Why not try your hand at some new extensive essays? Like 5000 words or so. Personally I like those because I can usually read them from start to finish without being interrupted, which is all but impossible for books because I’ve still got a fairly young kid to take care of.

Well put. Explaining our position morally is more important than volumes of graphs and data, which have their place of course, but are subordinate to the higher principles.

Ahmari’s essay appears to be about the Nietzsche fan Bronze Age Pervert, but his moniker goes unmentioned in it. Instead, Lomez and I are having micro-moments, so in the interests of timeliness, we got shoehorned into Ahmari’s thinkpiece, even though that doesn’t make much sense.

Yeah, I don’t know what Sohrab is smoking to try to make you out to be a Nietszchean. BAP yes, totally, but he’s an entirely different species.

By way of analogy, if Steve and BAP were female, Steve would be the good, no-nonsense wife you’d want your son to marry, while BAP would be the flashing red light you know you should run screaming away from but end up fluttering toward anyway, only to end up burnt to a crisp in a deadly electrified cage.

And this, if I may indulge in a little amateur psychology, is what is revving Mr. Ahmari’s engine. He must find BAP and his Nietszchean ethos deeply seductive on some level if he sees it everywhere he looks.

This is why I used the female analogy: I am personally very susceptible to Nietzschean-type women. Raw physicality, lack of emotional restraint, histrionic outbursts, intensity of desire… Irresistible and deadly all at once.

Could there be some sort of erotic appeal there for Sohrab as well, but perhaps less… conventional? It’s speculation, but I see something familiar there. Perhaps those half-nude young men BAP is always posting are getting to him. And I know BAP does that on purpose — he’s deliberately messing with a certain kind of (Catholic) guy by doing this and has openly said so. I never really took it all that seriously because it doesn’t affect me, but on second thought he might be on to something.

The carting off of Jewish women sounds like bullshit

Oh really?

Here’s one of the coins minted in celebration of the sack of Jerusalem:

The Latin reads “Iudea Capta” (Judea vanquished)

The Roman is the standing figure on the left with the enormous phallic object projecting from his loins and Judea is represented by the seated, weeping woman. I don’t think it’s too difficult to interpret the visual symbolism here.

It’s a Christian country and not that bad if you ignore the sodomy? Should that be on the travel brochure? In any case they did not become first world through Christ ‘n capitalism.

Ok that’s funny. No, the sodomy is illegal in Uganda. If they catch you being gay you go to jail. It is in the State Dept. Travel warning:

The May 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act raises the risk that LGBTQI+ persons, and those perceived to be LGBTQI+, could be prosecuted and subjected to life imprisonment or death based on provisions in the law, and may be subject to mandatory reporting to the police if they are suspected of committing or intending to commit acts in violation of the law, and could face harassment or attacks by vigilantes. Those perceived to support the dignity and human rights of LGBTQI+ persons (including those of youth under the age of 18) could be prosecuted and imprisoned for multi-year sentences.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/uganda-travel-advisory.html

So if you want to go to Uganda to see the gorillas in the mist, you’d better not have any prurient motives regarding the local (male) fauna.

One is either a Jew or not.

And you accuse me of resorting to tautologies…

In the past, I’ve defined that to be at least at the quadjoon descent level (after quadroon). That would include, for example, the current Sulzberger heading the NYT.

Ok, so you’re going by Israel’s citizenship standard. But what if the Jewish grandparent was a Jew by maternal but not paternal lineage? Still a Jew? Halachically yes but genetically no?

No, they reflect physical reality. You may not be a fan of physical reality, but maybe you should be on a religious blog instead of an HBD blog if you want to indulge in mystical musing.

What is the mechanism by which physical reality adheres to mathematical concepts? Are there real, physical numbers and formulae out there manipulating behavior? If so, how?

Your dog remains a dog even if you’ve taught it to ‘shake hands’ and have it wear a necktie. You might define that as “humanish” and therefore claim your dog is actually human, but you would be in error.

But this raises the question of how much doggishness is required for an animal to be a dog. And how much Jewishness is required for a man to be a Jew. Do you see how the science begins to fail as these biological distinctions become fine-grained?

Sure, you can distinguish a dog from a cat, but then consider the red wolf, which is supposedly a species, but is actually some kind of wolf/coyote hybrid. So in Arizona you can legally shoot a coyote on sight, but shooting a red wolf is a federal crime.

The red wolf is a sort of canine version of a Jew — hard to nail down physically, but yet people are quite sure that they exist. I’m not going to dispute their existence, but on the other hand I’m going to have hard questions for people who say you can identify them based on some simple taxonomic table, because that simply isn’t true.

Instead, people observe a quality, and then the biologists struggle to match it to the genetic data. The problem here is that the quality itself is utterly non-scientific. In other words we are bending the data around feelings. How is that rational empiricism? It isn’t. It’s a sort of “mystical” cherry-picking.

Not by your term alone—“-ishness” (your appendant) creates a vague tautology. As with any physically occurring phenomena we would have to at least agree on specific inherent attributes for identification purposes.

The problem is that we cannot agree, at least as far as the parts are concerned. On the whole we can usually concur, but that just goes to show that reductionism only divides opinion in this case. And what are we to make of that? Is “Jew” some emergent phenomenon along the lines of mystical Evolutionist theology like that held by Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett? If so it is irreducible.

DNA is one of those inherent markers, and is often reflected in physical appearance and also behavior (group and individual).

Well, yes. Genes clearly do things, but so does our limbic system. Is our reptilian brain the source of high culture? Sure, if I pointed a gun at someone’s face I’d get a fairly predictable reaction, but would that define him as an individual?

I know that the main thrust of this blog is the connection between genes and intelligence, which is as real as the connection between genes and height, foot speed, skin tone and hair texture. Yes, it’s real. But ultimately all these things obey immaterial principles. Our uniquely human ability to perceive these principles gives us the freedom to choose how we put these material realities to use.

This being the case, while we cannot deny the physical facts of the world (e.g. race, sex, talent), we can nevertheless put them at our service. I would say that ultimately it is how we choose to do so that is most salient to our social identity.

