October 18, 2012

Dept. of Not Getting Moynihan's Joke about the Canadian Border

From The New Republic, an elaborate article that doesn't seem to notice how literal its titular metaphor actually is:
Blue States are from Scandinavia, Red States are from Guatemala 
A theory of a divided nation. 
Jonathan Cohn October 5, 2012 | 12:00 am 
... We’ve come to think of “blue” and “red” states as political and cultural categories. The rift, though, goes much deeper than partisan differences of opinion. The borders of the United States contain two different forms of government, based on two different visions of the social contract. In blue America, state government costs more—and it spends more to ensure that everybody can pay for basic necessities such as food, housing, and health care. It invests more heavily in the long-term welfare of its population, with better-funded public schools, subsidized day care, and support for people with disabilities. In some cases, in fact, state lawmakers have decided that the social contract provided by the federal government is not generous enough. It was a blue state that first established universal health insurance and, today, it is a handful of blue states that offer paid family and medical leave. 
In the red states, government is cheaper, which means the people who live there pay lower taxes. But they also get a lot less in return. The unemployment checks run out more quickly and the schools generally aren’t as good. 
Assistance with health care, child care, and housing is skimpier, if it exists at all. The result of this divergence is that one half of the country looks more and more like Scandinavia, while the other increasingly resembles a social Darwinist’s paradise. 
Americans have been arguing over which system is morally and economically superior since the beginning of the republic. But every now and then, the worldviews have clashed and forced a reckoning. The 2012 election is one of those moments. ...
THE QUINTESSENTIAL blue state is, of course, Massachusetts. There, health care is available to almost everybody, regardless of income or preexisting medical conditions. Welfare benefits are among the most generous in the country, and the state spends hundreds of millions on public housing each year. These programs don’t always lift people out of poverty or protect them from financial catastrophe. Still, Massachusetts’s residents get a lot more help from their state government than people who live elsewhere in the United States. It is reliably at the forefront of efforts at the state level to do what the federal government will not.  
In colonial times, during their fabled town meetings, New Englanders established America’s first public schools and worked to look after those who had fallen on hard times, even though it meant higher taxes. In Albion’s Seed, a history of colonial settlement patterns, David Hackett Fischer writes that efforts to care for the vulnerable “went beyond the minimum.” 

As Fischer pointed out, New England Puritans tended to be, literally, "from Scandinavia:" their English-born ancestors were concentrated in the Danelaw region of a thousand years ago in eastern England. Isaac Newton, for instance, a classic eastern English Puritan, looked rather like Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap.
About a century later, a wave of immigrants from central, southern, and eastern Europe arrived in the Northeast and upper Midwest, grafting Catholic notions of social justice and Jewish notions of social responsibility onto the old Yankee sense of mutual obligation.
... The South was slower to industrialize and slower to take measures to protect the vulnerable. By the time of the Great Depression, most Southern state governments did not provide any form of cash assistance to people in poverty. 
One likely reason was the region’s own equally distinctive colonial ancestry. Appalachia had attracted fiercely individualistic immigrants from the Scottish and Irish woodlands. Virginia’s founders, meanwhile, were a group of well-educated elites who, unlike the Puritans, wanted to recreate the society they left behind, including its class divisions. ... 
But something else had soured the South on social welfare: race. Programs to help poor people were, inevitably, programs to help African Americans. Southern whites wanted nothing to do with helping former slaves get an equal footing in society. They did embrace the New Deal, in part because Franklin Roosevelt and his allies went out of their way to accommodate their racial sensibilities: Social Security, for example, initially exempted agricultural and domestic workers. By the 1950s, however, the South was once more under attack for its denial of civil rights to African Americans. Later, it came to see the anti-poverty programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society as yet another effort to redistribute money to blacks (even though, like the New Deal, it also helped many whites). 
... The biggest victory for these counterrevolutionaries came in 1996, when Republicans passed a bill, signed by Bill Clinton, to “end welfare as we know it.” The legislation gave states wide leeway over how to manage benefits and, over time, gave them less money to spend.
... This was fitting, because, just as Massachusetts is the model for the blue state, Texas is the model for the red. 
Today, Texas doesn’t even try to provide the kind of protection for its vulnerable residents that Massachusetts does. ... 
THIS PATTERN generally holds for the red states and the blue states overall. ... “The story is pretty clear,” Meyers says. “If you are poor, you want to live in a blue state.”  
By nearly every measure, people who live in the blue states are healthier, wealthier, and generally better off than people in the red states It’s impossible to prove that this is the direct result of government spending. But the correlation is hard to dismiss. The four states with the highest poverty rates are all red: Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Texas. (The fifth is New Mexico, which has turned blue.) And the five states with the lowest poverty rates are all blue: New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont, Minnesota, and Hawaii. The numbers on infant mortality, life expectancy, teen pregnancy, and obesity break down in similar ways. A recent study by researchers at the American Institute for Physics evaluated how well-prepared high schoolers were for careers in math and science. Massachusetts was best, followed closely by Minnesota and New Jersey. Mississippi was worst, along with Louisiana and West Virginia. In fact, it is difficult to find any indicator of well-being in which red states consistently do better than blue states.

Or, perhaps, the causality of the correlation works in the opposite direction: that wealthier states, having fewer poor people, can afford to be more generous to their poor?

And what makes states healthier, wealthier, and wiser? As Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out: proximity to the Canadian border -- i.e., being whiter. For example, Massachusetts is only 18% Non-Asian Minority, while Texas is 51% NAM (which, of course raises the metaphysical question, when Non-Asian Minorities are no longer a minority, what are they?)

So, TNR's lesson is that if Democrats want the whole country to be more like Massachusetts, Democrats should back an immigration policy of letting in more Scandinavians and fewer Guatemalans, right?

By the way, when speaking about Massachusetts, it's important to keep in mind that a major reason it doesn't have many blacks and that its blacks aren't as big of a problem as elsewhere is because it has an abundance of violent, tribalist, anti-black Irish to keep the blacks down. Boston is the only place I've seen in the U.S. where blacks appeared to be afraid of white civilians walking down the street. Having a lot of scary Irish around makes theorizing at Harvard a lot more pleasant.

In contrast, poor Milwaukee, a nice German social-democratic town (as Alice Cooper points out in Wayne's World, Socialist candidates were elected mayor of Milwaukee three times in the 1920s), had high welfare and a direct rail line from the Mississippi Delta, and it just got the worst of Southern blacks.

196 comments:

IHTG said...

Some surprisingly non-retarded comments there.

SFG said...

Yup! This liberal wants to whiten the country so he can have socialism. Simple, really.

Anonymous said...

2005 Statistical Abstract of the United States shows New Mexico with a slightly lower infant mortality rate than Vermont.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Putnam's initially-supressed data comes into play here. Diversity undercuts socialism. It is simply much easier to support a welfare state where everyone looks like you. Scandinavia comes to mind. (Also, they decided that government supports were a good idea not long after they had sent 15-25% of their poorer folk to America and Canada. Shoot, we could do that pretty easily even today if 60-80 mil of our mostly poor folk moved away.)

NH and VT are pretty white states, as is Minnesota once you get out of the Twin Cities, out where all the children really are above average.) That tribal sameness is a big boost may not seem very elevated, but it has the enormous advantage of being true.

dirk said...

You hit on a truth there which runs both ways: Conservatives often fear that Hispanic immigration will eventually make the country more socialist. But you just acknowledged the opposite: proximity to diversity makes whites more conservative. So take Texas. Will Texas soon become blue as whites become the minority? Unlikely. Because the median white voter in Texas will become more conservative as the state becomes more Hispanic.

I suspect that theory is easily testable if you look at white Texas voter trends over the past several decades. I'm not inclined to do the research myself, but anecdotally I'll note that it's been a few decades since Ann Richards was governor.

Anonymous said...

Did something happen with the font here? I really don't like it.

Cail Corishev said...

This is such a load that thinking about refuting it all is just too tiring. So just one bit:

THIS PATTERN generally holds for the red states and the blue states overall. ... “The story is pretty clear,” Meyers says. “If you are poor, you want to live in a blue state.”

It will never, ever occur to this person that the causation just might work the other way: if you live in a blue state, with all its high taxes and regulations to try to protect people, you might be more likely to be poor.

Anyone who thinks small towns and rural areas are a "social Darwinist's paradise" doesn't deserve to be read any further than that.

Anonymous said...

Did Scots-Irish really come from the "woodlands" of Scotland and Ireland?

Anonymous said...

I encountered the acronym NAM here and I have been assuming it stood for "New American Majority."

Anonymous said...

Red states are poor because they have a vast pool of people who vote blue. Most Mississippian blacks aren't voting red.

Btw, what about California? It's blue as hell but...

And Detroit is as blue as a city can be. Well?

Anonymous said...

Soon, Scandinavia will look more like Alabama with all those African immigrants.

Anonymous said...

Why are blacks moving from blue states to red states if blue states are so welcoming to blacks?

ricpic said...

The entire progressive project boils down to hollowing out whitey in order to prop up blacky. Which is then declared "doing good."

Hereward said...

Did Scots-Irish really come from the "woodlands" of Scotland and Ireland?
The "Scots-Irish" author of this article doesn't seem to know a whole lot about the landscape of the Scottish Borders.

Auntie Analogue said...

"Welfare benefits [in Massachusetts] are among the most generous in the country, and the state spends hundreds of millions on public housing each year. These programs don’t always lift people out of poverty or protect them from financial catastrophe."

It cannot be said that Mr. Cohn has not mastered the art of understatement.

sunbeam said...

Cail Corashev said:

"It will never, ever occur to this person that the causation just might work the other way: if you live in a blue state, with all its high taxes and regulations to try to protect people, you might be more likely to be poor.

Anyone who thinks small towns and rural areas are a "social Darwinist's paradise" doesn't deserve to be read any further than that."

I'm trying to curtail the length of my posts on this site, so maybe this won't be as complete as it should.

I am from the South, and currently live there again. Probably I'm going to leave again one day, and never go back, but that is a story for another day.

Additionally I am from the rural south. Now let me say what this post is all about:

There is literally nothing left in the rural south that is economically viable. The world of even 50 years ago is gone. Agriculture is a game that takes serious funds to operate now. You still see some guys do the little watermelon farming and whatnot, but essentially they are playing at it. The mills are gone now, and the other assorted factories that were once there are gone as well.

There are still some agriculture jobs, but not many. Mechanized agriculture has totally destroyed the world that existed as short a time ago as the 50's.

If it weren't for transfer payments like Social Security, Welfare, Food Stamps and the like it would not be financially possible to support yourself in these areas, let alone pay for things like schools (and football teams).

Even if you got the land for free.

The sad fact is that essentially no one is interested in these areas enough to even be Darwinian about it anymore.

And my best guess is the same pattern is replicated across the heartland and plains states as well.

Anonymous said...

when Non-Asian Minorities are no longer a minority, what are they?

Just NA, I guess.

Anonymous said...


Anyone who thinks small towns and rural areas are a "social Darwinist's paradise" doesn't deserve to be read any further than that.


Hey I thought libs liked Darwin. What gives?

Anonymous said...

Creationist social Darwinists.

Anonymous said...

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/10/05/mort-zuckerman-why-the-country-is-unhappy-under-obama

Anonymous said...

You hit on a truth there which runs both ways: Conservatives often fear that Hispanic immigration will eventually make the country more socialist. But you just acknowledged the opposite: proximity to diversity makes whites more conservative.

This.

Anonymous said...

Amazing how he doesn't notice the correlation between the very liberal states being much whiter than the country as a whole ( Or in the case of Hawaii, more Asian than the country as a whole ) and very red states being more heavily black or heavily Mexican ( Like Texas and N. Mexico ) than the country is typical. Well, obviously he can't pursue that thought to it's logical conclusion, because that would be THOUGHTCRIME. The best rejoinder I ever heard regarding this leftist tack was when someone said to Milton Friedman that Scandinavia had no major poverty and Friedman pointed out heavily Scandinavian and German ( And 92% white at the time ) Minnesota didn't either, despite the lack of cradle to grave welfare here in the US and A.

Anonymous said...

