Steve Sailer has a post up on IQ that hits on a favorite theme. One of the things I have always found amusing about the HBD world is their naivete about the people in charge. This is a common problem on the Right and is found a little with the handful of thoughtful Progressives. They think that being right is enough. That eventually, the rightness of their science has to prevail over the oogily-boogily of the Standard Social Science Model.

Unless and until IQ science, HBD or even plain old evolution, becomes useful to the prevailing ideology, it will remain in an intellectual backwater. That’s too hard to accept so they often fall back on the myth of Galileo. That is, Galileo triumphed over the Catholic Church because his science was irrefutable.

The trouble with that, in addition to being untrue, is that the prevailing ideology of today is not as generous in spirit as the Catholic Church.The Church leaders in the Middle Ages were not anti-science. They were responsible for rescuing much of the knowledge from antiquity so that science could blossom. No, they were concerned about the orderly working of society, the faith of the people being a big part, the part concerning the Church. Fumbling through it was their responsibility and their burden.

The reigning ideology of today is a different animal. Cultural Marxism shares much more in common with Islam, in this regard. It’s Islam without an afterlife. The faithful, instead of living in bliss after death, can live happily in this life. Similarly, the unfaithful, the heretics and the blasphemers, will suffer in this life. What completes the circle are the ideological enforcers, sorting the chosen from the damned. Guess who fills that role.

Science really does not fit into this ideology. Egalitarianism, however, fits quite nicely. Everyone is equal and therefore unequal outcomes means someone is benefiting at the expense of another. That can be proof that the one is pious while the other a heretic. That also keeps everyone doubling down on the one true faith in an effort to reach the utopian end point, where all that is left are those in perfect equality.

It also is a never ending source of dragons to slay. Inequality is caused by someone. If it is not the impiety of the less, then it must be the impiety of the superior. Attacking that inequity becomes a holy cause. Egalitarianism, therefore, takes up the slack that the super natural used to handle in the olden thymes.

The other problem is that the people will never accept the implicit determinism of HBD and IQ science. No one wants to believe they were decanted as a ‘Gamma’, ‘Delta’ or ‘Epsilon’ so they will never believe it. If we started using IQ tests to sort school children into appropriate tracks, there would be riots. SWPL-ville mothers would demand some way to game the system so their little flower can be at least a beta.

The narcotic of egalitarianism is more potent than science. It’s not so strong down here at the bottom of the social order. Here. reality is simply too vibrant to deny. In the plusher suburbs of the middle-class, that’s not the case. They get to ape the mannerisms and ideas of the managerial elite and believe that one day their little angel will something better than them.

In fairness, believing nonsense has not been a deterrent to material progress. Perhaps one day the people in charge will be of another ideological persuasion that embraces IQ science and biological realism. I will not see it in my lifetime. Instead, crime thinkers like Steve Sailer will be forced to slave away in the mines at the edges of society.

That’s probably the natural order.

Way back in the olden thymes, Democrats loved trotting out liberal Catholics as proof they were down with the folks. It was a common rouse in areas with an immigrant past like Chicago and northeast cities. They would show up somewhere with the local Bishop and talk about their faith. Some of them were even pro-life, but many finessed it to avoid having to choose, but all of them eventually had to choose.

The last guy to face the choice between his liberal faith and his Christian faith was Bart Stupak. Nancy Pelosi was so mad about his doubt that she made him walk the plank. He was forced to recant at a presser, which ended his political career. Today, there are no pro-life Democrats and few who even bother mentioning membership in a Christian church.

That’s how religions work. You can’t be in two of them for long before one or both force you to decide. American Jews are about to learn that truth as their party tilts in favor of the Arabs as opposed to the Israelis. The boys at Vox are scrambling to come up with some way to be anti-Israel and still a member of the tribe in good standing.

