Tag: history

Traffic report 2015

The growth in site traffic this year was more than expected, as a surprising number of people initially stopped by to see what was going on with the Hugo Awards in August and then stuck around for the remainder of the year. Last year we saw a single 1.5-million pageview month; this year we had 10 in a row. All of the growth was at VP, as AG was pretty flat due to my sporadic posting there. But as was the case last year, 2015 finished very strong; December was not only up 30 percent over last December, but was the second-most-highly-trafficked month of the year.

In 2015, Vox Popoli had 16,211,875 pageviews and Alpha Game 4,565,094 for a total of 20,776,969 Google pageviews. The blogs are now running at a average rate of 56,923 daily pageviews. And yes, I do find it amusing that the blogs are now seeing considerably more genuine traffic than the “extraordinary amount” a certain SF blogger once lied about having. As for the running annual totals, they are as follows:

2008: 3,496,757
2009: 4,414,801
2010: 4,827,183
2011: 5,969,066
2012: 7,774,074
2013: 13,111,695
2014: 15,693,622
2015: 20,776,969

Thank you all for the part you have played in making that happen. However, there are some more important numbers that merit mention. 2015 ended with 465 Vile Faceless Minions pledging their mindless obedience to the Supreme Dark Lord and preparing for battle in 2016. Expect heavier use this year, VFM, as the SJWs react to our media offensive in a variety of means both fair and foul.

On Twitter, I ended the year with 6,230 followers and 14.628 million impressions for 2015. Not bad, but I can clearly put in a little more effort on that front.

Castalia House grew from 21 books published to 37, including 5 in print and 1 in audiobook. Book sales increased 145 percent and no less than six category bestsellers were published. We also added three editors, an Editor-at-Large, an Audio Editor, and a Blog Editor; see the Castalia blog later today for more details there. Speaking of the Audio Editor, the audiobook for Cuckservative is now available on Audible and Amazon, and is already one of the top 50 Philosophy audiobooks. We expect even faster growth for Castalia in 2016 with the release of upcoming books such as Riding the Red Horse Vol. 2 by Tom Kratman and Vox Day, Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright, Clio and Me by Martin van Creveld, Do Buddhas Dream of Enlightened Sheep by Josh Young, and There Will Be War Vol. XI by Jerry Pournelle, among others.

And yes, one of those others will be A Sea of Skulls.

Thank you for your interest, even if it is no more than morbid
curiosity, thank you for your support, and while 2015 was certainly intriguing, I believe 2016 is going to be absolutely extraordinary.

The GT incident

VD, any reference to the GT incident that you are talking about? I
tried looking it up, but it is hard to search for, apparently, for
someone that isn’t already familiar with the story.

It’s a matter of public record:

Contracts; pleading; prevention of performance of condition precedent; repudiation and right to terminate; implied duty of good faith and fair dealing. Tortious interference with contractual relations. Alleged breach of agreement granting defendant rights relating to two software video games. Motion to dismiss (CPLR 3211(a)(7)). Standards for pleading breach of contract. The court upheld a breach claim. The court rejected an argument that plaintiff had failed to comply with a condition precedent because defendant had allegedly prevented the performance of the condition. The court dismissed a claim for repudiation of the entire agreement since under it defendant had had an unconditional right to terminate, which it did, and thus could be liable only through that date, there being no provision for acceleration of future payments. The court ruled that a fair reading of the contract indicated that defendant had an implied duty of good faith to assist, or not interfere with, plaintiff’s entering into bundling arrangements with computer manufacturers. A third claim was thus upheld. The court found that plaintiff had set forth only conclusory allegations regarding interference with prospective contractual relations and thus dismissed that claim. Fenris Wolf Ltd. v. GT Interactive Software Corp., Index No. 601206/99, 10/15/99 (Cozier, J.)

We were working on a groundbreaking SF 3D shooter with AI-driven squadplay called Rebel Moon Revolution that was signed to GT Interactive. We’d had a huge success with Rebel Moon Rising thanks to bundling deals with IBM and Intel; GT used to joke that we were the only developer who had ever sent THEM checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

(This is why I’m never bothered by people claiming I’m a failure. My most spectacularly stupid moves, the mistakes I would most like to have back, have usually been related to my failure to properly exploit either opportunity or success. We gave GT a percentage of our revenue to handle the tech support; it turned out to be the most expensive tech support in computer game history. Idiotic.)