Southern reds more likely to fight war for Israel.

Anonymous said...

Hey I thought libs liked Darwin. What gives?

What they like is Darwinism/evolution as a club to beat conservative Christians, they want to be seen as the cool science kids. And thats about it. They certainly dont think any of that applies to humanity in any other way.

john marzan said...

dirk said : "You hit on a truth there which runs both ways: Conservatives often fear that Hispanic immigration will eventually make the country more socialist. But you just acknowledged the opposite: proximity to diversity makes whites more conservative. So take Texas. Will Texas soon become blue as whites become the minority? Unlikely. Because the median white voter in Texas will become more conservative as the state becomes more Hispanic. "

how do you explain california? and most of the white voters in texas are already conservative!

Glaivester said...

What they like is Darwinism/evolution as a club to beat conservative Christians, they want to be seen as the cool science kids. And thats about it. They certainly dont think any of that applies to humanity in any other way.

Or as I said seven years ago:

"I [i.e., the liberal] thought the whole point of evolution was just to deny God. I didn't think it was actually supposed to tell us anything."

Dennis Dale said...

Hey I thought libs liked Darwin. What gives?

As Glaivester says, progressives think evolution is only about proving God doesn't exist. They are in oblivious denial of evolutionary theory's implications.

Historical Minorities I fear you've nailed it. I think I shall call them "Legacy Minorities".

poultry inspector said...

By the way, when speaking about Massachusetts, it's important to keep in mind that a major reason it doesn't have many blacks and that its blacks aren't as big of a problem as elsewhere is because it has an abundance of violent, tribalist, anti-black Irish to keep the blacks down

I suppose the fact that they're not afraid of Blacks explains why they could afford to vote for Ted Kennedy.

ben tillman said...

Americans have been arguing over which system is morally and economically superior since the beginning of the republic.

Hardly.

ben tillman said...

You hit on a truth there which runs both ways: Conservatives often fear that Hispanic immigration will eventually make the country more socialist. But you just acknowledged the opposite: proximity to diversity makes whites more conservative.


But the Whites will be outvoted, so the country will get more "socialism", whatever that is. That should go without saying. Wow.

Bébert said...

What they like is Darwinism/evolution as a club to beat conservative Christians, they want to be seen as the cool science kids. And thats about it. They certainly dont think any of that applies to humanity in any other way.

Precisely. It's all about social status. Of course, this short-term status comes at the expense of these useful idiots' descendants, who, while having a browner, poorer and more overtly hostile future to look forward to, shall still, their treasonous ancestors can rest assured, serve an integral purpose in the glorious future of Los Estados Unidos de Aztlán: they will be the hamsters propelling the wheels that keep the lights on. Justicia!

Veracitor said...

Please indulge me ranting about a pet peeve...

" In blue America, state government costs more... with better-funded public schools..."

"In the red states, government is cheaper, which means the people who live there pay lower taxes. But they also get a lot less in return... the schools generally aren’t as good."

Damn it, the American definition of a "good school" is one whose students average high scores on standardized tests. Funding literally doesn't factor in (look, for example, at greatschools.org or any real-estate marketing site like Redfin, the kind of websites liberal magazine writers stare at a lot while daydreaming about buying a house in the burbs ). So it's a typical liberal non-sequitur to imply low taxes cause poor schools. No matter how much money you pour into a school full of dull kids (%NAM is, sadly, a good proxy for %dull) you will not end up with a "good school."

candid_observer said...

To follow on a couple of comments here, it's always struck me that Putnam's research on diversity shows that the conventional left and the conventional right each espouse goals that work at cross purposes with each other.

Lefties seek diversity though immigration, but also a major welfare state. Righties (typically) seek to curb diversity though controlling immigration, but also wish to reduce the welfare state.

Putnam's research would suggest that the goals of each are incompatible. If the lefties get more diversity, they get less welfare state. If the righties reduce diversity, they get more welfare state.

The only real winners today seem to be the elite (what a surprise), which wants immigration for cheaper labor, but also seeks to reduce the welfare state. And such, of course, is today's America, wrapped up in a little bow for our powerful friends at the tippy top. You'd almost think it was by design.

jody said...

funny considering that california, the bluest state which ever existed, and getting a deeper more vivid shade of blue every day, is the one which actually looks like guatemala.

california might be the state which literally has the most actual guatemalans in it.

JayMan said...

Of course, the Whites themselves in the South have lower IQs than those in the North as well.

Lionel Hutz said...

By the way, when speaking about Massachusetts, it's important to keep in mind that a major reason it doesn't have many blacks and that its blacks aren't as big of a problem

It is cute when you blog as if you know what you're talking about. Except for Boston and Worcester the commonwealth has too few centrally planned slums to serve as the requisite wellsprings of antisocial blacks (contrast with Hartford, Bridgeport, the Havens) but let's fall over ourselves now to credit those dumb micks of stage & screen for short-circuiting possible race riots surrounding busing in the 70s, among other alternate-universe civil catastrophes. Much of Sailer's regional expertise sounds as if it could be gleaned from watching The History Channel in a bar for a few minutes with the sound turned off.

irishman said...

"Did Scots-Irish really come from the "woodlands" of Scotland and Ireland?"
Scots-Irish didn't come from Scotland the came from what we now call Northern Ireland where they were planted in the 17th century. Nor were they particularly rural. They set up these perfectly planned presbyterian prison-towns which were as anal as they are.They left because as we like to say in Ireland; "we can't all live on this small island".

Brett Stevems said...

Another factor here is that the east coast was industrial, and the south was agricultural.

As a result, the east coast is built "upward" and condensed; the south is spread out, and property values are less dramatically separated. In New York, moving one street over might cost you $200,000; in Texas, maybe $2k.

The consequence of this is that the east coast is actually not all that diverse, while the south is. In sprawling Texas, for example, most people live in suburbs where people randomly purchase houses and rent apartments. Excepting the nice in-town burbs, there's not much difference in price, which means these are ethnic hodgepodge settlements.

In other words, in the red states, people experience diversity, and Putnam's observations ring true: there's less trust, more antagonism. On the east coast, they theorize from brownstones and wish for diversity in their boring upper-middle-class whitebread neighborhoods. They have no experience with real diversity.

Ex Submarine Officer said...

But you just acknowledged the opposite: proximity to diversity makes whites more conservative.

Word.

The very whitish elites/oligarchs of Latin America are the least liberal people in the world.

A Liberal said...

"Hey I thought libs liked Darwin. What gives?"

Afro-Jesus magically stopped the evolution of the brain in humans, before we differentiated into continental-scale races.

Matthew said...

"In the red states, government is cheaper, which means the people who live there pay lower taxes. But they also get a lot less in return. The unemployment checks run out more quickly and the schools generally aren’t as good"

Well see, now there he is wrong. People paying the taxes aren't the people 'getting anything in return.'

"But you just acknowledged the opposite: proximity to diversity makes whites more conservative."

Which is why whites in California are now 100% Republican - even the gays.

Auntie Analogue said...

"when Non-Asian Minorities are no longer a minority, what are they?"

Hegemons.

Matthew said...

"They left because as we like to say in Ireland; 'we can't all live on this small island'."

And yet right next door in Britain, on an island not much bigger than Ireland, they manage to support a population of 60 million. What gives?

Anonymous said...

Hypothetical. What would happen if all the blacks in Southern states went to northern blue states and all the northern conservatives went to southern states?

Anonymous said...

How about Mass vs Utah?

Mr X said...

Yes, it's a paradox that regions full of Whites tend to be more progressive & socialist than more "diverse" regions. Case in point: Portland, Sweden. However, progressive mentality brings immigration & welfare state. When in actual proximity with real minorities, Whites start to become more "conservative" and less socialist, but then, they are already being replaced by the new "diverse" voters, who will vote "socialist" too but for other reasons. The Democrat party is slowly becoming the "non-white" party.

Is Canada still 80% white?

Anonymous said...

Blue States are under AIPAC, and Red States are under AIPAC.

dirk said...

"how do you explain california?"

California is an enigma wrapped in a squid, etc.

"and most of the white voters in texas are already conservative!"

Most means what? 70%? In 20 years it will be 90%

Research data said...

Cohn said:
But something else had soured the South on social welfare: race. Programs to help poor people were, inevitably, programs to help African Americans.

True, but only in part. White southerners themselves feed heavily from the welfare trough themselves compared to whites elsewhere. Indeed the white south has long had heavier dependence on government spending (Sowell 2005). And in the New Deal the white south insisted on white quotas (an early version of "affirmative action, including white head count quotas) to ensure that most spending benefitted whites. See Ira Katznelson's detailed analysis: When
affirmative Action Was White


Later, it came to see the anti-poverty programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society as yet another effort to redistribute money to blacks (even though, like the New Deal, it also helped many whites).

Indeed, while framing the narrative to use blacks as scapegoats. In fact, in states with higher percentages of black population, welfare benefits are proportionately less, while in states with higher numbers of whites, welfare benefits are more. In short, more affluent white people (overall) are doing quite nicely feeding on welfare while making sure poorer blacks, get less benefits proportionately. And as far as welfare spending overall- about two-thirds of the cash goes to administration- again- mostly white people. Sowell pointed out such things long ago in his classic 1975, "Race and Economics" and the hypocritical racial narratives used by white America to cover that reality.

“The story is pretty clear,” Meyers says. “If you are poor, you want to live in a blue state.”

Fair enough, but COhn fails to explain why for the last 2 decades, blacks have been moving AWAY from northern blue states back towards the red states of the south. The standard narrative is of "legions" of blacks flocking to high welfare jurisdictions, but in fact the demographic reality shows different.

Research data said...

Sailer said:
And what makes states healthier, wealthier, and wiser? As Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out: proximity to the Canadian border -- i.e., being whiter.

True partially. But Moynihan failed to note that California is one of the richest states in the US, and is NOT near Canada, AND it has huge numbers of minorities. New York is near Canada and is also one of the richest- a powerhouse in fact. And it also has huge numbers of "minorities."


Sailer:
a major reason [Mmass] it doesn't have many blacks and that its blacks aren't as big of a problem as elsewhere is because it has an abundance of violent, tribalist, anti-black Irish to keep the blacks down.

Wrong actually. Masschusetts has never had much of a black population over its history. Anti-black violence is a reality but it is hardly the primary or even secondary reason for black demographics in Mass. Between 1810 and 1890, the number of blacks in Mass almost quadrupled, a period overall where Irish immigration and native Irish births was high. If Sailer's claim was correct, black numbers should have been dropping. Instead, they show just the opposite.

Sailer's thesis is also contradicted by New York, which also has had a large Irish population, approaching 25% in some eras, along with numerous massive riots against blacks. But that never stopped blacks from moving to New York big time.

Indeed the case of Masschusetts illustrates an uncomfortable fact that typical "blacks as scapegoat" narratives hide. A lot of white people like welfare, particularly those of the liberal persuasion. In fact white people pioneered the welfare state, liberal, ultra white Sweden being Exhibit A. Blacks as scapegoats is a convenient smokescreen, behind which whites can continue to feed profitably from the welfare trough.


Sailer:
In contrast, poor Milwaukee, a nice German social-democratic town had high welfare and a direct rail line from the Mississippi Delta, and it just got the worst of Southern blacks.

Wrong again. It was not "high welfare" that drew many blacks to places like Milwaukee, but the economic booms wrought by WWI and WWII as credible conservative economists show (Sowell 1981, 1983, 2004, 2005).

DaveinHackensack said...

"Will Texas soon become blue as whites become the minority? Unlikely. Because the median white voter in Texas will become more conservative as the state becomes more Hispanic."

It doesn't matter how conservative the minority is if the majority votes the other way.

DaveinHackensack said...

Socialism versus capitalism is a false dichotomy when it comes to first world countries, where there are no pure examples of either, and successful countries combine elements of both systems to varying degrees.

The real issue is whether the US will remain a first world country or not.

Lizard Style said...

Those German social-democrats who liked socialists ... were they the same mercenaries that were offered incentives to come over and kill Southerners during the Civil War?

