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Archive for the 'Social Sciences ' Category
Social integration in the U.S., including cohabiting and marriage, is surging
By Ely Portillo and Frank Greve
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Despite its battles over immigration, affirmative action, racial profiling and other issues, America is finally becoming a melting pot.
A powerful interracial tide has transformed friendships, dates, cohabitations, marriages and adoptions in just one generation. If the wave continues to grow, it could sweep away racial stereotypes and categorizations, as well as the rationale behind affirmative action and other broad minority protections. It remains to be seen, however, whether higher levels of social integration, especially among Asians, are benefiting blacks, the least integrated of U.S. minorities. Data from the 2010 census will make that a lot clearer.
Continue reading ‘Brazilianization of America [Liberals Rejoice]‘
An interesting book: The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium (Hardcover) by Paul Edward Gottfried.
The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium by Paul Gottfried is an account of the rise of a new European politically correct left from the ashes of Marxism. Unlike the Marxism of the past, which focused primarily on history as the culmination of a dialectical process and emphasized the struggle of the working class proletariat against the capitalist class bourgeoisie, modern day politically correct leftism has turned towards the cultural elite as the dynamo for revolution. Indeed, as Gottfried notes, the original Marxists did not advocate “alternative lifestyles”, feminism, homosexual liberation, or rail against the family as oppressive in the same manner as their modern day leftist usurpers do. Gottfried argues that many of these ideas are not fundamentally European in nature but have been exported from America where they originated. This is contrary to the thesis advanced by others such as Alan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind that political correctness represents a Germanification of American universities. Against such Germanophobic tendencies of both the post-Marxist left and the neoconservative right, Gottfried maintains that political correctness is an import to Europe and began at the time of the Allied defeat of the Axis powers. In particular, Gottfried traces the rise of the Frankfurt School to the development of the therapeutic state, in which all dissenters are labeled as “potential fascists” and assigned to re-education. Echoing conservative critic Patrick Buchanan, whose book The Decline of the West showed the perils of both unrestricted immigration and cultural Marxism, Gottfried shows how individuals such as Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer constructed an “authoritarian personality” type as an explicit rejection of traditional bourgeois Christian values. Others such as Herbert Marcuse and Eric Fromm contributed similar studies rejecting those deemed “regressive” or “insufficiently progressive” as potential fascists. Much of this research was motivated primarily by Jewish intellectuals under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee. Gottfried contrasts this modern cultural Marxism with the more orthodox materialist Marxism in which the working class dynamo is considered as the prime historical motivation. In particular, individuals such as Louis Althusser, although equally motivated by the philosophy of Spinoza, sought a return to this form of Marxist materialism. Gottfried argues that while the post-Marxist left rails against American imperialism and actively supports the Palestinians in the Middle East, that they are fundamentally in favor of an American hegemony provided that it is sufficiently tolerant. In particular, for many on both the left and the right, American democracy is seen as the primary motivating good to be exported to the entire world. Such a belief in American power had its origin in the Allied defeat of the Germans following World War II. In fact, following the Second World War, Germans were assigned to de-nazification camps. Many of those who had been conservative monarchists or nationalists yet opponents of the Nazis were regarded as insufficiently democratic and therefore consigned to the outer darkness of being “potential fascists”. This was particularly ironic notes Gottfried because many of those who did the consigning were supporters of a far worse totalitarian regime which had an even greater death toll in the East or were even former fascists themselves. In addition, those who pointed out the many horrors of Allied occupation and the atrocities committed by the Allies during the war, such as the bombing of Dresden or the rape of German women by Soviet soldiers, were equally regarded as pro-fascist. Indeed, in the modern day political debate, any party that is deemed “reactionary” or “fascist” is instantly stifled by the far left. In Europe, many rightist parties have been suppressed or banned because of supposed sympathy for the fascists. While Gottfried admits that many of these parties may have unsavory elements within them, they do represent a part of the political process that involves the questioning of accepted wisdom and the desire to see a revived nationalism. It is disturbing to note the lust of the far left for censorship, particularly as it applies to Europe. However, Gottfried makes the point that America is equally slipping towards the left despite the apparent tendency to turn right following the so-called Reagan revolution. Indeed, Gottfried argues that the “Reagan revolution” was nothing of the sort and that Americans continue to drift in a sea of immorality and nihilism propped up by the far left. Gottfried also considers Italian communists such as Antonio Gramsci, who may have first originated the idea of the culture clash. In addition, Gottfried discusses the exploits of Jurgen Habermas, a profoundly anti-German German communist sympathizer, who has argued for banning other historians including Ernst Nolte. Indeed, those who bring up the atrocities of the communists under Stalin and others are regarded as being potential fascist sympathizers by much of the far left. This was particularly the case regarding the recent publication of the book The Black Book of Communism which showed the terrors inflicted upon the world by this horrendous ideology. Gottfried considers it useful to regard the modern day post-Marxist left as a form of political religion, echoing the categories of conservative philosopher Eric Voegelin. Voegelin believed that many political philosophies constituted resuscitations of earlier Christian Gnostic heresies. Oddly, perhaps the last hope of the cultural conservatives in the coming era is turning towards the working class as a source for traditional values. As others such as Christopher Lasch have shown, the working class may frequently support socialist economics, however they are fundamentally culturally conservative. This may offer a useful opportunity for the right in regaining ground stolen from it by the pernicious influence of a post-Marxist left guiding a managerial therapeutic state actively persecuting all dissenters.
