The New Health Fixation

In the 1990s, Tony Blair introduced the catchphrase “education, education, education”. Having overdosed on banal managerial writers like Anthony Giddens and Charles Handy, Blair simplistically believed education was the answer to solving problems like economic inequality and low productivity.

The fixation on education of course hasn’t really worked and the West’s attention deficit democracies have moved onto other political fixations. Today the new focus for centrist progressives is health spending. With the baby-boomer generation soon eligible for pensions, the health conscious elderly represent the prize demographic for political strategists.

New Zealand’s Labour government discovered this recently when they put public money forward for an ambitious sports stadium in Auckland. In opinion polls across the country there was strong opposition from voters who preferred to see the money spent on reducing hospital waiting lists rather than sports.

The new emphasis on health presents problems for the National party, which has traditionally been seen as the fiscally conservative party.

Socially conservative voters who usually vote for National may now end up voting for Labour if it continues with its relatively generous funding of the health sector.

National could respond by increasing health spending and reducing investment in areas like tertiary education. However, that could encourage more graduates to leave the country and undermine the nation’s tax base. National also has to face the prospect of a growing Maori, Polynesian and South-Asian population, which overwhelmingly backs Labour.

The big loser in the new funding priorities is likely to be long-term investment, which can be seen in the lack of government investment in savings incentives and research and development funding. With an aging population, and a neo-liberal economic orthodoxy still in ascendency, the main political parties are likely to continue with a short-term approach to economic problems.

The Labour’s government myopic focus on social spending is highlighted by commentator Colin James:

“Helen Clark’s government is fond of strategies. But is it strategic?Look at its new-spending in the 2006 Budget: of the $2.2 billion new operating in the 2006 new operating spending, mostly on health, education and “working families”, $25 million goes to research, science and technology. Fixing up old people certainly gives them higher quality of life. But it says nothing about how today’s young are to have the higher incomes to pay for the care of the old in the future”.

Although National’s Bill English has tentatively talked about mending the relationship between National and the scientific community, the arrival of the "Cameronesque" John Key, who appears to be more concerned with public image than development, does not bode well for those concerned with the country’s long-term economic prospects.

Another Good Finnish Blog Disappears

A few months back there was a spot of blogosphere controversy when a popular Finnish blogger abruptly closed his blog 16 Volts -apparently because of political pressure from the university at which he worked.

The bemusing epitaph to 16 Volts is still accessible here.

Another good Finnish blog called Desire to Conserve also appears to have closed down, just a few months after its on-line launch.

If I am mistaken and Desire to Conserve has moved then I would like to know the new address so I can provide a link.

Refugees or Economic Migrants?

In a feature article in this Saturday’s Press it is revealed that half of Christchurch’s Somalian refugees have left the city and moved to Australia.

The Press states that over half of the Somalian community of 800, which peaked in the 1990s, has now left Christchurch to seek “opportunities in Australia”.

I would have thought that refugees, who are supposedly coming to New Zealand because they are in fear of their lives, would be more concerned with cementing their legal status in New Zealand than in seeking economic opportunities in Australia.

Refugees from Afghanistan have now replaced Somalians as the largest refugee group in Christchurch and currently number about 730.

The movement of refugees from New Zealand to Australia raises a number of questions about New Zealand’s immigration policy:

Why is New Zealand letting in immigrants from third world countries if there aren’t suitable jobs for them?

How is the government distinguishing between refugees in physical danger, and opportunistic economic migrants?

Is New Zealand seen as a soft touch for economic migrants trying to get into Australia?

And finally, why is this important issue mentioned in passing in a PR piece entitled “Ethnic enrichment,” rather than in the hard news pages.

Genetics and Health

Last weekends’ Press has a large feature article, "The Health Gap", which addreses the topic of Maori health statistics. The article outlines numerous instances in which Maori health outcomes are significantly worse than those for European New Zealanders.

However, nowhere in the several thousand-word article is the word genetics mentioned. For example, it is stated that “half of all Maori are smokers compared with one in five non-Maori”, yet no reference is made to recent studies that suggest Maori may have a genetic predisposition to smoking.

High Maori smoking statistics are put down to the “stresses” of poverty and “lifestyle choices”.

In the case of smoking, there is a good argument that central government should be doing more to help Maori overcome smoking addictions. Smokers pay heavy compensatory taxes to the rest of society and low income Maori would be better off medically and financially if they weren’t spending so much on cigarettes.

