Tag: immigration

Puzzled by the Productivity Slump

Clown World’s economists are perplexed by the “strange and awful” 50-year decline in US construction productivity.

Measurement error alone cannot explain the decline in US construction productivity over the last 50 years, with evidence pointing to the sector’s deteriorating ability to transform intermediates into finished products, and to the allocative inefficiency of construction inputs.

Despite aggregate productivity for the US economy having doubled over the past 50 years, the country’s construction sector has diverged considerably, trending downward throughout that period. And this is no slight decrease. Raw BEA data suggest that the value added per worker in the construction sector was about 40 percent lower in 2020 than in 1970 (see Figure 1).

How can a sector like construction, with average value-added of 4.3 percent of GDP between 1950 and 2020, experience such a precipitous decline in productivity relative to the rest of the economy? To answer this question, researchers have focused on issues relating to data measurement, hypothesizing that measurement errors largely explain this phenomenon. This new research updates some of those efforts and, importantly, extends them to investigate other hypotheses to find the following:

Using measures of physical productivity in housing construction (i.e., number of houses or total square footage built per employee), the authors confirm that productivity is indeed falling or, at best, stagnant over multiple decades. Importantly, these facts are not explained by the incidence of price measurement problems. Instead of data error, the authors investigate two other possible explanations. First, they find that the construction sector’s ability to transform intermediate goods into finished products has deteriorated.

And second, the authors describe the curious fact that producers located in more-productive areas do not grow at expected rates. Indeed, rather than construction inputs flowing to areas where they are more productive, the activity share of these areas either stagnates or even falls. The authors suggest that this problem with allocative efficiency may accentuate the aggregate productivity problem for the industry.

Interestingly enough, US hourly wages have also been stagnant since 1972. Now, whatever could possibly have happened to the labor force that would make it less productive?

It couldn’t possibly be immigration effecting a qualitative change in the workforce, could it? It’s not possible that a predominantly white male work force might be more productive than a sexually diverse, nationally diverse work force, right? No, surely not, because we are reliably informed that immigration is always good for the economy. Just maybe not for wages and productivity and per capita wealth.

But the resultant growth in debt and spending makes up for it, so it’s all good, right?

Even while Clown World is collapsing and burning before their eyes, these wicked morons will be convinced that everything is fine because their spreadsheets produce the expected numbers.

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Diversity Enhances Paris

Several people were injured in a stabbing attack at the Gare du Nord train station in central Paris on Wednesday morning, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has said. The suspect was “quickly neutralized” by police, Darmanin wrote on Twitter, praising the officers for their “effective and courageous response.”

Six people suffered minor injuries in the attack and were provided medical care on site, according to BFTV. France Bleu has revealed more details of the incident, saying that the suspect, who reportedly spoke Arabic, began indiscriminately stabbing people at the station.

No worries, people of France. It’s good for the economy, see.

UPDATE: Freiburg also enjoyed enhancement by diversity today.

Woman killed in a knife attack, another seriously injured in Freiburg, Germany. Suspect detained.

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Foreigners Defend Fake Democracy

Clown World has obviously found a playbook it likes.

Two years ago our Capitol was attacked by fanatics, now we are watching it happen in Brazil.

Solidarity with Lula and the Brazilian people.

Democracies around the world must stand united to condemn this attack on democracy.

Bolsonaro should not be given refuge in Florida.

It would be more accurate to say that fake democracies around the world must stand united to condemn popular protests against stolen democracy.

These clowns are going to be in for a real surprise if they continue engaging in war against Russia. The only thing that is preventing the US Capitol – there is no “us”, Ilhan – half the cities on the East Coast from resembling Mariupol is that Vladimir Putin and Xi Xinping don’t see a direct conflict with the US military as furthering their objectives yet.

But the time does appear to be drawing nigh, probably because the US think tanks, which are literally always wrong, asserts the US military will win a war over Taiwan with China due to their simulations.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report, titled ‘The First Battle of the Next War,’ estimates that the US would lose at least two aircraft carriers and that 3,200 American troops would be killed in three weeks of combat, according to CNN, which viewed an advanced copy.

