Question: How can you find the most interesting event on the Berkeley campus?

Answer: Look for the police guarding a lecture hall.

I knew I had arrived at the right place yesterday evening when I saw the long line of people waiting to be wanded and have their bags checked to enter a building, as several police officers stood nearby keeping an eye on things.

Security was tight, no doubt about it, but more importantly, Ayn Rand Institute-sponsored talk featuring Daniel Pipes, Victor Davis Hanson and Yaron Brook was not advertised widely, and as a result did not have dozens of loud-mouthed thugs trying to end the proceedings through sheer chaos. (That was what happened at Nonie Darwish’s talk last October, although the Islam-reformer stuck it out through a rough scene where some members of the audience came to intimidate and disrupt.)

With a shortage of troublemakers and police stationed along the walls, the talk proceeded in calm fashion. The subject was the “Threat of Totalitarian Islam” and was part of a larger speaking tour with a rotating roster. Photoblogger ProtestShooter took some snapshots that showed the low-key atmosphere.

Of the three speakers, Victor Davis Hanson was the most upbeat about our efforts against political Islam, saying that many enemies have been killed or arrested over the last few years. But the military historian who has praised the superiority of the western approach to armed conflict said, “The war is half won, half lost.”

He criticized the State Department for undermining the overall effort by banning the use of accurate words like caliphate and jihad.

There was general agreement that naming the enemy is critical. Otherwise, Washington can cite meaningless statistics about “terrorists” being routed, and we have no idea what has happened.

Free speech in general was understood as being under widespread attack because of political correctness and plain fear. Hanson said that the values of the Enlightenment are being lost in Europe.

A rare disagreement occurred when Hanson favorably compared America to Europe in assimilating Muslim immigrants, to the point where we had less to worry about in terms of jihadist terror erupting here.

Pipes said No, there are small-scale terrorist acts going on all the time in America that do not get national media attention. He noted the trial of Naveed Haq going on now in Seattle for the shootings at a Jewish center in 2006 that resulted in the murder of Pamela Waechter.

There could have been more discussion about immigration and how crazy it is to welcome potential enemies into America, but I shouldn’t complain too much. It’s the first event on campus in a while where I haven’t felt either threatened by political violence or given a headache by left-wing looniness. So everything considered, it was a pleasant and intellectually stimulating evening where I got to hear two of my favorite writers debate a vital issue and even learned a few things.

It was almost like being at a… university.

Giovanni Alemanno, who is a member of Italy’s National Alliance, and who is either a “rightist“ or a “center rightist,” depending on who you believe, has been elected Mayor of Rome.

His plans include defunding Rome’s bloated film festival, and tearing down a really ugly museum, because he feels that Rome isn’t the place for modern architecture. He’s probably right, too. Here is a picture of the Vatican. Here is a picture of the museum.

But the real reason a “right-wing” politician has been elected mayor of a largely left-wing country, that once almost voted itself Communist, is that he’s offered to crack down on crime and immigration. American politicians take note.

The President of the Republic of Ireland, Bertie Ahern, has come to the US to speak to Congress and ask the US to keep all the illegal Irish, rather than sending them back.. (Taoiseach , pronounced roughly “tea-shock” is Gaelic for Prime Minister–Ireland has a weird kind of self-inflicted bilingualism.)

Taoiseach makes case for undocumented Irish in US Congress speech
The Belfast Telegraph

[Published: Wednesday 30, April 2008 - 17:26]
The Taoiseach used his address to the Joint Houses of Congress in Washington this afternoon to make a case for undocumented Irish immigrants to the US.

Bertie Ahern today became the sixth Irish leader to address the Joint Houses. The theme of his address was “Ireland and America - Our Two Republics”.

Bertie Ahern began by emphasising the bond between Ireland and America, and went on to outline the benefits of the new Irish to our country, and the challenges.

“So we’re profoundly aware of those challenges as we ask you to consider the case of undocumented Irish immigrant community in the United States today.

“I hope you’ll be able to find a solution to their plight.”