A real treasure-trove of great ebooks and articles here.
Why Truth Matters
by terry glavin
Publish Date: 13-Jul-2006
By Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom. Continuum Books, 196 pp, $30.95, hardcover.
Ten years have passed since New York University physicist Alan Sokal famously hoaxed North America’s leading academic journal on cultural studies, Social Text, with a dense and deliberately ridiculous paper titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”.
Sokal’s essay was all properly tarted up in the typically incomprehensible and impenetrable jargon of the self-proclaimed academic left, so the journal’s editors published it. They did so even though, or perhaps because, Sokal purported to make the case, more or less, that the real world doesn’t even exist.
The uproar Sokal set off was all very amusing, but, sadly, the absurd and ultimately reactionary forms of postmodernism and relativism that Sokal so effectively hoaxed and exposed in 1996 remain deeply entrenched in the humanities, in literary theory, and, perhaps most noticeably, in the ideas of certain sections of the Euro-American “left” elites.
British philosophers Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom array their immense talents against all that rubbish in Why Truth Matters. What they’re on about is a prevailing intellectual indifference to coherence, logic, rationality, and evidence. It’s a world-view that holds that there is no historical truth and almost everything is a mere social construction. Discovery is conflated with invention, myth is elevated alongside empirical evidence, and no lines are drawn between fact and fiction.
Why Truth Matters is by no means another right-wing barrage about university campuses having degenerated into playgrounds for gender studies, postcolonial theory, and identity politics. Like Sokal, Benson and Stangroom come from a distinctly left perspective. (See their Web site Butterfliesandwheels.com for more.)
“The Left is not well advised to discredit or undermine reason and respect for truth,” Benson and Stangroom argue, “because those are ultimately the only tools the Left has against the irrationalist appeals of the Right.”
Why Truth Matters will be easier for those readers with at least a passing familiarity with the ideas of such big-forehead people as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. But most of us will get the main point Stangroom and Benson are making: truth matters because human beings are the only species capable of finding it out.
RAF: Interesting confirmation of my contention that anthropology has become a collection of lies and propaganda. PC science in general is a sort of ‘constructed reality’ these days.
July 18, 2006
Before the white man came? War
We’ve deluded ourselves into believing in the myth of the noble and peaceful primitive
MARK STEYN
Nicholas Wade’s Before The Dawn is one of those books full of eye-catching details. For example, did you know the Inuit have the largest brains of any modern humans? Something to do with the cold climate. Presumably, if this global warming hooey ever takes off, their brains will be shrinking with the ice caps.
Modelling study shows how Anglo-Saxon élite outbred native Brits.
Michael Hopkin
They may not always have enjoyed the most cordial of relations, but English and German people have more in common than they might think. An analysis of the genetic make-up of today’s British population suggests that almost all English people are descended from Saxon invaders who became masters of a two-tier society that battered indigenous Brits into submission.
More good news for health fanatics such as myself who eat healthy, exercise strenuously sever times a week, and don’t smoke, never drink, and stay away from narcotics.
You’re only as old as your genes
Genetic fingerprint could pinpoint fittest organ donors.
Helen Pearson
Close up: ageing can be seen in our cells, chromosomes and genes.
A fingerprint of gene activity could reveal the true ‘youthfulness’ of our kidneys, hearts and muscle, regardless of our biological age. The technique might one day be used to find healthy organs for transplants or to warn us of impending disease.
Bedlam Europe
By Gerald Vouga
In the 1970s Portugal’s authoritarian regime succumbed to a peaceful coup by discontented army officers. Most of the country rejoiced but enthusiasm did not last long: within a few months the country was like a mental hospital under self-management. Portugal’s long tradition of music hall comedy thrived, and counter-revolutionaries with theatrical flair made the most of the loony political situation, drawing huge audiences.
