Asians in Canada vote Liberal

Combining two recent themes, here's a comment from "Matra" on the Majority Rights blog:

The situation in Canada may be of interest to some of you as most ethnic minorities here are Asian (the top 7 source countries for immigrants are all Asian) and when we talk about minorities in Canada we generally mean Chinese, Indian, Sri Lankan, etc.

In the last federal election (June 2004) the ruling left of centre Liberal Party once again managed to hold on to power (though with a minority government) mostly because the Conservative Party failed to make significant inroads in the metropolitan areas of Ontario, which have most of Canada’s immigrants. This despite a huge corruption scandal that caused the Liberals to lose a lot of its traditional support. Here are some observations about our election and immigrants (mostly Asians):

* Areas with more than a 20% immigrant population almost all went to the Liberals

* Every single Conservative Party seat in the Greater Toronto area was an area where fewer than 5% were ethnic minorities. I suspect it is also the case for the country as a whole.

* Even in metropolitan areas with a significant Asian vote, where support for the Liberal Party did decline, the main beneficiary was usually the socialistic NDP rather than the Conservative Party. With the exception of a couple of old trade union towns that was not the case in non-immigrant parts of English Canada where the Conservatives benefited from the Liberal decline.

* Unlike white Canadians there were no noticeable voting preferences based on class within the Asian communities. This despite the far greater importance these immigrants normally attach to class and status in other areas of life.

* As far as I know every single prominent political observer in Canada believes the Liberals last minute attacks on the Western/Albertan (ie white, “Anglo-Saxon”, evangelical, “redneck”,) character of the Conservative Party were DECISIVE in securing victory in metropolitan areas, especially Greater Toronto

* In provincial elections, which usually revolve around economic issues, the provincial level Conservative Party, does somewhat better in Asian immigrant areas, though not well enough to win the last election in 2003. It’s generally believed the Conservatives do better in provincial elections with Asians because Western Canada and all it conjures up (ie traditional white Christian Canada) is absent from the campaign.

* In French-speaking Quebec immigrants (more diverse and not quite as Asian dominated than the rest of Canada) voted for the party - almost always the Liberals - that was most likely to defeat the nationalistic Bloc Quebecois, which is supported almost exclusively by the ethnically French community.

Conclusion: Whether they are in English or French Canada immigrants from Asia and elsewhere, no matter what their economic status, nationality or religion is, overwhelmingly vote against the party they perceive to be most representative of the traditional majority culture of the part of Canada in which they live.

You might think that Canada would be one of the least corrupt political systems in the world, but as it became officially bicultural and now multicultural, it has descended into the gross Tammany Hall machine corruption of the AdScam scandal. The difference between Tammany Hall and Canada's Liberal regime, however, is that you could criticize Tammany Hall but you couldn't point out that the Liberal government was corruptly buying off French and immigrant votes without being very recently, criticizing the Liberals for their corruption wasn't allowed because that would be "racist."

A reader comments:

Why Asians are liberal in the Bay Area.

1. They want to fit in in the community so the Asian business community kisses-up to the politicians..who are liberal, the people follow the business community as to who to support and vote for (this especially describes San Francisco). When it comes to business they want a winner, who will almost always be a Democrat in the Bay Area. Confirm's your Blue state theory. They live in blue state and look to others to who to vote for. I see the Asian business community driving it a lot.

That makes a lot of sense: path dependency. If you do business in the Bay Area, LA, or NYC (where a large plurality of Asian voters live), it makes sense to join the local political ruling class, which is Democratic.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"Vibrant" = Cant

Have you noticed that whenever some writer uses the words "vibrant" or "vibrancy," he is almost guaranteed to be yanking your chain? It's just like how for so many years the phrase "in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate" always preceded utter bilge.

Through the magic of Google, I found that I have published the word "vibrant" (in a non-mocking sense) once, for which I profoundly apologize to all my readers.

In contrast, Google says that the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com has used "vibrant" 84 times. Here are some examples I gleaned from Google without subjecting myself to actually reading these WSJ opinion pieces:

"...President Bush is determined to keep the dynamism vibrant, and to encourage and empower the poor to take part in it, rather than to suggest they are ..."