Israel has always been more than just a place on a map. From the beginning, it has existed as a series of promises as well as a geographical location: a promise of being a place where Jews can live, a promise of being a place that will keep Jews safe, and a place that secures the Jewish people’s democratic ideals. Implicit in those promises has always been a threat: that if any of them were ever broken, Israel would no longer truly be Israel. It would just be a place on a map that happened to be labeled with that name.

Theodor Herzl, one of the founders of modern Zionism, once told a gathering of Zionist leaders that “those of us who are today prepared to hazard our lives for the cause would regret having raised a finger if we were able to organize only a new social system, and not a more righteous one.” As the American Zionist leader Louis Lipsky wrote in the 1946 forward to Herzl’s 1896 treatise “The Jewish State,” Zionism “had to become a movement of democracy.”

You can see the difficulty. Israel is not just another country. It can never be just another country to Jews. That leaves Jews in a tough spot, but when it comes time to choose, liberals will demand that Jews embrace the low-IQ violent nitwits in the territories over Israel.

Quietly, gradually, an internal crisis has grown so great that it threatens the survival of Israel as we know it today: Jewish, democratic, and an accepted member of the community of nations. If something does not change, then that Israel cannot survive. An Israel that is authoritarian, that is isolated in the world, and that betrays the ideals of its founders will take its place. It will retain the Israeli flag and national anthem, it will stamp “Israel” on its passports, but it will not be Israel as Zionists like Herzl and Lipsky — and millions of Jews who believed and still believe in their vision — hoped and intended.

It’s a fascinating bit of jujitsu. Israel is a functioning democracy. No one has any doubts about the integrity of their elections. Liberals hate the outcome so they have to dust off the Bushitler stuff and paint Netanyahu as a despot.

That, of course, justifies the South Africa treatment Israel is about to get from the American Left. Just in case you’re still laughing, they claim their concern is based on their hope for Israel to thrive as an enlightened democracy. As is so often the case, Progressive destroy because they love.

I’m sure the Vox boys are confident they can make this work, but history says otherwise. The Episcopal Church tried to compromise with Progressives and were devoured by the Cult of Modern Liberalism. The Catholic Church is going through similar process and may be facing a schism.

Rousseau-ist cults always end up having a problem with the Jews. The reason is you can leave the Catholic Church. There’s nothing in your nature that makes you a Catholic. You can give up that heresy for the one true faith and no one will think much of it. Jews can’t do do the same. You’re born a Jew. It’s literally in your bones.

Steve Sailer thinks that the smarter Jews are figuring out that the Cult of Modern Liberalism is coming for them next. I’m less optimistic about it. For the boys at Vox, there’s no walking away from the religion they have known their whole life and I’m not talking about the religion of Abraham. How this shakes out is anyone’s guess, but I’m thinking “not well” is in the final answer.

This is not a put on:

Elle Mallon, who was the external vice presidential candidate on the Ducks F.I.R.S.T. slate, filed a second grievance against We Are Oregon regarding its response to her original grievance from April 3.

Here’s how it played out:

March 29

We Are Oregon holds its kickoff event in PLC 180.

April 3

Mallon submits grievance against We Are Oregon for holding its kickoff event in a building with no gender-inclusive bathrooms.

April 4

The ASUO Elections Board rules that We Are Oregon broke the rules and as a result, it couldn’t campaign for 36 hours.

April 5:

2:54 – We Are Oregon campaign manager Taylor Allison asks the Constitution Court to overturn the Elections Board’s decision, and We Are Oregon gets to keep campaigning while the Constitution Court makes that decision.

Allison’s appeal says that part of Mallon’s evidence was taken out of context.

6:21 – Mallon files a response accusing Allison of sexual harassment because she referred to Mallon as “Ms.” when Mallon identifies with the use of “Mx.”

7:30 – Allison apologizes in an email, saying:

“In every situation I’ve been in with Elle, Elle has said Elle’s pronouns were “She, Her, Hers,” including on the Ducks F.I.R.S.T website. With that information, I used “Ms.” when addressing Elle.”

