Playing the Race Card that You’re Dealt

(Written August 16, 2015)

for The Bold Pursuit

There is a saying that applies to card games, which is that, you must play the cards that you’re dealt.  You do not get to look through the deck and choose the cards you wish for.  The cards are distributed randomly to each player.  Each player then does with those cards the best he can, and oftentimes, the worst cards can win in the hands of a skillful player.  Were it not so, people would flip coins instead of going through the bother of learning the rules and strategy of card games.

This principle does not, however, apply to the real life game of racial politics.  Not everyone can get the race card.  Even so, one can play it regardless.

I witnessed an eerie example of this recently.  I was participating in a low cost card tournament.  The fellow in front of me, waiting for a seat assignment, was a very dark-skinned American of African descent (there, did I say that with the requisite political correctness?).

Before he got his ticket, he had a complaint to make, which he addressed to a beige-colored clerk who had absolutely no discretionary power in the tournament.  She simply issued the seating assignments at random from a machine.

The complaint was that in a prior tournament, although there had been only three black contestants, out of a total of fifty players, all three of them had been assigned to the same table.

The very same table!  How could that possibly happen, except by a deliberate policy of racial segregation?

Oh.  It seems that anyone who understands the mathematics of probability and statistics (two vital skills for any serious card player), those kinds of things do indeed happen with far more regularity than one might at first imagine.

Furthermore, the seating arrangement did virtually nothing to disadvantage the black players.  One might argue that it reduced the chances of all three black players making the top three scores, but at the same time, it increased the chances of one black player making the top score.  In any case, the net effect was at or near zero.

Never mind.  None of that matters in the meta-game called racial politics.  What matters is not whether there is actual discrimination (which in this case there certainly was not— the ticket machine has no information about the race of players).  What matters is whether one can find evidence, however tenuous, of discrimination.  If not, then one can always imagine it.  If there is no race card in the deck, one can manufacture his own.  One does this simply by assuming that every unequal outcome is the unfair result of racism— even when the outcome itself is neutral.

To be sure, on the whole, black Americans do not get a fair deal of society’s cards in the game of economics and power.  This is because a great many of them have the abject misfortune of living in urban areas governed by liberal politicians who deny black children the opportunity to get a decent education.  Instead, the very liberal teacher unions are given political ownership of the public schools, and those schools under-educate and even mis-educate those children.

Those schools teach black children that they are not the ones to blame for the crimes they commit, for the children they produce out of wedlock, for the drugs they ingest, for their disinterest in books, and for their lack of skills concerning managing what little money they do have.  According to liberal politicians, those failures are all the fault of white people.

At no point, according to the liberal establishment, does it become the responsibility of black people to remedy these problems, other than for showing up at demonstrations blaming white people, and voting for more Democrats to perpetuate the racist policies of liberals.

Black people are often treated badly, even sometimes unjustly killed, by white policemen.  True, but this problem, as serious as it is, (and it is very serious), is dwarfed by the murders of thousands of black people by other black people.  It seems that virtually no effort is made to solve that problem.  Even to merely mention it is considered racist by some.  Ironically, even black conservatives who call attention to the problem are accused of racism.

Sometimes the frustration tempts people like me, white conservative males, to simply give up.  I am always reminded, however, that I have an obligation to speak truth, not only to the powerful, but also to the powerless— and to expect no thanks for doing it.

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Are Conservatives Descended From Apes?

(Written August 13, 2015)

for The Bold Pursuit

When liberal reporters decide to make conservatives look like monkeys in the eyes of the public, they often question them about their religious beliefs, and in particular, their beliefs about evolution.  Conservative politicians get much of their support from evangelical Christians, and many of those Christians take literally the Bible’s account of creation, an account that contradicts Darwin’s theory of evolution.

According to a large segment of that population, the world began about six thousand years ago, and on the sixth day of creation, God made Adam, after which He made Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, just as the Bible says.

This account seems so preposterous to many liberals that anyone who takes it literally is viewed as an anti-science buffoon, and therefore unfit to hold public office.

Even many Christians aver that the Biblical account is only symbolic, not a physical truth, but a spiritual one, and irrelevant to public policy.

My book, The God Paradigm, has little or nothing to do with politics, but I have sent copies of it to conservative figures such as Sarah Palin and Scott Walker, among others, because it offers all Christians a context in which to answer certain “gotcha” questions, including those involving evolution.

I believe firmly in the scientific method, but not in scientists who have adopted the unscientific view called by such names as natural materialism.  Natural materialism is not science.  It is a philosophy, but it governs much of current scientific thinking.  That philosophy holds that nothing exists except material things, and that everything in nature can be explained by other things in nature.  It dismisses any need for God.

There is plenty of evidence that natural materialism is not only wrong, it is illogical and unscientific.  One of the many arguments against natural materialism is the phenomenon we call “inward consciousness.”  Not only does nothing in science explain its existence, nothing in science can even define it.  It is, however, our direct experience of the spiritual dimension of reality, a dimension of much higher proportions than the physical.

Many other evidences of the spiritual realm abound, and they abound in the scientific literature.  Materialist scientists either ignore, or fail to recognize the significance of that large body of evidence.

For example, it is well known that the universe is so finely tuned to support life and technological civilization that were its parameters to differ by only an unimaginably tiny fraction, the universe would either suddenly collapse or evaporate into a subatomic mist.

In order to explain that fact, scientists had to imagine what the Bible already tells us, a context much larger than our universe.  The difference is that natural materialism describes a larger physical realm, to explain why our one universe among vast numbers of them can be a fluke which supports life.  This only kicks the can down the road, however, since it leaves open the question of why the multi-universe can support life.

If the Bible seems to be a strange explanation for life and reality, science has even stranger explanations.  The science of quantum physics is rife with controversial explanations of experimental results that seem to make no sense in physical terms, but make very good sense in spiritual terms.  Indeed, the Bible’s second verse concerns creation in terms that sound very much like quantum physics. 

