Summary: It becomes increasingly obvious that massive immigration is one of the great challenges to America in the next few decades. We are completely unprepared for it.
Question: “What nation poses the greatest threat to the sovereignty of the US?”
Answer: “Mexico.”
— Briefing by Martin van Creveld to a US intelligence agency 20 years ago (private communication). They were incredulous then. Now they understand.
Severe crises seldom occur where everybody is looking. Instead they occur along faults that are unseen. Disasters occur along flaws in the a nation’s social, economic, and political systems. At unknown weaknesses in their processes, where values clash, about matters people do not consider threatening. That’s the immigration crisis, now in the early stages.
“The migrant caravan isn’t an issue of good and evil. It’s about self-interest“
By Lionel Shriver in The Spectator.
“The image of that multitude on the move, full of women clutching screaming babies while vowing never to return to a homeland grown intolerable, isn’t just a snapshot of the present, but a vision of the future. More than the terrorism it may abet and the climate change that may spur it, mass migration, all in one direction, is this century’s biggest story. …
“The problem isn’t that they’re bad. The problem is that they’re people. Perfectly deserving people, who had the lousy luck to be born in a shitty place. In every single media interview I’ve encountered, a migrant’s story has been sympathetic. In this sense, the open-borders contingent wins hands down, every time. Last week, the Hondurans on Channel 4 News seemed very warm and very nice. …”
OK, that’s a nice emotional analysis of the situation. It is a child’s view of the world.
“The sole difference between them and us isn’t qualitative but geographical: they’re there and we’re here. We’re lucky; they’re not. Good or bad fortune isn’t meritocratic. Americans have no more of a moral right to dry homes and safe streets than those Hondurans do.”
A thought-experiment about the difference: swap the people in Latin America for those in America. How well would each nation run after the switch? She is guilty of reification, treating abstractions as if they were concrete things. “Nations” are not entities, just the collective actions of their peoples.
” The issue of immigration intersects with scores of moral issues, but it isn’t about morality. It’s about self-interest. That’s what makes it so uncomfortable. The pursuit of self-interest isn’t necessarily concomitant with the pursuit of virtue.”
That’s rare good sense. Philosophers and others have been telling us that for thousands of years. Perhaps we will learn, eventually.
“Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador all suffer from high crime, political instability and economic malaise. If poor prospects and a culture of violence justify asylum, every citizen of these countries qualifies. That’s 39 million people. Given the recent example of Venezuela, the prospect of whole nations simply emptying out isn’t preposterous.”
Bien pensant liberals seldom look at the consequences of their behaviors.
“Yet I don’t fancy my home city of New York, already inundated with Central Americans delivering pizzas on electric bicycles, being flooded with still more millions of their compatriots, even if they’re hard-working and ‘good people’.”
Got to love the ritual invocation of “they’re hard-working and good people.” Then why are their nations in such bad shape? Why will large numbers of them moving here make our nation more like their nations? Why do we believe America is magic?
“I expect the left-wing media to continue to trot out family after family, in immigration crisis after immigration crisis, to testify on camera that they’ve come a terribly long way, that they aspire only to thrive and that the circumstances they fled were horrid. The petition is unerringly affecting …If the test is whether immigrants are fellow humans just like us, and whether they come from a worse place than the country they want in to, we pretty much let them all in. …
“For the US, that surge of Hondurans is a wavelet in an incoming tide …Migrants trying to get into Ceuta and Melilla have had remarkable success with storming the fences simultaneously. …Millions if not billions of decent, ordinary people in need of food, clean water, shelter and medical care are bound to constitute a form of moral blackmail. They will all have heartbreaking stories. And if we continue to confront the issue as a question of sympathy rather than existential self-interest, they will nearly all get in.
“Thomas Friedman has astutely characterised the West vs the rest as order vs disorder. …If in the next few decades we’re looking at migration on the scale I think we are, we may be required to develop a hard heart, or simply surrender to forces larger than we can control. I’m not sure which is worse.
She cannot choose between a “hard heart” and national survival. That is the Left (broadly speaking) in a nutshell.
Rod Dreher at The American Conservative provides another perspective.
“The Bible tells Christians to love their neighbors as they love themselves. But who is their neighbor? The man next door? Yes. The people who live across town? Surely. Those who live in another part of their country? Okay. People from another country who want to settle in their country? If everybody is your neighbor, then nobody is.”