To use "keep the dynamism vibrant" and "empower the poor" in one sentence, hoo boy, that's some fancy writin'! (By the way, what kind of "dynamism" is not "vibrant?" "Listless dynamism?" "Lethargic vibrancy?")

"... The Iraq I saw was a society on the move, a vibrant land with a hardy people experiencing the first heady taste of freedom..."

... and that is to reveal Baghdad as it truly is, a vibrant city, able and ready to welcome the world business community, ...

So, when your windows rattle in Baghdad, that's not a car bomb or IED going off, that's just the local vibrancy manifesting itself.

Back home in the USA, things are a-quivering, too:

... The new creative class craves a vibrant nightlife, outdoor sports facilities and neighborhoods vibrant with street ...

... We have a vibrant Islamic community of emigrants from across the world. ...

... Like California, New York City can boast a vibrant immigrant community and is a magnet for ...

Whenever I read about "vibrant immigrant neighborhoods," I wonder exactly which ones has the writer has been to, if any. Come to the vast immigrant neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley and check out the vibrancy: there isn't any. They're boring, tacky, and low-brow. There's no culture beyond the video store. It was like that before, too, but 35 years ago we expected the place to improve a little with time, not regress.

And sometimes the political is personal:

But as times have changed, so have I. Today, as the father of two stunning daughters, and husband of a vibrant, sexy and successful wife who has ...

Perhaps this gentleman's vibrant wife will induct her stunning daughters into the intimate secrets of personal vibration and soon all three will be happily vibrating away.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Watching Foreign DVD's with the Sound Off

My wife was trying to fall asleep while I was watching the rip-snorting Brazilian gangster movie "City of God," so I turned the sound off. Hey, it's in Portuguese, so I'll just read the subtitles, right? No problem.

Well, it turned out to be a big problem because with the sound off, I could hear the voice in my head reading the subtitles ... and I'm a terrible actor.

I provided about as persuasive line readings as Rick Moranis did in that scene in Mel Brooks's "Star Wars" parody "Spaceballs," where, as the Darth Vader-character Dark Helmet, Moranis is playing with his Spaceballs action figures, doing both voices;

Dark Helmet: [In Dark Helmet voice] And now Princess Vespa, I have you in my clutches, to have my wicked way with you, the way I want to.

[In Vespa voice]: No, no, go away, I hate you! And yet... I find you strangely attractive.

[In D.H. voice]: Of course you do! Druish princesses are often attracted to money and power, and I have both, and you *know* it!

[In V. voice]: No, no, leave me alone!

[In D.H. voice]: No, kiss me.

[In V. voice]: Oh, oh, oh! Ohhhh, your helmet is so big!

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The End of Canada?

As you may (or may not) have heard, the ruling Liberal party trashed Canada's constitution by failing to call for new elections after it lost a vote of confidence (and then lost a few more votes). Instead, it stalled unconstitutionally until Prime Minister Paul Martin was able to pay off Conservative MP (and former Bill Clinton girlfriend) Belinda Stronach to switch to the Liberal Party in return for the most patronage-rich Cabinet post.

Colby Cosh notes:

What's not arguable is that the delay imposed last week on a formal non-confidence vote in the House of Commons has now--with the balance of power in the House teetering on the razor's edge--visibly become a banana-republic power tactic. Michael Bliss, who has forgotten more Canadian history than most of us know, wrote thus in the National Post on Saturday:

Canadians ought to realize that this week's breakdown of their Parliament is far more serious than any of the thuggish revelations from the Gomery commission. As of this weekend, we are in the historically unprecedented situation of having a Prime Minister who is clinging to office by recklessly disregarding the fundamental principles of our democracy. It is a shocking act of proto-tyranny, which justifies the extreme resort of intervention by the Governor-General.