Current developments in Europe look similar. All that’s missing is a suitable continental stage on which to burlesque the hilarious ongoing events—but anyway here are some typical scenes.
The United Kingdom
Like the rest of Europe Britain is a strange place nowadays. Earlier this year a lad of eleven was brought before a UK court charged with committing a hate crime. He had been caught at the age of ten in his school playground insulting a fellow-pupil as a “dirty Paki”. The boy was then tracked by the police for a year, his playground wickedness duly registered, and criminal proceedings initiated. His eventual defence was that his victim had started it all by calling him “white trash”.
In an unusual display of common sense, the judge dismissed the case and denounced the Crown Prosecution Service and the police for devoting their attentions to childish misdemeanours instead of attending to car-theft, burglary and assault. In his day, said the judge, the matter would have been dealt with by a timely clout. The judge’s decision was then indignantly condemned by teachers’ unions and has gone to appeal.
Continue reading ‘Europeans: Wimps, Cowards, and Peecee Fanatics’
The chimp. Israel’s useful idiot and war criminal.
Op-Ed Contributor
It’s Official: There Is Now a Civil War in Iraq
By NICHOLAS SAMBANIS
Published: July 23, 2006
New Haven
HAS the conflict in Iraq turned into a civil war?
Civil wars are defined as armed conflicts between the government of a sovereign state and domestic political groups mounting effective resistance in relatively continuous fighting that causes high numbers of deaths. This broad definition does not always distinguish civil wars from other forms of political violence, so we often use somewhat arbitrary criteria, like different thresholds of annual deaths, to sort out cases. Depending on the criteria used, there have been about 100 to 150 civil wars since 1945. Iraq is clearly one of them.
Continue reading ‘It’s Official: There Is Now a Civil War in Iraq’
Study: Boys trail girls in literacy scores
Submitted by Marmian Grimes
Phone: (907) 474-7902
07/12/06
A new study by University of Alaska Fairbanks Professor Judith Kleinfeld indicates that boys, regardless of their socioeconomic status, lag behind their female peers in language arts.
Continue reading ‘Study: Boys trail girls in literacy scores’
The ACLU and ‘Book Banning’by Humberto Fontova
Say I wrote a book that claimed the life expectancy, infant-mortality and nutrition rates for Black South Africans were all immensely better during the diabolical Apartheid regime than after the glorious liberation by Nelson Mandela & Co.? Pinks have a fetish for exonerating Cuban Stalinism with the reverse of this development as it applies to Cuba – though it’s a patently bogus claim as exposed and fully documented in Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant.
I’m currently reading Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature and in it he reports on how politics can corrupt science. My first example, taken from his book, concerns E.O. Wilson (at 108-109). In 1975 Wilson published a monograph entitled Sociobiology, which “synthesized a vast literature on animal behavior using new ideas on natural selection from George Williams, William Hamiliton, John Maynard Smith, and Robert Trivers. It reviewed principles on the evolution of communication, altruism, aggression, sex, and parenting, and applied them to the major taxa of social animals such as insects, fishes, and birds. The twenty-seventh chapter did the same for Homo sapiens, treating our species like another branch of the animal kingdom. It included a review of the literature on universals and variations among societies, a discussion of language and its effects on culture, and the hypothesis that some universals (including the moral sense) may come from a human nature shaped by natural selection. Wilson expressed the hope that this idea might connect biology to the social sciences and philosophy, a forerunner of the argument in his later book Consilence.
The first attack on Sociobiology zeroed in on its main heresy. In a book length critique, the [Jewish, surprise!] anthropologist Marshall Sahlins defined ‘vulgar sociobiology’ as the challenge to Durkheim’s and Kroeber’s doctrine of the superorganism: the belief that culture and society lived in a separate realm from individual people and their thoughts and feelings. ‘Vulgar socio-biology,’ Sahlins wrote, ‘consists in the explication of human social behavior as the expression of the needs and drives of the human organism, such propensities having been constructed in human nature by biological evolution.’ Acknowledging fear of an incursion into his academic turf, he added, ‘The central intellectual problem does come down to the autonomy of culture and of the study of culture. Sociobiology challenges the integrity of culture as the thing-in-itself, as the distinctive and symbolic human creation.’
Sahlins’s book was called The Use and Abuse of Biology. An example of the alleged abuse was the idea that Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness could help explain the importance of family ties in human life. Hamilton had shown how a tendency to make sacrifices for relatives could have evolved. Relatives share genes, so any gene that nudges an organism to help a relative would be indirectly helping a copy of itself. The gene will proliferate if the cost incurred by the favor is less than the benefit conferred to the relative, discounted by the degree of relatedness (one-half for a full sibling or offspring, one-eighth for a first cousin, and so on). That can’t be true, Sahlins wrote, because people in most cultures don’t have words for fractions. This leaves them unable to figure out the coefficients of relatedness that would tell them which relatives to favor and by how much. His objection is a textbook confusion of a proximate cause with an ultimate cause. It is like saying that people can’t possibly see in depth, because most cultures haven’t worked out the trigonometry that underlies stereoscopic vision.”
