I saw this on NRO this morning. The other day, I went around and around with some sheeple that I suspected were campaign volunteers for Ed Gillespie, the Liberal Republican running for Senate in Virginia. If you look in the comment section of that last linked post you’ll see me in there all over the place. My argument is a simple one. If you don’t see a choice on the ballot that represents your interests, not voting is always a choice and often the right one. If you’re choice is a child molester and a rapist, no one would fault you for refusing to endorse either option with your vote. In fact, everyone would applaud you for staying home and doing the right thing.

That’s the thing hod carriers like Jim Geraghty either don’t understand or would like you to ignore. The latter is a strong possibility as this has been explained to him dozens of times. A self-governing people not only selects amongst the options available, they decide on the options. One block offers up their preferred choice. Another block offers up their choice. The people unsure of which block is right ultimately decide the winners. Some will reject all of the options and seek out an alternative. They can’t do that if they always select from the offered choices.

The sheeple of the GOP insist the dissenters are being unreasonable. After all, staying home means the other side wins. They always claim the dissenters are looking for perfection and that’s the dissenters are being childish. That’s obnoxiously stupid, which reinforces the sense amongst the dissenters that the hod carriers simply don’t respect the opinions of the dissenters. Frankly, it is the only reasonable conclusion. If every time you raise an objection you’re told to shut up and sit down, what other conclusion can you draw?

What’s irritating about the “perfection” claims is they are easily disproved by recent elections. Conservatives of all stripes, even paleos, came out in force for the GOP is 1994, 2000, 2004 and 2010. The latter election was fueled by the populist uprising called the Tea Party. Their aim was to reform the GOP, not embrace it. Ever since, the GOP has made war on these people, driving out of the Tea Party wherever possible. Telling these people that perfection is the enemy of the good enough, when they have been living that life and got nothing but abuse for it, is a kick in the teeth.

The problem for the GOP is that no one believes them. The Bush years were a disaster for the Right and the GOP. I suspect a lot of Tea Party types would run back to them if the GOP leadership was at least willing to admit they bungled things in the Bush years. Guys like Jim Geraghty, no one’s idea of a deep thinker, would do the most good popularizing these confessions, not defending the privileges of an increasingly alien party establishment. But, offering up profiteers like Ed Gillespie in a winnable Senate race, however, says the GOP is more concerned with purging their party of voters than fighting the Liberal Democrats.

This can’t last. It is why UKIP is about to drive a beer truck through the Tories. The large number of Euro-skeptic in England need a party. The large number of diversity and immigration skeptics need a party. If the main parties refuse to speak to the issues important to the people, the people will inevitably find someone who will. In the fullness of time, the GOP’s decision to make war on the Tea Party will be seen as the turning point similar to what the Compromise of 1850 was to the Whig Party.

People on the Right are the most likely to accept half a loaf. It is their greatest flaw, one that the Left has expertly exploited since the birth of the American Left. The reasonableness and politeness of the Right is its broken window, through which all of the Rousseau-ist rats have entered. The party that pretends to represent the Right can no longer demand their voters reach into the bowl and select a turd for their turd sandwich.  Half a loaf is one thing. Half a turd is beyond the pale.

Like the Scottish independence vote, I can’t make up my mind on the November elections. I think the country would be best served with a massive Republican victory. They could bottle up Barry’s judicial nominees for two years and stop his planned amnesty. Barry would be a lame duck and spend the next two years playing dress up with Reggie Love. The Republicans would do nothing to address the many things that ail the nation, but at least they would probably staunch the bleeding.

On the other hand, a loss would throw cold water on Conservative Inc and the Wets in the GOP. I fear I would blow a funny fuse watching guys like Hannity burst into tears on election night. The crew at National Review would be wearing black arm bands for a week. But, there’s the danger they draw the wrong lesson and lurch even further to the left. If they can look at the 2010 election and conclude they had to try and compromise with Barry, there’s probably no amount of evidence they can open their eyes and see.

It is with mixed emotions I link to this story in the Lunatic Post.

Democrats are now (very slightly) favored to hold the Senate majority on Nov. 4, according to Election Lab, The Post’s statistical model of the 2014 midterm elections.

Election Lab puts Democrats’ chances of retaining their majority at 51 percent — a huge change from even a few months ago, when the model predicted that Republicans had a better than 80 percent chance of winning the six seats they need to take control. (Worth noting: When the model showed Republicans as overwhelming favorites, our model builders — led by George Washington University’s John Sides — warned that the model could and would change as more actual polling — as opposed to historical projections — played a larger and larger role in the calculations. And, in Republicans’ defense, no one I talked to ever thought they had an 80 percent chance of winning the majority.)

So, what exactly has changed to move the Election Lab projection? Three big things:

* Colorado: On Aug. 27 — the last time I wrote a big piece on the model — Election Lab said Sen. Mark Udall (D) had a 64 percent chance of winning. Today he has a 94 percent chance.

* Iowa: Two weeks ago, the model gave state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) a 72 percent chance of winning. Today she has a 59 percent chance.

* Kansas: Republican Sen. Pat Roberts’s reelection race wasn’t even on the radar on Aug. 27. Today, Election Lab predicts that he has just a 68 percent chance of winning.