We are unprepared for the challenge of mass immigration. We not only have little ability to stop it, we have no consensus about the need to stop it. Migrants have the will to come here. We lack the will to use force to stop them. We cannot even build a wall (which has worked for Israel).
As usual with disasters, we will have the consensus to act only after bad results become too evidence to ignore.
Flash forward to today
CNN: “The US is sending more troops to the border. Here’s what they can and can’t do.” The deployment ” could eventually grow in size to 800 troops.” Spoiler: this is security theater. The US-Mexican border is ten thousand kilometers long. And under current interpretations of the laws, US troops cannot defend the border. Just help overwhelmed law enforcement agencies do so. Also, no mention if these troops will be armed. The two thousand national guard troops already at the border are not armed.
NYT: “Trump Considers Closing Southern Border to Migrants.” The NYT is horrified that US troops might defend the US border, instead of, as the Founders intended, interfering in other nations’ civil wars.
For More Information
Ideas! For shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about immigration, about Reforming America: steps to new politics, and especially these …
- Essential reading about hidden history: The history of immigration and America, lost amidst the more useful myths.
- Important: The lies about immigration keeping the borders open.
- Migration from the south into America: new people, new foods, new political systems.
- Immigration as a reverse election: our leaders get a new people.
- Look at immigration policy to see our government respond to its masters.
- The numbers about immigration that fuel Trump’s campaign.
- The smoke & fire of the new Sweden is our future.
- Important: Diversity is a grand experiment. We’re the lab rats.
- Important: The Democrats will open the borders & make a New America.
- William Lind: a crying child opens our borders.
The book from 1973 by one who saw this coming
The Camp of the Saints
.
By Jean Raspail (1973).
Raspail is a French author and explorer (see Wikipedia).
One hundred ships leave a squalid Third World slum, crammed with hungry, filthy, desperate people bound for Europe. How would people of the guilt-ridden West react. Written as a dystopian novel in 1973, It is today’s present and future. See Wikipedia for details. The author writes in the preface…
“I had wanted to write a lengthy preface to explain my position and show that this is no wild-eyed dream; that even if the specific action, symbolic as it is, may seem far-fetched, the fact remains that we are inevitably heading for something of the sort. But what good would it do?
“I should at least point out, though, that many of the texts I have put into my characters’ mouths or pens – editorials, speeches, pastoral letters, laws, news stories, statements of every description – are, in fact, authentic. Perhaps the reader will spot them as they go by. In terms of the fictional situation I have presented, they become all the more revealing.”
For more about the book, see “The Relevance Of Raspail, the Visionary French Novelist Saw It Coming” by Martin Witkerk at Vdare.
A similar situation from South Africa shows that here is nothing racist about the need for immigration control.
If the problem is ignored the population can decide to take matters in their own hands.
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/world/africa/20safrica.html
Sounds interesting. What’s going on in South Africa?
I wrote a short piece for myself looking at the country as objectively as I could: https://www.dropbox.com/s/eu5gp9dq5miwkm2/What%20is%20to%20be%20done%20for%20SA..docx?dl=0
7zander,
Wow. Thanks for posting that, esp with the links.I knew South Africa was in bad shape, but that’s much worse than I imagined.
You describe South Africans as in some ways worse than others in south-of-the-Sahara Africa. Any thoughts why that is so?
You also mention one of Africa’s greatest problems, well-known to experts but almost never mentioned in the US news media: the astonishingly low average IQ of its people. The effects of that are massive, and solutions almost unimaginable.
Larry in reply to your question: something that South Africans realize is that they are not able to keep up with southern African migrants. It is generally recognized that the Mozambicans, Malawians, Zimbabweans are from countries where the shit has already hit the fan they work like mustard to get ahead. There is a general sense of entitlement that we have in our country. Freedom has come and now its time for me to eat’ as one minister in government put it.’
This is not an IQ deficit on our part, just plain laziness and lack of will. There are now more folk existing on social grants than there are working.
As I mentioned in the piece we have people from as far away as Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia and masses from Nigeria and an assortment of countries in west Africa and they are just streets ahead of us. As one man said to me… I am picking up gold on the streets, what is wrong with your people, don’t they see it?
IQ is not something that is mentioned in polite society either here or in America. Our country has an average IQ of 77 or if you believe the Finnish study 72. The Finnish institute that did the analysis commented that 75 is the cut off for remedial school in Scandinavia. Now imagine half the population being badly sub normal. A major problem in any terms.