The simulations were run 24 times. Taiwan survived as an autonomous entity in most scenarios, but with heavy losses to all parties. “The United States and Japan lose dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of service members,” the report predicts.

China’s navy would be left “in shambles” and Beijing could lose 10,000 troops, 155 combat aircraft and 138 major ships.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s military would be “severely degraded” and left to defend an island “without electricity and basic services.” Japan could also lose approximately 100 aircraft and 26 warships as US bases on its territory come under attack from China.

Perhaps they’re right, for once, but I very much doubt it. I would be absolutely willing to bet that the variables utilized don’t even begin to account for all of the current supply and special forces shortages due to the active support being provided for Ukraine. The simulation obviously also didn’t include North Korea attacking South Korea to further dilute the US military’s resource once the invasion of Taiwan begins. This is likely an optimistic scenario which will be used to justify a) more money for the Navy, b) a draft, c) continued belligerence on the part of US foreign policy, and d) prevent the Taiwanese from striking a Hong Kong-style deal with the Xi administration.

The simulation report can be downloaded here. I’ll read it soon and review it on the Darkstream. Notice that the summary tends to confirm my prior expectations.

CSIS developed a wargame for a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan and ran it 24 times. In most scenarios, the United States/Taiwan/Japan defeated a conventional amphibious invasion by China and maintained an autonomous Taiwan. However, this defense came at high cost. The United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of servicemembers. Taiwan saw its economy devastated. Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many years. China also lost heavily, and failure to occupy Taiwan might destabilize Chinese Communist Party rule. Victory is therefore not enough. The United States needs to strengthen deterrence immediately.

What I’d like to see is a simulation that accounts for China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran all acting in concert. Because that is what I expect to see happen when WWIII expands and moves into a more active phase.

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Freedom or Foreigners

Forget the Danegeld. Once you permit the Dane to become a citizen, you will never get rid of the Dane.

Machiavelli observes in Discourses that Sparta was able to obtain and then maintain its liberty for centuries, eight centuries in fact, without any serious disturbances. This is a remarkable achievement, and something that modern nations like the United States and Australia are already displaying that they cannot sustain, because, especially in regards to the United States, no one can say that they have maintained their liberty for centuries without disturbance. Most astute observers would note that the US Republic ended in all but name when the Northern States conquered the Confederate states in the late 1800’s. And Australia reverted to a prison colony because of fears about a virus. Whereas Sparta was able to maintain its liberty for eight hundred years, without a similar disturbance.

How were they able to maintain this liberty for such an extended period? Well he explains, in large part, it was because they heavily restricted immigration:

“Sparta, as I have said, being governed by a king and a limited senate, could maintain itself also for a long time, because there were but few inhabitants, and strangers were not permitted to come in; besides, the laws of Lycurgus had obtained such influence that their observance prevented even the slightest pretext for trouble. It was also the easier for the citizens to live in union, as Lycurgus had established equality in fortunes and inequality in conditions; for an equal poverty prevailed there, and the people were the less ambitious, as the offices of the government were given but to a few citizens, the people being excluded from them; and the nobles in the exercise of their functions did not treat the people sufficiently ill to excite in them the desire of exercising them themselves. This last advantage was due to the kings of Sparta; for being placed in this government, as it were, between two orders, and living in the midst of the nobility, they had not better means of maintaining their authority than to protect the people against all injustice; when these neither feared nor desired authority, and consequently there was no motive for any difference between them and the noble, nor any cause for disturbances between them and the nobles, nor any cause for disturbances’ and this they could live for a long time united. Two principle causes, however, cemented this union: first, the inhabitants of Sparta, were few in number, and therefore could be governed by a few; and the other was, that, by not permitting strangers to establish themselves in the republic, they had neither opportunity of becoming corrupt, nor of increasing their population to such a degree that the burden of government became difficult to the few who were charged with it.”

By maintaining their original population, their historical laws, and by not allowing strangers or foreigners (which includes other Greeks in this context) a foothold they were able to maintain a stable Spartan society for centuries. Spartans ruled Spartans, and because they had commonly agreed laws and customs, this rule was not resented.

