Unlike Dylan Hales, I think Britain’s decision to ban Michael Savage from even visiting England for the sin of uttering a few politically incorrect words about Islam and multiculturalism is our business. As someone who enjoys visiting Europe and is guilty of a few thought crimes, this concerns me personally.

While another country’s immigration laws should not be America’s concern, a legitimate purpose of the State Department is to facilitate business and tourist travel to other countries. We have a reciprocal visa waiver program with the United Kingdom that allows Americans to visit the country for business or tourism for up to 90 days without a visa. There’s no reason why a restrictionist should oppose these treaties unless they are with countries—like Mexico—whose citizens have a habit of not returning home within 90 days.

I’m not saying we should go to war over this, but there’s no reason why our State Department shouldn’t object and threaten to withdrawal from the visa waiver agreement.

Over at The American Conservative, Dan McCarthy defends Dave Weigel and Reason magazine’s unyielding coverage of Ron Paul’s supposedly scandalous ties to “racism” and other thought crimes. According to McCarthy, “David Weigel is a reporter first and a libertarian second: if he’s assigned to write about a story, he’s going to dig up whatever he can and report on what’s most controversial.”

The problem is that Weigel and co. are not merely objective reporters or even muckrakers.  They are advocacy journalists who wrote on the Ron Paul Political Report as a pretext to demand that Paul and the movement he represents purge and denounce all “racists,” “homophobes,” and anyone else who does not sufficiently embrace “free minds and free markets.”

Weigel and Julian Sanchez concluded their magnum opus on The Ron Paul Newsletters,

Ron Paul may not be a racist, but he became complicit in a strategy of pandering to racists—and taking “moral responsibility” for that now means more than just uttering the phrase. It means openly grappling with his own past—acknowledging who said what, and why. Otherwise he risks damaging not only his own reputation, but that of the philosophy to which he has committed his life.

Later Weigel complained that Paul’s book contained nods to Lew Rockwell, Paul Craig Roberts, and Tom DiLorenzo. 

I don’t expect Weigel or any journalist to simply mouth off Ron Paul talking points (I certainly haven’t,) but if their specific goal is to blacklist anyone who doesn’t tow the open borders/multi-culti line, we should not hesitate to speak out.

I completely agree with Austin Bramwell that the Conservative Movement was never made up by WASP elitists and conversely that the WASP elite has long been beholden to the Left. Yet this does not mean that conservatives are not WASPy in some sense. When you see someone wearing a Blue Blazer and Rep Striped Tie, the instinct is to guess they are a Republican. This would be a bad guess in Greenwich, but it would be a pretty good guess if you were in DC, or if the person wearing it is not a WASP.  (Yes, I’m aware I fit this description completely.) But the average Republican voter is more likely to wear Carhartt than Brooks Brothers.

This disconnect is nothing new.

The ethnic whites who founded the conservative movement defended and tried to emulate the values of that the Northeastern WASP establishment abandoned. If there was a mass base of the conservative movement at its infancy, it was the ethnic whites who rallied around Joe McCarthy and the Southerners who resisted forced integration. As busing and similar issues became a nationwide problem in the 1960s and 70s, these two groups combined to some extent (George Wallace had large pockets of support in states like Ohio, New Jersey and Michigan.)

Yet early on, the Conservative Movement threw both these groups under the bus—at least in part to gain approval from the then current establishment. This problem was exacerbated because, as Bramwell notes, the New Left rang the final death knell to the “Best and Brightest” crowd. Thereafter, defending the establishment was opposing the Left. 

Today, with the WASPs firmly out of power and the New Left and others filling the establishment, Republicans occasionally manage to win elections by attacking the “liberal elite” through some bread and circus. When they gut moose, eat freedom fries, burn Dixie Chicks CDs, or talk to Joe the Plumber, conservatives hail them as standing up for the “Real America” against the pointy heads. During the 2008 GOP primaries, David Brooks acknowledged, “you wouldn’t know it from the past few years, the white working class is the backbone of the G.O.P. Huckabee is most in tune with these voters.” Why?  Because he talked about bathing in Lava Soap.

But when a George Wallace or Pat Buchanan actually defends the interests of Middle America, he is engaging in a “demagogic populism.” The problem with Buchanan rallies, according to Brooks, is that,

There are none of those Chamber of Commerce officers in golf shirts and tasselled loafers. Instead, Buchanan draws the beefy, 300-pound guys with tattoos up their arms and sleeveless T-shirts. He draws the guys with shaggy biker beards and the Teamsters who park their rigs in the lot and get hoarse shouting, ‘Go, Pat, go!’

They also, if I may add, don’t go snowboarding. 