The thing that destroys hope is IQ does not improve in either the short or long terms whether you believe it is has an origin that is cultural, educational or inherited. In the US they don’t talk IQ because it is embarrassing. When only 13% of your population is struggling the rest are able to carry them but when 50% are on a par with downs syndrome children and the rest are barely above that level we are in a great pickle.
7Zander,
Thank you for this briefing – about matters not reported in the US, and about which I (and most of us) know little or nothing.
“The thing that destroys hope is IQ does not improve in either the short or long terms ”
I didn’t know that, and I do find it depressing. I wonder what the average IQ is for the people in the caravans coming here from Latin America.
“50% are on a par with downs syndrome children and the rest are barely above that level we are in a great pickle.”
Police in the US know what we do with such men: many can’t find a way to navigate our complex society, and turn to crime. They’re not good at that, either – and so wind up spending much of their time in jail.
Hi 7zander,
That’s and interesting report! It’s largely in line with other things I’ve read about SA. I developed an interest in SA (and Africa in general) as a kid, and this has been piqued by the South Africans I’ve met over the years, mainly teammates and coaches during my Rugby playing years. The history of SA is long and a lot more complicated than the standard line and is today an object lesson why culture and society is more than writing a constitution and shouting yea, freedom!
One of the spanners in the works with the land redistribution program has been that they can’t find folks to give the land to. The Boer farmers (redundant, of course, Boer means farmer) have been the primary workers of SA land since the mid 17th century onward in an area with absolutely no historical notion of agriculture at scale. The government is aware of what happened in Zimbabwe so dance this kabuki of saying they’re going to redistribute the land, but don’t (yet). Reporting on attacks on Boers often gets muddled by accusations of genocide, which suck the oxygen out of the conversation when people want to talk about why it’s not. It is, however, very much comparable to the lynchings and terror against American blacks in the Jim Crow south, except even more violent and widespread. I’ve seen murder rates for Boers as high as 138/100,000 and farming is more dangerous than working mines or construction. Chicago’s is 23/100,000 (2016), and while it’s not the highest in the US, it’s widely considered cringeworthy. And not counted in the 138 are the survived beatings, torture, blow-torchings, rapes, etc.
Many of the people who want to change society at scale are absolutely certain in their moral clarity. It’s impossible to say their schemes can’t work, but previous experiments show that its fraught with peril, and so far, no Utopian has got it right. The genius of the American system was the Quakers could piss off other there, the Amish could piss off over there, the Yankee WASPs could piss off over there, the Southern slave drivers could piss off over there, and everyone could mind their own damn business (except the slaves, alas). That system is breaking down at scale and mixing in increasingly immiscible ingredients is an unlikely recipe for tranquil coexistence.
Regards,
Bill
Bill,
Thank you for more about South Africa. Like much of Africa, it is rich with lessons for us. I grew up watching US and Brit TV shows in the 1960s, often about the decolonization of Africa. They were optimistic. The native leaders were almost uniformly presented as strong and educated (both men and women), even the bad guys – and westernized.
(1) “is today an object lesson why culture and society is more than writing a constitution and shouting yea, freedom!”
I’m amazed that people so assume that this is a simple and easy process. Western and Asian societies took millenia to evolve the complex societies capable of industrialization and democracy. Taking societies at the iron age – or even earlier – and giving them our complex social and technological tools does not make them able to use them. Harsh truths.
(2) “Many of the people who want to change society at scale are absolutely certain in their moral clarity.”
They are also confident of their skill at social engineering, despite little or no experience (i.e., successful experience).
7zander,
Do you have an opinion on the Suidlanders?
I don’t know how badly IQ hurts them. An African evangelist from Uganda visits us for support from time-to-time. He says they are occasionally attacked by insurgents from the Congo – young, hopeless men. They run off into the jungle with their biological and adopted children – 11 total – and come back later when the dust has settled. Then they go talk to the elders of the village that produced the young men. He described the Congo as a breeding ground for insurgents. It seems hard to set up any kind of industry or decent farming when guys with AKs and machetes occasionally attack you.
Also, does lack of IQ prevent you from making a profit? Here a guy from Burkina Faso figured out how to improve his soil and stop erosion and his practices have spread to surrounding areas for much more profitable agriculture. Granted, his IQ may be higher than others but Africans are having so many kids that the statistics predict at least some really smart men will be born who can help their countrymen. These guys aren’t going to be inventing electronics but so what? Our electronics are now making the world indolent and disinterested in children.