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”  (Genesis 1:2)

Quantum physics, according to some scientists, describes reality in terms of a formless condition which has no specific reality until perceived by a conscious mind.

My purpose here, however, is not to support or refute the Biblical account, but rather, to reassure any and all conservatives that they need not respond in summary form to “gotcha” questions which carry so many convoluted implications.  Instead, they might refer to the fact that there are many profound questions which science cannot answer, such as, why is there something instead of nothing?

For Christian politicians, the response I suggest goes something like this.  “Here are my religious beliefs as they relate to my political philosophy.  I believe that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Also, I believe that Congress should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Perhaps a liberal reporter might not recognize where those words come from.

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Western Civilization will Rise Again

(Written August 1, 2015)

for The Bold Pursuit

It was in the 1960s, as I recall, that college campuses resounded with the chant, “Hey hey, ho ho, western civ has got to go.”

The United States was, and perhaps still is, the pinnacle of western civilization, but just what is that?  To the campus hippies of the 60s, western civilization was considered to be a culture of oppression.  They decried all the abuses of power which they identified with the United States, and with other western nations— and there were many.

What the student protesters did not notice was that the abuses of power in nonwestern nations are far worse than anything they could imagine.  They idolized communism.  The American communists of the 1930s fantasized that a worker’s paradise existed in Stalinist Russia, and completely dismissed all the evidence of Stalin’s brutal repression in which millions were systematically starved to death.  Today’s American leftists are similarly deluded.

Despite whatever criticisms one might have of the United States— born as a nation of slave-owners, rife with Tammany Hall corruption, imperial greed that extended to India and China, and within the Americas— add to that the long litany of the failures of US domestic and foreign policies— despite all that, the United States is inherently a good country.  It is good not only because Americans are good people, but more than that, because we stand on the shoulders of giants, as the saying goes.  For all our faults, we are almost always moving in the right direction, toward more freedom, and toward greater charity to the entire world.

The remedy to our many flaws is not to embrace the evils of totalitarianism, nor to mimic primitive cultures, nor to tear down our own nation’s borders.  It is to continue to build upon that which is good in our culture.

To do that, young people first need to understand what western civilization is, what are its beginnings and foundations, how it has enriched the world, saved countless lives, and lifted millions from poverty, not to mention defeating the worst tyrannies the world has ever seen.

Opposition to teaching that history is fierce.  Ironically, those who most benefit from the achievements of western civilization are those who hate it most.  Even more ironic is that they who would trash its achievements will feel its loss perhaps more keenly than anyone else.  Those who abuse freedom are those who cherish it least, until at their own hands it is lost.

Western civilization is founded in two opposing traditions, the Hebrew and the Greek, the culture of faith and the culture of reason.  The first recording of the clash and merger of these two traditions is in the Bible’s book, the Acts of the Apostles.  This book chronicles the earliest days of the Christian faith, and from that point onward, it is impossible to separate Christianity from the rise of western civilization.

Until that period of time, there was no consequential mention in secular history of respect for individual rights, not only the rights of kings, but also the equal rights of peasants, and even the rights of our enemies. 

The freedoms espoused by Christianity are not bestowed upon us by men, but by God, and God requires us to obey His law.  It is that law which ignites the hatred of hedonists who disguise themselves as advocates of human rights. 

Certainly human rights includes the right to do wrong, but those who do wrong detest being exposed as wrongdoers.  Today, abortionists disguise their murders as “choice.”  Those who are destroying our education systems always declare, “It’s for the children.”  They are well aware of their criminality before God.

Those who would destroy western civilization must first destroy Christianity, and with it, its forebear, Judaism.  It is no accident that the chosen people of God, and their nation, is more hated in the west than are all the terrorist armies combined.  Iran is beloved by American liberals because although it poses an existential threat to the west, it first would destroy Israel.

Contrast this western hatred of Israel with the more pragmatic policies of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.  These two predominantly Moslem nations, whatever their past animosity toward Israel, have waged war against Islamic terrorism, and are moving closer to an alliance with Israel against Iran.  The Moslem Kurds also are fighting against Islamist terrorists, and doing so with only the most grudging and token assistance from the west.

Clearly, then, the liberal animosity toward Israel is not rooted in a love for Islam, but in hatred of God.

Christianity survived the lions in Roman arenas, not only survived but thrived.  It will survive the attacks by American liberals.  It will thrive.

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We are Dooming our Black Children

(Excerpted from a commentary written July 29, 2015)
for The Bold Pursuit

Not only are we failing to solve serious problems such as crime, we are all but forbidden to even discuss the issue if it offends anyone.  For example, it is no secret that while black people comprise about twenty percent of our citizenry, fifty percent of the felonies are committed by them.  Ninety percent (or thereabouts) of black citizens who are murdered, are murdered by black people.   Just try discussing that with any random sampling of voters, but take care to shield yourself from accusations of racism.  The issue itself will be drowned out in the tirade of anger from the left, and the problem continues.

The teacher unions and their political cronies have hijacked our schools, victimizing inner city black students, despite the fact that per student spending on them— in poorly performing schools— by the government— is far greater than the spending in many better performing schools, both public and private.  Yet the demand is always for more money and less accountability.

Mysteriously, black families continue to support the very same politicians whose destructive rampage in their children’s lives continues.  Maybe it’s not so mysterious, when one considers the schools they attended.

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How Not to Understand International Economics (it’s easy)

(Written July 19. 2015)
for The Bold Pursuit

I used to be so naïve that I actually thought that economics is understandable, at least by economists. Silly me.  A simple reading of a newspaper is all it takes to set anyone straight on this matter.

Take the European Union, for example.  You no doubt have read that Greece has been borrowing kazillions of euros from Germany and other European countries.  You no doubt have read that Germany wants some assurance that some day it might get at least some of that money back.  Silly Germans.