In addition to that trio of moves in Democrats’ direction, Louisiana has moved slightly in Democrats’ favor (from a 57 percent chance of losing to a 53 percent chance), as has North Carolina (a 97 percent chance of winning now as opposed to a 92 percent chance on Aug. 27).

The fapping sounds from Chris Cillizza’s cubicle are what you think. He is one the hardest of hard thumping lunatics in the fake data journalism rackets. The “data lab” at the Lunatic Post is a room covered in posters of Barry. I’d also note that around this time in 2006 the GOP was making similar noises about polling. They were crushed  two months later.

Steve Sailer has been wondering why the Cult is obsessing over trivia like Ferguson. NYTimes is carrying on like some homo was kiled, rather than a ghetto giant. We keep seeing non-stories getting more coverage than stories one would assume have greater public interest. The increasingly dangerous situation in Ukraine, for example, generates little coverage, despite the fact the West is headed for an ugly showdown with Russia. The domestic economy, staggering along in ways not seen in a generation, generates no news coverage.

Then we have this berserk obsession with some football player who hit his old lady. Everyone knew when the story first hit the wires that the player punched his old lady in the elevator. Unless you’re missing a chromosome, you could figure out how the women ended up unconscious. That and the player’s confession solved that mystery months ago. Now, a video comes out showing the incident, as the normally inert US Senate is moved to get involved in what the state prosecutor thought was a nothing incident.

The lunatic sporting press has been treating this like Watergate for two weeks now. Meanwhile, real scandals like the IRS systematically harassing citizen on behalf of the White House goes unmentioned. The White House attempt to declare Obama dictator so he rewrite laws as he sees fit is treated like a zoning board hearing in Poughkeepsie. Whenever this is pointed out, the lunatic press claims they merely chase the stories of interest to the public.

But, public reaction to the Rice story looks more like mockery of the lunatics than real interest. Last night the Ravens played Pittsburgh and the Baltimore fans were wearing Ray Rice jerseys. It seems clear they were not doing this to support wide beating. Most of the people wearing the jerseys were women. They were doing it to protest the lunacy they see from the Cult on this issue.

Music blared from the purple bus, and Baltimore Ravens fan Racquel Bailey stood with drink in hand amid her usual tailgate buddies while making a bold fashion statement: a black, rhinestone-decorated jersey with the white No. 27.

A Ray Rice jersey.

“There’s two sides to every story,” said the 23-year-old waitress from Baltimore. “I saw the video. That’s their personal business, and it shouldn’t have affected his career. I don’t agree with domestic violence, but she’s still with him, so obviously it wasn’t that big of a deal. Everyone should just drop it.”

Ravens fans male and female, young and old, arrived for Thursday night’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers debating the events that have affected their team over the last few days. Their once beloved running back has been kicked off the team and banned by the NFL after a video surfaced that showed him punching his then-fiancee — and now wife — inside an Atlantic City hotel elevator.

All condemned Rice’s actions, but there was little consensus as to what his punishment should be. The NFL did the right thing by suspending him, some said, but the Ravens shouldn’t have terminated his contract as well. Or maybe the suspension should have remained at two games, where it stood before the punch video became public.

The question is why does the Cult become obsessed on nothing stories like this or hoax stories like the Ferguson riots?

My offering is the Unitary Cult Theory. This is when members of a mass movement, always jostling with one another for status within the movement, close the information loop, excluding information from people outside the movement regarding a topic. The result is a piety contest where members of the movement stand up and commit increasingly extreme acts of public piety.  As more and more members jump into the ring, the contest quickly spirals out of control resulting in these absurd public displays.

Because the country is run by the Cult of Modern Liberalism, these piety wheels get maximum attention. The public is often sucked into the the false drama in the same way people get caught up in a TV serial. That’s gasoline on the fire. With Ferguson, the public has seen that drama too many times to stay interested for very long. The Gay Gayington story is too disgusting. This Ray Rice story gets more interest because the NFL is so popular and everyone can relate the story at the center of it.

The other piece of this, of course, is why the focus on trivia and hoaxes? We’ve had so many race hoaxes, the default assumption now is the next one will be a hoax as well. Part of it is how the mind of the fanatic operates. They see only that which confirms their fanaticism. When a white cop shoots a black giant, the fanatics in the Cult process that as yet another bit of data confirming the narrative. When a black cop shoots a white guy, it is filtered out and ignored.

At the macro level, the Cult, like any mass movement, will collectively focus away from dis-confirmation. The Cult has been in charge of American cities for 70 years. The problems of the black ghetto are the responsibility of the Cult. They cannot admit it or even acknowledge it, so they look to places like Ferguson. Given the times, the Cult is desperate to focus on news stories that have nothing to do with politics because then they have to face up to the failings of their idol, Barry Obama.

Finally, this story has something extra for the Cult. They love to destroy that which is popular with normal people. The NFL is very popular with typical white people. It is the typical white person sport. That means the Cult must hate it with all their worth. The Ray Rice story gives them a chance to land some blows on what is for the Cult, a proxy for middle America.