However, GT lost their crown jewels to Activision and soon came under financial pressure due to their funding practically every type of shooter EXCEPT the one that we pitched them twice: a WWII shooter. No one, they explained, would be interested in THAT. No wonder they went out of business.

In the summer of 1998, they went weirdly silent after we delivered a milestone that should have been routinely approved and paid. I got a phone call from our producer, who was very upset and told me that the milestone was not going to be approved. When I asked what was wrong with it, he said, “nothing”. Then he told me it would never be approved, and that they were terminating many development contracts, pretty much everything that wasn’t due to ship before the end of the year.

I’d heard rumors that this might be in the works; Sega of Japan had recently shut down Sega of America, and with it our Dreamcast launch title, an SF RPG that we were developing with Julian LeFay of Daggerfall fame, so I wasn’t exactly shocked. I asked when we could expect the termination notice, which was due within 30 days of a milestone rejection according to the contract, and was shocked when he said, “yeah, that’s the thing, they’re not going to terminate.”

You see, what GT was doing was trying to get back the money it had already paid out to its developers by refusing to release their claim on the IP unless the developer returned a substantial percentage of the advance it had already earned via milestones. This meant that the developers couldn’t take their projects elsewhere; we had good relationships with Microsoft at the time and would almost surely have gone there. Unlike other developers, we resisted their legal pressure, filed a lawsuit, beat them in the initial rounds of court, and ultimately forced a settlement in the place of the simple letter of termination they should have sent us.

The victory came at a serious cost, though. The legal process takes a long time, and by the time GT offered us a settlement worth taking, our entire team was already dispersed throughout the industry in the jobs we’d helped them find. My partner and I were so burned out and disenchanted that we both left the industry for several years. It was a substantial victory, but a Pyrrhic one; we would have been much better off in the long term just signing up with Microsoft and letting them deal with the legal complications such an action would have created.

Hitler’s 125 IQ

It’s rather remarkable to see that the entire Nazi leadership was nearly a standard deviation more intelligent than the average Ashkenazi Jew, especially when we are so often informed that the reason for Jewish success is their exceedingly high level of intelligence. That being said, I suspect the average IQ of the current Israeli leadership is even higher; the same clearly cannot be said of the current U.S. or German leaderships.

As I recall from what I’ve read on Hitler and internal Nazi politics, of the above list, particularly “close associates” of Hitler would include: Goering; Ribbentrop; Speer; and until his “betrayal,” Hess. Their average IQ is 129.

While there was never much love lost between Hitler and the German military establishment, the closest military connection to Hitler from that list would be Keitel, who was infamous for his toadying behavior towards the Fuhrer. His IQ also happened to be precisely 129.

(Incidentally, while Jodl is regarded as far more competent than Keitel – he is the guy who actually made OKW command structure run – it’s interesting to note his IQ was actually lower than that of his boss, if marginally so).

In practice, Goering’s IQ during his time as Nazi bigwig might have actually been lower, due to his morphine addiction. On the other hand, there are suspicions that Speer was in fact considerably cleverer than his test scores indicated, because he was playing the “dumb dreamer architect” type so as to pretend ignorance of the death camps and avoid execution (if so he was successful). So these two factors might cancel out.

Adjusting for the Flynn effect – but only modestly, since the most useful (not rules-dependent) forms of intelligence haven’t improved all that radically, and we have an IQ of around 125 for Hitler normed to today’s Greenwich standards.

While I was initially skeptical of the idea of estimating Hitler’s IQ by those of his associates, on second thought, the fact that the average IQ in the Digital Ghetto was above 140 forces me to admit that it’s not a completely unreasonable basis for an estimate. It also fits with the available evidence; it’s pretty clear from reading Mein Kampf that Hitler was bright, but not highly intelligent.

For obvious reasons, the most successful popular leaders tend to be within the 30-point communications window of the norm. I would expect that Stalin was north of 130 IQ, both on the basis of his writing and his erratic, introverted behavior; unlike Hitler and Churchill, he had no need to rely upon personal popularity with the masses.

What state is that?