The Taoiseach then spoke of the contribution Irish immigrants have made to America.

Mr Ahern also spoke about the benefits of the European Union, about the global challenges of poverty, financial decline and climate change, and about the peace process in Northern Ireland.

To huge applause, he said he was proud to be the “first Irish leader to inform the United States Congress– Ireland is at peace.”

Look, I like the Irish–Dennis Day, Bing Crosby, Megan McArdle, whoever. In the history of immigration to the US, I suppose it could be said that Irish immigration has been a blessing–just not an unmixed blessing.

But since Irish immigrants greatest contribution to America have been in the police and the military, perhaps we could convince all these illegals to join the Border Patrol. That way Ahern  could have made a proposal that for each illegal Irish immigrant, he would help deport two illegal  Mexicans. But really, while Irish immigrants might be good as a substitute for Mexican immigration, they aren’t going to be very popular as an (illegal) addition to the immigration problem. Ask Brenda Walker.

Rice University’s Professor Stephen Klineberg directs an annual survey of opinion in the Houston area. This year’s, released today shows a dramatic increase in unenthusiasm in the city for immigration:

The number of respondents who described the arrival of large numbers of illegal immigrants as a “very serious” problem for Houston rose from 43 percent in 2006 to 61 percent this year. By far the most frequently cited reason for this concern was the perceived strain on public services caused by illegal immigrants. The negative attitudes have spread beyond undocumented immigrants: The proportion of area residents who favor taking action to reduce the number of new immigrants (legal and otherwise) who are coming to America grew from 48 percent in 2004 to 63 percent today.

[Annual study finds Houstonians' attitudes sour toward immigration Eurekalert.org, April 29, 2008]

Professor Klineberg, who also designed the survey, seems frustrated by this:

“No matter how you ask the question,” Klineberg said, “every measure shows growing anti-immigrant sentiment.” The public seems increasingly to believe that the nation is being swamped by a rising tide of unassimilable foreigners that it cannot absorb.

An interesting discovery is that Latino immigrants, particularly the longer established ones, are not especially keen on immigration themselves.

Thirty-nine percent of the Latino immigrants who have been in the United States for fewer than 10 years said the U.S. should admit more immigrants. That number drops to 29 percent among those who have lived in America for 20 or more years, to 25 percent among second-generation Latino immigrants and to just 14 percent in the third generation.

Sadly, the survey, no doubt by design, verges on dishonesty in discussing the question of assimilation. The press release trumpets in its second sentence:

The…survey finds Latino immigrants are quickly assimilating into U.S. society.

The primary evidence of this is income levels:

The proportion of the immigrants who report household incomes above $35,000, for example, grows from 16 percent for those who have lived in the U.S. for nine years or less, to 22 percent and to 42 percent among the immigrants who have been in America for more than nine and more than 19 years; the numbers rise to 52 percent in the second generation (U.S.-born Latinos with immigrant parents) and to 57 percent in the third generation

Earning money, of course has absolutely nothing to do with becoming American, which is a cultural, not an economic phenomenon.

The limited insight into cultural matters the survey offers is, in fact, alarming:

the proportions who think of themselves as “primarily Hispanic” drop progressively from 85 percent among the most recent immigrants to 17 percent in the third generation.

Third generation!

The language news is bad too:

the proportion of the Latino respondents who conducted the interviews in English rather than Spanish grows from 17 percent among the most recent immigrants to 49 percent of those who have lived in the U.S. for 20 years or more, and to 98 percent of the third-generation Latinos.

One wonders if ever before an urban immigrant community would have been so weak in English after 20 years “or more” that it preferred its native tongue. Or whether they would have been given the option on such a survey.

Houstonians however, are not xenophobes:

When asked to assess “the overall impact of the Katrina evacuees on Houston,” a growing majority considers the impact to have been a “bad thing” for the city, rising from 47 percent in 2006 to 65 percent in 2007 and to 70 percent this year.

Something Steve Sailer could have predicted — and in effect did.