In my review of John Lukacs review of Pat Buchanan’s The Unnecessary War in the American Conservative, I wrote, 

All of Pat’s book have been savaged by both the liberal and “conservative” establishment, and he has weathered the storm. In the past, they were able to preface their attacks with “Even Bill Buckley…” Now they can say “Even his own magazine…”

According to plan, James Kirchick of Ron Paul Letters fame opens his piece “From Pitchfork Pat to Brownshirt Buchanan” in The New Republic by using Lukacs’s review to go after Pat:

In the latest issue of The American Conservative, the Old Right magazine founded by Taki Theodoracopulos and Pat Buchanan, historian John Lukacs reviews Buchanan’s latest book, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World (yes, it’s actually called that). The review is absolutely devastating, and the least that can be said of Buchanan is that he would exemplify the sort of editorial freedom in which a writer could compare him unfavorably to David Irving within the pages of his own magazine (that Buchanan might fancy a favorable comparison to Irving is beside the point). I know few editors who would publish a harsh critique of a book authored by someone on his masthead.

For good measure, Kirchick adds, “the greatest indictment of Buchanan ... came from one of his mentors, Bill Buckley ... In his magisterial, book-length essay, In Search of Anti-Semitism.”

I rest my case.

This weekend, I learned that I was a “genetic determinist.”  I’m not really sure exactly what it means.  Apparently it has something to do with not liking Barack Obama and not hating people in West Virginia and Kentucky.  Anyway this presumably means that us determinists will “make their way back to the GOP, make their peace with the neocons, and together with Bill Kristol and the rest of the Fox News commissars endlessly wallow in the collected sayings of the Rev. Wright? “

Preparing for my new role, I subscribed to National Review.  The latest issue arrived tonight, and I expected to find great new genetic determinist reasons to support John McCain.  Much to my surprise and dismay, look what was on the cover

The previous issue’s cover story was “The God of Black Power: On Black Liberation Theology and the Meaning of Rev. Wright.”  I’m confused.  Do they support Obama or McCain?

Justin’s latest ventures in behavioral genetics and differential psychology gives us a stunningly logical argument: Barack Obama is so smart that there is no way that blacks could, on average, have lower IQs than whites, or at the very least, not as low as the various racist pseudo-scientists who he doesn’t bother to name (or read?)

I’ll be the first to admit—or should I say the 250 millionth to admit—that Barack Obama is intelligent and articulate. I’m sure Obama is smarter than George W Bush and probably even John McCain; but he’s not a genius. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mitt Romney, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton are smarter than him, but we don’t hear much about how smart they are.  That everyone has to go out of their way to mention how intelligent and articulate he is, suggests that they implicitly acknowledge that he is an anomaly among African Americans.

As I said earlier, I am not saying that racial differences in intelligence are genetic and that while Obama is smart, he’s not a genius. But for the sake of argument let’s assume Barack Obama has a genius IQ of 145 and that the racist pseudoscience is actually correct. Are these two incompatible?

The best known pseudoscientific book that argues that intelligence testing does matter and may have some genetic and racial component is Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve. The title refers to the Bell shaped normal distribution of IQ scores. According to pseudo-scientists, different racial groups have different, but overlapping distributions.

Justin has already expressed his aversion to statistics, and perhaps he thinks the whole concept of a standard deviation is racist pseudoscience since it was discovered by Francis Galton, but I hope you all will humor me.

A standard deviation is a unit of statistical measure that is a unit of the probability of an outcome would occur. The more standard deviations from the mean, the less likely it will occur. This chart shows the likelihood of up to three standard deviations on a bell curve.

In IQ, each standard deviation is 15 points. So every 15 points away from the mean, a random person has the above likelihood of having that IQ .

Racist pseudoscientist Richard Lynn estimates that the average IQ of Kenyans is approximately 72. This is quite low. It’s considered borderline retarded, and nearly two standard deviations lower than those welfare taking, illegitimate child having, Hillary Clinton voting rapists in West Virginia. Nonetheless, this means that 13.6% of the population has an IQ between 87 and 102, 2.1% of the population has an IQ between 102 and 117, .3% of the population as an IQ between 117 and 132, and .006% has an IQ above 132.

As Justin acknowledged, Obama’s mother was White. The originators of racist pseudoscience normed IQ tests at 100 for the average White score. So according to the pseudoscientists, the average IQ of a half-White, half-Kenyan would be 86. The genius IQ of 145, is slightly four standard deviations above 86.

That means that approximately one in 16,000 Cau-Kenyans would have an IQ of 145 or higher. This is less likely than the one in 300 whites who would have such a score, but not impossibility.

In reality, Obama is much more likely to have that score. Racist pseuedo-scientists admit that their pseudoscience is not a perfect science. They fully acknowledge that the gap between whites and Africans is not entirely genetic. While they don’t think that forced busing and head start would create black Einstein’s, they believe that basic nutrition and education have an impact. This means that a random Kenyan baby in the raised in the right environment would have an IQ above the average of 72. Obama was certainly raised in such an environment.

Furthermore, regardless of what the average Kenyan IQ is, Barack Obama Sr. was certainly on the far right end of its Bell Curve, and his mother was smarter than the average white person.  Hypothetically let’s say that Obama Sr.was in the top 1% of Kenyans, and Obama’s mother was in the top 10% of whites, then there is a 1 in 50 percent chance that Obama would have a genius IQ.

Given that Obama is seen as the greatest hope for America, I think that’s pretty good odds.

