Category Archives: Human Accomplishment

The Motor City: A Microcosm Of South Africa

Crime, Human Accomplishment, Political Correctness, Race, Racism, South-Africa

Steven Malanga, the author of “Feral Detroit,” an only slightly politically incorrect City Journal tract, fails to mention the Other Method deployed in driving middle-class whites away: cruel, craven, targeted crime.

“Over the last half-century, [Detroit’s] population has shrunk by 50 percent, from about 1.8 million people to fewer than 900,000. Since 2000, the city has lost 35,000 residents. Detroit officials acknowledge that they see little prospect for a population turnaround soon. …”

“Though some blame Detroit’s population losses on larger economic forces, economists Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer argue in a groundbreaking paper that the city’s problems are mostly self-inflicted. (The paper, called ‘The Curley Effect,’ gets its name from legendary Boston mayor James Curley, who favored Irish residents and pushed other groups out.) After winning election in 1973, Detroit’s first black mayor, Coleman Young, consolidated his power, driving white residents, who had voted against him, out of the city by withdrawing services from their neighborhoods. Eventually, Glaeser and Shleifer write, Detroit became ‘an overwhelmingly black city mired in poverty and social problems’—and shrinking fast.”

[SNIP]

In South Africa, the wanton acts at Wichita and Knoxville are a daily occurrence. And here’s a filthy little secret I discovered in researching my near-complete book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa: Whites are being culled in greater proportion to their numbers in the population. (Stay tuned)

The caliber of Anglo- and Afrikaner human capital lost to black crime is inestimable. An example is Brian Hahn, my husband’s (Ivy-League educated) mathematics professor at UCT. (“After completing his BSc in applied mathematics and physics and his BSc (Hons) in theoretical physics at UCT, he undertook a PhD on the optimisation of scattering amplitudes at the University of Cambridge.”)

There are hundreds of examples of true brilliance extinguished by barbarism. Other than untold sorrow, what are the financial costs of such losses?

Updated: You Too Can Get A Peace Prize

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Human Accomplishment, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

SOME FUN; we all need it. “Groom your dog, get a peace prize; do the laundry, that’s a peace prize, make a sandwich, it’s a peace prize, she’s eating the sandwich; peace prize, mow the lawn, now that’s a peace prize; I’m in the hot tub; it’s a peace prize, you get a peace prize; everybody gets a peace prize. …”

Via Michelle Malkin:

Update: My husband vacuum-cleaned the house. I say, peace in the home is a peace prize.

Update IV: Pretty Please: A Nobel Peace Prize For My Parrot

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Human Accomplishment, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, The Zeitgeist

Joy! We awoke to some comedic relief this morning: President Obama joined Yasser Arafat and Al Gore in the pantheon of Nobel Peace-Prize recipients. Arafat got the coveted award for his pioneering work on the imploding homicidal human; Gore for inventing Climagedon. (No, the Internet was invented by the US Defense Department. Really.)

I nominate another worthy homie, my little leprechaun of a parrot, T. Cup. I so named him becasue he too is a homie, born into an era when teaching homie heritage and pride are essential. (Hatch date: April 15, 2009.)

Although T. Cup is a hand-raised American Poicephalus, his ancestors hail from Senegal (there might even be some oppression involved there; I’ll leave it up to readers to apprise me of the “history from below”). T. Cup, my little homie, is a small “concentrated parrot”—that is with the huge parrot Ego.

Most important: T. Cup’s little dexterous and dainty claws have never drawn blood (Some Other Homie We Know has blood on his hands—and keep boys dying in backward places where no respectable parrot would hang out).

T. Cup’s ambition: to quell the gang wars in LA, when he is big, that is.

Update I: Well, T. Cup deserves the Nobel Prize for his noble aspirations (and for his humble homie beginnings). Was that not the reason Obama was given a prize? For what he may do in the future for world peace. Not on any objective evidence can it be claimed that he has done anything for world peace so far.

Obama is on the verge of making the Afghanistan war even more intractable. In Iraq nothing much has changed since Bush left office. I am unaware of anything but presidential good intentions with respect to nuclear disarmament.

And frankly Obama ought to have said, “Thanks, but no thanks; there are more deserving people than me.” But he greedily grabbed the undeserved honor. Is bling for the mantle place so hard to resist?

In a way, this undeserved recognition might just stop the World’s Prince of Peace from escalating wars, which he is in the process of doing. On the other hand, if the schedule of incentives and disincentives during a person’s life has taught him that whatever he chooses to do will not affect his Golden-Boy status—then the margin for a learning curve is rather small.

The unwarranted award is also, apparently, for walking humbly with Muslims and calling Islam a peaceful religion. Hey, Bush did that well before Barack, before it became fashionable. Not fair.

Update II: Michelle Malkin rounds up the responses. Right or Left; they are all incredulous.

Update III (Oct. 10): THIN GRUEL. What the Norwegian Nobel Committee said: Obama made “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”; he changed “the international climate” and made a noise about “his cherished goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.”

