How to predict the future
JC had an interesting comment:
Lion, please let me know your comments or do a post about the following:
The Republican party has lost on every single issue over the long term, whether or not they win in elections. They’ve lost on:
abortion
immigration
limited government (see: $16 trillion dollar deficit and rising)
global warming
homosexuality
gay marriage (coming up)
gun control (except the bare bones have so far been preserved due to Heller)
Marijuana use
sex outside of wedlock
strong coherent families
religion (versus atheism or nature worship)
affirmative action
welfare
taxes
Can you think of a single issue that Republicans have won on in the long term?
On the international front, they’ve lost on Egypt (supporting Mubarrak), Iran (with respect to the current Iran negotiations), Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria intervention, etc.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is: it’s really bad that Israel is becoming a Republican/Democrat issue. That means that in the moderate to long term — Israel is screwed.
The Republican Party sometimes controls the Congress or the Presidency, but liberals ALWAYS control the mainstream media, which in the long run is more powerful because it influences the way we think. For the most part, the commenter is correct. If you want to predict the future, look at what propaganda liberals are pushing via the mainstream media. Maybe this is how Al Gore became so rich?
I remember seeing the movie “In and Out” in 1997. It was the first time I saw two gay men kiss each other onscreen. It seemed gross at the time, but I should have known that this was the beginning of an all-out gay push by the mainstream media that would culminate in legal gay marriage. Even the Presbyterian Church now supports gay marriage. And it took less than 18 years to happen.
Can anyone think of an example where predicting the future in this manner has failed?
Actually, I think that conservatives have been pretty successful in rolling back the availability of abortion, although that’s probably going to change once Hillary Clinton gets to appoint a replacement for Justice Scalia.
Regarding Israel: I’ve previously said that Israel is a doomed country, and now that I think about it, that liberals are against Israel and they control the MSM, Israel is definitely doomed. Maybe in 18 years there will no longer be a Jewish Israel? South Africa couldn’t withstand the liberal onslaught.
Insofar as taxes are concerned, the top marginal rate prior to Reagan was 70 percent. It was 28 percent when he left office. It’s now back up to 39 percent, but with that rise came all sorts of tax sheltering for the upper middle class, such as tuition savings plans, Roth IRA, etc. So Republicans haven’t “lost”on this issue at all.
As for abortion, historically Republicans favored abortion. Even the Southern Baptists passed resolutions favoring abortion in certain circumstances. But then Roe came along and the issue became conflated with state’s rights and federal overreach. It should be noted that abortion is no more common than it was before Roe. The study which found this was conducted two years ago prior to a bunch of new state restrictions. So abortion today is likely less common than before Roe.
As for the various moral issues, living well is the best revenge. There is no question that on average Republicans live more conservative, responsible, and moral lives than Democrats, and reap the social and economic rewards of their behavior. As a result, the Democratic party really is becoming the welfare party. Let’s face it, Democrats serve a useful purpose. They allow Republicans to feel superior!
ColRebSez
March 18, 2015 at 4:10 pm
“They allow Republicans to feel superior!”
Lucky us.
Stealth
March 18, 2015 at 6:55 pm
The Republican party represents a greedy faction that doesn’t care about anything or anyone, other than to be “conservative” with money, which means “I don’t care, because I’m cautious”. The Democrats, also greedy and with means, comes across as “liberal and open minded, and especially concerned about NAMs”, at the expense of the middle class.
JS
March 19, 2015 at 12:57 am
There is no question that on average Republicans live more conservative, responsible, and moral lives than Democrats, Only if you include NAMs in your sample. In terms of white people, white Democrats have lower divorce rates, less criminality, are better educated, etc. At least in New Hampshire.
Peter the Shark
March 19, 2015 at 6:44 am
In terms of white people, white Democrats have lower divorce rates, less criminality, are better educated, etc. At least in New Hampshire.
If you look at divorce in terms of the overall population that’s true. But if you look at divorce in terms of those who actually got married it’s not. The difference is not that liberals are less likely to get divorced but that liberals are less likely to get married in the first place. As for education, more conservatives have degrees and more liberals have masters. But a lot of those masters are in cheesy fields like humanities and education where a masters is required to get raises and promotions. When it comes to other kinds of degrees like engineering and hard science that’s not the case. As for criminality, I’ve never seen stats that comparing the criminality of white liberals and white conservatives. I’d be very interested to see that. I’ll bet it’s flawed like the other two claims. Liberals have a long history of using statistical malpractice to fluff their own egos.
destructure
March 19, 2015 at 9:50 am
Might want to check GSS data. White Democrats are considerably more likely to be divorced than white Republicans. Republicans are also more educated (a lot more on average) though postgrads are slightly more likely to be Democrats ( I’m surprised they don’t tilt more heavily Democrat).
J1
March 19, 2015 at 1:36 pm
The latest exit poll data shows more uniformity between the parties on these issues.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 19, 2015 at 4:42 pm
destructure is again repeating something which was demonstrated to be false on another comment thread.
teachers are more likely to vote GOP than masters degrees in engineering. so are MBAs more likely than masters or higher in natsci.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 19, 2015 at 4:53 pm
As for education, more conservatives have degrees and more liberals have masters.
yet another voice in detsructure’s head like “liberal” and “conservative” which has been silenced on a previous thread only to reappear.
the truth is that the only two education categories for which there was more than a 4% difference between Romney and Obama was for less than HS and more than college, both of which skewed for Obama.
now given that whites graduate from college at a much higher rate than blacks there is only one conclusion, which is born out by the data from the 2008 election, by the voting patterns of NYC, by the “solid south”:
for whites, the less education the more likely one is to vote GOP.
further the well-educated whites who vote GOP are overwhelmingly social “liberals” who find social conservatives and prole whites ridiculous and disgusting. really! you’re their useful idiots FOX News watchers, Bible thumpers, gun nuts, homophobes, self-hating poor white men, flag waving patriots, veterans, etc.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 19, 2015 at 5:08 pm
In the PAST, Republicans were more likely to be college educated (because Republicans were the party fo the rich, and rich people go to college), but that has been changing.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 19, 2015 at 5:21 pm
Ross, We’ve had this discussion before. If I recall correctly, your engineering masters reference was a GSS with a ridiculously small sample size. It’s not sufficient to base an argument on. The results are exactly what I said. Your tantrum doesn’t change that. Frankly, I’m surprised Leon publishes your comments.
destructure
March 19, 2015 at 6:32 pm
“that has been changing”
When you say that has been changing, are you talking about long term or at graduation? Over the past 20 years, a lot more people have been going to college, but the prevalence of some majors has changed a lot, mostly in areas commonly considered “liberal”. Could things actually be changing because people who wouldn’t have gone to college in the past are going now? And does that matter? I’m not sure average level of education between parties has changed all that much – even limiting the sample to 2012, Dems still have a lock on the high school or less crowd (about 2-1), and Republicans are much more likely to be college graduates. I’m not sure about the data on changes; most of my friends from college were a lot more liberal immediately after college than they are after marriage, kids and an established career. I certainly was.
J1
March 19, 2015 at 7:16 pm
and “much more likely” may be misinterpreted.
as the decades have passed the white black gap in % of at least bachelor’s has decreased…i expect. this means that older voters with at least a college degree will be much whiter.
blacks were 9% of graduates in 2000 and 10% in 2010.
but what was their % of the college population in those years?
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 19, 2015 at 7:59 pm
in that case lion. that means that young college edumacated voters are more “liberal” than ever and that they will stay “liberal”.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 19, 2015 at 8:01 pm
destructure (Gary),
you don’t know what “ridiculously small sample size” is.
statistics is also on your axis of evil.
thus far you have made claims and have provided ABSOILUTELTY ZERO EVIDENCE.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 19, 2015 at 10:39 pm
token “conservative” David Brooks has talked about illegitamcy. he’s just talking.
in valhalla, it’s the norm. what’s important isn’t the certificate, it’s the behavior. if the common law spouses behaved as if they were married then the legal sanction is irrelevant. if not, then it’s relevant. so bastardy in a purely legal sense is meaningless.
Brooks is still merely a sixth dan.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 20, 2015 at 2:49 am
and as Americans in general, and the commenters on this blog in particular, may be unaware that there are other countries, it is worth noting that:
NW Europe has much higher divorce rates than S Europe. and that the US is like NW Europe.
NW Europe also has much more successful economies, much higher labor force participation rates for women AND men. BOTH of these is much higher than it is in the US!!!
but does anyone know whether divorce is rarer in S Europe only de jure and not de facto?
that is…is it common for married couples to split up and move in with their lovers or whatever…but never get divorced because it’s just too much trouble?
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 20, 2015 at 3:00 am
Ross — “you don’t know what “ridiculously small sample size” is.”
The last time we had this discussion your GSS sample size for engineering masters was 19. Even you admitted it was small and might not be a random sample.
“thus far you have made claims and have provided ABSOILUTELTY ZERO EVIDENCE.”
Neither has anyone else including you and the original commenter. But I’m more than happy to.
Peter the Shark’s divorce claim originated with a Census release from Aug 25, 2011 titled “Divorce Rates Highest in the South, Lowest in the Northeast, Census Bureau Reports”. Democrats seized on this to claim red states had higher divorce rates. They conveniently neglected this key statement from the release:
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/marital_status_living_arrangements/cb11-144.html
**
As for graduate degrees, 2012 exit polls showed postgraduate voters went for Obama over Romney 55 to 42.
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/how_groups_voted/voted_12.html
However, if you crunch the numbers from this graph, 92.8% of graduate degrees over the last 15 years went to in order: Education, Business, Health, Public Admin & Social Services and only 7% to Engineering. The number of science postgrads is so small they don’t even show up. Education is so leftwing that it alone accounts for half the gap. Public admin and social services are even more leftwing than education.