The author also states that Maori children are twice as likely to be obese as Caucasian children. There is a lot of evidence that people of Polynesian origin tend to have heavier builds and slower metabolisms, which strongly predisposes them to obesity. A predisposition to obesity also means that Maori are more prone to obesity related illnesses like diabetes and heart attacks -so why isn’t this mentioned in the article?

It is also pointed out that Maori have higher rates of certain types of cancer, such as gall bladder cancer.

The problem with glossing over genetic factors in health statistics is that it tends to increase political divisions without improving health outcomes. From a right-liberal perspective it appears that Maori are choosing to be overweight, smokers who have a blasé attitude to cancer. Conversely, from a left-liberal perspective Maori appear to be victims of a prejudiced health system.

The media message seems to be that Maori health problems are mainly due to bad lifestyle choices and that in any case Maori are unlikely to receive optimum care because the medical system is riddled with institutional racism.

Consequently, it is hardly surprising that many Maori have a chip on their shoulder about visiting a doctor – nobody likes to receive a morale sermon from somebody they don’t think is competent or doesn't care about their patients.

Certainly educational/intelligence levels also play a part in health care. People who are more persistent, more compliant and more knowledgeable are likely to get better value from public health systems.

Given that there are relatively few Maori doctors and that Maori have less confidence in western science than Caucasians and Asians, Maori people are less likely to receive optimum care in some situations.

However, if both doctors and patients are made aware of genetic differences in medicine, then doctors will be able to provide more focused care and patients from minority backgrounds will have a better idea about their specific health needs.

Us versus Us

In commentating on the war in Iraq, Lawrence Auster (see here) highlights one of the fundamental problems that right liberals have in fighting wars.

In right-liberal ideology, all people are seen as rationale individuals who have the some core values. Therefore when a right-liberal country like the US invades another country, the invasion must be portrayed as an act of liberation.

In the case of Iraq, the US neoconservatives see themselves as liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein’s oppressive dictatorship. However, this presents considerable difficulties when the majority of the population do not have the same values as those of the occupying country.

Instead of being seen as enemies, Iraqi’s attacking US troops must be treated as criminal suspects who have the same rights as American criminal suspects. Mr Auster points out the absurdity of such thinking with the following hypothetical situation:

"Sarge, I’ve got a clear shot at the Al Qaeda guys in that house who fired an RPG at our convoy, can I hit them?" "wait a sec, I’ll just ask my JAG…Nope, she says we can’t do it".

The liberal argument that "every ones the same underneath" has been used by Marxist guerrillas in the developing world for the over 60 years. The arms dealer character in Lord of War comments that in third world countries the military factions with the most virtuous names often have the bloodiest reputations. Violent revolutionaries often try to justify their motives by denying their hatred of their opponents and claiming the moral high ground through phrases like “people’s liberation army”.

The fact is that different groups of people have different values and this is one of the reasons why warfare is such a bloody business. An ideology of sameness can be just as destructive as a supremacist ideology like fascism.

That’s why real conservatives only advocate war when an aggressive "them", is a direct threat to the different "us".

Blogging and Donations

Entertaining conservative ranter Udolpho comments here on the subject of blogging and donations. He argues that few conservative bloggers are sufficiently productive or intelligent to enough to warrant adding a donations option to their weblogs.

Udolpho states that Steve Sailer is probably the only non-mainstream conservative blogger who deserves to make money from blogging.

Personally though, I think that’s a somewhat negative assessment of the quality of conservative weblogs coming out of the US.

Other conservative bloggers such as Parapundit and Eunomia may not write as engagingly as Sailer but the quality of their analysis is certainly in the same league. Indeed, Sailer himself has acknowledged that he isn’t necessarily the smartest man on the Internet even though he is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining and probing.

If bloggers such as Parapundit and Eunomia wished to add a Pay Pal to their sites it would hardly make them the laughing stock of the blogosphere.

A possible reason why a number of talented bloggers don’t ask for donations is because the number of people willing and able to make donations is rather limited. The traffic gap between top mainstream bloggers like Instapundit and leading politically incorrect bloggers like Steve Sailer is (unfortunately) massive and unlikely to narrow much in the present political climate.