In order to get that assurance, the Germans have asked the Greeks to stop spending zillions of Euros on exorbitant salaries for its government workers, to raise taxes to help pay off the debt, and in short, to stop throwing money around like drunken sailors (and please believe me when I say that I have the utmost respect for drunken sailors, because after all, they spend their own money, not Germany’s).

Here is an unofficial wording, slightly edited, of the Greek position on the matter. 

Dear Germans:  How dare you try to tell us what to do with your money?  After all, it is your money, not ours.  We don’t tell you what to do with our money that we never lend to you.  So stop telling us what to do with the money you lend us.  Stay out of your business, or else we will threaten not to pay you back— which of course, we can never do anyway.  So there, take that, you big bad lenders of kazillions of Euros that we desperately need to delay our economic collapse for a few more days, after which we can never pay you back.

There.  Now you understand that there is no understanding of economics.

You’re welcome.

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On the Road to Gomorrah

(Written July 16, 2015)
for The Bold Pursuit

There is a condition called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) which, and this may shock you, causes victims to seek amputation of healthy body parts, such as their own arms or legs.  At present, medical science recognizes that this is a severe disorder of the brain.  No ethical physician would perform such an amputation, no matter how strongly the patient requested it.  To do so would be unconscionable.

There is another condition called Gender Identity Disorder (GID), otherwise known as transgenderism or transsexuality.  In this disorder, a person identifies himself or herself as a member of the opposite sex.  It has many similarities with BIID.

The main social difference between BIID and GID is that whereas BIID is unambiguously identified as a disorder, GID is on its way to being considered normal and natural, something to be accommodated by society, even celebrated.  Whereas the ideal treatment goal for BIID is acknowledged to be research into brain therapy, the accepted treatment for GID is to surgically mutilate the body to mimic the somatic features of the opposite sex.

Just to be clear, there is no such thing as sex change surgery.  No one’s sex has ever been changed.  The surgery simply mutilates the body to disguise its true sex.

We should not be complacent about the eventual imposition, by force, of the social acceptance of GID.  We made that mistake concerning homosexuality and same-sex marriage.  After years of being assured that it would never come to this, we now find it to be a civil rights violation to refuse to provide services in support of same-sex weddings.  In time it will become a criminal offense to even openly disagree with the “homosexual agenda,” a term which once was laughingly derided.

We have reason to be alarmed.  What we have learned about ultra-liberalism is that it is never satisfied with its victories.  It always seeks more.  As Donna Shalala (formerly head of Health and Human Services 1993 – 2001, under Bill Clinton) said when she was chancellor of the University of Wisconsin (1987 – 1993) at Madison— it is not enough to merely tolerate homosexuality; it is required that each student and faculty member must go beyond that, and affirmatively reach out and endorse it.

Her policy at Madison has since become all but official policy nationwide.

Conservatives were rightfully horrified when public schools began arranging for abortions to be performed on minor children with neither the knowledge nor consent of the parents.  Now we find advocacy for doing the same for school children regarding sex change surgery.  Of course such a thing cannot be hidden from parents, but the end goal is clearly to criminalize parents, who upon discovery that such a process is underway (beginning with such things as hormone therapy), object.

At Franklin Elementary School in Newton, Massachusetts, Laura Perkins, former board member of GLSEN, the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network, was found to be teaching third grade children, in great detail, about sexual deviancies, and doing so as a means of teaching the children to accept them.  Any parent who objected was stonewalled, belittled and subjected to public opprobrium.  The school hierarchy is solidly in favor of indoctrinating children with or without the permission of parents, and even despite laws specifically forbidding it.

Source:  http://www.massresistance.org/docs/articles/franklin_trans_1106.html#mountain

It does no good to simply complain about such debauchment of our culture.  A majority of Americans oppose the normalization of sexual deviancy, but a minority has succeeded in taking control of society’s key institutions, including education, entertainment and news reporting.

The only remedy now consists of civil disobedience.  This may take the form of simply transferring one’s child to a religious school (or home schooling), but even those remedies have come under attack from the social left, and will eventually be outlawed.

Americans must gird themselves for a long, painful and difficult resistance to evil.  If you doubt how severe will be the penalties for that resistance, simply look at history from 1776 onward.  If history does not persuade you, look at the Bible’s final book, The Revelation.

Of course, the social left will assure us that it will never come to that.

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Ruled by Idiots, Crushed by Reality

First published January 21, 2014
in The Bold Pursuit

Tyranny cannot succeed simply by the force of power exercised by a single tyrant and his small group of assistant thugs. Tyranny requires a large population of weak people to enable that tyranny.

That weakness resides not in their muscles and bones, but in their brains and in their hearts.

In the United States today, the citizenry has abdicated its Constitutional powers by abandoning its Constitutional responsibilities, first and foremost of which is to have actually read the document, not to mention having some basic knowledge about its contents.

The Congress has violated its Constitutional duty by refusing to read bills before passing them into law. Judges routinely make law, rather than applying them. The president openly sneers at both the Congress and the courts, deeming himself above the law.
 

All of this comes right back to the ordinary citizen, and this criticism is not merely about getting poor grades in a civics class, but rather, the failure to protect our children and grandchildren from a swiftly emerging tyranny, one every bit as destructive as those which brought ruin to Germany and Japan in the 1930s and 40s.
 

Many of us chuckle at the man-in-the street interviews with ordinary citizens who do not know the name of the Vice President, who think that the Constitution divides the government into two branches, Republican and Democrat. But there is nothing funny about it. It is as if they were being asked to recommend a diet for schoolchildren, and they prescribe one that contains large doses of a deadly poison.
 

Adolph Hitler was funny— until he wasn’t.

What can we do?
 

A better question is, what will we do? There is no avoiding reality. The consequence of national ignorance on the present scale is national death.
 

