I saw this linked by Kathy Shaidle. It does seem like race relations have gone south since Obama was elected. That’s probably wrong. We feel the here and now so it seems better or worse that previous times. We forget how we felt ten years ago or twenty years ago. We forget that the Left blamed this on George Bush. We also forget the riots after Rodney King and the ugliness following the OJ trial. Go back further and we have race riots dating to the 19th century. The fact is, there is money to be made telling black people that the blue eyed devil is coming for them. More important, there is money to be made telling white people looking for salvation that they can get by pointing at the other white people and calling them racists.

The sad truth is race relation will probably never get better than we see today. In fact, I suspect they get much worse in the coming decades. Humans just don’t like mixing it up and we really hate in tough times. As the mathematical realities of our situation bear down on us, the friction between ethnic groups will grow worse.

The root of the word culture is “cult.” Modern people hear the word cult and think of nuts living in a compound somewhere, waiting for the aliens to arrive. If you are old enough, you may recall Jim Jones and his wacky escapades in Guyana. We never think of our culture or customs as anything like a cult, but every society has their beliefs, customs and taboos. More important, every society has its rewards and consequences for either exulting the prevailing beliefs or violating one of the taboos. Therefore, every society has its morality police who roam around testing private virtue in public ways. Paula Deen was sent off to internal banishment for being honest. Travon Martin was sainted for confirming an article of faith about America.

Now we have Riley Cooper, a stupid redneck who was caught dropping the magic word at a country show. At this moment, his career as a professional football player is close to being over simply because he holds views that are different from the ruling cult. The pressure on the Philadelphia Eagles to cut him will be high. If he is cut, no team will sign him, fearing a visit from the morality police. It is one thing to sign a murderer or rapist, those are just crimes against people. Signing a racist, someone who commits crimes against the faith, is a bridge too far.

As we see with all religious fanatics, there are contradictions that will inevitably tear apart the faith. In this case, the same people snuggling up with a picture of MLK every night are now claiming Riley Cooper must be punished because he is white. In other words, there are additional restrictions on white people and violations of those rules must be dealt with severely. In this case, white guys can never even be suspected of thinking the word “nigger.” If they are found to have said it, they are no longer fit for society. Presumably they will be forced to use separate drinking fountains and have to ride in the back of the bus.

The insanity does not end there, of course. All secular religions operate out of fear. In cases like this, the need to police the space between people’s ears takes on a desperate weirdness you only see with left-wing cults. Riley Cooper is probably a typical white person of his class. He holds views about black people that are based on daily experience. His “bigotry” is of the benign variety that is common to people everywhere at all times. His teammates, white and black, probably hold similar views depending upon the race and class. More importantly, everyone knows it and ignores it. That’s how people get along in the regular world.

Our overseers, however, fear this so they work to rub it out. In the name of racial tranquility, they are now demanding that the black players denounce their teammate. It is not enough to hang the scarlet “N” on the white guy, they have to dictate the thoughts of the black guys too. A cynic would say our rulers like it when we are trying to kill one another. That implies a logical intent. The more likely answer is it is simple zealotry. They have been trained to yell at the white racist and defend the back victim. If the black guys don’t join in they must be Oreos, which are always bad. Hence the black players are forced to cut their own throat by demanding the white guy get sent away.

The best part of this, the part that should lead one to think there is not only a God, but he has a wicked sense of humor, is the presence of Michael Vick. This is the guy who was found to be torturing animals for pleasure. He would drown them in buckets and electrocute them. If he really needed to get off, he would hang them from trees. By any reasonable standard, Michael Vick is a demented and dangerous lunatic. Yet, he has not just been welcomed back to the NFL; he is now held up as a role model. News actors are running to him for his opinion about the monster that is Riley Cooper.

This is all madness and it will end poorly. Reality is that thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it. Humans are designed to be suspicious of and antagonistic toward those not like them. We evolved in small groups and suspicion of outsiders was always an evolutionary advantage. In the case of disputes over precious resources, tribal hatred rising to the level of religious faith works very well to unite the clan against the others. In a modern, multi-ethnic society such as ours a certain amount of friction is natural. Deliberately exacerbating it is lethal. The question posed by Paula Deen and now Riley Cooper is whether it is inevitable.