This is why I oppose a genetic determinist classification of friends and enemies. It’s too primitive and inhuman for my taste, and to be quite honest I suspect even houseplants and bacteria are more sophisticated than that. I think Jesus made the point quite well enough in the parable of the Good Samaritan. I know my neighbor by his neighborliness.

“Judaism”. There’s that weasel word again. I’m talking about biological Jews, not “Judaism”.

Ok, so it seems to me that you are saying that a Jew need not be Jew-ish.

Semantically, how does that work? Jewish means having the quality of Jew. Can one be a Jew without having a Jewish quality?

Your numeric genetic values are meaningless if they have nothing to say about this. They are just dots on a graph, not some cenotaph.

Can my dog be a dog without being doggish?

If we cannot determine a Jew by Jewishness, then a Jew must be a thing-in-itself, immune to empirical evaluation. In that case Jewishness is an ineffable quality that perhaps doesn’t even exist; a mere figment of the febrile perturbations of agitated brains.

Or maybe you can explain it so it makes sense. I’m eager with anticipation.

Aren’t Ashkenazim, by definition, Jews?

Only if you are a metaphysical naturalist, in which case the very concept “Jew” is arbitrary and tenuous, based as it is on various people who at one point adopted a belief that a non-existent spiritual entity commanded them to adhere to certain laws. In other words the Ur-Jew, Moses, became a Jew simply by making a false claim.

Later, a group of Jews became “Christian,” by (according to the naturalist) making another false claim.

So, if you’re going to take the naturalist approach, you might be skeptical, but to demonstrate the validity of the “Jewish race” what you’re going to want to do is dig up Moses and a bunch of his followers’ bones, find their genetic code and establish the original Jew DNA. This gives you baseline Jew.

After that you want to check the evolution of the Jew through the centuries to establish some continuity and see how we get to today’s Jew.

But what do we find? The people closest to Moses and his followers today are no longer considered Jews, but rather Christians, Muslims and Samaritans. It seems that other people “became” Jews (impossible! wrong genes), while many Jews became non-Jews (again, that could not be…). And get this: this actually happened multiple times. Therefore, being a proper naturalist, one must conclude that this whole Jew thing is just a mass delusion and certainly has no scientific basis in reality.

It begins to dawn on you that this 23&me Jewish ancestry test is actually a marketing gimmick based on very recent genetic history that has very little if any relevance to classical, not to mention pre-exile, Judaism.

While you concede that the “Ashkenazi” classification has some basis in reality, in that case one could also call “Mormon” an ethnicity and Amish even more so, but practically nobody holds that neither Mormons nor Amish are able to switch their religious identities.

Yet here we have Jenner Ickam Errican saying Judaism is a permanent and irrevocable condition “because DNA.”

But that is simply untrue from a scientific materialist perspective, so JIE must be accepting the Rabbinic position on Judaism, which means he is part way down the path to becoming a Jew himself, whether he knows it or not.

You see how clever the sages are? Sorry to say it, but the average person here is no match for them. These are people who can harness hatred of their religion to make it not only more cohesive, but more real — even in the minds of its opponents.

Personally, I admire the skill of the artifice, but I don’t buy it.

Baptism changes DNA? Seems unlikely. Or are you defining “Judaism/Jewish” and Jew differently from each other?

Was Andrew Breitbart a Jew? Jews seem to think so. Do you think Israel would have denied him citizenship for looking like my Irish grandpa?

E.g., was atheist physicist Richard Feynman a Jew or non-Jew (aka “Gentile”) ?

Was he an avowed atheist? If so, not a Jew. Ashkenazi, sure, why not? It’s a legitimate ethnic group.

Btw, “gentile” is traditionally used by Christians to refer to nonbelievers, including Jews (https://basilica.ca/documents/2016/10/St.%20Thomas%20Aquinas-The%20Summa%20Contra%20Gentiles.pdf). So yes, Feinman was a gentile.

Well the Jews set their own rules and they view bloodline as more important than beliefs. It’s their club and they make the rules.

They say God makes these rules. If you take their word for it, then you are tacitly agreeing with Rabbinic Judaism. Christians who do this are denying their own faith. You can’t get around that.

A Jewish looking convert to Christianity would still be viewed as more Jewish than a blonde Germanic looking woman that converted to Judaism by marriage.

In Germany, sure, but in southern Italy you probably couldn’t tell the difference. Nor could you in Israel, where the native Christians look pretty much the same as the Mizrahi Jews.

Jews just happen to stand out in northern Europe. South of the Alps they don’t really.

But we haven’t had a pagan media and I’m not sure what that would look like.

Probably pretty childish and stupid like some New Age crap.

Are you really giving us the Christ ‘n capitalism answer on Steve’s blog? Show the guy some respect.

You really think Haitians are sitting around being lazy and ignoring job postings on craiglist?

Capitalism is beside the point. Capitalism can accommodate pimping, cheating, lying, fraud, drug dealing, cannibalism, etc. If Haitians stopped doing that kind of stuff – and they could choose to do so – Haiti wouldn’t be a shithole country.

Take Uganda for example. It’s as black as Haiti, but evidently a nice place to visit so long as you aren’t into sodomy (the US State Dept. has a warning up about Uganda but that’s mostly because State is full of homosexuals). Uganda may not be up to Swiss or Singaporean standards, but it’s not bad. It’s also a Christian country.

Do you realize that conservatives made arguments around “hard work and Christianity” for Black areas over 100 years ago?

A lot of that has been in bad faith. There were fortunes to be made in the New World plantations, and the white men involved were hardly what you’d call godly men. More like pirates, human traffickers, latifundia caudillos, buccaneers, etc.

That whole “legacy of colonialism” thing is often overplayed, but it’s actually true in the tropical parts of the New World. No doubt extractive institutions that discouraged civilizing virtues had a powerful influence that persists to this day.

Not to say that excuses Caribbean criminality and vice, but it’s worth being honest about it, especially as we see the same old rapacity directed against our fellow American citizens today.

How did I disagree with myself?

I don’t see how that is the case when you can have any philosophy and still be Jewish.

That’s only true if you, personally accept the Jewish outlook. I don’t. I don’t think a baptized, faithful Christian is Jewish even if his parents were both devoted followers of Menachem Schneerson. Honestly I don’t think Jews really think so, either, but they’d rather you did.