The only data I could find on engineers’ political views was a survey of readers from Machine Design and Electronic Design magazines. Make of it what you will but their results show engineers are “much less liberal and slightly more conservative than the general public.” The survey found that engineers are more likely to be Republican (42.1%) or Independent (33.7%) voters, as opposed to Democrats (14.5%).
http://machinedesign.com/news/politics-engineers
Liberals wish to portray themselves as being on the side of knowledge by claiming the most masters degrees. But most of those masters degrees are in cheesy fields like education, public admin and social services that suckle at the government teat. When you eliminate the parasites you get a very different picture.
destructure
March 20, 2015 at 5:58 am
what i said stripped of the jokes which you didn’t get was:
despite the concern those illiterate in probability might have if the samples were random of teachers and engineers with masters degrees then it was impossible for the fraction of teachers who identified as conservative not to be greater than the fraction of engineers who so identified.
and by “impossible” is meant as likely as Harvard winning the basketball tournament.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 20, 2015 at 5:28 pm
and your “explanation” for southern divorce rates is derisible, because the rates of illegitamcy are higher in the south for whites.
that is, if people in Massachusetts aren’t getting married it’s not because they’re living in sin and having lots of bastard chilins.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 20, 2015 at 5:40 pm
It’s not my explanation. It’s the census bureau’s explanation. As for teen birth rate, you’re moving the goal posts. Regardless, red states do have a higher teen birth rate. But if you’d bothered to read Razib’s other posts on the topic, rather than simply grabbing a map that you like, you’d have realized there’s more to it than just pregnancy. First, red states do have higher teen pregnancy. But the difference in birth rates is much wider than the difference in pregnancy rates because so many democrat teens having abortions. http://www.gnxp.com/blog/labels/Teen%20Pregnancy.php
To summarize, not only are fewer liberals getting married but more are getting divorced. Furthermore, fewer liberals are getting pregnant and more are also having abortions. If you think those make me sad you’re mistaken. It makes me happy. Very, very happy.
destructure
March 21, 2015 at 6:13 am
Can you think of a single issue that Republicans have won on in the long term?
Labor. Which Ds had to soft-pedal in order to get the NE Rockefeller Rs to defect. And which they must continue to soft-pedal to avoid internecine fights over who gets most burned by a higher minimum wage.
Fiddlesticks
March 18, 2015 at 4:12 pm
Do liberals really support labor? Labor is essentially signing its own death warrant by supporting immigration, and Democrats have supported free trade for years. I don’t think there’s much sympathy for labor these days.
bjdubbs
March 18, 2015 at 7:51 pm
Transit is another one.
There was a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book from 1979 that propagandized kids about a car-free future. (Girl from the year 2022: “What’s a Cadillac?”)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016109678
Instead, GM got bailed out, became an Obama darling, and is currently running ads essentially saying that real alphas drive trucks to their office jobs. His halfhearted attempts to kickstart national rail service are in tatters.
Fiddlesticks
March 18, 2015 at 4:21 pm
I don’t think the terms of GM’s advertising are the metric for success on “transit.” I don’t know about other states, but in the biggest state, California, Dems have done a great job of making driving a nightmare. No new freeways, and no money to fix pitted roads, on top of the extra crowding from their immigration victory. I just don’t see a Repub or conservative win for transit.
explainer21
March 18, 2015 at 8:05 pm
Neither party is even trying when it comes to transit, and automobile-centrism is in synergy with race/ethnic movements that are pushing whites (and, to a lesser extent, Asians) out of the few places where cars don’t dominate.
People who cannot drive are outcasts in American society today, whereas just 60 years ago they could have walked to work from peaceful, safe urban neighborhoods. Neither party cares for them – the Rs’ base is the car-dependent heartland and the Ds think that everybody will be happy in multiracial utopias like Bed-Stuy and Harlem. Where exactly are middle-class Caucasian non-drivers supposed to live in the USA nowadays?
Kyo
March 21, 2015 at 7:34 am
I had replied to JC in the other post, but don’t think all of those issues are clear victories for the left. Political victories are temporary, although the left has the constant enforcement mechanism of the media to keep the masses in line with the latest correct thinking. Gay Marriage is a good example. It went from “Ewww” to “Fantastic” in about 15 years due to TV and movies creating sympathetic characters, first in plays, with the constant AIDS drama, then film, and TV. Once they won the ratings with Modern Family, the gay marriage debate was over except for the formalities.
Abortion is like WW1 trench warfare. But polling shows a slight gain for the pro life forces because of the newest imaging technology allows parents to see their kids at just a few weeks in utero. Once you see your child and how it’s formed, you’re not going to buy that it’s just a clump of cells.
The party has never been restrictionist on immigration in modern times. Polling a show that’s a winnable war if the party united and explained how immigration restriction would benefit the working classes. But right now Republicans Inc wants open bordersit as bad as the Democrats.
Global Warming: It’s near the bottom of voter interest and priorities. Winning that issue means nothing.
Gun Control: I think polling shows that the public is far more gun friendly than they were 20 or 30 years ago. That’s a win for the right, but again, all political victories are temporary. Notice Obama’s back door restriction via ammo bans.
Taxes: Republicans have won on taxes more than any other issue. So although it’s still a winning issue, it’s also hurting the Republicans because of it’s success. Taxes now are already at historical lows. So until the middle class starts feeling a real tax bite again, it’s useless.
Mike Street Station
March 18, 2015 at 4:25 pm
Oh yes, the first pro-gay propaganda I saw was the play The Baltimore Waltz. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baltimore_Waltz
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 18, 2015 at 4:47 pm
“Gay Marriage is a good example. It went from “Ewww” to “Fantastic” in about 15 years due to TV and movies creating sympathetic characters, first in plays, with the constant AIDS drama, then film, and TV.” ————————
Correct. There were no movies about women dying of AIDs caught from their closeted boyfriends, wouldn’t want to upset the unidirectional narrative. In fact, though STD percentages grew in terms of magnitudes, virtually nothing was said to tie any of it to the gay lifestyle though it certainly had an effect. The connection still isn’t made.
Similarly, little is said about the physical damage resulting from anal sex. Is it because it would make gay male sex seem odd?
The people who came to dominate our culture simply don’t care about those seeking to raise families and keep them healthy. Those demonic white male conservatives from the Fifties who are always mocked as hate-mongers truly cared more for the average person than do today’s idealism peddling narcissists. Most segregationists of that time cared more for their fellow man, of all races, than do today’s preening idealists. They fully understood that idealism comes to harm everybody over time.
Curle
March 18, 2015 at 9:16 pm
“Gay Marriage is a good example. It went from “Ewww” to “Fantastic” in about 15 years due to TV and movies creating sympathetic characters, first in plays, with the constant AIDS drama, then film, and TV.”
Gay marriage is no more popular or appealing now than in the past. In most places where it’s is legal, it’s been made so by not by the acts of legislators but by the rulings of judges, usually in defiance of the expressed will of the people: where people have had the opportunity of making known their view of gay marriage, as at the ballot box in state referendums, they opposed it, and by margins as great as two or three to one.
In fact, when it comes to the views of the majority regarding homosexuality in general, I would wager that, despite the threats and bullying and coercion directed at them by leftists, most people continue to regard homosexuality with disgust and revulsion–feelings that are natural and universal–while interacting with actual homosexuals in the admirable spirit of live and let live–which is more than can be said for many homosexuals in their treatment of heterosexuals.
What has changed, of course is the absolute intolerance, among leftist opinion makers and their enforcers in the media, for the expression of these natural and universal views: people dare to express them, or act on them, only at risk to their jobs, careers, and reputations.
Jonathan Silber
March 19, 2015 at 9:50 am
Gay marriage was also aided by the fact it has little practical impact on voters who aren’t gay. Taxpayers don’t have to subsidize homosexuals on welfare, worry about gay parents flooding the public schools with children, or having gays bring crime to their neighborhood.
Other liberal issues where there was an obvious negative result for the middle class – higher taxes, gun control, global warming regulations – have seen strong pushback.
Personally, I would abolish gay marriage and civil unions (for secular right reasons) but I don’t consider it a top priority.
The Undiscovered Jew
March 19, 2015 at 11:15 pm
Many libertarian Republicans staunchly support many of those so-called liberal positions: gay marriage, mass immigration, legalized marijuana, and so on. Taxes on investment income and large estates are low to nonexistent. Wealth inequality is at historic highs. This demonstrates the triumph of liberalism or socialism?
Owing to the new interpretation of the Second Amendment, Americans have newly discovered guns rights we never before enjoyed.
The right-wing Hoover Institute lawyer that Lion recently mentioned, Richard Epstein, actually favors not only gay rights but polygamy rights.
The big winner since the Reagan years has been neither liberalism nor traditional conservatism but individual freedom — at the cost of social cohesion and national strength, identity, and well-being.
Mark Caplan
March 18, 2015 at 4:31 pm
The media LOVES Israel . But they also love Obama so they’re conflicted
pumpkinperson
March 18, 2015 at 4:42 pm
The media loves reporting about Israel, but they don’t love Israel.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 18, 2015 at 4:48 pm
Well because of the high verbal IQ, Jews are 50% of the most influential pundits in America so it would be astonishing if that didn’t result in a pro-Israel bias. If 50% of the media were Irish, i would expect a pro-Ireland bias
Further, when even ultra liberal msnbc is blasted for pro-Israel bias, you have to wonder, though the person blasting them was Palestinian so she had her own bias
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rula-jebreal-msnbc-israel-coverage
pumpkinperson
March 18, 2015 at 5:21 pm
Touche! Good point.
E. Rekshun
March 18, 2015 at 5:38 pm
Most Jews in America come across as being dispassionate about Israel. The ultra-orthodox are more concerned about their immediate environment, especially with their neighborhoods and the coming of the Moshiach or Jewish messianism, where Israel becomes as important as of a discussion about East Asians on this blog. It’s not important to them in the grander scheme of things.
The saner denominations feel the same way, except they support the Jewish State on a superficial level, as if it was a travel/vacation destination.
However, and ironically, very secular Jews get riled up about the country, whenever anti-Semites criticize it, or when they get backed into corner for supporting it, which most of them don’t anyway.