Indeed, Machiavelli notes the Spartan kings ensured their position, by defending their people: “This last advantage was due to the kings of Sparta; for being placed in this government, as it were, between two orders, and living in the midst of the nobility, they had not better means of maintaining their authority than to protect the people against all injustice…” Despite popular assumptions to the contrary, there is a common trend in history of kings being the champions of their people. The Spartan kings are another example of that.

Machiavelli notes that the modern (in his day in the 15th century) state of Venice achieved the same kind of stability by granting all of its citizens who were there at its founding the right to participate in government, and by denying this right to foreigners coming in. This protected it from foreign interference which could twist the government to foreign purposes and against the will of the Venetians, at least in this era.

This is an incredibly wise rule, and is consistent with the biblical proscription on allowing foreigners to rule over your nation (Deut. 17:15). It is also consistent with the Biblical laws that forbid recent immigrants from having full rights of citizenship and immigrants from certain places from ever having them (Deut 23:3-8). The Spartans, Venetians, Machiavelli and the Bible all recognised how allowing foreign leadership in your nation undermines its liberty and identity, and made laws to forbid it.

Not only will you not get rid of the Dane, but the Dane will fundamentally alter your society, amend it in order to make it more to his liking, and as Machiavelli observed, eventually rule over you. Which is why, as the great Israeli historian Martin van Creveld has pointed out, immigration is war and war is immigration.

Although, as William the Conqueror demonstrated, it is possible to extinguish the Dane through extraordinary means.

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The Death of Retail

Online shopping was only the first blow to retail. Mass immigration resulting in the disappearance of high trust society will be the killing blow.

Three years ago, I bet that 99 percent of my readers had never heard of ORC. Of course by now almost everyone knows that ORC stands for “organized retail crime”, and it is prompting retailers to permanently shut down stores all over the nation. Right now, retail theft is happening from coast to coast on a scale that we have never seen in our entire history. Marauding bands of looters are barging into stores, grabbing as much merchandise as they can possibly carry, and then loading it into their vehicles. Online marketplaces make it easier than ever to turn stolen goods into cash, and at this point organized retail crime has become a multi-billion dollar business. As I have repeatedly warned my readers, America is descending into lawlessness. The thin veneer of civilization that we all depend upon on a daily basis is rapidly disappearing, and if we stay on this path our society will soon be completely unrecognizable.

Every year, organized retail crime gets even worse. According to Fox Business, the number of ORC incidents in 2021 was 26.5 percent higher than in 2020…

ORC incidents soared 26.5% on average in 2021, with 81.2% of retailers surveyed reporting “somewhat more” or “much more” ORC-associated aggression and violence year-over-year, according to the survey.

Of course things are even worse here in 2022, and this is particularly true in states where shoplifting laws are very soft.

For example, in Portland some stores are often victimized “more than once a day”…

Some of the hot items are perfumes and expensive handbags. Often, stores are victimized daily and sometimes more than once a day. A local pastor whose window looks out on the local Nike store says he sees thieves running out of the store with their arms full of stolen stuff all the time. And the excellent KGW-TV story makes the point that this stolen stuff is not to feed hungry children. It is organized theft. The stuff gets sold online and in flea markets.

Needless to say, it is almost impossible to run a profitable business in such an environment, and many store owners are throwing in the towel.

But at least no one will be able to call those living in urban third world hell holes racist. And really, that’s what’s important, after all.

If you don’t keep the invaders out, they will destroy your way of life. Thus has it always been, thus will it always be. Sink the ships or suicide your society. Those are the only options.

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They Think They Don’t Like it NOW

British football fans are upset that the Islamic Kingdom of Qatar is not going to permit them to drink beer in the stadiums of the World Cup matches.

Fifa has banned the sale of alcohol at Qatar World Cup stadiums just 48 hours before the tournament starts with sponsor Budweiser trying to make light of the news. The beer brand’s Twitter feed posted ‘well, this is awkward…’ moments before Fifa confirmed that alcohol sales will be confined to special ‘fan zones’ where pints cost £12, are only available at certain times, and are limited to four per person.