The local Treason Lobby propaganda sheet, the Houston Chronicle, quickly deployed Lisa Falkenberg for damage control.

Ignorance is costlier than immigrants [April 28 2008] is the conventional number-shuffling shell game, shot through with contempt for the serfs who dare to question the immigration enthusiast agenda:

it’s easy to see how well-founded concerns over immigration could have devolved into widespread hysteria after three years of constant politicization and media hype… the media are constantly playing up the “illegal immigrant” angle in crimes such as drunken driving or robbery… Focusing only on the negative perpetuates a climate in which illegal immigrants are demonized.”

Falkenberg, as usual, completely ignores the central issue: what good did all this immigration do US born Houstonians?

Particularly those whose find their children’s education needs neglected while teachers struggle with non-English speakers, who are delayed getting medical treatment and whose hospital bills are inflated by indigent immigrants stealing health care, or whose incomes would have been higher – and so their taxes – without the undercutting presence of illegals.

Happily the Houston Chronicle has a comment thread (at present).

A Houston policeman (apparently) has a much better – or more honest – understanding. Piercessw wrote

I deal with the illegal issue on a daily basis!

The majority of the illegals I stop on traffic stops have NO ID on them. This is so they can give us (police) a fake name, date of birth, etc, so they don’t have to be held accountable for their actions.

They often claim they can’t speak English….until the tow truck shows up! Boy, they learned broken English real fast!

They often have warrants on the plates of the car they are driving under various names (from the various alias names given to officers).

I would not think about going to another country and driving illegally, but I have illegal aliens pass me all the time speeding, drunk, etc… They know they are safe here in Houston!

Tell Lisa Falkenberg it is time for her to think of her fellow Americans.

… is that he prefers, all else being equal, not to lie.

Some politicians are like Chevy Chase’s character in “Fletch.” They’d rather make up lies than tell the truth, for the same reason that a composer likes to make up music–that’s what they’re good at.

In contrast, Barack Obama’s preferred mode is the intellectual puzzle. He likes to bury the truth in there somewhere under so many dependent clauses, thoughtful nuances, and “I have understood you” gestures that most people give up trying to decipher what he’s saying and just make up little fantasies about how he agrees with them. Obama’s view seems to be that it’s not his fault that the press and public aren’t as smart or hard-working as he is.

Unfortunately, with his back finally to the wall over Rev. Wright, Obama is reduced to common lying in answer to Sen. Howard Baker’s question during the Watergate hearings: “What did the [candidate for] President know and when did he know it?”

“You know, I have been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ since 1992. I have known Reverend Wright for almost 20 years. The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago.”

The fascinating question is why Obama insists that the person who has changed is Jeremiah A. Wright, not Barack Obama. Why not just say, “Well, we’ve both changed over the years, in opposite directions”?

The person Obama has to disown to be elected President is not Rev. Wright but his own younger self, the one who carefully chose Rev. Wright out of the dozens of black South Side ministers he met as a community organizer.

Why won’t Obama admit that he’s matured into moderation? As I pointed out a week ago, he’s going to need to do a speech along the lines of, “Yeah, I used to be a radical, but then … I had kids!” But he hasn’t come close to that yet.

Clearly, part of the problem is that that would demolish his carefully crafted myth that racial moderation is in his “DNA” (as he asserted today).

Another problem Obama has is that he’s strongly emphasized his connections with Rev. Wright and Trinity Church in his campaign materials aimed at Christian voters. My guess is that Obama is a secular nonbeliever who just plays up his church membership for political gain and because its racialist aspect fills the hole in his soul left by his father’s abandonment of him, helping him feel “black enough.” But that’s left him in the ridiculous position of asserting that he went to Trinity all the time, just not, through some amazing statistical coincidence, on the days when Rev. Wright did what Rev. Wright does.

Yet, there may be other reasons for refusing to disown his own younger self. Perhaps fear of his wife? Mrs. Obama made herself into a social lioness among Chicago’s elite, which may help explain the family’s inability to build up any savings until very recently, despite averaging over $200,000 income per year from 1997-2004. Perhaps Mrs. Obama, deep down, is worried that she sold out, so Trinity remains a symbol to her that she’s still keepin’ it real.