Religious Jews have less hang-ups about Israel than the non-religious one, especially those who would be the least supportive of it.
JS
March 18, 2015 at 6:34 pm
I agree with Lion. The cognitive dissonance between the media’s left wing views on social issues and Israel”s successful brand of ethno-nationalism is becoming harder to sustain. I suspect the media will try to use Netanyahu as an excuse to step up their criticism of Israel.
Peter the Shark
March 19, 2015 at 6:52 am
it would be astonishing if that didn’t result in a pro-Israel bias.
That pro-Israel bias is why the media’s coverage of Netanyahu’s speech and election was slightly less anti-Zionist than Palestinian radio.
The Undiscovered Jew
March 19, 2015 at 10:26 pm
If you think of the Republican economic platform as serving the interests of the wealthiest americans than they’ve had a great deal of success. Of course those same Americans own the media companies so that suggests that maybe the republicans can’t take all, or possibly any, of the credit.
Howie Stern
March 18, 2015 at 5:01 pm
Yes, liberals have won on most social issues but conservatives have won on 100% of economic issues. The latter is really far more egregious because of how thoroughly popularly accepted conservative economic theories have been proven wrong. The rich don’t really care about social issues so will throw the left a bone there to keep them distracted. it works pretty well, on popular liberals news websites what are you more likely to hear about: labor abuses or transgender bathrooms?
chairman
March 18, 2015 at 7:24 pm
Social liberalism and rightist economics both serve the elites. The upper classes have gained at nearly everyone’s expense.
eradican
March 18, 2015 at 9:25 pm
Pretty much all NPR has been talking about is transgender issues lately. Today they were talking about how pissed off transgender people are at the idea of “gender neutral” bathrooms. They want to use whatever bathroom they wish.
Nathan Wartooth
March 18, 2015 at 9:57 pm
omg chairman do ya mean the united states isn’t a democracy?
omg!
voters are useful idiots.
all the important issues have already been agreed on before the campaign even starts. american politics is sports entertainment or “kayfabe”.
anyone who uses words like “conservative” and “liberal” the way they’re most commonly used in the us needs to take the red pill already. they’re more booooring than people who thing professional wrestling is real.
people who go further and call “liberals” “mentally ill” or try to explain the “liberal” psyche don’t actually have a brain. technically it’s referred to as anencephaly.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 18, 2015 at 11:32 pm
Social liberalism and rightist economics both serve the elites. The upper classes have gained at nearly everyone’s expense.
Perhaps the best quote ever on LoftB!
JS
March 19, 2015 at 1:03 am
To understand why liberals have won so many issues you have to understand what it means to be liberal or conservative. Liberals push change and conservatives resist it. Liberals are constantly attacking the status quo. But here’s the thing. You only notice the issues that they change. You don’t notice the changes they never accomplished.
It takes 15-20 years for societal attitudes to change because most people don’t change. The next generation matures with a different set of attitudes. Surveys show most older people haven’t really changed on homos. But the MSM has pushed it for over 15 years now. Their strategy was to shove it in people’s faces until people became desensitized. And that’s what’s happened with the younger generation seeing it everywhere. The other strategy was to constantly portray homos as victims. Portraying people as victims for sympathy is a common tactic. Another reason liberals have been successful is that society has been prosperous. People are much more open to change and liberalism when there is stability and prosperity. When there is instability and recession people become very conservative and start pushing changes in the other direction. Of course, their latest strategy is to push their agenda through immigration. Over 60% of immigrants are on welfare. So they know immigrants will vote for whichever party promises to give them your money.
It’s not true, however, that liberals have won every issue. They’ve actually lost ground on five. First, they’ve lost on taxes. Taxes on top earners were actually much higher decades ago. Second, they’ve lost on welfare. Welfare is still huge but not like it was before welfare reform. Third, they’ve lost ground on education reform. There didn’t used to be charter schools or vouchers. Fourth, labor unions have lost most of their members and are being rolled back in many states. And, fifth, they’ve lost on guns. That one is a mixed bag because you used to be able to buy guns without paperwork or waiting period. On the other hand, gun rights has been winning for decades with CCW, castle doctrine and stand your ground. What’s more, gun rights have been gaining a lot of ground with women. There are lot of women with CCWs.
destructure
March 18, 2015 at 5:24 pm
Don’t forget, we won on pornography too. My plan all along was to make it so ubiquitous that producers would fill it up with really ordinary looking chicks, resulting in pure boredom. Ha ha, I balled more really cute chicks in the 1950’s than Howard Stern has interviewed in the entire histiry of his show.
Ed Meese
March 18, 2015 at 8:10 pm
LotB: The Republican Party sometimes controls the Congress or the Presidency
And that matters for nothing, other than the opportunity to appoint Supreme Court Justices; and, surprisingly, they usually get this correct (except for Souter).
LC’s list is spot on, but I will say one issue that Republicans have (so far, mostly) prevailed is capital punishment.
E. Rekshun
March 18, 2015 at 5:34 pm
How about winning the Cold War/defeating communism? 50 years ago almost 1/3 of the world lived under communist regimes, now what’s left? N. Korea and Cuba? That’s gotta count for more than losing on gay marriage.
Jimbo Nobo
March 18, 2015 at 5:53 pm
Over one billion people live in Red China.
eradican
March 18, 2015 at 8:59 pm
“Red” China isn’t “communist” today. It is more Fascist.
CamelCaseRob
March 19, 2015 at 7:06 am
China is 100% communist people just don’t know what they’re talking about.
Fascism also means something very specific in Marxism which I also explain.
https://eradica.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/old-and-new-gods/
eradican
March 21, 2015 at 7:46 pm
Fascism doesn’t mean anything in Marxism, the term didn’t exist in his day and Stalin accused the German Social Democrats of being Fascists because they weren’t down with violent revolution.
Foolish Pride
March 22, 2015 at 12:41 am
China, Vietnam, South Africa and Laos are four more. SA has “elections” but it would be impossible to out the communist party.
Nathan Wartooth
March 18, 2015 at 10:02 pm
South Africa isn’t communist……..
eradican
March 21, 2015 at 7:51 pm
Republicans had two major successes during the 90s.
1) The welfare reform. The recipients now have to look for work – this and Clinton’s not vetoing it made the left wing of the Democratic party very angry.
2) Closing some immigration loopholes. Previously, it was possible for an illegal immigrant to pay a fine and get a green card, usually through a bogus marriage to an American citizen. That loophole was closed and as a result, a green card can be obtained through marriage only if the immigrant is in the US on a valid visa.
WRB
March 18, 2015 at 5:56 pm
“Can anyone think of an example where predicting the future in this manner has failed?”
Campaign Finance.
The media *loves* it (because then it makes the journalists words carry more weight) but they have lost significant ground. Not only at the SCOTUS, but from the amount of money in elections.
Gun Control is another loss for them. All the world problems would go away if it wernt for the NRA, yet they arent making real headway.
But other than those two exceptions your point is taken. People live in the world that the media tells them they do. The media pretended Occupy was a thing even though there were only a couple hundred people involved, and most of them the same old crazy far leftists/anarchists that society had been ignoring for years.
No one even carried about gay marriage (because why would they- gays like the idea of having dozens of partners, not monogamy) but all of sudden it was the phoney civil rights issue of the era.
Lion of the Turambar
March 18, 2015 at 5:58 pm
Now that there is a medication that prevents people from getting Aids I wonder whether attitudes towards marriage will change in the gay community. In my experience older gay men who grew up in a pre-aids world were much less concerned with marriage and monogamy and often mocked the the current obsession with it. Obviously once rights have been granted to citizens they are not going to be removed but I think there might be some change, although the relative power of gay men within the ever broadening not straight community is probably diminishing.
Memow
March 19, 2015 at 1:33 am
wait, there’s an AIDS vaccine now? who knew.
Mrs Stitch
March 19, 2015 at 12:16 pm
@Mrs Stich. Truvada isn’t a vaccine but taken every day seems to provide about 99% protection.
Memow
March 19, 2015 at 6:38 pm
The GOP is like McDonald’s : it’s bland, boring, and slowly losing traction – but still has a very solid following and ‘business’. It prevails because it fills a niche, just like Rush Limbaugh, who the left predicted would go out of business once all the old white males die, apparently obvious to the fact many young and middle aged people like Rush, too. But when you have charismatic democrats (Clinton, Obama) who are analogous to 5 guys and Shakeshack, boring ol’d McDonald’s tends to lose.
grey enlightenment
March 18, 2015 at 6:01 pm
Talking about the piddling political issues obfuscates what is really going on: the demographic demise of the west. If you are prone to black and white thinking like me, you can easily sort issues into one of three categories:
1) Against white people
2) For white people
3) Indifferent
We’ve seen the end-game in Zimbabwe and South Africa. What is the end game in USA and Europe. What are your bets on who is going to reach end game first? England? France? Regions of the USA?
My vote is California is the first to Zimbabwe itself. It’s pretty much there, a few more years and whites will be permanently forced out of public life.
Unlike a few of your commenters I’m not a racist wn drinking haterade 24/7- I think other cultures and people are great and deserve to exist…the only difference between me and an enlightened leftist is that I’d prefer to visit those cultures on vacation than have them around me every single day where I have to compete with them. I don’t blame immigrants for acting out of self-interest- if I were in their shoes I would be running for the US to get my hands on the good stuff too…
jjbees
March 18, 2015 at 6:37 pm
You don’t compete with them. your taxes subsidize their existence.
map
March 19, 2015 at 12:43 am
If you assume, for the sake of argument, that people will behave in the same way regardless of institutions then America will become a little bit more like Asia and a lot more like south America. Both South Asian and latin american societies practise intermarriage while maintaining colourism so wouldnt we see a much less white America ruled by white looking people who’d consider themselves to be diverse. In this world i think there will be less hostility/discrimination towards African-Americans but also less preoccupation with them, something like Brazil. Either way its unlikely to be anything like Zimbabwe.