Look up the "Camp Jackson Affair" on Wikipedia. These Germans were brought in to more or less put down actual American citizens who weren't going along with "Honest Abe's" mass slaughter.

Mr X said...

And what about this, new English film version of Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" with a black man playing Heathcliff:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/oct/21/wuthering-heights-film-heathcliff

I'm pitching to Hollywood my biopic of Toussaint Lovertoure, with a White actor in the main role (I'm thinking Mel Gibson).

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYRbreCJaUk

Red states go Japanese

Auntie Analogue said...

If Mexican colonization of the U.S. southwest continues apace, it would not surprise me if Moynihan's remark turned out to be a case of northern liberal-blue states seceding from the U.S. and petitioning Canada for admission to its federation as provinces. This would leave the increasingly welfare dependent southwest and southeast as a rump United States, while the northern U.S. states would simply merge with Canada to form a new North American superpower; although such a merging would yield a super-Canada with southern borders likely to be even more porous and less defensible than the present U.S.-Mexico border.

U.S. states becoming Canadian provinces would be a smart move for those neo-provinces, since Canada's federation grants much greater provincial economic independence - read: more of provincial wealth stays in the province - than U.S. states enjoy. Such neo-provinces would also hugely profit and benefit the whole of Canada. The funny thing would be that such neo-provinces would have as their chief of state the future King William, or the firstborn son or sole child daughter of William and Kate.

Canada, despite its liberal "Kumbaya" immigration policies, was as of 2006 still 80% white, and its largest non-white minority appeared to be Asian, mostly Chinese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada

Research data said...

AVI says:
Diversity undercuts socialism. It is simply much easier to support a welfare state where everyone looks like you. Scandinavia comes to mind
Indeed. It is clear that the driving force behind socialism is not evil minorities, but the urge of some white people primarily to confiscate and redistribute the income, power and assets from one set of white people to another set. "Minorities" make convenient stalking horses or scapegoats but it is whites themselves who create and support such redistributionary policies.


Dirk says:
Coservatives often fear that Hispanic immigration will eventually make the country more socialist. But you just acknowledged the opposite: proximity to diversity makes whites more conservative.
True in part, but it also may yield another alternative. Proximity to diversity gives whites who favor redistributionary policies stalking horses to use in their battles for redistribution and confiscation. The use of blacks by white liberals in some cases is a case in point. Minorities also serve as convenient scapegoats that whites can hide behind while pushing ahead with their agendas. WHite conservtives also use black proximity to push their agendas. "Affirmative Action" quotas for example were not sought by black leaders in the 1960s. It was white Richard Nixon that pushed them- to split the Dem coalition of labor, blacks, and Jews. At the same time he could appear to be "reaching out" to minorities. And he succeeded while at the same time railing against Dems for "reverse discrimination." See: Tricky Dick’s Affirmative Action Gambit


CaliCo says:
Additionally I am from the rural south. ..
There is literally nothing left in the rural south that is economically viable. If it weren't for transfer payments like Social Security, Welfare, Food Stamps and the like it would not be financially possible to support yourself in these areas, let alone pay for things like schools (and football teams).

You have a point. The white South has in decades past, and now, been heavily dependent on government spending, while railing against convenient black scapegoats.

Amazing how he doesn't notice the correlation between the very liberal states being much whiter than the country as a whole ( Or in the case of Hawaii, more Asian than the country as a whole ) and very red states being more heavily black or heavily Mexican .. because that would be THOUGHTCRIME.
His data shows an uncomfortable truth- it is heavily white liberal states that are leading the charge for socialism and redistributionary policies, and that has been a long-standing pattern before much black migration. In fact recent trends over the last 2 decades show blacks moving AWAY from these blue states. This contradicts the standard narrative of evil minorities driving us towards socialism, versus virtuous white people.

Candid says:
If the lefties get more diversity, they get less welfare state. If the righties reduce diversity, they get more welfare state... The only real winners today seem to be the elite (what a surprise), which wants immigration for cheaper labor, but also seeks to reduce the welfare state
Not necessarily. Lefties oft use more diversity as a stalking horse to EXPAND the welfare state. RIghties often call for less diversity as a way to REDUCE the welfare state. And elites may actually have no problem at all with a welfare state provided then can shelter their income, perks and power, or channel government resources and special privileges to their profit. And in many ways, they have.

JayMan said...
Of course, the Whites themselves in the South have lower IQs than those in the North as well.
There is some data in support of this. WWI army tests show southern whites consistently behind northern whites and behind blacks from some northern states as well.
(A. Montagu. 1963. Race, Science and Humanity)

Anonymous said...

Lies, damn lies, and statistics. The Census Bureau's poverty threshold does not incorporate a geographical COLA. $15,000/yr in Texas goes much further than it does in Hawaii, New Jersey, or any of the other heavily-urbanized blue states.

Anonymous said...

"Research Data" writes an awful lot of bullpoopy.

By the use of flowery, technical language and a pompous handle he is tying to con the gullible that he is 'knowledgable' and 'technical'.

On close inspction most of what he writes is a downright lie.
The remainder is embroidered half truth.

Anonymous said...

dirk said...
"Will Texas soon become blue as whites become the minority? Unlikely. Because the median white voter in Texas will become more conservative as the state becomes more Hispanic.


Private Baldrick: I have a plan, sir.

Captain Blackadder: Really, Baldrick? A cunning and subtle one?

Private Baldrick: Yes, sir.

Captain Blackadder: As cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University?

Private Baldrick: Yes, sir.
Well, The way I see it, when whites are near people who are not white like they are, see.
And then they don't wan't to share the government programs with them, see.
And then they want the programs to be smaller, so that they don't have to share as much, right?
So, what we do, then, is bring in a lot of not-white people to be near them, then the'll all start voting for smaller programs, and then we all get's lower taxes.

Captain Blackadder: Yes, that's right. You see, there was a tiny flaw in the plan.

Private Baldrick: What was that, sir?

Captain Blackadder: The not-white people that you bring in will be able to vote too, and they don't mind sharing.

Private Baldrick: Ohhhh, yeah.

Lizard Wisdom said...

The WWII generation accepted forced integration, mass immigration, and open borders for their children to deal with. They allowed their service to be portrayed as some crusade against "racism". Their silence led to many of the problems we have today.

If only they had found the courage to speak out.

Antioco Dascalon said...

Socialism is a luxury that only wealthy societies can afford, like skyscrapers or sports complexes. It is a corollary of Thatcher's "Socialism works until you run out of other people's money." If Alabama tried socialism, it would run out of money very fast. California is trying socialism, but it is so wealthy that it takes decades for them to burn through all that money. Ditto Massachusetts or NY.
Socialism also only works in high-trust societies that are mainly mono-ethnic. Any state that is multi-ethnic AND below average in GDP per capita, then, would likely not be socialist in orientation.

Cail Corishev said...

"[P]roximity to diversity makes whites more conservative."

Which is entirely irrelevant as soon as these ultra-conservative whites are outnumbered by their diverse neighbors.

It's been suggested lately that there's nothing wrong with socialism per se because it works fine in all-white countries. But that makes socialism Lisa Simpson's tiger-repelling rock:


LISA: Dad, what if I were to tell you that this rock keeps away tigers.
HOMER: Uh-huh, and how does it work?
LISA: It doesn't work. It's just a stupid rock.
HOMER: I see.
LISA: But you don't see any tigers around, do you?
HOMER: Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.


If you have a population that's generally hard-working, healthy, and frugal, you don't need socialism in the first place. Sure, you can play with it and maybe not get harmed too much, because not many of your citizens would take advantage of it, but that's far from proof that it's beneficial. Scandinavians might be even better off with smaller government and no welfare, letting families and community groups take care of the rare person who falls on hard luck and needs assistance.

A country doesn't "need" socialism unless one of the following happens:

A) There are large enough concentrations of people requesting aid that their families and local communities can't handle it.

B) Society becomes fractured enough by small families, migration, and lack of religion and other local ties that an individual down on his luck may have no one to turn to personally -- no family or church group that knows him well enough to distinguish true need from sloth and help him through a tough spot.

If only B is true, you might still be able to keep welfare affordable, as long as your people would rather work than sit idle. But as soon as A is true, and welfare can't be handled as a matter of subsidiarity, it will necessarily grow into a federal behemoth that can do little to encourage virtue or improvement, but can only write checks and grow.

If neither A or B is true, then welfare is just a feel-good program for the people administering it and paying for it. It's like a charity that collects money to find rescue pets and match them with lonely people. Nice work if you can get it, but they could just go to the pound and get a free puppy.

SFG said...

"Look up the "Camp Jackson Affair" on Wikipedia. These Germans were brought in to more or less put down actual American citizens who weren't going along with "Honest Abe's" mass slaughter"

Um, no. Most German-Americans were the descendants of the usual Europeans looking for a better life or fleeing some revolution gone bad (in the case of the Germans, commonly 1848).

German-Americans are usually pretty average in every way, which befits the largest ethnic group in the country.

Tim K. said...

What's interesting is that the red states have had Guatemala-fication forced upon them despite efforts to try to enforce rounding up illegals, limit the provision of redistribution schemes like welfare, etc. whereas the blue states actively seek out Guatemala-fication by their behavior. If diversity is their goal, it is working. I lived in the South for many years and moved a few yrs ago to NJ. And when I began to go about my normal day-to-day activities like grocery shopping, etc. the thing that first popped into mind was quite literally that,"Man, this place is like an outpost of Guatemala". I had never seen so many Hispanic people in all my life, and so few whites- and the whites you did see often spoke Spanish to each other, or a Slavic language. Where I was from, maybe 1% if that were Hispanic, nearly all of the population was white, and the whites were Anglo-Americans who had lived there for eons. Looking through the history of the NJ region, this area had been predominately white American until relatively recently.

It's abundantly clear that between the liberal policies towards immigrants and the feminist push for young white women to self-sterilize, the white people of the blue states are rapidly blotting themselves out of existence. Which may not be a bad thing actually, if we can replace them with sensible whites from elsewhere.

Hercules Jones said...

"Of course, the Whites themselves in the South have lower IQs than those in the North as well.
There is some data in support of this. WWI army tests show southern whites consistently behind northern whites and behind blacks from some northern states as well.
(A. Montagu. 1963. Race, Science and Humanity)"

1963 was quite some time ago, prior to the liberal takeover of the North. Turning into Detroit is a bitch...

Dan's the man said...

".. The South was slower to industrialize and slower to take measures to protect the vulnerable. By the time of the Great Depression, most Southern state governments did not provide any form of cash assistance to people in poverty. "

-Yes, and this couldn't have had anything to do with being raped by the North, then forced to bring massive numbers of blacks into positions of leadership, etc...

Camlost said...

And blue states generally lock up a higher percentage of their black population - Wisconsin, Oregon, Vermont and California haare ve black incarceration rates that 50 to 100% higher than that of Mississippi, Georgia or Alabama.

Camlost said...

a major reason [Mmass] it doesn't have many blacks and that its blacks aren't as big of a problem as elsewhere is because it has an abundance of violent, tribalist, anti-black Irish to keep the blacks down.

As a lifelong Southerner I once visited Boston and saw something there that you would never see down South - "urban" whites who take pride in living in their neighborhood and identify strongly with their "urban-ness".

This is something you don't see with white southerners, who value low-density living and having elbow room more than anything else, and who have long since ceded "city life" to the NAM population. It was an eye-opener to see Irish-heritage white kids strutting confidently down the street as if they own the place.

Matthew said...

"German-Americans are usually pretty average in every way, which befits the largest ethnic group in the country."

They aren't the largest ethnic group, if you group all the various British nationalities together (English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh), plus those who simply call themselves "American," who are mostly really just British-Americans with no family memory of immigration.

Anonymous said...

"Boston is the only place I've seen in the U.S. where blacks appeared to be afraid of white civilians walking down the street. Having a lot of scary Irish around makes theorizing at Harvard a lot more pleasant."

There may be something to this- I frequently wear the Irish flat cap I got from my uncle (it's great against the weather), and I've never noticed anyone behaving in a threatening manner around me, even while walking through Dorchester or Roxbury after sunset (I'm not sure I'd want to try my luck with Mattapan after dark, though).

