Category Archives: Immigration

The Managerial State of America

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It’s often suggested that America, and maybe the entire West, is undergoing a great realignment culturally and politically. The managerial class has matured to the point where it controls the high ground in Western societies and most important, it has become class aware. What we used to think of “leftist” ideology has evolved into an elaborate defense of the prerogatives and interests of the managerial elite.

The rise of the managerial elite dates back to the 19th century with the full flowering of the Industrial Revolution and the credit economy. It’s often forgotten that Herbert Hoover, the guy “responsible for the Great Depression” because of his “laissez-faire” economic policies, was president of the Efficiency Society. Hoover, like many educated men of his age, believed modern engineering techniques could be applied to the organization of human society.

The story of the 20th century in America was the retreat of the traditional middle class in the face of a technological revolution that extended far beyond the material goods of life. This managerial revolution allowed the new ruling elite to consolidate economic, cultural and political power through corporate and governmental bureaucratic power. By the end of the 20th century, the loop had been closed. Politics, finance and the culture would be controlled by the managerial elite.

What we are seeing today is the public waking up to the reality in which they find themselves. Both political parties in America are now immune to the will of the voters. Across Europe, the main parties work together to thwart challenges from populist parties. At every turn the public is faced with a unified ruling class, from proselytizing by the cultural organs to financial chicanery greenlighted by the political class. Of course, no one in power is ever held accountable.

This last part is a good example. Forty years ago, Richard Nixon was run out of town because Liberals hated him. The America of the 1970’s was a country in which members of the elite fought one another for power and influence. There were competing interests in politics. Today, Barak Obama has done all of the things critics suspected Nixon wanted to do. The result is a shrug from both political parties. Hillary Clinton most likely sold national security information for cash to her slush fund and no one in power dares mention it. The shield wall remains intact.

The thing to understand is that the managerial class is not a self-conscious conspiracy or “deep state.” It’s a cohort that shares educational, class and cultural perspectives. They are bound together by an egalitarian ethic and a preference for technocratic solutions. Those solutions are to be carried out by the bureaucratic institutions in which they swim like microbes in a Petri dish. The shared interests and shared worldview results in a natural, unconscious cooperation, like ants whose queen is the bureaucracy. The interests of one are the interest of all.

It’s why there’s no mechanism to self-police. Holding Obama to account for his crimes means expulsion from the managerial class. To these people, such a thing is up there with crucifixion or stoning. Ultimately, the only punishments that can plausibly be handed out within the elite are those that lower one’s status within the elite. Anything that threatens one’s membership in the elite is therefore off limits. Hillary Clinton can auction off state secrets and not fear prosecution. The worst that she can expect is losing to Bernie Sanders.

This natural cooperation looks like coordination because it is so natural. The decision by the Supreme Court to take up Obama’s amnesty action is a good example. The court has decided to expedite the review this case and decide whether Obama, or any future President, can issue citizenship to random people at his discretion. Lower courts have put the brakes on the program for various administrative reasons and now the high court will decide the matter.

Of course, expediting this case is unusual. The reason for the rush is Obama is leaving office in a year. There we see one element of the managerial class helping the other without thinking too much about it. This would not have happened, of course, if Paul Ryan and the Republicans had not gone along with the scheme by funding it in the last budget. So, we have one side of the class pushing open borders, another element signing off on it, despite claiming to be mortal enemies of the former. Then another side comes in to help expedite it.

Again, that looks a lot like coordination and one would be forgiven for thinking it is a conspiracy. But wait, there’s more! The court now has the opportunity to remove this issue from public consideration. They will most likely rule that the executive can issue citizenship to whoever he likes whenever he likes. This removes the issue from Congress. From there, it just takes one president to issue green cards to South America for the circle to be complete. Citizenship, as a practical matter, ceases to exist.

Across the managerial class, the concept of citizenship is seen as antiquated. They all believe that the world is headed to a world without borders and countries. A vast administrative apparatus working through local bureaucracies will handle the issues of governance formerly done by nation states. While not always articulated in this level of detail, anything that moves us toward the general vision of a borderless world is supported by the elites, be they on the court, at the banks or in the legislatures.

The court did not take up the case because they intend to block the administration. They took up the case for fear it could languish until after Obama was gone and the public had become fully aware of what’s happening. Once the court rules in Obama’s favor in a few months, the game is lost. It’s just a matter of time before the ruling elite is completely decoupled from the people over whom they rule. They will have their managerial state, if they can keep it.

Public Madness

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One of the more remarkable things about the last couple of decades has been the evolution of multiculturalism into a suicide cult. Back in the 1980’s when “tolerance” was becoming a thing with Progressives, the argument was that whites in white countries should be tolerant of their dusky brethren.

It was not just the decent thing to do, it would make for a more peaceful society. If whites in America, for example, put aside their prejudices about blacks, then blacks would have a fair shot to join the mainstream culture. If the West was more respectful of the third world, then maybe those people would embrace civilization.

I recall being lectured about tolerance by a French girl back in the mid-80’s and my thought at the time was that this was just another silly way for Progressives to preen in public. When I pointed out to the French girl that “tolerance” implied “dislike” as in she was tolerant of blacks even though she privately despised them, she nearly had a stroke. It was clear she had not thought much about it, but she liked being smug around white trash like me.

