Equality, Battlefield Earth, Diversity, Aether, Harrison Bergeron, and other matters

Mail 721 Saturday, April 21, 2012

Equality

"that all men are created equal": the Great Lie in the US Declaration of Independence. The Great Lie, because it is patently and obviously untrue.

Some people simply are superior to others. Was the opinion of Albert Einstein (who, I believe, became a US citizen) of equal value to Joe Epsilon Minus?

Ian Campbell

But of course. Do you really think that Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, were unaware that in the real world men are not equal, either in potential or in realization of their talents, or in moral worth? Do you believe an experienced soldier doesn’t know very well that his troopers are not equal? Yet we made that an axiom of the Republic.

An axiom. Which is to say, we agreed not to question that as a principle. All are equal before the law, as opposed to England where some could be tried only by their peers, or in Visigothic Spain where there were categories of citizenship, or in Rome where there were Patricians and Plebians, or – well, I needn’t belabor the point. For good or ill, we contracted to the notion that people are equal. But that works both ways, or should.

What we have done is take a self-evidently limited axiom and tried to stretch it beyond all limits, then pretend that everyone really and truly is equal, and there must be equality of outcome as well as of opportunity.

Now as a matter of theology, all men as seen by God may very well be of equal worth; and we wrote that into the Declaration also. We postulated that there is a morality external to our wishes, and we agreed to act as if we believe that to be true.

As to the value of citizens, that is a much different question. What does it mean, value? And to whom? In some cultures the legitimate children of some fathers are definitely worth more than their illegitimate children who are in turn worth more than the children legitimate or not of less favored fathers. That we rejected.

No, all are not equal, and some are more valuable to the Republic than others, and we have always had the good sense to act that way; but we have also had the good sense not to dig too deeply into what we mean by equality and worth.

When I was young I thought and said that I thought that the law should be colorblind. This wasn’t a popular view among the adults around me in legally segregated Memphis, and I was thought a hopeless left-winger (at a time when I had no understanding of what that meant). As I grew older I never changed that view, and now I am thought a hopeless right-winger, although I am not sure what that means either. I once told one of my pre-law students who had been admitted to UCLA Law School under a minorities program to go back and tell them to stuff it: I wouldn’t have recommended him if I didn’t think he deserved acceptance, not as a black man, but as a hard working student who applied himself and would do well in law school. I never expected him to be in the top half of his class, but then not everyone will be. But he deserved to be accepted on his merits, not on the merit of being black.

And that is what I mean by equality.

Aristotle teaches us that injustice consists of treating equal thing unequally, but also of treating unequal things equally. We need to be careful what we mean by “created equal”, and we certainly cannot separate created equal from a Creator; but we long ago agreed to that, as we agreed that just powers of government come from the consent of the governed.

Diversity and the melting pot.

Jerry,

I believe that at one time before one could become a naturalised American it was necessary to have some grasp of the English language. Dropping this rule was very unwise. My job seeking Californian friend tells me that being bilingual in English and Spanish is now required by most employers. For a country to establish enclaves of people who do not speak the language of the country is very divisive.

As to Fred Reed on the black population, I expect that you are both correct. I surmise that the blacks that you meet are, pigmentation aside, no different from the whites that you meet. Fred spent a lot of time as a crime reporter riding in the police cars that patrolled the ghettos, and saw the worst side of the black population. Given inspired teaching some ghetto children can reach the middle classes but they, and the teaching that they need are in short supply. Read Fred’s cop columns if you are skeptical.

Then there is the great evil of positive discrimination. A black who has the talent and determination to rise in his profession will encounter quite reasonable doubts as to whether he rose because of his innate qualities or because, being short of the black quota, he was selected because he was the best black available.

John Edwards

RE: Diversity vs. the Melting Pot

Thank you thank you thank you! Why? For actually articulating the real problem that the Pollyanish left and ‘Derbyshire’ right refuse to concede: that the disintegration of the culture is the real problem, and not cognitive gaps, racism, etc.