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton tells Minnesotans who prefer the real Minnesota to leave the state if they don’t like living next door to squalid third-world Africans:

Governor Mark Dayton was one of the speakers at the NAACP Community Conversation, hosted in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

For several years now, St. Cloud has been one of the locations specifically targeted for “refugee resettlement”. The large influx of East African immigrants has caused racial tension between the White St. Cloud residents, and the East African immigrants.

“Look around you. This is Minnesota,” he said. “Minnesota is not like it was 30, 50 years ago. … This is Minnesota and you [Africans] have every right to be here. And anybody who cannot accept your right to be here, and this is Minnesota, should find another state.”

He described alternative views to his own as “unacceptable, un-Minnesotan, illegal and immoral”.

“If you are that intolerant, if you are that much of a racist or a bigot, then find another state.” said Dayton. “Find a state where the minority population is 1 percent or whatever. It’s not that in Minnesota. It’s not going to be again. It’s not going to be that in St. Cloud, or Rochester or Worthington.”

Where are they going to go? What would be the point? When I grew up in Minnesota, it was one of the whitest states in the country: 96.1 percent in 1980. First, aside from California or possibly Texas, there isn’t a state that can hold 100 million white Americans, which is about how many people would move to a state that was guaranteed to be Asian, Hispanic, and African-free. Second, even if a state is completely white, what is to prevent it from being invaded just like Minnesota and Germany have been invaded? Third, it is outrageous to state that alien invaders have the same right to be there as native citizens. They simply don’t, by any legal or moral standard.

History strongly suggests that Dayton is wrong. I can safely predict that the land presently called “Minnesota” will again feature a strong majority population with a minority population below five percent at some point in the future. After all, it already has twice within the past 165 years. All this imposed “refugee resettlement” means is that a lot of people are going to die and a lot of people are going to be forcibly expelled from the land. Whoever is willing to fight for it will hold it.

Where does Dayton think these homogeneous populations that he hates so much come from in the first place? Except in some extreme circumstances they don’t occur due to geography; mass migrations have taken place for millennia. They arise out of invasions, ethnic cleansings, and wars of the sort that are taking place right now everywhere from Myanmar to the Crimea. Of course, speaking as an American Indian from a tribe that bravely and repeatedly, and in the end, unsuccessfully battled the immigrants invading their land, I can also state with some authority that there is no guarantee the majority population that ends up living in that territory mostly unsullied by minorities will be of European descent.

For decades, Americans have assumed that all the terrible things that happened in Bangladesh and the Congo and China could not happen in the USA. And that assumption was true, mostly due to the halt in immigration in the 1920s. Now, thanks to diversity, labor mobility, the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, and the European Union, both the USA and Europe are going to see an insane amount of violence that will probably surpass the Holocaust and the Holodomor over the next three decades.

The lesson of history is very clear. The killing season is coming. And those with the eyes to see are well aware of it.

I am saying that all the ingredients are there for complete breakdown and large-scale deaths given the right initiating incident. I am saying that volatility is baked into the cake – even into the cake of what today looks and feels normal. I am saying that while it may be possible to keep loading box upon box of societal Semtex into the truck, given the right detonator the collapse will be swift, unstoppable and devastating.

And when it comes, as it always does sooner or later, don’t think that the explosives or the truck were responsible. The blame lies with those who loaded it.

Future trends, future history

It would appear that Richard Fernandez sees much the same future unfolding that I do:

Conventional wisdom has had  a pretty bad run these last 15 years.  For that reason there is little purpose to trusting it further. Instead it might be better to predict a future based on observable trends rather than scenarios that politicians offer. If those trends continue one would expect to see in 2025:

  • The self-destruction of the Muslim Middle East;
  • The rise of ethnic and national politics in Europe;
  • The widespread resurgence of religion and cultural identity as a consequence of (2);
  • Mass expulsions or segregation in large parts of the world to deconflict incompatible communities
  • Everyone packing personal weapons like the Wild West
  • The collapse of multi-ethnic countries into simplified pacts based around of national defense, with most social law generated by local communities and affinity groups;
  • One or more large regional wars with casualties in the tens of millions.
  • Several, possibly many WMD attacks on major cities involving radiological weapons, low yield nukes or biological agents.