What will happen is that there will be a major crisis of such dire proportions that the present system will collapse. This is not rocket science. The economic policy of the United States is to continually spend more money than it has, to borrow more than it can repay, and to print so much currency that it will soon become worthless. This policy is exactly what brought the German republic to such ruin that the people turned to the Nazis, thinking that that would make matters better. Instead, it killed millions of people for nothing gained.
 

What will the crisis be? If it is not economic collapse, it will be because something worse happens sooner. International war may break out, as our foreign policy is to alienate our allies and empower our enemies. Civil unrest might burn down our cities— on a much larger scale than has already happened. An actual political coup d’état is possible, either from the left or the right. Technological disasters are possible, such as massive credit card fraud that crushes our banking system. The list of possible terminal crises is very long indeed.
 

Into the chaos brought about by the next massive crisis, into the power vacuum thus created, there will step an opportunist, a tyrant.
 

The question then becomes, not what will the nation do, but what will you do, what will I do?

Make a plan. Follow it.

 

Reference:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/the_reign_of_collective_stupidity.html

The Reign of Collective Stupidity

By David Solway

Making It to the Top in America

(Written June 11, 2015, edited October 21, 2015)
for The Bold Pursuit

In America, the ideal of success is embodied in the young person who is born into poverty, sets a worthy goal, and pursues it relentlessly through difficulties and setbacks, until at long last his efforts pay off, and he (or she) is rewarded handsomely.  He needs no agent.  She is her own woman.

Of course that ideal is realized countless times in America, but it is not the whole story.  All too often, it really is, “Whom you know,” not what you know, that lifts some people from anonymity to fame.

My first encounter with this reality was many years ago, when a good friend of mine, Jack (not his real name), was an aspiring rock and roll musician.  He was good, very good, at what he did, and we (all his friends) expected to someday see him on stage and television, just as we had seen the Beatles, Mick Jagger, and other big names of the era.

In later years, I lost contact with Jack, but I noticed that many of the singers in church choirs are stunningly good.  It is no exaggeration to say that they are at least as good at singing as any celebrity that makes thousands of dollars per performance.  I wondered, what separates the uncelebrated but melodic nightingales from the rock stars?  Why aren’t these choir singers famous?

In answer to this, after a few years, I encountered Jack once again, who by then was working as a union construction laborer (I am disguising this part of the account).  I asked if he was still into music, but he told me that there is this thing called the musician’s guild, a trade union that controls the career tracks of most musicians.  The only way around the guild bureaucracy is to have powerful connections, someone who will “mention” your name in high circles.  Indeed, Jack had gotten his well paying construction job because he had a relative who was fortuitously placed in the union hierarchy.  You’ll never see Jack in the top forty, but he probably still plays guitar well enough to be there.

Jack’s story explained a lot to me, as did that of another acquaintance, an artist.  (I’m also disguising this story, but you probably know such people yourself.)  She produced what most would consider top quality artwork.  She was able to command impressive prices for her works, but the key to career success as an artist seems to be to gain a “showing” in a museum or prestigious gallery.  Picasso’s worst painting ever, or even one of his notebook sketches, can sell for more than her best work.  People who pay large sums for works of art pay for the name, not so much the quality.

All this might sound like sour grapes, but the people who tell me of these experiences are neither angry nor bitter.  They recognize that their talents and skills are not unique, but that many thousands of people possess them, and there is only so much room at the top.  They do not feel entitled to rise above their equals.  While they deserve to be at the top, so also, they will tell you, do those who are already there.

This ordinary fact of life becomes pernicious when people who have deservedly risen above the crowd, are then blacklisted.  This can happen in Hollywood, in music, and in academia— and it can happen for the seemingly most trivial of perceived infractions. 

For example, Jim Caviezel, star of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ claims that he has been blacklisted, barred from being cast in further movies.  He also says that Gibson warned him that this would happen.  Gibson reportedly told him, “You’ll never work in this town again.” Caviezel reportedly replied, “We all have to embrace our crosses.”

Michael Medved, a politically conservative Jew and radio talk-show host, has been outspoken about Hollywood’s rejection of Christian-themed movies.  This discrimination occurs despite the fact that conservative and family-oriented movies make more money than the vulgar and sex-themed movies that populate the R ratings in theaters.  It seems that the motives of Hollywood are more ideological than financial.  One must never rock the boat, or else, he will find himself off the boat.

In academia, politically liberal professors sometimes discover that they are not liberal enough.  The slightest departure from liberal dogma is enough to get one fired.  Even an innocuous observation, at worst a politically incorrect opinion, can be fatal to one's academic career.  Mere students fare even worse. 

Nowhere is blacklisting more vicious than in political reporting.  The most recent example is the attempt by the New York Times to smear Republican Senator (and presidential candidate) Marco Rubio as reckless, both in his personal finances, and in his driving record.  So ludicrous was this hit piece that even comedian Jon Stewart, known for his politically liberal views, featured it on his television show as a farce.

Note that the Times is utterly without curiosity concerning Barack Obama’s ties to the convicted real estate swindler (Tony Rezko) whose schemes included Obama’s heavily discounted purchase of a house in Chicago.  The nature of blacklisting is to smear only those with whom you disagree, and to cover up for those you like.

America remains the land of opportunity, and continues to encourage people to rise to the top.  It continues to be a fact that those who apply their talents, who work hard, who avoid destructive behaviors— those people are far more likely to have success than those whose lives are marked by indolence, self-indulgence and self-destructive lifestyles.

But one must never blame poor results on poor choices.  If you do, it could get you blacklisted.

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How Harvard University is Defending Us Against the “Yellow Peril”

(Written June 6, 2015)
for The Bold Pursuit

In the 1920s, someone noticed that China had (symbolically speaking) more people than the US had bullets.  In an era of low technology (by today’s standards), it was feared that China had enough people to swarm over the entire United States.  Only a few years earlier, the German army had “swarmed over” Belgium and other European countries, so it was perhaps natural that newspapers of the era ran terrifying headlines about the “Yellow Peril,” the color being used in reference to the perceived skin color of Asians.

