The Egalitarian Pill

There are many reasons to hate libertarians, all of them valid, but the most compelling reason is their totally misplaced self-assurance. Libertarians walk around sure they have gained access to the book of secret knowledge, while everyone else is staggering around in primitive darkness. In reality, modern libertarianism is mostly just window dressing for the oogily-boogily that comes from the Left. Libertarians start from the same misplaced beliefs about the human condition, but seek a different end.

A good example is this post from Reason Magazine (clown horn) celebrating the start of National School Choice Week. According to their website, it is “a week of celebration to raise public awareness of the different K-12 education options available to children and families while also spotlighting the benefits of school choice.” Reason Magazine is a big fan of school choice, so they are doing some celebrating of their own, promoting various studies about the glories of school choice.

Nowhere is the magical thinking of modern libertarianism more evident than in the area of education. While they don’t go so far as to embrace magic dirt theory, like their Progressive counterparts, they do believe in the magic of location. For example, the first bullet point of that post says, “Eighteen empirical studies have examined academic outcomes for school choice participants using random assignment, the gold standard of social science. Of those, 14 find choice improves student outcomes.”

Without reading a single study, anyone with the least bit of math and science knows that these studies are nonsense. There’s simply no way to net out certain immutable facts about the human condition, to isolate the effects of choice. For example, smart parents, who invest in their children, are much more likely to take advantage of school choice programs than dull or indifferent parents. Parents who like learning and value knowledge, will have kids who like learning and value knowledge.

The only way you could really test these various education theories, including school choice, is to do a twin study. One twin is ripped away from his parents and placed with some dullards, who are happy to send him to the local public school. The other twin is ripped from his parents and placed in a home with high parental investment and access to school choice. Then maybe you could get some useful data. That’s monstrous and no one would ever agree to anything close to it, so it will never happen.

Another point on the list states, “Ten empirical studies have examined school choice and racial segregation in schools. Of those, nine find school choice moves students from more segregated schools into less segregated schools.” Since we know the number of parents seeking to send their kids to majority black schools rounds to zero, this is actually a point against school choice for most people, but the modern libertarian has slugged down the multicultural ambrosia, so they can’t follow their own arguments here.

Look. Education is a function of biology. Smart kids tend to have smart parents and dumb kids tend to have dumb parents. Intelligence correlates with things like parental investment, peer selection, community involvement and so forth. The reason the kids at the school in the white suburb do better than the kids at the ghetto school is they came from better parents. Their parents built a stronger community, invest in their children and passed on their intelligence and social fitness to their kids.

The amusing part of the whole school choice debate is the Left fully understands what’s really going on here. Middle-class white parents want to avoid subjecting their kids to vibrancy. They will accept some of it, as long as the vibrancy has to pass through a filtering mechanism to weed out the really vibrant. The Left gets this, while libertarians and conservatives are drunk off their own fumes. If there is such a thing as “systemic racism” it is school choice. Everyone gets this except for the advocates.

This highlights the fundamental flaw of libertarianism. It’s the same flaw that has made Buckley-style conservatism utterly worthless. They accept the Progressive premise that there is no such thing as biology. People come into the world as amorphous blobs that can be shaped into proper citizens with the proper public policies and civic institutions. Once you take the egalitarian pill, the world stops making sense. From there it is an endless search for the right set of policies to make everyone equal.

The fact is, there is no fixing the schools. John Derbyshire brilliantly made this point in his global best seller We Are Doomed. Tens of billions have been poured into every conceivable education scheme. None have done anything to address the achievement gap and none have done anything to mitigate the inheritance gap. The best way to become a smart, educated person is to be born to parents who are smart and well educated. The schools can do nothing to make this happen.

That does not mean schools should be ignored. Public education, like public health, is a thing we expect government to manage. Instead of flushing billions down the drain fighting biological reality, vocational schools and the availability of jobs for people on the left side of the curve is the answer. No society can tolerate an excess of idle men, so fixing the schools in the ghetto means giving all those idle men something to do other than make babies, who will follow in their path. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

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Member
5 years ago

School choice was developed to give parents a way to opt out of the frequently-dangerous public education system because not everybody can afford a private school. The elites who come up with this stuff do not have to put their kids in the schools they champion. Normal people understand this. That’s why if you were to do a quick poll of what parents of parochial school children do for a living…a surprising number of the children have one or more parents teaching at the local public school. The Libertarians gussy it up in language about the power of free markets,… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  hokkoda
5 years ago

Hokkoda, well said. Long time Libertarian here, now ex-Lib. “Who cares the color of the cat as long as it catches mice.” Indeed, leaving out the concept of race, to promote school choice, is a wise move that all proponents of school choice should follow—for now. The truth will out in the end.

Member
Reply to  Compsci
5 years ago

As I tease my lefty friends on social media, they might be fantastic anti-racists, but they all seem to find ways to live “somewhere else”.

roo_ster
Member
Reply to  hokkoda
5 years ago

We pay 2x more to educate our children every year than we pay for housing. We drive our autos until the wheels fall off. Vacations are visits to family. Others move out to BFE and fight traffic for an hour+ each way to work. Still others eschew full time employment so one parent can home school or home school co-op(1). Any way you look at it, getting your kids a good education away from the troglodytes is not cheap. . . . (1) The wave of the future is a 2 days/week home school co-op schools. At least for white… Read more »

Member
Reply to  roo_ster
5 years ago

I’ve long believed that parents with 3 or more children should basically be exempted from income taxes until their children are fully emancipated or age 22 (end of college) whichever comes first.

Walt
Member
Reply to  roo_ster
5 years ago

Or move to Australia. Don’t bring the troglodytes with you though.

Rod1963
Rod1963
Reply to  roo_ster
5 years ago

The future is NOT SENDING YOUR KIDS to college to be brainwashed and turned into debt serfs before they even get going. Nor for that matter are most public schools due to the inclusion of Common Core. and other methods that kill a child’s curiosity and love of learning. when they turn 18, send them to a trade school. It’s far cheaper, no brainwashing and if they chose well they’ll make good $$$. Those who think college is a route to go are still living in 1980 like the CivNats and some HBD’ers who are still enamored by credentials(power totems… Read more »

Member
Reply to  Rod1963
5 years ago

Yes and no. My daughter wants to be a doctor, my son a fighter pilot. There are still careers, good ones, that require college. Not saying it’s for everyone.

Corvinus
Corvinus
Reply to  Rod1963
5 years ago

If we assume that kids are being sent to public school and college to be brainwashed, then that means those parents–who happen to be white–are other than intelligent. I thought white people in general had a higher IQ than non-white people. Furthermore, it would mean white people are easily duped.

