We should get out of that mess altogether. A security guarantee is extremely unwise.

Obama may consider it a more benign alternative to war, but even that presupposes that America is somehow and for some reason responsible for the protection of another country. That is the mindset we must shake.

“Like it or not we are engaged here, there, pretty much everywhere. And turning back the clock on that is impossible.”

Mr. Pearlman, we could very easily disengage and withdraw from the region if we had the political will to do so.

“it is a clear indication that Obama is very very serious about forcing a two state solution to end the Israel-Palestine conflict.”

But will it “end” anything? I seriously doubt it. This is not something non-interventionists should cheer. We just need to get out of it and mind our own business. Any attempt on our part to force a “solution” just draws us more into the whole mess. Why can’t America just leave well enough alone.

With all due respect Mr. Unz, you are reaching mightily re. Ben Franklin. Today Franklin would be denounced as a vile nativist bigot by the PC thought police. He was not primarily concerned with the Germans assimilating. That is a generous reading at best. He was worried about them being here at all and particularly in such large numbers in his native Pennsylvania. He was worried about keeping America English and it not being transformed into Germany across the sea. Today he would firmly be in the enforcement only restrictionist camp

Is a Japanese person who wants to keep Japan Japanese and resists having it overtaken by a foreign culture and ethnic group an ideologue? Likewise, is an Israeli who wants to keep Israel Jewish and resists having it become overrun with … oh I don’t know … Arabs maybe … an ideologue? In fact, this is an entirely natural and understandable human response. There is in fact already a name to describe people who want to preserve their ancestral home, but it isn’t ideologue. They are called conservatives.

So why is Matthew Roberts’ and Steve Burton’s analysis “ideologically shrill?” They are articulating a position that is entirely natural and flows from the order of things. It is actually the idea that mass immigration is a grand thing that is ideologically driven, based as it is on a purely ideological understanding of America as a “proposition nation” different from all others. This is the truly ideologically charged opinion. And there is another name for if. We call it liberal.

“But a U.S. air-war planner in the Persian Gulf War tells The Washington Times he does not think Israel’s relatively small air force — compared with the United States huge bomber and cruise-missile fleet — has the firepower to properly hit all the necessary Iranian targets.”

So obviously them the US should just do it for them.

“Paladino is revisiting social issues from the right in a way that has upset neoconservative journalists.”

I don’t think Paladino and his supporters are defined by this. He is certainly not a religious right socon. He has proven himself less than pious. He is more of an angry everyman type. His opposition to homosexuality is of the reactive type, not informed by his devotion to Christian sexual mores.

Kirt, I generally agree, but I believe Kay Bailey Hutchinson was the moderate candidate of the Republican Establishment, so people mistakenly viewed Perry as the conservative alternative.

I am from Georgia. I can assure you that Johnny Isakson is not now and never has been a “stalwart conservative.” For Matt Towery, a minor political celebrity in his own right here in Georgia conservative circles, to suggest so is laughable. Isakson is a Country Clubber Establishment shill. I wouldn’t call him a RINO, but he isn’t stalwart about anything other than representing the Chamber of Commerce wing of the Republican Party.

“which they’ve announced their intention to use”

With all due respect Dr. Gottfried, when did Iran announce their intention to use nukes if they get them? For that matter, when did they announce their intention to even get them?

When it comes to Romney and Obama, there is no conservative dilemma. A conservative shouldn’t vote for either of those clowns. The real dilemma is what third party candidate to vote for. Normally I would endorse the Constitution Party nominee without hesitation, but this time they nominated Virgil Goode who had a pretty sorry record on foreign policy when he was in the House. He has made some movement in the non-interventionist direction, but is it enough to warrant a vote? I can’t support Johnson because he is pro-choice, pro-gay “marriage” and squishy on humanitarian intervention.

Thanks to Dr. Gottfried and TAC for covering this story. The issue in Pennsylvania is that if the petitions are challenged and the challenge is successful, the third party has to pay court costs. It was this potentiality that caused the CP to withdraw their petitions.