As near as I can tell, blacks were doing just fine at assimilating into the middle class right up until LBJ and the Great Society basically blew that apart and set blacks (and America) back decades.

That this is very rarely mentioned is both galling and frustrating, and I thank you furiously for being one of the (very) few commentators actually pointing it out. If only you could get everyone else singing from the same hymnal, we might be able to have a sane, reasonable, discussion that we *need* to have.

Thanks again,

ECM

 

The evidence from the academies in New York and other places is that there are plenty of blacks willing and able to be assimilated into the Republic, and that this is desirable. The rejection of assimilation is a terrible tragedy. When the American culture is gone then e pluribus unum will be gone as well.

Excellent essay today.

It included this: " Yet there’s hope: there are the projects in Harlem, and Chicago, which insist on excellence in education, and which succeed, often startlingly well. You don’t see much about them in the media. Once in a while 60 Minutes will focus on such an institution, but mostly they don’t, and there’s a reason. They emphasize discipline, good grooming, politeness, and cultural assimilation along with rigorous education. And they work. They are turning out Americans who are black. And thus they are all but ignored by the liberal intellectuals."

I have seen reports on these projects and agree that they are conspicuous by their undeniable success, by general lack of widespread reporting on them in the media, and a visceral hatred shown them by the ‘education establishment’. On the other hand, the hundred odd years of empirical data that Fred refers to is still empirical data.

Unfortunately, I suspect that by demonstrating that dedicated, skilled instructors who insist on excellence and enforce classroom discipline can move the bell curve of black achievement one SD to the right, what is really demonstrated is that dedicated, skilled instructors who insist on excellence and enforce classroom discipline can take a population whose IQ bell curve peaks at 85 and instill in it what is considered to be an excellent education by our educational establishment. I also suspect, but with no supporting data other than the hundred years of data cited by Fred, that if caucasian students were ‘subjected’ to the same ‘enforce discipline and push the students to the limit’ educational environment, rather than being immersed in a culture of ‘no child left behind’ that their ‘results’ bell curve would move one SD to the right of the the black results bell curve. And if a group of Ashkenazic Jews were similarly subjected, their results bell curve would in turn peak approximately one SD to the right of the general caucasian peak. Just as a century of empirical data has consistently indicated.

Bob Ludwick

You miss the point. So what? The nation does not require that everyone be above average. It does require a certain minimum of acculturation. The academic results show that those willing to become Americans can do so. That may not be all of the young blacks. I wouldn’t know. I do know that it has been adequately demonstrated that significant numbers of young blacks respond to hard work and discipline despite some wide spread assumptions that this can’t happen.

We need as many Americans as we can get. We do not need diversity.

The High Ground

Dear Jerry;

Last week this outcropped on Chaos Manor:

"Himalayan glaciers actually GAINING ice, space scans show:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/16/himalayan_karakoram_glaciers_gaining_ice/

An inconvenient truth?

Ed

Which is hardly astonishing since glacier formation is far more dependent on rainfall and moisture content than temperature. Actually, warmer climates ought to be wetter, shouldn’t they? Which would mean more snowfall and glaciers which should mean more reflectivity which should mean cooling which – but I am not a climate modeller. I would have thought that kind of loop would be built into the models, though."

Your comments are apposite, but having ranged several of the glaciers in question, especially the Raikot, I feel obliged to point out the obvious- With major peaks above 25,000 feet, the monsoon fed glaciers between Nanga Parbat , K2 and Kargil are so high as to defy vertical migration of the frost line – global warming is not about to thaw the Death Zone anytime soon.

Incidentally , the scariest bergschund tongue on Nanga Parbat has a bridge over it, and consists , in season, of a clanking down escalator made up of house sized rocks barely lubricated with ice. You <i> really<.I>don’t want to go down there!

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics

Harvard University

Fabrication of a witness in the Zimmerman-Martin shooting.

