Tom Tancredo and the Sailer Strategy

Last Thursday at the National Tea Party Convention, former Congressman Tom Tancredo gave us this gem: “People who could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House.” Putting aside the obvious racism of this or whether Barack Obama is a “socialist ideologue” (I just happen to think he’s a politician of expediency), the obvious implication of this is his belief that Hispanics were responsible for putting Barack Obama in the White House. Tancredo also said that Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country.”

But if you look at exit poll data, the two biggest racial reasons for Obama victory was an increase in support from white males and an increased turnout and overwhelming support from African-Americans. In 2004, George W. Bush received a solid 62% of white males. In 2008, John McCain was only able to carry 57%. And for all the talk in the Roissysphere about women loving Obama, he only did two point better among white women than John Kerry did. (Although it is interesting that the gender gap was largest in the northeast, where most Roissysphere bloggers are from)

There are 19 states plus the District of Columbia where Obama won the white vote for 222 electoral votes, and they weren’t just coastal states. They included rust-belt states like Michigan and Wisconsin and even two states that Bush won in 2004, Iowa and long-time Republican state Colorado. If you add three states where Obama narrowly lost the white vote and at least 10% of the voters where African-American (Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania), that takes him to 268, just two short of victory. I can also safely say that because of his margin of victory and the low percentage of Hispanic voters that Obama would have carried Ohio and Virginia without Hispanic support. Although 15% of Nevada voters are Hispanic, because McCain only received 53% of white vote and 10% of the state voters where African-American, Obama still would have carried it. The only states where it might be reasonable to suggest that Hispanics pushed Obama over the edge are New Mexico, Florida, North Carolina, and Indiana. And in the case of Indiana and North Carolina, shifts in the white vote played a much greater role than Hispanics. As for Florida, Obama’s victory there had much to do from a shift from Cuban Americans, the most assimilated group of Hispanics.

Steve Sailer, an articulate opponent of illegal immigration, has made the case that Republican victories are dependent on large shares of the white vote. And comparing the numbers from 2004 to 2008 would prove him right. Virginia and North Carolina, two states essential for a Republican victory in 2012, saw significant drops in the white vote. In Virginia, support for the GOP dropped from 68% to 60%, causing Barack Obama to become the first Democratic nominee to win the Commonwealth since Lyndon Johnson. In the Tarheel State, white support went from 73% to 64%. Over in Indiana, another traditionally Republican state that Obama carried, Bush carried 65% of whites while McCain was only able to nab 54%.

As for Tancredo’s support for a civics literacy test, while it true that Obama won voter who did not graduate from high school 63%-35%, he also won voters of every educational level, so it’s a stretch to suggest that Obama’s voters are dumber than McCain. It annoyed me when liberals suggested Bush voters where dumber than Gore and Kerry voters and I believe the same principle applies.

I don’t deny that illegal immigration is a problem for this country and that the Republican Party faces long-term demographical problems. But is fundamentally dishonest to ignore the facts and scapegoat the loss on an election on a group that played a very small role. The obvious reason for Obama’s victory is that the traditional base of the Republican Party abandoned them. How exactly they can won back will be debated among pundits and party regulars, but seeing Obama’s falling numbers, it’s clear that they are there for the taking.

Random thought…

I haven’t read too closely into the situation but I will say that a man who’s completely open about being a Jesus look-alike who has no career aspirations, lives with his father and whose main goal in life is to fuck South American women seems a man who is pretty difficult to publicly humiliate. Just sayin’.

Why S.E. Cupp Should Embrace Her Atheism

S.E. Cupp is a frequent guest on RedEye, one of my favorite shows and is arising as one of the top commentators on the Fox News Channel. She also writes a weekly column for the New York Daily News, one of the ten most read papers in the country.  Her upcoming book is entitled Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity . It may be surprising to know then that Cupp is an admitted atheist. So why is Cupp so going out of her way to defend Christianity and accusing liberals of attacking it? A cynical answer would be that Cupp is doing what most political commentators do today: amp up their rhetoric to 11 in the hopes of generating publicity and book sales.