I’ve always been skeptical about the claims from libertarians regarding drug legalization. I’ve known enough drug dealers to know these people are not going to join the above ground economy once drugs are legal. Similarly, the gang bangers in the ghetto are not opening up boutique dispensaries once we end the drug war. Drugs certainly play a role in the degeneracy of the lower classes, but they are not a cause.  Poor people make bad choices, have high time preference and a below average IQ. There are exceptions, but that’s always the case with general rules.

That’s not to say the war on drugs is a good thing or even a necessary thing. In a time of low cultural confidence, aggressive policing of vice is never going to work. In fact, it just adds to the social pathologies that blossom during times of cultural decay. The cops are not hassling drug dealers in the ghetto out of righteous anger. They are doing it for money.

That’s why the tide seems to be turning on the drug war. All of the most glamorous people are now proud of their hookahs and dank tanks.  The cultural elite are squarely behind legalization and the political elites are coming around now too.

A 21-member international panel urged a global overhaul of drug policies on Tuesday, calling for some drugs such as marijuana to be regulated, an end to incarceration for drug use and possession, and greater emphasis on protecting public health.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy said traditional measures in the “war on drugs” such as eradicating acres of illicit crops, seizing large quantities of illegal drugs, and arresting and jailing violators of drug laws have failed.

The commission’s 45-page report pointed to rising drug production and use, citing the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s estimate that the number of users rose from 203 million in 2008 to 243 million in 2012.

The commission includes former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan; the former presidents of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland; British tycoon Richard Branson and former U.S. Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker. It was established in 2010 with a stated purpose of promoting “science-based discussion about humane and effective ways to reduce the harm caused by drugs to people and societies.”

The commission’s first report in 2011 condemned the drug war as a failure and recommended major reforms of the global drug prohibition regime. This report goes further, encouraging experiments in legally regulating markets in currently illicit drugs “beginning with but not limited to cannabis, coca leaf and certain novel psychoactive substances.”

It called for “equitable access to essential medicines, in particular opiate-based medications for pain,” noting that more than 80 percent of the world’s population has little or no access to such medications. It also called for an end to criminalizing people for drug use and possession, a halt to “compulsory treatment” for such people, and alternatives to incarceration for non-violent, low-level participants such as farmers, couriers and others involved in producing, transporting and selling illegal drugs.

“The facts speak for themselves,” said Annan, who is also the convener of the West Africa Commission on Drugs. “It is time to change course.”

The facts clearly show the war on drugs to be a failure. Compared to my youth, drugs are cheaper, more diverse, more potent, more evenly distributed and more sophisticated. If prohibition was having any impact on supply, all the metrics would point in the other direction. The best you can argue is it could be worse, but that’s a gratuitous assertion. When you add up the costs, the war on drugs looks like an epic failure.

Legalization will not be a panacea. In fact, there may be a very high cost to legalization. Drugs like weed have been proscribed for generations now. No one alive recalls a time when heroin, cocaine and cannabis were legal. More modern drugs like hallucinogens and dissociatives were broadly banned decades ago. That means generations have adjusted to the current arrangements. There will be a cost to breaking up those arrangements.

No one considers that because it is hard and not very cool. Libertarians, like Liberals, see only one side of the ledger. Basking in their new hipness, the drug legalizers are in no mood to think about the other side of the ledger. But, the first time a “dispensary” blows up or the owner is gunned down, everyone will suddenly remember that the drug dealers did not pack up and go away just because weed is legal.

Not that it will matter. The rulers have concluded that it is too much fuss to defend western civilization. The easy choice is to give the mob free drugs so they can sleep through the rest of the collapse. The Romans gave away free grain. The new Rome gives away free weed. I’m sure it will turn out just fine.

In the 1970′s, Nixon began to win over southern whites to the GOP by appealing to middle-class, suburban voters. The Left called the “Southern Strategy” racist because that’s what they do, but it was really just a strong defense of normal, middle-class values. In the face of the liberal onslaught on normalcy, those southern whites out in the burbs started to reconsider their long relationship with the Democrat Party. The Left squealed about “code words” and racism, as they just assume all whites in the South are racists. The fact is those early converts to the GOP were the southern whites looking to close the books on segregation and racial strife.

This argument carried on through the 80′s as the transformation of the South from Democrat to Republican was completed. If you know your Faulkner, Nixon converted the Compsons, while Reagan brought over the Snopes clan.

In fairness, race did play a role. After the 60′s, urban blacks rioting and looting became the face of disorder, the great enemy of the suburban burghers who fled the city for the suburbs. In the 1970′s, many of those people living in suburbia were there because their city neighborhoods collapsed in the 1960′s. The liberal enthusiasm for mayhem was amplified when they backed groups like the Panthers and the Nation of Islam. Nixon’s appeals to law and order naturally carried with them the image of the black rioter. He did not have to mention any of this. It was simply understood.

The thing about the Left is they tend to go craziest when applying their faults to their enemies. No one has cynically used race as a political weapon like the American Left. LBJ built his career long before the Civil Rights Movement on the back of race. He would appeal to blacks for votes and then use that support to lever support from the Texas elite. His cynical use of race as President still casts a shadow over the nation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was as much about funneling tax money into the Democratic Party as anything else. It also made blacks a reliable voting black that the party could take for granted.