Memow
March 19, 2015 at 1:44 am
I just wanted to add I worked in Buenos Aires for a year. Beautiful city, bookshops, museums, restaurants, parties, pretty women, party atmosphere as long as you have a upper middle class income it’s great. I have lived in much worse countries.
Memow
March 19, 2015 at 1:48 am
Well Republicans “won” on free-trade and “open markets,” much to the disaster of Americans other than the elites.
They “won” on increased home ownership, helping us have the housing crisis (granted, this was a bi-partisan issue).
They’ve been having patchy success with voter ID laws, though I’m not sure where that’s all at lately.
They’ve won on natural resource extraction in the US (if not on that pipeline), though Obama has been trying to put the kibosh on that. I don’t know who’s winning the war on coal.
There’s probably some more, but on the big cultural issues — the ones that ultimately matter — it’s been a complete rout.
peterike
March 18, 2015 at 6:46 pm
The affirmative action housing and loans that led to the crash was a liberal thing. Bush sort of adopted their agenda like he did with NCLB and the prescription medicaid thing. But it was a leftwing thing.
destructure
March 19, 2015 at 1:57 am
The Republicans have NOT lost on the gun issue. I don’t know why JC thinks that. The US is a gun owner’s paradise. That doesn’t mean, of course, that we pro-gunners don’t lose a battle every now and then, or that we don’t occasionally disagree among ourselves about a few thing. In the very long term we’ll lose, of course, because the country’s demographic trends favor the Democrats.
Right now, though, we have gun rights in abundance because gun freedom is (sadly) the only thing Republicans will fight for without hesitation, apology or mercy.
Stealth
March 18, 2015 at 6:52 pm
The Demographic changes do not favor Democrats. They favor non-whites. The Democrat whites are going to be pushed out of power, basically turned into minorities in their own party, before whites are made a minority in their own country.
Most of the things the Left won on are sideshow issues, easily undone when the Democrats become minority piracy party.
In see a very strong, nationalist future in America. The left-wing and right-wing whites will combine to fight the outright violence and depredations of the coming minority horde.
What we are seeing today is the “boiling away” of the “unfit” whites from society: the fetishists, the weirdos, the feminists, the aborted and the childless liberal loners. All of these are being culled from the population, slowly but surely. Liberalism has always been a trap for the weakest elements of society.
map
March 19, 2015 at 12:51 am
I’ve commented on one of Lion’s previous posts that California will start voting Republican again when non-hispanic whites can no longer control the Democratic Party in that state. Right now, Bay Area Liberals run the show, but it’ll only be a decade or so before even they can’t buy off the third-world hordes.
Bilbo Baggins
March 19, 2015 at 7:38 pm
Yes the current Democratic hodgepog is a loose coalition indeed. As they continue to fight for most favored victim status it will eventually become unglued. White Democrats will find out soon enough that multicultural activism within their ranks is eventually leading to their own demise. Like so many other leftist causes they will find it is much better in theory than in practice. Then the white elites will revert back to the GOP.
Another phenomenon that we are likely to see is the emergence of white advocacy groups. As white population dwindles near the 50% mark it will become more socially acceptable particularly among proles who have never experienced anything even remotely resembling “white privilege”. And I wouldn’t worry much about proles leaving the GOP. As long as the party stands for patriotism and gun rights they aren’t going anywhere.
B.T.D.T.
March 19, 2015 at 9:21 pm
The NRA kicked ass during every gun debate of the Obama years. Their victory was so thorough that even the most liberal politicians are afraid to bring the topic up. An absolutely superb performance.
The Undiscovered Jew
March 19, 2015 at 10:30 pm
This view is total Moldbug and probably right, but I like to think the left has crashed itself into a wall here and can’t do too much more damage. I’d guess that Israel’s existence is inextricably tied to how anti-immigrant sentiment plays out in the west over the next few decades, and I’m already seeing a little hope.
Robert
March 18, 2015 at 7:18 pm
“gun control (except the bare bones have so far been preserved due to Heller)”
I don’t get this one, but I agree with most of the others. I have felony convictions and could easily purchase a shotgun with no background check if I were so inclined. I could also mail order myself what I’d need to build an AR-15 if I wanted to. The left completely lost here.
Robert
March 18, 2015 at 7:42 pm
There is one very important thing that the GOP won: the Cold War. The Democrats gave some support to the struggle against Communism for a couple of decades, then went into full scale appeasement mode. The right had to fight it alone from then on, and won. Everything that the right said about the Cold War was true. The USSR was an evil empire. Alger Hiss was a spy. Peace through strength does work. You don’t hear much about the Cold War nowadays, which is too bad. It should be rubbed in the left’s face at every opportunity.
Taxes are still too high, but marginal rates lower than they were in 1960. We trade freely with other nations, which has made the stuff we buy better and cheaper. Talk radio, then Fox and the Internet have given the right a real voice in the media. Dan Rather could have gotten away with Rathergate 40 years ago. There are now a good number of originalist judges. Not a majority, but a lot more than in the past.
BehindTheLines
March 18, 2015 at 8:13 pm
One other thing. If not for Bush 41, Saddam would now have nuclear weapons and control half the world’s oil.
BehindTheLines
March 18, 2015 at 8:18 pm
Jew Bolshevism, Asiatic hordes, iron curtain, evil empire, or the current demonization of Russia when you challenge the international system they’ll smear you relentlessly.
The evil empire on display…….
eradican
March 18, 2015 at 9:06 pm
Linking to commie propaganda?
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 18, 2015 at 9:09 pm
Potemkin village. I grew up in Moscow, please…. Not in the 21st century.
Yakov
March 18, 2015 at 9:21 pm
Russia or Idaho?
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 18, 2015 at 11:29 pm
and Yakov has at least once in every other post said how great it was in the USSR. is it any better in Russia today? would it have been any better? Russian and Brazil were at about the same level in 1917 and at about the same level today. one went red, the other didn’t. seems like being commie for 73 years didn’t make any difference. oh and brazil didn’t have a civil war and ww ii. so actually communism wins!!! beats brazilian capitalism!!!
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 18, 2015 at 11:38 pm
Hey, the living arrangements sound like Al Gore’s and every other “smart growth” advocate’s wet dream. Coincidence? I thiunk not.
Sgt. Joe Friday
March 18, 2015 at 11:50 pm
LoL, funny they didn’t include the Gulag in their promo video. My mother grew up in Austria where the news was incessantly filled with stories of people being shot in the back trying to flee across the border from Communism. Funny, that would have been right around the time of this video. I guess they had to leave some of that footage on the cutting room floor.
I find it foolish that Russian apologists would defend modern Russia and the USSR together in the same sentence. If you want to defend Russia, create as much daylight as possible between modern Russia and the ideology that murdered 100 million or more people.
Dan
March 19, 2015 at 8:59 am
@ Dan
I’m not a Russian apologist but modern Russia owes its existence to the USSR.
I wrote a blog post discussing nearly every aspect of communist PLEASE read.
https://eradica.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/old-and-new-gods/
eradican
March 21, 2015 at 8:08 pm
Eradican is our local commie agitator who would like the Right to believe that communism is pro-White people and not explicitly for deracination and culture eradication. Pay him/her no mind.
Jon
March 22, 2015 at 10:46 am
The British Colonies gain their independence and 75 years later get sucked into a centralized nation-state anyway (Civil War). The North wins the Civil War and 50 years later becomes the destination of a massive negro exodus northward from the former slave states. The Allies win WW1 and the US becomes a migration destination for all kinds of European socialists. The Allies win WW2 and the US loses its ethnic culture becoming multicultural and Idealistic instead. The US reaches a tie in Korea and nothing bad happens. The US loses in Vietnam and nothing bad happens. The US wins the Cold War and lunges headlong into Dogmatic Idealism.
Notice a trend?
Curle
March 18, 2015 at 9:36 pm
If the South didn’t keep humans as slaves and attack Fort Sumter, the Civil War wouldn’t have happened.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 18, 2015 at 9:44 pm
“If the South didn’t keep humans as [first indentured servants then as] slaves” . . . English North America wouldn’t have happened. You’d be speaking either Spanish or Dutch right now.
Your statement is akin to noting that if the English didn’t have kings the English Civil War wouldn’t have happened. If the Mexicans didn’t occupy Texas the Texas Revolution wouldn’t have happened. Somehow forgetting that the kings preceded the English Puritans and the Mexicans preceded the Texans much as the southern agrarians preceded the northern moralizers whose very existence was at one phase of development dependent upon the existence of this industry they later came to hate.
Anyway, the tariff issue was much more important than Yankee scholars will admit.
Curle
March 18, 2015 at 10:48 pm
bs.
the south left ’cause lincoln was a republican.
wait. what?
lincoln was a republican?
i almost choked on my chaw!
south fights yankees. 600,000+ dead! 1 in 10 mean dead! hates dem damn yankees. south has most rigid class structure ion the country for whites. south has southern whites go 85% republican.
hmmm. south = ridiculous sh– hole that should have been allowed to secede?
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 18, 2015 at 11:43 pm
Curle — That’s an excellent point and ties in with my belief that winning and prosperity often precede disaster. When life is too easy, people take it for granted and lose sight of what’s important.
destructure
March 19, 2015 at 4:16 am
Ross claims the South “hates dem damn yankees”. But whenever the issue comes up it’s nearly always “yankees” spewing the hate.
destructure
March 19, 2015 at 1:07 pm
If the South didn’t keep humans as slaves
Lincoln offered the South a constitutional amendment to protect slavery where it existed. The South stupidly turned it down because they wanted to expand slaver already occupied by free soil whites. The war was caused by Southern expansionism, and Lincoln gave the Confederates exactly what they deserved.
The Undiscovered Jew
March 19, 2015 at 10:33 pm
centralized nation-state anyway (Civil War).
FDR centralized the government. Post-Civil War and pre-New Deal America – Lincoln’s America – was an economic and state’s rights paradise. Granted Reconstruction would have gone much better if Lincoln hadn’t been shot.