One of things that strikes as you drive through the state of Maryland is the weird driving. If you are traveling north-south, you will be on I-95 through the state. You will also spend a lot of time behind someone in the left lane driving below the speed limit. You will also find you regularly have someone deliberately driving in your blind spot. You speed up, they speed up. You slow down, they slow down. The crazier thing is you will come up on a slow poke in the left lane. You decide to pass using the middle lane. They will speed up as you pass trying to remain in your blind spot. They were doing 55 and then they force you to crack 100 to get around them. Once you get by them, they slow down again and disappear into the rear view.

Spend time in the state and you quickly figure out what’s going on. There is a combination of provincialism and dullness you rarely see elsewhere. Rhode Island has a bit of this. In both cases you have a small state surrounded by large culturally and economically dominant states. That explains the provincialism. I’ve met people from Maryland and Rhode Island who have never left the state. I’ve met college graduates who never leave the state. They take their vacations at home. They work in jobs that do not require travel because they simply have no interest in anything outside the state. The result is strange customs like the weird driving habits. I’ve often chuckled while driving in neighboring states when I see a long line of cars in the left lane behind one car with Maryland plates. The poor guy must be freaking out.

There’s another piece and that’s the dullness. Central Maryland has a very high number of dimwits. I don’t just mean the slack-jawed yokel type. I’ve met college graduates with a dimness that you would normally associate with the back woods. Out of curiosity I looked up IQ by state. The first link was this one. It seems to jive with what Steve Sailer has reported. He’s one of the most reliable writers on the subject so I assume it a good estimate. Looking through the list I see Maryland is 32 and and Rhode Island 33. If I were to guess, central Maryland, the Baltimore – Washington corridor, is below the state average and the smart fraction is very thin. It is not Detroit thin, but those with an above average IQ will be lonely.

Maybe it is all the lead pain in Maryland buildings.

One of the things you learn quickly when working with complex software is that one tiny change in one area of the program can result in unexpected behavior in another, unrelated, part of the software. Even when you know the software in detail, you are often surprised by the results of small changes. The reason for this is there are so many variables and related conditions, it is impossible to keep them in your head all at once. There are limits to how many chess moves the mind can anticipate. Put another way, we’re not that smart. Even high IQ types who work complex problems in physics run into this, which is why they control for as many things as possible in their proofs.

Anyway, the social planners never seem to get this or even recognize it exists. They are so confident in their power to model the new socialist man they blithely assume all sorts of things about the human condition. ObamaCare is a good example of this at work. They started with one goal in mind. They wanted to transfer the costs of giving middle-class health care to the poor from the government to private business. That means mandating coverage for employers. They quickly figured out that the unemployed and seasonal would not get coverage so they came up with the individual mandate.

It sounds good. If you have a job you employer has to pay the freight. If you don’t have a job, then you have to pay the freight. Eventually, people with eyes and time on earth in America explained that ghetto dwellers were never going to buy insurance. They also explained that most employers could not afford insurance. That means expanding Medicaid and subsidizing private insurance. One and one it went until the result was a 2,000 page bill requiring tens of thousands of regulators writing tens of thousands of pages of regs. All of which would be layered on top of the existing tens of thousands of regs. A massively complex system was going to bolted onto a massively complex system the legislators did not understand.

Since becoming law, we have been treated to a hilarious series of unexpected results. Employers are afraid to hire, not knowing the consequences. Their lawyers quickly figured out a way out of the mandate by moving from full time to part time. Hundreds of thousands have lost benefits because they are now part time. Now, cities in financial trouble will follow suit by throwing their workers onto the government system to avoid paying health care bills. Detroit is first up, trying to erase a few billion in expenses by shoveling their employees onto the dole. You can be sure every other city will look to do something similar. It is too tempting.

The result of all of this is pretty much the opposite of what the central planners expected. Instead of decreasing the cost to government, costs will go up faster. Instead of more people with insurance, you will see fewer people with insurance. Unions are ready to revolt because they suddenly find themselves no longer able to offer benefit plans. Doctors, seeing their earnings prospects decline are leaving the system and finding ways to carve out private systems for upper middle-class clients. On and on it goes, a myriad of unexpected outcomes accelerating the collapse of the health care system.

Wisdom is knowing what you don’t know. The opposite of that is being a liberal central planner.