Of course, maybe that also has something to do with the fact that I'm a broad-shouldered six-footer with thick calluses on his knuckles (from punching pads, not people).

Lizardly said...

SFG, yes Germans are good citizens, but the Northern socialist variety (not a big number but not tiny) have a history they like to forget. Some of both Irish and Germans were brought over to kill actual American citizens. And they did.

History is what it is.

Volksverhetzer said...

Scandinavia used to be a society where it was pretty easy to see that bad luck, and not parasitism was behind most people becoming poor.

Scandinavia also used to have an armed and trained population, and it has always been hard to have an armed man die from hunger, if not all were in the same boat.

The lowest administrative level in Scandinavia, used to be similar to the english Hundreds or wapontake, where they not only fought together, but also had their own thing, where local taxes and other local matter were decided.

It is not actually weird, since everybody knew everybody at this level, that some form of socialism in form of support for the unfortunate develops.

Up until the 1968 madness, it was common knowledge that the best way to have money to help the poor and unable, was to breed as few of them as possible.

The labor party have for instance never forgotten, that few poor people is a necessary condition for the welfare state to survive.

So it is not the knowledge that is lost, what is lost is the biological reality of intelligence and other heritable traits. According to leftist political dogma, people are poor because they are deprived.

The leftist script of human engineering says that the solution to this is to make them undeprived, so that they become good taxpayers.

This script followed reality with all the competent poor workers of the 1930'ies, but struck reality around the 1980'ies, when they started to see signs of a third generation living on welfare.

Rather than modify their theories, they started to implement their theory about the irrelevance of biology, by importing the world as well, and so far they have had little success at anything else than importing a huge amount of brown people.

I don't know what happens in Scandinavia in the future, but I am pretty certain that Sweden is finished in it's current incarnation. Most powerful Danes and Norwegians can say, and to a large part speak the truth, that they did not know, and that they never tried to hide anything.

Not so in Sweden, where is has become some kind of conspiracy that good people hide bad information about immigrants, so that you don't give any arguments to the Nazis.

Because of this conspiracy between the media,(Jewish near monopolist Bonnier) and the political multikult elite, Sweden has the best developed alternative net-based media in the western word, as there is a real demand for unfiltered news.

sunbeam said...

Wow, I saw a reference either on this site or somewhere else to a book called American Nations by Colin Woodard.

I read it last night, and just wow. He has a lot of incredibly useful insights that ring true to me. Up until the 20th century his narrative seems to fit the facts perfectly, though I haven't got the time to read through all of his source documents.

Then he hits the 20th century and it's all woefully incomplete or just biased. I'd love to debate this guy in a public forum and ask him a lot of pointed questions. Hell I'm a critic of my native Southland, and even I think he is full of shit about what he has written about a lot of the modern era. Pre-20th century though, and it makes a lot of sense.

I mention the book because it really does provide an alternate explanation to a lot of what has been talked about in this thread. But at the same time HBD has some arguments that can't be dismissed easily, and he obviously doesn't cover this at all.

The guy also doesn't consider that new regional societies are emerging as we speak, notably the Mexican one.

Interesting book, I'd recommend it, but it will piss off a lot of the readers of this blog.

DaShui said...

Huey Long came from about as deep as u can go south.

DaShui said...

Huey Long came from the deep south.

Chicago said...

Proximity to diversity does seem to foster a harder, more conservative outlook. It also makes dealing with it a full time job when one has to keep demographics in mind constantly as one charts out the routes to get somewhere, where to live, where are the schools, where not to be after nightfall, where to seek entertainment, and so on.
Diversity has turned this country into crap. It's not normal to always look over one's shoulder, just in case. Paying out taxes and getting nothing in return seems to be the rule; that is, getting something that you might actually want. The quality of life for the majority of whites just deteriorates day by day, some places getting hit harder faster, others getting it later.

Bill said...


Cail Corishev said...

If you have a population that's generally hard-working, healthy, and frugal, you don't need socialism in the first place.

'Course not! Because general frugality is a talisman that wards off disability, mental retardation, birth defects, stupidity and every other thing which reduces one's marginal value product. If only we could increase the density of frugality radiation, those cross-eyed schizophrenics living under bridges would just boost themselves up by their bootstraps!

Sheila said...

Massachusetts' black population may be relatively low, but its "Latino" population is booming - with Portuguese immigrants and their descendants. They are the majority in a number of coastal areas, and I know I read recently (I've looked but can't find the links) of massive city-corruption and cronyism in the interior of the state - Worcester and/or Lowell. They're heavily involved in the drug trade in that state, as well.

As for "Research Data," Anonymous has him pegged: "Research Data" writes an awful lot of bullpoopy.

By the use of flowery, technical language and a pompous handle he is tying to con the gullible that he is 'knowledgable' and 'technical'.

On close inspction most of what he writes is a downright lie.
The remainder is embroidered half truth."

john marzan said...

"Diversity undercuts socialism. It is simply much easier to support a welfare state where everyone looks like you. Scandinavia comes to mind."

is it true that diversity has that effect among white people in countries like Canada, UK and Australia?

I think this "diversity undercuts socialism" theory is being floated out there to show that tea party types are a bunch of racists.

is steve sailer a small govt conservative?

Henry Canaday said...

Check out Jewish social responsibility in Israel. I wonder how generous the welfare state can afford to be when 1) a sixth of the population is less-than-ferociously ambitious Arabs and 2) defense spending necessarily eats up a huge portion of public funds.

Oh, and I’m a Catholic and I’d love to believe that “Catholic notions of social justice” were a practically important determinant of American government. But these high-brow notions mostly occupy the brains of a few Catholic intellectuals. The practically important Catholic influences on American government have been the impulses toward sloth and mooching developed in certain nominally Catholic countries like Ireland, Italy and Mexico and the tendency of Irish political thought to emphasize the buying of votes with public funds.


diana said...

"Appalachia had attracted fiercely individualistic immigrants from the Scottish and Irish woodlands."

Were they really fiercely individualistic? Or just selectively communitarian?

Dutch Boy said...

The problem here is that capitalism tends to concentrate wealth. The welfare state is an attempt to address that problem, it is not socialism (state ownership of production). The economic elite likes to obfuscate this problem (naturally) but it won't go away under the present system and is indeed getting worse as the cpaitalists outsource the economy.

ben tillman said...

Lefties seek diversity though immigration, but also a major welfare state. Righties (typically) seek to curb diversity though controlling immigration, but also wish to reduce the welfare state.

Putnam's research would suggest that the goals of each are incompatible. If the lefties get more diversity, they get less welfare state. If the righties reduce diversity, they get more welfare state.


No. Righties don't want less welfare; they're quite charitable. What they want is less "state". And homogeneity prevents the development of a "state". From Ibn Khaldun to Nock, political philosophers have understood that a "state" was an alien ruling elite.

By the way, you've gotten it wrong regarding the Lefties as well. They don't want diversity as an end in itself; they want diversity as a means to an end. And they don't care about the public welfare at all. What they want is a "state", i.e., they want to be the ruling elite.

ben tillman said...

Indeed, while framing the narrative to use blacks as scapegoats.

Scapegoating is something done by the party who is actually responsible. Think of Leo Frank and his factory's Black custodian.

In fact, in states with higher percentages of black population, welfare benefits are proportionately less, while in states with higher numbers of whites, welfare benefits are more. In short, more affluent white people (overall) are doing quite nicely feeding on welfare while making sure poorer blacks, get less benefits proportionately.

"Proportionately"? "Proportionate" means "being in due proportion". How do you figure that Blacks are entitled to any proportion of Whites' resources?

paleopaleo said...

"when Non-Asian Minorities are no longer a minority, what are they?"

Easy: "historically under-represented"

Midgardian said...

Red states BAD for their social Darwinism. But blue globalists say it was good to increase business with Mexico and China where workers really have no protections.
Imagine all the wealth made in Wall Street as the result of such globalism. Now, where is Wall Street located? In Mississippi of course and its firms are controlled by Scotch-Irish hillbillies who make moonshine on the side.

Midgardian said...

I think maybe Southern whites should pass out flyers saying, 'Yeah, we admit it. We are evil and racist, and you blacks deserve much better. And you can have it by moving up North where all the wonderful liberals will take care of you.'

dirk said...

""[P]roximity to diversity makes whites more conservative."

Which is entirely irrelevant as soon as these ultra-conservative whites are outnumbered by their diverse neighbors."

Do the math people. Whites are already outnumbered in Texas yet it still remains solidly Republican. More than a third of Hispanics in Texas vote Republican.

So if currently 45% of Texas is white and 70% of whites vote Republican that is equal to a future with 35% of Texas white 90% of which vote Republican.

The political power that results from wealth will be overwhelming white and to the extent it is Hispanic, it will be in the hands of the most conservative Hispanics.

I expect that the conservative issues which matter most to families, such as school vouchers, will eventually pass in Texas. And as the oil & gas industry remains one of the biggest growth industries in the country (whether you realize it or not), hubbed in Houston, there will be a continual influx of well-educated, conservative whites into the state.

Anonymous said...

Steve Sailer, why are liberals so obsessed with teen pregnancy?

Teenage pregnancy is becoming lower and lower. Single motherhood is concentrated in early to mid 20's right now throughout the nation and also emerging in early 30's.

Most single mothers didn't become pregnant in their teenage years. It's anything between 20-35 years old.

The only reason the red states have high rates of teenage pregnancy is because of blacks and hispanics (large minority populations).

Some of the whitest states in the union are blue.

Why do those educated SWPL high-status liberals attribute minority dysfunction to working class white people?

Everything that goes around wrong in red states can be roughly blamed on minorities.

Yet those "white trash" get the shaft?

Are SWPL rich white liberals deranged? White trash isn't that widespread.

Anonymous said...

There is no single Left. There is rich left, poor left, Jewish left, black left, Mexican left, Asian left, gay left, and etc.
As 2/3 of the superrich are Democrats, the old GOP the Rich Party vs Democrats the Workers' Party no longer applies.

I think the Rich Left thought it could handle more government with Obama, though to be sure, the superrich want socialized medicine not so much to expand healthcare spending as to restrict and control it. Under a socialized system, everyone is guaranteed access but the state controls the availability.
Also, the Wall Street rich supported Obama as a kind of cover. They knew Americans were angry with them, and so Obama's presidency gave the impression that America was now in control by a 'socialist'. But what did Obama really do? He bailed out Wall Street, and he didn't raise taxes.

Even so, Obama raised deficits sky high, and the Rich Left may be nervous about Too Much Spending. As Democrats, they are loathe to admit this is a problem and that it has to stop. So, even while pretending to be appalled by Romney and Ryan, they might use underhanded means to have Romney elected in order to reverse some of Obama's more government-heavy programs. That way, the Rich Left gets to kill two birds with one stone. Obama -ism is ended but this 'dirty work' is done by a 'greedy' Republican. (Similarly, NYers turned to a Republican to reduce crime; Having a 'conservative' do the dirty work is convenient to liberals. If they are blamed for 'racism', they can always point to the 'heartless conservative'.)
Romney would give the Rich Left what it really wants(reversing Obama's dangerous levels of deficits) even as the Rich Left tepidly continues to support Obama and pretend to be offended by Romney's 'selfish capitalism'.

It's like how the evil general handled people in PATHS OF GLORY. He undermines some officers even while pretending to be on their side.

dirk said...

OK, my math doesn't add up. I concede the point that too many Hispanic Dems in Texas will eventually overwhelm the white vote even as the white vote itself becomes increasingly Republican.

I suspect that when Texas reaches the tipping point of red/blue political control there will be much earnest talk about splitting the state into 5 easy pieces.

helene edwards said...

Scandinavian socialists ban free online course provider from using the term "college":

http://www.volokh.com/2012/10/18/the-first-amendment-and-free-online-courses/

Anonymous said...

"By the way, when speaking about Massachusetts, it's important to keep in mind that a major reason it doesn't have many blacks and that its blacks aren't as big of a problem as elsewhere is because it has an abundance of violent, tribalist, anti-black Irish to keep the blacks down. Boston is the only place I've seen in the U.S. where blacks appeared to be afraid of white civilians walking down the street. Having a lot of scary Irish around makes theorizing at Harvard a lot more pleasant."