The Undiscovered Jew
March 19, 2015 at 10:36 pm
my nearest southern roots have been deracinated thankfully.
but i got a call from a relative in ATL rencently.
said relative is a reader. he’s read all of a la recherche believe it or not. he runs an industrial distributor with a black guy. he’s an MBA from a directional school and a Democrat who hates the Kochs. his brother works for the railroad, never attended college, and listens to FOX news non-stop. said relative is not a homo.
QED. for sample size = 1.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 19, 2015 at 11:30 pm
no. no. no.
there are two event being confused here.
1. secession
2. northern aggression
EACH had it’s own set of legitimate and stupid and EVIL reasons.
AND in both cases…in both north and south poor white people did the fighting and the dying!
sound familiar?
as Carl Fox (Oliver Stone had no idea how ironic he was being at the time) said: The rich have been doing it to the poor since the beginning of time. The only difference between the Pyramids and the Empire State Building is the Egyptians didn’t allow unions. I know what this guy is all about, greed. He don’t give a damn about Bluestar or the unions. He’s in and out for the buck and he don’t take prisoners.
the only difference today is it’s the poor of all races.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 20, 2015 at 12:09 am
The living standards the middle classes of the West enjoyed during the post-WW2 boom years (and which are quickly fading away) owe a large debt to the threat of communism. It was the threat of violent revolution that forced the elites to make concessions to labor. We see what happens when that threat decreases and then vanishes.
chairman
March 18, 2015 at 11:11 pm
Tax revenue as a percent of revenue is at a historic low. Welfare has been drastically cut back since the time of LBJ. The republicans have won big on these issues.
Then look at your other issues – gay marriage, abortion. The wall street elite that the republicans serve are probably on the liberal side of these issues. They just use rhetoric on these issues to get the middle american base riled up.
alex
March 18, 2015 at 8:59 pm
*tax revenue as a percentage of GDP
alex
March 18, 2015 at 9:00 pm
Completely wrong. It was lower in 1950 and the recent bottom was in 2009. In fact today it’s not too far from it’s post WW2 peak: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/U.S._Federal_Tax_Receipts_as_a_Percentage_of_GDP_1945%E2%80%932015.jpg
Foolish Pride
March 22, 2015 at 12:44 am
The chart demonstrates that Reagan didn’t really lower taxes. The flat trendline didn’t change in the 1980s.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 22, 2015 at 8:34 am
Don’t forget the deficit. This is a tax, in the form, of inflation. Add that in and are we really at a historic low?
CamelCaseRob
March 19, 2015 at 7:02 am
Inflation is underreported, but still very low right now. So I would say yes.
alex
March 19, 2015 at 9:33 am
It is relatively low because people are still paying off personal debt and when they do that they decrease the money supply. Just wait until that process is over and then you will see the deficits really impacting the money supply.
CamelCaseRob
March 19, 2015 at 3:24 pm
Somewhat O/T, but Obama seems to think the left is still in danger of not being able to cram its agenda down the nation’s throat, so his latest proposal is universal compulsory voting. He did not say if he was also going to extend the franchise to non-citizens and lower the voting age to 16, but neither of those would be surprising either. There is a part of me that is watching this like one would a plane crash or something horrific you just cannot take your eyes off of: a great nation is committing suicide before our eyes, and the media are acting as cheerleaders for it. On the plus side – I suppose – once Russia is able to get up off the mat and is really once again a superpower, they will want to settle old scores, but with whom? A pussified, Mexicanized USA resembling a cross between Venezuela and Somalia, presided over by Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho won’t be worth getting even with.
Sgt. Joe Friday
March 18, 2015 at 9:02 pm
Russia, unlike the US conducts a responsible foreign policy, it doesn’t settle scores. US poured billions into Mujahideen in Afghanistan when Russia was there, Russia had not supported Talibman when US was there.
Yakov
March 18, 2015 at 10:17 pm
Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. Putin is former KGB and IIRC said that the breakup of the USSR was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the last 50 years.” I could be wrong about a reconstituted Soveit Union taking a poke a Tio Samuel (that’s “Uncle Sam” for you non-Spanish speakers), but I wonder if the Chicoms could pass up the temptation.
Sgt. Joe Friday
March 18, 2015 at 11:49 pm
There’s a good case for mandatory voting. It’s a classic collective action problem where it’s individually rational but collectively harmful to not vote.
Howie Stern
March 19, 2015 at 2:46 am
How is it collectively harmful?
Curle
March 19, 2015 at 11:03 pm
Exactly none of the media is controlled by liberals.
Those who control the media label their positions liberal even though their positions are not and cannot be liberal because liberal describes a view that allows discussion rather than chooses a side and relentlessly advocates for it and abuses those who disagree. If the only way you can get what you want is by unelected decree forced onto the masses, your methods are totalitarian not liberal.
not too late
March 18, 2015 at 10:34 pm
You are using the non-US meaning of the word “Liberal”. This is also called “Classical Liberalism”. In the U.S. today, Liberal is used as a synonym of Leftist.
CamelCaseRob
March 19, 2015 at 7:00 am
They are not of the Left. The Left is the party of the working classes aka the taxpayers, think Tea Party. Elites who manipulate the poor for votes and over tax workers and producers so that an ever greater fraction of what is produced comes back to the Elite are not and cannot be on the Left. By definition, they are the Right. You simply mean those who market destructive license as though it were liberty and rob the workers of true Liberty. They are not of the Left.
not too late
March 21, 2015 at 2:06 pm
As a former long-time GOP activist, I agree completely. I’ve often thought about just exactly what the GOP/conservative movement has accomplished in the last fifty years, and I can come up with only two victories:
the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court
the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment
sestamibi
March 18, 2015 at 10:42 pm
Winner!
E. Rekshun
March 19, 2015 at 3:58 am
Scalia, Thomas, Roberts (yes, I know), Kennedy, Alito.
Curle
March 19, 2015 at 11:05 pm
The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment was a huge victory for feminism.
Kyo
March 21, 2015 at 7:09 am
The demise of Israel as it stands today is of no real consequence.
It will be re-born by the Orthodox. A state devoted to peace and God is the only legitimate Israel.
One
March 19, 2015 at 5:08 am
Can you explain what you mean here?
CamelCaseRob
March 19, 2015 at 8:58 am
Welfare hasn’t existed since the 80s, so the GOP didn’t lose that fight. Good job, guys! Now all the handouts go to the wealthy, as god intended.
Speaking of welfare … funny you should mention Israel. Why should I as an atheist American subsidize them or any foreign country? Sheldon Adelson can feel free to donate his own money.
k@q.com
March 19, 2015 at 5:10 am
Welfare reform happened in the 90’s not the 80’s. And it didn’t do away with welfare. It merely reduced some of the abuses. I don’t think most conservatives want to get rid of it for the people who really need it. But people who are capable of working shouldn’t be living a middle class lifestyle off the backs of others. As for handout to the wealthy, I’m not sure I’d characterize lowering taxes and letting people keep more of their own money as “handouts”.
destructure
March 19, 2015 at 7:45 am
“But people who are capable of working shouldn’t be living a middle class lifestyle off the backs of others.”
Everything is made in China. They are living off the backs of Chinese, not Americans. And every middle-class worker is also supplementing their incomes by living off the backs of Chinese.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 19, 2015 at 7:48 am
Low taxes aren’t handouts to the wealthy but bailing out all the Wall Street banks during the last economic crisis were handouts. The current fed policy is in no way free market oriented and is designed to help the rich. You can see that in their increasing wealth and their support for that policy. The current crony capitalism shouldn’t be confused with free market capitalism. Both the Republicans and Democrats largely support crony capitalism. The Republicans also are the party of the military/industrial complex and the Democrats are the party of the health/education/ welfare complex. There is no small government, pro-free market party in America today.
Mark
March 19, 2015 at 11:32 am
I don’t think most conservatives want to get rid of it for the people who really need it. But people who are capable of working shouldn’t be living a middle class lifestyle off the backs of others.
Who are these people that live middle-class lifestyles on welfare checks? I always hear about them, yet I never see any evidence to back up the assertion.
As for handout to the wealthy, I’m not sure I’d characterize lowering taxes and letting people keep more of their own money as “handouts”.
Capital gains taxes or lack thereof ensure that the rich pay a much lower share of their income than John Q public does. Corporate subsidies are also essentially entitlements.
swanknasty
March 19, 2015 at 3:05 pm
“Who are these people that live middle-class lifestyles on welfare checks? “
Here’s an example of a woman who was renting a 7 yr old, 4 Bd/2.5 Ba house with utilities included for $572/mo paid for with a section 8 voucher. There’s a picture of the house and it’s surprisingly nice for someone on welfare. Throw in food stamps, medicaid and other entitlements and she’s living very well off the backs of others.
http://oaklandcounty115.com/2014/06/19/protesters-claim-racism-in-ferndale-housing-commission-dispute/
“Capital gains taxes or lack thereof ensure that the rich pay a much lower share of their income than John Q public does. Corporate subsidies are also essentially entitlements.”
Spendthrifts blow everything they make then are jealous others haven’t. Just because someone else is too stupid to save and invest doesn’t mean my savings should be slammed with higher taxes. As for corporate subsidies, critics of welfare usually oppose corporate subsidies as well. It’s supporters of corporate subsidies who usually support welfare. Those who try to defend welfare by bashing corporate subsidies are barking up the wrong tree.
destructure
March 19, 2015 at 6:09 pm
Here’s an example
So you found an outlier. I should have been clearer. I have never seen any compelling evidence that these individuals constitute a significant portion of those on welfare.
Just because someone else is too stupid to save and invest doesn’t mean my savings should be slammed with higher taxes.
A spendthrift poor person will never have enough money to take advantage of the capital gains tax.