About half a century later, in the 1970s, American immigration policies that previously had strictly limited immigration from Asia were loosened.  Asians began arriving in America (although not swarming) in large numbers.  One of them was my wife, who soon became a US citizen.

In that era of emphasis on minority rights, universities invited Asian Americans to enroll, and they did.  Did they ever!  Within a decade, it seemed to some people that the student body would be overwhelmingly Asian.  Poor us, it seemed that we Caucasians would become a tiny minority on campus.

The “problem,” it was soon discovered, was that college admissions, at the time, were based on something called, “merit.”  If you look up the word, “merit,” in the politically correct dictionary of socialist America (if there is no such dictionary, there should be), you will find this definition.  Merit:  an antiquated and unfair system of racial discrimination that unjustly oppresses black and latino applicants for college— or whatever.

To remedy this unfairness, quota systems were established to ensure that the “proper” percentage of college students would be black and latino, regardless of academic qualifications, or lack thereof.  As a result, many seats in college classrooms were, in effect, reserved for black and latino students only. Whites and Asians need not apply for those seats.  More highly qualified students were displaced, that is, denied admission, in favor of less qualified applicants.  It’s the American way (sarcasm, of course).

When the courts ruled that government quotas are unconstitutional, the colleges quickly learned to evade those rulings, by redefining the word, “qualified.”  Whereas before, qualifications had to do with test scores, with grades received in school, and with other empiric measures, the new definition involved “life experience, perspective,” and other factors that anyone could claim to have, but which allowed college admissions offices to discriminate based on race alone.

Unfortunately, those Asians who did get admitted to the colleges continued to dominate the honor roll, while black and latino students failed their courses or dropped out of school in disproportionate numbers.

Undaunted, the colleges adjusted their grading methods to solve this new “problem,” although it proved far easier to admit a minority student than to properly educate those who were less literate than other students.  Consequently, many minority students who had preempted the arrival of more qualified freshmen, soon left their seats vacant— due to failure or dropping out.

While this may sound to some like a racist screed, it is quite the opposite.  It has been demonstrated that the best way to help minority students is to begin at the bottom rung of the ladder.  In other words, the first improvements must be made in elementary school, where lifelong values are formed, where lifelong study habits begin, and where expectations and discipline can have the effect of lifting minority students from their traditional stereotypes, lifting them to academic excellence.  There are many examples of success among black and latino students who did not need quotas, but instead had parents who instilled in them values and a high purpose.

Liberal policies at colleges continue in effect, however, and the results continue to damage large numbers of minority students.  The false god of “diversity” has become more important to college admissions policy than quality education.

There is a reason why Asian college students tend to excel far out of proportion to their numbers as compared to other races.  That reason is culture.  To sum it up, on average, Asians tend to value education more than they value rock-and-roll.  Their culture demands respect for the elderly, demands honorable behavior, and demands hard work.  While exceptions abound, my own personal experience provides a useful anecdote.

In the early 1990s, I had retired from the military and gone to college at the University of South Florida, not a bastion of liberal extremism.  Having gotten to the ripe old age of forty-plus, I found that my mental acuity had diminished since the days when I could wait to study the night before a test and ace it.  I struggled merely to pass.  Therefore, many of my evenings were spent in the university library, grinding away at the books.

I noticed right away that I was one of a select few Caucasians in the building.  The great majority of students in the library, late at night, were Asian, with a good number of Africans— but not African-Americans, rather, foreigners— Nigerians and so forth.  These young students were already brilliant and getting good grades, but for them, that was not enough.  They had a need to excel, to get straight A grades, to rise to the top of the honor roll.  In their personal self-grading system, a B grade stood for “Bad.”

The black Nigerian “A” students are proof that race does not explain poor academic performance among black Americans.  Culture does.  Attitudes do.

Nor does race explain why Asian Americans perform better than white, black and latino Americans.  Culture does.  Attitudes do.  Is there an echo?  It is the echo of fact and reason.

Instead of focusing on culture and attitudes, some universities, including Harvard, insistently focus on race.  Harvard is now being sued (see link below) by the father of some young Asian Americans in his household, because he rightly fears that despite their hard work and discipline, they will be denied admission to Harvard based on, and only on, their race.

It’s long past overdue for this final form of racism to be excised from America.  It will help everyone, and perhaps especially, black Americans.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/harvards-chinese-exclusion-act-1433543969

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Games and Reality

(Written June 5, 2015) 
for The Bold Pursuit

Let’s not play games here.  On the other hand, let’s.

      Games are not what they may seem at first to be.  At first one associates them with frolicking children, and perhaps after a moment of thought, with adults engaged in some inconsequential pastime.  Games, however, are very consequential.

      Take for example the fact that the military forces of many nations engage in what are called, “war games.”  These are in fact, practice sessions for the real thing. Everyone from generals and admirals to the lowest ranking personnel take part.  They carry out, as closely as possible without actually killing people or bombing cities, the tasks they would in war.  It’s a game, and a very serious one at that.

      In professional sports, games are themselves the activity of consequence, where tickets and merchandise are sold for billions of dollars.  Even in collegiate sports, the games are played not “just for fun,” but with vast amounts of money at stake, not to mention careers.

      Even recreational games are often modeled after real life, however loose the imitation may be.  Chess was probably intended to represent medieval warfare, albeit in a very abstract form.  Modern day computer games may rival the simulations used by the armed forces, modified for customers whose goal is entertainment.

      Most games are competitive.  Checkers, Bridge, Monopoly and other games are usually played against one or more opponents, and the outcome is that one player “wins,” while the others “lose.”  Hurt feelings sometimes result.

      Games People Play is a 1964 book by psychiatrist Eric Berne (1910 – 1970) which analyzed the very consequential interactions between individuals.  Later studies categorized people in terms of power struggles within their relationships, including in business and in marriage.  The object of these kinds of games is to win outright, or if not that, to gain some advantage over another person.