Over the last three decades, this fetish has evolved from tolerance through celebration to outright worship. Hilariously, there’s zero tolerance for anyone that does not fully embrace the self-loathing, suicidal impulses of the multicultural faith. On every college campus in America, you will find a club for every conceivable “minority” group, but the opening of a few “white student” clubs was cause for National Day of Mourning.

Eric Hoffer wrote that “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” A corollary to that might be “every great cultural pathology begins as a petty public piety, becomes a political weapon and degenerates into insanity.” It does not trip off the tongue, but the point is what’s important. What started out as a pose became a weapon for the political Left and has now devolved into madness.

This example from the City of Brotherly Love would be funny if it were not so sad.

A 33-year-old Philadelphia policeman, Jesse Hartnett, was ambushed late Thursday when Edward Archer, a Muslim man, reportedly tried to execute him while he was sitting in his police vehicle. Images from the incident show a man dressed in Muslim attire firing off a reported 13 rounds at officer Hartnett. The police officer was hit three times but did not suffer life threatening injuries and is expected to recover fully, reports said.

According to Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross, the suspect said he had committed the attempted execution in the name of the Islamic State, the jihadi terrorist insurgent group that controls territory in the Middle East.

“According to him [the shooter], police bend laws that are contrary to the teachings of the Quran,” said Commissioner Ross.

Mayor Kenney, who was inaugurated last week, took a strikingly different tone when coming to the podium.

He began by expressing his well-wishes for the officer who the Muslim man attempted to execute, but then spent the latter part of his statement distancing Islam from the shooter, who claimed he was carrying out the shooting for Islam.

“In no way shape or form does anyone in this room believe that Islam or the teaching of Islam has anything to do with what you’ve seen on the screen,” said Mayor Kenney.

“That is abhorrent. It’s just terrible and it does not represent this religion [Islam] in any way shape or form or any of its teachings,” he added. “This is a criminal with a stolen gun who tried to kill one of our officers. It has nothing to do with being a Muslim or following the Islamic faith.”

I’m old enough to remember when mayors, even from big cities, were content to take bribes, ignore police corruption and let the city unions raid the treasury. Now they want to be the local imam, defining the will of Allah and passing judgement on the conduct of the faithful. How long before the mayor begins issuing fatwahs, calling the local youth to wage jihad against the infidels?

The mayor is not thinking any of this through, of course. He’s just a back pew moonbat that is willing to grin like a chimp on TV and do what his handlers tell him. In modern America, municipal government is a dead end politically, so it attracts low-watt sociopaths and grifters unable to do productive work. Mayor Kenney is too stupid to comprehend any of this. He is just trying to ape what he sees and hears from his idols, people like Obama and Angela Merkel.

That does not change the fact that multiculturalism has become a public madness. Angela Merkel is throwing her country into turmoil for no reason other than the psychological terror she feels when contemplating the alternatives. Like an agoraphobic fleeing a public place in terror, Merkel is in a panic over the mere hint of nationalism and is instead inviting a billion Muslims to relocate to the Fatherland.  She would rather let the rapefugees rampage through the streets than see her countrymen waving the flag.

Unlike private madness, public madness eventually recedes. We’re seeing that now all over the West, but public madness comes with a price. The bill for Merkel’s Madness will be paid. Whether that is through a return of the worst instincts of the German people or a diminished of their best instincts is the question. The same is true all over the West. The madmen have conjured spirits most assumed were dead. It will not end well.

The Crisis of Liberal Democracy

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It is generally assumed that revolutions are for poor, bedraggled countries where operating a flush toilet is a great challenge. The hilariously misnamed “Arab Spring” is a good recent example. One Arab craphole after another fell into chaos as the price of food shot up and the local potentates were unable to keep a lid on things. Big important countries don’t have revolutions anymore. They have democracy!

That’s not a foolish assumption. The last real revolt in Europe was the Bolshevik Revolution and a lot of people would argue that Russia is not a part of Europe. The Spanish Civil War is not counted as a revolution, but that’s debatable. Either way, it’s been a long time since westerners have felt the need to “spit on their hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.”

The argument is that modern liberal democratic societies have built in checks against tyranny and systems for making structural reforms when necessary. If the main political parties are unresponsive, then new parties rise up to displace them and implement the needed reforms. Elections give the people the tools to reign in their rulers so there’s no need for revolution.

Just because this process has never happened does not mean it can’t happen. The argument here is that the main parties respond to changing attitudes and reform on their own so there’s no need for new parties. The Tories in Britain, for example, moved right when UKIP got going. In America, the Democrats lurched to the left when the Green Party sprouted up in the 90’s. The Republican Party is about to move right in response to the Trump-a-paloosa.

That’s the theory. The Greeks would point out that they kept voting for something different, but nothing changed. In fact, the more they voted, the more draconian the punishments from Europe. They would have been better off having a good old fashioned military coup. At least that would have made for good television. Instead, Greece is now Germany’s Puerto Rico.