My problem with calling the MSM Jewish is that it implies a non-Jewish media would have a different agenda. I don’t believe that for one second.

A Christian media would definitely have a different agenda, and it exists. Honestly a Jewish media is better than a flat-out atheist, Communist or pagan media. I’ve lived in a Communist country. If you think the NY Times is bad try reading the Chinese language version of the People’s Daily. A lot of people here don’t seem to realize that while sometimes, ummm… “challenging,” Jews are far from the worst. I’ll take them over Muslims, and I don’t even particularly dislike Muslims.

I don’t understand your outlook. What is your take on Haiti? Does it have anything to do with genes? If God invented genes then why would we be worthless if our behavior is tied to them?

Same take on Haiti as anywhere. Genes matter, but every Haitian has the choice as to whether he wants to do right or wrong. You know the parable of the talents, right? That addresses the issue of innate ability. You may not be likely to get a James Clerk Maxwell out of Haiti, but if Haitians chose to work, be honest and other simple things they are capable of, Haiti could be quite pleasant, and maybe after enough generations of civilization you would get an actual Haitian genius.

On the other hand if you have a bright and talented people, but a corrupt and degenerate society, such as late Qing China, you’re going to have a godawful mess.

Judaism is more of a philosophy than an ethnicity IMO, and I think calling everyone who has a single Jewish ancestor a “Jew” is more in line with the Jewish rather than Christian outlook. I used to see it that way until I finally understood what this meant:

…and do not presume to tell yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father,” because, I tell you, God can raise children for Abraham from these stones.

I.e. it isn’t your lineage that makes you righteous (or wicked).

This was to buttress the argument about (liberal) Jews controlling the media. You may not have been one of them, but it was a typical Men of Unz pile on.

I think regardless of the racial composition of the media it is indeed more “Jewish” in that it is tribal, status-obsessed and prideful. So they are right, but still missing the point.

For the record I don’t think genes “don’t matter,” but I’m quite certain that as human beings we have the God-given ability to transcend them. If not, then we are just ashes and dust.

So totally a Jew, according to the men of Unz. I don’t know anything else about him.

He just has a Jewish mother, big deal. Given how many slaves the Romans took when they sacked Jerusalem probably just about every native Italian has a Jewish woman in his family tree, but we don’t call the Italians “Jews.”

Ralph and Kelly Flagg started dating when Kelly was in high school, and she likes to joke she picked her partner because his 6-9 height was essential to raising a basketball family. Kelly perfected Kevin McHale’s patented up-and-under move as a high school standout before playing on the wing at the University of Maine in the late-1990s. Ralph was a traditional post player for Eastern Maine Community College.

The athlete assortative mating evidence piles up…

I think you and Reg are mistaking honesty about human nature for condoning mob violence. Yes I’m fully aware of what inflamed Chinese mobs can do. I helplessly watched my friends in the USMC embassy security detail deal with this back in ’99:

Video Link

And my grandfather, who was on a B-17 bomber crew, told me they all hoped if they got shot down the Wehrmacht would get to them before the civilians.

I merely assume that Americans are not all that different from Chinese, Germans and other people when their passions are aroused by war.

Had Bill been around then, he would have swallowed all the propaganda and demanded my grandfather and his many brothers be interned due to their Palatine surname, so reminiscent of the enemy.

Yes, proudly. I would have been out there with a bullhorn rounding up the krauts because, you know, they just always seemed suspicious what with their strange way of talking. Never mind that my kids have a Bavarian Oma.

The “dittoheads” are going totally nuts with their “Israel-first bromides” in the vain hope that maybe, just possibly, finally, they can win over the Jews.

Actually it’s because it’s politically cheap. For example you have a senator from Idaho making a great deal of noise over the Israel/Palestine issue in favor of Israel despite the fact that there are virtually no Jews in Idaho and your typical Idahoan doesn’t give a damn about it. He probably thinks he’ll get some marginal benefit for doing so, such as a check from AIPAC, and his voters could care less, so why not?

Ironically Jews think people in places like Idaho are virulent anti-Semites, which is laughable. The Mormons are the Jews of Idaho. Rabbinic Jews are pretty much an abstract concept in the mountain West.

What’s different about 2024 America is that Jewish support doesn’t correspond with Jewish demographic representation. In fact, it seems that the more Jews in any given location, the more pushback you get against pro-Jewish policies.

Zero-sum politics, I guess. Welcome to multicultural America. You got what you wanted 😂.

Yes, the Japanese would have been in danger if they were still living in the midst of Americans, especially when word got back about the war crimes they committed against POWs.

As I’ve remarked here before, the only true racial hatred I heard expressed by my grandparents was against “Japs.” My paternal grandpa’s little brother died in the Philippines, and my maternal grandfather’s big brother almost got killed in a kamikaze attack. Here’s his boat after it got hit:

The Emperor listened for a while until Ricci’s time was up and the next supplicant came forward. Afterward, the Emperor was heard to remark to the court something like, “Who was that funny little barbarian?” and that was that.

Oh for God’s sake Jack you don’t actually believe this bullshit, do you? Matteo Ricci and the Jesuits who followed him were at the very top of the imperial hierarchy. The Qing emperors knew them personally and feuded with the pope over who was their sovereign.

Yeah but you should see how they light up up when you give them American BBQ ribs and fried chicken. I do that occasionally for my local Ukrainians. It’s funny because they seem to have a guilty look as they wipe the traces of sauce and grease off their faces.

New Mexico and Alaska have WAY more Indians than the other states you mention (besides SD, and those Indians – the Pine Ridge Sioux – are basically living in a federal welfare colony).

Cops and Indians, at least where I live, have a traditionally more hostile relationship than cops and blacks. Maybe it’s because cops wear blue. Indians are not big on bluecoats.

Slavic women are no better or worse than other white women. They get just as fat when they adopt an American lifestyle, btw. If there’s any advantage they have it’s also a disadvantage: the recent immigrants are very insular and clannish and stay in their own community, usually centered around their church, which does afford some protection from run-of-the-mill American female degeneracy, but makes it harder for native born Americans to get to know them.

