feminist who rejects transgender status. She wrote various tweets on the subject including “A woman is someone with a female body and any personality … not a ‘female personality’ and any body. Any other definition is sexism.” She also argued that “It’s not possible to be born in the wrong body,” and “so called trans women will never be anything but men.” Those views were declared by The Daily Nexus as “transphobic.”
And the Coalition of the Fringes unravels just a little bit more….
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Doctoral Candidate at UC-Santa Barbara Faces Protests After Speaking Out Against Transgender Ideology
Amid racist accusations against President Trump following his tweet-tirade against various progressive Democrats, one of the more outspoken #Squad-members unleashed a torrent of what some might call racist, homophobic, islamophobic claims admonishing the deplorable Americans who refuse to firebomb ICE facilities, cry at parking lots, and denounce free speech…
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Dem Rep: “We Don’t Need” Blacks, Gays, & Muslims Who Won’t Play Identity Politics
It is a real city with people living in it. I was reminded of this as I made my way through residential neighborhoods to the Ritz-Carlton, where the conference is being held. As is true of all ruling class areas now, Washington is gentrifying, which is a polite way of saying ethnic-cleansing. Slowly, block by block, the underclass blacks are being shipped out to surrounding areas so they can be replaced with hipsters working for government and the array of think tanks that support the government.
I am curious as to how these changes will be reflected in city government and services.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Travelogue: The Imperial Capital
According to a new rule published in the Federal Register, asylum seekers who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border.
The rule, expected to go into effect Tuesday, also applies to children who have crossed the border alone.
When I visited Singapore a few years ago, I kept noticing novel bits of social technology that managed to solve problems that I didn’t even realize I had. One favorite example was parking: all parking garages were equipped with an RFID reader, and everyone had an EZ-Tag type device in their car. Instead of picking up a ticket when you go in and waiting to hand it to an attendant on the way out, you just drive in, park, and drive out, and they automatically deduct the payment from your account.
But what made the biggest impression on me was the maid system in Singapore. Singapore’s policy on guest workers would make for an interesting essay in its own right. Briefly, though, the government makes it easy for guest workers to come if they can find work in various industries, including domestic service. Once in, you get a visa for a couple years, which does not come with voting rights or many of the perks of citizenship. But because this system is so rigorous in ensuring that would-be guest workers are net economic positives, it’s politically feasible for Singapore to take in a lot of guest workers. Proportionally, Singapore’s guest worker population is equivalent to the US taking in about two-thirds the population of Mexico – with huge net benefits to them and their families.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Servants Without Masters
In the 20th century most business leaders were predictably conservative. Big money aligned with their class allies in the “party of property,” and some of those elements still back Donald Trump and conservative causes. Left-wing politics were left to their unions, academics and parts of the media.
But over the last twenty years most of the oligarchy — whose firms are overwhelmingly non-union — have embraced the progressive social and environmental agenda. The clear majority of wealthy donors support the Democratic Party while vast majority of the ultra-rich foundations — funded by the offspring of the Rockefellers and the Fords based on fossil fuels — now all tilt well to the left.
So deep-seated is gentry progressivism that a company like Nike quickly sides with a mediocre NFL quarterback who has worn socks showing police as pigs over an iconic image from the country’s founding. This could be one way that company, which relies on low-wage, largely un-unionized foreign labor in what the Baltimore Sun called “abysmal working conditions,” can sell itself as politically correct.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Dangerous Rise Of The Woke Corporation
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Somali Immigrant Goes Back to Somalia to Make It a Better Place by Changing the Racist Media Narrative About Somalia, Gets Blown Up by Terrorists
Aggregation fallacy. States don’t have bodies and can’t be obese. Individual people have bodies and can be obese, but there is nothing about where they live that controls their weight.
The complications associated with obesity are tragic and expensive and they have a direct effect on all consumers in a number of ways. Excess weight relative to one’s height is medically linked with early death, heart disease, diabetes, and practically all maladies. Across pretty much all cultures across the globe, obesity is associated with early death.
What ways? That ‘they have a direct effect on consumers in a number of ways’ is asserted but no evidence is presented.
If you are a consumer and obese, well, there’s an effect — but the alleged connection between obesity and consumer status is supported neither by evidence nor by argument.
I really hate these hair-on-fire articles that make great claims and never back them up. But people believe this shit.
