Monthly Archives: December 2010

UPDATE II: “Inside [John Esposito’s] Islam”

Islam, Israel, Jihad, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Pseudoscience

Very little was said about sample size, data-collection methods and other crucial methodological matters during the screening, on PBS, of the documentary “Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think.”

“We have the missing answers and statistics, gathered, parsed, and analyzed not by pundits but by professional researchers”: So goes a declamation on the website touting the program. This sounds a lot like advertising. You do learn that these stellar social scientists relied on the interview to collect this definitive information (which concludes that Muslims the world over are moderates). The interview is one of the least reliable tools in the social sciences. The questions asked and showcased, moreover, were most definitely leading questions. The answers people tend to give to loaded questions are usually bogus.

Other than Georgetown University Professor John Esposito, an A-list Islam apologist, “Inside Islam” introduced the viewer to emphatic, invested presenters of a one-sided view of the West as oblivious to Muslim opinion and aspirations.

I guess they had a valid point with respect to American foreign policy. You have to possess Olympian vanity to invade Muslim countries as America has done, with so little knowledge of the history of the people, the region and the outcome of prior such faith-based democratic missionizing.

However, the efforts of Dalia Mogahed, Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies (also an Obama appointee), to sanitize Islam became quite ridiculous when she contended that her faith specifies a series of inalienable rights designed to protect the individual against the state.

Come again? More than a religion, Islam is a fully developed political system.

Mogahed was commandeering the language of the American Bill of Rights to ingratiate Islam on her audience. What has happened to the social sciences? In my days you ruled out activists.

In the same spirit of “scientific” detachment, another self-styled social scientist, who spoke at length on “Inside Islam,” ventured that Israel was a piece of the West left behind in Muslim lands; a sore reminder of this occupation. Our impartial researcher was voicing the radical opinions of the Helen-Thomas School of Thought.

My old Afrikaner lecturers—the ones who drilled me in statistics—would have barred both Mogahed and her colleague from designing or partaking in a study for fear of biasing the results.

There is a good chapter on the death of the social sciences in “WE ARE DOOMED.”

The social sciences are most certainly doomed.

UPDATE I (Jan. 1): Stephen raises an interesting point about pathological sexual repression. Sexual deprivation accounts for the accepted practice of rampant homosexuality among heterosexual Muslims prior to marriage.

UPDATE II: Actually, Mercer (Who Eats Nails For Breakfast) had softened momentarily to the excuse-making, psychologizing, school of thought on Islam. Larry Auster keeps us focused: “It’s because they’re sexually repressed–no, it’s because they lack democracy–no, it’s because they marry their cousins–no, it’s because they were ‘left behind’–no, it’s because of Israeli cruelty–no, it’s because of … Anything But Islam.”

TSA Solution: Name ‘Em And Shame ‘Em

Barack Obama, Government, Homeland Security, Justice, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Terrorism

This week’s column had been titled “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” After all, it is about The Transportation and Security Administration. Thankfully, writers have editors. The following is from “TSA Solution: Name ‘Em And Shame ‘Em,” my new, and newly named, WND.COM column:

“… If Michelle Obama had experienced a gut reaction to the ordeal inflicted by her husband’s administration (begun under his predecessor) on travelers and their tots — she was not letting on. The First Lady, as you know, is in touch with her gut — and the gut of every kid in the country. The FLOTUS of the fat-based initiatives ‘cares’ enough to decide what America’s bloated babes will ingest, but not enough to weigh-in when their bodies are being invaded by state workers. …

… It’s safe to say that the moms of the Fox News Blond Squad were with The FLOTUS. One of these interchangeable females implied that the interminable complainers at the terminals were no more than an insignificant group of noise-makers. Kirsten Powers, a liberal member of that squadron, expressed her satisfaction with the porn protocol. Her sympathies, she said, go out to TSA workers.

Yes, ‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.’ On a more cheerful note, let me suggest a theme song to perfectly capture the TSA’s mission and mien. I give you the hip hop band ‘Three 6 Mafia'”:

The complete column is “TSA Solution: Name ‘Em And Shame ‘Em,” now on WND.COM.

My libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society, is now available on Kindle.

A Happy New Year to all,
ILANA

UPDATE VI: Bravo David Frum

Canada, Economy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Founding Fathers, IMMIGRATION, Labor, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, The State

David Frum deserves credit for significantly transforming his position about what I call the global right of return to the USA; mass immigration. Ever the realist, Mr. Frum has abandoned the flippant, immigration free-for-all fetish to which neoconservatives subscribe. Frum now galvanizes the research of economist George Borjas (could VDARE.COM be next?) in his work, and is no longer delinquent about reporting the “small net benefit” mass migration yields in the age of “high and prolonged unemployment” (among other problems).