The lesson the German politicians learned, or at least appear to have learned, is that democracy is nothing but a bluff. The Greeks could have started shooting, but instead they knuckled under to German demands, even when it was a matter of pride. They would rather stop being Greek by eliminating that which makes them Greek, than take on the burden of leaving Europe and reclaiming their sovereignty.

Angela Merkel appears to be taking the same stand with the German people. Here we have genuine social unrest due to the flood of migrants she invited into the country and her response is to go after Germans who speak out about it. The mayor of Cologne, sounding like Bill Clinton, told her female citizens to just lie back and try to enjoy the rape-a-thon going on in the city square.

Just in case you are inclined to think that’s a mischaracterization, Merkel has just made a big public show of not accepting limits on allowing more Muslim immigrants into the country. The only conclusion to draw from this is she thinks there’s no amount of degradation and humiliation that will cause the German public to rise up and put an end to this madness. Given the Greek experience, she’s probably right.

It’s tempting to think there’s some difference between Germans and Greeks in the view of the people in charge, but that is a mistake. As far as Merkel is concerned, the people of Cologne are no different from the people of Athens. They are not even people. They are economic units to be shifted around and eliminated in order to maintain the ruling class. If the economic units in Athens can be bullied, why think the units of Cologne will not be bullied too?

What we are witnessing in the West is the great test of liberal democracy. On the one side, all over the West we see recalcitrant mainstream parties digging in their heels on polices that benefit the global elite at the expense of the local populations. On the other side you have local populations trying to force change on their government through the liberal democratic processes. The theory says the politicians, as a matter of survival, will yield.

So far, that has not been the way to bet. Instead, the main parties find new ways to subvert the will of the voters. In Greece the Germans laid siege to the country until they broke the will of the people. Closer to home, the German government is unleashing a wave of Muslim terrorism on their people, presumably as a form of intimidation. In France, the main parties have teamed up to block the third party from winning.

You don’t have to be a seer to see what’s coming. If through the accepted democratic process, the will of the people is thwarted, then the people will lose respect for those processes. If the people in charge already look upon these processes with contempt, there’s no one left to support the status quo and the whole things falls to pieces. Perhaps the post-democratic world imagined by the global elite is what emerges, but 100 years ago all the smart people had similar thoughts.

Fear and Resentment

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I continue to read National Review On-Line, despite having dropped the subscription to the paper version years ago. The reason is it is a canary in the coal mine sort of publication now. Their selection of topics and positions indicates the current thinking within the Republican Party. They have fluff and red meat type stuff too, but it is mostly about how to sell the GOP to the public.

The Weekly Standard, in contrast, is about influencing policy and is more of a trade journal for staffers in DC. They will take a long piece on policy or strategy and package it with a bunch of fluff that managerial class staffers will find interesting. My guess is their circulation is 90% within the DC metropolitan area. It now fills the role the New Republic filled before it was destroyed by the gay Nazi from Facebook.

Anyway, this ridiculously long-winded piece on immigration from one of the fake nerds at National Review is something that got my attention. I mostly skimmed it for two reasons. One is that a 3,500 word piece is too long by default. Second, it’s obvious the author has no grasp of the subject.

For years, elite conservatives have ignored grassroots opposition to mass immigration, and Trump’s rise is their reward. That GOP primary voters are in revolt over immigration, and that so many of them are spurning elected Republicans they no longer trust, should come as no surprise.

Does this mean that all conservatives need to do is call for closing the borders, and then all will be well? Not by a long shot. If Republicans who favor mass immigration have been blind to its downsides, many of those who are opposed to it have themselves been blinded by nostalgia — they have failed to recognize that the more culturally homogeneous America of the 1980s, when many older conservatives came of age, is gone.

The result is that anti-immigration conservatives have alienated potential allies. Many centrist and liberal African Americans share conservatives’ skepticism about immigration, yet they are reluctant to join forces with a movement they see as racially exclusive. Many Hispanics and Asians, whether foreign- or native-born, see the virtue in reducing less-skilled immigration while easing the way for skilled workers. Political scientists Jens Hainmueller and Daniel Hopkins have gathered considerable evidence that support for such a policy is widespread among Americans of all backgrounds. Yet immigration advocates have deliberately framed the immigration debate as all-or-nothing, and conservatives have let them get away with it.

I’ll just note that no where in the 3,500 word article do we find numbers in favor of mass immigration of any sort. The alluded to “evidence” in this quote is never mentioned again. Like the “evidence” in support of Big Foot and extraterrestrials, the evidence in support of mass immigration is always discussed, but never presented.

Again, it is an unnecessarily long article. The argument is that the GOP needs to adopt a policy of unlimited immigration that discriminates against low-skilled immigrants. That way, the knuckle-dragging rubes in flyover country will stop bitching about the foreigners and get back on the GOP bus. Again, there’s zero data in support of the claim that immigration is good for Americans. It’s just assumed.

None of this is new, but it indicates two things. One is the GOP is still baffled by the revolt of the peasants. They are convinced the trouble is the poor white dirt people in their trailers and shanties, being displaced by the brown people of the future. If the GOP can buy them off then the American middle class will gladly sign onto what the author concedes is cultural suicide.