Such a world would be rough, dangerous and in many places, miserable.   Perhaps it will not even be as good as that; for the list above omits the occurrence of an event equivalent to World War 3, in which case we can describe the future with a single word: ruin.  But it is the world we are building, absent any change of course.  The oddest circumstance is that politicians still pretend without the slightest basis, that if we stay their perverse course we’ll go right through the ruin and out the other side and find the dream we glimpsed as we crossed into the 21st century. 

I’m not concerned about nukes or radiological weapons. What concerns me are genetic weapons. I expect genetic research to be shut down and highly regulated in the relatively near future. In addition to the way advancement in genetic science keeps disrupting the Narrative, it also poses a genuine large-scale threat to Mankind that is very nearly unprecedented in human history.

The events of the post-WWII period desperately need to be chronicled in detail, because future generations need to learn from the utter idiocy of the international policy makers of the last 70 years. In the unlikely event we happen to have enough historians here, I have in mind a project like the Cambridge Medieval History series, where the different writers each focus on a different set of actors. If this is of any interest to you and you think you might have the ability to contribute a section, email me with POSTWAR in the title.

Also, in not entirely unrelated news, we still need 3-5 more non-fiction articles for THERE WILL BE WAR Vol. X. If you’re a published military writer, we’re looking for high-quality reprints, so if you’ve got any, let me know.

Mailvox: get your syllogisms straight

TB goes awry in the second step:

This post (which was about IQ, part of a larger issue of Civilization) seemed to me to be about the very foundation of the Civilization discussion.

1. Genetics and culture are inseparable,
2. Only British genetics can grasp and enact Western Civilization,
3. The U.S. cannot allow a drop below a certain level of British derived population.

I understand that civilization requires trade-offs in education, economics, religion, and other systems. It just seems that the Civilization you describe was doomed the very moment it started. I believe the Constitution allows the nation to be hardier than this hot house flower being described.

2. is false. The U.S. Constitution is not synonymous with Western civilization. Western civilization is hardier than the U.S. Constitution, which was not only written by and for Englishmen, but is only understood correctly by them and those who have sufficiently adopted their culture.

More than that, it was only written for them and their descendants and was never intended to apply to anyone else except some of the German colonists who successfully grasped, accepted, and supported their unusual limited government philosophy.

The descendants of the countries who came later, the Irish, the Italians, the later Germans, the Scandinavians, the Jews, and the Hispanics are not the posterity of the Founding Fathers. It should be no surprise that they have not successfully defended a philosophy they have never accepted or understood nor respectfully abided by a document that was never written for them.

And my rebuttal to those who would argue is very simple and straightforward. Look around you. Do you see anything that is even remotely respectful of the concepts put forth in the U.S. Constitution?

Rise of the ultras

The result of the recent Greek parliamentary election is in line with my prediction of the European ultra-nationalists coming to power in two election cycles.

Golden Dawn, one of Europe’s most violent far-right parties, has emerged as one of the biggest winners of Sunday’s general election in Greece, consolidating its presence in parliament and power on the streets. The neo-fascist group came in third with 7% of the vote, behind the triumphant leftwing Syriza and conservative New Democracy….

“Golden Dawn is a movement of power, it is not a protest movement any
more,” the party’s Swastika- tattooed spokesman, Ilias Kasidiaris, told
Star TV as it became clear that the extremists had retained their
position as the country’s third biggest political force. “Golden Dawn is
the only party seeing an increase in its percentage. In October when
Greeks begin to experience the consequences of the memorandum and
illegal immigration you will see our support increase radically,” said
the former marine, berating the country’s mainstream media for
boycotting the party.

With 18 MPs in the 300-seat house, around 500,000 Greeks cast ballots
in favour of Golden Dawn. The organisation performed especially well in
Attica, the greater Athens region and the Aegean islands of Lesbos and
Kos where voter support doubled. Both islands have been overwhelmed in
recent months by thousands of refugees and migrants fleeing conflict and
poverty.