You really are bordering on anti-white propaganda here.

hokkoda
Member
Reply to  Corvinus
5 years ago

Kind of a silly comment since most white people are making a “trade off” between sanctimonious gasbag Leftists in the social sciences vs. the fact that the average lifetime earnings of college graduates dwarfs non college graduates at present. Stupid? No. Just balancing the books, so to speak. This is something my daughter and I talk about quite a lot. I show her what these ass clown college professors are saying in the classrooms, and remind her that from almost the instant she steps on campus, she will be a target for religious conversion by campus radicals. And, that she… Read more »

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  hokkoda
5 years ago

Once more for emphasis: “The brutal truth is that school choice charter schools are just the suburbs on an educational scale…”

LeafyGreen
LeafyGreen
Reply to  hokkoda
5 years ago

If anybody is wondering why is Betsy DeVos so demonized, these samples of juicy literature might help: FORWARD dot COM, November 28, 2016, by Jay Michaelson: “But charter schools are only one step of the strategy. To the extent this is allowed by the Constitution, the agenda of the DeVos family foundations is to re-Christianize America and to replace the melting pot or gorgeous mosaic of our current secular society with an imagined America of a hundred years ago: white-dominated, Christian-dominated, traditional in values and orientation. Oh, and of course, along the way the Department of Education will immediately reverse… Read more »

Matrix
Matrix
5 years ago

This is such a spot on post! I have been in education in some form or another my whole life. You would not believe how blind professional educators are. There is always a new program that will fix the problem. A new admin will come in and implement the newest research, pad the resume, and then move on to a higher paid position. Slash and burn. This is done, over, and over, creating an ever-expanding bureaucracy. that sees no end. Couple that with the fact that there is absolutely no responsibility laid on kids for their behavior and you have… Read more »

Epaminondas
Member
Reply to  Matrix
5 years ago

So when the counter-revolution gets underway, how do we identify the bad guys in education? Seems to me you are all being tarred from the same brush merely by participating in that ghastly racket.

hokkoda
Member
Reply to  Epaminondas
5 years ago

You don’t have to identify individuals. You simply cut 70% of the administrative overhead. Most teachers are outnumbered 3-4-5:1 by non-teaching staff. That’s where a lot of the trouble comes from. Also, gut the “education licensing” bureaucracy. It’s merely a system of indoctrination. You’re not there to learn how to be a better teacher. You’re there to learn how to be culturally sensitive to your non-English speaking students and all the LGBTQ stuff. Pure indoctrination. No, rather than try to ID problem people, gut the overhead. Too many grifters who add not a penny of educational value, but who create… Read more »

Matrix
Matrix
Reply to  hokkoda
5 years ago

If we get into something that we really enjoy, the natural inclination is for us to be the best at it that we can be. Competition drives all of us. Unfortunately, educators are notorious in taking soft research and creating new initiatives that are going to save the day. Never ending new initiatives. We had the bus the under-privileged into our school program because research showed that you could bring test scores up immersed in quality teaching. All bullshit! All that happened was their test scores actually went down over time. They couldn’t keep up with the pace and intern… Read more »

Member
Reply to  Matrix
5 years ago

Build the toll booth to pay for the bridge, and when the bridge is paid for, the toll booth doesn’t come down.

A lot of what teachers have to put up with is all the people who make money changing the names for everything from one year to the next. Last year it was called this. This year it’s renamed something else, and there’s a 3-hour training module that must be completed.

Most of the time, it’s stuff about teaching that people have known for 1,000 years, but they give it a new name and call it progress.

S. Bishop
S. Bishop
Member
Reply to  hokkoda
5 years ago

Good point, Hokkoda: “A lot of what teachers have to put up with is all the people who make money changing the names for everything from one year to the next.”

Sounds very much like the Human Resources Department in every large corporation. Basically grifters who latch on to every sanctioned government mandate and set up ‘shaming’ mechanisms or outright punishments for those that don’t toe the line – all while grossly inflating their own self-importance and contribution.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Matrix
5 years ago

The best writing on this is “Bad Students, not Bad Schools” by Weissberg. He cites study after study indicating the failure of school improvement projects to back up his case.

Member
Reply to  Compsci
5 years ago

Good book, a solid run-down here for the uninitiated… https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/bad-students-not-bad-schools-by-robert-weissberg/ The principal at my school is from industry, not the Educomplex. She and I talk about this all the time. If they want to bring their test scores up, they need to do two things: improve the scores a little bit for the bottom 25%, and maximize the scores for the top 25%. The first one will have a greater impact because a 0% weighs heavily on the scores, whereas improving the top 25% of kids by 2-3% will barely move the needle. Alternately, take the bottom 1/4 and show… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  hokkoda
5 years ago

Again, Hokkoda, excellent summary. Going from the biological explanation backward…what percentage of the population has the intellectual horsepower to succeed in a rigorous STEM degree course of studies in University? Forget about the phony degrees given out to all who have money and can fog a mirror. Rigorous field of study (which is the only reason to be in University, albeit it is now basically a remedial follow up to High School) takes about an IQ of 120+, perhaps as low as 110-115 if you are very motivated and conscientious. That’s about 10-20% of the population (and of course, far… Read more »

Anon
Anon
5 years ago

I’m no fan of libertarianism and a big fan of this blog. But on this one you got some things wrong. Random assignment studies are the statistical equivalent of twin studies. If you use a large enough sample size and randomly assign members to two groups, they are statistical twins. Using this strategy, you can then validly compare school choice and traditional schools. The same thing is true in drug studies. You don’t have to test out drugs on twins. You run a random assignment study. As it turns out, these studies show that kids from low-income backgrounds, especially minorities,… Read more »

DLS
DLS
Reply to  Anon
5 years ago

You make some good points, but there is no random assignment in school choice. If parents are free to choose their schools, the brighter ones, along with their brighter children, will choose better schools and bias the samples. If you are suggesting a random process for trying to force minorities into white schools, you still have to account for the minority parents that refuse. And those that don’t refuse probably have the brighter kids.

Oldvannes
Oldvannes
Member
Reply to  Anon
5 years ago

This study isn’t random. The people who choose charter schools are already a self selecting group. A true random study in this context would not randomly draw from 2 groups but from a single group: in an area randomly choose families with school aged children. Then compare family attitudes towards education, educational attainment, income, school choice, etc. Then you can compare and contrast variations in the data. Starting out by having already separated general public schools (and these studies probably went looking for crappy ones) from charter schools already makes all kinds of assumptions about the populations. Think of it… Read more »

Larkin Lover
Larkin Lover
Reply to  Anon
5 years ago

Random assignment in drugs is different from random assignment in social science where there is human selection preference. As DLS observed, the charter school effect is based on genetics in fact. The schools evaluate for parental support and motivation, which are correlated with higher IQ. Also discipline probably plays a role, but again the charter school subset is already more disciplined by nature.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Anon
5 years ago

As long as the weaker students do not lower standards, I’m on board. i’ve been through this before and seen such in action—where teachers “teach” to the lowest denominator. That actually was my initial switch to a Charter school from Public.

Anon
Anon
Reply to  Anon
5 years ago

@DLS and @Yves Vannes There actually is random assignment in school choice, sometimes system-wide across entire cities. The (valid) point you are actually making is that kids who win the random assignment still come from families who care enough to sign them up – and they are thus more motivated than other parents who couldn’t be bothered. But the studies aren’t comparing those two groups. They are looking at results for a large group of parents, ALL of whom signed up for the school, but only half of whom actually got in. In the studies, all of the parents were… Read more »

Member
Reply to  thezman
5 years ago

“Again, unless you can rerun the experiment with the same kid in different schools, results are notional.” I actually see this quite often. For many years I ran an after-school tutoring business. Kids would come in from the public schools a disaster. I would work with them, and there would be some marginal improvement, but I would point out to the parents that it’s like the school is rowing in the opposite direction from us. The kids often wouldn’t thrive. At that point (sometimes much sooner depending on the child’s school), I’d recommend Charter Academy X nearby. The parents would… Read more »

DLS
DLS
Reply to  Anon
5 years ago

I see your point. The average inner city teacher is what you would expect from a typical government union worker, so a more intelligent, motivated charter teacher in a better environment has to have some effect. The question is whether the charter school improvement is enough to bridge the divide between a vocational vs. white collar career. My hunch is it could help overcome 5 IQ points, but not 15.