Plans had called for alcohol to be sold on stadium concourses, but this will now not happen – reportedly after pressure from Qatar’s all-powerful royal family. Alcohol will be available as normal in licenced hotels and restaurants… It is just the latest controversy to plague an already fraught World Cup – the first to be held in a Muslim nation – which has thrown football’s governing ethos and traditional trappings into conflict with the hosts’ conservative interpretation of Islam.

Just wait until the Muslims who rule London and other formerly English cities begin banning alchohol in those areas.

I find it extraordinary how people who obviously recognize that American Indians no longer make the laws or define the social mores in the United States and celebrate the fact that Arabs no longer make the laws or define the social mores in Israel, continually fail to grasp that their laws and their social mores are not going to survive the mass immigration into their countries.

No beer and no homosexuality? Whatever is anyone going to do for fun around over there?

As I contemplate the plight of the poor gay peasants over a glass of nice Spanish Tempernillo, a single tear traces its way down my face.

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The Good Immigrants

On last night’s Darkstream, I was asked if I could think of a single group of immigrants who genuinely made their new residence a better place for the previous residents. And the only group of whom I could think that truly fit the description was the Conquistadors:

These men stepped off their wooden sailing vessels, accompanied by warhorses and armoured war mastiffs, clad in steel breastplates, armed with sword, axe, dirk, arquebus, and cannon, and ventured into an unknown land inhabited by an alien people speaking an incomprehensible tongue, whose nobles sported head-dresses of brilliant quetzal feathers, whose warriors clad themselves in jaguar skins and painted skulls on their faces, whose men and women pierced and tattooed the flesh of their faces, elongated their skulls, and whose smiles showed teeth filed to a point and replaced with jade and turquoise.

As they made their way into the heart of this land they found themselves standing beside racks of skulls at the bases of vast stepped pyramids, watching as waterfalls of blood cascaded down the steps from priests wearing the flayed skins of victims offering up beating hearts torn from the chests of butchered men to the stone idols of savage gods whose fangs and claws glared out across the arid landscape. Surrounding them was a city of unparalleled magnificence, larger in scale than anything these men had ever beheld, of smooth white adobe walls shining in the merciless irradiance of the tropical sun, wide canals carrying the canoes of trade and strange tribute from every corner of the empire, its avenues thronged with richly attired citizens.

To be in the midst of such power and beauty, while to be confronted with such an incomprehensible scale of cruelty and bloodlust, led these men to come to the only possible conclusion: where their homeland was the land of God and His people, this, surely, must be the earthly domain of His adversary. The people around them were in thrall to Satan and his demons, and had constructed about them all the terrors and tortures of Hell.

And so those hard men from a hard people responded as such men must respond, when cut off from home, surrounded and outnumbered, exposed and alone in the heart of an evil the depth of which even their darkest nightmares and ugliest legends had never hinted might exist. They did the only thing they knew how to do.

They fought.

For gold, yes. For riches and for land and for glory. These were adventurers seeking fortune, after all.

But they also fought for souls.

They fought, desperately, to kill all they must, in order to save who they could, and wipe an abomination from the face of God’s Earth.

What people tend to forget is that the Conquistadors didn’t defeat the ruling Mexica tribe and wipe out its Aztec Empire by themselves. In fact, they were merely the iron core around which the native tribes who were savagely oppressed for over 100 years by the Mexica used to free themselves. It’s worth noting that the Mexica – a Nahuatl-speaking tribe – were themselves immigrants to the region.

Nahua peoples were not originally indigenous to central Mexico, but are instead descended from Chichimec peoples who migrated into the region from the north in the early 13th century.

Of course, given that most history is written by servants of the very Empire That Never Ended that was defeated at Tenochtitlan, it should not be surprising that they are now regarded as the villains of the piece.

UPDATE: One cannot truly grasp the extent of Aztec evil, or the extent to which the Conquistadors benefitted humanity, without learning about the philosophy and theology that underpinned Aztec society.

The Nahautl Weltanschauung was not a mindless or unreflective cruelty, but a sophisticated body of ideas and axioms, developed over centuries of debate and discord. In this way, we can approach the Aztec ‘mindset’ on its own terms and attempt to understand the metaphysical logic behind their civilisation.