The system is absurd. That two parties have essentially automatic ballot status and that other parties have to work for it (some states significantly harder than others) should strike every fair minded person as wrong. Defenders of this system can’t even get their stories straight. If our winner-take-all system lends itself to a two party system, which it does, then what do the two centrist parties have to fear?

It makes it hard for the interventionists to deny that they want the US military to “police the world” when the military itself is blowing their cover. I commented on this when I first heard the Navy comercial.

http://conservativetimes.org/?p=9776

“But certainly one of these is the remarkable demographic tilt of the American electorate”

Which is why any Republican or conservative who isn’t an immigration restrictionist either has a death wish or can’t do simple math.

“Grant and Sherman?!”

Yeah, there’s a pair you want to emulate.

My understanding of the gay germ theory is that it is likely something that infects the mother while the child is in utero. Something similar has been suggested for schizophrenia, which is more heritable than gayness (twin concordance for example), but also tends to be more common in winter births (hence a possible infectious element). Whatever the environmental influence (germ hormonal or whatever) it seems to me that it almost has to be an in utero effect since gayness is associated with other physical traits such as “gay face” and hair swirl patterns that it is difficult to imagine happen after birth. In fact, every parent who has tried to style a child with ornery hair knows that hair swirl patterns are there form birth.

“even though it was based on the contributions of someone who still believes and argues something that all serious researchers know is false.”

The level of PC rightthink being spouted in the comments here is embarrassing. All “serious researchers” do not know it is false. In fact, all serious researchers know it is a well established fact. But even if we give Spartacus the benefit of the doubt and allow that there is still some debate, at the very least, it is not “known” to be false, that is gross hyperbole. The PC addled brain simply believes what it wants to believe.

“Both Richwine’s supporters and the Heritage Foundation want people to take this immigration study seriously even though it was based on the contributions of someone who still believes and argues something that all serious researchers know is false.”

In addition, let’s say just for the sake of the argument that Richwine did hold beliefs that the guardians of the conventional wisdom deemed icky. Like maybe if he was a vaccine skeptic or he didn’t like floride in the water or he’s a birther or whatever. So what? What would that have to do with the accuracy of his number crunching in an article about the economic impact of immigration? Ad hominem anyone? The accuracy of his number crunching rises and falls on the accuracy of his number crunching, but this is a concept that the PC addled mind can’t understand. For them, it’s all about the rightthink. Once you have uttered crimethink you’re a thoughtcriminal who must be punished.

“for whatever reason libertarian economists can’t think straight when it comes to immigrants.”

Sam, they can’t think straight BECAUSE they are libertarians. It’s that whole free movement of labor, atomistic individualism, economic man, individuals as simply embodiments of either good or bad ideology, and freedom as the highest good thing. At the least, if libertarians were at all interested in self-preservation, they should be for restricting immigration to fellow libertarians. Sign on to the non-aggression principle, you’re in. Don’t and you’re not.

TomB, I wasn’t primarily referring to libertarianish or libertarian leaning economist because the “ish” and the “leaning” indicate some moderation of the ideology to practical concerns. I was referring primarily to ideological libertarians. (Although some economist seem to be more dogmatic about their libertarianism when it comes to economics than when it comes to other matters.)

There used to be a group of paleo-libertarians mostly around Hoppe (as Sam indicated) and Lew Rockwell, who argued against open immigration. While their arguments were purist libertarian, you sensed at least that they understood intuitively that people aren’t just freely interchangeable blank slate vessels of ideology. They openly understood that you can’t have open immigration and a welfare state. But for whatever reason, this group of libertarians has mostly lost its voice. Now most libertarians instinctively argue for open borders on the grounds of maximal freedom. A person should be able to move wherever he wants without anyone or any entity telling him he can’t as long as he has the means. To be honest, this is in fact the most straightforward application of purist libertarianism. The pro borders libertarian argument was always nuanced and one off.