See also Matt Nuenke’s review of The Blank Slate here:
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker. This is probably the best written book on evolutionary psychology yet. Pinker lays it all out, and does so in a thorough and entertaining way. My critique however takes issue with parts of the book that deny racial differences in intelligence and behavioral traits, as well as eugenics, morality, etc. (Revised 12/2005–it seems Pinker has changed his mind or has become more honest.)
So much for The Noble Savage…- or the good old days, or “family values”. It’s believed by the scientific community that the Neanderthals were exterminated by Homo sapiens in genocidal wars…there’s no question that we are an extremely violent species…our first burst on the European scene was accompanied by bloodshed on a truly grand scale!
BRUTAL LIVES OF STONE AGE BRITONS
By Paul Rincon
BBC News
May 11, 2006
A survey of British skulls from the early part of the New Stone Age, or
Neolithic, shows societies then were more violent than was supposed.
July 9, 2006
The New Gender Divide
At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust
By TAMAR LEWIN
Nearing graduation, Rick Kohn is not putting much energy into his final courses.
“I take the path of least resistance,” said Mr. Kohn, who works 25 hours a week to put himself through the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. “This summer, I looked for the four easiest courses I could take that would let me graduate in August.”
Continue reading ‘At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust’
Religion as mental abuse.
It has amazed me that mental health authorities rarely question the
harm that is done through religious indoctrination, particularly when
children’s minds are being filled with nonsence. To threaten a child
(or adult) with eternal torture because he can’t force his
(intelligent) mind to believe unconditionally in Biblical mythology is
one of the worst forms of abuse there is. He has to contend with
supposedly rational parents and most other adults who believe in such
religious quackery to varying degrees and expect the child to think
the same way.
Roger Shadduck in his book, “Forbidden Knowledge”, points out that the
more one analyzes the merits of his actions, beliefs, or thoughts, the
more he incurs feelings of guilt. This is especially true if no one
else seems to share the same concerns.
I wish our public schools could teach comparative religious studies
along with non-religious texts like Dennet’s book and other points of
view to broaden a child’s mind. But, I guess that would violate a
parental right to indoctrinate their child with bogus “morality”.
A psychologist friend of mine once told me that psychologists avoid
condemning religious teachings because of “money”. Does that mean
there isn’t any money to do controlled research on this issue, or is
there too much money to be made from spiritually abused patients? I
sure hope its not true.
Peter H. McCusker
Culture wars at the EU parliament
The European Parliament has passed a resolution, which calls for EU member states to take a more active stance in the fight against homophobia, racism and anti-Semitism. Polish politicians are outraged.
Report by Bogdan Zaryn
Last year Warsaw came under fire from gay activist groups world wide for banning an Equality Parade. This year the parade went on without a hitch but Poland’s gay community still feels persecuted.
The European Parliament has passed a resolution calling for several EU member states including Poland to take a more active approach in the fight against anti-Semitism and homophobia.
Continue reading ‘The EU Parliament Wants the Destruction of White People’
In a recent paper describing the threats and challenges Great Britain and Europe face, Rear Admiral Chris Parry couldn’t resist engaging in some good ol’ German-baiting by comparing today’s situation to the Goth invasions of 4th and 5th centuries of the decadent and rotting Roman Empire. There are several problems with his analogy. First, unlike the current Black & Brown invasions from the southern hemosphere, the Goths were indigenous to the European continent. Secondly, a far more apt analogy for his thesis is the long struggle of Romans against the racially alien Carthaginians. However, that would’ve prevented the Rear Admiral from taking a swipe at Germans. Can’t have that now, can we?
The Sunday Times June 11, 2006
Beware: the new goths are coming
Peter Almond
ONE of Britain’s most senior military strategists has warned that western civilisation faces a threat on a par with the barbarian invasions that destroyed the Roman empire.
In an apocalyptic vision of security dangers, Rear Admiral Chris Parry said future migrations would be comparable to the Goths and Vandals while north African “barbary” pirates could be attacking yachts and beaches in the Mediterranean within 10 years.
Europe, including Britain, could be undermined by large immigrant groups with little allegiance to their host countries — a “reverse colonisation” as Parry described it. These groups would stay connected to their homelands by the internet and cheap flights. The idea of assimilation was becoming redundant, he said.
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