Finally, the issue of fatherlessness is huge. When there is no father supporting the household, household income drops by at least 50%, and probably more because men earn more. If my household income dropped in half, I wouldn’t be poor but I wouldn’t be comfortable.
Finally, there is the issue of religion, and this is the main one. Islam, animism, and Marxism are not a way forward for any civilization. The Africans, like every other people, will benefit enormously from a robust, confessional Protestantism. Also, we will soon need them to evangelize us.
Tear it apart, Larry.
PRCD,
(1) “at least some really smart men will be born who can help their countrymen.”
I wonder about the extent to which that is universally true. In a dysfuncational society, there are few methods for merit to make a difference. See the worst of America’s inner cities. Capacity to use violence, personal charisma , and physical size matter more. Smart people flee, if they can.
(2) “the issue of fatherlessness is huge”
True, and often misunderstood. Functioning family systems are a foundation for even low-level human societies. But they are social, not biological constructs, and require a lot of scaffolding. In the worst of America’s inner cities, those structures are broken. We don’t know how to rebuilt them.
(3) “Islam, animism, and Marxism are not a way forward for any civilization.”
Islam produced a civilization far higher than that of the West at the same point in time. Like everybody else, those societies were crushed by the West after it developed modern tech. But that does not support your claim.
Mr. Ockham,
This
may not be true. I think Cyril Ramaphosa has sold-out to the Chinese. How else did he accumulate $500 million? I suspect the Chinese will be given that land.
Hi Larry,
LK: I grew up watching US and Brit TV shows in the 1960s, often about the decolonization of Africa. They were optimistic.
Memories! I bought a 66 Series IIA Land Rover when I was in high school. I still have it. I studied physics and hydraulic engineering with an eye to moving to SA. I wanted to suit up as a Springbok and beat the All Blacks, not because I have the first thing against Kiwis, but because I loved the Springboks.
Hi PRCD,
LK: I think Cyril Ramaphosa has sold-out to the Chinese.
I don’t claim to be “right” per se, thus the use of “yet”. I don’t know whether you’re right or not ;), but the Chinese are playing a different game of colonialism. Part of my family came over from Slovakia (it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the time) a little more than a century ago, yet I “identify” as American. Boers have been in SA since the 1600s. They are *African*. To give (appropriate then sell) their land to Chinese? That’s grab the 303 and fight the fascists in Spain with Orwell kind of crazy. I shudder to think that you may be right!
With respectful regards,
Bill
Great post 😁
Look again at the list of countries that the Central American migrants are coming from. Didn’t you notice something strange? Costa Rica is not there. Why? Poor as Costa Rica is, its people are proud of their counttry and their democracy. Unlike Cuba and Venezuela, they understand the neighbourhood they are in and do their best not to antagonize the US and its economic and political interests. The fundamental reason is simple: their elite (like the old American elites) love their country and don’t work against the rest of the citizens.
Costa Rica is poor: my niece when she stayed in a Costa Rican middle-class home on a school project was told not to throw toilet paper into the toilet. Yet, they have medicare (which they and their employer pay monthly premiums for) and they abolished their army in 1948, after a failed coup d’eta, but, unlike Iraq, they created a greatly feared national police, which operates so that they are incorruptible (minimum of four police on patrol). So, Costa Rica is not some liberal paradise but a conservative (in the old sense) “law and oerder” society.
The mestizo population that lives in Costa Rica is no different than the population that lives in the other Central American countries. The difference is the behaviour of the elite. Like today’s American elite, the elites in the other countries are self-centred and “globally” focused.
albertde,
Thanks for the brief on Costa Rica! What conclusions do you draw from that about the mass migration into America?
The mass immigration from the South is coming from countries that have abandoned “law and order”, where gangs rule the slums and the elite only care about themselves. As I said before, that is not the case in Costa Rica.
As to the caravan, in the real world as opposed to the world of fairy tales, it takes money and organization for this (and other events) albertdeko@gmto happen. Some organization / individual is financing and organizing the caravan – in particular, the ringleaders are being paid to recruit participants, coordinate the caravan and instigate “spontaneous happenings” along the way.
In the past, Nicaraguans (and Salvadorians?) would flee to Costa Rica, which has had enough of the importation of trouble into their society. They would still prefer going there – similar language (but Costa Rican Spanish is different in grammar and vocabulary), same weather, same faith and similar ethnicity.