That fat slob of a New Jersey governor has the chattering classes talking about the brewing fight between “libertarians” and “conservatives” over the direction of the GOP.  Here’s a representative article on it. The author does a fair job of labeling one side the establishment and the other insurgents. Calling the GOP conservative is not just a factual error, it accepts the establishment view of the world which is inaccurate and self-serving. America’s ruling elites range from fanatically left-wing to mildly liberal. The fanatics call the mildly liberal “conservative” and “right-wing.” The mildly liberal call the other guys liberal and progressive, when they dare stand up for themselves in public.

The GOP’s role in this is as a rubber stamp for the Democrats. The Democrats are run by the fanatics. They chased off their mildly liberal members in the 1990′s. The GOP is run by the mildly liberal, but have a sizable number of non-liberals of various stripes. For as long as I’ve been alive, the myth is that the non-liberals run the GOP, but that was always nonsense. At best they contribute some color to an otherwise drab party of establishment career men. In every fight, the establishment types surrender to the fanatics to the great disappointment of the non-liberals. Now, it appears the non-liberals are starting to wake up and target the surrender wing of the GOP. As Michael Walsh noted on NRO, it is a good time to have the fight.

My own view is the status quo is only brought down through crisis and catastrophe. That’s why every epoch is book-ended by violent conflicts. The Civil War ended the colonial period, ushering in the Industrial Age.  The riots of the late sixties and stagnation of the 1970′s ended the post-war period and ushered in the free money era. Revolutions throughout the Soviet Bloc ended the communist era, just as it started it. If the GOP is going to become something other than the Stupid Party, it will be a bloody mess before it emerges. The old guard will not leave quietly. Their friends in the establishment will move heaven and earth to support their collaborators.

My bet is the old guard wins for now. Until the money runs out, nothing will change.

Looks like the Stupid Party is preparing to make Obama a hero this fall. The hilarious part of it is they will not just make Obama look like Lincoln they will end up giving the store away at the end. It is a familiar story. The Stupid Party looks around and sees that their base is wandering off in disgust. They think the way to get them back is to pick a pointless fight with the other guys over the budget. They will make a bunch of noises intense to get “their side” ready for battle. A handful of Congressmen who really want to reign in the blob will be front and center making their case. The press will play it cool for a while hoping for a shutdown. Then they will pile on the hapless Stupid Party like convicts on a new inmate. After a week of beatings, Boehner will cave and give the White House a blank check. Conservative Inc will chatter on about about the need to get more Stupid Party members in Congress and win back the White House for the SP’s.

I’ve been reading a lot of European history of late. One thing that always strikes me is how the nobles were able to set themselves up in power and maintain that power. They were clearly better educated and probably in the top tier of IQ for their respective populations. There were some blockheads springing from the royal loins, but they self-policed. If the next in line was an idiot, he often “fell ill” in his youth and never made it to adulthood. Democracies work the same way, just without the inherited positions. Even the children of pols have to stand for election. That’s the self-policing. The retarded Kennedy can be placed in a safe Congressional seat, but he is never running for president. The smart ones are groomed for bigger things.

What explains the Stupid Party?

I have not had time to think this through, but sense is the parties have changed since the 1980’s. The “new” economy born out of the Louvre Accords allowed the ruling class of America to sever itself from the middle class entirely. From the 1930’s through the 1980’s, the Democrat party was the home of cultural elites and the working and middle classes. The GOP was the home of the business and financial classes along with upper middle and some middle classes. If you owned a body shop were inclined to vote Republican, while if you worked at the body shop you voted Democrat. There was plenty of overlap, but that was the general breakdown. Then the world changed as the money changed in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The political alignment quickly followed.

Today, the Democrats are the ruling class party. They are the Cavaliers. The jealously guard the interests and prerogatives of the state and the elites. There’s a reason we have gone through three major financial crisis and no one has gone to jail. There’s a reason why Wall Street gives 2-to-1 to Democrats. On the other side, the GOP has become the home of the working and middle classes. They still have plenty of upper class businessmen who run the Chamber of Commerce, but those are folks decidedly not in the elite. That body shop owner is now solidly Republican, but so are most of his employees. Government, Gays, Guns and God is what unites the working class whites of the GOP with the middle class whites. The GOP is now the Roundheads, except they lack anyone with the skill and self-awareness of Oliver Cromwell.

The Stupid Party not only has an IQ deficit, they also have another problem. They don’t get it. They look at the fight as just one group of loyal Americans against another group of loyal Americans. They think they can have honest dealings with the other side. In reality, the other side wants them dead. We are in a cold civil war and the establishment elites are playing to win. They are not interested in compromise. The result is the Stupid Party shows up to every gun fight with their hat in hand, hoping to appeal to the other side’s patriotism, good sense and good will. It is never a fair fight.