As for corporate subsidies, critics of welfare usually oppose corporate subsidies as well. It’s supporters of corporate subsidies who usually support welfare
Where did you get this from? When I look at information on specific subsidies, I find that Democrats and Republicans tend to equally oppose or support corporate subsidies. Republicans, however, disfavor welfare for the poor.
swanknasty
March 19, 2015 at 8:28 pm
“A spendthrift poor person will never have enough money”
Even a thrifty minimum-wage worker will never ever ever have enough money to benefit from the lower capital gains tax.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 19, 2015 at 9:53 pm
the capital gains tax can be seen as a stealth wealth tax like property tax in some cases.
in an ideal world taxes would be on consumption and they’d be very steep at the high end.
the idea is that selling shares or real estate or whatever at a profit and reinvesting ALL of it should be regarded in the same way as doing nothing (unless it’s done in a very short period of time and short term speculation is considered bad taste, which it is!).
BUT then the future dividends, rents, coupons, or SPENT capital gains may be RIGHTLY taxed at a high rate.
the question regarding private equity is unfortunately much deeper than taxes. it gets at the root of capitalism itself.
the greatest finance man of the 20th c imho John Bogle said that private equity and the Us financial system was a parasite. it was a net subtractor from the economy.
John Bogle must be a Marxist right?
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 19, 2015 at 10:53 pm
“Welfare reform happened in the 90’s not the 80’s.”
Nothing was reformed in the 80s or 90s. Wall St saw it’s largest handout in history in 2008. Wall St “made money”? That’s a laugh. Most of it was transferred.
get real
March 20, 2015 at 8:07 am
Swanknasty,
That is not an outlier.
People on welfare receive in benefits the equivalent of $50-60,000 a year in pre-tax income.
I used to process section 8 housing vouchers for a real estate company.
map
March 20, 2015 at 12:08 pm
That is not an outlier.
People on welfare receive in benefits the equivalent of $50-60,000 a year in pre-tax income
Citation?
swanknasty
March 22, 2015 at 12:43 am
Republicans seem to be winning on the denial of evolution front.
jef
March 19, 2015 at 7:43 am
Evangelical Christians have made progress in maintaining a large minority of True Believers.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 19, 2015 at 7:47 am
Nope. I would say the left, with its equalist drivel, are the major denialists on the evolution front. Evolution is a useful implement for bludgeoning southerners with zero political influence, but the powers that be from the administration and the New York Times on down deny the utterly obvious reality of HBD, which is something that actually matters.
Dan
March 19, 2015 at 8:46 am
Correct. It is on the Left where denial of HBD really matters. For one, the large denialist presence in the universities undermines the credibility of those institutions (and intellectual authority in general). This leveling may not seem like such a big thing to folks on this site, but it my job I encounter more and more ‘populist’ lawyers (uneducated and not credentialed) who dispense advice that, shocking as it may seem, people think is grounded in reality. These phony dispensers of bogus wisdom and claims are taking advantage of a cultural environment where the hoi polloi rightfully feel that legitimate authority no longer exists. Were those in authority to act more in line with reality the problem would not be as severe as it is.
Curle
March 19, 2015 at 9:21 am
First, there is not believing evolution at all, and then there is (assuming HBD is true and is supported by evolution — by no means clear) believing that evolution applies in a certain way among humans. The former belief is much more anti-science.
Second, HBD, which is essentially strong hereditarianism, if true, would actually matter. However, true HBD would logically lead to strong liberal — maybe even Marxist — policies. If HBD is true, then the “producers” did not earn most of their talents and advantages over others. Accordingly, there is more of a justification to tax them and redistribute societal wealth to equalize outcomes.
swanknasty
March 19, 2015 at 2:57 pm
It’s much stupider to deny evolution than it is deny innate behavioral differences between human groups. Most HBD extrapolate entirely from the present and ground their view in an ahistorical perspective that’s totally ignorant of the constant rise and fall of different civilizations and groups. Which it not to say it’s not stupid to dismiss the possibility of HBD.
Howie Stern
March 19, 2015 at 4:40 pm
Are you guys aware that minority kids now get three free meals a day at school? The reason Pedro always has a new Ram truck is that he doesn’t have to pay for groceries. That’s welfare reform.
so old fashioned
March 19, 2015 at 11:08 am
I was gonna say, in response to those who claim welfare is shrinking. Kids don’t have to worry about food Monday-Friday, and if people don’t use sale their EBT cards, then no one has to worry about enough food.
CamelCaseRob
March 19, 2015 at 3:33 pm
Oh, and wide-spread disability fraud seems to becoming more and more of a “thing” here, as in the U.K.
CamelCaseRob
March 19, 2015 at 3:48 pm
Exactly. These minorities are essentially government teenagers. Their food, housing and medical care is provided by Daddy Government, while their “jobs” provide them with spending money to buy toys.
map
March 20, 2015 at 12:13 pm
No one is saying that conservatives “lost” segregation or civil rights, but everyone is bemoaning that they lost gay marriage? Sometimes people just have wrong or ignorant opinions about minorities that change over time. Irrational cruelty or prejudice is a thing, and people can be shamed out of it.
While obviously the MSM has been beating the drum for greater gay tolerance for several decades now, gay people don’t just exist on TV. More gay Americans have been coming out, and having a gay child/sibling/cousin/etc has changed the way a lot of people think about the issue. You look at polls, and record high numbers of Americans say they know a gay person these days. I mean, I guess you could say conservatives “lost” keeping people in the closet…
I do agree that Israel is becoming a hugely partisan issue. One under appreciated aspect of the Obama foreign policy is that if a country elects the “wrong” (ie: non-leftist) party, that country goes on the shit list and relations take a nose-dive. Obama has ruined relations with Britain and Canada because all he knows is partisan policy. He has no competence whatsoever at forming diplomatic relationships that transcend ideology.
Netanyahu’s Likud government is probably to the left of Obama on a number of issues, but Netanyahu is increasingly crammed into a US domestic context in which identity politics transcends everything. Indeed, I think the most damaging thing about the man in the eyes of the left is not his stance on Iran or even the Palestinians per se, but rather his repeated assertions Israel has a specific ethno-cultural identity, and should seek to maintain it. That makes him heretical to Democrats in a way previous Israeli presidents never were.
Morris
March 19, 2015 at 11:13 am
Marrying a person of the same sex is not a civil right, Morris.
roseate spoonbill
March 19, 2015 at 12:46 pm
“No one is saying that conservatives “lost” segregation or civil rights, but everyone is bemoaning that they lost gay marriage?”
I freely and openly say we lost segregation. Segregation is the natural state of affairs and a much wiser course for any civilization. Conservatives used to talk like that all the time, but the Cultural Marxists have relegated such talk to the nether world. You know your CrimeThink reprogramming has been stunningly effective when people won’t even let themselves THINK things that were once perfectly obvious to EVERYBODY ON EARTH.
I am far less upset about gay marriage, though I resent the way it has been forced down our throats. And really, the media re-programming has been an amazing thing to watch. Seriously, you can make anyone believe anything.
peterike
March 19, 2015 at 1:55 pm
The reason you’re not upset about gay marriage is because you have been re-programmed, but don’t even realize it.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 19, 2015 at 4:44 pm
“The reason you’re not upset about gay marriage is because you have been re-programmed, but don’t even realize it.”
Ehhh, I do realize it. The reason I’m not upset is that I really just don’t care anymore. It’s a lost battle, so why get upset about it? On the other hand, I’m not terribly worried about gay guys playing knockout game on me, or robbing my house, or ruining the neighborhood. It’s a lot easier to live with gays than to live with NAMs. I suppose one picks one’s poisons.
peterike
March 19, 2015 at 4:57 pm
The quality of restaurants definitely improves in gay neighborhoods. Although personally, I prefer the cute girl waitresses in the suburbs over the gay waiters in the city.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 19, 2015 at 5:06 pm
peterike,
The whole point of gay marriage is to introduce polyamory into heterosexual marriages. Gays are not monogamous. Gay marriage will eventually weave non-monogamous, no-fault open marriages into the marriage law.
The only plus side to gay marriage is that it stops the spread of the gay gene. It also reduces the fraud of a closeted gay man marrying your daughter.
map
March 20, 2015 at 12:21 pm
No one is saying that conservatives “lost” segregation or civil rights, but everyone is bemoaning that they lost gay marriage? Sometimes people just have wrong or ignorant opinions about minorities that change over time. Irrational cruelty or prejudice is a thing, and people can be shamed out of it.
Exactly. While the left’s “it’s not your fault” pandering is obviously wrong, the alt-right’s “it’s all your fault because IQ” is obviously wrong. What’s strange is that “civil rights” for ‘all’ only was fully put on the table about 50 years ago. 50 years out of 239. To state that current affairs are the just deserts of any aggrieved group is to be dishonest.
swanknasty
March 19, 2015 at 2:51 pm
Slavery has been over with for a very long time, and segregation was only in the South (and yes, I’m aware that prejudice and discrimination themselves were not confined to the South), but everyone carries on as if black people were denied the right to vote and forced to use separate toilets everywhere. Of course discrimination is going to make a difference, but it’s no longer the primary stone tied to the necks of black Americans. For instance, black teenagers who do well in school, and have standardized test scores to back up their grades, are probably a lot more “privileged” than working class white kids of similar ability. The problem is that, for some reason, there aren’t a lot of such black kids.
For a lot of Americans who still live in isolated (or just plain insulated) pockets of the country where there are no black people or only a few members of the talented tenth, racial issues are largely academic, and they can just believe what they want to believe. However, when you live in a place with a sizable black population, you see what you see, and you can’t just ignore the behavioral problems that hamstring America’s black citizens. Back when people could at least speak their minds behind closed doors in this country without fear of being put on the national news by a snitch, a lot of “yankees” who moved to the South would often confess, after a year or two, that they had lost a lot of their illusions about black people and that America’s race problems were a little more complicated than they had previously thought.
Stealth
March 19, 2015 at 7:40 pm
Slavery has been over with for a very long time, and segregation was only in the South
A very long time relative to what? A lifespan? Sure. Civilization and societal development time? Not really.
You say that segregation was confined to the South but then handwave similar effects in the North with “I’m aware that similar effects existed in the North.” It counts.
For instance, black teenagers who do well in school, and have standardized test scores to back up their grades, are probably a lot more “privileged” than working class white kids of similar ability.