Albertde,
“it takes money and organization for this …”
I don’t know if that is true. But it seems logical. Ten thousand people is the size of a small WWII US division. Think of the organization and logistics required to make it work. Even a mid-19th century wagon train required financing, organization, and logistics.
You raise another important issue. I am frequently astonished how little we know about events. How difficult would it be for a major news network to “embed” someone with the caravan for a few days. How are they operating? Latrines, food, water, fuel, organization? Instead we get cute little stories about Jonny and Marie.
I spent time studying biblical warfare and was surprised at the sophistication required to keep a war-train on the road and that was in the days of pillaging the land for everything eaten and drunk. Here you have a body of people larger than most armies in the middle ages and they are not raping the land or they would be set on by the locals. So, the journos are either fast asleep or not reporting on who is feeding and watering this band of pilgrims. Yet another example of the media having picked sides and abandoned their duty of reporting objectively?
Could this be a Soros funded Mid term election embarrassment spectacle?
If that’s the case then it appears as if it will backfire massively. RCP shows things swinging in the Republicans’ direction: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2018/senate/2018_elections_senate_map_no_toss_ups_race_changes.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2018/house/2018_elections_house_map_race_changes.html
Rando,
Attributing changes in political polls to individual events is an exercise in imagination. Many things have happened during the past two months. Such as the Kavanaugh hearings, and the associated hysteria.
“Spoiler: this is security theater. The US-Mexican border is ten thousand kilometers long. And under current interpretations of the laws, US troops cannot defend the border. Just help overwhelmed law enforcement agencies do so. Also, no mention if these troops will be armed. The two thousand national guard troops already at the border are not armed.”
I must agree with this Calling up the military is clear evidence of our lack of seriousness about this. If he were serious, Trump would ring up the State Department, not the Pentagon. Explain to the Mexicans that there will be dire economic consequences if that caravan actually gets to the border, and we have to deal with it. Make it their problem.
Trump is thinking optics, not policy. Doing something effective would be controversial, and it would also lead to problems int he midterms. Congress wouldn’t support effective action on the border, and this would call undue attention to the fact that the Congressional GOP is just as pro open borders as the Dems on the other side of the isle. You call this security theater, Larry, and you’re right, but it’s also, to borrow a Russian word, a maskirovka, if I understand that term, A deception operation designed to conceal what’s actually afoot.
The Man,
I agree with your analysis, but think it’s too harsh.
Trump is president, not (despite the Democrat’s hysteria) Dictator. Look at the comments to these posts. Most Americans don’t want to see the problem, and powerful special interests work to keep them confused and driven by easily manipulated sentiment.
That creates a situation that might step might stump FDR, and far exceeds Trump’s capabilities.
As always in these situations, we must first look at ourselves before listing big expectations from our leaders.
IMO it’s an act of war and should be dealt with as such. Secondly, all the pro immigration advocates need to come forward and personally take responsibility for an immigrant or their family. That means all financial responsibility. And if the immigrant commits a crime the sponsor is imprisoned and the immigrant deported.
This whole thing is insane. Mass immigration will so alter us we won’t be recognizable in 20 years. But the elites will continue to be elites.
Gute,
“IMO it’s an act of war and should be dealt with as such.”
Wow, that’s over the top. Madness. Not a surprise, however. Americans love war. We have war on poverty, on cancer, 4th generation wars that include all sorts of crime and social unrest. Twenty minutes in a firefight would provide useful instruction to them about the nature of war.
Got to love the ritual invocation of “they’re hard-working and good people.” Then why are their nations in such bad shape? Why will large numbers of them moving here make our nation more like their nations? Why do we believe America is magic?
———-
Good globalists should want these good, hard-working people to stay and improve their own countries, making the world a better and more productive place for all of us. If, on the other hand, they’re not good people, we should not want them in our country. Heads, we want them to stay in their country, tails, we don’t want them in ours.
Dark,
Nicely said.
Are we a force for global good by stripping underdeveloped nations of their doctors and other most educated and successful people? Do we compensate their home nations for the cost of raising and educating them. No, we just preen ourselves for this display of virtue.