So why the change? I think it is partially because libertarianism is a simple easy to understand position that is easily embraced by those inclined to embrace it. I saw this among young Ron Paul supporters. There weren’t many right-wing Constitutionalists in the bunch or budding paleocons. Most were purist libertarians. But I also think it is because being a purist libertarian and for open borders allows them to mount their PC high horse or at the least inoculate themselves against charges of wrongthink on the issue of immigration. Immigration invariably has to do with the “national question.” It can’t not. So the PC phobics want to avoid the charge of wrongthink at all costs. They may be called heartless and cruel. They may be called impractical. They may be called dreamers or even deluded. But By God no one can accuse them of wrongthink.

““IQ” (and the tests that purport to measure it) has issues as a measure of cognitive ability”

Engineer Scotty, do you reject the concept of mental retardation which is largely DEFINED by IQ?

“serious economists tend to ignore the more extravagant pronouncements of the Austrians, medical journals tend to ignore whole swaths of “alternative medicine”, and biologists ignore creationists”

In this debate, the PC ideologues are the equivalent of the alternative medicine advocates. Funny you should mention creationists, because PC ideologues are creationists of a sort because they rule out before hand that there could be any evolution above the neck. Such would be wrongthink and thus cannot be.

Engineer Scotty, if you really are an engineer, I seriously doubt that you really believe your own silliness. You are simply regurgitating PC ideology for the sake of enforcing rightthink.

“If there really were genetically pure populations … However there are very few populations that have not mixed their genes substantially with others in the last 190K years”

JonF, above is a perfect example of the fallacy of the heap. Look it up. To suggest that there aren’t relatively pure populations of Negroids, Caucasoids, Mongoloids, Australoids is silly. The existence of such is confirmed by mere observation alone. Stop making yourself look silly for the sake of PC ideology.

JonF and Engineer Scotty, PLEASE go to Wikipedia or wherever and look up “the fallacy of the heap,” or more formally the “continuum fallacy.” A ridiculous amount of the PC ideological case is one big textbook demonstration of the fallacy of the heap. Seriously, you are embarrasssing yourselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy

“The fallacy causes one to erroneously reject a vague claim simply because it is not as precise as one would like it to be. Vagueness alone does not necessarily imply invalidity.

The fallacy appears to demonstrate that two states or conditions cannot be considered distinct (or do not exist at all) because between them there exists a continuum of states. According to the fallacy, differences in quality cannot result from differences in quantity.

There are clearly reasonable and clearly unreasonable cases in which objects either belong or do not belong to a particular group of objects based on their properties. We are able to take them case by case and designate them as such even in the case of properties which may be vaguely defined. The existence of hard or controversial cases does not preclude our ability to designate members of particular kinds of groups.”

You can make the case, if you like, that some questions should simply not be asked. That’s a legit position. I’m not sure how many people will be lining up behind you to make that case, but it is at least a legit intellectual position. But you cannot make the case that race does not exist or is largely a “social construct.” That is not legit. That is flat earth territory silly.

My strong suspicion is that neither of you actually believe your own nonsense. I think you are just enforcing orthodoxy. What you get out of such activity I don’t know. Maybe it’s all so you can prove to the world and yourselves that you really aren’t one of those grubby wrongthinkers.

Tumarion, one trick of the PC right think enforcement brigade is to label everything they deem wrongthink as “hate.” Where is the evidence that Steve Sailer “hates” Hispanics? That is just absurd. Such nonsense may fly at Think Progress, but you’re going to get called on it here.

“I’m well aware of the continuum fallacy, and no, I’m not engaging in it.”

Engineer Scotty, saying that race can’t be qualified or doesn’t exist because there exists a continuum is a textbook example of the continuum fallacy, hence the name. I would be hard pressed to find a more perfect example if I tried.

And all the quibbling over IQ testing is a similar error – because something is not as precise as we would like, then it is of little or no utility at all.

If an alien landed on earth without all the PC baggage infesting his mind and was asked to explain persistent group differences in test scores, wouldn’t he automatically consider both nature and nurture as a possibility? That nature is a possible explanation is intuitive.* To believe that it is of minimal importance you have to actively discount a perfectly plausible possibility. So is this active discounting based on evidence or ideology? Are the PC enforcers believing what the evidence suggests or what they want to believe (or more accurately what the ideology demands MUST be believed)? I say the latter. If it were the former then they wouldn’t always resort to obvious sophistry about the validity of IQ and the reality of race.