It is surprising to me how dangerous for police the Southwest turns out to be. Alaska’s still the frontier, I guess.

American Indians tend to have fewer compunctions about shooting men in uniform than others (could be one reason they make good soldiers). Notice how Oklahoma’s high, too.

Oh yeah? Well, looks like that old “friend” swatted you. If this really happened prepare to deal with PTSD for some time. Seriously, it takes time to psychologically recover from these things.

I’ve read Stallman’s own writing and he isn’t crazy, but despite his programming brilliance he’s kind of retarded about some things, including politics and the concept of sexual perversion. So long as he stays in his lane (which he did — he wasn’t teaching classes on ethics or anything like that) that never should have been a problem. Frankly, these girls who go after guys like Stallman should be made to stay in their lane. They are far too stupid and selfish to be allowed to make personnel decisions at major institutions.

But then again given what Harvard has become it’s probably for the best that he isn’t there anymore. Who wants those goons having any control over OS software projects?

For amusement’s sake here’s Stallman defending necrophilia and bestiality:

The concept of “sexual interference with a human corpse” is curious. All a corpse can do on its own is decay, so the only possible “interference” is to prevent its decay. Thus, “sexual interference” rationally would mean some sexual activity while injecting embalming fluid, or while putting the corpse into a refrigerator. However, I doubt that the censors interpret this term rationally. They will have cooked up an excuse for some twisted interpretation that enables them to punish more people.

This censorship cannot be justified by protecting corpses from suffering. Whatever you do to a corpse, it can’t suffer, not even emotionally.

Then there is the prohibition of realistically depicting sex with an animal. The law does not care whether the animal wanted sex. I’ve read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that’s what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?

This part, wherein Stallman admits not only to being seduced by a parrot, but enjoying it as well, is hilarious:

A parrot once had sex with me. I did not recognize the act as sex until it was explained to me afterward, but being stroked on the hand by his soft belly feathers was so pleasurable that I yearn for another chance. I have a photo of that act; should I go to prison for it?

This guy has a real gift for the absurd, which is precious in its own way.

Europeans claim Jews are Middle Easterners, and Middle Easterners (e.g., Helen Thomas) claim Jews are Europeans. It gets confusing.

Ashkenazi Jews are genetically most similar to Sicilians, Greeks and Cypriots. I’d call them Mediterraneans. They’re even closer to northern Italians than Britons are. Kind of hard to deny a largely European (if southern) origin, but distinct from Europeans north and west of the Alps.

I also think despite their protestations to the contrary they have a highly Hellenically-derived culture. Think about it: after being scattered, which Jews would be most likely to settle in Europe? Hellenic Jews, naturally. One could even go so far as to say Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism are two divergent forms of Hellenistic Judaism, both of which included lots of actual Greek proselytes among their earliest proponents.

So I need to maintain my health so I can stay productive for another 10 or 20 years.

That Mangan program worked for you, didn’t it?

Most non-whites seem to like whites better than they like each other (I’ve worked with plenty of them).

This anti-white thing is just a grift that’s soon coming to an end. Lots of (mostly older) whites are in on it. It has been helpful for staving off up-and-coming younger whites for the past 30 years or so. Is it going to work for white millennials or younger? No way. Just finding enough competent people is going to be enough of a struggle in coming years that keeping whites down and out won’t be an option for those who want to compete in business or politics.

White status can only rise from the artificially depressed position it now occupies.

If Trump gets voted in the State Dept. should post a travel advisory for white Americans who plan to visit countries with draconian racial lèse-majesté laws, such as Scotland and Germany.

There’s a good topical called adapalene these days. I got it for my oldest and it worked well. Maybe this kid’s dad should pay better attention.

And yeah, the looks hold guys back. This PUA “looks don’t matter” line is bs. Just watch women’s eyes.

Their theory is that people aren’t really members of different races but only think they are. So they end up referring to people “who think they are white” or who have “black bodies.” Weird creepy stuff.

Actually this gives the game away. “People who think they are…” is how you’d explain nominalism to a dumb person. That is to say that classifications such as race are just names we give to perceived similarities that may not be relevant to the individual “black bodies” (particular individuals as in “this particular individual” from Idiocracy). Kendi doesn’t have the foggiest idea what this means, but with sufficient editorial guidance he can imitate the jargon.

Steve’s extended family metaphor is a really good way of conceptualizing “race.” I already knew what he was talking about when he refered to trillions of “slots” in a theoretical family tree and how the math of recombinent DNA means a race is “inbred.” But I bet a lot of people had trouble groking that particular point. Steve should work on an explainer spiel that is a little more broken down and accessible.

It’s good, yes, but it’s also subject to interpretation. Where does “family” end and “race” begin? How many grains of sand makes a “heap?” This is the problem with scientific explanations: eventually the data fails to provide a clear answer to the question.

In that case, you’ve got to be nimble enough to know when to take the terms a step higher. Science is a subset of knowledge. For a while (mid 20th century) a lot of people bought into the notion that it could be THE authoritative source of knowledge, but that just hasn’t worked out, for the obvious reason that science itself is based on non-scientific assumptions that it cannot prove.

So the best response to the so-called scientific debunking of race is to merely challenge the non-scientific assertions made by it’s proponents, such as the idea that what we observe does not exist. If race is really a mass hallucination, then surely it should disappear from view if we simply stop using it to categorize humans. In other words end affirmative action, stop taking racial statistics, do not allow schools to compare test scores based on race, etc.

If, on the other hand, they want to preserve these practices, then they must concede that race is real and make a case for them based on their benefits to society. But by no means should they be permitted to use science to claim that both exist in contradiction to each other, because science, which itself is subordinate to logic, has neither the authority nor the ability to do that.

He sure ain’t pretty. Wonder whether the acne and rage is from ‘roids. Poor kid doesn’t have a clue.

Dude looks Central Asian. Maybe one of those Bukharian Jews?

I’m listening to it this morning as I do my chores. Podcasts are great for when you’re doing mindless tasks.

Anyway, they were talking about “race realism,” and it occurred to me that people ought to stop assuming this is a scientific debate because “the science” is always subordinate to various interpretations.

The main objection to race realism is that it is a “social construct.” If that is the case, and it is not real, then we are all particular humans in regards to race.