Steve Sailer links to and comments upon a story in the NYTimes about how the Left is trying to use the Ferguson riot as a get out the vote tool. It says something about our times when the Times can report on something like this without bothering to notice the evil of it. The banality of the report is what’s shocking.

With their Senate majority imperiled, Democrats are trying to mobilize African-Americans outraged by the shooting in Ferguson, Mo., to help them retain control of at least one chamber of Congress for President Obama’s final two years in office.

In black churches and on black talk radio, African-American civic leaders have begun invoking the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, along with conservative calls to impeach Mr. Obama, as they urge black voters to channel their anger by voting Democratic in the midterm elections, in which minority turnout is typically lower.

“Ferguson has made it crystal clear to the African-American community and others that we’ve got to go to the polls,” said Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and a civil-rights leader. “You participate and vote, and you can have some control over what happens to your child and your country.”

The push is an attempt to counter Republicans’ many advantages in this year’s races, including polls that show Republican voters are much more engaged in the elections at this point — an important predictor of turnout.

What the Left is doing is encouraging blacks to riot. Think about that for a second. Appealing to voters on the basis of civil order can be racist, but it is not racist in itself. Order is what you must have in a civil and sane society. The Left is turning this on its head and telling their constituents that only through mayhem can they attain a civil and sane society. “Burn baby, burn” is fine when you’re sacking the village. It’s madness when it is your village.

Mr. Lewis is headlining efforts to mobilize black voters in several states with competitive Senate races, including Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina. The drive is being organized by the Congressional Black Caucus, in coordination with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Other steps, such as recruiting N.B.A. players to help register more African-Americans, are also underway.

Anyone who has read and understands Invisible Man will be reminded of the scene where the narrator examines the paper doll Clifton is selling. The Sambo doll is a metaphor for the life of the narrator and for blacks in America, maybe even the world. Kwame Nkrumah was a fan of the book and the metaphor. Specifically, whites manipulate blacks in the same way a puppeteer manipulates the puppet. The point is to entertain the patrons of the puppeteer. Mr. Lewis has volunteered to be the puppet for this latest drive by SWPL-ville to keep their enemies at bay.

While Democrats always seek to increase African-American turnout, that they are taking such aggressive steps to rally their most loyal constituency reflects the increasingly difficult landscape they face. In recent weeks, seats in Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire, once expected to tilt toward the Democrats, have become more competitive. Mr. Obama’s approval rating has tumbled below 40 percent in states with some of the most competitive races, and Republicans already seem assured to win at least three of the six seats they need to take back the Senate.

And the terrain is tricky: Many of the states where the black vote could be most crucial are also those where Mr. Obama is deeply unpopular among many white voters. So Democratic senators in places like Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina must distance themselves from the nation’s first African-American president while trying to motivate the black voters who are his most loyal constituents.

One of the fascinating things about the Left is the urge to commit suicide. In the 1990′s, they looked at the Clinton model and rejected it. The Clinton model was an old fashioned blend of agrarian populism and high brow elitism. Clinton could mix it up with the ruling class, but also hang out with the servant class. Reagan had this same quality, but without the seedy grubbiness we got with the Clintons. Bubba was a dirtbag who cleaned up well. Reagan was an aristocrat with the common touch.

The Left hated this and worked to destroy it, even as it put the GOP in the majority from 1994 through 2006. Obama was dumb luck. His team was great at running two campaigns, but they got lucky with the perfect candidate for the moment. Hillary would have won in 2008, but would have lost in 2012. She would have been a better president than Obama, but she lacks the unique appeal of Obama. Obama motivated the black vote in ways no one else will do and he got the SWPL vote out writing checks.

The thing is, the Obama approach works once. It’s why his vote fell off in 2012. You can only be the first black President one time. You can only be the Progressive Messiah once. It’s not that the coalition that supported Obama is temporary. It’s that its natural size is not enough to win elections. Without some way to get these people infuriated enough to vote in bulk, it is a loser hand. 2010 was a GOP blowout, despite the fact even the most loyal Republican thinks the party is run by idiots. 2014 is looking like another blowout, even though the GOP is just a little more popular than cancer.

As I wrote in another post, I think the Ted Talks site will keep me supplied with material for years to come. The attraction is the shallowness that is weirdly masquerading as high brow intellectualism. It’s a post-modern version of the old Three Stooges bit Swingin’ the Alphabet. Well, if it were on purpose. Lampooning high culture can be quite clever, when it is done on purpose. The TED Talk crowd is doing it by accident. This one on inequality is funny to me for some reason.

The great inequality of income and wealth in the world, and within the United States, is deeply troubling. It seems, even to many of us who benefit from this inequality, that something should be done to reduce or eliminate it. But why should we think this? What are the strongest reasons for trying to bring about greater equality of income and wealth?

One obvious reason for redistributing resources from the rich to the poor is simply that this is a way of making the poor better off. In his TED Talk on “effective altruism,” Peter Singer advances powerful reasons of this kind for voluntary redistribution: Many people in the world are poor, and the improvement in their lives that richer people can bring about by giving money is enormous by comparison with the small sacrifice that this would involve.

