A big part of radical politics is the public display of piety. Members of the Left have a habit of displaying their piety in the same way women display charms on a bracelet. They make a big deal of letting everyone know they have a gay friend or a black friend. They don’t think of these people as people, of course. They are props, charms to hang on their bracelet that they rattle in public to signal to everyone they are a pious person.

Way back in the Bush years, liberals all claimed to know a moderate Muslim, who was like a suburban white guy, just a Muslim. It was hilarious how these otherwise irreligious people suddenly turned into Muslim scholars. They still hated Christians, but they were now experts on the Koran. They just knew that Islam was great. Proof was their imaginary Muslim friends and co-workers.

They never read the Koran and most likely had no Muslim acquaintances. It was just a public act of piety. They needed that charm on their bracelet. The funny part is they all repeated the same claims, as if they were reading from a script. Since these people read the same narrow set of website and watch the same news programs, it is no surprise they make the same arguments, sing the same songs and read the same lines from the catechism.

In the homosexual marriage debate, every liberal friends suddenly sprouted homosexual friends. The fact that the supply of homosexuals was far outstripped by the claims never came up. Unsurprisingly, there was no talk about the Muslim friends who just a few years ago were allegedly confirming all of the claims of the Left. The prominent charms on the piety bracelet were all gay all day.

Now we are seeing Ukrainians turn up in conversation. On the one hand, many leftists are Jewish and have family roots in this part of the world leads to an obsession with Russia and the old Pale of Settlement. On the other hand, the gentiles now need to feel like experts on this new thing. More important, they need to personalize it, so all of a suddenly their gay friend is out and their Ukrainian friend is in.

One of the things you learn as you travel around this world of ours is that people are not all the same. Way back in the olden thymes, our school teachers had just picked up Cultural Marxism and were preaching to us about how people everywhere were the same. I recall learning the word “ethnocentrism” in the fourth grade. We were about to learn about Japan and India and the teacher spent an hour telling us about how not to laugh at the weird things we were about to learn. That’s close to half a century now for our ruling fanatics to scream epithets against reality. Yet, reality is still here.

Race and culture are just stubborn things and will not yield to wishful thinking. Although I identify as African-American, my ancestors having left the dark continent 50,000 years ago, I am white. I’m very white. Other white people assume I am white and of the white culture. Black people make the same assumption. It is not that everyone is racist. It is that they have eyes and notice things like skin color. People also notice that, the occasional Oreo and Wigger notwithstanding, that skin color tracks closely with race and culture in America.

A good example of this is the film Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp. Until last night, I had never heard of the movie or knew much about the man. I am a fan of true crime so I am familiar with notorious criminals of all races. People find it odd that I can recall the names of obscure ghetto gangsters, but every man has his hobbies. Not only was I not very familiar with Mr. Slim, I had no idea he played such a big role in the culture of black America. Here’s the trailer:

Documentaries about people long after they are gone are usually full of lies.The director is not going to have a bunch of people on-screen saying they never heard of the subject of the documentary. Instead they find people willing to say they share the director’s passion for the subject. Still, according to Wiki, Slim’s books sold millions of copies in the 1970’s, exclusively to black readers. Yet, few white people have ever heard of him or hold “pimping” in the same regard as black Americans.

That last bit is an important takeaway. The Left can rattle on about racism all they like, but people have eyes and they see things. Black people are covetous of their culture, black culture. They don’t want it thrown into the diversity blender. They want their heroes and antiheroes. Iceberg Slim is not an “American” here. Most Americans have never heard of him. He is a black hero, unique to black culture.

It is why being authentically black looms so large for successful black entertainers, sports stars and politicians. Snoop Dogg and Chris Rock live like the Clevers but they pretend to live in the ghetto. I’m more gangster than those two phonies, but they have to “keep it real” and pretend to be ghetto whenever the cameras are rolling. Otherwise, they are not authentically black and will lose their audience.