The other thing we see here is there’s no real interest in peeping over the walls and seeing the faces of the revolting. They prefer to imagine the Trump vote is a bunch of old white guys on Rascal Scooters, waving around the Confederate Flag. There’s a sneering contempt for the rabble outside the walls. Therefore, it is only proper to assume the worst of them.

The contempt is most obvious when they deploy their favorite phrase, “fear and resentment” to those opposed to mass immigration. The implication is that only paranoid losers oppose mass immigration. They can’t keep up so they manufacture bogeymen they can point to as an enemy. Hilariously, the author finishes by calling his war on Americans “the compassionate case for integration and assimilation.”

This being the start of 2016, I have naturally been reading up on the year 1916. Even though it was clear that Russian society, for example, was buckling under the strain of war, the tsarists were incapable of seeing things through the eyes of the Russian people. To them, the peasants and workers may as well have been foreigners, for all the connection they felt toward them.

You see the same insularity in today’s managerial elite. Reihan Salam is better than most in that he concedes that the GOP should pay some attention to its voters on the issue of immigration. The trouble is the vast majority of the managerial elite look at the American people in the same way the tsarists looked at the starving peasants of St. Petersburg, as a burden and a nuisance.

Insurance Versus Taxes

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You can make the argument that insurance made the modern world possible, because it made risk quantifiable. The insurer is making a bet that the return on his investment of your premiums will exceed the claims on those premiums. In order to make that bet, he has to have some way to calculate the amount he can reasonably expect to payout in claims.

That’s one half of the equation. The other half is the investment. In order to run a profitable insurance company, you have to invest conservatively. The same guys figuring out the probability of your death this year are using the same mathematical skills to find the safest investments. The result is large pools of premiums moving into the safe investments like bonds. [1]

Niall Ferguson in the Ascent of Money gives a great history of the first modern insurance company, the Scottish Ministers Widow’s Fund. Robert Wallace and Alexander Webster figured out a few things that revolutionized capital. One of the consequences of this innovation was that large pools of capital were created from thousands of small premiums. That capital could then be put to work in new businesses, new industries and new technology.

The interesting thing about the birth of modern insurance is even after centuries of experience, we still can’t understand the difference between insurance and taxation. Social welfare programs, for example, work on the principle of pay-as-you go where current taxpayers cover the expenses of current beneficiaries. Back when the Scots were inventing modern actuarial tables, they knew pay-as-you-go could never work in the long run. Yet, here we are.

It’s also why the public sector pension systems are teetering on collapse. The Scotts figured out that a fixed benefit system had to lock in the benefit side by pegging it to the amount of premiums paid into the system. Once you uncouple the premium from the benefit, the system will collapse. The only question is how long it will take, but the boundary always seems to be one working life, as we are seeing in America.

Similarly, insurance only works when it is voluntary. When the state comes in, points a gun at your head and says you have to buy an insurance policy from the companies they choose or from the state, that’s not insurance. That’s extortion. If you want to be kind, it is a tax. When the state takes money from citizens against their will, that’s a tax, regardless of the intentions.

It’s why American health insurance is collapsing. It has none of the features one must have for a successful insurance system. The insurers are forced to take all customers, regardless of risk. They are not allowed to dump reckless customers or even ask about risky behavior. At the same time, the customers are forced to buy insurance. In many areas, there’s only one or two companies and the rates are set by the state.

Of course, what makes health insurance an impossibility is we will all get sick and die eventually. You cannot insure against certainty. A true health insurance system would combine the logic of whole life insurance to cover the inevitable with the logic of term life insurance to address surprises, like getting hit by a bus. Again, these are things we have known for centuries.

Progressives are now talking about using the same nutty ideas to “remedy” gun violence in America. They want gun owners to carry liability insurance that would pay victims in the event the insured’s gun is used in a crime. No insurance company would sell a policy to a gun owner to cover the cost of them shooting someone. There’s simply no way to shoot someone without being negligent (criminally or civilly) or justified. In both cases, insurance has no role.

The point of this, of course, is to drive up the cost of gun ownership and create a gun registry, but even if it was an honest effort, the gun owner is being held liable for the actions of others. That’s just a click away from collective punishment and contrary to a couple thousand years of western civilization. More important, it is confusing insurance with taxation. In this case, taxing millions of gun owners so politicians can hand out tax dollars to the victims of gangbangers.

All of this brings me to something Steve Sailer has been pushing with regards to immigration and that is forcing immigrants to carry liability insurance. Unlike compulsory gun insurance, the attempt here is not to infringe on a natural right. Steve is cleverly trying to introduce the idea in order to help immigration opponents. In that regard, it is clever and I hope it catches on with the chattering skulls.

The problem here is similar to the other examples of compulsory insurance. It’s really just a tax. We already have a sponsor system where people can bring over relatives and employees, as long as they meet certain financial terms. Sponsors cannot be on welfare, for example. They have to have an income higher than the current poverty line.

Where the insurance should come into play is on the sponsor and employer. If Jose wants to bring his family over, he has to either get a liability policy with a million dollar combined single limit or post assets of the equivalent. Employers seeking H1 visas would do something similar. If Jose gets rich and wants to sponsor his relatives, Jose has to carry enough insurance to cover it. Similarly, the employer will have to factor insurance costs into their indentured servant costs.