Yves Vannes
Yves Vannes
Member
Reply to  Anon
5 years ago

Signing up and following through are two very different things. This is a “black fathers read to their children more often than whites do” kind of study. They assume in a very general way that all seemingly non relevant factors can be treated as irrelevant or they assume under the same conditions all groups should have the same outcome. This is one of the reasons most studies in the social sciences fail in repeating their initial celebrated outcomes: The sampling techniques are full of errors and poorly thought out implications. If you can accurately predict the out come of a… Read more »

Dean Jonathan Swift
5 years ago

1. There is no such thing as an “achievement gap.” Black children are already pretty much achieving whatever it is they are capable of achieving. Water seeks its own level. The overall market is by now pretty heavily over-saturated for blacks trained to leap about and throw a rubber ball through a hoop or to shout rhyming obscenities into a microphone. So is the market for blacks who cannot actually discharge the duties of a bank Vice President or a chemistry professor, but who can be trained to talk like one. There’s nothing shameful about working at the post office… Read more »

Alzaebo
Reply to  Dean Jonathan Swift
5 years ago

Ha ha! Fabulous! Since the gap is great, and since civil rights means ‘access to white people’, should we not bridge that gap with access to the greatest special magic of all?

Let the Most Virtuous show us the way. Integrated yeshiva- think of the restaurants they’ll create!

Mike_C
Mike_C
Reply to  Dean Jonathan Swift
5 years ago

If only it were possible to upvote more than once. But this, alas, is not a federal election.

Glen Filthie
Glen Filthie
Member
5 years ago

Libertarians are pretty much as you described. They have all the answers, you are full of chit, full stop, end of story. I’ve noticed that most have had traumatic childhoods too. Abusive or uncaring parents, family members that are booze or alcohol addicts, you name it. Like most zealots – the majority of them aren’t that bright. Some have “book” or academic smarts… but no common sense. Those idiots WILL parachute drop their kids into vibrant schools and fully expect success. If the kid manages it they will crow to one and all about the righteousness of their ways. If… Read more »

Darth Curmudgeon
Darth Curmudgeon
Reply to  Glen Filthie
5 years ago

The one endearing trait that Libertarians have is that at least they don’t want your stuff. Progressives want you dead, want your stuff, and want to diddle your children.

DeBeers Diamonds
DeBeers Diamonds
Reply to  Darth Curmudgeon
5 years ago

Lolbertarians inevitably end up as the stooges of monopolists. They may not directly want your stuff, but their Koch and Google paymasters do.

DLS
DLS
Reply to  Darth Curmudgeon
5 years ago

Progressives don’t want you dead. It’s worse than that. They want you plugged into the matrix, afraid to think or speak, working your ass off to atone for your racist, sexist, homophobic thoughts. They, as the enlightened virtuous few, will mange the wealth transfers without creating any of their own.

King Tut
King Tut
Reply to  Darth Curmudgeon
5 years ago

I’m not sure that the proglodytes want us dead. As zman has pointed out they understand biology and they realise that if we dead we cannot keep them in the luxury they yearn for. No what they want is for white men to be yoked like water buffalo who will reliably yield bumper harvests for them and their many vibrant clients without a murmur of complaint.

roo_ster
Member
Reply to  King Tut
5 years ago

Yeah, but that argues that their intellect will rule their impulses once they get undisputed killing/controlling power over the rest of us.

I am not betting that they will exhibit such restraint and not kill the cow they benefit from milking.

TBoone
TBoone
Reply to  roo_ster
5 years ago

Well said. Deep in their shiny, tiny Lil hearts they Know the Cow is irredeemably Raycis/HateY & Mean. Must.. Make. Example. For the virtue signify’n…..

Range Front Fault
Range Front Fault
Reply to  roo_ster
5 years ago

Agree. Once the firestorm hits it will feed until it sucks out all air completely like a firenado, including feeding off itself and all until it dies out from lack of oxygen, almost a fire suicide. He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword, and so on…with emphasis on he who wields the sword.

Screwtape
Screwtape
Reply to  Darth Curmudgeon
5 years ago

Yes, Libertardians tend to have stuff so they aren’t inclined to agitate for yours. Self-interest combined with somewhat muted envy and covetousness as a result of said stuff – and just enough intelligence to connect the accumulation of their stuff with hard work, insulates them from the leftoid impulse to ask big daddy govt to take yours. Time will tell tho. As credentialism overtakes gumption and grit as the striving virtue in this class, the reality of how one accumulates stuff runs threadbare against the idea that one is owed certain standards of living. Cue envy and coveting of thy… Read more »

Member
Reply to  Screwtape
5 years ago

The comments from John Smith down to Screwtape were funny. I like how the opinions evolved from Progs wanting us dead, to Progs wanting us alive as useful cogs…then back to wanting us dead. LOL. I think Roo_ster has it right.

BadThinker
BadThinker
Reply to  Darth Curmudgeon
5 years ago

Some of the more sexually-libertine Libertarians probably do want to diddle your children, so long as “it’s consensual”.

ron
ron
Reply to  Glen Filthie
5 years ago

you left outthe fact that liebertarians have no cause and effect genes, which causes all their problems in the first place!

Al from da Nort
Al from da Nort
5 years ago

Time to think outside the box. The most historically effective educational segregation that dare not say its name today is sex segregated education. It is a particularly effective remedy for lower income males, most especially those past the age of puberty. It used to be the rule for urban parochial schools (not just Catholic) for good reason. Where I grew up in the boonies, $$$ was the reason for not doing it. A number of commenters have rightly observed that one big reason charter schools outperform public schools is discipline. – First, Sex segregated education allows for the forms of… Read more »

DLS
DLS
5 years ago

My father worked in the St. Louis City public schools administering advanced placement tests, which were basically IQ tests. At that time I was a full on school choice advocate. Despite my father being a union liberal, his stock answer to the question of how to improve the black schools was that there was only one way – to start with smarter students. It took me awhile to accept that, but now I see it clearly. My own high school kids have vibrancy taxied in from the city. They hate it because the vibrants are disruptive but untouchable. The theory… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  DLS
5 years ago

Actually, it’s more insipid than that. Spreading out vibrancy pulls down the standing of the heretofore non-vibrant schools thereby masking the starkness of the difference and making the school district look better.

O Gangster
O Gangster
5 years ago

I must say I get confused with the complete and utter hatred of Libertarianism on this website. There was a period of time when I considered myself 100% libertarian and now realize that I only need “borrow” some of its components as some things are just not possible. That being said, you say there is no hope for our educational system, I agree overall. However the model of free choice when it comes to schooling is still a better option than none at all (which is where your article seems to just give up and say, it’s over). It doesn’t… Read more »

DeBeers Diamonds
DeBeers Diamonds
Reply to  O Gangster
5 years ago

The Constitution is dead.

Numerous federal judges have indicated as such, and they will not enforce any laws viewed as “racist”. When fmr. Circuit Judge Richard Posner can openly denigrate the Constitution without charges of treason, it should clue you in.

South African liberals also have this “muh most progressive Constitution in the world” fetish. Indeed, the courts are the only thing the ANC doesn’t have total control over. But when blacks are 80% of the population, its ludicrous to expect the courts to protect Eurocentric concepts of private property.