Or perhaps it’s Obama who is appalled by his own selling out of his youthful radicalism?

That touches on a different question about who Obama is: Is he the cold-blooded political operative who destroyed the career of a beloved elder stateswoman by having her nomination signatures disqualified to win office for the first time in 1996? Or is he the sensitive, self-absorbed literary artiste who recounted the mild buffets that fate has dealt him with so much anguish in his autobiography? Clearly, he’s both, but it’s hard to get a sense of the balance within him.

Obama denounced Rev. Wright today for, in effect, exposing the basic lie upon which Obama’s campaign is built: that Obama’s genetic racial make-up, his “DNA,” has meant that he has devoted his whole career to racial conciliation. His opening statement about “my DNA” speaks directly to the fantasy Obama has carefully nurtured:

“SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: Before I start taking questions I want to open it up with a couple of comments about what we saw and heard yesterday. I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people. That’s in my DNA, trying to promote mutual understanding to insist that we all share common hopes and common dreams as Americans and as human beings. That’s who I am.” …

“The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. … They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought, either. … It contradicts everything that I’m about and who I am. …

And anybody who has worked with me, who knows my life, who has read my books, who has seen what this campaign’s about, I think, will understand that it is completely opposed to what I stand for and where I want to take this country.

Of course, in reality, Obama’s nature and (especially) nurture left him worried that he won’t be perceived as “black enough,” so he has devoted much of his career to working to extract money from whites and spend it on blacks (e.g., getting jobs as a community organizer, civil rights lawyer, and state legislator). That’s why he joined Rev. Wright’s church–it made him feel black enough.

I’m always being denounced as “obsessed” about race, genetics, and the interplay of nature and nurture because I’ve learned a lot about them and think about them in a dispassionate manner. And yet, it keeps turning out that everybody else is obsessed, too. (That certainly includes Barack Obama, who subtitled his 442-page autobiography, A Story of Race and Inheritance.)

The problem is that everybody else keeps getting their thinking about race and inheritance wrong, because they only allow themselves to think ignorantly and emotionally about it. For example, Obama has, quite intentionally, elicited in the minds of tens of millions of white people a crude genetic-determinist fantasy that racial reconciliation is in his “DNA.”

I’m sorry, but human beings are a lot more complicated than that. Obama is the product of a complex and unusual nurture–to understand his life, you both have to put yourself in his shoes and pull way back and view him in context, knowing a lot about the sociology of race, including seemingly minor aspects like the Hawaiian view of race.

I was just about the first to put together a plausible story of who Obama is precisely because I’m interested in the same things that interest Obama about himself and so many of his fans about Obama — the difference is that I allow myself to think logically, objectively, and empirically about “race and inheritance,” while respectable people only allow themselves to think with non-rational and intentionally ill-informed parts of their brain.

Lou Dobbs said in a recent broadcast:

We don’t really think that that looks so good for you people in Washington, to be slobbering over billionaires who are asking for an unlimited number of H1-B visas no matter what the cost is to American workers. And Bill Gates, specifically for you, we have reserved a chair here at any time for you to come in and explain how you could testify as you did before Capitol Hill when only three percent, three percent of your 900 H1-B visa workers at Microsoft are considered level four and keep giving us those speeches on the best and the brightest, Mr. Gates, because you’re just doing it, just doing it beautifully. Except for one thing — you look like a complete and utter fool and we really don’t understand why a man so smart as you would choose to look like a fool, especially in the nation’s Capitol.

I don’t think that Gates–or for that matter Greenspan–look like fools. They remind me more
like a crook who “can’t remember” anything when placed on the stand. In this case,
we have men who are quite bright except when it comes to issues that might affect their personal bottom line or position in society.

That strategy may work quite well for keeping out of jail–or keeping power or financial privileges.