      In short, games are very serious matters in themselves.  Moreover, a study of games can allow us to use them as reflections of reality, with which we might better understand real life.

      For example, sports have often been touted as useful in teaching children to prepare for adult life.  Sports involve discipline.  To succeed in sports, one must train, one must forego unhealthy habits, and one must focus on improving one’s skills.  Team sports are especially useful, because they include group dynamics in which self-interest and group interest must be properly balanced.

      Physical sports may not be suited for everyone, but other forms of competition are available.  We mentioned chess and checkers, which stress analytical thinking.  Those games, however useful, lack one important aspect that we find in real life.  On the chess board, one always knows (if he is observant) where his opponent’s strengths and weaknesses are.  In real life, there is what we call the “fog of war,” which consists of many layers of unknown and unknowable factors upon which depend success or failure.

      This is true not only in war, but in business, in politics, and in many forms of personal relationship.  In a game, one knows who the opponent is, but in real life, the adversary may sometimes become an ally.  At the same time, your ally may have goals that conflict with your own.  In any large corporation, office politics can be ferocious.  Internecine conflict may sometimes become more pronounced than conflict with external competitors.

      Card games provide an abstract example of this “fog of war.”  Poker and bridge are played without having full information on what cards are held by opponents, or in the case of bridge, even by one’s partner.  In poker, this fogginess can have the result that a player may play a strong hand quite correctly, only to lose to a weaker hand that gets lucky (and stronger) with a subsequent card that is dealt after the initial betting.

      Likewise in “real life,” some people do all the right things, but are badly hurt by subsequent events that they cannot control.  This happens in marriage, in business, and in matters of health (and in politics and war, etc).

      There is a serious psychological effect on some people when they repeatedly suffer losses after performing as well as anyone could.  They tend to become discouraged, to give up, or else, to compete irrationally.  This is true in poker and in business, among other human endeavors.  Repeated, continual losses can leave one depressed, resentful, and feeling that life has been unfair to him.  Blame is often placed where it does not belong, either on particular individuals, or on society as a whole.  “The system is rigged,” we often hear.

      And it is.  Any competitive system is.  The winner is the one who uses all of his advantages, and moves aggressively to increase those advantages.  Cheating does occur, but even when it does not, the winners make more money, get the most desirable mate, and continue to win again and again.

      It’s called life.

      It is known that some people begin life with enormous advantages, and continue to obtain great benefits from them.  Wealth, intelligence, good looks, and even height, are among the predictors of success.  Other people start out poor, of low intelligence, and with unattractive looks, and they are less likely than their more privileged peers to achieve financial success.

      Politicians sometimes promise to remedy these disadvantages.  Those promises are false.  At most, politicians can steal wealth from those who have it, and distribute it to those who (like me) do not.  The “have nots” are prone to support those politicians, and this begets internal competition within society, competition not to produce, but to steal.  That kind of competition creates resentment, division, and even outright enmity between economic classes.

      Unlike in games such as chess and poker, life need not be a game of winners and losers.  Everybody can win.  Even a competitive society can cooperate well enough to lift everyone, and to do so without cheating, stealing or lying.  The formula of capitalism is simple and straightforward:  apply managed labor to natural resources, and the result is wealth.  Wealth will be allocated to individuals unequally— sometimes unfairly, but most often based on their productivity.  Therefore, some people will enjoy great financial rewards, while others will get by on meager rations.

      Rigging the game can be harmful both ways.  If the very wealthy prohibit ordinary people from starting businesses, then competition is reduced, and the general wealth is reduced.  On the other hand, if the “have nots” rig the system politically to steal from the wealthy, then financial incentives become skewed, productivity falls, and political instability becomes destructive to everyone.

      The game will never be to everyone’s liking.  Not every team will go to the championship of life, and not every player will be the star of his team.  Somebody has to be the water-boy.

      Even so, if everyone can understand the rules, and if each person plays the game, the outcome will be as fruitful as possible for all concerned.  Life will never be completely fair, but any attempt to remedy this through redistribution by politicians will only make matters worse.

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The Myth of GI Jane

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(Written June 1, 2015, edited October 18, 2015)

for The Bold Pursuit

So much has been said and written about gender (in)equality that the literature is a maze of confusion, distortions, and outright lies.  Lucky you, you have stumbled upon a commentary that sorts it all out for you, neither deprecating women (or men), nor mythologizing them.

The reality is that while men and women are clearly not completely interchangeable (the myth), there is a lot more overlap in our separate skills than one might assume.  The error we often make is to look at the extremes of performance, both the best and the worst, and to ignore the vast middle ground where most of us live.

For example, on one extreme side, the National Football League used to have a rule which stated that a football team consists of eleven “men” on the field.  The National Organization of Women attacked this rule as sexist, since it prohibited women from participating.  When the NOW threatened action, and demanded the rule be changed, some of us expected the NFL to put up a fight on several obvious grounds.  Instead, the NFL immediately gave in, changing the rule to indicate “persons.”  Thus the NOW gained an important victory for women who wish to play football in the NFL as an equal of men.  Sarcasm mode, of course, since in the years after that change, not one woman has played in any regular season NFL game.  They can’t get through training camp.

The NOW’s error here of course, was to look for equality at the extreme of performance.  The natural physical differences between ordinary men and ordinary women in general may be arguably small, but at the upper levels of brawn and brute strength, men occupy more than ninety-nine percent of the population.  Nature is not concerned with fairness or ideology.

What is often ignored is the lower extreme.  Here, women rule supreme.  For starters, men are hugely more likely to be imprisoned than are women, and are much more likely to commit suicide.  Boys perform much more poorly than girls in the early years of school, cannot read as well, and drop out at a higher rate.  The resulting lack of life skills among lower class males has devastating consequences, for themselves and for society.

It is here that all the quick-and-easy explanations vanish.  We can understand that women’s bones are more fragile than those of a comparably heavy man’s, making football into a deadly sport for any woman at the highest level.  So what?  Few of us play professional football.  We live in the real world of jobs, business and school.

      The explanations for male inferiority at the everyday level of work and family, however, involve a universe of factors, each of which multiplies the others, until the maze becomes too difficult to navigate, even for the so-called experts.

      One of the first factors to consider is technology.  Gone are the days when many jobs required brute strength.  Lifting fifty-pound loads repeatedly for hours on end is now done by machines.  So has digging ditches, and likewise, many other jobs that women could not do as well as men.  Had they been able to, the “greedy” entrepreneurs would have hired them at lower wages, and fired the men.

      Women can, however, operate heavy construction equipment, effectively enabling one woman to do the work previously requiring a hundred men.

      Another factor is economic.  Women can now out-earn their husbands, and in so doing, need not accept their former role as household servants.  If the man threatens to walk out, and to leave the woman without support, the woman might very well pack up and leave first, support herself, and find better circumstances in the process.

      Yet another vital factor is that society itself has undergone swift and radical changes, even going so far as to decrease that one previously indisputable area of difference between men and women— reproduction.  Contraception and abortion have enabled women to unshackle themselves from the inconvenience of unwanted pregnancy.

      This new found freedom has, however, also shackled women as much as it has liberated them, and done more harm than good for them.  With contraception came an increased tolerance for premarital sexual activity.  That, in turn, increased tolerance for out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the very thing that contraception had promised to reduce, but counter-intuitively increased.

      The result of this has been an outrageous statistic of fatherless children, which in turn increases poverty.  Fatherless children tend (but certainly not in all cases) to behave more criminally and more promiscuously, not only perpetuating these social ills, but accelerating them.

      It is a shame, then, that gender inequality has been subject to so much disinformation.  Movies like GI Jane are taken by many young people to be reflections of reality, so much so that when reality bites, the inequality is blamed on the unfairness of a male dominated society.  Women like Hillary Clinton scorn the practice of paying women less than men, and yet Clinton herself follows this practice with her employees.  When liberal professor Lawrence Summers dared to explain some gender differences in employment as being inherent in the desires of women to pursue different careers than men, he was booted out of his job.  Liberal tolerance has its limits, and the limit is essentially zero.

      Gender equality should be about rights, dignity and respect, not about quotas in elite Army combat units.  To achieve true equality, we must first recognize the natural differences— the good and natural differences— between men and women, even between boys and girls.  We must reconsider some of our politically correct taboos, for example, the one that forbids educating young boys in classes separate from young girls.

      That is no easy task.  The progressive left will oppose progress of any kind, by every means available.  To them, equality means hammering down every nail that rises above the others.  In order to lift society above its perverse definition of equality, men and women must work together, as equal partners, and we must do so in the real world.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/01/none-8-remaining-female-candidates-pass-first-phase-ranger-school/

Addendum
 Two women recently passed the rigorous US Army's Ranger School training course, and were awarded the prestigious Ranger shoulder patch, along with all the benefits and duties which are attached to Ranger status.  In order to help them pass the course, the women were given special exemptions to compensate for perceived past unfairness, without which they would not have passed.  While supporters of the women contend that these exemptions only leveled the playing field, past history has shown that such accommodations for women tend to become permanent, disguised by lowering the standards for both men and women.
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Can there be high drama in mathematics? Really?

(Written October 17, 2015)

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Well, yes, as a matter of fact, there can.  And you don’t need to know math to appreciate that drama.

      Mathematics seems to be the rule book for the universe.  If so, it is a book that has yet to be fully understood by any human being.  The physicist Max Tegmark perhaps said it best when he said that math does not merely describe how reality works, it is reality itself.

      Be that as it may, most of us (including myself) find even the simplest mathematics to be at best boring, and at most something slightly more difficult than impossible.  If we did not need it to keep track of our money, we might ignore it completely.

      Most of us might also consider math to be settled science.  Two plus three equals five, always has and always will.  So how could there be any controversy, much less drama, in mathematics?  Could there possibly be new discoveries yet to be made in math, discoveries that will change how we live?  Is that even possible?

      I don’t know.  It seems that one mathematician has written a book so complicated that not even other mathematicians at the highest levels fully understand it.  Has this book gone beyond the present boundaries and discovered new frontiers?

      His name is Shinichi Mochizuki.  Here is a link to an article about him, followed by some brief excerpts from it in case you don’t wish to read the whole thing.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/math-mystery-shinichi-mochizuki-and-the-impenetrable-proof/?WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20151014

[Here are some excerpts.]

In December 2014, he [Shinichi Mochizuki] wrote that to understand his work, there was a “need for researchers to deactivate the thought patterns that they have installed in their brains and taken for granted for so many years”.

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The trouble that he faces in communicating his abstract work to his own discipline mirrors the challenge that mathematicians as a whole often face in communicating their craft to the wider world.
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Born in 1969 in Tokyo, Mochizuki spent his formative years in the United States, where his family moved when he was a child. He attended an exclusive high school in New Hampshire, and his precocious talent earned him an undergraduate spot in Princeton's mathematics department when he was barely 16. He quickly became legend for his original thinking, and moved directly into a PhD.
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People who know Mochizuki describe him as a creature of habit with an almost supernatural ability to concentrate.
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The reason [for controversy] is that Mochizuki's work is so far removed from anything that had gone before. He is attempting to reform mathematics from the ground up, starting from its foundations in the theory of sets (familiar to many as Venn diagrams).
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Well, those are the excerpts.  This article reminds me of the saying that we do not know what we do not know.  In other words, what we do know is like a drop of water in a big lake.  What we know that we do not know is the lake.  What we do not even suspect that we don’t know is the ocean.  We should be humble, more humble than we can ever know we should be.
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We will not go to war. War will come to us

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(Written May 27, 2015)

for The Bold Pursuit

Americans refuse to go to war, and with good reason.