Jerry;

There is some really good web sleuthing occurring on this case.

http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2012/04/21/update-10-part-2-the-trayvon-martin-shooting-deedee-reveals-the-false-truths/#more-37932

I expect Zimmerman to be suing the Martin family lawyers under state and federal RICO statutes.

Jim Crawford

IOM Report on Autism & Childhood Vaccination

http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2011/Adverse-Effects-of-Vaccines-Evidence-and-Causality/Report-Brief.aspx?page=2=

Autism & Childhood Vaccines

Hi Jerry-

Fifteen years ago, when my children were in the vaccination cohort, I carefully reviewed the evidence regarding autism and exposure to childhood vaccines. At that time, there was rather convincing evidence that exposure to vaccines did not increase the risk of autism. Since that time, additional evidence has accumulated that there is no relationship between vaccine exposure and autism. I am unaware of any credible evidence to the contrary. If there is evidence that now shows that vaccine exposure has the effect of increasing autism risk, I’d be greatly interested in looking at it.

Best,

-Steve=

I do not believe it is a good idea to give 25 vaccinations all at once, as they used to do. There needs to be some sanity in this business.

I have a great deal of mail on this.

Gold Record on Pioneers

“It occurred to me I have never read any novels about a race that discovers one of our probes which exited the solar system, then did a search to find us based upon the gold record.

Do you know of any (and I mean good ones, not a hack novel).

I recall the First Star Treck Film, but that does not count…

B”

L Ron Hubbard’s book Battlefield Earth has the planet attacked based on the Gold Records of the Pioneers.

Whether or not it’s a hack novel is not for me to say.

David March

Many others have pointed this out. Hubbard wrote science fiction adventure (indeed adventure of every conceivable genre – he was incredibly prolific) and much of it remains quite readable. The reputation of Battlefield Earth was not enhanced by the motion picture, which had a director afraid of his star, and who allowed the star to overact as many actors will do if the director will let them; the result was the injection of farcical scenes in a dramatic movie, and that never works. I thought the novel a bit long, but it certainly moved. Hubbard was a story teller.

Gold from Voyager

" It occurred to me I have never read any novels about a race that discovers one of our probes which exited the solar system, then did a search to find us based upon the gold record."

Well, there’s Battlefield Earth. Although it turned out that the gold was what they wanted all along, and if we’d done it on titanium or steel then they wouldn’t have bothered.

—

Mike T. Powers

» Climate Alarmist Calls For Burning Down Skeptics’ Homes Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!

Jerry,

Fallen Angels should become required reading.

http://www.infowars.com/climate-alarmist-calls-for-burning-down-skeptics-homes/

Jim Crawford

I wouldn’t mind that.

Pioneer anomaly solved?

<http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003459/>

<http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.2507v1.pdf>

Roland Dobbins

That may well be. I have always hoped that the Pioneer anomaly would provide us with an interesting test of special relativity. As they get farther and farther from the Sun the gravitational field gets thinner; under Beckmann’s theory the speed of light changes as the medium changes, and the medium is the dominant gravitational field through which the light ray travels.

Beckmann has tried to revive the notion of an aether: it consists of the gravitational field, and it’s in that field that light waves ‘wave’. As the medium changes the speed of light changes (as it does when it goes into water or a glass prism). The gravitational field of the Earth is entrained (moves with the Earth) so the Michaelson-Morley experiment would not be expected to find any proper motion of the Earth through the aether. But that’s another essay for another time.

Harrison Bergeron-short film

I didn’t know if you were aware that someone had done an excellent short film adaptation on this story. You can watch it on youtube at the following link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7mftzcZfJ0

Craig Pruett

I had never seen that. Thanks.

Fred’s variation on HARRISON BERGERON

http://www.fredoneverything.net/LLA.shtml

This was posted last November but seems to fit.