Out of curiosity, has anyone else noticed this? How can you tell that blacks appear to be afraid of the Irish? What evidence is there that the Irish are violent? I always assumed the white crime rate in Mass was very low. I suppose they were the only city to riot after busing.

Anonymous said...

Will Texas soon become blue as whites become the minority? Unlikely. Because the median white voter in Texas will become more conservative as the state becomes more Hispanic.


That can only work as long as there are more white voters than non-white voters. Texas is already a minority white state. Whites still make up a majority among people of voting age, but in the next twenty years, as todays children turn into adults and older white people die, Texas will turn Democratic. Even if 100% of white voters vote Republican.

Anonymous said...

There is literally nothing left in the rural south that is economically viable. The world of even 50 years ago is gone. Agriculture is a game that takes serious funds to operate now. You still see some guys do the little watermelon farming and whatnot, but essentially they are playing at it. The mills are gone now, and the other assorted factories that were once there are gone as well.

There are still some agriculture jobs, but not many. Mechanized agriculture has totally destroyed the world that existed as short a time ago as the 50's.

If it weren't for transfer payments like Social Security, Welfare, Food Stamps and the like it would not be financially possible to support yourself in these areas, let alone pay for things like schools (and football teams).




All of that applies to rural areas everywhere in the United States, not just to those in the much-maligned South.

In fact, it also apples to a great many urban areas in the United States, where factory jobs have left and not been replaced with anything.

Anonymous said...

Of course, the Whites themselves in the South have lower IQs than those in the North as well.


Well, they score slightly lower on a vocabulary test, though they score the same as whites in the mid-west.

Anonymous said...

Moynihan failed to note that California is one of the richest states in the US, and is NOT near Canada, AND it has huge numbers of minorities


In Moynihan's day, California did not have huge numbers of minorities.

Anonymous said...

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/the-irony-of-60s-liberation-the-age-of-aquarius-ushers-in-a-ruling-class-of-experts

Anonymous said...

in Britain, on an island not much bigger than Ireland, they manage to support a population of 60 million. What gives?

England is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Perhaps the most densely populated if you look at areas of comparable size. It's not an example anyone should seek to emulate.

Anonymous said...

The Democrat party is slowly becoming the "non-white" party.


It's been that for quite some time.

tommy said...

You hit on a truth there which runs both ways: Conservatives often fear that Hispanic immigration will eventually make the country more socialist. But you just acknowledged the opposite: proximity to diversity makes whites more conservative. So take Texas. Will Texas soon become blue as whites become the minority? Unlikely. Because the median white voter in Texas will become more conservative as the state becomes more Hispanic.

Texas didn't need Hispanics to be conservative and California isn't conservative with Hispanics.

Anonymous said...

A lot of people are throwing the word "socialism" around without defining what they mean.

In the libertarian sense, any gathering of more one the one person is socialism in action. City states are socialist, nation states are socialist, all states are socialist.

More realistically, I think that socialism is hard to define and is a matter of degree. America is certainly a much more socialist country now than it was one hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago. And there is definitely a correlation between the increase in socialism in America and the increase in the non-white population. There is zero evidence that greater numbers of non-whites leads to a smaller welfare state.

Anonymous said...

Well,Virginia is a swing that has low poverty. If you adjust for rential income California has a 21 percent poverty rate while New york is number 2 at 20 percent.

James Kabala said...

Mr. X.: Well, Heathcliff is a swarthy street urchin from Liverpool (center of the slave trade), not actually himself part of the gentry. It would hardly be unthinkable for such a person to be part black - but yes, if he were visibly African in his features, he would probably not have been able to romance Catherine and marry Isabella Linton.

Carl Corishev: A very eloquent post.

Gene Berman said...

Cail Corishev:

You have an entirely erroneous set of ideas on the topic of socialism.

But, in that regard, you're not much different than anyone else--perhaps as much as 99% of the U.S. population, regardless of education or even intelligence.

Socialism is bound to fail, wherever tried--but not because of any traits of the people involved. It's actually much simpler than that. Socialism simply has no way to know when it has made a profit (gotten ahead) or incurred a loss (wasted values). Understanding is limited to societies operating in a private property mode,ideally, with a well-developed market (a stock exchange) on which values of enterprises (tools of production) are constantly reassessed.

Government simply cannot operate other than socialistically: that and no other is the reason to keep it small and not used for purposes other than that for which it is necessary--the employment of force.

All governments are essentially socialist enterprises "in the dark" as to their relative success and failure; that's true even of governments in capitalistic nations--they can only make crude guesses by comparing the products and services they deliver with any similar in the private market. A nation operating socialistically is even without this source of information and can only follow the markets beyond their own borders--an entirely unsatisfactory makeshift.

It's not the flaws of people that make socialism unworkable--its the very nature of the system itself.

Gene Berman said...

Assistant Village Idiot:

Your observations are correct. But in entirety, they imply merely that socialism will proceed to ruin the fortunes of a population in a manner somewhat dependent on their specific characteristics and the degree to which such characteristics are homogeneous.

Anonymous said...

"There is some data in support of this. WWI army tests show southern whites consistently behind northern whites and behind blacks from some northern states as well."

which don't exactly say much.
otoh consider iowahawk's takedown of krugman,

http://www.cougaruteforum.com/showthread.php?t=40971

"but yes, if he were visibly African in his features, he would probably not have been able to romance Catherine and marry Isabella Linton."

how about a half-african lesbian, bigot?

Anonymous said...

Actually,Calif isn't that rich, Collinsville Texas has a higher income than Santa Clara Ca. California is only 10th in income. California like New York and Texas has income extremes. What I say to both left and right here is that large States tend to have more problems because of certain immirgation to them.

Planetary Archon said...

Seems pretty clear to me: the relationship between nonwhite population and socialism is NONLINEAR.

At low levels of nonwhite population, you have Sweden (or Minnesota): whites use their risk aversion and strong sense of community to produce a welfare state that takes care of everyone. As everyone is of Scandinavian blood, this state is not abused significantly.

At intermediate levels of nonwhite population, you have Texas: whites respond to nonwhite disproportionate welfare utilization by shrinking the welfare state.

At high levels of nonwhite population, you have California (or Brazil): nonwhites grow numerous enough to command the electoral apparatus and vote themselves welfare. The result is, of course, debt and destruction.

Just as Steve points out that a lot of people have difficulty understanding differences in distributions between groups ('you're saying there are NO smart black people!'), a lot of people have difficulty understanding nonlinear (really, non-monotonic) relationships.

Truth said...

"By the way, when speaking about Massachusetts, it's important to keep in mind that a major reason it doesn't have many blacks and that its blacks aren't as big of a problem as elsewhere is because it has an abundance of violent, tribalist, anti-black Irish to keep the blacks down. Boston is the only place I've seen in the U.S. where blacks appeared to be afraid of white civilians walking down the street."

This is an often-repeated wet dream/fantasy I've read on this site.

Anonymous said...

WWI army tests show southern whites consistently behind northern whites and behind blacks from some northern states as well.


Well, no.

Hunsdon said...

Truth said: This is an often-repeated wet dream/fantasy I've read on this site.

Hunsdon replied: We white boys LOVE LOVE LOVE us some tough mick paddy hoods!

Whiskey said...

Scots-Irish refers to the people of the English-Scottish border, and those sent after Cromwell to settle Northern Ireland. They were not woodland dwellers, no woodlands really in either place. Generally speaking, warfare before the Romans, during the Roman Empire, after it, with Viking, English, Scottish raiders meant as Fischer points out, a group of people with little pride in habitation (because a fine house was soon seized), emphasis on clan/family (clan musters of 5,000 men were not uncommon in the early 1700's), and hatred/suspicion of government which was the tool of distant oppressors.

Read Charles Williams "the Diamond Bikini" for the Sagamore Noonan take on things. You can get it for the Nook or Kindle now, well worth it, hilarious and the con man Noonan's approach to taxes, legality, and government (and his sayings) are pretty spot on regarding the "Borderer" group Fischer talks about.

kudzu bob said...

This is an often-repeated wet dream/fantasy I've read on this site.

You don't know a thing about Boston. In the interests of furthering your education, you definitely should go up there to hang out with the locals, and then tell us all about it!

Anonymous said...

A very funny follow-up of iowahawk's article on Krugman's school numbers if you go through the comments, (steve's vdare article gets a mention, though not directly):

http://educationnext.org/are-wisconsin-schools-better-than-those-in-texas/

Whiskey said...

Blacks flee places like Detroit because, as Heartiste linked to a Discussion, see min 24-27 about inequality: sexual status/power/etc. depends on killing. As the one speaker notes, research shows killing a person leads to about 18 months in prison, and VASTLY increased access to women. Sexual marketplace dynamics (killers get more and BETTER women, younger more attractive) among Blacks drive up violence to hyper-levels. This is why most sensible societies suppress to a large degree both female hypergamy and male alphaness. Because it leads to hyperviolence like a vampire fantasy (which are LOADED with explicit violence that sadly turns on their female readers/viewers).

Ironically Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi recounts a massive murder ring in the 1830's-40's that accounted for about 3,500 Whites and about 1,500 Blacks done by a ring of around 150 men but a few vicious killers in the lead.

The Scots-Irish (this is a common failing among Celtic peoples that Caesar observed) had little social unity, that is few institutions, mores, that provided social control and unity. When faced with unified, cohesive and organized opposition: the Romans, Angles/Saxons/Jutes, Vikings, and English, they generally gave way, being prone to fracturing and allying with the enemy (resembling btw Amerindians).

Fischer recounts that even the "Ascendancy" that acted as Gentry would not intervene in common brawls that erupted regularly in towns and villages. All one had was kinfolk. A Randian Dream as nightmare. Presumably the "woods" Fischer refers to is the backwoods of Appalachia, which ironically was healthier than the Tidewater malarial swamps of the 1600-1700-1800's. Though not as healthy as New England.

irishman said...

"diana said...
"Appalachia had attracted fiercely individualistic immigrants from the Scottish and Irish woodlands."

Were they really fiercely individualistic? Or just selectively communitarian?

10/19/12 9:12 AM"
No they're just anti-social and unlikable.

irishman said...


"Anonymous said...

Out of curiosity, has anyone else noticed this? How can you tell that blacks appear to be afraid of the Irish? What evidence is there that the Irish are violent? I always assumed the white crime rate in Mass was very low. I suppose they were the only city to riot after busing.

10/19/12 11:58 AM"

This is a myth believed by both hibernophiles and phobes alike. The reality is that Irish people are rather docile.

Cail Corishev said...

OT: Steve, I was just watching The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and had a thought that might be right in your blogging wheelhouse:

My understanding is that hundreds of spaghetti westerns were filmed in places like Spain because it was cheap and the actors and landscapes could pass as the Southwest US and Mexico. So why didn't they just film in Mexico? Wouldn't that have been cheap, especially then, plus provided easier access to Hollywood resources? And was there any sort of native Mexican western movie industry along the line of Italy's?

irishman said...

"Matthew said...
"They left because as we like to say in Ireland; 'we can't all live on this small island'."

And yet right next door in Britain, on an island not much bigger than Ireland, they manage to support a population of 60 million. What gives?

10/18/12 10:16 PM"
The population of Ireland pretty much tracked the population of England until the famine.

1500
England pop: 2,000,000
Ireland pop: 1,000,000

1700
England pop: 5,000,000
Ireland pop: 2,800,000 (56% of English pop)

This despite the Cromwell genocide killing half the population in the 1640s...

1800
England pop: 8,900,000
Ireland pop: 5,200,000 (58.4%of English pop)

1841 eve of the famine/genocide
England pop: 15,900,000
Ireland pop: 8,200,000 (51.6% of English pop)

1900
England pop: 32,500,000
Ireland pop: 4,500,000 (13.8% of England pop).

Ireland can easily support a population as dense as England's. Today we produce enough food for perhaps 7 times our population. We don't because the English perpetuated two genocides against us, stole our land and enserfed us, excluded us from any way of life other than subsistence farming the the latter part of the 18th century when the rest of the UK was in the throws of the industrial revolution. All without batting an eye-lid. But were not bitter or anything.