April 8:

Mallon submits a second grievance saying Allison chose to misgender her.

She cites the apology email from Allison as evidence saying that:

“Allison found a place where my pronouns were listed and then chose to misgender me anyway (My pronouns also include xe xem hyr and they them their).”

In a later email, Mallon calls for the removal of all We Are Oregon candidates from the ballot.

April 9

The Constitution Court sends an email to its mailing list with the decision addressing the bathroom grievance.

“While this Court is empathetic towards Respondent’s original grievance, and advises all future campaigns to remember their cultural competency trainings in order to promote as inclusive a community as possible, access to a bathroom is not a campaign related purpose.”

The court reversed the Election Board’s decision and removed the sanctions.

The decision did not address the misgendering claim. Associate Justices Chaney and Huegel agreed with the Court’s position on the bathroom grievance, but dissented in part that the decision did not address the additional complaint and makes the accusations part of the court’s public records.

“Sexual harassment is a very great evil, but the record supports the conclusion that only a single unintentional gender-based microagression occurred. To conflate the two may serve to salve the sense of anger Respondent may feel at Petitioner’s mistake. However it may serve Respondent, it is unnecessarily inflammatory and risks damaging the reputation of Petitioner, an ASUO member who the record shows made a mistake, and then took the first opportunity to apologize. At no time was any of this relevant to the matter before the Court, which is a dispute over whether the Elections Rules require campaigns to provide gender-neutral restrooms.”

Assembling a coalition of disgruntled and dispossessed can be a viable short term strategy to gain political power. Lucius Sicinius Vellutus is a good example, since I like to sprinkle in Roman history with my bog posts. The trouble is that many of the disgruntled are nuts. Handing these people even a little power can be disastrous.

We are seeing this all over and increasingly people are getting sick of having nutjobs throw sand in the gears. Otherwise cautious people vent in public at having to navigate around social justice warriors. They are learning that life is trade-offs. A sane and stable society is mildly intolerant of the weirdos. A society that embraces its weirdos grinds to a halt and begins to collapse.

I’ve often made sport of TED Talks as nothing more than revival meetings for upper middle class suckers. Sitting in an arena listening to Joel Osteen or Rick Warren is like going to Walmart for these people. It’s yucky and gross. Instead, they get the exact same sort of pat on the head, without all the Jesus stuff and definitely without the riff-raff.

Well, it looks like TED has a competitor. Tyler Cowen is now pimping Voice & Exit, which kicks off this week in Austin TX, the phoniest city in America. This is what has Cowen hyperventilating:

We assemble those who ask: What are the systems and ways of life that are holding us back? What can we create to make those old ways obsolete? What innovations enable us to find wellbeing, life meaning and stronger connection to others? How can we live intentionally today so as to create that better future? Voice & Exit is an environment of exploration where we “criticize by creating” a better world.

I have this theory that is more of an observation than a real theory. Religion has been so marginalized, many people have simply lost the ability to recognize it. Humans are wired to believe so we will believe in something. There has to be an answer to the eternal question and a religion, ideology of theodicy will fill any void that exists. These techno-mega churches are just the latest attempt to answer the great question.

Strangely, to me anyways, is that these look pretty much like EST from the late 70’s and early 80’s. Beautiful people were running off to those just as they are running off to these weird revivals today. The fact that no one ever mentions the similarities says something, I suspect, about our increasingly hostile relationship with the past.

Maybe Cowen falls for this bullshit, maybe not. It is hard to know. He’s getting paid to decorate their roster and thus fleece more people out of their money. It’s possible he pretends to go along with it just for the money. But, Paul Krugman writes batshit crazy stuff all the time because he believes it. The answer is not always obvious.

I was reading some Roman history the other day, specifically about the short reign of Elagabalus, the first truly foreign emperor. He showed up in Rome from Syria wearing eyeliner and silk robes. Before long he was dressed as a women and having people call him queen. As Gibbon put it, “Elagabalus abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures and ungoverned fury.”