DeBeers Diamonds
DeBeers Diamonds
Reply to  DeBeers Diamonds
5 years ago

Read Mr. Posner’s writing here. Posner was the most frequently cited judge outside of the Supreme Court. His impact in legal circles cannot be minimized. Go ahead and try to convince anyone that his words were not treasonous.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/06/law-school-professors-need-more-practical-experience.html

James_OMeara
Member
Reply to  DeBeers Diamonds
5 years ago

Your screenname leads me to think you are not really up on the issue. Constitution worship (Judaic sacred scripture) goes along with treating judges as wise rabbis issuing “interpretations.” Real nations (i.e., every other nation, NONE of which has adopted a US-style Judaic Constitution) treat their constitutions as “basic laws” that can be changed as needed by the legislature.

Hoagie
Hoagie
Reply to  James_OMeara
5 years ago

Our Constitution is dead specifically because the president, legislature and courts decided that it is “basic law” and change it at will. But then that’s the real problem with constitutions and laws in general. Once the society graduates enough Jewish lawyers to “interpret” every “is” “and” or in every law then every law is worthless.

At this point every American with common sense realizes the law will be applied according to who the defendant is not any written word.

Corvinus
Corvinus
Reply to  Hoagie
5 years ago

No, our Constitution is not dead. There is no “changing at will” the laws, nor is there is “Jewish lawyers interpreting every ‘is’ and ‘and'” taking place. That is like saying that Martin Luther, the 95 Theses guy, was a pedophile without any proof. So, I’ll speak slow for you. Laws are passed by Congress. Each law provides a framework. The laws then provide discretion to the executive departments to fill in the details. The Founding Fathers put this into place. There was nothing nefarious here. Now, Congress set up the courts, which would then be the arbiters as far… Read more »

Whitney
Member
Reply to  O Gangster
5 years ago

The Constitution is dead

Hoagie
Hoagie
Reply to  Whitney
5 years ago

The Constitution has been dead since Abraham Lincoln decided states that freely joined in a union were never again free to leave it. Imagine if you told leftists you wanted to change the marriage laws so that once one is married no matter how bad the abuse they can never divorce.

bilejones
Member
Reply to  Hoagie
5 years ago

It was dead when Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  O Gangster
5 years ago

Speaking only for myself, a former libertarian, my “hatred” of libertarians comes from my belief that they are cowards (yes, I was a coward) and have done irreparable harm to their own people, my people. White guys (and libertarianism is a white guy thing) with all the intellectual tools to understand what’s happening choose to hide behind “free markets” instead of standing up for their people. They willfully block their minds from making the simplest, most incredibly obvious connections about genetics/biology and societal outcomes to stay safe and in the good graces of groups who hate them and want their… Read more »

King Tut
King Tut
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
5 years ago

I concur. As an ex-lolbertarian myself, I came to the conclusion a few years ago that most of them are autistic to varying degrees. They don’t understand human connection so they think that it is some sort of commie trick. They just want to be left alone to indulge in their yummy foods, toys and pr0n and they naturally assume that everyone else is similarly inclined, or would be if only we can abolish this wicked idea of nations.

Range Front Fault
Range Front Fault
Reply to  King Tut
5 years ago

Pharaoh Tut…..interesting….please elaborate and riff on this more so my fish brain can comprende, particularly the human connection/commie trick idea.

Screwtape
Screwtape
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
5 years ago

Yep. Most libertarians I know are terrified of being called out as a racist or a misogynist. So they burrow into their rabbit holes.

When confronted with reality that inevitably reveals their sacred beliefs to be purely magical, they launch into all kinds of ivory tower poopytalk about the constitution and free markets.

Its pretty much the “moving houses because better schools” meets “let the market decide” while they self-congratulate over the alpha in their 401k and bathe in faux gratitude for the blessings of their gated community.

TomA
TomA
Reply to  O Gangster
5 years ago

Demonization of “others” is an ancient technique for dehumanizing the enemy such that they can be more easily exterminated if need be. During WWI and II, both sides used propaganda to make the other side’s soldiers appear as immoral barbarians not worthy of common decency or mercy. Hatred is an emotion, not a rational conclusion.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  TomA
5 years ago

In a war for survival, hatred is rational and a needed tool.

Hoagie
Hoagie
Reply to  TomA
5 years ago

I hear ya, TomA. As a white, Christian man i can feel the dehumanizing every time I see leftists protesting against my country, demanding I let illegals in and every time they talk down to me or accuse me of their litany of BS insults. I felt dehumanized watching a bunch if Black Israelites calling a group of kids debasing names then watching as the left Media and their vibrant “experts” took sides with the anti white racist blacks. Yes, you are correct TomA.

TomA
TomA
Reply to  Hoagie
5 years ago

Emotions are transient, and hatred is only useful if you’re trying to form a mob. If you wish to build a lasting movement (or lead an army), you need more than emotions. The media today is wantonly sowing anger rather than informing and educating. That is why they have no credibility anymore. They’re just cheerleaders for a mob of maniacs.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  TomA
5 years ago

Emotions are with us every second of every day. Hatred can be a very lasting emotion. There are peoples who have hated other peoples for hundreds of years. Letting hatred take over your life can be debilitating, but using justified hatred to improve yourself – and possibly harm those who have harmed you or your family – can be a very positive thing. Hatred can be a motivator for good or bad. Hatred of oppressors can lead to movements that free a people. Is that bad? Hatred of a school yard bully can lead a young man to lift weights,… Read more »

TomA
TomA
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
5 years ago

I agree that hatred can be a powerful motivator in many things (some good and some bad), and it also can lead to long term grudges and feuds. The Irish Troubles were most certainly founded on such a hatred and great misery flowed from that. I would argue that (more often than not) negative emotions get in the way of sound thinking and decision-making, and ultimately erode one’s soul.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  TomA
5 years ago

True. But fear of hatred or hating some one or some group that that has harmed you, your family or your people can be just as dangerous. When some one or some group is trying to harm – or completely destroy – you, your family or your people, hate is exactly the right emotion. Whites have been taught that it’s wrong to hate – ever. That’s wrong. Hatred can be exactly the right feeling and can push you to do what needs to be done to protect yourself, your family or your people. So long as that enemy exists and… Read more »

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
5 years ago

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.

http://www.europeanamericansunited.org/school1/Fiction/kipling/awakened.htm

Guest
Guest
Reply to  O Gangster
5 years ago

I hate libertarians because they suffer from the same deluded refusal to accept objective reality as socialists or communists. Press any socialist or communist on why socialists countries across the globe are poverty-stricken hellholes and they will ulitmately respond earnestly that nobody has implemented socialism/communism properly yet. Similarly, ask any libertarian why libertarian policies have failed and they will tell you that it hasn’t been implemented correctly. At some point you have to face the fact that the consistent, repeated failure of your political philosophy means that there is a flaw in your philosophy. The sentence in your comment that… Read more »

DLS
DLS
Reply to  O Gangster
5 years ago

The basic flaw in your argument is not realizing this is a zero sum game. When you pull out the best blacks from the inner city, what’s left gets even worse. I am all for freedom of choice to send your kids where you want, if they qualify. But it’s not going to make a dent in the problem.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  DLS
5 years ago

DLS, perhaps. But when the schools with the dregs collapse utterly, does that not bode for a rethinking and a new model of thought wrt Education? Especially when alternatives (alternative schools) shine brightly in their contrast? One can hope. In the meantime, all folk—White and Minority—deserve an alternative to dying on a Leftist cross of ideology.

c matt
c matt
Reply to  Compsci
5 years ago

The key to the success of alternative schools/magnet programs is that they are not mandatory. You can be excluded, so they only take the cream of the crop. In short, they can discipline. Your average public school has lost most of the power to discipline, so naturally things run wild.