The original quote I used; "We can't all live on this small island" was uttered in the 1980s by the prominent Irish politician Brian Lenihan senior when he was in opposition. He meant it ironically impugning the motivations of the then conservative government. The 1980s were a terrible time in Ireland with very high emigration. It was resurrected a lot recently because his son Brian Lenihan junior happened to be Finance minister as the arse fell out of the Irish economy.

kudzu bob said...

The reality is that Irish people are rather docile.

That explains why Ireland never won its independence, I suppose.

Anonymous said...

Steve,

OT, but the latest Fred Reed column appears to take a similar tack to your definition of gun control in America, namely its racial component.

Beneath the debate of outlawing guns lies race. Conservatives want guns to protect themselves against blacks, but can’t say so. Liberals want to eliminate guns so as to disarm blacks, of whom they are afraid but cannot say so.

...

The rash of high-school shootings by white adolescents is a godsend for those opposed to the Second Amendment, since it provides plausible non-racial cover for wanting to illegalize firearms. Race, again.

Cail Corishev said...

"Socialism is bound to fail, wherever tried--but not because of any traits of the people involved."

Gene, I don't disagree with that, or anything else you said about it. In fact, I think I implied pretty heavily that socialism is always a cost when I said that some societies may be able to "afford to play with it." If you have a medium-to-high-IQ, frugal, sensible, hard-working society, then on a typical day, maybe only a few people in a thousand will be unemployable or in ill health, so you can "afford" to have a socialist safety net for them. Yes, it'll still be terribly inefficient and cost multiple times what it would cost to let families and private charity take care of them, but you might be talking $10/year/person instead of $1. Costly, but you can afford it, just like such a society can afford other luxuries like operas and sports cars.

Change the ratio of people needing (or demanding) benefits to a couple hundred out of the thousand, and now it doesn't matter that much whether it's inefficient or not -- the remaining producers can't afford it long either way. The same safety net that the first group could afford as an expensive luxury will bankrupt this second group.

The left says, "Hey, socialism works (for some value of 'works') in Europe, so if it doesn't work here, it must be because rich/middle class people are too greedy, selfish, racist, etc." Color-blind conservatives sometimes respond much as you did by saying that socialism doesn't really "work" there either; it's very costly, they have very high taxes, there are waiting lists for basic health care, etc. But anyone who knows someone living over there knows they tend to be pretty happy with things, so there's a disconnect.

That disconnect goes away when you understand that it matters what kind of people are in your safety net. Not because socialism works for some people and not others, but because some groups (or mixtures of groups) make it unsustainably costly instead of just expensive.

Anonymous said...

"Diversity undercuts socialism. It is simply much easier to support a welfare state where everyone looks like you. Scandinavia comes to mind."

So does Japan.

fnn said...

This is a myth believed by both hibernophiles and phobes alike. The reality is that Irish people are rather docile.

They certainly weren't docile during the New York Draft Riots of 1863 or the Chicago Race Riot of 1919.

Anonymous said...

"and the schools generally aren’t as good. " - Heh.

"THIS PATTERN generally holds for the red states and the blue states overall. ... “The story is pretty clear,” Meyers says. “If you are poor, you want to live in a blue state.” " - Just as clearly, blue state should seek to limit the growth of such individuals with various restrictions.

"It’s impossible to prove that this is the direct result of government spending." - It is possible to show that driving out poor people with environmental restrictions, gentrification, and so on will do that however.

ben tillman said...

The problem here is that capitalism tends to concentrate wealth. The welfare state is an attempt to address that problem, it is not socialism (state ownership of production).

Yes, concentration of wealth is the problem with capitalism. But concentrating wealth in the hands of a state is no better. Belloc and Chesterton were right.

ben tillman said...

Do the math people. Whites are already outnumbered in Texas yet it still remains solidly Republican.

Only because so many Mexicans are not citizens or are too young to vote.

Anonymous said...

"Yup! This liberal wants to whiten the country so he can have socialism. Simple, really." - If the democrat party went back to that they'd go back to enjoying 60+% majorities.

"Of course, the Whites themselves in the South have lower IQs than those in the North as well." - this is a proxy for school spending, if you separate out performance by demographic better funded schools have kids that do slightly better, though not necessarily well enough to justify massive expenditures, especially in poorer states.

Perspective said...

Auntie Analogue said:
"Canada, despite its liberal "Kumbaya" immigration policies, was as of 2006 still 80% white, and its largest non-white minority appeared to be Asian, mostly Chinese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada"

Canada's largest racial minority are South Asians. Immigration from China to Canada has actually been declining in terms of numbers and proportion of new immigrants over the last 5-7 years. In recent years, a significant amount of immigration has come from Africa and the middle east, including many refugees. This has become very evident in my area (eastern Greater Toronto), where niqabs, hijabs and the odd burka are becoming a common sight.

Anonymous said...

If you have a population that's generally hard-working, healthy, and frugal, you don't need socialism in the first place.

- Having work is for most people not their decision. Keeping your job is for most people not their decision.

- Your population is never completely healthy. Think of all the physically straining jobs and I guess that includes at least all of manufacturing. And how is that blue-collar job for you working out at a higher age?

- If you run an economy and find it A-OK to remain frugal, you must be dumb, idealistic, or ideological. The whole point of working is to have wealth to spend.

So now you are stuck with a blue-collar population that works hard and has to remain frugal to finance the elder and with a white-collar population that can afford to send its children to university to have white-collar offspring. Plutocracy in education is going to kill the competitiveness of a country.

- from Germany

ben tillman said...

Boston is the only place I've seen in the U.S. where blacks appeared to be afraid of white civilians walking down the street.

First time I went to Long Island (Uniondale in the late '80s to go to the federal courthouse) I was stunned by how deferential Blacks were. Like you're in a convenience store, and they all step back to let you cut to the front of the line.

Anonymous said...

"Hypothetical. What would happen if all the blacks in Southern states went to northern blue states and all the northern conservatives went to southern states? " - they call that the great sort.

"In short, more affluent white people (overall) are doing quite nicely feeding on welfare while making sure poorer blacks, get less benefits proportionately." - Wealthy people pay more in taxes, film at eleven.

"It doesn't matter how conservative the minority is if the majority votes the other way." - The democrats are actually terrified that the republicans will find a way to marginalize and disenfranchise mexican voters. Of course historically freedom has not been the default state of man, so it is plausible that the chamber of commerce has a plan to preserve its own power.

"Canada, despite its liberal "Kumbaya" immigration policies, was as of 2006 still 80% white, and its largest non-white minority appeared to be Asian, mostly Chinese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada" - What do they say about jumping out of the frying pan?

"Easy: "historically under-represented"" - Gentlemen, stop this, they're going to use these if we're not careful.

Anonymous said...

Diversity undercuts socialism. It is simply much easier to support a welfare state where everyone looks like you. Scandinavia comes to mind.

It's not about looks. It's about the will to work for the wealth you spend and yet if you are immigrating into a western country you are almost guaranteed to lack the skills to create wealth while you want to want to spend the same amount of wealth like everyone else. Hell, that's why you moved here in the first place!

- from Germany

sunbeam said...

Anonymous said:

"Of course, the Whites themselves in the South have lower IQs than those in the North as well." - this is a proxy for school spending, if you separate out performance by demographic better funded schools have kids that do slightly better, though not necessarily well enough to justify massive expenditures, especially in poorer states.

It's not that simple. For several reasons most southerners are just not that into education, for want of a better way to say it.

You see the odd scholar, people attend colleges to get their ticket punched.

But you will never see anything like Silicon Valley, the Detroit Car Industry, or the Aerospace Complex of California ever arise here.

Texas is a different culture, even though the voting patterns are the same, but I doubt they would have a similar economy if there hadn't been oil there.

You really can't have anything like Hollywood that requires a lot of moving parts, writing, coordination, and business acumen.

I'm not sure this was a useful attitude to have even in the 1800's. It sure isn't very useful today.

I think the origins of this go back to the planter class. They didn't want black slaves to have education, and they didn't want the white underclass be educated either. It's become part of the culture.

But there is a limit to how much a society is going to accomplish with that attitude.

David Davenport said...

populations that we don’t want to have too many of.

Prof. Ann Althouse, a bien pensant white person, on abortion and Justice Ginsberg:

When Roe v. Wade came out, Justice Ginsburg believed the motivation behind it was fighting overpopulation.

Emily Bazelon gets clarification directly from the Justice about a remark she made in 2009 that seemed perhaps to favor abortion for population control. Justice Ginsburg reframed her point this way:

“I was surprised that the court went as far as it did in Roe v. Wade, and I did think that with the Medicaid reimbursement cases down the road that perhaps the court was thinking it did want more women to have access to reproductive choice. At the time, there was a concern about too many people inhabiting our planet. There was an organization called Zero Population Growth.... In the press, there were articles about the danger of crowding our planet. So there was at the time of Roe v. Wade considerable concern about overpopulation.”

That is, she intuited the Court's motivation, which she says she was wrong about — as she observed in the old remark and repeats now — because the Supreme Court later, in 1980, upheld the political decision to exclude Medicaid funding for abortion, in Harris v. McRae. Ginsburg's 2009 quote was:

"[Roe v. Wade] surprised me. Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. ( Says Supreme Court Judge Ginsburg !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ) So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion.

...

Svigor said...

Hey Steve, got a blogworthy one for you:

Obama blows racist dog whistle

President Barack Obama has a diagnosis for what he considers rival Mitt Romney’s shifting positions: Call it a case of “Romnesia.”

Making a direct gender-pitch in hotly contested Virginia, Obama tells a college crowd that when it comes to issues important to women’s health and jobs, Romney has conveniently overlooked his past stands.

“He’s forgetting what his own positions are — and he’s betting that you will too,” Obama told an audience of 9,000 at George Mason University. “I mean he’s changing up so much and backtracking and sidestepping. We’ve got to name this condition that he’s going through. I think it’s called Romnesia.”

Obama, a broad grin on his face, borrowed heavily from the style of comedian Jeff Foxworthy, known for his “you might be a redneck” standup routines.

“If you say you’ll protect a woman’s right to choose, but you stand up at a primary debate and said that you’d be ‘delighted’ to sign a law outlawing that right to choose in all cases, man, you’ve definitely got Romnesia,” he said.


If a a white man did something like this and referenced Chris Rock's "I love black people, but I hate niggas" routine vis-a-vis Obama, the press and the left would chimp out. They'd definitely consider it racist and condemn it loudly as such.

Thus, they should consider it racist if the races and candidates are swapped. But they don't and won't, so they're obviously racist; they excuse racism against whites by blacks, but chimp out over racism against blacks by whites.

Anonymous said...

"a major reason it doesn't have many blacks and that its blacks aren't as big of a problem as elsewhere is because it has an abundance of violent, tribalist, anti-black Irish to keep the blacks down" Steve you say the darndest things.

Svigor said...

Beneath the debate of outlawing guns lies race. Conservatives want guns to protect themselves against blacks, but can’t say so. Liberals want to eliminate guns so as to disarm blacks, of whom they are afraid but cannot say so.

...

The rash of high-school shootings by white adolescents is a godsend for those opposed to the Second Amendment, since it provides plausible non-racial cover for wanting to illegalize firearms. Race, again.


A very large fraction of the blacks most prone to shooting people aren't eligible for gun ownership in blue states anyway, right? And even if they are, they probably aren't prone to registering their guns legally.

This position makes no sense as stated. No, "gun control," AKA 2nd Amendment Hatin', is about taking guns away from law-abiding citizens (whites), not the criminal class (blacks and browns). If it was just about liberals and conservatives wanting to protect themselves from blacks, they could reach a compromise to make it harder for the criminal class to get guns legally, and keep it easy for law-abiding citizens to have them.

I will concede that the child-like delusion of banning guns successfully is on the table for many libtards, and complicates the issue. But I think their willful blindness is tactical. They won't acknowledge that banning guns would only serve to strengthen the criminals' hand and weaken law-abiding citizens', either because they don't give a damn, or because that's actually the plan.