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Mailvox: Anomie in Asia

A reader writes in about the situation in Thailand:

The shooting yesterday took place a couple of provinces away from where I live. Recently, the vast majority of murders that you read about in the English papers here are committed by cops, ex-cops, and soldiers. This one was a recently fired cop on meth. The cops here are incredibly corrupt, which I suppose is par for the course in the Third World. They are the biggest drug dealers in the country, too. Meth here is so cheap that even the poorest of the poor can afford it. The cops and the military also have access to the best weapons, which makes them especially dangerous. Weapons–meaning guns–are not hard to acquire at all.

There’s also so much anger and a sense of hopelessness here that its almost palpable. The military clowns that run this place are destroying the country. They still run around with masks and are now starting to vaxx 6-month-olds, so they are screwing over multiple generations. People in the poor rural northeast part of the country have no jobs, no money, and no hope.

Of course, the Were-West is in no shape to help anywhere else, because mass immigration has imported all of the Third World structual problems with it. To the contrary, until globohomo collapses and is rooted out, we can expect the structural problems to get worse everywhere. That’s the price of abandoning Western tradition and what made those societies desirable in the first place in favor of dyscivic policies and people.

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A Gatekeeper Discovers IQ

Just as they’ve recently done with Christian Nationalism, the gatekeepers of the Right are beginning to discover that immigration affects IQ, and consequently, the shape of society.

The flow of people from the south into America is having a clear impact on IQ. The claim is that the people coming in will get smarter by standing on the better dirt in the United States, but it will take four or five generations for that to happen. That is roughly a century. While that is happening, the population of low IQ people rises. This is happening rather quickly due to the age distribution of the white population.

For example, using government data, whites have an average IQ of 100, blacks are at 85 and the new people are around 90. This is consistent with what Richwine found in his research and what subsequent research has shown. This is one of those times when the official government position mirrors reality. That means that the average IQ in the United States in 1950 was around 98. By 1980, with the uptick in immigration and decline in white fertility, the average was just over 97.

In other words, with very stable demographics and little immigration, the average IQ in the United States had not changed very much in thirty years. This would explain why the country was able to pull out of the cultural lunacy of the prior decades and turn things around so quickly. There were a lot of smart people. Societies with high average intelligence also have a much larger number of smart people. These are the people who solve the problems made by other smart people.

By 2000, the effects of immigration were showing up in the test scores. The average IQ of the country, based on the new demographic mix, was below 97. By 2020 the average had fallen to below 96. In another decade it will fall below 95 and when the white population is a minority, it will be around 93.

The Great Dimming, The Z Blog, 20 September 2022

Now, you might wonder about the strange reference to “the better dirt in the United States”. Or, perhaps, the way in which it appears to avoid the use of the more common term “the Magic Dirt” as well as any reference to the specific individual who has been pointing this out for some time. Consider the following passage from a book published seven years ago.

Without question the worst effect caused by 50 years of failure, and the one most likely to have the most severe long-term consequences, is the negative effect immigration has had on the collective national intelligence. Researchers around the world have observed that the nations of the West have been gradually becoming less intelligent; the Danish military measured a 1.5 point decline in the average IQ of its soldiers between 1998 and 2014, while the average British 14-year-old lost two IQ points from 1980 to 2008. The same is true for the USA, where a three-point average IQ gain that took place after the Melting Pot migration ended has been entirely reversed as a result of immigration from lower-IQ nations.

By multiplying the average measured IQs for the four major ethnic groups in the United States with their changing demographic ratios, we can calculate how the demographic changes have affected the national intelligence over time. In 1960, we calculate the national IQ average to have been 100.3. By 2010, the average national IQ had fallen four points, to 96. By 2030, if the current population estimates are correct, it will fall another point, to 95. Lest you think that average national intelligence is irrelevant, note that just that four-point difference is essentially equal to the difference between countries such as Austria, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and countries such as Uruguay and Portugal. There is a strong correlation between societal wealth and average national intelligence as measured in IQ.