How much you want to bet that T. M. Scanlon, the guy responsible for those lines, gives next to nothing to charity? The people most troubled about the poor tend to do the least for the poor. That’s unfair of me, I know, but I’m not a nice person. As to his query, that answer has been supplied a million times in a million places. Lefty gets comfortably set in the upper middle-class and then starts to feel guilty. Lacking any sense of self-awareness, they declare it a “deeply troubling” social problem, which means more laws and more taxes on the rest of us.

Amazingly, the idea that there may be a reason why some people have nothing and others have extra is never mentioned in these disquisitions on inequality. I see poor people every day. I can give a lot of reasons for it. I’ve been to some dirt poor countries. In five minutes I can point out a dozen reasons why they are poor. Giving these people money is not solving anything. Once again, the people who are most concerned about poverty know the least about poor people.

Further along, the reasons he gives for wanting to force you to do something about inequality (as long as it does not cost him time or money) are interesting.

1. Economic inequality can give wealthier people an unacceptable degree of control over the lives of others.

If wealth is very unevenly distributed in a society, wealthy people often end up in control of many aspects of the lives of poorer citizens: over where and how they can work, what they can buy, and in general what their lives will be like. As an example, ownership of a public media outlet, such as a newspaper or a television channel, can give control over how others in the society view themselves and their lives, and how they understand their society.

Where has this ever been otherwise? Name a newspaper of any size owned by poor people. Name a poor person owned TV station. How about a government staffed with hobos? Under every imagined form of government in human history, the rulers have been in charge of the ruled. That’s why they are called rulers. They also have more stuff, more food and power over the lives of the ruled.

2. Economic inequality can undermine the fairness of political institutions.

If those who hold political offices must depend on large contributions for their campaigns, they will be more responsive to the interests and demands of wealthy contributors, and those who are not rich will not be fairly represented.

Steve Sailer likes to point out that liberals forget they have been in charge for close to a century. For forty years in America we have had laws against rich people making big contributions to office holders. In that time the influence of the rich has grown so much that government pretty much caters to them exclusively. Europe has seen a similar results. Maybe that’s a clue?

3. Economic inequality undermines the fairness of the economic system itself.

Economic inequality makes it difficult, if not impossible, to create equality of opportunity. Income inequality means that some children will enter the workforce much better prepared than others. And people with few assets find it harder to access the first small steps to larger opportunities, such as a loan to start a business or pay for an advanced degree.

Again, when has this ever been otherwise? The various Marxist schemes that professor Scanlon prefers have produced exactly this result. In fact, they were exaggerated under communism.

4. Workers, as participants in a scheme of cooperation that produces national income, have a claim to a fair share of what they have helped to produce.

What constitutes a fair share is of course controversial. One answer is provided by John Rawls’ Difference Principle, according to which inequalities in wealth and income are permissible if and only if these inequalities could not be reduced without worsening the position of those who are worst-off. You don’t have to accept this exact principle, though, in order to believe that if an economy is producing an increasing level of goods and services, then all those who participate in producing these benefits — workers as well as others — should share in the result.

But what did they produce? In my neighborhood, there are households that have not produced anything but mayhem for generations. In some of our more vibrant neighborhoods, there are three generations of some households in the same state prison. How about the guy who sells meth for a living? He may not be a burden on the state, as far welfare and prison costs, but he is burden on society. What’s his share?

The trouble with these disquisitions on inequality is not that they are mere sentimentality. The trouble is the sentiment is imaginary. No one really believes inequality is a problem, save for maybe a few bitter Marxists in your local state college faculty lounge. These are those old rancid hippies who have posters of Che Guevara on their office wall. No, the people who prattle on about inequality simply wish to replace the current inequalities that don’t favor them with a new set that do favor them.

You’ll note that the people convulsed by Piketty’s book are the managerial classes. These are the maidservants and coat holders for the ruling elite. A guy like T. M. Scanlon looks at a Mitt Romney and wonders how this boob got to be a billionaire. An Elizabeth Warren, making calls to beg for campaign cash wonders why she, a Harvard professor, should be begging these rich bastards for money. The credentialed members of the managerial class want more power and thus they complain about inequality.

Here and many other places, I’ve made the point that the Israeli – Arab fighting is a forever thing. It is what they do and that’s never going to change. I recall reading an old newspaper from the 40′s that had a headline about hopes for peace in the Levant. It was ridiculous then and it is ridiculous now.

Every president in my lifetime has taken a crack at making peace over there and all of them have failed. My bet is I live long enough to see the Jews and Persians exchange nukes. The Persians lob a small nuke into Tel Aviv and the Jews wipe out Tehran. The Arabs will quietly applaud, then go back to fighting the Jews.

As far as which side to take, I’m fine with backing the Jews. The Israelis are a civilized people with many connections to the West. While we are nominally Christian, a great many Americans have strong feelings toward Israel and the Jewish people for religious reasons. The support should be limited, of course, but the Jews don’t need a lot of support to defend themselves.

I’ve never bought into the argument that our support for Israel is why the Muslims hate us. The Muslims were a pain in our side as far back as the Barbary Wars. The people of that region have been hostile to their neighbors for as long as they have had neighbors.The best best way to deal with Arabs is to leave them alone, as much as possible.