That said, your culture is not getting very far if you insist on celebrating social pathologies as if they were cultural achievements. Much of American culture these days is exactly that, a celebration of the base and the crude. One television show after another is holding up the riff-raff and carny freaks as role models. Snoop Dogg got very rich pimping the nation’s youth out like whores. For most of human history entertainers were treated as scum, pushed to the fringe of society. Today they are in charge, telling us about the greatness of a ghetto pimp.

Today I stopped for a sandwich at the local bagel shop. It is a treat I have maybe once or twice a month. Usually there’s a pretty little blond at the counter, but she was hustling tables this morning. A new girl was handling takeout. I’m assuming she is a lesbian due to the lip ring, boys jeans, plain hair and sports bra. For whatever reason, lesbians like to try and hide their boobs. I’m sure there is more nuance to lesbian dress codes, but as a non-lesbian, I only notice the basics. The other thing that seems standard with lesbians is the sour look. They always look sad.

Are there happy lesbians? I’m reminded of this classic from Steve Sailer. Re-reading it, I get the sense unhappiness is woven throughout the lesbian lifestyle. It is, after all, a narrow subculture that has never enjoyed the popularity with elite culture  that we see with male homosexuality. The typical lesbian is ignored by popular culture. I would imagine that makes the sub-culture of lesbianism more difficult. The overall exclusivity of the group probably explains some of the surliness as well as the strict dress code.

When roughly 1-in-100 are a potential sex-partner, life can be quite lonely.

I also wonder if the biology is more the issue than social pressure. Homosexuals have much higher drug and alcohol abuse. They have very high suicide rates. Violence between homosexuals is also much higher than between heteros. Lesbians, according to crime figures, are twice as likely to be a victim of domestic violence as hetero women. That’s a staggering number. When you look at divorce rates, it’s rather clear that homosexuals should not bother with marriage. Their rates of divorce are astronomical. Lesbians are the least likely to remain “married.” All of this points to a population of uncommonly miserable people.

This was linked up at National Review. The commentary at NRO is pretty much what you expect from people on the Right these days. There are are no greater defenders of Israel and American Jewry than American Conservatives. Even Israelis are not as enthusiastic for the Tribe as these people. They are so over the top, you can’t help but wonder where their loyalty lies, but that would be called antisemitic.

The strangeness of it is America Jews are mostly hostile to the Right in America. Some think that speaks well of Conservative Inc. and those who look to them for guidance. It means their position is a philosophical one, not political. On the other hand, it is every bit as insane as chasing the black vote or thinking Hispanic immigrants are natural conservatives. It wastes energy on a fruitless venture.

“Dorm Storming” is a tactic used by anti-Israel activists at many campuses to slide mock eviction notices under student bedroom doors in the middle of the night, allegedly to let students know how Palestinians feel when served with eviction notices prior to demolition of their homes. The content of the flyers, including the frequency, number, and practice of such pre-demolition eviction notices is disputed, but that’s somewhat besides the point.

Students for Justice in Palestine frequently is the perpetrator of these dorm stormings, as happened at Northeastern University recently, resulting in SJP’s suspension.

The point of sliding political flyers under dorm doors, rather than handing them out on the street as students enter and exit, is to intimidate students in their most vulnerable place, their bedroom, and at their most vulnerable time, while they sleep. That is why many if not most universities ban the practice.

I’m not sure if it is intended to intimidate. Maybe it is. Maybe sometimes it is. Maybe it is also intended to draw attention to their cause. There’s a tradition in America of this sort of outlandish behavior for the purpose of drawing attention. These activists may be anti-Semites, but in America we don’t do thought crimes. All we can know is they are using  a tactic to press their case in a way that is very American.

There’s a time and place for everything in an orderly society. Harassing people who have zero to do with any of this is exactly what the school should discourage. On the other hand, This is not a legal issue. This is a culture issue. Why in the world are we inviting this here? The easy solution is to send all of them back to their respective lands so they can sort it out over there, not over here.