*One could argue that nature is actually the choice suggested by Occam’s razor. When presented with evidence that Thoroughbreds are consistently faster as a breed than Quarter Horses, what is the intuitive assumption? That Thoroughbreds are a faster breed. It would actually take a great deal of evidence that Quarter Horses are consistently hindered by inadequate nutrition etc. to persuade you otherwise that the speed differences are primarily environmental, and you know it.

Quit being a PC enforcing tool and have some intellectual self-respect.

“But race/IQ research is, by and large, conducted and funded by those looking for a pretext to discriminate.

If Richwine or Unz and others want to make this a serious field of study, step one is to do what William F. Buckley did to the Birchers a few generations ago: drive the cranks and kooks from the field. Demonstrate good faith.”

WRONGTHINK ALERT! WRONGTHINK ALERT! PURGE THE WRONGTHINKERS! PURGE THE WRONGTHINKERS! WRONGTHINK ALERT! WRINKTHINK ALERT!

ES, perhaps you should make your PC toolery a little less obvious.

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, the reason that this research attracts “cranks and kooks” and axe grinders is precisely because the rightthink enforcement apparatus makes the climate so toxic that people with anything to lose avoid it like the plaque? If you want for it to not be a field of kooks and cranks and axe grinders then stop the rightthink enforcement.

“Let me ask you another question, though: East Asians often outperform whites on IQ tests. What should the social impact of THAT be? And do you suppose that this is biological, or cultural?”

I suspect it is largely biologic that East Asians outperform Europeans on average on IQ tests. Although I think there is evidence to suggest that the European bell curve is broader and flatter and hence there are proportionally more European geniuses, which would help explain the grossly disproportionate contribution of Europeans to great developments and advancement. (Charles Murray wrote a book about that too.) There might also be something about the European endowment that contributes to this such as greater creativity however one might measure that, and some have suggested that Christianity is also a factor.

I think greater East Asian academic achievement (which is related to but different from IQ) (and this goes for certain groups of Indians as well), has to do with IQ and a culture that heavily emphasizes academic achievement.

“Knock off the Orwell references.”

Why? They are perfectly appropriate, and they hit a nerve because they are so spot on. You specifically called for a purge.

“There is in Christ neither Jew nor Gentile, man nor woman, slave nor free” (Galatians 3:28)

Tumarion, this verse is often abused by PC enforcers and it does not mean what you are suggesting it means. This verse is a reference to salvation, not social organization. If it means that we are no longer to consider ethnicity, then it also means that we are no longer to consider gender (man nor woman), but Paul goes on to specifically endorse gender roles much to the chagrin of feminist everywhere.

Turmarion, “blathering” about PC wouldn’t be necessary if everytime this conversation came up it wasn’t immediately in evidence. To say that the term “enforcers” is inappropriate means that you obviously haven’t read this thread or the many others like it or that you are so immersed in the thought structure that you can’t seperate yourself from it enough to see it. You can defend attempts to enforce rightthink if you like, but you can’t deny that it happens and expect to maintain any credibility. Just ask Jason Richwine. Just ask John Derbyshire.

And Paul warns against factionalism within the Body of Christ. As I said, the verse is addressing the spiritual realm.

I guess one easy way to deal with verses you don’t like such as the ones about gender roles is to suggest they aren’t authentic. How convenient. But if he was addressing social organization instead of the spiritual realm then what about the reference to slave and free? He later goes on to acknowledge the condition of slave and free without commanding people to free their slaves. Are those verses inauthentic as well?

Why would anyone even expect the Bible to condemn gender roles? The Bible is a pre-modern book and takes gender roles (as well as ethnocentric social organization) for granted. The Bible is full of calls for fairness and equity, but it is not full of calls to abolish hierarchy or the existing social order. Such is taking a modern view and attempting to impose it on the Bible rather than taking away from the Bible what it is trying to tell us.