There’s a brand of crank that can’t accept this. It used to be a paleo thing, but it manifest all over these days. On the Left it is driven by hatred of Evangelicals, who have a deep affection for Israel. Blacks like President Obama just hate Jews for historic reasons and that results in an anti-Israel bias. Libertarians with their child like view of the world think the world will just go away if we go away.

For reasons I don’t know Ron Unz seems to featuring a lot of Israel bashing. Maybe Unz hates Jews, I don’t know. Really smart guys often fall for crackpot theories. High IQ combined with very broad mindedness can be dangerous. I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m just seeing some patterns in the Israel-bashing.

The first thing you see with the Israel-bashers is an obsession with civilian deaths in the territories. This is a good example Unz published recently.

Let’s do a thought experiment and imagine that the Arabs had gotten the better of the Israelis in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and after years of conflict, all that was left of Israel was the Gaza strip.

Assume for a moment that instead of Palestinians, over 1.8 million Jews were crammed into the 11 mile Gaza strip and the state of Palestine, subsidized and supported by a superpower, was administering the calories to the Jews in Gaza, keeping them to a limit of 2,300 a day.

Imagine that instead of Palestinian children, it was Jewish children living under a Palestinian embargo that denied them toys, books, music and until a few years ago, even pasta. How do you think the world would react?

This sort of moral equivalence is common amongst the paleos. They create a framework that is seeded with half-truths and magical assumptions so they can cast the Jews in the worst possible light. In this case, the writer takes the fact the Jews actually provide most of the food to the Palestinians and phrases it as “keeping them to a limit of 2,300 a day.” Just for the record, that’s more calories than Arabs enjoy all over the Arab world.

The bit about denying the Palestinian kid “them toys, books, music and until a few years ago, even pasta” is half the story. The other half has something to do with the Arabs smuggling in rockets and bombs that they use to blow up civilians. The Arabs also like to use children as human shields for their rocket batteries.

But, the whole thing is just an egregious bit of moral obtuseness. We know what would happen if the Arabs ever beat the Jews. They would murder all of the Jews that did not flee to America. We know that because the Arabs have been saying it for fifty years. It is the official goal of Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLA.

These cranks also suffer from the “pushing old ladies” problem. That is, they look at one guy who pushes an old lady out of the way of a bus and another guy who pushed an old lady in front of a bus. They conclude both guys just like to push old ladies. Motivation is important, but not to dim bulbs like this guy.

The most recent fighting in Gaza was in fact started by Israel, which exploited the pretext of a kidnapping on the West Bank that it knew was not carried out by Hamas to use its armed forces to eliminate that group from power. It made mass arrests and killed some Palestinians on the West Bank before the Gazans responded with a barrage of homemade missiles, a weapon so ineffective that to this date it has only succeeded in killing one Israeli civilian. Israel has destroyed hundreds of homes in Gaza, devastated its infrastructure, and has killed nearly two thousand civilians who had no place to flee to.

The Palestinians have had many chances to make peace with Israel. They have refused all of them. Further, groups like Hamas target civilians in order to kill civilians. Israel kills civilians when going after Hamas. Maybe Israel could be more careful, but they are under no obligation to do so.

That’s the key feature of the Israeli bashers. They setup a moral code for one side and a different moral code for the other. Israel, could kill all of the men and sell the women and children into bondage. That’s how tribal warfare works. They at least make some effort to guard the people they are feeding and clothing. Those people make no effort to respond in kind.

Then you have the comparisons to Hitler’s Germany. This is a favorite of the cranks and one they picked up from the Left. Hilariously, they think “fascism’ is an abracadabra word that makes their antagonists disappear. Instead, they come off sounding like idiots.

Fascism is generally linked to ultra-right wing politics or attitudes. A fascist is a totalitarian who supports an all-powerful and centralized state that can do no wrong precisely because it is the government. Fascism views political violence, war, and imperialism as a means to achieve national rejuvenation, and it asserts that stronger nations have the right to expand their territory by displacing weaker nations.

There are common themes that generally surface when one speaks of fascist style states. All fascist regimes have an assertive ultra-nationalism that frequently feeds off a sense of victimhood. This need to assert a frequently mythical notion of national power and greatness, often through war or imperial expansion, generally produces a militarization of society as well as a rewriting of history to support the new agenda. Fascist government frequently evolve into police states to suppress dissent and maintain the regime.

Both Israel and the United States are increasingly characterized as police states where authority trumps liberties. They both claim victimhood from terrorism and have used that as an excuse to maintain aggressive foreign policies that emphasize the use of force as a first option. Both spend far more proportionately on “defense” than other developed countries and both are actively engaged in proxy and shooting wars around the world. Israel exploits its alleged victimhood to occupy Palestinian land and kill Arabs while the United States does the same to justify its continued presence in Afghanistan and its threats to use military force against nations like Iran and Syria.

The only thing this guy does here is prove he knows very little about fascism. Sure, Hitler used anger at the treaty of Versailles as a political tool. That’s a tiny bit of the story. Putting that aside, it leaves out one rather important point. Exactly two Arab countries acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. You get to be the victim in the story when the other guy wants you dead and will not consider another option.