History says, however, that the Roundheads eventually figure it out. That’s when it will get interesting.

John Derbyshire has a bit in his weekly transmission bout Smart Fraction Theory. The argument, one that John describes well in his broadcast, is that a society needs to have a certain number of high IQ people in order to maintain the institutions necessary for a functioning society. The author of the paper argues that there is a threshold number of “smart people” described as possessing an IQ above 108. About 30% of the American population falls into that category. A basket case like Equatorial Guinea probably has less than 1% that fall into this category as they have an average IQ at about 60. The few truly intelligent rule over the rest in the same way the one eyed man is the king of the blind.

John raises the topic in relation to Detroit. No one says it publicly, but the general belief is that when Detroit went black it was never coming back. The crime, corruption and dysfunction were baked in the cake and would follow the predictable path. Coleman Young, the first black mayor, was so openly hostile to whites that he could fairly be described as the Robert Mugabe of American politics. Like most post-colonial African potentates, Coleman held a mixed bag of Marxist ideas and a deep seeded hatred of the white middle-class. Within a few years he drove most of the whites out of Detroit.

The conclusion many make is that since there are no majority black societies that are thriving, the cause of the problem must be IQ. Prior to the 60’s, Detroit had a majority white population who supplied the bulk of the “smart fraction” needed to carry the underclass. Once they left, the remaining black population lacked the number smart people to carry the underclass. The result is what we see in sub-Saharan Africa. The smart fraction turns the institutions into weapons to rule over the rest and extract what value lies therein.  They exploit the available resources in a great bust out until it collapses. Basically, it is the Jim Goad argument.

I think that looking strictly at IQ misses a wide swath of observable facts that play a role as well. Lebanon is not exactly brimming with geniuses. If not for outside intervention by Israel and Syria, it would be a peaceful and prosperous land, by the standards of the Arab world. It would not be a rich country, but it would not be Detroit either. West Virginia is brimming with pinheads, yet manages to avoid the pathologies we see in Detroit, Camden, Chicago and other cities. Culture can and does provide a structure within which people make choices.

Much of what plagues sub-Saharan Africa is anti-colonialism. The ruling elite that replaced the Europeans rulers were motivated by what turned out to be an insane desire to scrub away the stain of colonialism. That led to doing the opposite of what made sense in many cases. Killing the white farmers in Mozambique resulted in the exodus of all whites, along with their wealth and expertise.  Robert Mugabe eventually went down the same path and Zimbabwe is now one of the poorest nations in the world. The Europeans did some awful things in Africa as colonial masters, but they did the basics right. The wholesale rejection of colonialism based in emotion is as much the cause of the consequent collapse as dimwittedness.

Detroit went through a similar process. The same is true of many cities, particularly those in the north. Blacks had moved from the Old Confederacy to the north for factory jobs. Whites found a way to segregate without resorting to the same tactics of the South. I suspect the popularity of liberalism has a lot to do with the fact that northern whites felt guilty about shoving blacks into ghettos and keeping them out of public office. It is easier to talk like MLK than to live like MLK. Eventually, blacks demanded whites live up to the words. The bitterness of blacks who came along in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s is due in large part to the realization their white collaborators were not really that interested in sharing the wealth with them. That resentment is what drove the new black politicians like Coleman Young to pursue anti-white polices, even though it resulted in a massive exodus of whites from the city. There was enough residual value in the city to keep the patronage machine going for a few decades, so they got to feel good without paying the price.

That’s the big question raised by the Detroit bankruptcy. We’ll never have a public debate on IQ. We can have a public debate on culture. The Left’s desire to nurse black hatred of whites cannot hold up if every majority black city in the nations is falling into bankruptcy. Even a few is enough to get the attention of the public. The fact that race relations appear to be getting worse, despite the election of Obama twice, tells me the gap between public debate and on-the-ground reality is getting big. Most whites are willing to accept blacks into society as long as blacks drop the grievance games and accept the responsibilities that come with being in the mainstream.