Svigor said...

Yup! This liberal wants to whiten the country so he can have socialism. Simple, really.

Deal.

Svigor said...

They set up these perfectly planned presbyterian prison-towns which were as anal as they are.

"Anal" is Irish for conscientious.

irishman said...

Dutch Boy said...
The problem here is that capitalism tends to concentrate wealth. The welfare state is an attempt to address that problem, it is not socialism (state ownership of production). The economic elite likes to obfuscate this problem (naturally) but it won't go away under the present system and is indeed getting worse as the capitalists outsource the economy.

10/19/12 9:17 AM"

"ben tillman said...
The problem here is that capitalism tends to concentrate wealth. The welfare state is an attempt to address that problem, it is not socialism (state ownership of production).

Yes, concentration of wealth is the problem with capitalism. But concentrating wealth in the hands of a state is no better. Belloc and Chesterton were right.

10/19/12 5:15 PM"

Socialism is not state ownership of the means of production it is worker ownership and control of the means of production. A crucial difference(Although I believe in state ownership of land).

As a socialist I believe that the crucially important part of our economy is not the rate of taxation and welfare spending but the existence of the capitalist corporation. To achieve socialism one would need to end the existence of these and replace them with worker controlled corporations. Socialism requires both racial and cultural homogeneity and a high 100+ average IQ In my opinion. So even if I think it's a great idea I understand it won't happen.

In a socialist society there would not a concentration of power because power, which is mainly economic, would be with the mass of workers and therefore be diffuse. This diffusion of power is why I consider a socialist society perhaps the only one capable of creating a democracy worthy of the name. But as I said, it won't happen.

irishman said...

"fnn said...
This is a myth believed by both hibernophiles and phobes alike. The reality is that Irish people are rather docile.

They certainly weren't docile during the New York Draft Riots of 1863 or the Chicago Race Riot of 1919.

10/19/12 5:06 PM"

So what...

Scandinavians used to be Vikings. Now there the hardest to piss off people on earth. You can rape their women and leach of their welfare state and they won't bat an eye.

People adjust to extreme circumstances. America is very English. English people don't like Irish people and Irish people don't like English people so we had the occasional riot.

Big whup.

What's the two most quintessentially Irish American professions? Cops and Priests. Nuff said.

Anonyia said...

"Actually,Calif isn't that rich, Collinsville Texas has a higher income than Santa Clara Ca. California is only 10th in income. California like New York and Texas has income extremes. What I say to both left and right here is that large States tend to have more problems because of certain immirgation to them."

I am from Alabama, and vacationed in Northern California/Southern Oregon this past summer. All I'll say is that it seemed just as poor, if not poorer as rural (white) Alabama. Lots of trailers and unkempt houses everywhere. Beautiful country, though.

Midgardian said...

"The problem here is that capitalism tends to concentrate wealth."

This is especially true with diversity. If US were all Jewish or all Swedish, it would be economically more equal. But we have Jews and Swedish-Americans with high IQ and cultural values and blacks with low IQs.
Indeed, look at the racial divides in blue states. Compare Jews in NY with blacks in NY. Compare whites in Michigan with blacks in Michigan, especially Detroit.

Compare Black Chicago South Side with Hyde Park oasis made up of Jews and white liberals.

Anonymous said...

Negative equality is created by pushing people down or pulling people down.

Positive equality is created by pulling people up or pushing people up.

DPG said...

"By the way, when speaking about Massachusetts, it's important to keep in mind that a major reason it doesn't have many blacks and that its blacks aren't as big of a problem as elsewhere is because it has an abundance of violent, tribalist, anti-black Irish to keep the blacks down."

Hilarious. Reminds me of the first ever episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia. They hire a black guy to promote their bar and he says: "First thing is we need to get rid of all the shamrocks. Nothing scares gays and blacks like a bunch of Irish crap."

Serious note: a former Defense undersecretary in the Obama administration makes some less than veiled comments about the Valerie Jarrett insider ring that Steve likes to mention.

"President Obama should send his staff a clear message that cliques belong in junior high school, not in the White House. Permitting senior staff to exclude everyone but their favorites from meetings guarantees uninformed group-think."

"He should increase the number of press conferences he gives, increase the number of formal and informal meetings with members of Congress, and institute at least quarterly town-hall style meetings with his national security staff -- invited based on position, not based on whether they're in the in-club"

And then ends on a note that should be blindingly obvious to everyone by now, and could have been foreseen four years ago.

"To some extent, his errors are errors of inexperience: Obama simply undervalued issues of strategy, structure, process, and personnel. These are understandable mistakes for a first-term president with little prior government experience (or management experience, for that matter)."

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/18/the_case_for_intervention?page=full

Truth said...

"You don't know a thing about Boston. In the interests of furthering your education, you definitely should go up there to hang out with the locals, and then tell us all about it!"

I'd walk down the toughest gypsy/traveler/Mic/ street in Boston wearing a Malcolm X T-shirt, as long as you are walking next to me doing the same; and feel relatively snug in the hypothesis that you'd get your ass kicked first.

David said...

>So why didn't they just film in Mexico?<

Believe it or not, the Mexican govt., which issues permits, actually looks (or used to look) at foreign scripts and said "no" to any that made Mexico look bad in the eyes of potential tourista et al. Spain didn't care about making Mexico look bad.

For example, "Touch of Evil" (1958) was shot in CA because, according to Welles, he knew he could never get Mexico's permission to film it on location in sleaze-capital Mexico City as he wanted, much less the studio's permission.

Anonymous said...

Irishman - This despite the Cromwell genocide killing half the population in the 1640s...

I trust you were being ironic there. Ive never heard a figure as high as 50% before and even some of the accusations leveled at Cromwell seem to have undergone some revisionism recently.

Anonymous said...

My understanding is that hundreds of spaghetti westerns were filmed in places like Spain because it was cheap and the actors and landscapes could pass as the Southwest US and Mexico. So why didn't they just film in Mexico?

Because these were Italian/European productions, not American.

Ex Submarine Officer said...

I just want to know how we got the colors mixed up in this whole red-blue state cliche.

Isn't blue the color of probity, security, staidness, and red the color of the left?

Is this just another one of these up is down, peace is war, untruths forced upon us by PC conventions?

Before this trope gained currency, I'd bet that 99 out of a 100 (reasonably well informed) people, given the colors red/blue and the Democrat & GOP parties and told to assign colors, would have instinctively done the reverse from what we've ended up with.

fnn said...

People adjust to extreme circumstances. America is very English. English people don't like Irish people and Irish people don't like English people so we had the occasional riot.

Albion's Seed aside, how English is America today ? Or, indeed,how English is England? American ruling elites are no longer very WASPy,either genetically or by inclination, and the culture is more Judeo-African than anything recognizably English. Is there some remnant of Old WASP sensibility that keeps the US afloat or is it just inertia combined with the all-encompassing police state apparatus?

sunbeam said...

Ex Submarine Officer said:

"I just want to know how we got the colors mixed up in this whole red-blue state cliche.

Isn't blue the color of probity, security, staidness, and red the color of the left?

Is this just another one of these up is down, peace is war, untruths forced upon us by PC conventions?

Before this trope gained currency, I'd bet that 99 out of a 100 (reasonably well informed) people, given the colors red/blue and the Democrat & GOP parties and told to assign colors, would have instinctively done the reverse from what we've ended up with."

Red is a color used to indicate danger.

Hence the protagonists of the story use it as such.

The problem you have is in understanding that you are no longer at the narrative focus of the story, but are now an antagonist, an extra if you will.

Don't worry, it won't last. If there is anything Star Trek taught us, it is what happens to Red Shirts.

Anonymous said...

http://www.catranslation.org/blogpost/stephen-snyder-yoko-ogawa-haruki-murakami

http://www.catranslation.org/blogpost/two-voices-carmen-boullosa-and-pura-lopez-colome

Beecher Asbury said...

Ex Submarine Officer said...

I just want to know how we got the colors mixed up in this whole red-blue state cliche.


The current standardized color scheme has just been around since 2000. Prior to this many maps had the republicans in blue and some in red. There was no set convention.

Watch this NBC video of the 1980 election and you will see Reagan's states are blue and Carter's are red.

ABC featured the republicans in red in this 1984 video, while NBC covered the same election with the republicans in blue.

Anonymous said...

I just want to know how we got the colors mixed up in this whole red-blue state cliche.

Isn't blue the color of probity, security, staidness, and red the color of the left?



Considering that nearly all conservative intellectuals of note were Trotskyites earlier in life, I'm not sure red is an inappropriate color for conservatives. That and a lot of conservatives seem pretty enthusiastic about the "entitled" middle class being wiped out, not too different from the "liquidation of the kulaks" back in the old country.

Anonymous said...

just want to know how we got the colors mixed up in this whole red-blue state cliche.

The media did it.

Anonymous said...

For several reasons most southerners are just not that into education, for want of a better way to say it.

You say a lot of dumb things, sunbeam. The IQ differences between whites in the South and Mid-West versus those in the North and West are tiny. The differences are much too small to hang your elaborate social theory on.

Anonymous said...

Do the math people. Whites are already outnumbered in Texas yet it still remains solidly Republican.


Do the math yourself. Whites are, at present, a majority of voters in Texas. When that changes, and it will change in the next twenty years as all the young Hispanics become adults and all the old whites die off, whites will become a minority of Texas voters, and Texas will become a sold Democratic state.

David said...

>"Anal" is Irish for conscientious.<

You left off "Scotch."

Mr. Anon said...

"Ex Submarine Officer said...

Isn't blue the color of probity, security, staidness, and red the color of the left?

Is this just another one of these up is down, peace is war, untruths forced upon us by PC conventions?"

Yes. Prior to 2000, Republican states were shown in blue, Democratic states in red. Then all of a sudden, on November 8th, 2000, the pattern was reversed. All the news media did this, and completely without any comment by them. Many people my age noticed the change (which is why a lot of us are still uncomfortable with the "red state / blue state" formulation). I recently spoke to a guy at work, who is younger than I by 10 or 15 years, and he was completely unaware of this.

I think the media did it, just to see if they could f**k with everyone's mind in such a blatant fashion and get away with it. Obviously, they could, and did.

Anonymous said...

How about pink states?

David Davenport said...

I just want to know how we got the colors mixed up in this whole red-blue state cliche.

Isn't blue the color of probity, security, staidness, and red the color of the left?

Is this just another one of these up is down, peace is war, untruths forced upon us by PC conventions?


Seriously, I think the "red state" label was invented by the Establishment news media during Bush I's 1st term, for the Orwellian reason you mention. I never heard "red state - blue state" used that way before the 2000's. This phenom. is recent.

The pinkos want to smear conservatives with the traditional implications of the red political adjective, which are: red = disloyal and subversive.

Conservatives ought to refrain from using those tags. Here's my alternative. Conservative = red, white, and blue. Progressive = pink.

sunbeam said...

Anonymous said:

"You say a lot of dumb things, sunbeam. The IQ differences between whites in the South and Mid-West versus those in the North and West are tiny. The differences are much too small to hang your elaborate social theory on."

Actually no, I think I say valid, truthful things.

Maybe this site should go all the way as far as HBD goes.

Maybe some sort of validation site where you have to take an IQ test. Score too low, and you aren't allowed to post.

However it turns out, I'm game for it.

James Kabala said...

Mr. Anon and others: Blue for Republicans and red for Democrats was the general trend and was usually used by reference books, but there was no universal pattern. Sometimes completely different colors were used - I remember my college history textbook having something like green for Democrats and brown for Republicans.

I think the use of red for Republicans and blue for Democrats in 2000, whatever the reason for it was, stuck in the public mind because the maps were shown day after day during the stalemate. The late Tim Russert is credited with coining "red states" and "blue states."

It seems that this year the media have really gone overboard with the red-blue scheme. I had gotten resignedly used to it for electoral maps, but now it is being used everywhere else as well, in every conceivable kind of chart or diagram. I assume the reason is that these charts are made by young interns who are too young to have pre-2000 political memories and do not know that the current system is new/backwards from every other country. It drives me nuts.