Israel is not blameless for what happens in happens in their fight with the Arabs. Countries are run by people and people do and say dumb things. Often, they do what looks like the right thing and they get a terrible result. You can’t blame Israelis, however, from overlooking their own mistakes and focusing on those of their enemies. That’s human nature.

That’s the key with the Israeli bashers. They don’t allow for normal human failure when it comes to Israel. They have no trouble finding the humanity in the Arabs. They can’t imagine it with the Jews. In the end, they are that which they claim of Israel and Israel’s supporters. Worse, they excuse what the Arabs have done and that moves them into the antisemitism camp.

That’s what makes stories like this one so important. They clarify the differences, but they also expose the Israel-bashers. We don’t have Jews beheading innocent westerners on youtube. There’s a reason for it and it is the same reason Israel is the moral superior in the fight. It’s why good people can overlook the sins of the Jews and come to their aid.

We have had a week to stare at the mayhem going on in Missouri. Everyone including me has gas-bagged about it at one time or another. Most everyone has found themselves eating some words, including me. So it goes with the news these days. By the time you have a good bead on things and you have a well formed opinion, no one cares. Everyone is onto the next big deal that will not be remembered in a week. Given this is an election year, some women somewhere will have to buy her own rubbers and that will be the next reason for a riot.

Anyway, here a few lessons I think we can take from this story.

Black people don’t like white people. There are some black people who are comfortable around white people, but those are exceptions. Generally speaking, blacks don’t like whites. The news has brought a parade of black people telling us in one fashioned or another that they think all whites are suspect and probably guilty of doing some harm to blacks. It’s a fact white people never consider. It’s only when something like this happens that they recoil in horror at the realization.

I grew up around black people and they were always quite blunt about not liking white people very much. I live on the edge of the ghetto now and the local black people make it very clear they are not fond of the blue-eyed devil. Here’s a Rasmussen poll that makes it clear. Blacks assume the worst of whites and they are probably not unreasonable in thinking it. If you grew up being told by your mother that white people want to own you like a dog, you’re going to have a dim view of whitey.

White people don’t know anything about black people. I grew up in what used to be called a mixed neighborhood. In the South, whites and blacks have been rubbing shoulders since Anthony Johnson sued Robert Parker in the Northampton Court in 1654. When I moved north as a young man, one of the first astonishing things I discovered is just how little white people in the north knew about black people. In my lifetime that ignorance has spread everywhere, it seems. Unfamiliarity breeds boundless ignorance.

The thing is, whites want to know about black people. They just don’t want to live near them. They used to say that the whites in the north would treat blacks as equals as long as they did not have to live near them. Whites in the south were fine living around blacks as long as they did not have to treat them as equals. As has been the case for 150 years, the culture of the north dominates on this issue. Now, whites only know black people on TV. If you learn anything from Ferguson, it should be that black people are nothing like Beyonce and Jay-Z.

There’s no fixing the race problem. White people try hard to help black people. In fact, some white people are helping black people to death. The trouble is they don’t know anything about black people and wind up wasting time and resources on things that just make things worse. Nowhere on earth have blacks and non-blacks been able to live side-by-side in peace. In post-colonial Africa, the first thing the blacks did was attack the non-blacks. First it was the Europeans, naturally. Then it was the Indians, Arabs and Chinese.

In America, the story has been far better, but that’s because blacks are 13% of the population. Small minority groups tend to get along well with the majority. That does not change the fact that America is an anomaly in the race game. We probably had the golden age of race relations in the 80’s and 90’s and now it is heading back to something like the 70’s. That’s not awful, but it is never going to be the dreamy, weepy-eyed fantasy many white people imagine is just over the next hill. Race relations are going to be a tense stand-off for as long as any of us are alive. If anything, they will get worse.

We have a cop problem. The warrior cop business is getting a lot of play, but it is a symptom of a bigger problem. Liberals have decided to herd non-docile blacks into urban reservations. Conservatives decided to turn the cops into game keepers. Both sides then raced to see who could load the game keepers up with the most authority and weaponry. Now we have an army of pudgy robo-cops guarding a bunch of angry black people. The results are inevitable.

I’m sympathetic to the cops working the ghetto. They are given a job that is impossible. These are not men with the capacity to be philosophical about it. They want to get satisfaction from their work. Arresting the same guy over and over until he finally kills some other guy, who you have arrested over and over is not very satisfying. It does not take long for the cops to view the people they police as zoo animals. The ghetto is no place for people with a desire for accomplishment.

My sympathy for the cops does not change the fact we have a cop problem. We’re asking them to do things they are incapable of doing. Arming them to the teeth is not helping either. The fact is, the people of Ferguson don’t want the white cops from the suburbs policing their streets. Policing has to be local and personal. The cops in the black area should be from the black area. Let the brothas police themselves. It is not a perfect solution; it is just a better solution.

It looks like we have another “racially motivated” crime on our hands. He better bring his “peace mission” to Baltimore before things gets realz.

A 24-year-old man is listed in critical condition after being robbed and stabbed multiple times by a group of teenagers.