[1] I know. I know.

The New Containment

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The policy of containment, with respect to the Soviet Union and the Cold War, evolved at the end of World War II and into the post-war period because the other options were not practical. Sending the US army to push the Russians out of eastern Europe would have been an impossible sell to the American public, assuming it was even possible. Dropping a nuke on Moscow would have been a public relations disaster.

On the other hand, simply letting the Russians dominate Europe was out of the question politically, even though many within the American ruling elite were communists. There had to be a way to keep most of Europe free that did not result in a war with Russia. Containment was the near perfect solution. It kept the Russians in check, created thousands of jobs for the Yankee elite and fed the military-industrial complex.

That’s not intended to imply that the people who crafted and developed the Western response to the Soviets thought all this through in advance. It just evolved into the best solution. At the onset it scratched the itch, the need to respond to Soviet aggression, but over time it proved to be flexible enough to accommodate the needs of various constituencies within the ruling class.

The funny thing about the Cold War is it preserved the American ruling consensus long after the facts on the ground justified it. The public was not going to support overturning the apple cart as long as the threat of nuclear annihilation was very real. That naturally made anyone advocating great change a threat and they were easily painted as a hothead or commie.

The result was a self-policing where the Left kept their commies in the lower ranks and the Right kept their hot heads out of sight. Within living memory, a ridiculous fop like Barak Obama would have been kept in the community organizing department where he could not cause trouble. Of course, fear of nuclear annihilation kept the public from questioning the arrangements, even if meant keeping the black man down.

Since the end of the Cold War a quarter century ago, the ruling elites have lost their footing, staggering around like drunks. In Europe, the main parties are imploding into a single party relying on skullduggery to overcome a lack of purpose. The recent French elections demonstrate their willingness to lock shields to preserve the status quo, even when they can’t come up with reason for maintaining it.

In America, the Democrats are a party for men in dresses and women in muumuus. The Republicans are the land of misfit toys, politicians just not weird enough for the other team. The ructions in the GOP primary reveal the party establishment to be hollow men with no reason to exist beyond habit. The Democrats look like God’s waiting room, an old pinko in a pantsuit versus an old an old pinko in pants.

For the past few decades, there’s been no real cost to excess, but that’s changing as the demographic explosion on the fringes of civilization threaten the West with an invasion of barbarians from over the horizon. Islam presents both a cultural and demographic challenge. Africa presents a demographic and biological challenge. So far, the ruling elites have failed to come to terms with this looming threat.

It strikes me that the rise of “far far far extreme right wing” parties in Europe and the rise of the “extreme right wing racist Donald Trump” in America may turn out to be a catalyst for how the ruling class responds to the next great challenge to civilization. While abandoning anti-racism, multiculturalism and egalitarianism is unthinkable, all three can be shoehorned into a new policy of containment.

Keeping the Mahommedan bottled up in his own lands, a new policy of containment, has obvious practical benefits to the West. Capping off Africa by making the Mediterranean a real barrier to entry (and maybe bribing the countries of the Maghreb), helps solve the African explosion as well. The Arabs would simply refocus their attention on making the Sahara a natural barrier again.

At the same time, containment means not mucking about in the affairs of the Mahommedan. In the Cold War, the West left the Eastern Bloc to the care of the Soviets. They had their sphere of influence and we had ours. The new containment would follow the same model. Let the Mahommedan manage his lands as he sees fit, but keep him bottled up in those lands, behind a technological, cultural and military curtain.

The benefit to the ruling class is it gives them a natural reason to exist. They are holding back the tides and sensible citizens will not want to risk that by supporting fringe candidates. It also brings back the natural self-policing that comes from permanent war. The Left will suppress their one-word fanatics, while the Right will keep their invade the world nutters under wraps.

Of course, the military and the diplomatic core will have plenty of reasons to get money and jobs for their people. Muffy Pemberton can pop out of Harvard and take a job in the diplomatic corps, while Dwayne Haskins can make a career out of standing guard at the borders. The Yankee ruling class gets the band back together, just focused on a different enemy. They can even, wink-wink, argue about which side has the best approach.

The sales pitch can center around the fact that it is more effective to send aid to these people than it is to resettle them in the West. There’s also the benefit of keeping their best and brightest in their home countries so they can help develop their societies. There’s the obvious safety angle, keeping the Mahommedan from exploding in your local coffee shop. It’s an easy sell with obvious benefits.

Containment. It’s not just for commies anymore.

The New Containment

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The policy of containment, with respect to the Soviet Union and the Cold War, evolved at the end of World War II and into the post-war period because the other options were not practical. Sending the US army to push the Russians out of eastern Europe would have been an impossible sell to the American public, assuming it was even possible. Dropping a nuke on Moscow would have been a public relations disaster.

On the other hand, simply letting the Russians dominate Europe was out of the question politically, even though many within the American ruling elite were communists. There had to be a way to keep most of Europe free that did not result in a war with Russia. Containment was the near perfect solution. It kept the Russians in check, created thousands of jobs for the Yankee elite and fed the military-industrial complex.