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee added.

Where does one begin? A new Dark Ages has decended. The culture reflects and exalts emotional extremes, lack of inhibitions, exhibitionism and assorted grotesquerie: From “Gay” pride to transexualism to fetishisms to Obamaism (a kind of Onanism).

The periods during which Jews would become light in the head and take off after false messiahs were considered dark times in the nation’s history. Now darkness has descended on the world. Mass contagion is everywhere.

Update IV (Oct. 10): Via George Stephanopoulos (“Courtesy of conservative activist Keith Appell):

Barack Obama’s Teleprompter: Big Guy says Bill Clinton called and was gracious in defeat; offered to fly Kanye West over 4 the Nobel awards ceremony.

Erick Erickson: Obama is becoming Jimmy Carter faster than Jimmy Carter became Jimmy Carter.

Ana Marie Cox: Apparently Nobel prizes now being awarded to anyone who is not George Bush.

Headline over AP analysis by White House correspondent Jennifer Loven: He Won, But For What?

Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review: I want to buy the world a coke.

Ezra Klein: Obama also awarded Nobel prize in chemistry. “He’s just got great chemistry,” says Nobel Committee.

Adam Bromberg, CRC: Nobel Prize Committee must be staffed by out of work comedy writers.

Kristina Hernandez, CRC: It was the Beer Summit that put Obama over the edge.

Update II: Dumb Down, You Uppity (Intelligent) Bitch!

Human Accomplishment, Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Israel, Paleoconservatism, The West, The Zeitgeist

No, “Dumb Down, You Uppity (Intelligent) Bitch!” is not the title of my new WND column, now on Taki’s, but a reaction to it. In the Age of the Idiot people take pride in their ignorance, and seek to shame and humiliate those who do not reflect their own impoverished state-of-being. On encountering someone they might learn from, they recoil, and out come the Id and the Ego all in one ball of fury.

Personally, on encountering my betters, I seek to learn from them. In fact, I actively seek out my intellectual betters. But not the average member of the Idiocracy. If the Little Woman makes him feel bad, he lashes out in an attempt to take her down a notch or two, and salvage his own ugly, aggressive emptiness.

I urge you: Rather than lash out at someone for using her gifts, at the very least examine yourself first: Ask yourself why you are behaving in such a transparent, disgraceful manner. Get onto yourself. And then work hard to submerge your demands for replicas of yourself.

The letter that prompted these thoughts arrived in response to the not-quite-new, originally titled “Paleos Must Defend the West…And That Means Israel Too.” A version of the essay was first published on VDARE.COM. Barely A Blog readers had discussed the topic extensively, so I did not post it again.

OVER TO IVAN The Terrible (and proud of it):

From: Ivan Poulter
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 12:40 AM
To: imercer@wnd.com
Subject: Re: Paleo….:Dumb Down

Ilana,

Compared to you, I’m a total ignoramus. I’d admit to lacking your intellectual quotient. Not meaning to be insulting, you also appear as some kind of dumb-ass in your exaggerated intelligence.

You’re far too clever for you own good. Or better still, you far, far exceed the ability of most you write to. I am constantly accused of being too intellectual, and in my ‘intellectualism’ speaking or writing way above people’s heads. However, Ilana, you take that award away from me, hands down. If you want to reach a few more people, for heaven’s sake, dumb yourself down a little. Then, even as I write that to you, I’ll attempt to remember my own advice. Except, I’m very dangerously down there, too close to the ranks of stupidity, sometimes. You certainly could afford to dumb down just a little, as least in your attempts to communicate to all of us. Unless, of course, you have a very limited target market. Then do as you please!

Ivan Poulter

[Ivan: cheer up, there is no chance of you being too intellectual. Absolutely none. I’m glad you did not live back in the days of our Founders. The Federalist Papers would have driven you to distraction. Or worse.]

Update II (Oct. 3): Young Brett is right about the dumb-down shtick being an insult to our readers. First, I write as I think. I can’t change that. I don’t know how to. Second, the reason I won’t make a concerted effort to parrot O’Reilly’s erroneous, ugly prose is that I have respect for my readers. It’s patronizing to talk down to people. Yes, it is inevitable that I will enjoy fewer readers than the other crowd pleasers becasue, for the most, people wish their views confirmed. However, those who want to be challenged and have minds that seek interest and humor; something extra—they will find their way here. I hope.

To follow the medical profession’s recommendations, Mercer columns can help ward off Alzhemier’s later in life. Staying within your comfort zone mentally will do nothing to force those dendrites and synaptic connections in the brain to branch out well into old age. The brain is very plastic; but if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. I know of what I speak; I once awoke in a sweat mumbling: “Oh, my G-d, I think I made a circular argument in my last column.” Yeah, I often argue my case in my dreams. You want to stay alert well into old age, so stick around, boys and girls. Let the other lazy minds atrophy and fill-up with plaque, the hallmark of senility.

Anyhoo, read “Athens & Jerusalem,” and the rest of the intellectual gymnastics on Taki’s.