When Karl Denninger is on his meds, he can be quite good. This is a a good example. Detroit did not just happen. Over decades, politicians, unions heads, business leaders and state officials conspired to perpetrate a fraud on the public. When they sat down with the unions and promised these pension plans, they knew they could never hold up their end of the bargain. The union bosses knew it too. I will not be shocked to learn that high ranking employees got special deals to insulate themselves from these losses. The same people also knew the GO bonds were never going to be repaid. That’s a fraud on the bond holders and the tax payers.

Detroit highlights another problem, one that is going to bring the nation to its knees. That’s the problem of public debt. For most of human history, government was subject to the same market forces as everyone else. When they borrowed, they did so at a rate set by lenders. They were also constrained by the types of debt available. The government could finance a bridge by pledging the tolls as collateral. They could borrow without pledging collateral, but those rates were higher as bond holders factored in risk. Many states forbid this type of borrowing by state and local government. The only other way for government to get money without raising taxes was to inflate the currency and that only applied to national governments. With hard money, this was very difficult to do for obvious reasons.

Today, government have many new ways to borrow money to buy votes. Pensions are a promise to pay tomorrow for services today. This allows the politicians to buy votes, the service today, and leave someone else with the bill. General Obligation Bonds are another way to get around the problem. They borrow to buy votes through community programs and patronage jobs. To make matters worse, the government only pays interest until maturity. When a bond matures, the bond holder gets their principal. In all cases, the government issues new bonds to pay old bond holders, thus rolling over debt without ever paying it down. This disguises the problem further, which makes it grow bigger and faster. If the employees knew twenty years ago that their pensions were at risk, they would have made different decisions.

Detroit finally reached a point where it could no longer pay interest on the debt and operate basic services. Most of the states in this country are on the same path. If interest rates revert to historic norms, states like Illinois will be bankrupt. The Federal government would add another $400 billion a year in debt payments. If you believe government will reform and avoid this catastrophe you have not been paying attention. If you think interest rates will remain near zero forever, you should seek professional help. Within the next decade, the great serial bankruptcy of American government will occur. Trillions in promises will be broken. The money will have finally run out.

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New Jersey slob, Chris Christie, has decided to go off on Ran Paul. You have to give it to the Stupid Party. They never miss an opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot or face. Rand Paul is not going to be president. He is not going to win the GOP nomination in 2016. He will bring enthusiasm to the party and attract younger voters. He will also get the attention of disaffected voters who have concluded that the GOP is not worth their time. So of course, they send out their chief buffoon to ridicule Rand Paul and the folks enthusiastic about his issues.

What kills me about these idiots is there is zero support for the surveillance state. It should be an easy play. Come out against the state spying on citizens and you get votes. Instead, they go with the self-parody of waving the bloody shirt of 9/11 around, claiming safety trumps freedom. They think it makes them sound butch, but it just makes them sound stupid and weak. Maybe if we stop importing Muslim fanatics from terrorist countries, we would not have to turn America into a prison. Of course, the Stupid Party and this fat load is four square behind open borders and mass immigration.

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One of the few remaining reasons to read National Review is Kevin Williamson. He is smart, shrewd, gutsy and a good writer. The rest of the mag is full of dullards and dimwits. Rich Lowry, a mediocrity of the first order, is afraid to hire anyone talented. Instead he gives space to guys like his personal toady Ramesh Ponnuru. The rest are just kids hoping to make a living off of people who make a living off of the tax payer. Williamson, on the other hand, is a talented guy. He does, however, produce a rotten column on occasion. This one is a prime example.

Politics is about rhetoric. Since the Greeks, the clever politician is the one who knows how to appeal to the hearts of his fellow citizens. That’s not always a good thing, of course. Alcibiades appealed to the patriotism of his fellow citizens over the sober judgements of Nicias. The result was the disastrous Sicilian Expedition, which lead to the fall of Athens. Still, it has been and always will be a central element of political debates. For one party to eschew these tactics is not honorable. It is stupid. Very stupid. It is an example of why the Right in general and the GOP in particular has lost every fight with the Left since Woodrow Wilson.

If the Right in America is to ever become a a real political force instead of merely a break on the Left, they have to master the tools of politics. You do that which is necessary to win. Obama lied every day of the 2008 primary so he could portray Hillary Clinton as an old bag. He lies all the time now trying to stay relevant. That’s what they do. The Left will lie, cheat, steal, break rules, break laws in order to win. The Obama campaign used the IRS to undermine the opposition in the last election. Until the Right smartens up and starts dealing with the Left as it is, they will remain the Stupid Party, a freak show of losers.

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