The Ambler laments:

There is a great deal of ruin in a nation—but not an infinite amount. And by 19 May 2005, it could no longer be denied that Canada was used up, sucked dry, finished. On this day, the Liberals effaced the last vestige of Parliamentary sovereignty and destroyed thereby what little remained of Canada's legitimacy, legal and moral. On this day, the Liberals revealed the condition to which they—and their Mulroneyite Conservative allies—had reduced Canada. After this day, it can no longer be denied that ours is a gangster state whose sole animating principles are bribery, blackmail and theft. Whose sole remaining purpose is to continue pumping the lifeblood that provides vampiric sustenance to the Liberal Party, its oligarchic masters and its parasitic rainbow coalition that marches to the polls on election days, delighted to have traded our birthright for a mess of social programs.

Let the Liberals laugh. They'll be crying soon enough. That they have defiled everything noble about this country is of no account in English Canada, but the Québécois nation, a once phantom polity fomented by Liberal cynics as the most successful of its bribery-blackmail schemes, has become a real nation and has developed a self-respect that English Canadians can only envy. The Québécois will not forget Adscam; they will not forgive their humiliation at the hands of capo Chrétien and capo Martin. The Parti Québécois will be returned to power by 2008. It will call a third and final sovereignty referendum: neither money, the ethnic vote or the furious efforts of the quisling federalist class will prevent a Yes vote this time.

And that will be the formal end of Canada. The Liberals will demand we weep, but those of us who knew and loved the Old Canada will have no tears left. We wept when the Liberals—and their Mulroneyite Conservative allies—traduced, then trashed our British tradition. When it was demanded we "forget the Plains of Abraham."

We wept when Canada was declared first bicultural, then multicultural. When millions of fractious colonists were imported here, when it was it demanded we change our ways to protect their feelings, when New Canadian became synonymous with Better Canadian. When millions of native Canadians were made strangers in their own land and official discrimination became the price of being a member of the visible majority. When terrorism was introduced here and when our politicians rushed to succour the terrorists. [More]

The people of Canada would certainly have been better off breaking up a few decades ago rather than letting Trudeau placate Quebec by destroying British Canada as a nation-state.

Canada only seems boring. It's actually an important country where some dramatic and rather sinister processes have played out in slow motion. Although Canada's British-descended residents are as good citizens as you could want, Canada's transformation into a bicultural, and now multicultural state has inevitably reduced its politics to the kind of Tammany Hall machine politics that you found in multicultural immigrant cities in the U.S. If you want to understand Canada, Peter Brimelow's mid-80s book "The Patriot Game" remains essential.

The die was cast during the Trudeau Era. Since then the Liberal Government continues to fight secession by promising lots of tax money and breaks to Quebec, and by pushing bilingualism in British Canada while allowing Quebec to run a de facto monolingual province. This is a form of affirmative action for Francophones, who are much more likely to qualify for government jobs requiring bilingualism than are Anglophones. (Here's my UPI article on how bilingualism works against English-speaking Canada). Also, the Liberals import lots of immigrants, some of whom end up in Montreal and vote against secession since they don't want to live in a Francophone country. Quebec has some controls over immigration directly into its province from abroad, giving preference to people from Francophone countries, but just enough of the vast numbers of immigrants imported into Ontario filtered into Quebec to barely defeat secession in the last referendum a decade ago.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Book Ideas:

Thanks for all the ideas for which book I should write first and keep them coming! Here's one from somebody with a close-in perspective"

Don't think of the book as hitting much more of a target than one of your articles. Many nonfiction thought/policy books (of the popular rather than academic kind, anyway) these days are essentially expansions of snazzy articles -- readily-identifiable topic, great angle, a couple of terrifically catchy phrases. "The Tipping Point." "South Park Republicans." "The Long Tail." Crunchy Cons. Bobos. One thing -- of course, one thing that has enough validity so readers actually say, "Hey, yeah, I notice that too!"-- that you can get people talking about for five minutes.

It's sad that this is what most bookwriting has become. But it isn't dumb -- it's one of the few ways a book (and a book author) can poke through the media fog for a few minutes. The key realistic thing to understand is that your goal is to get people talking about the book -- which means that you want reviews, features and interviews, and to get those you have to have that one resonant thing that'll give the writers and interviewers an easy 10 second pitch. Ah, I get it -- and then they've snagged their readership. Most of these books have more of a life as a media event than they do as traditional books.