That’s not intended to imply that the people who crafted and developed the Western response to the Soviets thought all this through in advance. It just evolved into the best solution. At the onset it scratched the itch, the need to respond to Soviet aggression, but over time it proved to be flexible enough to accommodate the needs of various constituencies within the ruling class.

The funny thing about the Cold War is it preserved the American ruling consensus long after the facts on the ground justified it. The public was not going to support overturning the apple cart as long as the threat of nuclear annihilation was very real. That naturally made anyone advocating great change a threat and they were easily painted as a hothead or commie.

The result was a self-policing where the Left kept their commies in the lower ranks and the Right kept their hot heads out of sight. Within living memory, a ridiculous fop like Barak Obama would have been kept in the community organizing department where he could not cause trouble. Of course, fear of nuclear annihilation kept the public from questioning the arrangements, even if meant keeping the black man down.

Since the end of the Cold War a quarter century ago, the ruling elites have lost their footing, staggering around like drunks. In Europe, the main parties are imploding into a single party relying on skullduggery to overcome a lack of purpose. The recent French elections demonstrate their willingness to lock shields to preserve the status quo, even when they can’t come up with reason for maintaining it.

In America, the Democrats are a party for men in dresses and women in muumuus. The Republicans are the land of misfit toys, politicians just not weird enough for the other team. The ructions in the GOP primary reveal the party establishment to be hollow men with no reason to exist beyond habit. The Democrats look like God’s waiting room, an old pinko in a pantsuit versus an old an old pinko in pants.

For the past few decades, there’s been no real cost to excess, but that’s changing as the demographic explosion on the fringes of civilization threaten the West with an invasion of barbarians from over the horizon. Islam presents both a cultural and demographic challenge. Africa presents a demographic and biological challenge. So far, the ruling elites have failed to come to terms with this looming threat.

It strikes me that the rise of “far far far extreme right wing” parties in Europe and the rise of the “extreme right wing racist Donald Trump” in America may turn out to be a catalyst for how the ruling class responds to the next great challenge to civilization. While abandoning anti-racism, multiculturalism and egalitarianism is unthinkable, all three can be shoehorned into a new policy of containment.

Keeping the Mahommedan bottled up in his own lands, a new policy of containment, has obvious practical benefits to the West. Capping off Africa by making the Mediterranean a real barrier to entry (and maybe bribing the countries of the Maghreb), helps solve the African explosion as well. The Arabs would simply refocus their attention on making the Sahara a natural barrier again.

At the same time, containment means not mucking about in the affairs of the Mahommedan. In the Cold War, the West left the Eastern Bloc to the care of the Soviets. They had their sphere of influence and we had ours. The new containment would follow the same model. Let the Mahommedan manage his lands as he sees fit, but keep him bottled up in those lands, behind a technological, cultural and military curtain.

The benefit to the ruling class is it gives them a natural reason to exist. They are holding back the tides and sensible citizens will not want to risk that by supporting fringe candidates. It also brings back the natural self-policing that comes from permanent war. The Left will suppress their one-word fanatics, while the Right will keep their invade the world nutters under wraps.

Of course, the military and the diplomatic core will have plenty of reasons to get money and jobs for their people. Muffy Pemberton can pop out of Harvard and take a job in the diplomatic core, while Dwayne Haskins can make a career out of standing guard at the boarders. The Yankee ruling class gets the band back together, just focused on a different enemy. They can even, wink-wink, argue about which side has the best approach.

The sales pitch can center around the fact that it is more effective to send aid to these people than it is to resettle them in the West. There’s also the benefit of keeping their best and brightest in their home countries so they can help develop their societies. There’s the obvious safety angle, keeping the Mahommedan from exploding in your local coffee shop. It’s an easy sell with obvious benefits.

Containment. It’s not just for commies anymore.

Fear of the R

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In my most recent post in the series, “My Theory of Everything” I got into the weaponization of race by the dominant half of the ruling elite. The three-legged dog that is the dominant orthodoxy of America relies excursively on the moralization of race to point where noticing anything about race is dangerous. Egalitarianism, Multiculturalism and anti-racism are the three legs, but it is anti-racism that is both the cause and consequence of this worldview.

The Right, what’s left of it, is so fearful of the race issue that they invest all of their time inventing ways to achieve some of the results that flow naturally from freedom of association, but in a way that inoculates them from the race issue. In some cases, they invent externalities that get them off the hook so they can avoid the wrath of the Left. In America, the worst thing that can happen to you is to be tagged a racist.

Yesterday, Jim Geraghty posted a panicked response to Trump’s proposal to ban Muslim immigration. In it is he makes the absurd claim that everyone has a right to migrate and settle in America. After all, that is the only way to read the claim that preventing Muslims from immigrating is unconstitutional. If the charter of the nation prohibits immigration, then only Hitler would be against immigration!

The poor man is so afraid of the race issue that he is willing to sign onto dissolving the nation, if that’s what it takes to avoid the “R” word. Even after people with some knowledge of the Constitution and American history explained to him that he was hilariously mistaken about the constitutionality of it, he still clung to his belief like a drowning man. “Better dead than racist” is the mantra.

Today, Roger Simon has a similar trip down loony-tune lane looking for a way to avoid the scarlet letter, while remaining serious about the problem of Sudden Mohammedan Explosion.