Elagabalus was not the first queer emperor, but he was probably the most flamboyantly queer. Romans were indifferent to homosexuality as long as it remained private and the respectable public man was in the dominant position. The submissive role was for slaves and lower class boys used by the elite. Pillow biters had no place in the Roman elite. Elagabalus was assassinated, his corpse dragged naked through the streets and then thrown into the Tiber

The ancients were slightly more tolerant of homosexuality than modern Europeans, but not by a whole lot. That is, until the Homintern got control of the culture. We have suddenly lurched from mildly intolerant to, well, complete intolerant. Intolerant of traditional views of human sexuality. Everywhere you look, it seems that the gay mafia is waging the finger at us, warning that we are violating some taboo.

A friend sent this to me the other day.

The Turing test detects if a machine can truly think like a human. The Bechdel Test detects gender bias in fiction. If you were to mash the two together to create a particularly messy Venn diagram, the overlap shall henceforth be known as the Ex Machina Zone.

In writer/director Alex Garland’s thought-provoking new film—out Friday—we meet Ava (Alicia Vikander), an artificially-intelligent robot. Ava’s creator, genius tech billionaire Nathan (Oscar Isaac), has asked his employee Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) to determine whether Ava’s thinking is indistinguishable from a human’s. Until she meets Caleb, Ava has only ever met her maker and one other woman. (Hence the failing of the Bechdel Test, which stipulates that a movie must feature two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.) Her existence, and her ability to learn how to interact, is a fascinating study of what makes us human.

It’s also a compelling, if problematic, look at the interactions between men and women—or at least that’s what I thought.

The word “problematic” is always a clue that you are dealing with a lunatic. Fanatics love that word. It has that Torquemada vibe they like so much. On the one hand it is banal, but on the other is the threat that you better fall in line or else. A quick look up of the authoress conforms that she is, at the minimum, a minor figure in the Homintern.

This story from the NYTimes explains how homosexual pressure groups are gnawing through the fiber of the culture.

The stacks of Supreme Court briefs filed on both sides of the same-sex marriage cases to be heard this month are roughly the same height. But they are nonetheless lopsided: There are no major law firms urging the justices to rule against gay marriage.

Leading law firms are willing to represent tobacco companies accused of lying about their deadly products, factories that spew pollution, and corporations said to be complicit in torture and murder abroad. But standing up for traditional marriage has turned out to be too much for the elite bar. The arguments have been left to members of lower-profile firms.

In dozens of interviews, lawyers and law professors said the imbalance in legal firepower in the same-sex marriage cases resulted from a conviction among many lawyers that opposition to such unions is bigotry akin to racism. But there were economic calculations, too. Law firms that defend traditional marriage may lose clients and find themselves at a disadvantage in hiring new lawyers.

Now, the nuts at the Times think this is just swell, but it used to be called a culture of fear. The sort of thing that went on in Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia. People are altering their behavior, foregoing their rights and privileges as citizens, out of fear.

This is not a conspiracy, of course. I just like the analogy because it is useful. The fact is we are seeing a mass conversion, forced upon the people by their rulers. The people in charge want to stamp out traditional customs and beliefs. Unleashing mentally disturbed deviants to harass respectable people that fall afoul of the new ways is a time tested way of converting the people.

Elagabalus was not assassinated because he was a homosexual or even that he was a degenerate homosexual. In addition to his sexual peculiarities, he also thought he was a deity and was a devotee of the cult of Elagabal. He created a new god to rule over the pantheon of Roman gods and started turning all of the Roman temples into temple to Elegabal. How long before the Homintern starts forcing Christian churches to marry homosexuals?

This will not end well.