Golden Dawn’s anti-immigrant stance at a time of mounting fears over
Greece’s frontline role in Europe’s biggest humanitarian crisis in
recent history, almost certainly helped. The party, portraying itself as
the “only nationalist choice” played heavily on fears that Greeks could
soon become a minority in their own country. But, so too, did its
shrill opposition to the internationally sponsored bailout accords, or
memoranda, that the extremists have said amount to “ethnocide” or death
of the nation. Polls showed that some 16.6% of those who voted for
Golden Dawn were victims of record levels of unemployment – the most
grievous side-effect of massive budget cuts and lay-offs enforced as the
price of being bailed out to the tune of €326bn creditors in the EU and
International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“In terms of absolute numbers Golden Dawn was the only party to hold
its ground,” said Aristides Hatzis, political commentator and Athens
University professor.

The Fascists and the National Socialists came to power in the 1930s because they were the most credible options available to the Italian and German publics at the time. Don’t confuse the beginnings with the ends; 1933 was not 1941 or even 1939. Fascists were not elected with the idea that they would throw in with German imperialism (it is usually forgotten that Mussolini was an ally of France and Great Britain and only threw in with Germany after Great Britain betrayed Italian interests), and the National Socialists were not elected because they promised they would invade the Soviet Union, slaughter the Jews in Eastern Europe, and get Germany into a war with the USA.

One can’t learn anything useful about the future prospects of revolutionary parties by what other revolutionary parties did AFTER they came to power, one can only learn about their prospects by looking at what the other parties were doing BEFORE they came to power.

The worst thing about the established anti-nationalist European parties is that they have failed so spectacularly that even the violently murderous anti-immigrant parties will be preferred to them by even the most sane and civilized elements of the electorate. In a time of invasion, it doesn’t matter how dangerous the only party willing to defend you might be, what matters is that they are the only ones willing to defend you, your family, and your children.

As for those who are historically ignorant enough to point out that Golden Dawn only won 18 seats in the Greek parliament with 7 percent of the vote and therefore will never come to power, I will type very, very slowly and point out that in 1928, five years before they took power, the National Socialist Workers Party won 12 seats in the German parliament with 2.6 percent of the vote.

Two election cycles. And then you will see an absolute sea change in Europe. And if the EU attempts to entirely abandon even the pretense of democracy in defense of the invasion, the change will come even faster. And harder.

Rationalist naivete

One of my great disappointments this year has been reading JB Bury’s History of Freedom of Thought. Bury was the editor of my much-beloved Cambridge Medieval History series, which is excellent, and so I was looking forward to reading his thoughts on a matter that is of more than a little interest to me.

But while the book is as erudite and well-sourced as one would expect, it is little more than a one-sided anti-Christian rationalist polemic, with little insight and absolutely no foresight whatsoever. It’s High Church Atheist in a manner that is about as proto-“I Fucking Love Science” as it is possible for a book published in 1913 to be.

One wishes one could bring Bury forward in time to see what passes for reason hath wrought; a thought police more authoritarian, more delusional, and more in conflict with reality than any of the religious opponents of the freedom of thought ever were. Bury’s unjustified faith in the power of reason is a fascinating precursor to the complete inability of the modern irreligious to grasp the connection between Christianity and many of the aspects of Western civilization that they value, as well as their willingness to blithely saw off the branches of the tree on which they are sitting.

The struggle of reason against authority has ended in what appears now to be a decisive and permanent victory for liberty. In the most civilized and progressive countries, freedom of discussion is recognized as a fundamental principle. In fact, we may say it is accepted as a test of enlightenment, and the man in the street is forward in acknowledging that countries like Russia and Spain, where opinion is more or less fettered, must on that account be considered less civilized than their neighbours. All intellectual people who count take it for granted that there is no subject in heaven or earth which ought not to be investigated without any deference or reference to theological assumptions. No man of science has any fear of publishing his researches, whatever consequences they may involve for current beliefs. Criticism of religious doctrines and of political and social institutions is free. Hopeful people may feel confident that the victory is permanent; that intellectual freedom is now assured to mankind as a possession for ever; that the future will see the collapse of those forces which still work against it and its gradual diffusion in the more backward parts of the earth. Yet history may suggest that this prospect is not assured. Can we be certain that there may not come a great set-back? For freedom of discussion and speculation was, as we saw, fully realized in the Greek and Roman world, and then an unforeseen force, in the shape of Christianity, came in and laid chains upon the human mind and suppressed freedom and imposed upon man a weary struggle to recover the freedom which he had lost. Is it not conceivable that something of the same kind may occur again? that some new force, emerging from the unknown, may surprise the world and cause a similar set-back?