As half the world knows by now, Donald Trump has gone “Full Monty” on Muslim immigration, calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

That’s our Donald — never a master of understatement! (But he certainly knows how to make monkeys out of the media — kudos for that.)

Like most commentators, however, I don’t agree with him — I support the Constitution and its freedoms — but to deny we have a gigantic Muslim problem in this country and in the world is to be a troglodyte of epic proportions.  Something has to be done, domestically and internationally, even if it’s not Donald’s “Full Monty.”

First he makes sure to put lots of space between himself and the bad thinker. Then he tries to cuddle up to the audience by laughing at how silly the media has been over Trump. Finally he makes clear he is a good thinker who rejects the bad thinker because he supports the Constitution and its freedoms and puppies, he loves puppies too.

Unlike Jim Geraghty, Roger Simon is not a blockhead, but he has the same fear of racism and so he decides to find some non-racist way to do the same thing. His proposal is to ban Sharia, which makes Trump’s plan to ban Muslim immigration sound modest and sober. Simon apparently thinks banning Muslim immigrants is a horrible crime against “who we are”, but it is OK to unleash the police state to root out people who want to change the laws to match their beliefs.

Now, it is possible that Simon is just as dumb as Geraghty, but my sense here is that fear of the “R” word is so intense it warps the thoughts of otherwise sensible people. The narcotic of the ruling class is anti-racism. They chew it like the khat. If you want to be a part of elite culture, you better chew on it too. Otherwise, you will always be under suspicion and eventually evicted.

The fact is, Trump’s idea is not preposterous; it is impractical. We can’t screen for Islam, but we can close up the migration programs bringing in people from Muslim countries. There’s no upside to bringing in Afghans or Somalis. If Americans want grace by helping these people, planes fly to these countries, not just from them. Let the grace seekers hop a plane to Marrakesh and help the Mohammedan in his native land.

But then, saying that means casting doubt on the whole moral structure of the ruling class. If Mohamed is not going to workout as a potential citizen in a modern technological society, then that means not all men are the same after all. If that’s true then universal equality is false. At that point the whole rationale for the modern American ruling elite unravels. A ruling class without a raison d’être is going to have a short shelf life.

After a Mohammedan went bonkers and shot up a military base, General Casey came forward and said, “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” Most thought he was just a pussy-whipped groveler, but he really meant it. They all mean it. They see regular Mohammedan mass murder as the price we pay so they can remain in charge.

Trump: Dragging The Overton Window Our Way

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A year ago, the great frustration of the Dissident Right was that the “I” word was pretty close to being the “N” word in politics. The only time members of either party discussed the issue was when they were preaching the glories of open borders and flooding your neighborhood with foreigners. Mitt Romney actually said he wanted to throw you out of your job in order to make room for a foreigner.

Then Trump came along talking about building a big beautiful wall along the southern border. The political class howled, but the public applauded. The interesting thing about the last six months is that the Republican Party has avoided going after Trump on immigration, instead attacking him in crude personal ways. Even the insulated elites felt the ground shifting on the issue.

The thing about Trump is he is the ultimate opportunist so he has drifted from the immigration issue of late, taking shots at the other candidates as the opportunity presented itself. I called him the Leverage Candidate back in the summer, because he invests everything into the next deal he thinks he can win.  It’s his mentality so he is going to meander from topic to topic.

The other thing about Trump is he is a risk taker, but he is not foolish. He saw how Carson picked up support after he said honest things about Islam. I suspect he saw that and wondered how he could use it. Then the muzzies went bonkers and shot up Paris and then California soTrump is about to drag the Overton Window a few clicks in the right direction.

Donald J. Trump called on Monday for the United States to bar all Muslims from entering the country until the nation’s leaders can “figure out what is going on” after the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., an extraordinary escalation of rhetoric aimed at voters’ fears about members of the Islamic faith.

A prohibition of Muslims – an unprecedented proposal by a leading American presidential candidate, and an idea more typically associated with hate groups – reflects a progression of mistrust that is rooted in ideology as much as politics.

Mr. Trump, who in September declared “I love the Muslims,” turned sharply against them after the Paris terrorist attacks, calling for a database to track Muslims in America and repeating discredited rumors that thousands of Muslims celebrated in New Jersey on 9/11. His poll numbers rose largely as a result, until a setback in Iowa on Monday morning. Hours later Mr. Trump called for the ban, fitting his pattern of making stunning comments when his lead in the Republican presidential field appears in jeopardy.

Saying that “hatred” among many Muslims for Americans is “beyond comprehension,” Mr. Trump said in a statement that the United States needed to confront “where this hatred comes from and why.”

“Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,” Mr. Trump said.

This is horrifying, of course, to the ruling class, but most Americans will think it blazingly obvious. We can’t seem to figure out which Muslims are going to blow, so why import millions of them into the country? Again, the number of people walking around saying “We need more Muslims” rounds to zero.

The beauty of this move is it not only shifts the conversation, it will flushes out the lunatics in the GOP. Trump is not just moving the window of acceptable discourse, he is trolling the meatheads and nitwits that pose as statesmen.