Anonymous said...

the culture is more Judeo-African than anything recognizably English

There isn't much that is authentically culturally Jewish in Hollywood-produced fare. Jews may be heavily involved in the financing and production of African-American music and films, but again the music and films produced have nothing to do with authentic Jewish culture.

Anonymous said...

The New Republic was the most worthwhile news magazine to read in terms of well-written, interesting, and often contrarian articles until around 2007. What happened there? And what happened to National Review a decade earlier?

Anonymous said...

Maybe this site should go all the way as far as HBD goes.


In a previous thread, a few posters said that liberals don't actually care about evolution or view it as having anything important to teach us, they just use it as a club to beat creationist conservatives with. I think a similar thing is true with HBDers and IQ: lots of these dips like to brag about how they're so much more logical than liberals for believing in the validity of IQ, but they definitely don't like all the implications of it, do they?

irishman said...

I remember reading about a scientific study which said that football(the European type) teams that play in red have a much better record of sporting success. Red is aggressive and attacking. A warrior colour. Blue is defensive and establishmentarian. Given who is the aggressive force in American politics and who is more representative of the establishment, I think blue and red are assigned to the right parties.

Ray Sawhill said...

Semi offtopic, but ... In one of his comments above, Whiskey recommended a novel by Charles Williams. I second Whiskey's admiration for the guy, who I think a lot of you would enjoy: his books are short, fast, and hardboiled, and they're full of invention, suspense and smarts. Very grownup, very masculine. Forgive me for passing along a link to a posting I once wrote about a couple of Williams' novels ...

Anonymous said...



I remember reading about a scientific study which said that football(the European type) teams that play in red have a much better record of sporting success. Red is aggressive and attacking. A warrior colour. Blue is defensive and establishmentarian.


Les Meringues have the record number of tiles in Spain White.

Saint Etienne and Olympic Marseilles have the record in France. Green and White and White.

Bianconeri Juventus have the record in Italy. Black and White.

Rangers (Blue)have the record in Scotland with 54 however if they a certain number of titles taken off them for financial impropriety then the record goes Green and White.

Ireland (First World) Shamrock Rovers Green and White.

Ireland (Fourth World) Linfield Blue.

Was this shoddy survey done by US academics or English academics who did not know of football outside England?

Anonymous said...

But Moynihan failed to note that California is one of the richest states in the US, and is NOT near Canada, AND it has huge numbers of minorities.

Define near. Trenton some horrid horrid state, Pittsburgh some horrid horrid Commonwealth, New York City are further south than California's northernmost point which is 20 minutes south of the US city north of Canada.

corvinus said...

Albion's Seed aside, how English is America today ? Or, indeed,how English is England? American ruling elites are no longer very WASPy,either genetically or by inclination, and the culture is more Judeo-African than anything recognizably English. Is there some remnant of Old WASP sensibility that keeps the US afloat or is it just inertia combined with the all-encompassing police state apparatus?

English are the third-largest white ethnicity in the United States, after German and Irish. The average white American is a German/Irish/English mongrel.

I trust you were being ironic there. Ive never heard a figure as high as 50% before and even some of the accusations leveled at Cromwell seem to have undergone some revisionism recently.

I don't think it was nearly as high as 50% (I'd say 30% is a better guess), but Cromwell and his troops did try to exterminate the Irish Catholics in imitation of the Jews in the Old Testament who did the same to the Canaanites and other idolaters. Yes, that was the excuse they gave.

Anonymous said...

Scots-Irish refers to the people of the English-Scottish border, and those sent after Cromwell to settle northern Ireland.

Initially started under James I or Union Jack.

ATBOTL said...

"Will Texas soon become blue as whites become the minority? Unlikely. Because the median white voter in Texas will become more conservative as the state becomes more Hispanic."

It will go blue at some point. When you look at the births, it shouldn't be too long.

Anonymous said...

Sheila, Portuguese are not Hispanic. Lowell and Worcester are Hispanic, SE Mass and a lot of Cambridge are Portuguese. The Portuguese colonials, the Brazilians and Cape Verdeans, are the violent lot; the murder rate in Boston is in large part driven by Cape Verdeans. In situations where they interact with white people, Cape Verdeans like to self identify as Portuguese.

Mark Wahlberg grew up in Dot (Dorchester) not Southie, and therefore had a much closer proximity to the the full multicult.

The biggest lie about Boston is that the Irish scare the brothers. Southie is the white section of Boston that's most LIKE Roxbury and Mattapan (the black sections; Southie is the statistical area with the second highest percentage of white welfare in the country. Saileresque quiz: which ethnic group populated Roxbury and Mattapan 50 years ago? Ask any black guy over 40 which part of Boston he felt the least at ease walking in, and I assure you they'd say the North End, the Italian section. Troofie, you'd last 30 seconds in the old North End; there they bring a cannon to a fistfight.

Anonymous said...

"You say a lot of dumb things, sunbeam. The IQ differences between whites in the South and Mid-West versus those in the North and West are tiny. The differences are much too small to hang your elaborate social theory on."

Actually no, I think I say valid, truthful things.

Maybe this site should go all the way as far as HBD goes.

Maybe some sort of validation site where you have to take an IQ test. Score too low, and you aren't allowed to post.



So your response to being told that you say dumb things is to say another dumb thing?

I repeat - the IQ differences between whites around the country are trivial. This is what is known as a "fact".

Anonymous said...

lots of these dips like to brag about how they're so much more logical than liberals for believing in the validity of IQ, but they definitely don't like all the implications of it, do they?


What do you think the implications of IQ are?

There are a range of possible stances on IQ. (1) The "liberal" position, that there are no genetic differences in intelligence and that IQ does not exist. (2) That intelligence is partly hardwired in DNA (about 50%), that intelligence roughly but not exactly corresponds to IQ, and that IQ is one of a range of human attributes. This is the HBD position. (3) The IQ fetishist position - that intelligence exists, that it is hardwired in DNA, that it is the same thing as IQ, and that IQ is the only thing we ought to care about.

Mr. Anon said...

"James Kabala said...

Mr. Anon and others: Blue for Republicans and red for Democrats was the general trend and was usually used by reference books, but there was no universal pattern."

You make my point: there was indeed a nearly universal decision by the media in 2000 to impose this color scheme.

Anonymous said...

The commies hijacked the color red in much the same way the Nazis hijacked the swastika.

Anonymous said...

Svigor said...
They set up these perfectly planned presbyterian prison-towns which were as anal as they are.

"Anal" is Irish for conscientious.


How about "Prussian?"

Anonymous said...

As the one speaker notes, research shows killing a person leads to about 18 months in prison, and VASTLY increased access to women. Sexual marketplace dynamics (killers get more and BETTER women, younger more attractive) among Blacks drive up violence to hyper-levels.

There's a grain of truth in this. People, all people, respect killers more than law-abiding passive-aggressive wimps. This is an unpleasant fact that goes against all civilization, law and order.

Anonymous said...

"A very large fraction of the blacks most prone to shooting people aren't eligible for gun ownership in blue states anyway, right? And even if they are, they probably aren't prone to registering their guns legally." - The presense of legal guns anywhere makes it more possible to obtain/smuggle/transfer firearms illegally, atleast that is the rationale.

@sunbeam:"But you will never see anything like Silicon Valley, the Detroit Car Industry, or the Aerospace Complex of California ever arise here." - The Marshall Space Flight Center(in Alabama) was where the saturn rockets were developed. If you go there, they still have some of the booster parts if you want to see. Likewise those other industries exist in the south as well, and in the case of Detroit, well thats just a gimme.

California is really awesome, and was able to draw a lot of premium talent, but given that they aren't doing that anymore regression to mean will eliminate that in due time, and of course mass migration of foreigners won't help much either.

Anonymous said...

This may be too painful for envious folks to bear:

Salaries of Texas Legislators

2.5 Compensation
State legislators are paid meager salaries. Senators and representatives alike earn only $7,200 per year, or $14,400 for a two-year legislative period. Some may consider this salary generous, since after all legislators work only for 140 days over two years. However, this salary equals just slightly over $100 per day. Even if our legislators worked only eight hours per day, this would equal only $12.86 per hour for the people who make our state laws and conduct oversight of executive branch offices.


http://www.laits.utexas.edu/txp_media/html/leg/0205.html

Anonymous said...

Legislator salaries.

New Hampshire is the lowest pay: flat $200/2year term with no per diem.

Illinois is over $67k

California is highest at over $95k

http://www.empirecenter.org/html/legislative_salaries.cfm

Anonymous said...

corvinus - "Cromwell and his troops did try to exterminate the Irish Catholics in imitation of the Jews in the Old Testament who did the same to the Canaanites and other idolaters. Yes, that was the excuse they gave."

I know Cromwell used Holy Writ to justify some pretty unpleasant things, but I've never heard that he tried to exterminate Irish Catholics other than those (admittedly a fair few) who were in arms against him. Have you any references or evidence for your assertion?

ben tillman said...

I remember reading about a scientific study which said that football(the European type) teams that play in red have a much better record of sporting success. Red is aggressive and attacking. A warrior colour. Blue is defensive and establishmentarian.

This certainly doesn't apply to college basketball. UNC, Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, UCLA. The top 5 programs of my lifetime. All blue.

Anonymous said...

Blacks simply ignore felon-in-possession laws because they know police just use them to get people for other crimes. If all black FIPs were locked away the prison system could not handle them and everyone knows it.

I used to work with a lot of black females and was known as the office gun nut. They were always asking me stuff so they could sound plausible to the clerks at gun stores because they were always buying guns -usually for their baby daddies, or THEIR daddies. Most of which had felony or DV raps.

sunbeam said...

Anonymous said:

" (3) The IQ fetishist position - that intelligence exists, that it is hardwired in DNA, that it is the same thing as IQ, and that IQ is the only thing we ought to care about."

Everything I've read on the matter seems to indicate this really is the way it is. From what most of us would call Virtous behavior, to earnings, to general health, to being less violent, to contributing to society...

I mean when is the last time you have read anything positive, or heard of any study that says anything at all positive about lower IQ types?

From reading this site, following links on it, to reading similar sites, it's all High IQ = Good, Low IQ = Bad.

I mean you can throw away the Bible, the Koran, anything like it. They are all irrelevant now. Good people are smart. There is no other truth. The smarter you are, the better a person you are.

What else are you going to make of all this HBD stuff?

Anonymous said...

I mean when is the last time you have read anything positive, or heard of any study that says anything at all positive about lower IQ types?

Personal experience says that low IQ types are in good physical health, have fantastic social skills, are well-balanced, well-mannered, loyal, obedient, unselfish, community-oriented, have a high pain threshhold, good distance vision, and little need for sleep.

That does assume that the low IQ people are not left to their own devices, but have good leadership and the right social and spiritual climate.

Anonymous said...

"(3) The IQ fetishist position - that intelligence exists, that it is hardwired in DNA, that it is the same thing as IQ, and that IQ is the only thing we ought to care about."

Everything I've read on the matter seems to indicate this really is the way it is.



You say a lot of dumb things.


From reading this site, following links on it, to reading similar sites, it's all High IQ = Good, Low IQ = Bad.


You're beating up on a strawman of your own making.

Kylie said...

"Personal experience says that low IQ types are in good physical health, have fantastic social skills, are well-balanced, well-mannered, loyal, obedient, unselfish, community-oriented, have a high pain threshhold, good distance vision, and little need for sleep."

Yes, if they are dogs who've successfully completely obedience class.

My personal experience with low IQ human types has been dismal. They lack all the virtues of well-trained dogs and have some vices in which even the most perverse dog will not indulge.

sunbeam said...

Anonymous said:

A lot of nothing.

I bet I could write a bot to duplicate your dialogue.

It's not hard:



post: "You say a lot of dumb things." or some variation of this.

Here, let me play:

Anonymous said:

"You're beating up on a strawman of your own making."

You say a lot of dumb things.

Anonymous said...

I bet I could write a bot to duplicate your dialogue

No bot could possibly duplicate your idiocy. "I read some book somewhere which claimed that all advances in European shipbuilding up to the 17th century actually originated in China!"