“On what basis do you assert this?”

What do you mean on what basis? The basis I just explained. Paul mentions Jew and Greek, male and female and slave and master all together. They are mentioned in parallel and all illustrate the same point. In the natural world they are differences/distinctions. Within the Body of Christ they are not. You can’t then pick and choose which distinction you want to abolish in the real world and which one you want to keep based on this verse. If it really means that there should no longer be Jew or Greek socially speaking, then it also must mean that there shouldn’t be male or female distinctions and shouldn’t be master and slave distinctions circa AD 70ish. (While the verse mentions slave and master specifically it is implying hierarchal relationships in general – Captain/Private, boss/employee, teacher/student, etc.) So if you say the verse was intended to abolish all those things, then you can say that and be consistent but you are going to run into problems with the verses that endorse gender roles and the fact that nature establishes gender roles. The people with the most problems with consistency here are the people who want to use the Jew and Greek part of the verse to mean Christians should support throwing open the borders or whatever but who aren’t willing to abandon gender distinctions based on the verse. (This would include the emerging group of evangelicals for immigration “reform” – Russell Moore comes to mind.)

I have heard the idea that Christianity abolishes ethnic distinctions called neo-Babelist. I think this is an accurate label. I believe the story of Babel illustrates that ethno-linguistic social organization is God’s plan and that one worldism is dangerous.

You say I just assert things, but I explained why your use of that verse was illegitimate. Perhaps my explanation above is clearer. Then you turn around and imply that I don’t know what I’m talking about. That’s as convenient as getting to declare the verses you don’t like inauthentic. Accuse the other guy of just asserting things then just assert he doesn’t know what he is talking about and you do. (For the record I am quite familiar with the theological debate regarding immigration reform, which is why I knew Russell Moore’s name off the top of my head.)

And clearly we are coming at Scripture and Christianity from a different perspective. So yes, by and large I actually do believe that Christian teaching should be “static.” There is some room for looking at things in context and situation, but I don’t believe Christians teaching should “broaden” or “adapt” to the times. It should declare God’s Truth as He intended it. If I believed the former then I would be a Christian liberal, which I clearly am not. As for what “most theologians” think, I guess that depends on which theologians you’re talking about. If you’re talking about the faculty of Harvard and Yale Divinity Schools, then I suspect that it’s true that most believe Christians teaching should “develop and change.” If you’re talking about the faculty of Westminster or Bob Jones then not so much.

“Finally, if you’re holding up Bob Jones University”

I mentioned Bob Jones specifically because I was trying to bait you into going PC, but to your credit you didn’t take my bait. But while I’m not a dispensationalist or young earth, I certainly would chose the faculty of Bob Jones (or Liberty or Dallas or Reformed etc.) over the faculty of Harvard Seminary because those faculty actually believe orthodox (creedal) Christianity to be true. If I thought Spong was on the right track, then I would just sleep in on Sundays.

“As to the Bible: Except for Fundamentalists and Biblical literalists, no one, not even conservative scholars, believes that the Bible is free of spurious verses, or literally true in all its particulars.”

Well that’s a pretty big “except” don’t you think? We already had this thing called the Fundamentalist vs Modernist debate, and much to your apparent surprise, the Fundamentalists didn’t concede.

And personally I do think women should wear head coverings in church, but unfortunately that cat seems to already be out of the bag. That is clearly the safest interpretation of that verse, and I don’t think it can be dismissed as entirely culture bound precisely because it is illustrating the universal principle of gender roles that we have already discussed.

“Close Southern friends of mine, including the historian Boyd Cathey and the former federal judge Samuel Currin in North Carolina and Professor Clyde Wilson in South Carolina, blame this unsettling change in their region on the corrupting influence of the Republican Party.”

I see what they are saying, but what are they suggesting as an alternative? That conservatives should have stayed in the Democrat Party and battled it out with liberals in the primary? Or that we should have made a serious attempt to form a third party?