There's a certain kind of book that creates a terrific stir in the press but that doesn't actually sell very well... But that's OK for the author -- he got his advance, he's now a book author, and he's got the cred you get from 1) getting a book published and 2) getting your topic and your angle taken seriously and chatted about. That can turn into lectures, panel appearances, etc -- which often means more money than the book, as well as an elevated stature. You're no longer a wannabe (so far as the game goes), you've arrived. And that has its benefits.

The superkey thing to avoid is thinking of a book as a place where you put it all -- all your observations and thoughts. No one wants that, at least not in a commercial sense. It'd be a lovely monument to your genius, but the publisher (and the public) could care less.

Important to remember that there are multiple levels of sales going on. You have to sell your idea to your agent. The agent has to sell it to an editor. That editor has to sell it to her boss. Both of them have to sell it to their sales force and their publicity staff. The sales and p-r people have to sell it to the bookstores and the press. Eventually everyone hopes to reach the public. Two points: publishing a book is a long process. And, because there are so many levels of sales involved (and because there's so much media fog out there), you pretty much *have* to polish your subject and your angle on it to a real sharp gleam. You don't want your book to be a nonstarter, just because you feel you have more to say.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Invasion of the Pod People:

Earlier this week, after longtime National Review Corner stalwart John Derbyshire mentioned a Pat Buchanan column, he was thuggishly warned by newcomer/hack/neocon enforcer John Podhoretz:

OH, DERB, DERB, DERB... [John Podhoretz]
...Beware praising those who have placed themselves outside the bounds of civil discourse. Really.
Posted at 11:53 AM

Today, the Derb responded:

HE MUCH BETTER NOW [John Derbyshire]
A lot of readers want to know how I'm getting on at the re-education camp. It's great! The food is terrific! We have games and stuff, and the nurses are really kind. I've learned a lot from the group sessions, too. You can be sure I shall never again give an approving mention to... Ow! Where do these electric shocks come from?
Posted at 12:08 PM

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Standard of Living by State:

Here's a table of the monetary standard of living by state, as calculated by median income for a family of four divided by the Accra's cost of living index. Minnesota has the highest standard of living, at least in terms of things money can buy (i.e., not weather). At the bottom are Washington D.C., Hawaii and California. Although Democrats tend to live in higher income states, they also live in higher cost of living states, so there is little correlation between a states monetary standard of living and its voting pattern.

By the way, author Thomas Frank has gotten a lot of mileage out of his book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" in which he contends that social conservative Republicans are exploited by wealthy Republicans. The rich right get from their alliance with the religious right the tax cuts they want, but the religious right don't get bans on abortion, pornography, etc. I think there's some truth to that, but considering that Kansas comes out with the 7th highest monetary standard of living out of the 49 states measured, it would appear that the overall answer to his question is "Not Much."

	Median Income Family of 4	Cost of Living Index	Standard of Living
Minnesota	$77	100	$76
Illinois	$72	99	$73
Wisconsin	$69	95	$73
Colorado	$72	101	$71
Delaware	$73	103	$71
Missouri	$64	91	$70
Kansas	$64	92	$70
Virginia	$72	103	$69
Ohio	$66	95	$69
Indiana	$65	94	$69
Iowa	$64	94	$69
Pennsylvania	$69	101	$68
Georgia	$62	91	$68
Nebraska	$64	93	$68
Connecticut	$86	127	$68
Michigan	$69	101	$68
Utah	$62	92	$67
Washington	$69	104	$67
Massachusetts	$83	126	$66
Maryland	$82	126	$65
New Jersey	$87	134	$65
North Dakota	$57	92	$62
South Dakota	$59	95	$62
Tennessee	$55	90	$62
Texas	$55	89	$61
Alabama	$55	93	$60
North Carolina	$57	96	$59
South Carolina	$56	95	$59
Florida	$59	100	$58
Kentucky	$53	91	$58
Oregon	$62	107	$58
Vermont	$66	114	$58
Idaho	$53	94	$57
Arizona	$58	103	$57
Oklahoma	$50	89	$56
Nevada	$63	112	$56
New York	$69	124	$56
Alaska	$72	129	$56
Arkansas	$48	87	$56
Rhode Island	$71	128	$56
Wyoming	$56	102	$55
Louisiana	$51	97	$52
Mississippi	$47	91	$51
West Virginia	$46	92	$50
Montana	$49	98	$50
New Mexico	$46	101	$45
California	$68	151	$45
Hawaii	$71	162	$44
District of Columbia	$56	145	$39
Maine	$60	NA
New Hampshire	$79	NA