Charles Brumbelow

HARRISON BERGERON – A Secondary Story

(Re)read this story and picked up a secondary story line.

"It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor."

Notice that the HG showed up quickly, and efficiently murdered the two dancers, without any hint of having been handicapped down to average…demonstrating once again that government functionaries are not subject to their own laws, rules, and regulations, and that subjects are not provided with due process One can reasonably infer that murder charges would not be filed against the HG.

Today a drone strike would probably be used…

Charles Brumbelow

Stand Your Ground law – part 2

Dear Jerry,

After Matthew wrote and quoted the statute, I did some research. The information I gave was based on the Diane Rehm Show, air date 3 April. The transcript can be found at http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-04-03/stand-your-ground-and-concealed-weapons-laws/transcript. The background on the reason for the law is given by John Velleco of Gun Owners of America :

MR. JOHN VELLECO

10:08:38

Well, Stand Your Ground laws were needed because people were being prosecuted for defending themselves with a firearm because of the principal of the duty to retreat, and people have — would have a duty to retreat in the face of attack and…

GJELTEN

10:08:57

Is that phrase duty to retreat actually written into law in many places?

VELLECO

10:09:02

Yes. That was written into several Supreme Court cases going back to the late 1800s. And it becomes a murky proposition when — did a person retreat enough? And people were being prosecuted and bankrupt defending themselves. Even if they were not convicted, they would end up being bankrupt by overzealous prosecutions and finding themselves victimized really twice, once by the criminal, once by the criminal justice system.

The statements on police limitations, by Elizabeth Megale of Barry University Law School, are as follows:

MEGALE

10:14:43

Prosecution begins with detention in Florida. Most other states don’t start prosecution with detention. But in the statute defining immunity from prosecution, we start the definition at detention, then custody, then arrest, which means someone cannot even be detained if there’s any evidence that they acted in self-defense. In the castle, again, you have this presumption of reasonable fear.

MEGALE

10:15:07

But even outside the castle, if there’s any evidence that shows that you had a reasonable fear, then you no longer have to establish that to a jury or even to a judge. The police are not entitled or allowed to arrest you until they can disprove this — that you were not in reasonable fear or — excuse me — until they can prove you were not in reasonable fear.

MEGALE

10:15:32

So that’s the problem with this — with the Trayvon Martin case, is that when the police arrived on scene, at least one version of the story is that Mr. Zimmerman had injuries consistent with his claims that he was acting in self-defense. And if that is the case and there was any evidence of that, the police are now in a position where they must disprove his claim of self-defense before they can even detain him.

So Matthew is, of course, correct, and I should have done more research before I wrote to you. Police were required to release Zimmerman, but not to cease investigating the incident. My apologies.

Regards,

Jim (still not related to Trayvon) Martin

Terry Pratchett-This is just sad

In today’s Britain, even a Knight must hide his sword.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/sir-terry-pratchett-forges-a-sword-with-a-meteorite

Will there ever again be an England?

Cordially,

John

I guess there will never again be an England, and that is indeed sad.

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

I just now came across this:

http://io9.com/5903345/is-james-camerons-next-big-venture-asteroid+mining

and thought it would interest you. I’ve been waiting for this to happen ever since I read your first stories about it. Cameron may be a flake but Diamandis and the others seem like serious guys.

Regards,

Tim Scott=

We can hope.

.

Jerry,

This Henninger piece on Paul Ryan hits the nail straight on the head. I have been looking for someone to articulate my thoughts on this and it was a Pope from long ago.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304356604577337922580242292.html?KEYWORDS=paul+ryan

Ryan is on it…

rjw

Rod

‘Instead, they identify local businesses, like bagel shops and delis, that are not in compliance with the law, and then aggressively recruit plaintiffs from advocacy groups for people with disabilities.’

<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/nyregion/lawyers-find-obstacles-to-the-disabled-then-find-plaintiffs.html?&pagewanted=all>

Roland Dobbins

The Iron Law at work.