If humans are all racial particulars, then racial equality is an illegitimate concept, because race (doesn’t exist) does not provide a basis upon which we can judge whether people are being treated equally or not.

So you can have race realism AND racial equality, but you can’t have racial equality if race is not real.

I think this is pretty obvious, but people keep going back to “the science” as though it will somehow solve this logical contradiction. In other words stop using science to argue with these people. All they have to do to defeat you is switch from a realist to a nominalist position on race and then back again while you are busy showing them graphs and numbers.

What you have to do is call them out on the contradiction. Ask: “if race isn’t real, then why are you putting a box for it on this job application? Why are you fighting for greater representation for this fake class of people?” Let them explain that away. It will be even less convincing to the average person than all those studies and statistics that give them a headache.

Not to say they won’t come up with some obfuscating bs, but don’t be led astray. Just stay on point and certainly don’t get dragged into statistical or scientific sophistry. Eventually they’ll just resort to ad hominems and then you win.

I got my bag of candy snatched by older thugs on Halloween when I was about seven.

But it’s probably the case that most fights in Irish neighborhoods are between people who know each other and live in the same household.

West Bank comes to LA…

The COVID lockdowns were really the opening act of another America, and I honestly have no idea where things will go from here, but it doesn’t look so great.

Never heard of Steven Weinberg. Historian Peter Adamson is who introduced me to Al Ghazali, and he tends to maintain neutrality and avoid speculation.

Actually it was the parallels with Hume that led me to independently speculate about Al Ghazali’s effect on the sciences. Not to mention the attacks on Ibn Sina and the title of his book.

Thanks for the link. I try to catch up on Persian thinkers when I can. They are woefully underappreciated here in the US.

The very fact that Islamic societies tend to put so much of their cultural riches into one basket is itself a sign of brittle weakness.

A few hundred years before the Mongols that wasn’t really the case; the Mongol conquest was a kind of coup de grâce in that it finished off a declining dynasty. Scholarly centers had existed from Samarkand to Tunis during the early middle Ages.

I think theological skepticism was more responsible for Muslim underachievement than the Mongols, but the Mongols finished off much of what remained in the 13th century (except for astronomy, which they considered important for fortune-telling).

This reminds me of the people who thank Jesus for saving them from the tornado after they are pulled from the wreckage. Who sent the tornado in the 1st place?

The tornado is a natural part of God’s (good) creation. Some people chose to build a trailer park in, say, Kansas, where tornadoes have been ripping around for Lord knows how long.

So a tornado goes through the trailer park tossing the flimsy structures this way and that, and someone who prayed for deliverance is miraculously spared.

“Thanks, God, for sparing me despite our human folly”

That’s the Augustinian theodicy:

Evil and suffering is the price we pay for free will and original sin. Everything God does is good. If there is some evil or bad quality or event, it is because of an absence of God. Falsehood is an absense of truth, ugliness an absence of beauty etc. So in truth, evil doesn’t positively exist at all, but is merely a deficiency.

That’s not the only theodicy. The debate about evil carries on to this day:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy

As a lawyer you might find it interesting. Perhaps you have your own (or a Jewish) explanation?

Vancouver has grown a lot since I was a kid, but I think for your average wage earner the cost of living is about even on either side of the river. Also, I doubt you can avoid paying Oregon taxes if you live in WA and work in Portland and I (painfully) know you can’t avoid WA taxes if you buy a car in Oregon.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the A-holes at CBSA (Canadian border patrol) who will give you the latex glove treatment if they even suspect you’re making any money in Canada without paying Johnny Canuck.

They embraced radical theological skepticism. That’s the Al Ghazali guy I linked.

His position was that we really can’t know why anything happens except that it is God’s will, so philosophical (and by extension scientific) inquiry is a waste of time.

Sounds kind of obtuse to modern ears, but you have to keep in mind that this was essentially David Hume’s epistemological position as well, and Hume was a very formidable modern thinker. It’s very hard (although not impossible) to refute this. Try plowing through Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and you’ll see what I mean.

Because Al Ghazali’s ideas found broad acceptance in Islam, they shaped the subsequent development of Islamic civilization, much as Augustine of Hippo shaped Christian civilization.

Wave a red flag, appeal to their vanity, greed, or fear, and voila, a war for freedom! We can blame duplicious elites or scheming diasporas only so far, at some point the majority rubes bear guilt. That Americans aren’t supporting the recent war is more due to their anxiety about their status at home in a much browner and gayer America.

100% agree about the rubes being responsible.

However, the kids aren’t buying it. Crazy but true. I know because I have a couple in that age bracket. I can’t say what’s changed (hell, they hardly ever listen to me), but it’s very different from a generation ago.

You can’t take anything in regime media at face value anymore. There is no consensus. It’s different from anything I’ve ever seen in this country in my life.

Seems to have had that effect in East Asia where the scholar gentleman was rewarded. But in the Islamic world it was usually warlords who had a lot of wives, and that has a somewhat different result.

My theory is that if you let rich/smart guys hoard the women the men will degenerate over time into a bunch of venal, four-eyed dweebs. Of course you don’t want the opposite, as in the American underclass where the most brutish, stupid thugs father more children because welfare promotes such behavior.

Monogamy provides the best balance.

But the Muslim world is pretty barren intellectually. Not sure why.

Wasn’t always that way.

I think this guy had something to do with it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ghazali

Also this didn’t help:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad

I wonder if the current fad for giant four-door pickups is a repeat of this. You rarely see them toting anything, even out here in the countryside.

Yeah, they’re all over the place, even here in WA where despite our many refineries our gas is very expensive (taxes). Huge, shiny, spotless, and apparently never used for anything besides showing off around town.

I’ve got to wonder what the appeal could possibly be besides being big and imposing, because I’ve driven my fair share of large vehicles and they aren’t exactly a pleasure to drive.

One thing I’ve noticed about truckers who spend countless hours driving big rigs is that lots of them have a preference for small cars and motorcycles for personal use, so these big shiny trucks come off as totally fake poser-mobiles to me, and I can’t stand it when they park opposite each other in parking lots.