Repudiation of Mr. Trump’s remarks was swift and severe among religious groups and politicians from both parties. Mr. Trump is “unhinged,” said one Republican rival, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, while another, while another, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, called the ban “offensive and outlandish.” Hillary Clinton said the idea was “reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive.” Organizations representing Jews, Christians and those of other faiths quickly joined Muslims in denouncing Mr. Trump’s proposal.

The thing we’re seeing with Trump is that there is no benefit in playing along with these people. The better course is to keep pushing the boundary and force the Social Justice League of America to defend their position. In a weird way, Trump is doing to the ruling class what Progressives have done to traditional Americans for fifty years. He swings the wrecking ball and says, “Tell me why I shouldn’t do it.”

Experts on immigration law and policy expressed shock at the proposal Monday afternoon.

“This is just so antithetical to the history of the United States,” said Nancy Morawetz, a professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law, who specializes in immigration. “It’s unbelievable to have a religious test for admission into the country.”

She added: “I cannot recall any historical precedent for denying immigration based on religion.”

Times change Nancy, times change.

A Sickness Reason Cannot Cure

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One of the stranger things about daily life is that the most obvious answer, the one most likely to succeed at the lowest possible cost, is almost always declared unacceptable or even impossible by the people in charge. More often than not, the next best option is also eliminated, even laughed off. Somehow, the public debates always revolve around options that are unlikely to work or promise to make things worse.

This madhouse dynamic is most obvious when it comes to health care. The laws of supply and demand apply to all things. Prices go up when demand outstrips supply. Prices fall when supply exceed demand. Health care, like all other goods and services, must be rationed. That’s either done through price or through monopoly, which has failed everywhere it has been tried, leaving price as the best solution yet discovered.

Therefore, the most obvious way to make health care cheaper is to increase the supply. If we have more doctors, hospitals, pill makers and so forth, the price for their services will fall. The way government helps this along is by removing impediments to entering these fields. Government can also remove the artificial costs that make these fields less attractive. This is ground floor economics, yet it is never discussed anywhere by anyone.

Instead, the public debate over health care in America is one side with their insanely complex plans versus the other side with their insanely complex plans. ObamaCare is tens of thousands of pages of rules and regulations that no one comprehends. The results have been disastrous, but simply repealing it is considered madness. Instead, the only possible option is to pile on even more insanely complex plans, like throwing a drowning man an anchor. It’s as if the people in charge want the whole thing to collapse.

If you are a normal person looking at this, there are two ways you can go with this. One is you can doubt yourself and assume the issue must be vastly more complex than you can comprehend. I suspect many take this option, preferring to ignore it all rather than consider the other choice.

The other choice, the other way you can go is to try to understand why the people in charge insist on not doing the obvious, most sensible thing. Why are seemingly smart people allergic to the obvious? Mickey Kaus touches on this in this post:

If the Republican establishment is so panicked about Donald Trump — a wild, proto-fascist egomaniac with his finger on the button, in their telling — you’d think it would do the one thing that would almost certainly stop him: Surrender. By “surrender” I mean abandon their decades long dream of winning Latino votes through a magic pill called “comprehensive immigration reform” (known to its opponents as amnesty). After Romney’s 2012 defeat, conservatives like Charles Krauthammer argued that if they just caved to the Democrats on this one issue — immigration — they wouldn’t really have to change anything else. (“It requires but a single policy change ….”) In 2013, with Marco Rubio as their smiling pitch man, they tried desperately to sell out on immigration. They failed.

Today, Trump’s massive rallies can be interpreted as an expression of the historic populist undercurrent animating America’s white working class. Or they can be interpreted, with less sophistication, as Americans saying, as loudly as they can, “WE DON’T WANT YOUR F___ING ‘COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM.’” Either way, anger over elite “more immigration” plans is the molten core of the Trump eruption. Is there any doubt that if “comprehensive immigration reform” went away for good, Trumpism would wither? So why don’t Haley Barbour and Karl Rove call a big K Street meeting where they say, “Boys, we have to throw the damn yahoos this bone. We’re giving up on amnesty”?

My bet is most sensible people think that after the recent terror attacks, the people in charge will back off of open borders and the importation of Muslims. After all, the people are starting to get very pissed off over the Muslims. All across the West, the people are shouting, “Enough with the fucking Muslims!” Yet, the people in charge are out grinning like chimps promising to import even more Muslims. You would be forgiven for thinking that maybe they like it when Mohamed shoots up a mall or an office park.

That, I think, is the part that is hard for most people to face. It’s hard to imagine that President Obama or Angela Merkel or David Cameron really want to see their people suffer. It’s unfathomable that someone could be so deranged by self-loathing that they would commit their lives to pulling down the roof on their countries. It’s a madness that is impossible for normal people to contemplate, but what else is there?

The most obvious answer to the problem of Syed Farouk coming back from Saudi Arabia and murdering his co-workers at the Christmas party is to not import guys named Syed Farouk in the first place. But, that’s the obvious answer, the one most likely to succeed. Instead, the madmen in charge insist on building a police state so they can keep importing Muslim fanatics. There’s no reasoning with them. No amount of carnage will shake them of this disease that has driven them mad.