7Zander,
Your point seems to be undercut by the Flynn effect, which as far as I know holds in Africa as it does elsewhere. (The Flynn effect is the observance that keeping average IQ at 100 results in having to raise the standard periodically, in other words, a 100 score 80 years ago might only be in the 70s now -the reasons for why scores increase over time are debatable but the rise is well documented-) Leaving aside issues with IQ testing, using a metric that changes over time doesn’t seem like a sound strategy.
The Murr,
Your comment makes no sense to me. It is vague, and the I don’t see your logic.
(1) “using a metric that changes over time doesn’t seem like a sound strategy.”
What is this “strategy”?
Do you believe that inches and pounds are invalid metrics since a given population’s height and weight change over time?
(2) “Your point seems to be undercut by the Flynn effect”
What is his “point”?
How does the Flynn effect “undercut” it? The rise in average IQ scores (using the same test, not resetting the index) of roughly 0.2%/year is not meaningful relevant to migrants with average IQ’s roughly 30 points below those of their destinations.
I meant to reply specifically to 7zander’s comment. I was only addressing his use of IQ in South Africa to support his argument. My point is IQ isn’t static over time. 7zander makes the comment that long term they’re stuck with a 70s IQ which unless there is something about South Africa that is different from most everywhere else does not hold. (Thus referencing the Flynn effect) I hope that clears up the confusion.
the Murr,
It was clear you were responding to 7Zander. As I said, your comment makes no sense that I can see. You have not responded to my questions.
“My point is IQ isn’t static over time. …Thus referencing the Flynn effect”
The Flynn effect is a roughly 0.2%/year increase in IQs. That’s not going to change a 30 point gap in any useful time frame, which was 7zander’s point. Restating what he said, we don’t know how to make large increases in a population’s average IQ over a few generations – and have not observed such a thing happening.
I don’t know if 7zander is correct. But please respond to what he is actually saying.
I was responding to 7zander, I will pull quotes to show how I am responding to him. I think these two segments are a reasonably succinct encapsulation of his use of IQ values to further his argument about the problems South Africa faces.
“Our country has an average IQ of 77 or if you believe the Finnish study 72”
“The thing that destroys hope is IQ does not improve in either the short or long terms whether you believe it is has an origin that is cultural, educational or inherited.”
I am not addressing whether South Africa is or is not in trouble, I am addressing using IQ to support arguments. In one of the previous immigration scares in this country, it was the Irish and Italians and other unwanted European populations that were flooding our shores. Their IQ scores averaged in the low 80s and for the Italians I think it was also in the high 70s. It was assumed they would not integrate and would drag the country down (with papist-conspiracy undertones) Now those groups have scores indistinguishable from the rest of the American populace. This is a brief way of stating that while an individual IQ number might have value, population wide numbers don’t imply that a country with an average in the 70s is full of morons, but that IQ tests are capturing more than intelligence, they capture all the cultural/technological/economic baggage of the country.
That was an addition to my previous point which more addressed his statement that IQ does not improve, which is flatly wrong over the long term, and even short term doesn’t always hold. Or to expand on that thought, if an average of mid 70s IQ meant half the population was non functional, that might explain the leaders during World War I but doesn’t explain everyone else keeping things running in the mess.
This is another comment where you can accuse me of nitpicking and not addressing the prime point, but here especially, low IQ scores by subgroup has been used to justify truly terrible policies so I think it is important to push back when similar arguments come up again.
The Murr,
(1) “where you can accuse me of nitpicking and not addressing the prime point”
Wow. I’ve looked at my replies to your comments. They’re on the whole quite positive, with numerous compliments – and thanks for the material you’ve provided.
In this case, however, you appear to be basing your reply on the massive – and largely bogus – leftist propaganda about IQ. I’ll give two examples from your comment. You’re also ignoring my questions and replies.
(a) “In one of the previous immigration scares in this country, it was the Irish and Italians and other unwanted European populations that were flooding our shores. Their IQ scores averaged in the low 80s”
Do you have any support for those claims? You mention Irish immigration, which seems incorrect. That peaked in the 1880s, and there was little after 1914. the psychologist William Stern coined the term in his 1912 book. The first mass use in the US of intelligence tests – crude ones — was when the US built a mass army after the Selective Service Act of 1917.
(b) “Now those groups have scores indistinguishable from the rest of the American populace.”
Are you serious? Tests of IQ immigrants during those early days (the 1900-1920 wave) were absurdly unreliable, based on US culture and language which they lacked. Tests improved, but immigration went to also near-zero after 1930 – so we don’t know how those people would do on modern tests (esp those of WWII and after).