I’ve been reading about the upcoming British elections. Unlike in America, British elections seem to go on forever. It seems that they have been talking about this election for years! I’m kidding, of course, but British election shows are following the same arc as American election shows. As soon as one ends, a new one starts up. I guess it keeps the political consultants off the streets.

For Americans, British elections are a good indication of where things are going in our own lands. Thatcher became the head of the Tories in ’75 and Reagan became the de facto leader of American conservatives in ’76. Thatcher became PM in ’79 and Reagan won the White House in ’80. It’s not a perfect bellwether, but it is useful. We elected the vulgarian Bill Clinton and the Brits followed that with the execrable Tony Blair.Sometimes America is the trend setter.

Even so, it’s worth noting what is going on in the mother country. The fraying of the political parties in Britain cannot have an analog in the US due to our system, but the general disgust with the political class is something we’re seeing on both sides of the Atlantic. That’s the point of this piece in the Guardian last week.

Public mistrust of government is high in Britain, and deference to the political elite has also collapsed as economic woes erode living standards. Amid all that, voters are deserting the Conservatives and Labour, Britain’s two main parties of the right and left since the 1920s, in droves.

In the 1951 election, Labour and the Conservatives – or Tories – shared 96% of the vote. By 2010 they could only manage 66% between them.

At the last election in 2010, Cameron – the first Tory leader since the 1960s to be educated at Eton college and Oxford University, an upper-class combination somewhat comparable to the Ivy League – successfully ousted Labour after 13 years of Blair and then Gordon Brown, but his 306 seats to Labour’s 258 left him 20 short of an outright majority.

The Conservative leader was forced into the first peacetime coalition since the Great Depression, his partners the middle-of-the-road Liberal Democrats who had staged a revival since near-extinction in the 50s and had won 57 seats. A coalition of some kind – or a minority government, rule by a party that does not have a majority of MPs – seems likely again this year.

From where I sit, the Tories look a lot like the GOP in that they have run out of reasons to exist. When you have caved on all of the important cultural arguments, what argument can you offer to voters other than you will wear a tighter fitting eye shade whilst managing the custodial state? How is Cameron different from Blair, other than being taller?

The other issue, of course, is the national question. That’s always the topic when discussing UKIP. It is the thrust of the party and the tool they are using to dig out the innards of the Tory party. I suppose you can add in a healthy bit of economic nationalism as well as economic populism. No national figure in the US has picked up this issue yet, but it is looking like Walker and Cruz are working on their conversion stories, in the hope of repeating what worked for Dave Brat.

It’s convenient to dismiss UKIP as the party of yahoos, just as it has been easy to dismiss Tea Party types in the US. The thing is, I wonder if the appeal of the Scottish Nation Party is really just a veiled and uniquely Scottish protest against immigration. There’s no economic reason for Scotland to break away. There’s not a language or cultural barrier that is big enough to warrant a split.

I looked up SNP’s position on immigration and it is nonsensical, therapeutic state gibberish.The national appeal is by definition exclusive and they make clear they intend to restrict immigration. On the other hand, they moan about being victims and having their feelings hurt by the mean men of Westminster. My hunch is the average Scot hears “Scotland for Scots” when he thinks of SNP.

Demographics certainly plays a role as we see in the US. Scotland is white, very white. The latest demographics say 96% white as a matter of fact. England, in contrast, is 85% white. In America, pasty regions up north love talking about diversity, while diverse parts of the country are more restrained. Diversity romanticism does not sell very well in the Southern states, for example, as everyone there has more than their fill of diversity.

I suspect something similar is at work in Britain. The SNP can wax romantic about immigration and pretend they are treated like foreigners by the English. They can afford such loose talk. Their brothers to the south have to navigate through Londonstan and have a very different view of the rainbow coalition. A couple of muzzies saw off the head of a Scottish soldier in Glasgow and I suspect we get a different tune from SNP.