Tough to tell. In theory AA is a tie-breaker for those stragglers at the bottom of whatever admissions pool. In practice, so many people complain about it that maybe it doesn’t quite work in such a way.
However, when you live in a place with a sizable black population, you see what you see, and you can’t just ignore the behavioral problems that hamstring America’s black citizens.
The main question does not center on “are we equal” or “are we the same.” Reality disconfirms this notion. The question is to what extent things can change for the better. I know of zero liberals who are blank slatists. And I know zero liberals who argue that there are no current disparities.
swanknasty
March 19, 2015 at 8:40 pm
I didn’t say something equivalent to Jim Crow existed elsewhere in the country, only that some discrimination occurred. Big difference.
You think AA isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? I’ve seen and continue to see a lot of it. Here’s an example that might mean something to you: lack people are represented according to their share of the population at Harvard and other institutions where whites (gentiles, at least) are severely underrepresented.
Stealth
March 19, 2015 at 10:32 pm
I didn’t say something equivalent to Jim Crow existed elsewhere in the country, only that some discrimination occurred. Big difference.
How big was the difference? There were restrictive covenants among racial lines, racially based hiring, racially based accomodations, etc. The only difference was that it was not required by the law.
Lack people are represented according to their share of the population at Harvard and other institutions where whites (gentiles, at least) are severely underrepresented.
It’s complicated. SAT and LSAT scores do not predict much of an individual’s performance — .3-.4 correlations, usually. OTOH, the sorting mechanism is the test., and the test, while imperfect, is the best sifter we have. However, I don’t believe that eliminating AA would greatly increase the average white individual’s chance of admission.
swanknasty
March 20, 2015 at 4:04 pm
“segregation was only in the South”
You’ve never been to Manhattan, have you.
J1
March 21, 2015 at 12:18 pm
You’ve never been to Manhattan, have you.
Manhattan is a fascinating place to study self segregation by race without the barrier gates. For example, you have the Stuyvesant Town complexes (which are now basically luxurious housing projects for the White upper middle class, with a swimming pool, cafes and an ice skating rink), that borders the public housing complexes divided by one street block that are infested with NAMs, who don’t have any of these things.
JS
March 22, 2015 at 11:51 am
“Sometimes people just have wrong or ignorant opinions about minorities that change over time.” ———————–
No. People tend to have accurate impressions of people of other races or preferred sexual practices, minority or not, and they don’t seem to change all that much over time, what changes is their understanding of how expressing those opinions will impact their social standing. Since at least the 18th century Arabs and later whites and Asians have held a low opinion of the collective intelligence of blacks. This is an opinion that is solidly supported by the best available science. Blacks, do not appear to have held similar views regarding Arab, white or Asian intelligence. To the extent blacks criticize white inherent features they tend to focus on white temperamental coldness (a rational complaint). In other words, the many peoples of this world have been remarkably consistent over time in their views of other races and these views have almost always proven to be amply supported by evidence.
Curle
March 19, 2015 at 11:24 pm
And now, Mestizo Hispanics, and even the Caribbean mulatto types who have issues of self hate, hold the same low opinions of blacks.
JS
March 22, 2015 at 11:14 am
We could say that your opinions are ‘ignorant” or “wrong”. Do you see how these accusations aren’t arguments? Or am I debating someone with a GED or less?
“Opinion change” also is not an argument. Enough pressure will cause anyone to change their opinion, if for nothing but to avoid punishment. Additionally, your relative ability to change opinion does not speak to a moral nor rational cause. It only speaks to your ability to change opinion. That “a lot of people believe” something is not an argument. “A lot of people” are often the least suited to lead or decide policies on anything. “A lot of people”, by statistical definition, are the least intelligent of society.
Irrational policies, irrational empathy, anti-science, and politically driven sociology are also things.
Obama hasn’t ruined relations with anyone. It’s all theater.
Likud is to the left? You haven’t the foggiest idea about what you are addressing.
Jon
March 22, 2015 at 10:32 am
The Republican elite functions as a ‘controlled opposition’ in the context of social and racial issues. That’s why affirmative action is so common even in “red states.” It’s not a liberal vs conservative thing, it’s a liberal and neocon vs conservative thing. What the Republican cares about is economic policies that favor the wealthy, which they have most certainly “won on.”(Whether that victory can survive the coming tidal wave of NAM voters is another question) And they “won” on Iraq. Even after the 2006 congressional Democrat victory, the war continued. They “won” on Afghanistan too.
I see no evidence that the liberal media is “against Israel.” Most of the liberal elite are Zionists, just not as “right wing” as neoconservative Zionists. It might be in the future, but the anti-Zionists will have to wrestle control away from Zionists and that won’t be easy.
Zachary Smith
March 19, 2015 at 12:28 pm
I am not sure what you mean by anti zionist. Usually anti-zionists are people who believe Israel shouldn’t exist and since that position is extreme not surprisingly its unpopular. The only advantage of this arguement is that it allows one to collapse all the diiferent versions of support for some form of Israel and create the fiction that that liberal American Jews essentially have the same position as Likud or Jewish home. If someone was proposing dividing people into those supporting the existence of America and those committed to its destruction then suddenly Palin and Clinton or Obama and Steve sailer would all be on the same side.
Memow
March 19, 2015 at 7:00 pm
You haven’t been reading Slate magazine this week, have you? Totally against Israel.
CamelCaseRob
March 19, 2015 at 9:45 pm
You have to accept evolution before you can understand HBD.
jef
March 19, 2015 at 1:19 pm
Have left-wingers won on free-trade agreements, international human rights, animal rights, U.S. support for despotic regimes?
Action on climate change has been a failure because people lack the self-discipline. Countries like England brag they’ve reduced carbon emissions, but that’s only because so much of their manufacturing has been outsourced to China.
In the United States, support for gun control has been going up for the past couple of decades.
I like how the OP mentions big government has won because of the 16 trillion dollar debt, but that was actually a victory of tax cuts for the wealthy. It should be termed the Reagan debt.
I don’t think there’s nearly as much support for (racial) affirmative action, and California voters years ago wanted to do away with it (I vaguely recall a relatively recent Supreme Court case involving the University of Michigan).
As for Israel, I would be happy to see a realignment of sorts with liberals and leftists challenging their support for that country the way they challenged S. African policy. In many ways it’s a wonder conservatives are now the biggest Israel-huggers, what with Zionism being a massive social engineering project, one that advocated huge waves of immigration from Europe into the middle-east. Now Israelis complain that they are “surrounded” by Arab countries. Whose fault is that? Simply taking paleo-conservative view about the natural geography tracking with the social geography should’ve told everyone that was a dumb idea.
Nevertheless, I’d expect robust Democratic support for Israel to continue unabated for the next thirty years. Nixon used to complain about how Jews in the media would question every war, unless Israel was involved. The hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance will continue.
Vince
March 19, 2015 at 2:26 pm
Tax revenue INCREASED under Reagan. Debt increased because government spending increased, and because government became funded by issuing Treasury securities instead of through direct expansion of the money supply which is what they were doing in the 1970s. Reaganomics ended the double-digit inflation we were having in the 1970s.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 19, 2015 at 4:45 pm
Very succinct and informative.
Stealth
March 19, 2015 at 7:54 pm
I sincerely hope you’re not suggesting Laffer curve nonsense. And by Reaganomics do you mean “military Keynsianism”? Tax revenues tend to increase because 1) the economy naturally expands; 2) population increases; 3) inflation (yes, many Reaganites are do dishonest they fail to account for inflation). Nevertheless, debt increased because Reagan pushed for slashing taxes on the upper brackets. This became undeniably clear several years in which is why Congress (and Reagan) overhauled the tax code in 1986.
Vince
March 20, 2015 at 12:08 am
Reaganomics eliminated a lot of tax loopholes. In the 1970s, there were rich people paying no taxes at all. A significant loophole was eliminating differential capital gains, but that loophole has since been brought back. (The other big loophole eliminated was the ability to claim passive losses (using super-accelerated depreciation) from limited partnerships against ordinary income.)
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 20, 2015 at 6:51 am
It looks like there’s some confusion here. There were two major pieces of tax legislation, In 1981 & 1986.
The depreciation loophole was eliminated in 86. Aligning capital gains with the highest marginal bracket was also 86. Reducing the top marginal bracket to 28% happened in 86 as well.
Vince
March 20, 2015 at 12:37 pm
Nixon used to complain about how Jews in the media would question every war, unless Israel was involved.
America never sent troops into any of Israel’s first three major wars, idiot.
The Undiscovered Jew
March 19, 2015 at 10:43 pm
How to predict the future:
In America, a decade from now, most of its citizens are still stuck with a 40/hr work week mode, engaging in all kinds of conundrum tasks that have no meaning in life. Other nations would have evolved into a self actualization job market of leisure work-play.
JS
March 19, 2015 at 2:47 pm
How about invading Iraq, twice? Republicans wanted to do that, and did. The first time, lots of Democrats voted against. The second time, most Democrats voted for it, but only reluctantly.
Dave Pinsen
March 19, 2015 at 5:17 pm
Regarding Israel:
LotB does not have to join the IDF
http://www.mahal-idf-volunteers.org/about/Jewish-volunteer-over-age-limit.htm
greasedweasel
March 19, 2015 at 6:13 pm
“I remember seeing the movie “In and Out” in 1997. It was the first time I saw two gay men kiss each other onscreen. It seemed gross at the time, but I should have known that this was the beginning of an all-out gay push by the mainstream media that would culminate in legal gay marriage. Even the Presbyterian Church now supports gay marriage. And it took less than 18 years to happen.”
I call this phenomenon “convergence,” especially when you’re talking about it happening among liberals themselves. The topology has changed, and updates have been sent out to let everyone know they must change or be cast out.