“What’s the value of immigration?” asks Mr. Frum in his latest CNN column. Here are some excerpts:

“What is immigration for? What are we trying to accomplish?

A century ago, the answer seemed obvious. Factories and mines clamored for workers as an underpopulated continent beckoned settlers.

America in the 21st century, however, does not suffer from a generalized labor shortage. If labor were scarce, you’d expect wages to rise. Instead, wages were stagnating even before the recession hit in 2008. …

… So why import almost a million people a year legally, plus nearly the same illegally? That’s a question that usually goes not only unanswered but unasked.

… the question we need to ask now at this time of high and prolonged unemployment is: Why mass migration at all?

You often hear it said that the U.S. needs to create 150,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth. What’s seldom mentioned is that almost all of America’s net population growth is driven by immigration.” …

…Back in the 1950s and 1960s, immigrants arrived with higher skills and soon gained higher incomes than the native born. That’s how immigration still works in Canada and Australia. Their immigration systems are race-neutral and favor prospective immigrants who arrive with language skills, advanced degrees or capital to invest.”

[SNIP]

David is yet to confront the transformation of America via immigration, where the “the historic American nation —its culture and Christian faith—is… eventually … confined to an ethnic enclave among many. This is the ‘End of Days’ scenario that immigration patriots must contemplate, once they’ve exited the hypobaric chamber that is the current ‘conversation” about immigration.”

UPDATE I (Dec. 31): It is probably advisable to refrain from using the “intellectual” appellation in naming one’s website if one has a problem arguing one’s case logically. To the comment below: From the fact that Christian factions have squabbled—fights within the family—how does it follow that changing the original cultural and religious composition of this country is inconsequential, or not worth contemplating? From the fact that your average Mexican might be more devout than his American counterpart, and that some founding fathers were less religious than the average illegal Mexican alien (no doubt, most Mexicans have a better grasp of Western civilization and its Christian muse than Thomas Jefferson)—it does not follow that a mass influx of said population is inconsequential, not worth slowing down, or should not be debated.

As for the call to think about the US as a propositional nation; an idea rather than real flesh-and-blood communities animated by shared language, history and heroes. Why, that is the call of statism at its purist. For the rootless deracinated people are the most pliable, most miserable, and, thus, easier to control.

UPDATE II (Jan. 1): Larry Auster is less charitable about David Frum’s about-face:

“It’s not true that he’s been consistently opposed to unrestricted immigration. From time to time, he’s made wimpy, ambivalent criticisms of illegal immigration. That’s it. To my knowledge, he has never seriously criticized the overall level and content of U.S. immigration or suggested an alternative policy.
I sum up his pathetic record on the issue in this 2007 entry, where I respond to his bizarre, self-serving claim–made right in the middle of the life-and-death battle over the 2007 Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill–that he has been a leader and pioneer on immigration reform.
Nota bene: the fact that a person claims to have taken a certain position on an issue, doesn’t mean that he has actually taken it. We are not obligated to accept self-seeking parties’ views of their own great contributions.”

UPDATE III: The Center for Immigration Studies, via Steve Sailer:

“2010 Census: Population Up 27 Million in Just 10 Years

Immigration Drives Huge Increase; Since 1980, Population Up 82 million, Equal to Calif., Texas & N.Y.

WASHINGTON (December 21, 2010) – Most of the media coverage of the 2010 Census will likely focus on the country’s changing racial composition and the redistribution of seats in Congress. But neither of these is the most important finding. Rather, it is the dramatic increase in the size of the U.S. population itself that has profound implications for our nation’s quality of life and environment. Most of the increase has been, and will continue to be, a result of one federal policy: immigration. Projections into the future from the Census Bureau show we are on track to add 130 million more people to the U.S. population in the just the next 40 years, primarily due to future immigration.

So much for attempting to hold national carbon emissions stable.

* Immigration accounted for three-quarters of population growth during the decade. Census Bureau data found 13.1 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) who arrived in the last 10 years; there were also about 8.2 million births to immigrant women during the decade.1
* The numerical increase of 27.3 million this decade is exceeded by only two other decades in American history.
* Without a change in immigration policy, the nation is projected to add roughly 30 million new residents each decade for the foreseeable future.
* Assuming the current ratio of population to infrastructure, adding roughly 30 each decade will mean:
building and paying for 8,000 new schools every 10 years;
developing land to accommodate 11.5 million new housing units every 10 years;
constructing enough roads to handle 23.6 million more vehicles every 10 years.

* While our country obviously can ‘fit’ more people, and technology and planning can help manage the situation, forcing such high population growth through immigration policy has profound implications for the environment, traffic, congestion, sprawl, water quality, and the loss of open spaces. …”

MORE.