The old divisions in the Anglosphere were mostly about economics. The Left embraced Fabian socialism and the Right embraced free market capitalism.Today, everyone agrees on economics. Global capitalism is the economic foundation of the ruling elite. Where they differ is on biological reality. The cultural globalism espoused by a Jeb Bush assumes nurture is everything and nature is nothing. At the heart of the nationalist appeal is the implicit assumption that nature, not nurture, is what defines us.

The nurture crowd still controls the high ground in the West. They press on with their program, despite the rumblings of discontent. The fact that these issues are part of the public debate is progress of sorts. I suspect American pols are watching what is happening in the UK with great interest. Gains by UKIP and SNP could change a few minds on this side of the Atlantic.

I’m going to have a beer (drinking in the ghetto!). Since someone mentioned the Ramones….

Maybe I’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe not. Tomorrow belongs to no one.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
–Bertrand Russell

Like my PJ colleague Liz Shield, I dislike government nannies of any kind. Yet, I can’t help but be pleased with the latest recommendation from the Feds: “A dietary pattern that is higher in plant(s) … and lower in animal-based foods is more health promoting and is associated with lesser environmental impact.” And it has nothing to do with the quantity of methane in cow farts.

The reality is that a plant-based diet is better for your health. Note, I did not say vegan, nor vegetarian. “Plant-based” is a style of diet that puts plants before meat and any other processed product you’d put into your body. Mediterranean diets proffering fish, poultry and other lean meats are highly plant based and continue to prove to be one of the best diets for optimal health. And we aren’t just talking physical health, either. Mental health is hugely impacted by the quantity and quality of vitamins and minerals we take in on a daily basis. Both psychological studies and personal experience testify to the fact that kids and adults who eat veggies are happier, healthier, and less likely to be drugged on behavioral medications. What’s going to be a richer, diverse source of nutrients, a dinner that is 75% greens or 75% processed cow parts?

Yet, we cringe at the idea of public school kids being fed salad for lunch. Salad isn’t a bad thing, having the government tell us what we can and can’t eat is a bad thing. In our resistance to government interference, we risk missing the greater point: What we eat matters. Studies come and go and the factors that go into these studies, especially from a funding and lobbying point of view, are never adequately addressed. Surely this latest line is a political one meant to motivate environmentalist legislation above all else. But that doesn’t turn the grain of truth, the reality that a plant-based diet is good for you, into a lie. If anything, it abuses the truth for a political point. That abuse, not the recommendation to eat plants, is the sin in the conversation.

The other day I saw this commercial on one of the news channels. It was on a talker show of some sort, I don’t remember which one, but the chattering skulls were taking turns being outraged by it. I was not quite sure why they were outraged and not all that interested. I think Taco Bell is on the unapproved list so they are not allowed to employ mockery. Alternatively, maybe they are not permitted to mock central planning.

Regardless, the thing that got my attention was the use of the Ramones song Blitzkrieg Bop. Eventually, anything and everything that is subversive or banned in western culture is absorbed into the Borg and turned into a tool of the Borg. Pop songs from the 60’s that celebrated the rejection of bourgeois society are used today to sell products made by global mega-corporations. Punk from the 70’s and 80’s is seeing the same thing.

The same is true of people. Conservative Inc gets their panties in a bunch when kids wear Che t-shirts or sport other symbols of communism, but they are mistaken. What it shows is that in the path of The Borg, there is no resistance. Everything will be absorbed and put to use in furtherance of The Borg. We are the Borg. You will be assimilated.

If you are reading this, odds are you are from the Anglosphere and you have some familiarity with the fictional Borg, as well as the real one, but the latter is taken for granted so you don’t think about it much. There’s no reason to think about it. Fish don’t think about the sea and birds don’t think about the air. English speaking humans don’t think much about the media in which we are suspended.

The rest of the world, however, thinks a lot about The Borg. They see it from the perspective of both outsiders and potential insiders – unwilling insiders. If you listen to the Islamic fundamentalist, they will tell you why they are so obsessed with killing the West, particularly America. That reason is they fear that their culture will become like that Ramones song in the commercial. It will be just another tool to move product.