Murr,
Follow-up: here is an often cited early paper about intelligence of immigrants: “Intelligence Tests of Certain Immigrant Groups” by Kimball Young in The Scientific Monthly (merged with Science in 1958), November 1922. It is really crude work (i.e., early stage research).
It does not even mention intelligence of the Irish.
Larry, you’re right, I conflated two waves of immigrants in my comment, which is what happens when I go from memory so I should not have mentioned the Irish. Though the Kimball Young article does reference the Irish in table II, where their scores in the army are between Northern European and Southern European recruits. I reference this era though it has the problems you highlight partly because it frames the argument outside the current fraught context and I at least thought I had a decent grasp of it. I also think it’s a good reference for the parallels in arguments between the different eras, though just because the anti-certain-populations’ arguments were built on faulty science then doesn’t mean they are now.
Also I didn’t intend you to feel attacked when I said you accused me of nitpicking, mostly it was very warranted, and even when I think I had a valid point I inevitably communicate it badly at least twice before I finally write what I mean. (also we always remember the negative even in a sea of positive)
I just went for a quick dive to reacquaint myself with IQ tests and their application across diverse populations (new baby in house, should not go from memory, probably how the Irish snuck in), and I don’t think it justifies your portrayal of my position as “largely bogus – leftist propaganda about IQ.” I’d cite sources backing me up, but without a deeper dive (gotta put the maths degree to work somehow) I am not comfortable citing anyone as definitive since this topic appears to be a couple decade long food fight. If there’s a paper/book/interpretive dance you think does nail the issue down I would love you to point it out.
A short video you might watch that seems to be fact based, objective but highly objectionable …
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7zander,
I think I understand why you posted it, but it violates our comment policy. We’re not directing traffic to such material. And I don’t want links on file from here to there which might prejudice this website to our Google Overlords.
Larry, great to know that. The discussion is shut down because it is too uncomfortable? I was directing you to a Google owned and over-lorded site, openly available on You Tube. Surely if they have not shut it down you are safe?
I completely understand your position… we are so easily ruled because we live in fear of what big brother might do.
7zander,
I’m concerned less about directs to noxious material than about the ethics of linking to it. Discussing it is one thing, but I’m uninterested in directing traffic to it.
People rightly have different views about these things, and that’s mine.
“The discussion is shut down because it is too uncomfortable?”
Nothing has been “shut down.” If you want to discuss it, go ahead.
It may interest everyone to know that the “Flynn effect” is reversing itself across the OECD countries. It has not been studied well in undeveloped nations, so it is logically invalid to use the Flynn effect when arguing that IQ in the third world is rising, as it did for a while in OECD countries.
I am not sure whether such arguments suffer from the taint of leftist wishful thinking, or simply from a person not being familiar with the research.
Kunstler,
Thanks for that info about the Flynn Effect in underdeveloped nations. I wondered about the amount of info about IQs from there.
Here is the latest study about the decline of the Flynn Effect.
“Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused” by Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg in PNAS, 11 June 2018.
Funny that the invasion force is coming to the USA at the same time that Merkel drops the mike and says “My work is done” when surveying the raging dumpster fire that is the EU.
g(r)eek,
The similar social and economic trends in the West are often astonishing, since we are in many ways very different societies and not tightly linked together. This shows the power of the unseen forces of our age, so unlike the froth of policies and personalities that dominate the news headlines.
I agree that mass migration is an issue here in the US. I am not clear on what tools would be effective if we wanted to move away from the present open borders or market type of approach (immigrant driven, not controlled by explicit US quotas). Presumably an East German shoot to kill border would be effective, but horrible (IMO) to contemplate. Employer sanctions? Work visas (somehow enforced)? Aid to the countries generating refugees? Passive wall a la Trump? I’d like to know what would work, if anyone has data.
Passive defenses, such as the wall, have a long history of success – from the Great Wall and Hadrians Wall, to walls in East Germany and Israel. Also effective will be strict enforcement on employers of internal laws and ending benefits to migrants.
If they keep coming in large numbers, eventually we will have to lean on our southern neighbors. Now they’re facilitating the passage of migrants, cheering how they are sticking it to the man. They well understand the ill effects on the USA.
I am fascinated how people leap ahead to more discussing when we have not even attempted – and show no signs of doing so anytime soon.
Despair and preemptive surrender are our favorite alternatives to doing anything. But we love to talk!