The possibility cannot be denied, but there are some considerations which render it improbable (apart from a catastrophe sweeping away European culture). There are certain radical differences between the intellectual situation now and in antiquity. The facts known to the Greeks about the nature of the physical universe were few. Much that was taught was not proved. Compare what they knew and what we know about astronomy and geography—to take the two branches in which (besides mathematics) they made most progress. When there were so few demonstrated facts to work upon, there was the widest room for speculation. Now to suppress a number of rival theories in favour of one is a very different thing from suppressing whole systems of established facts. If one school of astronomers holds that the earth goes round the sun, another that the sun goes round the earth, but neither is able to demonstrate its proposition, it is easy for an authority, which has coercive power, to suppress one of them successfully. But once it is agreed by all astronomers that the earth goes round the sun, it is a hopeless task for any authority to compel men to accept a false view. In short, because she is in possession of a vast mass of ascertained facts about the nature of the universe, reason holds a much stronger position now than at the time when Christian theology led her captive.

All these facts are her fortifications. Again, it is difficult to see what can arrest the continuous progress of knowledge in the future. In ancient times this progress depended on a few; nowadays, many nations take part in the work. A general conviction of the importance of science prevails to-day, which did not prevail in Greece. And the circumstance that the advance of material civilization depends on science is perhaps a practical guarantee that scientific research will not come to an abrupt halt. In fact science is now a social institution, as much as religion.

I wonder if Bury would revise his conclusions in light of the “social construct” school of denial, which has produced everything from the “science” of anthropogenic global warming to multiplying sexes. Considering how ready the SJWs are to deny that a man is, in fact, a man, it is not at all hard to imagine that they would be every bit as willing to compel men to accept a false view of the sun rotating around the earth.

SJWism is the revival of the blasphemy concept, but it is far more dangerous than the religious laws ever were because it lacks a textual anchor. At least with religion, you always knew what blasphemy was and could readily avoid committing it. With the current thought police, they will inform you of your offenses after you have committed them, and neither ignorance of the law nor its previous nonexistence will provide you with any defense.

The dangerous faith

I doubt it has escaped anyone’s attention that with a few exceptions, the atheists, agnostics, and pagans around the world are content to make common cause with very nearly any religion except for one particular faith. As J.B. Bury observed nearly 100 years ago in his epic Cambridge Medieval History, which I cannot recommend more highly, this is not a new development:

Jesus Himself, had His followers allowed, might have had a place between Dionysos and Isis; but Christianity, which according to Porphyry had departed widely from the simple teaching of the mystic of Galilee, was sternly excluded from the Neoplatonist brotherhood of religions. Its idea of a creation in time seemed irreligious to Porphyry; its doctrine of the Incarnation introduced a false conception of the union between God and the world; its teaching about the end of all things he thought both irreverent and irreligious; above all things its claim to be the one religion, its exclusiveness, was hateful to him. He was too noble a man (philosopkus nobilis, says Augustine) not to sympathise with much in Christianity, and seems to have appreciated it more and more in his later writings Still his opinion remained unchanged: “The gods have declared Christ to have been most pious; he has become immortal, and by them his memory is cherished. Whereas the Christians are a polluted set, contaminated and enmeshed in error.” Christianity was the one religion to be fought against and if possible conquered.

What Neoplatonism did theoretically the force of circumstances accomplished on. the practical side. The Oriental creeds had not merely gained multitudes of private worshippers; they had forced their way among the public deities of Rome. Isis, Mithra, Sol Invictus, Dea Syra, the Great Mother, took their places alongside of Jupiter, Venus, Mars, etc., and the Sacra peregrina appeared on the calendar of public festivals. As most of these Oriental cults contained within them the monotheist idea it is possible that they might have fought for preeminence and each aspired to become the official religion of the Empire. But they all recognised Christianity to be a common danger, and M. Cumont has shewn that this feeling united them and made them think and act as one.

From Communists to Muslims to SJWs, various philosophies and religions have been more than happy to attempt to coopt Jesus Christ, because they believe he is dead. What they cannot countenance are the servants of the Living God, the followers of the Risen Christ, who despite our manifold failings, our observable flaws, our complete falling short of the glory of the God we worship, insist on attempting to tread upon the hard and narrow path rather than obediently follow the gentle, easy, thoughtless ways they advocate.