Twinkie’s Catholic. So am I. We are realistic about the Russians. Brothers in Christ, yes, but also rivals from time to time. Put simply, they’re different in a way that Poles and Western Ukrainians are not, and we’d prefer they stay put. Of course that neither rules out negotiation nor necessitates war. Personally, I’m in favor of a settlement that lets the Russians keep their own sympathizers while Ukrainians who want to align with the West get freedom and self-determination.

So while I think the war is stupid and unnecessary, and that Russia was clearly provoked, when it comes down to it I’m still on Ukraine’s side. My guess is Twinkie has the same sentiment.

The real tragedy is that non-Christian neocons – who have no legitimate business meddling in Christian countries’ affairs – played a decisive role in starting this tragic and deadly conflict that is taking so many Christian lives.

My millennial priest denounced anti-white hatred a few months ago, and he’s a political moderate. People know it’s morally wrong, so it wouldn’t be politically costly to call it out. I’m surprised more politicians haven’t figured that out. Maybe they’re just afraid the degenerates in the media would jump them for it.

German Shepard + yak smell doesn’t sound appealing. You know how Tibetan Buddhists use yak butter for their votive candles? Their monasteries smell strongly of yak because of this.

I give my dog cow kneecaps to chew on so I see it rather frequently, but I pick it up and bag it so doesn’t sit there for the viewing pleasure of others.

The old men seemed like real hard-asses back then, too.

What really gets me is that back then I was in the company of people born in the 19th century every Sunday at mass.

I even met my great-grandpa, who was born in the 1880s. He personally witnessed Pancho Villa’s escapades, corpses washed up from the sinking of the Lusitania, the Battle of the Somme, the Easter Rising and the Lindberg flight across the Atlantic (he was a reporter for the Herald Tribune back when reporting was still a respectable and cool job). If only I’d been a few years older I would have known enough to ask him about it.

Makes me think kids should spend more time with interesting old people so they can get the sense that this history stuff really happened.

I barely remember the 70s, but from what I do remember I’d agree. I remember a shopkeeper cheating me out of a dime when I was about 5, packs of dogs running loose, the ubiquitous smell of piss and stale beer, dangerous electrical outlets, scary old people yelling at me and some really weird grown-ups working at my preschool… It was a rough time. But so were the early 90s.

Also the artistic level of film making was better. But I assume that’s not the target audience of this group.

Huh? Steve does movie reviews all the time. And I, personally, am a big fan of 1970s cinema. I even make my kids watch movies from that era.

Criticism and identification of the quite real, manifold destructive activities of Jews is really just diagnostic in nature: it is the very essence of the observed and the rational.

Actually, this is empirical but not yet rational.

When people call “anti-Semitism” deranged or pathological, they are just engaging in misdirection and distraction.

I don’t think it’s deranged, but I do think it’s the wrong approach. What people object to about Jews is not a result of their Semitism but rather their Judaism, yet it seems that very few people can articulate that these days, probably because they can’t articulate their own moral worldview.

Let me put it as succinctly as possible:

Jews believe they have a contract with God. They follow the rules and serve God, and He elevates them above all others who in turn serve them.

Christians believe something entirely different:

God served us to the point of suffering and dying a mortal death to save us from ourselves and teach us to serve Him and each other.

To Jews service is hierarchical; to Christians it is the highest virtue and source of all value. The Christian notion of equality derives from this metaphysical interdependence based on the obligation to serve (love God, neighbor — even enemy).

Islam is more like Judaism with simplified terms that are universally applicable rather than exclusive to one nation.

Whether or not people consciously believe, they inherit certain values through culture. Christians and Jews inherit different sets of values, which are the source of friction that leads to what is commonly called “anti-Semitism.”

If you understand the differences, the “mystery” disappears and it is much easier to deal with these problems with reason rather than the “pathos” of anti-Semitism. So I suppose if, like me, you think anti-Semitism is a visceral response to the problems caused by conflict between Christian and Jewish mores, it is indeed “pathological” in the literal sense of the term.

Even though Jews didn’t invent the equalism heresy, it’s hard to ignore the massively disproportional present Jewish contribution to making the equalism heresy socially and legally mandatory

I’m not sure that’s the case. Jews are highly visible (and voluble) so more noticeable. But look beneath the surface and you’ll find layer after layer of true-believer gentiles.

Take MLK jr. for example. Possibly the biggest so-called Christian fraud of the last century. Sure, he had ethnic Jews working with him, like that commie speechwriter Stanley Levison, but who held his hand throughout his formative years? Progressive “Christian” white men. Who tolerated his plagiarism and encouraged his outright fraud in calling himself a pastor while privately denying the divinity of Christ? Again, not Jews, but white “Christians.”

The other great Christian fraud of the time was Jim Jones, an utterly degenerate and profoundly evil man who is arguably, through his seizure of the San Francisco political machine in the 1970s, the father of the modern progressive Democratic party. Jones is highly underrated. Willie Brown, Diane Feinstein and Harvey Milk, and by extension Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, among others, owe(d) their careers to him.

Perhaps I’m wrong about what I’m about to say, but I think Christianity is capable of the highest good mankind can achieve, but the other side of the coin is that with such knowledge of good also comes a greater capacity for evil. It is the price we pay for the fall:

The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil

Stalin trained in seminary. He was to become an Orthodox priest, but instead he joined the Communist Party, bent it to his will, and presided over a hellish regime of terror and mass murder. His Jewish rivals fell before him like blades of grass under a scythe.

My point is that in seeking to blame Jews, we take our eyes off the true culprit: ourselves. Reform starts with self-knowledge and requires self-mastery. Blaming Jews is like being an alcoholic who curses the liquor store as he takes another drink.

Jews or their analogues – those who reject our values – will always be with us. Personally, I’d rather it’s the Jews, who stand aloof and more or less openly practice their faith, than some secret sect or faction that stands with us by day then plots against us at night.

Finally, I have known some real anti-Semites personally. Their hatred for Jews was not balanced by love for fellow gentiles. Quite the contrary: their greatest love was for themselves, and others could go to hell. Often it seems their detestation for Jews was personal, e.g. due to professional rivalry. This is why I honestly believe anti-Semitism among white progressives is vastly underestimated, including by Jews themselves, and also why this sudden eruption of Jew hatred came out of the academic milieu.

