Neil Parille

They are having quite the debate on immigration over at Amy Peikoff's blog: http://dontletitgo.com/2015/08/20/a-response-to-ed-mazlish-on-immigration/#comments I thought the comments of Ed Powell were quite good.

Our girl Ann Coulter has a good piece on this: http://www.vdare.com/articles/ann-coulter-fox-news-anchored-in-stupidity-on-14th-amendment There was a Appellate Court decision saying recently that people born in America Samoa aren't citizens. Was everyone born in the Philippines after 1898 and prior to 1948 a US citizen? Are their children US citizens? NP

A couple of weeks ago 2 people stabbed 3 people, killing 2 in Sweden at an Ikea store. I had to search to find their identities. Apparently they were two immigrants from Eritrea. More immigrants "self-selected for their virtue." Sweden is no longer a low crime society, thanks to immigration. -NP

Well, Mark can speak for himself but I'm not sure what exactly the Objectivist position is on this. Rand didn't exactly seek out a "multicultural" environment. And note that Mark said only that people prefer to be with their own race, which is probably true. That's not the same thing as saying the military should be re-segregated, etc. Rand said rather critical things at times about Native Americans and Arabs (as groups) for example. In the context of immigration (which Rand, to the best of my knowledge, didn't write anything about) it's hard to imagine that she would take the "open immigration" position of people like Brook and Binswanger who believe that (in an ideal world at least) there would be unlimited Islamic immigration even if it turned Europe and Israel Muslim. There have been studies showing that the more diverse a country becomes, the last charitable and civic minded its citizens are. Here is a letter on VDARE today. -NP

Harry posted a strange essay on his blog. He thinks its ok for ARIans to disagree with open immigration because, as things now stand, it could make things worse (Muslim immigration, poor people going on welfare, voting for leftist politicians and entrenching the multicultrual PC socierty) It's curious because I don't know of any ARIans who seem to be concerned about this things, other than an occasional rumbling about Islamic immigration. -Neil ***************** Why do Objectivists disagree on immigration? Well, they really don’t. I think we all agree (certainly Leonard Peikoff does) that in a laissez-faire world, there’d be open immigration. The disagreements arise because we are light-years away from that world . And it’s not just that we have wrong political conditions. It’s that we know that, within the foreseeable future, we won’t enact the right solutions to the problems created by the statism. In the case of immigration, the right solution is essentially fourfold: 1. Militarily crush Iran and its ally-states, in an all-out campaign (it would be too short to call it a war). That, coupled with a proper foreign policy, would end the rise of Islam and worry about Muslim immigration. 2. Make immigrants sign away their right–for their whole lives–to any government loot. That would end the worry about poorer immigrants coming to get welfare. 3. Make it impossible for immigrants to get the vote–for their whole lives. That would end the worry about immigrants from statist cultures voting in more statists. 4. Replace multicultural BS with the proud, morally confident assertion of America’s moral superiority over the statist and theocratic societies from which the immigrants are coming. We are right and they are wrong–politically, philosophically, and in other ways. Standing up for our values would end the worry about immigrants diluting (the fast-fading remnants of) American individualism. But not one of these things is going to happen in the foreseeable future. So what are we to do in regard to immigration? Look at what this means: given that our government is not going to do the right things, what should it do? But there’s no way to answer that question. If it’s not going to do the right thing, then, by definition, whatever it does will be the wrong thing. Can we pick the best, or least bad, among the wrong things? Yes, to a certain extent, but not in a principled way. It is a contradiction in terms to ask: “On what principle should we act if we are not going to act on the principle by which we should act?” But philosophy deals in principles.That’s why there are continuing arguments about immigration among those who accept the Objectivist philosophy. Deprived of the guidance of principles, the issue then becomes one of concrete facts. Do immigrants, in the aggregate, take more out of the economy than they contribute? Some of us think “yes,” others think “no.” Will the immigrants assimilate and become Americans in spirit as well as in legal status, given our multiculturalist intellectual establishment? It’s a factual question, on which views differ. If immigrants are going to be given citizenship, will they vote leftist or could a better Republican strategy (and other ideological work by us) prevent this? Is there a really dangerous threat to our safety from massive Muslim immigration, or is this a very minor issue compared to what’s going to happen to us from Islamic regimes abroad, with or without that immigration? People can certainly differ on these factual issues, and raw, statistical (!) facts are all we have left when we can’t appeal to principles, because the principled path is not “politically realistic.”