Alzaebo
Reply to  O Gangster
5 years ago

To his credit, the Zman nails it on “vo-tech, or breeders”.

Member
Reply to  O Gangster
5 years ago

As Zman likes to point out, I’m an example of a guy who flirted with Libertarianism until I figured out that most of Libertarianism is b.s. The local chapter, so to speak, would have luncheons and speakers talking about public-private partnerships, cue eye-roll. That’s just a taxpayer money grab. They’d have the principal “reformer” at a local school come in and talk about how tough it is for the teachers…but the guy wasn’t reforming anything. It just made them feel good. And while I’m deep in the minority of people who think pot legalization was a BAD IDEA in Colorado,… Read more »

Karl Horst (Germany)
Karl Horst (Germany)
5 years ago

I met a young American college student in a small town outside Amsterdam over the Christmas holidays. I was surprised to hear an American accent as you don’t often near Americans in that particular part of the Netherlands at that time of year given it is a more rural area. You’re more likely to find a farmer than tourist. Turns out he’s studying “Construction Management” from a university in Colorado (forgive me if I forget the school’s name) and he graduates this spring. I was curious about his education, what he paid for it and if he thought it was… Read more »

TomA
TomA
Reply to  Karl Horst (Germany)
5 years ago

The university education system in the US operates primarily as an indoctrination center for mush-minded adolescents, and is intended to inculcate Leftist ideals. In order to ensure success at this, the students are seduced into becoming debt slaves so that future Democrat politicians can buy their vote by offering debt relief. In reality, these institutions just warehouse juveniles during their hormonal years and delay the maturation process that normally occurs when you have to work for a living.

Maus
Maus
Reply to  Karl Horst (Germany)
5 years ago

The problem with this kid from Colorado, and many of the nihilistic strivers of the Millennial generation, is his failure to grasp that those art and music classes he found a waste of time will be the true education that separates him from the proles he’ll manage at the construction site. He ought to at least have opinions on the aesthetics of a Rembrandt painting (why else visit the Netherlands?) or a Bach concerto. I’ll give odds that the Mexican tile layer or the redneck roofer won’t even know who those worthies are.

Teapartydoc
Member
Reply to  Karl Horst (Germany)
5 years ago

Anecdotal experience is not worth much. In America you can get any kind of education you want to. And as long as you meet entrance requirements you can get that education at a tremendous variety of venues. Having this tremendous variety means that it cannot be offered at government expense. You have to pay for it, unless you are offered a scholarship. I was a rather poor high school student, so no scholarships were available to me. If I was German, I doubt if I would have even qualified for university. As things turned out I double majored in biology… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Teapartydoc
5 years ago

Teaparty, the low end is not so much institutions as students. In even the best US Universities, there is a contingent—sometimes large—of students who really should not be in University. Horst won’t know this because he comes from a society where students are tracked early into those who can “succeed” (read, make good use of) in a University setting and those who would be better off in a trade school or work study program. And of course, it follows that the State can therefore afford to pay for a student’s Univerisity education as the cost/benefit is in line with societal… Read more »

Jack Boniface
Jack Boniface
Member
5 years ago

1. School choice — vouchers — was libertarian Milton Friedman’s dumb idea from “Capitalism and Freedom.” What it really does is put govt. in charge of private schools. The same thing already happened to private colleges that accepted govt. cash. Who pays the piper calls the tune.

2. “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” I love it when a post ends insulting Buckley Conservatives.

Larkin Lover
Larkin Lover
Reply to  Jack Boniface
5 years ago

Right. Then when everyone can afford to go to any private school, the government sticks its nose in and says “why don’t the demographics of this school reflect the race percentages of this city or state? “ Then there will be no safe haven!
Or only for ridiculously expensive schools.

Maus
Maus
5 years ago

The simple fact is that the majority of Americans are trying to reconcile two unspeakable truths that are fundamentally irreconcilable. The first is that some people are more intelligent (and amenable to education) than others; so equality is nonsensical. The second is that in a post-agricultural and post-industrial society such as we have in 21st century America, there is no need for the labor of hordes of stupid people. Many on the left side of the bell curve have no meaningful contribution to make. Thus, society faces stark choices. Either we collectively provide for the material needs of these useless… Read more »

Herman Snerd
Herman Snerd
Member
Reply to  Maus
5 years ago

I like your “two unspeakable truths” and in the main agree with you. However, the garbage man and the plumber, whose work will never appear in any university curriculum, are [hardly useless] and in fact are of more use than most white collar drones who spend a lifetime pushing paper from one desk to the next.

BadThinker
BadThinker
Reply to  Herman Snerd
5 years ago

Many garbage men these days are truck drivers, the truck does most of the work. Automation is coming for them too… until the self-driving garbage truck crushes some poor child who was hiding in the trash can.

BadThinker
BadThinker
Reply to  Maus
5 years ago

I like legalized drugs for some of those folks. Pot in particular to keep ’em docile. And if we could lace it with some kind of birth control that works on inhaling it…

TomA
TomA
5 years ago

Schooling cannot change native intelligence, but in can inculcate behaviors, especially during the early formative years. This indoctrination used to be focused on wisdom transfer, and was fundamentally about continued survival. Later, with the advent of civilization, it morphed into cultural and moral teaching, and was primarily about minimizing the non-conformism and chaos that caused social friction. Today, it’s used an instrument of memetic infection to inculcate “approved” beliefs (ideas more so than behaviors). The Left has seized control over education as an instrument of exercising power and growing their ranks. That is the core problem.

GU1
GU1
Reply to  TomA
5 years ago

In short, we need more “Tom Brown’s School Days” and less poz.

Based Millennial
Based Millennial
5 years ago

It will take the equivalent of an intellectual or actual revolution to overturn the paradigm. The current paradigm is egalitarianism, which was born from the Enlightment. What we are seeing now is the logical conclusion after two centuries of slowly imposing progressive thought. Most people are steeped and marinated in it because they believe that they can create a utopia through their brainpower and also because the fact that we are not inherently equal is too terrible for people to contemplate. We have gone from everyone having equal worth to everyone being theoretically equal (which in a way was to… Read more »

williamwilliams
williamwilliams
Reply to  Based Millennial
5 years ago

>>>The Revolution though will probably be very hard to implement in the US….

Any significant “revolution” is impossible in the USA, until real economic hardship comes to most of the population.

Fortunately, we’re getting there. The sooner, the better.

mr. incredible
mr. incredible
Reply to  williamwilliams
5 years ago

When will the debt bubble pop?

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Based Millennial
5 years ago

There are lots of good—and well educated—people out there who would go into such a valued profession as teaching, once we return to sanity wrt students and educational outcomes.

Gun Bangley
Gun Bangley
5 years ago

Oh, if it were only three generations.

Carl B.
Carl B.
5 years ago

“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

More imbeciles are on the way. Both Domestic and Imported. All hail our Dear Leader, Kamala!

Outis
Outis
5 years ago

This:

“vocational schools and the availability of jobs for people on the left side of the curve is the answer”

Everyone must go to college was the dumbest initiative of our lifetimes. It’s harmed more people than it’s benefited.

DLS
DLS
Reply to  Outis
5 years ago

We shipped the lower class jobs to China, while convincing those who used to do them that they were too good for these jobs anyway. Then we pressured them to waste a fortune on college for no discernible benefit. What could go wrong?

Drake
Drake
5 years ago

I’ve paid for “school choice” for some of the benefits Reason talks about (better education) but also for the reasons Z-Man describes: filters, willingness to kick-out trouble-makers of any race, in-your-face Catholicism that keeps stupid progressives quiet.

Lorenzo
Lorenzo
Reply to  Drake
5 years ago

The primary advantage of a private school is that troublemakers can be summarily kicked out. The other stuff is a bonus, but maintaining order makes the rest possible.

JEB
JEB
5 years ago

Biology matters, but it isn’t the only thing that matters. Culture also matters. It really is true that many black students disdain academic effort because they see it as “acting white,” and that’s something that at least in theory could be changed. Ironically, this is an argument for school segregation! Children tend to really like doing whatever it is that they are best at relative to their peers. I was too short to be good at basketball, so I’ve never had much interest in the sport and certainly never made any effort to get better at it. But I had… Read more »

DLS
DLS
Reply to  JEB
5 years ago

I think you have the cause/effect backwards. The attitude follows the deficiency, not the other way around.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  JEB
5 years ago

JEB your argument appears sound, except that much of the trouble/deficiency is in basically all Black schools. There are no superior white students to be jealous of in those. What I see (as you do mainly) is a response to just not being able to hack an academic course of study and a behavioral inclination to gain status through disruption. In this case, alternatives need to be found for such students. That brings us back to discipline. Get rid of the bad apples to save the few good students or take the few good students out (Charter schools) and baby… Read more »

bilejones
Member
5 years ago

Conflating Reason magazine with libertarianism is like conflating the NY Times with journalism. Just because they say so doesn’t make it so.

Drake
Drake
Reply to  bilejones
5 years ago

They went way off the rails a few years ago. There was always a tendency to ignore the logical consequences of some of their bad ideas like open borders. Now it’s just leftist BS in the face of any facts they don’t like.

Red Forman
Red Forman
Reply to  thezman
5 years ago

We are naturally socialists with our immediate family and libertarians with our extended family. Both systems work and sustain peace and prosperity, in their proper spheres. The folly is in trying to superimpose those relationships onto other groups. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, we forgot the proper systems for community and nation.

Libertymike
Member
Reply to  thezman
5 years ago

Most libertarians do not buy tabula raza and they thoroughly reject the proposition that all men and all women and all trannies are born equal. Do you think the likes of Hoppe, Prof. DiLorenzo, and Tom Woods embrace the blank slate? Do you think Rothbard did? Speaking of Woods, your boy, Audacious Epigone, is apparently a fan. If you read some of the comments on the Reason piece to which you linked, you will find some posters who objected, including some who accurately observed that those who think government can educate children are lunatics. That is the real magic dust:… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Libertymike
5 years ago

There may be a hatred of Libertarians expressed here, but there sure seem to be a lot of EX Lib’s on the forum—myself included. I do not take offense. I take from Libertarianism that which works and discard the rest. And before you criticize Zman further, note that he’s got the history pretty correct: I was a “Right” Libertarian for 20 years, now I am a “Dissident Right” member.

Drake
Drake
Reply to  Compsci
5 years ago

I was a Barry Goldwater Libertarian. Still am on most issues,

Sleepy
Sleepy
Member
Reply to  thezman
5 years ago

Derb recently speculated on whether he was really the coiner of the “dissident right” label, so I did some internet searches and (spoiler alert) it is pretty clear that he did.

At any rate, during those searches I found an interesting article from 2007 that discusses the demise of Fusionism and the related move of right libertarians to what would become the dissident (and alt) right.

(The author uses the words “dissident” and “right” in succession, but not as a coined term…)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-failure-of-fusionism/

BTW, the article also pretty accurately adumbrates Trumpism, though not, of course, Trump.

Sleepy
Sleepy
Member
Reply to  thezman
5 years ago

Would you settle for the chair of the Purity Council when Czar Derb opens his Inquisition after the revolution?

BTW, for those reading along, here is the article where he coined the term:

https://vdare.com/articles/john-derbyshire-who-are-we-the-dissident-right

…and a couple of examples of the reaction of the screeching Left immediately after:

https://gawker.com/5910087/john-derbyshire-comes-out-of-the-white-supremacist-closet
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/john-derbyshire-latest-racist-rant_n_1518815.html

(Before this time virtually all of the few uses of “dissident right” that I found were references to European politics.)

Range Front Fault
Range Front Fault
Reply to  thezman
5 years ago

Grape or grain? Or box wine swiped from some bluehaired crophaired cat lady shrieking!

A.B. Prosper
A.B. Prosper
Reply to  thezman
5 years ago

The US has never been a Libertarian society . We’ve censored books, prohibited pornographic images , restricted arms , restricted drugs , prohibited gambling and prostitution and all manor of vices, adultery, birth control and homosexuality was illegal I could go on. Hell those natural libertarians went to the trouble to amend our Constitution to legally eliminate alcohol at the Federal level At no point does any of this qualify as Libertarian and it appears no one wants that kind of society at all. In fact given weed is legal , guns are mostly legal in most places, gambling is… Read more »

Someone
Someone
Reply to  thezman
5 years ago

Right-libertarianism has morphed into Propertarianism.

Member
5 years ago

Libertarianism is now a catchall for not republican or democrat. The Reason crowd are truly an austistic bunch beyond redemption.

Your statement “ Once you take the egalitarian pill, the world stops making sense. From there it is an endless search for the right set of policies to make everyone equal.” In a nutshell the reason we have and always will have the screwed up society and political system.

BadThinker
BadThinker
Reply to  David_Wright
5 years ago

No one is beyond redemption. But one can get pretty close.

JMDGT
Member
5 years ago

In all honesty I cannot describe myself as anything other than being a realist. Not libertarian or conservative definitely not progressive or socialist. I just want to be free to ride my machine and not be hassled by the man. Heads up. Helmets on. Gear up gentlemen. We still have work to do.

JR Wirth
JR Wirth
5 years ago

Nature over nurture is so abhorrent to our national culture that it’s literally unspeakable. Which is why I frequent this blog. If you look at the counties that Ron Paul won during a primary six or seven years ago, they were nearly all 99% rural white counties that are clustered near the Canadian border. So it appears that libertarianism only has a shot in rural white America that’s too cold for Maria and Sheniqua. So of course choosing between a high school that’s composed of Kyle and Amy from across the street, vs, Kyle and Amy from across town, it’s… Read more »

Alzaebo
5 years ago

Before reading the comments, I know some brilliant person is going to tell me Somalia is libertarian.

No. Somalia is full of Somalis.
Libertarianism only works in lighter societies.

Blank slate vibrancy has ruined libertarianism.
What Libertarianism needs, is Whiteness.

Alzaebo
Reply to  Alzaebo
5 years ago

Wouldn’t proper libertarianism include freedom of association, speech, self-defense?

Self-defense as the right to knock the sh*t out of disruptive azzholes, whether vibrant, proggy, or corrupt.

Most especially the corrupt.
Even right-wing azzholes who will turn their guns and laws on their own, to support the corrupt.

BadThinker
BadThinker
Reply to  Alzaebo
5 years ago

A Libertarian white society is also impossible because there are lots of sociopathic high-achieving whites. Example – Every CEO and Board Member of the fortune 500. 13th century Venice is an example of what a white society can be when the only values that matter are transactions – slave galleys and the rule of cash above all else.

Teapartydoc
Member
Reply to  BadThinker
5 years ago

The Venetians never used slaves on galleys. They did conscript prisoners, but these rowed alongside guys being paid the regular rate and getting better food. Some of the conscripted were even allowed to share in the profits of the voyage like the regular rowers. One of the big problems with using them was that they were notoriously bad fighters, as rowers sometimes had to act as marines.

BadThinker
BadThinker
Reply to  Teapartydoc
5 years ago

Early on, they did not. But as they grew more powerful they most certainly did, and they also operated large slave markets (but not on Venice proper). By the late 16th century many Venetian galleys were slave-rowed. So technically, yes, the galley slavery came a bit later than the 13th century as I suggested. The trade in slaves, however, was there pretty much from the start.

At Lepanto, I believe that the Christian fleets struck the chains from most of the non-muslim galley slaves, however, unlike the Ottoman fleets.

A.B. Prosper
A.B. Prosper
Reply to  Alzaebo
5 years ago

Libertarianism doesn’t work anywhere although a “mind your own business” ethos is fine in an undeveloped frontier. Once a society reaches a certain level of complexity, population density and/or technology or has dangerous neighbors the Libertarian ethos is not only useless but dangerous There is a reason there has never been any Libertarian societies, they don’t work and invariably collapse into oligrachy Note even medieval Iceland which would seem to be the place for such a society had a complex legal code and strict laws on what could be said or written to avoid open feuds In a world where… Read more »

Teapartydoc
Member
Reply to  Alzaebo
5 years ago

Libertarianism was a bus stop on the road to race realism.

Ryan
Ryan
5 years ago

Excellent point about the left hand of the bell curve needing a role in the economy. There’s a handful of bloggers who call themselves “alt-left,” basically liberals who accept HBD. They’ve been talking about this problem for years, what does a liberal/hippie/compassionate society do to help the biologically disadvantaged play a meaningful role in society. They seem to have no idea, but at least they’re asking a useful question.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Ryan
5 years ago

Ryan, it is the essential question. Good point. The concept of an “adequate” IQ is a relative one and a moving target in today’s society. We should not think that we are talking about folks with (for example) 90 or below IQ. In a decade or two, it will be folks with an average (100) IQ that are unemployed due to lack of jobs. Ask the now threatened 8+M long haul truckers.

Folks need jobs, not welfare. A society wth too many idle hands is dangerous one.

James_OMeara
Member
5 years ago

Monstrous? Yes. Never happen? Nonsense. That’s exactly what happened to me. Unfortunately, I was the twin who got to live with the Dullards. As Howard Stern would say, it would have been better to have been raised by wolves.

Alzaebo
Reply to  thezman
5 years ago

I thank you, personally, Zman, for those kind words.

Monstrous. Monstrous. Unimaginable. Poor singletons, you are the damned, you cannot possibly know what we know.

James O’Meara, nothing has shaken me as has this. Nothing.
The fools! What they have taken!!

LeafyGreen
LeafyGreen
Reply to  thezman
5 years ago

There WAS a longitudinal study. I would even argue that there still is, considering breakneck speed of legalized human trafficking. (adoptions) In the 1960’s, (by jewish Louise Wise Adoption Agency), children were separated from their identical siblings and placed in adoptive homes where they were studied under the guise of “visits.” Their adoptive families were never told of the existence of siblings so that nature vs. nurture could be studied in its purest form. Study results have been locked up at Yale, 61 boxes of data, yet those individuals are not privy to their own histories until the year 2066… Read more »

Range Front Fault
Range Front Fault
Reply to  James_OMeara
5 years ago

Kudos to you! Actually not shocked to hear. Heard of this ghastly experimenting before. Good for you to work your way out of the hole. Respect that! You’re made of solid stuff. You have some serious teaching stories stored away.

UKer
UKer
5 years ago

I have said this before, but having done some teaching I know that a lot depends on the student him(or her)self, irrespective of the system. No matter what I said or tried to show, no matter what ‘teaching methodology’ was employed, or what the current theories about teaching ideas were enthused about, it was down to the student to make sense of it all. They themselves had to have a spark in them, and needed to employ some sort of effort. Where that spark came from, how much effort they were willing to make was beyond any teacher’s reach. Add… Read more »

Dutch
Dutch
Reply to  UKer
5 years ago

I taught the equivalent of high school in a strict British school in Hampshire (a very wealthy place) in the Margaret Thatcher days. The tight structure and heavy discipline worked for some of the students, and completely failed other bright, promising kids. My conclusion was that the biggest failing of the system, was in the parents and the educators not working diligently to pick and choose the proper educational environments for each student, one by one. In our public school system, the primacy of geography and quotas in determining where kids go to school, and the absolute prohibition of freedom… Read more »

Teapartydoc
Member
Reply to  Dutch
5 years ago

I was one of those fish out of water kids in high school. Graduated in the bottom half of my class. Got saved by standardized testing. Without that I wouldn’t have qualified for college. As it was I got invited. Teachers all knew I was smart, but had no idea what to do with me.

Sleepy
Sleepy
Member
5 years ago

The school aged population in and around the Imperial Capital is ~30% white and 10% Asian, so only in the schools in the wealthiest pockets have a majority of students who are academically capable and motivated. This issue is solved through tracking programs, e.g., IB, AP, etc., and limited school choice to access these types of programs. The calculus depends on there being enough students in a given school to sustain such programs and on the rest of the students being a small enough percentage of the student body to avoid chaos outside the classroom. The shame of it, at… Read more »

Dr. Dre
Dr. Dre
Reply to  Sleepy
5 years ago

Saw TN’s “Promise Program” in action yesterday at a private college nr. Nashville. 2 yrs free education. Not a good thing.

Severian
5 years ago

In college I called myself a Libertarian. It meant “I have some problems with Liberal cant, but I still want to score with easy Lefty girls.” Sex is a very underrated element of politics, in my opinion — as the Heartiste types keep pointing out, MAGA hat girls are generally orders of magnitude better looking than pussyhatters. We’re not doing a very good job of capitalizing on that.

A.B. Prosper
A.B. Prosper
Reply to  Severian
5 years ago

A lot of us are married, not much point in that

Also are movement such as it is rightly feels young women should marry and have children not gallivant around being .Alt Right Thots

BadThinker
BadThinker
Reply to  A.B. Prosper
5 years ago

Not only is it desperately necessary if the west is to survive, it’s much better for the women too. Somehow humans reached the current era after thousands of years without many female engineers, scientists, warriors, etc. But we’d all be dead without mothers and the makers of homes. In a way, the disaster that befell women was a result of the industrial revolution eliminating so much of women’s work.

roo_ster
Member
5 years ago

If you want to burst delusions of egalitarianism, read Martin van Creveld’s “Equaity: The Impossible Quest.”
https://www.amazon.com/Equality-Impossible-Martin-van-Creveld-ebook/dp/B00UVLE20W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548350444&sr=8-1&keywords=creveld+equality
This book was not THE thing that red-pilled me, but it helped to further destroy any egalitarian delusions I once had.

Vegetius
Vegetius
5 years ago

Thought on strategy:

We must wedge the left apart while eliminating libertarian and conservative alternatives to nationalism.