Christianity is the dangerous faith because it is the one faith that is rooted in truth rather than lies. It is the one real connection Man can make to the Divine. Yes, our understandings are imperfect, yes, we see as though through a glass, darkly, yes, our interpretations are various and contradictory, and yet, only in doing so, only through relentlessly pursuing the truth to the best of our ability can we begin to approach Truth.

Those who consider Christians to be self-righteous entirely miss the point, including those who consider themselves to be righteous Christians. To be forgiven is not the same as being sinless. To be repentant is not the same as to be blameless. It is not necessary to put on sackcloth and with Augustine melodramatically label ourselves the worst of all sinners to recognize that we are no better, and in some cases are considerably worse, than the virtuous pagan.

For better or for worse, we are who we are. We have done what we have done and we can never change the past. But what we don’t have to do is remain broken, frightened, sin-enslaved beings. That, through the grace of God, is the one thing we can change.

And that is what the enemies of God, in all their various guises, cannot abide. Because that is the one freedom they can never offer.

Immigration and idiocracy

This development in human devolution will be very difficult for the true believers in human progress or racial equality to explain away:

Our technology may be getting smarter, but a provocative new study suggests human intelligence is on the decline. In fact, it indicates that Westerners have lost 14 I.Q. points on average since the Victorian Era.

What exactly explains this decline? Study co-author Dr. Jan te Nijenhuis, professor of work and organizational psychology at the University of Amsterdam, points to the fact that women of high intelligence tend to have fewer children than do women of lower intelligence. This negative association between I.Q. and fertility has been demonstrated time and again in research over the last century.

But this isn’t the first evidence of a possible decline in human intelligence.

As for Dr. te Nijenhuis and colleagues, they analyzed the results of 14 intelligence studies conducted between 1884 to 2004, including one by Sir Francis Galton, an English anthropologist and a cousin of Charles Darwin. Each study gauged participants’ so-called visual reaction times — how long it took them to press a button in response to seeing a stimulus. Reaction time reflects a person’s mental processing speed, and so is considered an indication of general intelligence.

In the late 19th Century, visual reaction times averaged around 194 milliseconds, the analysis showed. In 2004 that time had grown to 275 milliseconds. Even though the machine gauging reaction time in the late 19th Century was less sophisticated than that used in recent years, Dr. te Nijenhuis told The Huffington Post that the old data is directly comparable to modern data.

It should hardly come as a surprise that the average level of intelligence has declined as less intelligent populations have become a larger percentage of the whole. It would be interesting to learn if that is a factor, or if the various intelligence studies are all of a homogenous Anglo-European population and the decline is even worse than it appears.

Remember, intelligence scores are always normalized to 100, so what is 100 in 2004 is not the same thing as 100 in 1884.

I don’t find this difficult to believe at all. There is virtually no one writing today that I regard as being on the same level as many past writers; it was astonishing to read how F.A. Hayek, in addition to refining Mises’s Impossibility of Socialist Calculation, refuting Keynes, and winning a Nobel Prize, also traced the intellectual roots of social justice before obliterating it 14 years before it became an observably significant cultural force.

Who do we have to compare to that? Paul Krugman? Steve Keen is the one and only economist doing anything that can even be remotely compared to the giants of even the relatively recent past.

Now, what could possibly account for an even more dramatic decline in average British intelligence?

Tests carried out in 1980 and in 2008 showed that the average 14-year-old was two IQ points cleverer in 1980, according to a study published in 2009. Scientists found that performance dropped the most dramatically in teenagers in the upper half of the intelligence scale, The Telegraph reported. Brighter teens who took part in the study in 2008 were on average six IQ points less intelligent than their counterparts tested 28 years earlier.

The 1980 UK census didn’t even take ethnicity into account. The 2011 census showed that the white population had dropped to 87.2 percent, down from 92 percent in 2001. It shouldn’t take an IQ much above the average to determine the reason for the decline in British intelligence over the last 28 years.

Diversity doesn’t only destroy a society, it makes it literally dumber. After all, you have to be pretty damn stupid and scientifically ignorant to believe in human equality anymore.