Author Archives: admin

Jason Putnam, Bowling Alone —

SUMMARY:

—“Are you engaged with your community? Or are you “hunkering down?”
Are you connecting with friends, volunteering or involved in politics? Or are you drawing into yourself, “like a turtle?”
Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam has completed an important study of more than 30,000 North Americans and concluded that – especially if you live in ethnically diverse cities such as Toronto, Vancouver or Los Angeles – it’s likely you are “hunkering down.”
That’s the colloquial phrase that Putnam, who has been an adviser to everyone from Bill Clinton and Tony Blair to the U.S. State Department and the World Bank, uses to describe the lack of trust he discovered among most North Americans in diverse urban settings. . . .

Still, the author of the classic book Bowling Alone, which chronicles the decline in civil engagement in North America since the 1950s, has felt contradictory feelings as his findings have been confirmed by researchers in Canada, Sweden, Peru, Pakistan, Kenya and beyond.

He has realized neither of the two dominant North American myths about multiculturalism are accurate.

In contrast to conservatives’ beliefs, Putnam says multicultural diversity doesn’t necessarily lead to open “conflict” among people of different ethnic groups. “Race riots” and violence do not often break out.

On the other hand, contrary to liberals’ dreams, Putnam did not find people of different ethnicities inevitably discover “harmony” or enjoy “fusion.”

“Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours, regardless of the colour of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, vote less … have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television,” Robert Putnam writes.

Putnam’s survey of 41 American cities and towns found people in ethnically diverse regions tend to be polite – but also disengaged and wary. . . .

“Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours, regardless of the colour of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders … have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television,” Robert Putnam writes.”—

blogs.vancouversun.com/2014/02/09/ethnic-diversitys-inconvenient-truths/

***

Putnam adds a crushing footnote: his findings “may underestimate the real effect of diversity on social withdrawal.”

www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-06-25jl.html

Curt on Rothbard

The most consice criticism I’ve heard yet:

MORAL OBLIGATION TO SUPPRESS ROTHBARDIAN PSEUDOSCIENCE
(from elsewhere)

If you don’t claim economics isn’t an empirical science, and that praxeology isn’t a loose statement of operationalism, that apriorisitc reasoning produces apolitically certain premises, that rights ‘exist’ without a consensual contract, that the NAP is sufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity, or that rothbardian ethics are either objectively ethical, or capable of producing an anarchic polity, then that’s good enough for me.

Just doing my job trying to rescue liberty from the lunatic fringe.

Some things are too serious to leave to crypto-marxists.

Cheers.

Letters to the Oppressed

(from me)

Dear oppressed. I think you are lying. I think your rhetoric is a completely Machaivellian bid for power. You evoke general principles when they benefit your group, and forget them when they don’t. I think your rhetoric will evolve along the same lines that the rhetoric in South Africa evolved: liberty! -> equality! -> reparations! -> Kill the Boer! The latter is advocated openly by some of S. Africa’s political organizations. In 2012 President Zuma sang ‘Kill the Boer’ at a celebration of the African National Congress (the ruling political party). The silence of the world’s media was terrifying. I can no longer assume everyone in the world is a member of my tribe. Continuing to do so while my people are demonized, while violence against us is encouraged, ignored and excused, is madness.

I want to cooperate. Most of us can cooperate. I just 1) need to be careful (ie. trust can’t be automatic), and 2) consider your demonizing of me an act of aggression.

(from Eli)

first address:

To individuals of all races/ethnicities/backgrounds/(append additional classifications here):

If I am not one of you, then you are not one of us.

Despite this distinction, I believe that we can nevertheless coexist peacefully on the basis of productive, mutually-beneficial, exchange.

Do you agree? Are you willing to demonstrate this by your actions? If so, then we can be cool (although the transaction costs of conducting exchanges will necessarily vary in proportion to our differences.) If not, then we will have problems.

I am not ashamed of who I am, what I have done, or who my ancestors were. You will gain no leverage and obtain no discounts with me by these means.

second address:

Dear oppressed of various categories. We have given up oppressing you in many ways. Yet we do not seem to have gained anything by this. In fact we’ve lost quite a bit. You have declined even to give us the slightest moral respite, as it now seems clear that the shaming and scorning will continue apace for the foreseeable future. Once one aim is achieved, they will simply lend themselves to the next.

Oppression and persecution seem ever more appealing in comparison.

(from Curt)

ON THE UNGRATEFUL OPPRESSED
If you think you are oppressed, then let me introduce you to some of my ancestors. The thought of it as ‘settling’, ‘civilizing’ or ‘conquering’. And the fact is that getting settled, civilized and conquered by them was a pretty good thing compared to some of the alternatives. So if you really think that your current state is unjust, then I think it’s perhaps time to remind you what ‘unjust’ can be.

Besides. If we don’t. Others will do it in our stead.

Because you’re a dead end.

Data on Leftist Academia

—“In its examinations of more than 150 departments and upper-level administrations at the 32 colleges and universities, the CSPC found that the overall ratio of registered Democrats to registered Republicans was greater than than 10-to-1 (1,397 Democrats, 134 Republicans). Although in the nation at large, registered Democrats and Republicans were roughly equal in number, not a single department at any of the 32 schools managed to achieve anything even remotely approaching parity in party affiliations. The closest any school came to parity was Northwestern University, where 80% of the faculty members were registered Democrats and 20% were registered Republicans.”—

www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=217

—“By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week. The imbalance is almost as striking in partisan terms, with 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans.”— (from 2005)

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8427-2005Mar28.html

—“Liberal profs admit they’d discriminate against conservatives in hiring, advancement

It’s not every day that left-leaning academics admit that they would discriminate against a minority.

But that was what they did in a peer-reviewed study of political diversity in the field of social psychology, which will be published in the September edition of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. . . .

Other studies reveal that 5 percent to 7 percent of faculty openly identify as Republicans. By contrast, about 20 percent of the general population are liberal and 40 percent are conservative.”—

www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/1/liberal-majority-on-campus-yes-were-biased/?page=all

Also, relevant — the trend is strongly leftward. Also, good data and public/private Universities: www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/24/survey-finds-professors-already-liberal-have-moved-further-left

***

In the fifties, when the communists, progressives, and leftists of all kinds were OUTSIDE of academia, their big idea was freedom of speech. But as usual, lefties are a bunch of savage, power-hungry Machiavelian back stabbers. Now that they’ve seized academia, their big idea isn’t free speech, but hate speech.