Stealth
March 19, 2015 at 8:01 pm
“Even the Presbyterian Church now supports gay marriage. And it took less than 18 years to happen”
The Presby church in S.F. where I went to as a kid had an out lesbian minister by 1984.
marty
March 19, 2015 at 8:05 pm
the correct stance on this matter is the orthodox one.
there are people with this perversion, but acting on it is a sin.
this is the official stance of the Roman church. and afaik the E orthodox church as well.
that is, one shouldn’t hate someone because he or she is homosexual, but he and the homosexual should recognize that this “orientation” is perverted and vane…though as Paul VI said “the smoke of Satan has entered the Church”….children can’t consent…better that Barney Frank be President than that one child be molested.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 19, 2015 at 8:52 pm
or rather vain.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 19, 2015 at 8:55 pm
The Presby church in S.F. where I went to as a kid had an out lesbian minister by 1984.
It’s all part of the great WASP conservative tradition.
The Undiscovered Jew
March 19, 2015 at 10:46 pm
gay and lesbian sex is on the same level as hetero adultery and fornication imho.
it’s one of those sins which isn’t a sin any more.
unfortunately a lot of “homophobes” are adulterers and fornicators. so i see that as a sweep before your own doorway, throw the first stone issue.
hell! if lion could’ve chosen Elton John over his own parents…??? if anyone could!
better to have rich fags as parents than no parents.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
March 20, 2015 at 3:51 am
First TUJ came for Southerners. And now he comes for the WASPs. It’s only a matter of time before he starts on the guidos.
destructure
March 20, 2015 at 7:19 am
First TUJ came for Southerners. And now he comes for the WASPs.
What did I say that’s incorrect? The South seceded so they could expand slavery into free soil territories and WASPs have been at best Rockefeller liberals, at worst David SOuter and Howard Dean liberals since Coolidge?
Try responding this time instead of running away and then whining I was unfair to you because you weren’t smart enough to refute my points, or even respond to them.
The Undiscovered Jew
March 20, 2015 at 7:40 pm
The Republicans have won on:
nuclear disarmament – nukes aren’t going anywhere
big military – part of big government that the right likes
middle east interventionism – iraq is acknowledged as a mistake by almost everyone, but this doesn’t stop us from getting involved in syria / yemen/ iraq again
labor – private sector unions are dead. public sector unions are generally disliked by anyone not in one
free trade – the left used to be for protectionism
gun control – a lefty lib president hasn’t managed to pass any meaningful gun control despite Fort Hood, Tucson, Aurora, and Sandy Hook
domestic oil production – higher than ever. there is no serious consideration of banning hydraulic fracturing at the federal level. oil companies are catching much less PR flack now than during Bush II. greenwashing is now jobswashing
climate change – a lot of federal money gets wasted on pointless research (my own included) but we won’t see the devastating taxes like a co2 cap and trade system that could actually reduce emissions
culturally, the democrats have won on almost everything. one exception is reverence for ghetto culture – back in the 90s, gangster rap was huge and lots of middle class white kids dressed like wiggers with flat brimmed hats, huge shirts, and sagging pants. this has completely changed – kids actually look pretty sharp today
PoorGradStudent
March 19, 2015 at 9:28 pm
guy, cutlure isn’t political. did you expect a culture czar?
the confusion of the two is the only reason why the GOP has more than two votes.
because the rich vote mostly for the Dems the GOP has to kneel and unzip the rich in the hope that they will give them money.
Dems are the wife of the rich. Republicans are the whores.
Jorge Videla
March 19, 2015 at 10:33 pm
Isn’t being one evil dictator enough ?
Memow
March 20, 2015 at 12:07 am
Requesting more on the nature of climate change research. I was a science researcher for many years. Money was tight, and even then much of the research (image processing, medical research) was a waste in the sense that it was clearly not going to amount to anything. How is it with you? How easy is it to get funding? How much nonsense is there?
steve@steve.com
March 20, 2015 at 11:38 am
The current media line on Netanyahu and Israel is that they are “racist” for noting that large numbers of Arabs were driven to the polls by Obama the Lightworker’s NGO pals using State Dept. Money. And that it is double-dog racist to be against a two state solution. Why, Hamasistan in the West Bank is a paradise. Its not like they will cut off heads and rocket Jews!
And the ever-leftward trend is because the media is very feminized. A consumer culture will always be feminized, and thus every leftward: an all controling state with no real military capability (see: France, Germany, the UK, Italy) that criminalizes speech towards protected pets (gays, Muslims) but cannot defend its borders or wage war against enemies.
The pill, the condom, anonymous urban living, improved standards of living for women (tm Roissy/Heartiste insight), and a mass consumer media serving women (who make or influence 85% of purchases — my insight) tilted Western societies ever leftward. The way the printing press and gunpowder ended the old Medieval Manorial system and Knighthood, and aristocratic rule. Finished off by industrialization — a modern nation state needed a meritocratic elite particularly in industry and the army to survive predatory neighbors who certainly would move that way first.
But there is a limit. The media being so decisively female is ever so male-hostile. The result is a mass opting out of consumerism for the most part by men, and growth of low-cost alternative media. The guy running Dish Network was featured in the FT. He felt there was no future in his company, his job was to manage decline as consumers cut the cord to save money, and he was buying up radio spectrum. Already, HBO, Apple, and Comcast are offering internet based cheap subscription services at less than $30 a month (as opposed to over $100 for cable/satellite).
The days of media supremacy are over. Roissy/Heartiste is just a click away, so is Instapundit, or Drudge, or a youtube video on shooting guns (fun!) Declining real income from automation, H1 Bs, outsourcing, all insure even women will be spending less on stuff. Which means less money for the infotainment complex and thus less influence.
Look at Israel. They are as secular and feminized as the next society. A recent show, “the Ex-List” had a woman looking up and hooking up with her (100) ex lovers as a fortune teller told her she’d marry one of them. Adapted to the US it failed. In Israel it was a hit. The media in Israel went over Netanyahu like he was Romney running against the Lightworker. Netanyahu still won. Big.
When it comes to personal survival, and mass third world immigration into the US tends to make that a big concern, people ignore the media and focus on not getting killed. The media has power as long as Whitopia exists. Put the people of Portland right next to half of Oakland, and they’ll be joining the Klan and planning gun range visits in a heartbeat.
whiskeysplace
March 20, 2015 at 3:07 am
hear hear
roseate spoonbill
March 20, 2015 at 9:19 am
This is an excellent comment, thanks for visiting my blog.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 20, 2015 at 9:53 am
The main reason feminism got hold of the West is because even Israelis don’t know the difference between children of an Israeli father and a Palestinian mother and the children of a Palestinian father and an Israeli mother. That is, people in the West can’t grasp patrilinearity.
oogenhand
March 23, 2015 at 3:17 pm
There is a natural male (genetically encoded) revulsion to homosexuality (evolved mechanism to prevent disease) in the vast majority of men so the liberals have to propagandize against nature. If the pro-gay propaganda stops (I would feel like a homophobe if I used homosexual instead of gay because that word implies something is wrong with the gays) people’s revulsion to homosexuality will become natural again in time.
Shawn
March 20, 2015 at 11:58 am
“Maybe in 18 years there will no longer be a Jewish Israel? South Africa couldn’t withstand the liberal onslaught.”
You really believe this is what happened.. just because this is pushed by the mainstream media?
The political system that was described as apartheid was first and foremost intended to preserve the property of rich businessmen against the communist threat, by making it as obvious as possible that there should be no reason for blacks to vote. Yes, it also included sops to working class Afrikaaners and other whites, but this was something that had to be done to get the platform in place, rather than the core of the plan.
Apartheid did not end because the sanctions forced the government to end it. There was never rationing. There was never disease. Military victory suceeded military victory, again and again and again.
Apartheid ended because the same rich businessmen decided that with the USSR fallen, and the more principled and dedicated communists among the ANC eliminated, they could make a great deal more money in the short-medium term when sanctions were lifted. How convenient that true RSA patriots like Clive Derby-Lewis did their dirty work for them (killing Chris Hani) in the latter issue! It doesn’t matter that South Africa is rapidly turning into a toilet- they have already made, and continue to make money as the ANC mysteriously fails to appropriate their resource holdings. And they, unlike Brandon Huntley and Charl and Naira Nel and every other South African who is not at fault for the state of their country, do not have any trouble escaping it.
kindharmlessandagreeablemorons
March 20, 2015 at 4:06 pm
I think agnostic would have a word to say about some of the things that actually were GOP victories weren’t that good.
Foolish Pride
March 22, 2015 at 12:28 am
On a relative scale in comparison with other perceived conservative issues, Israel gets a fair shake from the liberal media.
Items that confirm your bias tend to go unnoticed because they read as ‘objective news’. Meaning that if you are pro-Israel, articles that are also pro-Israel at the least in their omission of the obvious critique that any similar or even lesser conservative issue would receive from say the NYT, would simply go unremembered as confirmation of media fairness or even a bias toward your view even if just manifested in a lack of will to attack that would be levied at other similar or lesser issues.
One example of many that could be listed: the true left sees Israel as a racist country. You’ll never see that perspective in the mainstream media, at least not in a manner that is outright dismissive of the accusation; but usually not at all. The media knows that something that isn’t addressed isn’t an issue. In contrast, the media will turn any flinch toward racial awareness of any other western country into a scandal. Another example: Netenyahu just went through a minor scandal owing to some election rhetoric. For any other politician, the media would have made him persona non grata and they likely would have made it racial. In this instance, NPR actually had him on to present his side of the issue. They won’t present the other side for any other issue on the liberal agenda. The possible examples are many.
What this says to me is that the liberal media occasionally hat-tips to the true left view of Israel, but in general controls the conversation toward their de facto endorsement of Israel.
None of my comments are a reflection of my personal views on Israel. I endorse Israel on political principle but have a difficult time resolving their lack of expressed endorsement of the American Right and their willingness to be in-bed with leftist American orgs. The reciprocity of right-wing Judaism must come.
Jon
March 22, 2015 at 10:23 am
Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota received more support from Jews than he did from gentile whites. Jewish support for Republicans is coming in the near future. Obama’s dissing of Netanyahu is pissing off a lot of regular non-elite Jews.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 22, 2015 at 11:46 am