Assuming the constitutional right to free speech applied to private college campuses as in public spaces, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld ordinances protecting homeowners against unapproved intrusions.  Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728, 738 (1970)(“We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another…. That we are often ‘captives’ outside the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech and other sound does not mean we must be captives everywhere.”)

This is where it is time to change gears. There are no Muslim run countries where this sort of deliberation is possible. There are no Arab countries where this is possible. The concepts of free speech, peaceful protest and privacy are strictly Western concepts. More precisely, they are northern European concepts. If not for that collection of eccentrics on a barren island in the North Sea, liberal democracy would have remained a mystery to mankind. If the people called “Palestinians” got their way, we would all be dead, including the Jews.

The “dorm storming” is really much broader than just this college campus. By letting these savages into our lands, they are treating our country the same way they treat this college. These people have no interest in being Americans. They have no interest in the culture that allows for liberal democracy. The only reason they are here is to cause trouble for the West. The response  to macro-scale “dorm storming” should be mass deportation and a ban on all immigration from Muslim countries.

In another post I mentioned the nuisance fraction. That’s the portion of humanity, who mostly interfere with the orderly operation of society. They are not criminals. They are merely dimwitted, reckless, careless, inconsiderate and so forth. The ghetto has a high number of these people. Go to a fast food joint near the ghetto and you find vibrant people in line not ordering off the menu. They also require a separate bag for each item and one of every free item available.

Anyway, there’s a lot of overlap with this group, the people who are perpetually yapping on the phone. Probably 99% of cellular communication is between two competing dimwits with nothing of value to impart to the other. They just jibber-jabber at one another like simpletons all day, every day. Look around when you are out in a public and you see zombies staggering around either looking at their phone or talking to another zombie about useless nonsense.

Schutta says parents spend, on average, 11 hours a day using electronic devices. All that time takes away from face to face communication, which helps kids learn behavior.

“Kids in preschool and kindergarten are no longer as able to read social cues from other human beings,” Schutta said. “That’s in part because of their own media use and it’s in part because of their parents’ media use, they’re just not getting that training.”

Too much time on technology can also leave an emotional impact on your child, if you’re missing life moments for email.

A popular item in the news is the person walking into traffic while yapping on a mobile or texting on it. Putting aside the walking into traffic stuff, people are paying $100 a month for the phone. That’s $1200 a year after taxes. As the article points out, it also makes them socially awkward. When you spend your life interacting with digital representations of people, rather than real people, you lose the skill to deal with real people in real life. Kids never develop it.

For most of human history, making it to adulthood was a big deal. Even into relatively docile times like the middle ages, women lost a third of their off-spring by adulthood. Into the industrial age, losing a kid or two was not unusual. Therefore, the least physically fit rarely made it long enough to breed. Even then, not having some value to society was a good way to remain a bachelor. In other words, for men at least, you had to have some status in order to pass on your DNA to the next generation.

Today, the stupid fat woman wandering into the street is saved by those of us who know better. Even if she was hit, a smart team of doctors would probably patch her up. A smart lawyer would get her a big settlement from the insurance company. In a world in which labor is less necessary, increasing the supply of epsilons will have negative consequences. On the other hand, giving the state the power to murder those they deem useless is never a good idea so I don’t think there’s much to be done about it.

Regardless, we may have found a way to short-circuit a vital natural process. Spend any time on Diversity Street and you see the challenge straight away. It’s not that the stupid are breeding. It’s that a basket full of traits antithetical to human progress are celebrated in a way that turns natural selection on its head. If you are a woman adept at turning generosity into a vice by scamming the welfare system, you can have ten kids and live well. If you are a male with high violence capital and a complete lack of social intelligence, you rise in status and therefore breed like a rabbit.

If you want a glimpse of the future, head on down to Diversity Street and imagine the folks you see wandering around your town, wearing Google Glass or whatever wearable devise emerges in the next decade. That’s the future. Millions of jabbering nitwits doing nothing more than planning their next crime or their next opportunity to breed new nitwits. That assumes, of course, that we are not eventually overwhelmed by stupid people and foreign invaders.