***

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

My New VDARE.com column: Asian exit poll

Asian “Natural Republicans” Vote 74% Democratic—Any More Bright Ideas?

Is immigration good for the Republican Party?

The second-largest heavily immigrant ethnic group, after Hispanics, are Asian-Americans. Immigration enthusiasts often claim they are "natural Republicans" because they are thought to be prosperous, law-abiding, family-oriented etc. etc.

The only problem with this theory: these natural Republicans have been voting Democratic.

The results of a massive multilingual Presidential election exit poll conducted last November in eight languages of almost 11,000 Asian voters, 82 percent of them immigrants, have finally been released by the liberal Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The findings are exceptionally bad for the GOP.

Among these Asian voters, Kerry drubbed Bush 74-24.

This is not a perfectly representative sample, so the real figure probably wasn't quite so awful. The AALDEF exit poll was conducted in 23 cities in 8 states east of the Mississippi, only one of which (Virginia) voted for Bush.

Still, no less than 76 percent of Asians do live in “blue”—Democratic—states...

Of particular interest to GOP strategists should be Bush's performance among South Asian voters (mostly Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis). They are the wealthiest, best educated, and, due to their English-language skills, the most articulate of the Asian immigrant nationalities. And, thus, increasingly the most influential.

Little data has been available before on South Asian voting, so the 2,700 South Asian participants in the AALDEF exit poll offer an important first look.

The result: among South Asians, Kerry clobbered Bush—90-9!

Maybe this is even less nationally representative because Indians are more spread out across the country than other Asians, who cluster in blue states.

Still …

Why have Asians deserted the GOP? ... I'd like to add another perspective drawn from my "affordable family formation" hypothesis. [More]

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Movie Economics:

The new Star Wars movie opened with a record-setting $50 million day (including midnight screenings). It is showing in 3,661 theatres domestically (US and Canada), but the number of prints distributed is over 9,000, or well over two per theatre. In turn, multiplexes can show movies on even more screens than they have prints if they shuttle reels from auditorium to auditorium (e.g., start Reel A playing at 7:00 pm in auditorium 1, then carry it to auditorium 2 and start it playing at 8:00pm). Once a famously snoozy job, being a projectionist has become much more demanding in recent years as multiplex owners have figured out how to maximize their use of prints.

35mm prints are extraordinarily expensive: about $1,500 apiece. Because "Revenge of the Sith" is longer than usual, I'd guess that about $15 million has been invested just in domestic prints. Obviously, it will soon make more sense to distribute movies to theatres digitally on reusable hard disks or on stacks of DVDs, but that's an open invitation to piracy. (There's plenty of piracy already, but the awkwardness of analog to digital copying slows things down a bit.)

One thing that drives me nuts is when the sound slips out of sync with the pictures. That must happen 10% of the time. It must not bother other viewers as much because I'm usually the first person out of his seat to alert the projectionist. (They almost always fix it immediately.) After 78 years of talkies, you'd figure they wouldn't still have this problem, but they do. Projectionist used to be a cushy union job, but as the owners made the job harder, they also got rid of the union veterans and brought in kids to run the projectors, so the quality dropped despite all the technological improvements.

Thinking about projectionists reminds me of the story about the man who went to see a psychiatrist:

"Doc, I haven't had a date in years."

"Perhaps it's that odor that you seem to exude."