Early Monday morning around 4:20 a.m.  officers were called to the 1200-block of Wall Street for a reported stabbing. When officers arrived they located 24-year-old Sal Schittino suffering from multiple stab wounds to his body.

A preliminary investigation revealed that Schittino was attacked by four black males between the ages of 16 and 18, who had been riding on mopeds.

What?

The victim was white?!

Never mind. That’s not an issue anyone has to worry themselves over in this apartheid state country we call Amerikkka!

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you will have noticed that I am not particularly religious. I’m not an atheist, but I’m not religious. Mark me down as indifferent, maybe even insouciant. That said, I am sympathetic to Christianity and I think it is the one religion most compatible with self-governance. Islam is tribal and pagan. Judaism is too legalistic for anyone outside the tribe to manage. Atheism is just a license to believe any old nonsense that comes down the pike. Therefore, I prefer a mildly Christian society, if I get a choice.

The trouble is the people in charge of the country hate Christians with an intensity of a thousand suns. The Liberal Democrats, if they had the option, would make ISIS look multi-cultural. They would burn down every church in the country and ban the religion entirely. The Republicans have tried hard to use  Evangelicals for votes, but it has been hit and miss. Frankly, Evangelicals have been given a lot of bad advice about how to make a difference in politics. Now, the GOP is tired of pretending to care about things like abortion and homosexual marriage. They would like to free themselves of the snake handlers.

That means the Christians, social conservatives and Evangelicals may find themselves with out a candidate in 2016. At least, that’s what the WaPo is hoping for anyway.

Perched on the edge of his chair in a study overflowing with books, Pastor Gino Geraci reels off the Republicans he no longer believes in. His friend Mike Huckabee is an “odd bird” who couldn’t win a general election. Sarah Palin doesn’t inspire him with her “cliched responses to difficult questions.” Rand Paul is “fascinating but frustrating.”

Of all the Republicans weighing a bid for president in 2016, the only one who puts a smile on Geraci’s face is doctor-turned-conservative-media-darling Ben Carson. And yet, Geraci concedes, Carson is “not in the mainstream” and has little chance of ever being elected.

The assessment from Geraci, the founding pastor of Calvary South Denver, a sprawling evangelical church with several thousand congregants, reflects a broader sense of despair among white evangelicals about the Republican Party many once considered their comfortable home.

Many social conservatives say they feel politically isolated as the country seems to be hurtling to the left, with marijuana now legal in Colorado and gay marriage gaining ground across the nation. They feel out of place in a GOP increasingly dominated by tea party activists and libertarians who prefer to focus on taxes and the role of government and often disagree with social conservatives on drugs or gay rights.

I’ve always thought that Evangelicals have it wrong, as far as how to engage in politics. They think putting people who are from their cult in office is all that’s needed to get their desired policy outcomes. That was never going to work because big government is incompatible with religious liberty and social conservatism. The state is always at war with private association and private contract. The bigger the state, the more hostile it is to these things.

Meanwhile, the list of possible front-runners for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination includes New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has a limited relationship with evangelical activists, and the libertarian-leaning Paul, the senator from Kentucky who only recently began reaching out to social conservatives. One prominent establishment favorite weighing a bid, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), is a supporter of legal same-sex marriage who claims his views on the issue could help him and his party appeal to younger voters.

This is where the Colonial Post shows itself to be blazingly ignorant of what’s going on outside the hive. Tubby is not getting elected to anything and he is pro-life. Rand Paul  has been playing the social conservative side of the street for years, as did his old man. He’s not winning the nomination, but he is hardly a typical libertarian. Rob Portman is a company man who has no chance in the GOP primary, even assuming he runs.

The disconnect between social conservatives and the GOP has become a “chasm,” said Gary Bauer, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 and is now head of the Campaign for Working Families. He pointed to the party’s two most recent presidential nominees, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, as examples of candidates who were touted initially as having broad appeal to centrists in the general election but ultimately never inspired evangelicals and lost.

Neither McCain or Romney were centrists. McCain has always been a bit of nut and hostile to Evangelicals. He went into Suffolk Virginia in the 2000 primary and told Evangelicals to shove it. Romney actually did well with social conservatives, despite the fact no one believed a single word that came out his mouth. His problem was not his positions. His problem was no one believed him.

Fundamentally, that’s the problem facing the GOP. No one believes them. If you are a social conservative serving the cause for the last twenty-five years, you have to be discouraged. In 1990, there were pro-life Democrats and no trace of gay marriage or tranny rights. Abortion and family law issues all looked like they were heading your way. The DLC was advocating a more conciliatory tone with social conservatives.

Today, even Republicans flinch at the mention of opposition to the most extreme perversions. This garbage is jammed in your face everywhere you look. I’ve stopped watching ESPN because I’m all fagged out and I’m not even an Evangelical. If I had committed my life to the Evangelical cause, I’d be ready to throw in the towel on politics.

I do wonder if the Christians in this country have one last fight in them, though. The lunatics have been running wild now for a decade and the damage is immeasurable. I know I’ll never see the day when we finally fix what Obama has broken. We’re still suffering for Clinton’s failures. The damage Bush did to the GOP will never be fixed. He effectively killed the party, I think. Even if the Christians have it in them, where do they turn?

I’m not terribly optimistic.