Happy birthday Robert. By the way, has anyone tried Windows 10?

I think the Milgram biography will be good, even if one-sided. Having access to all that material can't hurt. I wonder when it will come out. Objectivists aren't good at keeping book publishing deadlines. -NP

I think the decision is wrong. The Constitution leaves issues of marriage to the individual states. If the 14th amendment mandated same sex marriage it would never have passed. What bothers me most is this decision in light of the increasingly aggressive homosexual movement. Obviously there is a fair segment of the homosexual movement that won't be happy until everyone has to bake a cake for homosexual weddings, etc.

Will, So do you agree with Harry Binswanger that third world immigrants reduce crime? Do you believe that Jews have the same innate intelligence as Southern Italians such as myself? -Neil

Michael, I'm not sure why he started the video the way he did. The relevant discussion starts around 1:40. Fringe has an abbreviated video which cuts to the chase: -Neil

This is an almost four hour video by one Fringe Element* on race, decide for yourself: -NP _______________________ * Don't know much about the dude (apparently he doesn't post anymore) but I don't think I agree with his views on the Jewish genocide (to the extent that I understand them).

Michael, As Steven Pinker points out, it is very hard to come up with a cultural explanation for the high IQ and success rate of Jews. We are told that it is a "literate culture." How this results on Nobel Prizes in chemistry isn't clear. -NP

Will, Here is another response to Unz: http://www.vdare.com/articles/has-ron-unz-refuted-hard-hereditarianism I don't know enough about the mechanics of IQ testing to know whether the studies that Unz cites are likely to be "random noise" as this writer asserts. But even on Unz's terms, it seems the most he has shown is that a group's IQ is more malleable than Lynn, et al believe. It is consistent with the thesis that different groups have different ceilings I'm not sure what the difference is between a "racialist" and a "race realist." Unz wrote a reply to Lynn's reply, but I can't find it. -NP

Michael, I'm no Jim Valliant, but I've got the right to speculate. It always comes back to Jim Valliant. Seriously, does Ann Coulter think Ashkenazi Jews have the same innate IQ as Australian Aborigines? If not, she's a racial realist. I'll have to ask my Brazilian wife what she thinks about this. :laugh: :smile:

Yes. I guess my suspicion is based on: (1) Coulter knows her columns are posted on VDare; (2) she knows that VDare is a race realist site; and (3) she wouldn't allow her columns to be posted on VDare if she opposed racial realism. Even someone such as Charles Murray is cagey on these issues, but I don't doubt where he stands. There is nothing in Adios, America that indicates that Coulter thinks culture has the transforrmative power that a blank-slater such as Binswanger thinks it has. -NP

Here are two articles that make the case for race realism: https://jewamongyou.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/why-i-believe-in-race-realism/ http://takimag.com/article/the_unfortunately_innate_nature_of_intelligence_fred_reed/print#axzz3cfKoR1Th There views may be wrong, but I can't find good essays/posts on the web making a case for the opposite. EDIT: Actually, Ron Unz has written a good piece showing that national IQ scores can change dramatically: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/race-iq-and-wealth/ Richard Lynn did a response: http://www.vdare.com/articles/iq-and-the-wealth-of-nations-richard-lynn-replies-to-ron-unz -Neil

WSS, In 2005 Rushton and Jensen published a paper 30 Years of Research on Race and Intelligence http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf Richard Nisbett did a response: http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Nisbett-commentary-on-30years.pdf Jensen and Rushton responded: http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen-reply-to-commentaries-on-30years.pdf In 2010, Nisbett wrote a book, Intelligence: How to get it, which had an appendis on race. Jensen and Nisbett did a response http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/2010%20Review%20of%20Nisbett.pdf -NP

