You remind me of that quote from “Prizzi’s Honor”

Jack Nicholsen (to Kathleen Turner) “So, how many guys have you whacked?”
Turner – “Not many”
Jack – “How many is not many?”
Turner – 25, 30.
Jack – “That’s NOT MANY ?!?”
Turner – Well, not considering the size of the general population”

Compared to rates for other groups in the U.S., 35/100,000 is high. No, it’s probably not as good a job of it as Genghis Khan or Stalin would have done, but still…

“The overall rate has dropped significantly in pretty much everything since then. The incarceration rate has also begun to fall.”

This is true, so lucky you – for now…

“The murder rate for blacks is 35 or so per 100 000 black people (2010). Thats tiny”

Tiny? Compared to what? Mexico has a murder rate of about 20/100,000, and the country is coming unglued. Brazil had a murder rate of 33/100,000, and practically declared martial law. Yeah, the black murder rate is lower than it was in the 1970’s but that tells you more about crime in the 70’s than anything else.

Get this misdreavus guy a blog, stat!

"The average IQ of a group, a team or a race matters little, if at all. What counts is how well they communicate, collaborate and exchange ideas."

Pure, flat-out assertion. It may be true, but is there any evidence of this at all/ Or is this just what Ridley wants to believe is true?

The next few weeks are going to be fun. Race deniers are going insane over this thing.

Of course it's true, the USSR and the Free World waged incessant economic warfare against each other, and tried to hurt each other in any way possible. This is neither crazy nor a scandal. It's not like the USSR didn't have a lot of Active Measures going against the West, as well. They didn't call it the Cold WAR for nothin' Annie. What the Hell is the matter with people today?

And for whatever reason, there’s nothing like the subject of nutrition to bring out sloppy thinking in people. As a friend of mine once observed, people seem to desperately want food taboos, and they seem upset that the Western Christian tradition doesn’t really have any, so people keep trying, only in the name of “health” or suchlike. Labeling otherwise totally unobjectional foods as “pure” or “unclean” seems to fill some sort of deep human need.

If the New York Times had hated Communism half as much as it hates non-Communist Russia today, the Cold War would have ended sometime in 1964.

Unlike a lot of liberals, Applebaum seems to be genuinely horrified by Communism and it's record of mass murder, and that's all to the good. But someone should tell the poor woman that 1)the USSR fell back in 1991, and 2) Harry, Ike , and Ron did not stand up to the Commies in the name of gay rights. And while we're at it, someone should tell NATO as well

Wesley Clark was a classic example of the Peter Principle in action. He was a great lower ranking officer, but he simply did not have the judgement to be a general, as the Pristina incident shows. Another prie example of the U.S. military's deeply flawed "up or out" strategy.

I'm not a big fan of Margolis, but he's dead right on this. Considering how a lot of these same people couldn't wait to sell us out to the Commies in the Cold War, the current anti-Russian hysteria is mind-boggling. Of course, I suppose that this whole business is some sort of milestone; the American Left finally met a KGB agent that they didn't like.

Marxism? Open Borders? Is this guy nuts? Well, yes, he is. And if Christianity favors open borders, it's odd that this has only been noticed for the last fifty years or so. No one in 1924 thought that immigration restriction was anti-Christian.Did someone find some lost book of the Bible or something that I missed?

Peter,
Ambrose did not approve of violence in self-defense, but he DID support the death penalty, which is what I stated. They are two different things.

"The death penalty had support from early Catholic theologians; Saint Ambrose encouraged members of the clergy to pronounce and even carry out capital punishment; Saint Augustine answered objections to capital punishment rooted in the fifth commandment in The City of God. Augustine's argument is as such: "Since the agent of authority is but a sword in the hand [of God], it is in no way contrary to the commandment `Thou shalt not kill' for the representative of the state's authority to put criminals to death".

Let's be clear – the Church never regarded the death penalty as "inherently wrong". St. Ambrose defended capital punishment at the very beginning of the Dark Ages, and this never changed – the only debate was as to when the application of the death penalty was just. Also, there is plenty of support for the death penalty in the New Testament (Romans 13, 1-4, anyone?) and there was also plenty of execution and torture under the late Roman Empire, just read a history of the period. The thesis expressed in the essay above is interesting, but flawed.

Yeah, what happened to a few Poles in New Zealand seventy years ago is really germane to millions of Hispanics in the U.S. today. If this is the best the pro-invasion people can do, they're really desperate.

Yes, and it was obvious. I mean lack of drinking in Victorian England? Really? REALLY?!?

"Part of me wants to scientifically rebut the IQ-related claims of Herrnstein, Murray, Watson and Richwine"

Go for it, dumbass. I'd like to see you try.

But he did get "Vibrant" in there really quick. That ought to count for something.

Wilkinson is a buffoon. Why anyone gives a rat's patoot about what he thinks is a mystery.

Musharraf was still better than the nitwits/Taliban opening act that is running Pakistan now. Admittedly, that's a low bar to clear, but still…

Toddy Cat

Sabermetrics is kind of like Michael Jackson, the Laffer Curve, and Adam Smith ties; they were really cool back in the '80's, and they probably all made some positive contributions, but it's time to move on. The bloom is very much off the Sabermetrics rose, no matter what Nate Silver thinks.

"Most Democrats aren’t “anti-White.”

Hoa anyone can read the crowing of certain Democrats after the last electiom, and say this with a straight face, beats me.

"Why, that general theme hasn't come up here since 1 whole posts ago"

Then quit reading it, dipshit. No one asked you.

With all due respect, Christianity is not pacifist in theory, and throughout most of its history, it has not been pacifist in practice. In fact, the “evidence…is fairly strong that from A.D. 170 onward there were significant members of Christians in the [Roman] army, and ‘the numbers of these Chrisitans began to grow, despite occassional efforts to purge Christians from the army [by the Romans], through the second and third centuries into the age of Constantine. We may estimate the number of Christian soldiers at the beginning of the fourth century in the tens of thousands’” (p.112 of Prof. J. Daryl Charles’ War, Peace, and Christianity. Also, see the Bible for additional verification.

For Lord's sake.

With regard to British views of the American military; yes, there's a long history of this, primarily stemming from the Brit superiority complex. In both WWI and WWII, those who fought against the U.S. military had a much greater regard for it than did the British (read Rommel's writings, or Ludendorff's). Of course, this attitude led to such British military triumphs as Bunker Hill, New Orleans, and Lundy's Lane, but it was not confined to Americans (see Isandlewana, Chilianwallah, Balaklava, etc.) Of course, this arrogance is also what built the Empire, so…

I agree with Udolpho. I'm no big fan of Taleb, but there's no doubt that he got the better of this exchange.

They're hugging each other. What the Hell is that supposed to prove? I saw my (very non-feminist) Dad hug my (very non-feminist) Mom that way a hundred times. Once again, this illustrates the fact that the Obamas are a mirror that other people project their hopes and dreams onto.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again – anyone who takes Bryan Caplan seriously needs to have his head examined. Caplan is an open borders fanatic and a pacifist, so any society that adopted his policy prescriptions would perish pretty much immediately. Caplan's only saving grace is that he dislikes Communism, but so does anyone who isn't a loon, so that's not saying much.

The Republican Party needs to sign this guy up.

Yes, the media will spin this as an Obama victory no matter what happens. We'll se if the American people fall for it.

Is anyone surprised that the takeaway from this article is “People are fungible. A Mexican is a Belgian is a German is an American. And oh, yeah, Hispanic immigration is good, and we need more of it”.

I have no idea if Unz or Lynn is right, but the word for Mr. Unz’s article is “tendentious”, as indeed is Lynn. We need light on this subject, not heat, and Mr. Unz’s ongoing love letter to Hispanics isn’t helping matters any.

"Native Americans (whose DNA is indistinguishable from East Asians"

Anyone who claims that American Indians and East Asians are "indistinguishable" is deranged. Full stop. Go back to reading your Gould and Lewontin.

"And one of the architects of the JFK assasination. Every American should read JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass. I would stake my last dollar that it is all true."

Ah, that's exactly what they WANT you to think…

So according to the NYT, homophobia is ok, as long as it's commies doing it. Why am I not surprised?