"Yeah, that's probably it. See, my job is shoveling up after the elephants in the circus, and it would take weeks to scrub the smell off me."

"Perhaps you could look for a different job?"

"What?!? And quit show biz???"

Jerry Seinfeld tells the story about the time a private plane carrying Benny Goodman's band crashlands on a stormy winter night in a field. The musicians clamber out in their tuxedos, grab their suitcases, and trudge off through the mud and darkness. After a mile or so, the bedraggled bunch comes to a cozy farmhouse. Two musician looks in the window at a family happily playing board games in front of the fireplace, mom bringing hot chocolate, the faithful family dog curled up by the hearth. The saxophone player turns to the trumpet player, shakes his head, and says, "Man, I just don't how people can live like that."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Which Book Should I Write? Reader Recommendations Requested:

I'm soliciting your suggestions for what should be the topic of my first book. Please think about: What would you buy? What would the public buy? What would get published? What would get reviewed and publicized on TV?

E-mail me

A reader replies:

If you want to sell your book, ask yourself, what do people want to believe? I remember reading about this Japanese author who wrote a book claiming Japanese brains were hard-wired differently and so had great difficultly learning foreign languages. It was a run-away best seller. But complete nonsense of course.

But it ingeniously fed two things Japanese want to believe. 1. Japanese are exceptional 2. It's not your fault that you can't learn English (Japanese are atrocious at learning English).

I know this is cynical advice, but....gotta sell your book.

Now you just gotta figure out what people here want to believe that doesn't compromise your integrity too much. Your only problem is that you specialize in telling people exactly what they don't want to believe.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Catch 22 of Nation Building:

A reader writes:

Nation building depends on the kind of nation that is being targeted for reconstruction. Most of the ones the US will have a strategic interest in are in a complete mess, which is why they have become a threat in the first place. Therefore the kind of nations the US wants to build are exactly the kind of nations you don't want to get involved with. Kind of a Groucho Marx affiliation problem [Groucho said of Hillcrest Country Club: I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.]

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Gullible Skeptic:

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, provides in the Los Angeles Times another example of Google-free reviewing of Freakonomics:

Levitt's most controversial computation involves the dramatic 1990s drop in crime rates. The reason, he says, is not tougher gun control laws, capital punishment, decreasing unemployment or a stronger economy. It is Roe vs. Wade. Research shows that children from impoverished and adverse environments are more likely to become criminals. After the 1973 court decision made legal abortions possible, millions of poor, single women aborted unwanted fetuses; 20 years later, the pool of potential criminals had shrunk, as did the crime rate. (The solution isn't more abortions, he says, but "better environments for those children at greatest risk for future crime.")

Of course, correlation does not always mean causation, and explaining the causes of crime is a complex, multivariate problem. But Levitt also shows that the five states that legalized abortion two years before Roe vs. Wade saw a drop in crime earlier than the other states. Further, those states with the highest abortion rates in the 1970s experienced the greatest drop in crime in the 1990s, and the entire decline in crime was among the age group born after 1973, not among older groups.

It's amazing how many reviewers don't bother even typing "abortion crime" into Google.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Wealth and IQ

A reader writes:

I recently heard on television a college professor and author speaking enthusiastically in favor of affirmative action. When asked about disparity between white and black I.Q.'s even when family household income is controlled for, he replied something along the lines of "You are controlling for the wrong factor. If instead of income you control for family household wealth black and white I.Q.'s are identical." Without any specialized knowledge or training, I have nonetheless followed the affirmative action controversy over the years and don't ever remember hearing this before or hearing this particular tack taken by any of its proponents Do you know if it is true?

This comes up now and then, so let me try to explain how this sleight of hand works:

The implication is that wealth serves as an environmental effect that changes IQ by 15 points (the one standard deviation difference between whites and blacks). But, there's no evidence from any adoption or separated twin study that says that net worth has much impact on adult IQs, so the alleged causal mechanism is not true. Indeed, most of the environmental variation in IQ does not appear attributable to anything measurable in the environment -- it might have more to do with random infections or bumps on the head or developmental differences.