There is probably a more principled reason to her book as well. Similar to many bloggers in the Roissysphere, Cupp might believe that the particulars of religion are nonsense, but that religion is gives a moral framework to people and that if you take it away, you’ll be left with nihilism. Some conservative writers, such as Irving Kristol have suggested that some truths should be withheld from certain peoples. A noble lie if you will. I don’t think Cupp is that brazen and cynical, but is rather just making a correlation in her mind between people who are religious and people who are good, decent people. In her opening diary at the Daily Caller, she writes:

First of all, I say, I dislike you very much already. Not because you’ve already told me how much money you make, but because I’m a misanthrope. That’s because most of the people I meet fall far short of the examples my mother and father set decades ago. Whereas they are compassionate, hard-working, down-to-earth, unpretentious, God-fearing common folk, you are an entitled, self-important, elitist and condescending snot weasel who wears his empty moral relativism and cheap “Daily Show” pieties like they are Olympic medals.

Like S.E., I am extremely troubled by moral relativism. For a long time, I bought into the mindset best expressed by supposed Fyodor Dostoyevsky quote, “If there is no God, then everything is permitted.” For this reason I was unwilling to identify myself as an atheist until fairly recently. As long as it is thought that life is a choice between religious faith and moral subjectivism, religious faith will win out because people are rightly afraid of what subjectivism will lead to. But the battle between faith and subjectivism is a false choice. When I discovered that there can be objective morality that is based in reason rather than faith, it solved my biggest hang-up about atheism.

William F. Buckley is famously quoted as saying that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone book than by the 2,000 members of the Harvard faculty. In a similar vein, I would prefer to be governed by 2,000 randomly selected Mormons than 2,000 randomly selected Atheists because the bulk of the Mormons would have a higher commitment to morality and would probably be more disposed to my views on markets and national defense. That certainly does not mean that atheism is itself immoral, but I do believe that most atheists do not believe in objective morality. This means that atheists who do believe in objective morality need to stand up, make their standards of morality clear and counter those who would claim that atheism necessarily leads to subjectivism.

I personally do not identify myself as a “conservative” because I believe word implies a certain reverence for tradition and institutions which I do not share. If forced, I would classify myself as a classical liberal or in more familiar terms, a libertarian. Nonetheless, I take an interest in the future of conservatism because it is the most realistic hedge against the growing power against the state and I align myself with the Republican Party. In order for conservatism and the Republican Party to maximize its appeal, they both need to argue from a place of reason rather than faith and fear. If you’d like to read further into that, I’d recommend the articles “The Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party” by Ed Hudgins and “The Party of Modernity” by David Kelley.

I’m Not With Coco

“Stewie: You know, it is so fashionable to take a shot at Jay Leno. Look, the fact is the man is out there every bloody night with fresh material and he’s charming.” – Family Guy

I don’t quite share Stewie’s enthusiasm, but I do believe that the piling on of Jay Leno and exaltation of Conan O’Brian has been excessive. In 2004, NBC basically pressured Leno into agreeing to a deal where he would leave the Tonight Show in five years. Leno was #1 in his time-slot at 11:35, had been #1 for a decade and stayed at #1 for the five years after that deal was signed. If anyone was disrespected in this whole process, it’s been Jay Leno. If NBC had stuck to the maxim, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” they never would have found themselves in this place. Yeah, Conan might have left for another network, but that’s exactly what going to happen now and they could have spared the months of embarrassing ratings and the PR hit NBC has taken as the #4 network.

How many people posting about being on “Team Conan” on Twitter were actually watching his show before this controversy started? Based on his ratings, not many. People liked Conan because he had edgy bits like Masturbating Bear, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and the Pimpbot 5000, but Conan was put into awkward position at 11:35 where he had to tone his act down and try to become more mainstream. The older audience who didn’t like Conan was never going to like him no matter what he did and his core audience would rather watch Stephen Colbert or other programming that don’t have to appeal to a broad demographic.

Conan decided that he would rather leave NBC than be pushed back a half hour. In his statement, he made it look like he trying to defend “the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting” that would be compromised if it started at 12:05. But in reality, this was about Conan feeling like he was getting dissed and deciding that he wasn’t going to go along with it. I can respect a man for taking a stand, but I get annoyed when he gives fake, altruistic reasons for it. I watched Conan’s finale on Friday and he was funny, sincere and heartfelt. In short, the exact opposite of the bitter pettiness he had demonstrated up to that point.

UPDATE: Bill Carter of the New York Times makes my point for me.

Admiration for a Mail-Order Bride?

For God knows what reason, I found myself watching Oprah a few days ago. The topic was on marriage around the world. The first segment involved a Danish woman talking to Egyptian women about marriage and gender roles. This was interesting enough, but it was the second segment that I truly found fascinating.

Lera Loeb is a woman from the Ukraine who came to the United States as student, but had to return to Ukraine when her student visa expired. Desperate, she signed up on a mail-order bride website so that she could get back to the United States. The whole story can be read in this Glamour piece. Lera’s husband is a successful music producer but he’s awkward looking in a Christopher Walken way. It’s easy to see why this option might have been appealing to him. This was a free trade and both parties got exactly what they wanted. He got a hot, young wife. She got a ticket to the United States and a chance to pursue her dreams. As Kerry Howley noted, this kind of arraignment is not that different than most marriages through history.

See Rule 5…

In Atlas Shrugged, there is a minor character named Cheryl Brooks. She is a young woman who leaves her unambitious family in Buffalo because she knows that she’ll never amount to anything if she stays with them. She tells her future husband: “we were stinking poor and not giving a damn about it. That’s what I couldn’t take−that they didn’t really give a damn about it. That’s what I couldn’t take−that they didn’t really give a damn. Not enough to lift a finger.” Like Cheryl, Lera is a woman who refused to take the path of least resistance and live a mundane life. She took affirmative steps to give herself a chance for happiness. She is not a woman who just wanted to leach off her American husband. She wanted to create a successful life on her own terms and she has very clearly done so. For that, she has my admiration.

The Painful Aesop of Roissy

The newly labeled “dark lord” has made his triumphant return after taking a two and a half week break from blogging. (Hey, I go two and a half weeks without blogging all the time, so who am I to judge?) It was largely assumed that he went into hiding over having his identity exposed by Lady Raine and facing legal threats from Denise Romano, but since his identity was exposed around Thanksgiving and he didn’t take his break until Christmas, maybe he just fucking with his readers.

My friend Obsidian has made this an issue of free speech, but I’m less sympathetic. In 1993, Peter Steiner drew a cartoon with the caption, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Amazingly ahead of its time, it spoke to the mysterious nature of how nobody knows what a character on the internet is actually like. This degree of mystery has led people to believe that they can write or post anything on the internet without having to face any consequences whatsoever. In real life, there are an infinite number of things that we are “free” to say or do but chose not because we’re afraid of what might happen.

For instance, if a man had a disagreement with a woman, it’s unlikely that would try to spread a rumor about her being in a porno because he would likely get caught and have to face the consequences. But on the internet, he can hide under a pseudonym. The internet, because of its anonymous nature, has become a haven for slander, innuendo and mistruths. Anyone who tries to wrap this kind of behavior in the flag and the First Amendment is being disingenuous. Now, revealing someone’s personal information on the internet is wrong, but people need to carefully consider the potential consequences of the things they posts. If a guy gets drunk, wonders into a bad neighborhood at three in the morning and gets mugged, he shouldn’t be screaming about wrong it was that he got mugged. He should take a long look in the mirror and accept responsibility for the choices he had made up to that point.

One of the best pieces of advice Roissy ever gave was this:

Every text or email or recordable instance of conversation you have with a girl must follow this simple rule:

If it were given a public airing, let’s say on a blog or the Verizon Center jumbotron, you should feel comfortable with what you have written for the world to see.

Yet this man chose to give first initial and last name as well as his occupation to a writer for the Globe and Mail. By doing that, he set himself up for getting exposed. Maybe Roissy truly is comfortable with what he has written for the world to see, but the fact that he’s deleted several of his past posts indicates otherwise. This is a stark reminder of the fate that befalls the arrogant.

BTW, when is Zeets gonna get a blog?

The Legacies of Ayn Rand and Ted Kennedy

Toward the end of a recent Bloggingheads between Timothy Noah of Slate and Megan McArdle of the Atlantic, they discussed whether Ted Kennedy would be remembered 100 years from now and whether Ayn Rand would be remember (around the 50 minute mark). McArdle is a fan of Rand, but referred to her novels as “beach reading.” (Although I believe she was a better philosopher than novelist, I do believe she was a writer of tremendous power) I’d like to make the case for why I believe Ayn Rand will be more remembered 100 years from now than Ted Kennedy, or least more remembered than 99% of Members of Congress from this era.

Looking back at any era in history, the writers, artists and poets always have a more enduring legacy than the politicians. Michelangelo is far more renowned today than the Popes who commissioned his works. Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone are two of the most famous British Prime Ministers, but neither is as famous as Charles Dickens. With the exception of Lincoln, Walt Whitman is more famous than any American President from his era. This isn’t to say that Rand will be as an enduring a figure as Michelangelo, Dickens or Whitman, but the fact that Atlas Shrugged sold 200,000 copies in 2008 shows that Rand already has endured the test of time. Outside of Rand’s circle, I’m sure that very few people in the late 1950s thought her popularity would sustain itself for more than half a century.

In the introduction to 25th anniversary edition of The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand wrote:

Many people have asked me how I feel about the fact that The Fountainhead has been in print for twenty-five years. I cannot say that feel anything in particular, except a kind of quiet satisfaction. In this respect, my attitude toward writing is expressed by a statement of Victor Hugo: “If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away” Certain writers, of whom I am one, do not live, think or write on the range of the moment. Novel, in the proper sense of the word, are not written to vanish in a month or a year. That most of them do, today, that they are written and published as if they were magazines, to fade as rapidly, is one of the sorriest aspects of today’s literature, and one of the clearest indictments of its dominant esthetic philosophy: concrete-bound, journalistic Naturalism which has now reached its dead end in the inarticulate sounds of panic.

Almost all politicians are exclusively focused on the immediate, i.e. “What’s going to help me win the next election?” This is the reason why almost all of them are quickly forgotten. A proper novelist (one not writing for immediate profit) is writing for all of time. Whatever Ted Kennedy accomplishments were in civil rights, womens’ right, etc., they will be added onto and altered by future legislators, but a novel can never be altered. (Hipster trends like “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” be damned.)

Leave the BCS Alone!

In the past, I’ve seen Rep. Joe Barton of Texas and Senator Orrin Hatch’s efforts to crack down on the BCS as a quixotic effort to appease their constituents that would never go anywhere. But somewhat surprising to me, Barton’s bill which would prohibit a bowl game from calling itself a “national championship unless it was through a playoff, advanced through a House Subcommittee on Wednesday.

Barton’s BCS bill provides an example of exactly what’s wrong with the Republican Party. They’re against intrusive government regulation, except when they are. They denounce a government take-over of health care, but don’t seem to have much of a problem with a government take-over college football. Barton’s bill isn’t exactly that, but I have feeling that a lot of “small-government conservatives” in Congress wouldn’t mind the government mandating an eight or sixteen playoff that the major conferences and college presidents have refused to implement.

Michael Wilbon and others frequently call the BCS a cartel. But who does this cartel consist of? The major conferences, the conferences that bring in the most money, get the highest TV ratings and send the most fans to bowl games. Why then shouldn’t they get the biggest slice of the pie? What has the inclusion of the minor conferences into the BCS done anything to improve it economically? Nothing, the four BCS bowl games involving minor conference teams have all been among the eight lowest rated BCS games since the inception of the system. If anything, the minor conferences should be grateful for the BCS’s existence because it’s given them access where there previously was none. Under the old bowl system, the bowls selected whatever teams would get them the most money, regardless of how good they were. When BYU won the National Championship in 1984, they were stuck with a mediocre Michigan team in the lesser-paying Holiday Bowl. Now, they would have been guaranteed access to one of the major games, such has been the case for Utah, Boise State, Hawaii and now TCU.

It’s been often pointed out that the major conference and schools would stand to make more money with a playoff system. If that’s true, then why do we need the government to force a playoff? I would argue that the mediocre ratings for the lower-tier BCS bowl games might also give a pretty good free market incentive for a “plus one” system or a playoff. The Capital One Bowl, which features teams from the TV-friendly SEC and Big 10, has received higher ratings than the Orange Bowl two years in a row and considering the Capital One’s match-up of Penn State and LSU versus the Orange’s Georgia Tech and Iowa, I’d say it’s a pretty good bet that it will happen again. However, if the second tier BCS games where to become national semi-finals, the interest of casual sports fans would be much higher. Personally, I’m in favor of a “plus-one” system where the top four teams play in a first round bowl game and then the winner play for the National Championship. But if the BCS wants to continue in an irrational direction that limits their profits, that’s their business, not the government’s.

Carrie Prejean and the Inevitability of Gay Marriage

It doesn’t take much to become a household name. Just be drop-dead gorgeous and be willing to express a controversial opinion. That’s how it worked for Carrie Prejean. When she was asked by Perez Hilton whether she thought gay marriage should be legalized in all fifty states, she responded with this gem:

“Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And, you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman.”

Taking Robert Stacy McCain’s advice, here’s a gratuitous glamour show of the lovely Prejean:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now regardless of your opinion on gay marriage, you have to agree that this is a confusing, contradictory answer that should not be taken as a substantive policy statement . So then, what was the reaction of opponents of gay marriage, particularly those in the conservative media? They made her into a hero. She was given frequent appearances on the Fox News Channel. She was given a book deal at the tender age of 22. She was even given a speaking spot at the FRC Action Values Voter Summit, the top annual conference for social conservatism whose slate of speakers included senators, congressmen and potential presidential candidates like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty.

Two Cheers for Evolutionary Psychology

My dad used to tell me that gambling was only thing that made him interested in mathematics. His desire to succeed at a vice required to pick up some virtues of intelligence. In a similar vein, becoming involved in Game gave me a interest in evolutionary psychology that I otherwise would not have. I absorbed books like “The Red Queen” and “Sperm Wars,” both going into fascinating detail about what men and women are attracted to and why. (I might also recommend “Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters”) It wasn’t just for my own selfish motivation of figuring out what the aspects of a natural alpha, I was legitimately interested in understanding the basis of our desires. The talk of early single-celled blobs bored me, I was more interested in human interactions and how we screen others for health, success and other factors.

It’s quite striking that someone like Richard Dawkins, far from the classic definition of alpha, would become such a hero within the Community. But he provides an important narrative to those who would like to believe it. Sexual desire is encoded into our DNA and we have been blessed a tremendous system to detect what sexual partners are best for us. The complexities of humanity are truly a wonder to behold.

We as humans should know as much about ourselves as we can discover. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “there is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.” If man is going fully prosper, he must know what his tendencies are, and then use his rational faculties to make the right decisions to guide his life. If he just goes on his basest instincts, he’ll be denying his humanity and suffer greatly for it. “Nature to be commanded, must be observed,” Francis Bacon stated centuries ago. That would seem to imply that is man is capable of commanding nature. (Subduing and conquering the earth if you’re the religious type).

Evolutionary psychology should not be an excuse to default into our animal past, it should be an attempt to show how man how he came to be. Too often, I’m afraid EvoPsych provides a convenient excuse to escape responsibility for our humanity and deny the existence of free will. A man who enjoys sleeping with sluts and uses the excuse, “I can’t help it! I’m only acting in accordance with my nature” is a coward who evades morality. A woman who sleeps with two men in order to have a “sperm war” is even worse. EvoPsych is a fascinating look of how gender roles, but it’s not a moral defense of them. (Although there can be a moral defense of gender differences as I looked at in a previous post) Is it any wonder then why so many people are so desperate to discredit evolution? They’ve been led to believe that backers of evolutionary theory are indifferent to morality. Wholesale acceptance of EvoPsych without regard for a system of morality is a step away from nihilism.

Biomechanics are not god, we are. We are the powerful beings in the world, and in a sense, we are swifter than nature. Evolution is an extremely slow process, yet man was able to achieve more in the last 10,000 than he did in the previous 100,000. Even backers of EvoPsych acknowledge this by saying even though we live in extremely advanced times, we largely have the same brains we did in prehistoric times. But then if the prehistoric brain was capable of building the Empire State Building and putting a man on the moon, is it really that bad? For instance, agriculture is what made all civilization possible, and it could have only been put into practice by a rational mind. Let us not pretend now, that we are merely slaves to our evolutionary whims. We are far stronger and far more capable.