Justin’s does a great job taking my friend Dave Weigel to task, but I he’s missing a larger point.  Lew Rockwell has been instrumental in helping Ron Paul’s career for over 30 years.  He served as Paul’s Chief of Staff when he was in Congress in the 1970s.  He helped Ron Paul’s run for president in 1988, and encouraged him to return to Congress in 1996.  In between these campaigns, Rockwell used his immense skill as a fundraiser to maintain and grow Paul’s following up to and including his latest run for president.

In contrast, Reason was running debates as to whether or not they should even endorse Paul.  Then when Ron Paul’s campaign became a serious movement—in part because of Lew Rockwell, and in no part because of Reason—then they jumped on the bandwagon. 

Then the Ron Paul Letters came out—which yes, Dave, are completely defensible in contrast to the rantings of Rev. Wright.  Despite the huge hissy fits from Reason, The New Republic, the Cato Institute and the rest of the usual suspects; this seemed to have absolutely no negative effect on Paul’s campaign or movement. 

Now Weigel expects Ron Paul to turn his back on one of his most loyal and effective supporters of over thirty years because he was allegedly responsible for a pseudo controversy.  I have been less enthusiastic about the “Ron Paul Revolution” than some, but if he sticks to his America First principles rather than whatever Reason wants him to be, you can count me in. 

John points out that there are some neoconservative elitists and racists who like abortion for eugenic reasons.  This may be true, but regardless of what they say about abortion after a few drinks, they are not the types of people who support or get involved with NARAL or Planned Parenthood. 
The mindset among most of these militant pro-choicers has nothing to do with wanting more or less children of any race.  It has everything to do with their view that every woman—regardless of race or economic status—has the right to abort their fetus and that society has an obligation to make it possible for them to do it.  Thus, they see providing abortions to blacks as a great step forward to racial equality. 

This may be incredibly twisted logic, but it is simply disingenuous to purport that they have some secret racist motivation behind their views.  As the comment section shows many pro-lifers agree with me, but they still find it justified because it is an expedient argument to convert leftists and blacks to the pro-life cause.
This is not going to happen.  I have yet to hear a story of a single leftist who has been converted to the pro-life cause because they discovered that abortion is racist.  Instead, they see denying black women the opportunity to exercise their tax-funded “right” to an abortion as racist.

Blacks are already overwhelmingly pro-life, but they vote overwhelmingly for pro-choice Democrats no matter what.  Even if they were convinced that abortion was racist, there is no way for Republicans to out anti-racist Democrats.  Therefore, the only way for Republicans to get these blacks to vote Republican would be to go as far to the Left on every single issue as the Democrats to get the black vote—which is exactly why these dishonest arguments have negative consequences.

Of course, in the course of their pandering they are going to alienate more white voters than the few blacks that they would gain, and the pro-life cause would be set back anyway.
Thus, the only thing accomplished by these arguments is to distract pro-lifers into fighting “racism” rather than abortion. 

Lest there be any doubt of how pervasive this is, here are two e-mails I’ve gotten in literally the last two days:

One is from Students for Life of America “Defund Racism Day: Government Funding Racism through Planned Parenthood”

The other is from the Family Research Council:

To commemorate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the 40th anniversary of his assassination, over 40 leading ministers - 20 whites and 20 blacks - made a commitment to bring racial reconciliation to our nation within a decade. (Click here to read the full statement: “A Reconciliation Referendum” by Tony Perkins and Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr.)
There is an urgent need for a deliberate and coordinated effort among Christian pastors and spiritual leaders in America to lead the nation in racial reconciliation.
The failure of good Christian people to provide a clear and convincing example of racial unity within the Church has contributed to the divide between the races in the nation, and it only appears to be widening.

We must recognize that racism is not just a social problem in America; it is also a spiritual problem. It is a matter of the heart. Healing racism in the nation is, therefore, a challenge facing our country that must first be addressed in and by the Church. We believe that contrary to what Americans have seen in the last few weeks, the Church can and must help lead the nation toward reconciliation among the races.

We are calling for all Bible-believing Christians to accept this Reconciliation Referendum and become active healing agents in this nation.
Will you stand with us?

If so, please add your name to the growing number of Christians who have made a commitment to bring racial reconciliation to our nation within the next decade.

Sincerely,
Tony Perkins

No one should be surprised by Obama’s remarks at a San Francisco fund raiser that because small towns in Pennsylvania and the Midwest haven’t had sufficient economic growth, they “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

This is exact same thing he said in his much heralded race-transcending speech in Philadelphia where he attributed white “resentment” to “a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.”
According to Andrew Sullivan, Obama would end both all racial divisions and the culture war?  It’s now pretty clear how Obama thinks he can do it.

As soon as the unwashed socially conservative, xenophobic, and racist white masses get their universal health care and a more progressive tax code, they will have no reason to go to church, own a gun, be concerned about urban crime, or notice that their country is being taken over by immigrants.  They will immediately cease to be “bitter” and “resentful” and embrace the social values of the people who attend Obama fund raisers in San Francisco. 

If Hillary gets the nomination, we will hear Jack Kemp and co. tell us how this is a “historic oppurtunity” for Republicans to appeal to black voters after the racist anti-Obama campaign from the Clintons.  McCain will still get less than 10% of the black vote.