What he's trying to do is find a selection effect where he can select blacks who are, say, two standard deviations above the black mean for IQ and compare them to whites who are one standard deviation about the white mean and then, hesto presto, discover that they are equal in IQ.

Net worth is particularly suited to playing this game. Blacks have a much harder time than whites accumulating wealth (they inherit less, their houses don't appreciate as fast because they tend to live in crime-ridden black neighborhoods, and they save less of their income), so blacks with high net worth are much more elite relative to other blacks than whites with the same positive net worth. So, that's how you get them as having equal IQs.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

It Must Be a Cold Day in Hell

The political tide on immigration is definitely turning when the Wall Street Journal's online opinion page, normally virulently opposed to anyone who questions the sacred right of employers to cheap labor, runs a pro-Minutemen / anti-illegal immigration op-ed called: "Minutemen Are People, Too: Arizona rednecks win a round against the ACLU."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Class and IQ:

The NYT and the WSJ have been writing about the lack of change in class status, but Mickey Kaus wonders if they'll mention IQ:

The NYT's Intelligence Test: The big question about the New York Times' Big Deal "Class Matters" series is how it will treat the role of genetically inherited traits--including but not limited to "intelligence"--in reducing mobility and perpetuating an aristocracy of the successful. Let's hope they do better than the WSJ's David Wessel, who blew off the genetic vector in a single unsatisfactory, buried paragraph:

Why aren't the escalators working better? Figuring out how parents pass along economic status, apart from the obvious but limited factor of financial bequests, is tough. But education appears to play an important role. In contrast to the 1970s, a college diploma is increasingly valuable in today's job market. The tendency of college grads to marry other college grads and send their children to better elementary and high schools and on to college gives their children a lasting edge.

The notion that the offspring of smart, successful people are also smart and successful is appealing, and there is a link between parent and child IQ scores. But most research finds IQ isn't a very big factor in predicting economic success. [Emph. added]

The r-squared of IQ and income is around 10% and it's a common error to think that's not a "very big factor." The problem with this line of thought is that Life Is Very Complicated, which means that a huge number of factors contribute to determining income. Relative to the multitudinous other factors, IQ plays a sizable role, so that the average income difference between people with IQs of 115 and 85, say, is very large. Here, for example, is Charles Murray describing his study of 710 pairs of American siblings for the Times of London:

"Each pair consists of one sibling with an IQ in the normal range of 90-110, a range that includes 50% of the population. I will call this group the normals. The second sibling in each pair had an IQ either higher than 110, putting him in the top quartile of intelligence (the brights) or lower than 90, putting him in the bottom quartile (the dulls). These constraints produced a sample of 710 pairs. How much difference did IQ make? Earned income is a good place to begin. In 1993, when we took our most recent look at them, members of the sample were aged 28-36. That year, the bright siblings earned almost double the average of the dull: £22,400 compared to £11,800. The normals were in the middle, averaging £16,800." [IQ Will Put You In Your Place, Charles Murray, Sunday Times, UK, Day 25, 1997]

The Washington Monthly's blogger Kevin Drum takes a stance similar to Mickey's:

Ever since World War II, the United States has done a phenomenal job of sorting people by talent. Not a perfect job, but an astonishingly good one nonetheless. All four of my grandparents, for example, would almost certainly have gone to college if they had turned 18 in the 1960s, but that just wasn't in the cards for any of them a century ago. Today, though, as a matter of deliberate policy, the vast majority of people who have the talent to succeed in college get the chance to try. As a result, they moved upward into the middle and upper classes decades ago, and their children have followed them.

But there's only a moderate amount of sorting left to be done. Random chance, both in nature and nurture, will always play a role in life outcomes, but that role has gotten smaller and smaller as the sorting has progressed. The result is that life roles have become more hardened. While incomes of the well-off have skyrocketed over the past 30 years, working and middle class incomes have stagnated. At the same time, the incomes — and jobs — they do have are far more unstable than they were a few decades ago. And as recent research indicates, most of them are increasingly stuck in these grim circumstances: every decade, fewer and fewer of them — and fewer and fewer of their children — have any realistic chance of moving up the income ladder.