Whynot, But as I first learned in The Bell Curve, there is a correlation between IQ and certain anti-social behaviors. Low IQ people have higher rates of crime, drug use, unemployment, etc. Of course there are plenty of good people with low IQs. -NP

Michael, It's just a hunch. The only evidence I can give (which isn't very good, I concede) is that she publishes on Vdare. ON the other hand, she's skeptical of Darwinism. So I may well be wrong. EDIT: John Derbyshire thinks Coulter is a blank-slater on race: http://www.vdare.com/articles/john-derbyshire-on-ann-coulter-vs-jorge-ramos NP

Selene, I don't think she's a racist, but rather a racial realist. She probably believes, like most people who have looked into it, that there is likely some genetic component to the differences in IQ between the races. -NP

Michael, But what if Coulter does believe that there is a genetic component to racial/ethnic differences? Would that make her a racist? When Arthur Jensen died a couple years ago, both Tom Sowell and James Flynn praised his work, even though disagreeing with his conclsions. (Later in life, Jensen concluded that 80% of IQ differences between the races were genetic.) I don't have a dog in this hunt, but what the science says, the science says. If you take the extremes in IQ -- Ashkenazi Jews (115) and Australian Aborigines (uncertain, but maybe high 60s) -- it's hard to argue that there is no genetic component. Are we supposed to believe that the small Roma (Gypsie) population that arrived in Europe 1000 years ago hasn't suffered as a result of endogamy (they marry other Roma) and favoring cousin marriage? Their low IQs would indicate it has. As I understand it, Jews earn 1/3 of the Nobel Prizes in the hard sciences. That's pretty astonishing for a group that is less than 1/3 of a percent of the world's population. And, I gather that the winners are all almost Ashkenazi Jews (European descent) and the Sephardic Jews have IQs of around 100. And in Israel, when the groups go to the same schools, the gap persists. There is a 2006 debate between Charles Murray (of The Bell Curve fame) and James Flynn (a socialist) about the black/white IQ gap in the USA, which is quite good. You can find it on youtube. -NP

I use "racial realism" (or "race realism") to describe the belief that there are differences among the races in terms of intelligence and behavior and that these differences should guide social policy (including immigration). In my understanding, it is roughly coterminous with the "human biodiversity movement." www.Amren.com and www.vdare.com are the two leading racial realist sites, from what I can tell. Here is a defense of the idea: https://jewamongyou.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/why-i-believe-in-race-realism/ Whether this is true or not, I leave for others to decide. -NP

I'm about 2/3 of the way through the book. I'm glad this is the first book by Coulter I've read. I don't think I could read another. The entire book reads like one long newspaper column. (Which isn't to say that what she's saying is wrong, it's just over the top in writing style.) Basically, Coulter argues like a racial realist, but doesn't admit she's one. Her not so subtle claim is that Western Civilization is the result of high IQ white Europeans and that other people for the most part lack the ability to maintain it. When she says that Americans (as in USA-Americans) have earned over 300 Nobel Prizes in the sciences and that people South of the border all of 5 (notwithstanding a combined population over 50% larger) it's not hard to understand where she's coming from. There is a fascinating the discussion of immigration and crime. The news media and the government are doing all they can to conceal the oversized percentage of crime committed by immigrants and their children. -NP

No. Adios America is the first book of hers that I will be reading. I'm starting tomorrow. -Neil

I found this very interesting from Mark from ARIwatch.com (his updated entry on Harry Binswanger) Now lives in Naples, Florida. The city is 94.1% white. His house cost $840,000 (February 29, 2014) so his neighborhood is probably 100% white. Neighborhood doesn’t quite describe it, it’s a “premier gated residential community” known as Banyan Woods. More from its website (accessed March 2015): “... fenced on all sides, Banyan Woods offers a gated entry with guardhouse, harkening back to the safe havens we all knew in childhood.” As for the population density of Banyan Woods, according to the Naples Area Board of Realtors: “With only three single family homes per 100 acres, each home offers plenty of space between neighbors.” In his piece advocating open borders, Binswanger claims that immigrants "refresh" our society and that the USA is "underpopulated." -Neil Parille