A popular camp fire story among the managerial types is the looming collapse of the college system in America. On the one hand, it seems like a manufactured crisis, as collapse is unlikely. The boom times may end, but boom times always end. On the other hand, the problems get worse every year and no one has any idea how to arrest the decline and reform the system. That’s probably why the death of college is such a popular story these days. This one made the rounds yesterday.

At a Dowling College campus on Long Island’s south shore, a fleet of unused shuttle buses sits in an otherwise empty parking lot. A dormitory is shuttered, as are a cafeteria, bookstore and some classrooms in the main academic building.

“There’s a lot of fear here,” said Steven Fournier, a senior who lived in the now-closed dorm for his first three years. “It’s not the same college I arrived at.”

Dowling, which got a failing grade for its financial resources from accreditors last month, epitomizes the growing plight of many small private colleges that depend almost entirely on tuition for revenue. It’s been five years since the recession ended and yet their finances are worsening. Soaring student debt, competition from online programs and poor job prospects for graduates are shrinking their applicant pools.

“What we’re concerned about is the death spiral — this continuing downward momentum for some institutions,” said Susan Fitzgerald, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service in New York. “We will see more closures than in the past.”

I admit to having never heard of Dowling College. An applicant would probably be better off not mentioning it to me if they were applying for a job. If the resume did not list a college, I’d probably never notice. Seeing an unfamiliar one I’d look it up. Looking at the college website does not fill me with confidence. “Literacy Education Department” sounds bad for some reason. I’m sure it is fine college, but who knows what that even means anymore?

These people claim to know, but their methodology is dubious. The graduates of Harvard are most likely smart and motivated. Comparing their earnings to those of other smart and motivated people who lack a diploma would be useful, but that’s impossible to construct. Every decade someone does the math and announces that a college degree nets a higher salary, but not necessarily a higher net worth.

The reason for this, and the flaw in the college model, is simple. Wealth is not the same as income. The small plumber with one truck and an assistant may not have a high salary. He’s constantly buying tools and paying off that truck. Once he gets the truck paid off, he buys another truck and hires another plumber. His salary is not going up, but the value of his business is going up. By the time he retires, he had four or five trucks, a paid off house, some real estate where he runs his business and so on. His brother the manager has none of that, despite making considerably more in salary.

Strangely, college is all about preparing a young person for life as an employee. The son of the plumber may go to state college to make dad proud or he may just go into the business. The manager’s son is taking out debt to finance college so he can work for someone just like his father did. If you want of nation of renters, debtors and employees, our university system is great, until it collapses. If you want a nation of plumbers building up their asset base, then you need something different.

Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has predicted that as many as half of the more than 4,000 universities and colleges in the U.S. may fail in the next 15 years. The growing acceptance of online learning means higher education is ripe for technological upheaval, he has said.

He is most certainly wrong, but, if he is right it will not change much of anything. Half of college students at state universities have no business in college. The world has all the communication majors it needs. Sending kids to major in criminal justice or physical education is a waste of everyone’s time. The kids sit in class learning nothing useful, while the instructors get to extend childhood indefinitely.

In some respects, it is amazing how things evolved in the West. No one imagined taking out tens of thousands in debt in order to attend college. Someone majoring in gym would have seemed hilariously implausible a generation ago. Arithmetic says this arrangement has a short shelf life, but our rulers have managed to keep the plates spinning for three decades now.

The comments in this post at ParaPundit suggest the probable future. Taking an IQ test is a simple thing.  It will not be long before some company pops up offering a packaging of services to people so they can bypass the system in some way. A DNA test to show you have no genetic markers for expensive diseases could lower your insurance premium. An IQ test score from a credible company can help the truly gifted bypass college entirely. It may even be possible one day to use DNA to indicate raw IQ, language skills, math skills and so forth.