This makes a lot of sense, but I want to urge caution: There's still a lot of IQ variation found between siblings raised in the same home. I haven't done the math necessary to figure out how much impact assortative mating would have had by now.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Villaraigosa elected mayor of LA:

A reader writes:

Villaraigosa won, so billionaire developer Eli Broad and the other Westsiders got their man in the job. Villaraigosa could serve them for the next 20+ years, much as Bradley was a useful asset during his long service in office. So much is going to be made of this victory, but little good for the city will come of his election.

The mayor can't fix the totally messed up LAUSD. Traffic problems are a joint concern of CALTRANS, the MTA, AQMD, and other I can't think of right now. Does the city even have the money to fix it's own rotten streets?

A handful of Latino consultants are going to become rich(er) as a result of this victory. Latino pride types will boast of their time having come. Beyond braggin' rights, the average Latino is not going to get squat from this election.

The big losers in all of this will be the local black leaders. The value of their voting block diminishes each day. They may not have the numbers to swing the election in 4 years.

In 4 years Villa will get to claim the credit for new Police Chief Bratton's work, denying Hahn any legacy.

Los Angeles has a "weak mayor" form of government stemming from the Progressive Era of almost a century ago. The Progressives were mostly northern Midwestern Protestants, as was the population of LA at the time, who despised the corruption in immigrant-dominated cities with machine-dominated politics, such as Chicago, where votes were traded for jobs and services. So, they invented a system that would be harder to corrupt and would rely upon the civic-mindedness of the citizens.

Well, today, LA, like Chicago before WWI, is an immigrant city with an uninformed and uninterested electorate. We just don't have the civic virtues anymore to make the system work the ways the Progressives intended. So, control has fallen into the hands of the only people interested and informed: a coterie of a couple of dozen ultra-rich Westside developers like Broad and former mayor Richard Riordan, both of whom backed Villaraigosa.

Under the circumstances, LA would probably be better off with traditional corrupt machine politics. Chicago is doing better with a strong mayor machine system under King Richard II than LA is doing under its old Progressive structure.

Of course, you'll never read about how the new immigration has undermined the Progressive reforms that liberals were once so proud of.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Black Rednecks or Black Africans?

A reader responds to my VDARE article:

This is a really superb piece of commentary on Thomas Sowell, who is also one of my heroes--as Grady McWhiney [author of Cracker Culture] is one of my old friends and was once a colleague here at U of Alabama. I think you make a very important point about the residue of African culture in the behavior of present day blacks. I hope Sowell sees your argument, which seems to me to be correct and compelling.

I also think you are right to distinguish between redneck and what I call hillbilly culture in southern whites. Here in Alabama, the hillbillies (mostly Scots Irish in ancestry living in the northern part of the state) did not own slaves and in some cases refused to join the Confederacy to fight for the institution. A couple of hillbilly counties even seceded from the state when it seceded from the Union. The rednecks from the southern part of the state, where land is flatter and richer, are more often English in ancestry and became shareholders after the civil war, raising cotton formerly raised by slaves. The difference was typified in the last half of the twentieth century by the contrast and conflict between federal judge Frank M. Johnson, an enforcer of civil rights law, and redneck rabble rouser George Wallace, both Alabamians and both graduates the same year from the UA school of law. Johnson was from northern, Wallace from southern, Alabama.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"Revenge of the Sith"

-- I'm all Sithed-out.

What I don't get is why George Lucas felt so compelled to step back into the director and screenwriter roles, even though 1980s' great "Empire Strikes Back" -- where he hired Irven Kershner to direct and veteran lady screenwriter Leigh Brackett and hot young talent Lawrence Kasdan to write (based on Lucas' s story) -- showed the advantages of delegation. Can you imagine how much better the three prequels would have been if Lucas had hired, say, Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings) to direct and gotten a competent screenwriter to work up his story, such as Steven Kloves, who has done a good job adapting the Harry Potter novels?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer