UPDATED: Lee Kuan Yew Knew A Thing Or Two (Like When To Cane An American)

Asia, China, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence

Ah, intelligence: When last was I moved by the intelligence of an American public persona—the teletarts, the presstitutes, the egos in the anchor’s chair, the politicians? If you mean moved to vomit, then all the time. Conversely, I could not listen to Lee Kuan Yew without being impressed by his enormous intelligence. Singapore’s “prime minister for 31 years, widely respected as the architect of Singapore’s prosperity,” died at 91.

More than anything, Lee Kuan Yew, who retired in 1990, understood that human capital, not natural resources, makes a society thrive.

The Cambridge-educated lawyer led Singapore through merger with, and then separation from, Malaysia.
Speaking after the split in 1965, he pledged to build a meritocratic, multi-racial nation. But tiny Singapore – with no natural resources – needed a new economic model.
“We knew that if we were just like our neighbours, we would die,” Mr Lee told the New York Times in 2007.
“We had to produce something which is different and better than what they have.”

And:

Lee’s role as the founding father of Singapore [is what] he will be most remembered for and which gave him that global status in the first place. His success in turning Singapore from a tiny third-world country – at the time of its independence separated from Malaysia and under threat from neighboring Indonesia – into a first-world city state is a feat to behold. While few expected Singapore to survive, it has thrived far beyond the wildest dreams of many, including Lee himself who once reportedly dismissed small island states as a political joke.

Alas, there “was a darker side to the Singapore story” (said in Keith Morrison’s most ominous, Dateline voice).

But we won’t speak ill of a man who loved his people and was genuinely loved by them, who didn’t spread democracy by force to nobody, kept his military mitts to himself, and did Americans a great favor by inspiring the public paddling of a visiting truant teenager, Michael Fay, when he spray-painted cars in Singapore of 1994.

UPDATE (3/23): Facebook thread:

Kerry Crowel: I’ve used a quote of his (“In multicultural societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.”) many times when arguing with open-border, amnesty advocates .
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Myron Robert Pauli: While perhaps too authoritarian for my standards (but how much better are Bloomberg and Guiliani??), Lee improved a lot of things to make a modern Singapore. Another interesting comparison would be to compare Abe Lincoln (from when he took office to when he died) with Deng Xiaoping (from when he took power to when he died) and ask who freed more people or lifted them from poverty and who butchered more people (how does Tienanmien Square casualties compare with Antietam?).
9 hrs · Unlike · 1

Hastings Ragnarsson: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists; not so good when people obey and acclaim him; worst when they despise him.” ~ Laotzi /// Wo jing ni yi bei, Lingdao.

Zionist Reciprocity = Recognizing There’s No ‘Global Right Of Return’ To The US For The World’s Citizens

Foreign Policy, IMMIGRATION, Israel, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism

Steve Sailer seconds Mercer on the “path to mutual respect” between the neoconservative and Zionist faction, on the one hand, and the American conservative (and paleolibertarian) faction, on the other hand. As Steve puts it:

The path to mutual respect is to insist upon reciprocity. The most reasonable bargain would be for conservatives to demand of neoconservatives that in return for American support for Zionism, Zionists must publicly support America deploying the same immigration policies as Israel currently enjoys.

The Mercer version (April 29, 2011) urged Israelis to recognize Americans’ right to deny a “global right of return to the US for the citizens of the world”:

“… Ask any left-liberal American Jew if he supports a ‘Right of Return’ to Israel proper for every self-styled Palestinian refugee, and he’ll recoil: ‘Are you mad? Never. That’s a euphemism for Israel’s demise.’ The very thing he opposes for Israel, the leftist Jew is inclined to champion for America: a global right of return to the US for the citizens of the world. When it comes to ‘returning’ to America only (but not Israel), humankind is said to possess a positive, manufactured right to venture wherever, whenever. (This view is common among American liberals of all religious persuasions.)
Israelis want the support of Americans in standing up for their national sovereignty. Fine. But they should respond in kind. … when liberty deprived peoples the world over support patriots stateside, I’ll return the favor. The same goes for Israel. …”

MORE Mercer.

MORE Sailer.