I can only imagine how white gentile academics – often godless narcissists – must seethe as boorish, rich Jews call the shots at their institutions. People wonder how Nazis seemingly came out of nowhere to seize power in an advanced, highly-educated country like 1930s Germany. Well, there you go.

In any event, I’m very glad we can have this debate here. The US is full of cowards these days, but Steve isn’t one of them thank God.

Gold star comment. Reposted on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/Lorlordylor/status/1784578550902755710

When some mid-wit white/black/Asian journo-girl is blabbing and shrieking “race does not exist” or the “disproved theory of eugenics”, she didn’t come up with any of that herself. The “disproved” “consensus” she was indoctrinated with in college/media is the work of a bunch of Jewish guys. Ditto Asian girl judges in 2024.

We aren’t even supposed to namedrop Stephen J. Gould lest we commit the “sin” of anti-Semitism. LOL. “Thou shall not notice.”

I hate to sound like a broken record over this but in order to understand the origins of “equalism” we have to be clear about it’s origin.

It is actually a Christian error – I’d even call it a full-blown heresy at this point – that comes from mixing up material properties with transcendent ones.

Jews are impervious to it. The concept of human equality is completely absent from Judaism. The most celebrated Jewish philosopher of all time, Moses ben Maimonides, who was so impressive Thomas Aquinas felt it necessary to directly refute him in his theological masterpiece (Summa Theologica), is the first European known to compare blacks to monkeys.

No single non-Christian country (in truth no country not dominated by Anglo Christianity) buys into equalism, which is really a particularly dunderheaded kind of monism that no Jew or Muslim (true theological monists) with any sense would countenance. Not even Communists would buy it. Instead, it is particularly stupid Christians (or, to be more accurate, their progressive Anglo offshoots) who came up with the idea and have consistently advanced it from the late 18th century on.

If any Jews support this stupid idea, it is precisely because they don’t believe it; i.e. they favor blacks and other nonwhites because they think they are less of a threat due to inferior capabilities, and the belief is simply a useful expedient.

Be that as it may, whose fault is it really that some Christians hold this logically impossible position? Did a rabbi teach this to them? I’m afraid not. They came up with it on their own, so attacking the Jews over it is useless and won’t solve the problem. Actually, it will probably just make it worse as Jews will come to the conclusion that:

A. It works, and

B. We automatically and irrationally blame Jews for things that are not of their creation, and

C. Therefore Jews should keep supporting it to weaken us

Instead, criticism of Jews qua Jews should be limited to those things that are actually done in their name by their own will and supported in their own voice.

I wish everyone who abhors this sordid, destructive mania that has seized our people opposed it as much as you do, but I want us to actually defeat it, and my honest evaluation of the problem strongly suggests that instead of sniping at Jews, we should turn some big guns on the tenuous, fragile positions that support the edifice of equalism.

Mostly older ones who had to conform to preexisting norms. The next generation of female jurists is going to eviscerate our tradition of judicial independence

As I’ve often said, what goes unsaid tends to become inconceivable

Nah, they just put ladies on the bench. Choosing social conventions/coercion over objective reality causes zero cognitive dissonance for women. They’re very useful to powerful men in that way.

Hamilton was a young man at the time and often away from home. Resisting the advances of a determined harlot takes almost superhuman fortitude. How many men can honestly say they could do so if the woman is sufficiently alluring?

I think the episode makes Hamilton a more sympathetic man. It isn’t as though he was having gay orgies. All that happened was that an immoral woman took advantage of his healthy instincts. In addition to extorting him, she probably fully enjoyed herself, too. Hamilton was a good-looking man.

Blogging, yeah, it’s much better than Twitter. You should do it. Dont bury the talent. So much garbage out there these days it’s practically a moral imperative to offer some quality thought now.

While first gen AJ hybrids with high IQ NW Euros and NE Asians are often impressive, like me for example […]

Tits or GTFO

What a farce.

What’s a “Harvard man” today?

Not a man at all.

Ian, do you write elsewhere? I like your take on things and would be interested in seeing more of it.

If the West’s predicament is really caused by “the Enlightenment”, then we’re just screwed. There will never be a consensus to chuck science and the fruits thereof and almost no one actually wants to be ruled by churchmen–of any stripe. (Yuck.)

It isn’t that dismal. Science is here to stay, and can be reinvigorated by being put in it’s proper place, which is not as a guiding principle, but rather as subservient to the higher truths.

There’s a reason science emerged from a culture that worships the Truth as God. It’s the same reason that science is stalling and devolving into scientism as our society slides into subjectivism and skepticism.

That may be. It’s a theological argument worth having, and I know it is an ongoing dispute in Evangelical circles.

However, the Puritans never intended such an outcome, and that’s an important distinction between them and true anti-Christians. But today they are being blamed for all sorts of social pathologies that would horrify them if they were alive to see them.

Given the state of Protestantism today, it looks to me as though people are just kicking them while they’re down.

Boston was majority Unitarian by the end of the 18th century, IIRC. That’s about when the last of the old guard Puritans were forced out of Harvard and pastoralized.

Evidently the mercantile class had had enough of the austere spirituality of the Noncomformist Puritans. This was in fact an old dispute, the Puritans having originally gained the upper hand by expelling liberals in the early 17th Century.

So despite the contemporary fashion of blaming the Puritans for progressivism, it wasn’t really their fault, unless you want to blame their immoderate zeal for the subsequent backlash.

Yankee progressivism emerged, in my opinion, originally out of a desire for economic liberalism. Old fashioned Christian ideals can get in the way of commerce, and Boston was all about international trade. Boston ships were laden with cotton, sugar, rum, molasses, tea, coffee, whiskey, slaves, spermacetti, ambergris, Chinese opium, etc. etc.

The Indians on the Pacific Coast called Americans “Bostons,” because that’s where all the Americans they had met were from.

I believe it’s Catholic scholar Patrick Deneen who has pointed out that each side of the political spectrum in the US promotes one variety of liberalism: the right promoting economic liberalism (Hamiltonian) and the left social liberalism (Jeffersonian). Opposing both is a kind of populist conservatism that was mostly expressed through Protestant Christianity.