The central planners of The Borg are already working on how to make Iran chic so they can move product. Once Obama gets his deal done with Iran, you can be sure Apple will have a Persian iPhone cover and the all-women’s auxiliary of the Cult of Modern Liberalism will be sporting swank hijabs.

In the novel Brave New World, the World State has come to terms with the fact there are parts of the world not conducive to easy living. These are set aside as reservations for the savages. They are not really left to their own devices as they are maintained as amusement parks for the World State citizens. You go there to watch the savages. It is not entirely different from how western tourists run around looking at ruins in third world countries.

The story of John the Savage in Brave New World is relevant here as it shows the torment of being in but not being of two worlds. In the novel, the Savage was never accepted by his fellow savages. Similarly, he was never accepted as anything other than a curiosity by the citizens of the World State. His “otherness” was incorporated as a novelty, like an animal in a zoo.

Muslims who have spent time in the West or been exposed to the West often have the same reaction. They can grow up in and immerse themselves in the West, but they are never truly Western. Islam is simply alien to Western culture. Unlike blacks, they cannot blame slavery. Instead, many come to blame the Borg and decide to make war on it as self-defense.

On the other hand, those in the Middle East often feel shame over their backwardness and inability to compete with the West. Without the West, the Arabs would be living in tents and riding camels. They would live and die as they did in the ninth century. At the same time, they adopt the material goods of the West and feel their culture being absorbed into the Borg, losing its vitality and utility.

In other words, to tie the two themes together, the Muslim Arabs stand facing two options, assimilate of die. It’s why Islamic fundamentalism has ticked up as exposure to the West has ticked up. The communications revolution along with the end of the Cold War brought The Borg to the Middle East and Islamic fanaticism has been the response. In the novel, John the Savage resolves this by hanging himself.

It’s why I think the Iranians will have no choice but to scuttle the deal, hang themselves, so to speak. Normalizing economic relations means a Starbucks across from the mosque, Western music on the radio, Western shows in the TV. It means The Borg is on every corner and in every home. Iran already struggles with the consequences of encroaching Western culture. Assimilation cannot possibly be an answer they accept.

Roman expansion was based on land. They seized the lands of others, held them by force and extracted what they could to profit themselves and maintain their grip on empire. Eventually, the math stopped working. Long before Alaric, the Western Roman Empire ceased to be an ongoing concern. But, the Romans did manage to export a great deal of their culture to the rest of the world.

America has never been a land based empire. Ours is a culture based empire. Instead of seizing the lands, we seize the culture and assimilate it into our own. Even our friends chafe at the stifling cultural hegemony. It is therefore no surprise that the fringes of human civilization would recoil in horror at our materialistic, homogenizing culture. It’s why, in the end, Iran can never make a deal with us. There’s no negotiating with The Borg.

It’s not hard to see how this will play out in the general. Any opposition to Cankles will be off limits because, well, vagina.

Rand Paul’s first day on the campaign trail was marred by a high-profile fight with NBC’ “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie that raised questions about whether he is ready for primetime.

Video of Paul telling Guthrie how she should do her job went viral on social media, placing his attitude toward female reporters in the spotlight.

The Kentucky GOP senator was ultimately forced to give a partial mea culpa, even as he sought to dispel the notion that his earlier pushback was sexist.

But the damage may have already been done for Paul.

“If this were the first time this had happened, that would be one thing,” GOP strategist Ford O’Connell told The Hill. “But I’m not sure it is all that clear to Rand Paul that, when you’re running for president, it is not a good thing if you launch into a diatribe.”

The incident with Guthrie was reminiscent of a February interview with CNBC’s Kelly Evans when the senator “shushed” the TV host and told her to “calm down.”

I’m not much of a Ran Paul fan, but if the dingbat twat squad is against him, maybe he deserves a second look.