The problem is that that kind of self-serving behavior just doesn’t have a place at the top of the economic food chain–and if it is done, it must be done in ways that don’t draw any attention. Any criminal who is successful enough will face a time when they simply have to “go legit”, because you can’t effectively organize an entire society around criminality.

In this case, Greenspan and Gates are having trouble adjusting to the fact that they have clawed their way to the top and history will evaluate them not by whether they can accumulate a bit more money or power–but what they really do with what they have gotten.

In the case of H-1b expansion, we had a mass failure of the political, academic and financial system. I think the elites who depend on these systems will have a horrible price to pay as this Ponzi scheme reaches its inevitable conclusion.

Joe Guzzardi will be interviewed tonight at 6:10 PM PST on the Political Vindication network. Listen here; callers welcome at (646) 652-4598.

One little-mentioned aspect of Barack Obama’s on-going fiasco involving his spiritual mentor is that it makes him look feckless.

Rev. Wright has been a problem Obama knew he was going to have for, roughly, ever. But what has he done about it, besides giving a 5,000 word speech? Did he switch to a Washington D.C. church when he was elected to the Senate in 2005? Did he persuade Trinity to stop selling Wright’s sermons on DVD? Did he provide any sort of narrative about the evolving ideological differences between the young and mature Barack Obamas?

In contrast, do you remember how in February 2004, Democratic frontrunner John Kerry was rocked by rumors that he was having an adulterous affair with a young woman? You probably don’t remember because, although for about a day it looked like it might derail Kerry’s victory march through the primaries, the story quickly went away–when the young lady went away, leaving the country.

Problem dealt with.

I have no idea if the rumors about Kerry were true or if the girl’s timely departure from America was a coincidence or what. But, let’s assume the worst about Kerry: he wrote a big check from the allowance his wife gives him to his mistress in return for making herself scarce. What can you then say about Kerry?

Well, one thing you can say is that he had a problem and he dealt with it. All else being equal, I’d rather have a President who had a problem and dealt with it than a President who had a problem and failed to deal with it.

Wright should not have been an unsolvable problem for Obama. Wright likes the spotlight, but he also likes other things. (He drives a Porsche, for example).

So, Wright likes money. Obama has friends with money. Right there, you have the makings of a deal. (The payoff didn’t have to be crass–just that in return for Wright maintaining a low profile all year, in December 2008 Obama’s supporters would start up a charitable foundation for Rev. to run. Obama could have asked Bill and Hill for advice on the fine points of foundations.)

So, why hasn’t Obama dealt with it?

1. Maybe it’s all part of some brilliant plan Obama has got to heighten the drama before he delivers his master-stroke.

2. Is Mrs. Obama the key to Sen. Obama’s Wright problem? Michelle Obama is a formidable woman, and Sen. Obama wouldn’t be the first Presidential candidate who’s scared of his wife. Maybe she won’t let him deal with Wright? It’s an intriguing idea, but I haven’t been able to find much evidence for a strong connection between Mrs. Obama and Rev. Wright.

3. Rev. Wright is all tied up with Obama’s complicated issues of personal identity, as expounded at endless length is his autobiography, so his normally cold-blooded brain fails to work rationally here. It’s not uncommon for highly ambitious and effective people like Obama to have an Achilles heel, an area where their feelings of guilt and inauthenticity get concentrated and paralyze them.

4. He’s terrified of losing the black vote? I dunno, that sounds implausible.

5. So what if he can’t deal with it? He’s not running against FDR and Reagan–he just has to beat Hillary and McCain.

6. His campaign, going back to the opening of his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address, is based on white people’s assumption that being half-white made him less anti-white than other black leaders. So, Obama is worried that anything having to do with Rev. Wright will just unravel the logic of those fantasies he’s elicited in his followers’ minds.

I suspect, though, that Obama’s overthinking this. People are slow to give up their fantasies due to logical disproof. Sure, Obama misled people about who he really was, but they wanted to be misled. And they still want to be misled.

At the moment, though, Obama doesn’t looke like a leader. Obama’s problem now is that Rev. Wright’s vigor and enjoyment of the situation makes Obama, by contrast, look like a loser. Think about how Reagan wrapped up the 1980 election by turning to Carter in the debate and saying, with a smile on his face, “There you go again.” What the hell did that mean? Not much on paper, but on TV it showed that Reagan was enjoying his dominance over the President. Reagan learned that from FDR, who always wore a look of amused mastery as he stuck the shiv in his political opponents. The public likes that in their leaders.

In the Obama vs. Wright battle, Wright is now playing the alpha male.

Here’s an interesting excerpt from Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.’s Sunday night Detroit NAACP speech:

Turn to your neighbor and say different does not mean deficient. It simply means different. In fact, Dr. Janice Hale was the first writer whom I read who used that phrase. Different does not mean deficient. Different is not synonymous with deficient. It was in Dr. Hale’s first book, “Black Children their Roots, Culture and Learning Style.” Is Dr. Hale here tonight? We owe her a debt of gratitude. Dr. Hale showed us that in comparing African-American children and European-American children in the field of education, we were comparing apples and rocks. [Ha-ha.]

And in so doing, we kept coming up with meaningless labels like EMH, educable mentally handicapped, TMH, trainable mentally handicapped, ADD, attention deficit disorder.

And we were coming up with more meaningless solutions like reading, writing and Ritalin. Dr. Hale’s research led her to stop comparing African-American children with European-American children and she started comparing the pedagogical methodologies of African-American children to African children and European-American children to European children. And bingo, she discovered that the two different worlds have two different ways of learning. European and European-American children have a left brained cognitive object oriented learning style and the entire educational learning system in the United States of America. Back in the early ’70s, when Dr. Hale did her research was based on left brained cognitive object oriented learning style. Let me help you with fifty cent words.

Left brain is logical and analytical. Object oriented means the student learns from an object. From the solitude of the cradle with objects being hung over his or her head to help them determine colors and shape to the solitude in a carol in a PhD program stuffed off somewhere in a corner in absolute quietness to absorb from the object. From a block to a book, an object. That is one way of learning, but it is only one way of learning.

African and African-American children have a different way of learning.

They are right brained, subject oriented in their learning style. Right brain that means creative and intuitive. Subject oriented means they learn from a subject, not an object. They learn from a person. Some of you are old enough, I see your hair color, to remember when the NAACP won that tremendous desegregation case back in 1954 and when the schools were desegregated. They were never integrated. When they were desegregated in Philadelphia, several of the white teachers in my school freaked out. Why? Because black kids wouldn’t stay in their place. Over there behind the desk, black kids climbed up all on them.

Because they learn from a subject, not from an object. Tell me a story. They have a different way of learning. Those same children who have difficulty reading from an object and who are labeled EMH, DMH and ADD. Those children can say every word from every song on every hip hop radio station half of who’s words the average adult here tonight cannot understand. Why? Because they come from a right-brained creative oral culture like the (greos) in Africa who can go for two or three days as oral repositories of a people’s history and like the oral tradition which passed down the first five book in our Jewish bible, our Christian Bible, our Hebrew bible long before there was a written Hebrew script or alphabet. And repeat incredulously long passages like Psalm 119 using mnemonic devices using eight line stanzas. Each stanza starting with a different letter of the alphabet. That is a different way of learning. It’s not deficient, it is just different. Somebody say different. I believe that a change is going to come because many of us are committed to changing how we see other people who are different.

Rev. Dr. Wright resents not being taken seriously as an intellectual, and I think he has a point. So, I’ll respond at some length.

This is pretty similar to a lot of stuff that I wrote in the late 1990s: for example, “Great Black Hopes” in National Review, my “Nerdishness” essay, and my review of Arthur Jensen’s The g Factor.

The problem, of course, is that while Rev. Wright’s ex-parishoner Oprah Winfrey can make a billion dollars being America’s best nonrational subjective interpersonal improvisational thinker, it’s a limited market. If you are the 100,000th best accountant in America, you probably live on a golf course. But if you are the 100,000 best talk show host, you are unemployed.

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