Wars are deadly, tragic, and costly.  The tragedy is on many levels.  For example,  I once worked closely over a long period of time with an adult orphan of war, where I learned that one of the most poignant heartbreaks of combat is the emptiness— which exists in the life of someone whose father died overseas while she was yet an infant.  He never saw her.  She never met him, never felt his loving embrace, never had any discussions with him.  Her only reference point for such things was to witness them in the lives of her childhood friends, whose fathers came home every day.  In similar manner, hundreds of thousands of American children became unseen casualties of war.

The last time our nation went to war was in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Or did we?  We didn’t go.  We sent our young men instead, and even some of our daughters.  We stayed home, enjoying the comfort and safety of a prosperous nation, while others suffered and died in our place.  At home, there was no war.  It had not come to us.

There was, however, a price.  Thousands of Americans died, thousands came back permanently disabled.  Many children will never know their father; many wives were widowed.

Shamefully, many more thousands of Americans— perhaps millions— have little or no knowledge of those overlapping, years long, wars.  We spent blood and treasure in enormous amounts, but too many Americans are oblivious to that fact.  Sadly, some do not even care.

It is good that we do not wish to go to war— but war will come to us.  The enemy has a level of commitment we cannot fathom.  They will arrive, and when they do, they intend to wreak as much havoc here, as they have in the villages of Iraq, where they have massacred thousands.

When war comes to America, what will it find?  Will it find the fury and determination that the Japanese found in us, in 1941, when they brought war to us?  Or will it find the complacency of an America that fawns over its sports heroes and rock stars, but knows little or nothing about the national heroes, our warriors, who kept us out of slavery?

Will war find America being led by such as a Winston Churchill, who promised “blood, toil, sweat and tears,” or by a Neville Chamberlain, who thought he could appease Hitler into peace?  That appeasement only strengthened and emboldened the enemy.  It made the war more costly, more painful, and more difficult to win.

In this dark, pre-war hour, we find that ours is a nation with weak leaders whose policies have continually failed.  Yet these same leaders pompously assure us that we are safe and secure.  We find a nation of college students— future leaders— who hold that same-sex marriage is a right, but who believe that personal self-defense should be criminalized.

Not all is bleak.  There is some good news.  There are still many Americans who see the danger that is rising, and who have the courage to stand for what is right, even when the price is high.

War will find us, both the weak and the strong alike.  It will find those of us whose faith is in God, and those whose faith is in mammon.  It will find those who uphold the Constitution, and those who trash it.  It will find some of us standing to fight, and some hiding under beds, perhaps smoking a newly legalized intoxicant, unable to distinguish between good and evil.

Where will it find you?

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It’s for Your Own Good. Do it, or go to Jail.

(Written May 24, 2015)

for The Bold Pursuit

You may never have heard of John and Alicia Nash, but they were celebrities.  The 2002 movie, A Beautiful Mind, told their story.

To put it very briefly, John Nash, a mathematician, devised a method of analyzing data in a way that helps lead to optimal decision making.  It’s called the Nash Equilibrium.  That may not sound very important at first, but it is one of those innovations that nobody notices, yet everyone depends upon.  It is really a big deal.

Unfortunately, and perhaps with tragic irony, John and Alicia Nash made a decision that proved to be fatal to both.  On May 23 of this year (the day before I wrote this), they were killed in the crash of the taxi in which they were riding.  Riding in the back seat, according to reports, neither fastened their seat belts. 

This was a terrible tragedy, and a great loss for the world.  It was also possibly avoidable. Many people are alive today because they made the wise decision to buckle up before riding.  That might have been the outcome had the Nashes made that choice.

This brings us, as a society, to a decision point, one which perhaps the Nash Equilibrium might help us to make correctly.  It is this:  should a federal law be passed, requiring people riding in the back seats of taxis, to wear seat belts?

That is what Joe Concha advocates at

http://www.mediaite.com/online/violent-death-of-john-and-alicia-nash-underscores-need-for-federal-law-mandating-rear-seat-restraints/

Many people will quickly agree with him.  If the passage of a new federal law would save lives, then by all means, let’s do it right away.  Who could possibly oppose such a law?

Oh.  I could.

I always wear a seat belt when in a vehicle, and I always insist that all my passengers do also, front seat and back.  Should they exercise their right to refuse, then I exercise my right not to start the engine.  Such a dictator I am!

What I object to is not the wearing of the safety belt, but rather, the intrusion of the federal government.  Those intrusions have, over the years, brought us to the point where disagreement with controversial government policies can cost one his livelihood, even when issues of safety are not at stake. 

I happen to disagree with a law requiring Moslem bakers to bake cakes for same-sex weddings.  Forgive me for clouding the issue, but if I say Christian instead of Moslem, the accusations of bigotry are instantaneous, whereas if I say Moslem bakers, then there is at least a moment of confusion and hesitation that at least delays the reflexive anti-Christian bigotry.

I also state, for the record, that Moslems who work in food establishments— and who refuse to handle pork— should be given the same protections afforded to Christians who work in pharmacies, and who wish not to dispense abortion-inducing drugs.

How we got from seat-belt-freedoms to religious freedoms may seem convoluted, but the road of freedom does not twist and wind.  It is straight and narrow.  It is not the role of government to make good ideas mandatory.  That’s what people are for.  We decide for ourselves.  It’s called liberty.

I’m not an absolutist on this.  I recognize that there are necessary restrictions on our freedoms.  Even those restrictions, however, should be the minimum necessary to bring about a compelling social need, and the greatest of all social needs is freedom itself.

Whereas seat belts are a good idea, making a law requiring their use is a bad idea, very bad.  Making it a federal law is a terrible idea.  There are other, less intrusive ways to encourage people to make wise decisions without imposing the threat of fines or perhaps even to impose jail time.

How about a federal law forbidding the passage of federal laws that unduly restrict personal freedoms to promote a good idea?

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