UPDATE IV (Jan. 2): “Did the Founding Fathers Support Immigration?” Not really. Hamilton understood intuitively what Harvard scholar Robert Putnam took five years to discover scientifically. Hamilton called it “heterogeneity,” Putnam calls it “diversity.” Either way, it makes people miserable. The difference between Putnam and the founders is that the fathers of the nation loved the American people; they did not delegitimize their ancestry and history by calling them eternal immigrants. John Jay conceived of Americans as “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and custom.” The very opposite of what their descendants are taught.

UPDATE V (Jan. 3): Thomas Jefferson famously cautioned in “Notes on Virginia” (Q.VIII, 1782. ME 2:118):

[Is] rapid population [growth] by as great importations of foreigners as possible … founded in good policy? … They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.

These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their number, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass … If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship: but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements …

Writing of immigration to George Flower in 1817, Jefferson worried about “consecrat[ing] a sanctuary for those whom the misrule of Europe [my emphasis] may compel to seek happiness in other climes.” And to J. Lithgow in 1805, “A first question is, whether it is desirable for us to receive at present the dissolute and demoralized handicraftsmen of the old cities of Europe [my emphasis].” Jefferson feared that immigrants under “the maxims of absolute monarchies” – again, he was not talking about the monarchies of Buganda or Ethiopia – may not acclimatize to “the freest principles of the English constitution.”

What would he say about arrivals from Wahhabi-worshiping wastelands whose customs not only preclude “natural right and natural reason,” but include killing their hosts? That would have appalled Jefferson, and again, not because of his limitations, but because of ours; because of how low we have sunk.

[SNIP]

UPDATE VI: “Whether they are armed with bombs or bacteria, stopping weaponized individuals from harming others ? intentionally or unintentionally ? falls perfectly within the purview of the ‘night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory,’ in the words of the philosopher Robert Nozick.

But thumping majorities within rarified libertarian, Objectivist, and loony left circles disagree.

When Objectivists eulogized the dazzling Randian Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq., most downplayed her trenchant opposition to the unfettered flow of migrants across the 1,940-mile-long border with Mexico. To that end, the late Dr. Cosman ‘never hesitated to put her own time, money, and neck on the line for her beliefs,’ even volunteering as a patrolwoman with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

The quintessential ‘Renaissance woman,’ Dr. Cosman was an expert aviator, health-care policy analyst, marksman, and musician. …” And immigration patriot.

MORE (with links to Dr. Cosman’s work).

Putin Prosecution Backed By Pitchfork Mob

Criminal Injustice, Democracy, Individual Rights, Law, Propaganda, Russia

The criticism leveled at Russian justice by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for the prosecution and subsequent conviction on theft and money laundering of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. As the Russians rightly countered, the sentences Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev received pale compared to comparable prosecutions by American justice:

Take Bernard Madoff in the United States. He got a life sentence and no-one blinked – Putin told reporters who asked him about the case during a trip to Paris to negotiate new gas pipeline and auto manufacturing deals.

You can’t argue with that come-back.

Nevertheless, the trial of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky looks a lot like a politically motivated show trial, ordered, ostensibly “by the Kremlin to punish Khodorkovsky for financing Russia’s beleaguered opposition.”

Dimitri Simes, “president of the Nixon Center, a foreign policy research organization,” takes a nuanced look at Mikhail Khodorkovsky:

“He started as a tycoon. He was a very ruthless tycoon. He took a lot of government property, paying very little, and actually using government loans, which he never repaid, to become very wealthy.
He was, politically, very ambitious. He wasn’t just supporting opposition parties, but he was entertaining the possibility of becoming prime minister himself, curtailing Putin’s power.
Having said that, once he was arrested, he proved to be a man of courage, determination, eloquence. The government wasn’t able to break him. And when he was arrested first time in 2003, I really liked Khodorkovsky personally, and I was sorry for him, but, politically, I had mixed feelings, because he was threatening the government in a very ruthless way, using the money he got illegally to mount a political challenge.
What they are doing to him now is totally beyond the pale. It is not just selective justice. It’s really no justice at all.”

Says Anna Vassilieva, “head of the Russian studies program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies”:

“What does it tell me and tells all of us is that the power belongs to someone who exercises strength, not justice, not pardon, as we were hoping until the most recent phrase that Putin announced.
What we see is history repeating itself. Russian rulers are afraid to make compromises. And, obviously, allowing Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev free would be a sort of a compromise that no one can afford, because they know they will lose the trust.
We have to remember that — the trust of the population — we have to remember that the highest ratings Putin and Medvedev enjoyed were during August 2008, during the war with Georgia. And there was no chance that they would exercise the opportunity to compromise.”

[SNIP]

Let’s remember this: Be it in the US or in Russia, the masses are foursquarely behind their governments when it comes to the zealous, over-prosecution of the rich. Putin has the support of the pitchfork-wielding Russian folks. That’s democracy in action.

My, but the convicted has such beautiful, refined features.