Even the left-wing British paper, the Guardian, was recently forced to take note of this phenomenon, as it reported that scientists have determined genes influence academic ability across all subjects, and that as much as 60 percent of the observed differences between various population groups can be explained by genetic factors. So, the mass migration of the last 50 years has been materially dysgenic and has literally made Americans stupider on average. It’s not just you, mass entertainment really has been dumbed down in recent decades in order to appeal to what is an even lower common denominator than before.

Whatever one thinks of these changes, this is one of the fastest demographic transformations of a nation in recorded human history, and it is the direct result of public policy.

CUCKSERVATIVE by Vox Day and John Red Eagle, 4 December 2015

What I find significant about the Z-man’s post is that even mediocrities who assiduously refuse to mention me except to attempt to minimize my hypothetical influence are now being forced by events to address the issues that I’ve been highlighting for more than 20 years, because the observable reality can no longer be ignored.

Now, I don’t take the Z-man seriously and neither should you. I stopped reading him regularly once it became clear that he is a confirmed liar who doesn’t hesitate to try to shape his readers’ opinions despite his complete ignorance of the facts. His gatekeeping role can be seen clearly in the way he follows the lead of the Daily Wire with regards to certain unmentionables who must not be mentioned for fear that his readers might become tempted to leave the intellectual corral he has constructed.

On that note, it’s rather amusing how, in a discussion of various concepts that will be familiar to you even without being named, most of those involved are less willing than Jordan Peterson to Name the Voldemort.

  • There is a certain blogger who has a very outsized opinion of his intelligence. I used to think he was exaggerating somewhat when he said that we could have diversity or we could have running water. No longer do I think he is exaggerating. Nothing explains the way our world runs and has developed the way IQ does. it is the one element of social science that has been battle-tested and still stands. The liberal intelligentsia spent decades trying to disprove it, innate intelligence, and genetically-derived abilities of a population. It sure seems like their final stab at it was Jared Diamond’s stupid book, but once that failed, they just banned it.
  • Said blogger does tend to be self aggrandizing, but that does not automatically make his conclusions wrong. He has been proven correct, in my opinion, in a number of areas.
  • His main point of hubris was that taxonomy of male archetypes. The taxonomy itself is self-evident even without the greek letters: you’ve got jocks, jocks-in-waiting, nerds, normies, and losers. Then our friend realized he was a nerd so he had to add an extra category of “cool nerd who everybody likes even though he’s a jerk” which only exists in TV shows written by narcissistic nerds like Rick and Morty or House MD.
  • The disdain people in the dissident right have of him is a reflection of some of the flaws of the DR. He is one of the few people making headway in the culture war. They sperg out about his quirks and his comics. Those comics are reaching a lot of people. Like it or not, comic books are a good way to reach young people.
  • That blogger has been pretty prescient lately and I’ve come around to agreeing with many of his conclusions about China.

It’s even more amusing to see how they cling to their assumptions even as they cite the evidence against them. But in fairness, once formed, assumptions are hard to recognize, let alone break. As for “the disdain people in the dissident right” harbor for me, well, the dissident right is welcome to join the very long line. Pretty much every group from CAIR and the ADL and SFWA and ComicsGate and Tor Books and Thomas Nelson and the Sad Puppies and the conservative media and the Red Cross and the Google executives and the Swiss media share that disdain. Boo-freaking-hoo.

None of them need me and I certainly don’t need them. All that matters is that everyone who attempts to shape, spin, and shade the truth will be exposed by the harsh light of reality in the end, myself included.

UPDATE: It’s been pointed out to me that the Z-man has been pulling this gatekeeping stuff for a LONG time.

Steve Sailer has been having a lot of fun with the cooing over Raj Chetty’s big project, pointing out the many methodological flaws. In John Derbyshire’s latest transmission from the bunker, he introduces us to a new term that describes what Sailer has been discussing. It is called “Magic Dirt Theory.” The dirt in places like Utah where children do very well possess special qualities that are lacking in the dirt of places where children do poorly. Magic Dirt Theory is what’s behind the push to export troublesome populations out to the suburbs.

Practical Magic, The Z-Blog, 1 November 2015

NB: Observant minds will note my error in the last sentence of the quoted passage. I should not have used the term “nation”, but rather “polity” or “society”. It is the US polity that has been transformed while the American nation has been suppressed.

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