Move On. Nothing More To See @ The Site Of The Rand Paul Crash (Ron, Rand: Politicians Both)

English, Iran, libertarianism, Republicans, Ron Paul

Libertarians seem fascinated with tracking Rand Paul’s every move, waiting for some critical-mass of evidence to show that Rand is no libertarian. How often can one relive the same eureka moment? Move on. There’s nothing more to see at the site of the Rand Paul crash.

“Rand Paul: Action Hero, Or Political Performance Artist?” was penned in 3/1/2013, when Rand was first presenting himself to the public in a big way. Back then, there were still questions to be asked. Matters were inconclusive on the Rand Paul front.

Like most Americans, I like an action hero. I am just incapable of telling whether Rand Paul is such a hero, or whether he is no more than a political performance artist.

One thing should always be a certainty for libertarians:

“It is a smart libertarian who retains a healthy contempt for politicians, even the libertarian ones. Ultimately, they’re all empire builders, who see nothing wrong in using fame and the public dime to peddle their influence and their products.
The people—at least those who’ve never fed at the “public” trough, unlike every single politician and his aide—are always morally superior to the politicians.
In all, some politicians are less sickening than others, but all fit somewhere along a sick-making scale.”

The Daily Beast’s “Why Real Libertarians Hate Rand Paul” is yet more hoo-ha about Rand Paul’s latest un-libertarian mistep—Paul signied Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) open letter to “the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The letter stated, rather condescendingly, that Iranian leaders ‘do not fully understand our constitutional system.’ Soon a new president would be in office, Cotton wrote, and that president could (if Republican, would) ‘revoke’ any executive agreement President Obama signs.”

While the Beast pardons Justin Raimondo for his prolonged Rand Paul crush; I cannot forgive the Beastly writer for a usage such as “cyber-bullying” and “… it feels like.”

UPDATED (3/22): Ron, Rand: Politicians Both.

Ron and Rand Paul are just … politicians. A few years back, in the midst of the Ron Paul orgy, Karen De Coster pointed this out rather gruffly. She must have gotten flack of the order even she didn’t feel like handling, because she did not repeat the observation. It bears repetition. Here: Rand and Ron Paul are politicians. Senior is way better than junior, but he too showed all the trappings of a politician. We just turned a blind eye, b/c he was ours.

Your Get-With-The-Program, Demography-Is-Destiny Policy Paper

Education, IMMIGRATION, Labor, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism

You know just how scholarly an essay is when it is studded with loaded pop-words like “conversation”: “We need to have a conversation about race (when we do nothing but subject ourselves to one-way brow-beatings about imagined slights committed against the pigmentally burdened). “We need to have a conversation about immigration (translation: Get with the program of mass immigration from the third world and its implications for your communities—reduced quality of life, poorer education, environmental degradation; less safety and security, more taxation).

Jennifer Bradley of the liberal Brookings Institute lectures Middle America on how to prepare its diverse workforce for tomorrow.

Thus, for example, it is stated that “America is on the cusp of becoming a country with no racial majority, where new minorities are poised to exert a profound impact on U.S. society, economics, and politics.” The implication is that the seismic shift is due to a mystic force, and not to willful policies in which the host population has never had a say.

A feature of the Minneapolis-St. Paul diversity explosion, as Bradley sees it, is a widening “race-based education and achievement gap” that will “become a drag on workforce growths unless something was done to reverse these trends.” In other words, the immigrant population isn’t up to scratch.

I can think of a few options to narrow the gap. One is to welcome immigrants who’ll add value, not drain resources. But Bradely is here not to explore all options, but to dictate them.

The raiment of scholarship is shed as quickly as a hooker sheds her clothes (only less admirably; working girls deserve respect). Bradely brays about the need to “reframe the conversation about race-based education and achievement gaps in Minneapolis-St. Paul — turning what had been a moral (and insufficiently effective) commitment to its underserved communities into an economic necessity. Leading figures from the worlds of government, business, and academia, and public and private groups throughout the region, are now trying to figure out how to undo the effects of decades of neglect, tackling the problem from many perspectives and with an ever greater sense of urgency.”

If a population is not achieving parity it is inferred that it has been “underserved”; that its inhabitants need more resources rather than that the fault lies with the kind of incompatible immigrant being privileged by policy makers. The essay’s premise is that America is “underserving” her immigrant population, when it is the other way round:

Averaged out, the immigrant population is underserving the American economy.

And, research is only as good as the semantics used to state the hypothesis.

MORE braying (with apologies to donkeys; they’re adorable).