Vegetius
Vegetius
Reply to  Vegetius
5 years ago

The 30,000 or so libertarians who actually affected the outcome of Senate elections in 2018 wear cowboy hats and baseball caps, not fedoras.

Vegetius
Vegetius
Reply to  Vegetius
5 years ago

These people don’t read Reason. They tend to live in areas where school choice is not an issue.

How are these folks to be approached and brought over?

Mike Walsh
Mike Walsh
5 years ago

Simpler explanation: Libertarians are basically adolescents.

Teapartydoc
Member
Reply to  Mike Walsh
5 years ago

See: LibertyMike.

Saurons_Lazy_Eye
Member
5 years ago

The other twin is ripped from his parents and placed in a home with high parental investment and access to school choice. Then maybe you could get some useful data. That’s monstrous and no one would ever agree to anything close to it, so it will never happen. Oddly enough, just a few minutes after reading that, I came across the following post in the comments to a post elsewhere: “In grad school, I had a flaming liberal adjunct instructor of child development. Our textbook contained a study of M[entally] R[etarded] children who had randomly been placed in one of… Read more »

Dale Peterson
Dale Peterson
5 years ago

Excellent closing sentence!

sirlancelot
sirlancelot
5 years ago

Inner city schools are the state penitentiaries waiting room.

Lived through forced busing . Mandated integration doesn’t work.

Keep your children out of the zoo.

Member
5 years ago

I tried to browse through the comments for quite a ways but saw nothing that portrays an even uglier truth about education. If I remember correctly, “The Bell Curve” did a study of an affluent suburb of Cleveland that was disproportionally populated with Blacks. These citizens were doctors, teachers, professionals all. One would think their offspring would follow in their footsteps…having such a comfortable upbringing by intelligent parents. The unfortunate reality, however, was that the ethnic culture was stronger than family. Their children, in a single generation, seemed intent on following the worst vices and turning their nose up at… Read more »

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Samuel_Adams
5 years ago

The offspring of outliers usually regress to the mean. Culture is not nothing, but it’s usually much less important than biology.

Din C. Nuffin
Din C. Nuffin
5 years ago

Speaking as a productive (tax paying) Caucasian, are the prisons overcrowded? I much prefer paying for more prisons for maladaptive citizens, than welfare for the same group. The stick works better than the carrot on these folks, just as it did on me.

Herman Snerd
Herman Snerd
Member
5 years ago

Zman along with a few others opened my eyes to libertarianism’s fundamental flaw, for which I thank you. Fetishizing liberty, blind to every other consideration, is civilizational suicide.

Dan
Dan
5 years ago

The left side on the Bell Curve provides votes for the commie lefts “something for nothing” promises. Thus the incentive to reform ANY system that creates this demographic is doomed. Votes and power for politicians will ALWAYS come before anything and everything else.

Member
5 years ago

Having blogged for more than a decade, trying to come up with a catchy opening line is always a struggle but that might be the best opener you have offered to date.

BadThinker
BadThinker
5 years ago

There was an education post at insty a little bit ago. So much love for school choice and homeschool in the comments, so few folks that recognize the truth. How much longer until the BoomerCons wake up? Will they ever?

Member
5 years ago

This interview with Libertarian John Stossel is a typical example of how they spend their interviews evading questions, playing dumb, or in Stossel’s case, actually being dumb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lap1DSBrk0

GU1
GU1
5 years ago

“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Holmes was a Progressive. But Progressives were based back then.

JJ Jones
JJ Jones
5 years ago

“is to do a twin study”

A group did this, but for different reasons and under unethical conditions (ostensibly for tracking mental illness). See the film ‘Three Identical Strangers’.

Teapartydoc
Member
Reply to  JJ Jones
5 years ago

There are a lot of twin studies ongoing. I know because my old employer was involved in them. When they were starting up they got a lot of publicity, in part because that helped them locate subjects. I suspect that they get little publicity these days because the results don’t support the egalitarian suppositions we are expected to hold dear.

Recovering Lawyer
Recovering Lawyer
5 years ago

Z, I’m your acolyte (not really, but you know what I mean), trying to properly interpret your closing sentence. You surely know the source, so are you saying that eugenic selection by our governmental/bureaucratic overlords is the answer to the problem? I hope to hear from you. Thanks.

LeafyGreen
LeafyGreen
5 years ago

Tragically, the MONSTROUS thing had already happened. In the 1960’s, (by Jewish Louise Wise Adoption Agency), children were separated from their identical siblings and placed in adoptive homes where they were studied under the guise of “visits.” Their adoptive families were never told of the existence of siblings so that nature vs. nurture could be studied in its purest form. Study results have been locked up at Yale, 61 boxes of data, yet those individuals are not privy to their own histories until the year 2066 when most will be gone. Only the Jewish Board has the authority to release… Read more »

John Pate
Member
5 years ago

Whilst the dimensions of the problem seem to be well agreed upon here what I don’t see described are the solutions. How are you going to prevent the government being taken over by the moochers and looters and sociopaths? I don’t see any extant government where this hasn’t happened. Central banking is one of the planks of the Communist Party Manifesto and seems to me to be a fundamental problem but nobody seems to have a way forward to eliminating that. Fundamentally your system has to appeal to certain moral premises to develop a framework within which behaviour is deemed… Read more »

John Pate
Member
Reply to  John Pate
5 years ago

…by which I meant to say, the future will be like the present, only more so.

Dutch
Dutch
Reply to  John Pate
5 years ago

Government is and always has been a sanctioned and sophisticated skimming operation. Shackling the ability of government officials to participate in the skim is the best that we can do.

Member
5 years ago

I can’t take any libertarian seriously who isn’t a racist. Reality is that a society with minimal government and a focus on individual responsibility requires a average IQ in the three digit level. Besides being dumber lower IQ people have less impulse control and greater criminality. That is why in greater Wakanda, Rwanda is such a stand out success story. The supreme ruler has a broken Windows policy towards running the country. He makes his people walk the strait and narrow or face consequences. It is also why blacks are more functional in the strict confines of the military than… Read more »

Member
5 years ago

“The best way to become a smart, educated person is to be born to parents who are smart and well educated.” True but race is still king. Kids from the poorest white families do better on standardized tests and have higher IQ than blacks from the wealthiest families. They also have a lower criminal rate than those blacks. A white and or eastern Asian school is always going to be preferable to middle class families than a black or Hispanic one. To Z’s point, many bright white kids from families that aren’t well educated do not end up becoming well… Read more »

Mike
Mike
5 years ago

I used to consider myself an Objectivist. In the end, Rand’s philosophy denies biology too. It started to Dawn on me when others looked at me funny when I expressed a lack of optimism regarding the prospects for certain minorities to embrace the ideology. When I finally became redpilled about women, it was over. I still think there are some good parts with regards to some technical aspects of epistemology in it, but the rest is just left libertarianism. The funny thing is if you look carefully you can find some hidden redpills in Rand’s writings. Just take a look… Read more »

BadThinker
BadThinker
Reply to  Mike
5 years ago

I was once the same as you. Rand was very good at telling a certain kind of young, smart, alienated white man what he really, really, wants to hear.

Dale Peterson
Dale Peterson
5 years ago

Z, I am having trouble reading your Gab feed. The page comes up but I cannot see your posts (and the same this is happening with other feeds). Is something wrong on Gab’s end? Or is it my end?