So one could say that the American project has been based on an anti-Christian liberalism balanced by a fervent populist religiosity. Now that this Christian religiosity has been largely vanquished, the balance is gone and we are careening down the path of nihilism, which, as Dostoevsky pointed out, is the inevitable child of liberal parents.

So they’ve got a slightly different paternal lineage. Honestly who gives a shit? My paternal lineage is Welsh, which is kind of cool (King Arthur and all that), but I’m about 6% Welsh at most.

So if I knock up a Scot (I have), do I get to claim Scotland for Wales? I suppose under the old rules that might have been possible, but then does my puny 3% Welsh contribution to the royal house magically change the ethnicity of Scots?

In fact, Norman claims on Britain seem to have been prompted largely by their maternal ancestry. Rollo and his descendants really liked Celtic girls, so by the time of William they were mainly of British descent, reintroducing British rule to England with only a Norwegian great grandpa in the mix.

Most of those weren’t Jews. They were Communists.

Communism is an overt repudiation of Judaism. Not sure why people don’t get it.

Marx made himself quite clear:

Many “Orangemen” and their Scottish cousins will “see red” at the slightest hint that their ancestors were of Gaelic stock.

It doesn’t make sense that they were much else. Not that many English bothered to emigrate to Ulster, and the continental Protestants settled in Ireland mostly left as soon as they were able.

Scots, on the other hand, emigrated to Ulster en masse, especially during the late 17th century famine.

I suppose they can deny their Gaelic origins, but then what to make of their own names? The Presbyterian hero John Knox, for example, has a Gaelic surname. Ironically, there are plenty of Ulster Scots named Kennedy, and the list of Ulster Protestant surnames that begin with “Mc” or “Mac” is too long to post here.

One of my favorite examples is actor Kenneth Branagh, an Ulster Protestant whose name means “The Welshman” in Irish/Gaelic. OK, maybe this surname means his distant forefather was a Welshman, but why, if he isn’t of ancient Gaelic heritage, is it in Gaelic? Shouldn’t it be something like Davies?

Here are the names of the UDA leadership as yet another example:

Charles Harding Smith (1971–1973) – Anglo
Andy Tyrie (1973–1988) – Gaelic
John McMichael (Commander of the UFF until 1987) – Gaelic

Inner Council:

Jackie McDonald – Gaelic
Johnny Adair – Gaelic
Jim Gray – Anglo
Andre Shoukri – wog
James Simpson – Anglo

South East Antrim Commander

Billy McFarland – Gaelic
Matt Kincaid – Gaelic

That’s 6/10 Gaelic, 3/10 Anglo, and one “miscellaneous” that made up the leadership of the notorious loyalist fanatic association. They can claim they’re not Gaelic until they’re blue in the face, but their mothers know otherwise.

What was your friend doing there? Was he an arms dealer, since Ukraine is one of the biggest vendor of military technology to China?

She was just trying to make money. And she had some success at it, but last I heard her boyfriend stiffed her and took the money back to France. I don’t know the full story, so I can’t say whether that’s what really happened. Everything was word of mouth in China back then.

Anyway, Ukraine was a total “shithole country” in the 90s, so lots of them were running anywhere they could to get out. Some of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in person were plying the trade in Beijing at the time. I was a very young man – barely an adult – and that was profoundly demoralizing to me.

My friend – her name was Olga – was mixed up in some shady business, so I avoided getting too close to her, but I don’t think it had anything to do with weapons. In hindsight, she was an intelligent, quality woman getting by with the cards she’d been dealt. Life in this world isn’t fair.

“Gordon Roberts” looks like the kind of name a marcher lord would have. Roberts is Cambro-Norman, like Joyce, de Clare (Strongbow), Costello and many others. Gordon is a Scottish name of Brythonic origin, same as Abercrombie and Wallace.

My guess is that the Roberts family descends from Cambro-Norman nobility who assimilated into Irish society prior to Elizabethan times, retaining the Catholic faith even as it was suppressed in England and Wales.

So if Gordon Roberts Maher took his first and middle names from a maternal ancestor (common practice among Catholics), then he likely has some Norman ancestry, which is far from rare among Irish Catholics.

Orange Irish are in large part remnants of the Dal Riata kingdom, which was centered in Antrim, extended into western Scotland, and was distinctly Gaelic (e.g. Trump’s Protestant but very Gaelic mother Mary MacLeod). Purely Welsh/Brythonic surnames, such as Morgan or Jones, are rare among them, although Norman names are common (as they are all over the British Isles — the Normans got around).

My Orange Irish maternal great grandmother was a Sheeran, which is a common name in Ulster and clearly of indigenous Irish origin. It goes to show that there isn’t a clear racial divide in Ireland between Irish Celts and Protestant Saxons. That notion doesn’t even come close to the reality. Actually, culturally speaking, Dublin is arguably more English than Belfast, which has traditionally had closer ties to Scotland.

A Ukrainian friend of mine operated a dance club in Beijing in the late 90s along with her French Jewish boyfriend. Because it was a lucrative business it was a joint venture — with the PLA believe it or not.

Chinese were not allowed inside, because it would have immediately filled up with hookers and hustlers and ruined the place if they were. The People’s Liberation Army was perfectly content to allow a segregated space for Westerners in the capital city of Communist China. Nobody batted an eye.

Maher is ok. Bryndis looks so much like my sister that I can’t honestly evaluate her (too weird).

I think part of the problem with Nordic women is this overestimation of their beauty. Mediterranean women are actually much sexier.

I don’t think it’s rape fantasies. Actually, Nordic guys could much more easily rape than scrawny Syrians. Maybe some of these ladies just want a sort of exotic pet, like the husband version of a purse-dog. Also they like that the Syrians think they’re hot while their own men are not all that impressed.

But as it turns out when the Arabs actually show up the Nords don’t want to have anything to do with them aside from farming them on the government payroll.

This was built as the German-American Turnverein Society before it was sold to the Norwegians. Things change. I like what they’ve done to the place. TBH, when it was Dovre Hall, it was boring looking

At least someone’s keeping the eastern European sense of humor alive here — I think we’re going to need it soon enough. I’ll have some sprats on black rye to go with that.