“The blogosphere” (God I hate that word, can anybody come up with something better) is still in its infancy and if a large number of bloggers asked for donations then the money might be spread too thinly for leading non-mainstream bloggers like Sailer to make a modest income.

Not only are blogger’s like Sailer important in their own right, but they also provide vital links to other “edgy” sites that would otherwise be starved of the “oxygen of publicity”.

Furthermore, there are many bloggers, who, while not in the same league as the best US bloggers, may still be the best blogger in their country or are a de facto leader in a particular field.

If a blogger of moderate ability happens to be covering important issues that other bloggers aren’t then why shouldn’t they ask for donations? - Good luck to em’ I say.

The Press on Asian Immigration

A recent editorial in Christchurch's Press (Saturday, December 9, A21) highlights the wishful thinking and hypocrisy that typifies mainstream media views about immigration in New Zealand.

The latest national census figures indicate that Asians now make up 9.2 percent of the population, up from 5.1 percent in 2001. Unfortunately, the Press does not specify what percentages of Asian immigrants are South Asians and East Asians. Anyone interested in obtaining such information will have to untangle it from official statistics.

Nevertheless, this is an extraordinary rapid increase and unless stricter restrictions are placed on Asian immigration, Orientals and South Asians could become numerically dominant before 2050.

The Press editorial states that "New Zealand’s way of life must be preserved" without acknowledging that the country's "way of life" was established by and for European immigrants.
Once New Zealander’s of European descent cease to be numerically dominant then the New Zealand way of life will change change and nobody really knows what it will change into.

The "Kiwi lifestyle", which the Press claims is the main reason why immigrants come to New Zealand, is in many respects the same lifestyle enjoyed by people of European origin in North American and Australia.

It is build around a high wage/cheap land relationship, which is unique to societies established by North Europeans.

Unfortunately, for many working and lower middle class New Zealanders of European and Maori descent the “kiwi lifestyle” is already under threat. Increasing house prices and stagnating wages are being reflected in declining home ownership and escalating personal debt.

Whether Asian immigration is the primary reason for this situation is open to debate, but it certainly hasn’t done anything to alleviate it.

Although Australia also has a problem with surging land prices it still offers high wages and the chance to save for retirement. Subsequently, a steady stream of disgruntled New Zealanders are heading across the Tasman on a permanent basis.

The editor of the Press also states:

“As a nation which has agreed to accept migrants from different societies, New Zealanders must do far more to make them welcome when they arrive. And this includes doing all possible to ensure that they can get a job using the qualifications they have bought with them”.

In the United States, where East Asians are a smaller and slower growing segment of the population, they are seen as enterprising self–starters who make a valuable contribution in areas like scientific research and IT.

In New Zealand, the liberal-right argues if a little Asian immigration good for the US, then a lot of Asian immigration will be great for NZ. Hence, white New Zealanders, who are already burdened by an economically under performing Polynesian population, are expected to go out of their way to help middle-class East Asian immigrants with high IQs and numerate degrees.

Given that East Asian immigrants have, on average, higher IQs than European New Zealanders, it is they who should be providing us with jobs not the other way round.

Of course for an increasing number of wealthy whites that live off property rather than wages, the quality of life of the average citizen isn’t important, and it is the former who seem to be driving immigration policy.

Some Thoughts on Contemporary Liberal Decadence

As I stated in a previous post on Christianity and liberalism, modern liberal excess is probably due to a combination of ideology and material factors such as economic affluence and global overpopulation.

Material affluence of course leads to the old “bread and circuses” problem that plagued the Roman Empire.

It also provides a means whereby the unproductive can gain power at the expense of the productive, creating a society of “too many chiefs and not enough Indians” - a problem recognised by early 20th century social scientists like Therstein Veblen.

However, modern industrialised countries have added a new twist on the affluence equals decadence relationship - credit driven consumption. The modern consumption economy is not just an ad hoc tool for distracting the masses and winning public favour, but a scientifically developed system that exploits human quirks and weaknesses for profit maximisation.

In contemporary society marketing executives know more about human nature than most university academics.

Global overpopulation reduces the value of labour and puts pressure on lightly populated countries to import labour instead of increasing productivity or shifting people into more productive roles. This is something that early liberals like Voltaire and David Ricardo openly acknowledged, but which most modern liberals ignore.

With most of the world overpopulated, and a small number of developed countries experiencing population aging, an increasing number of people in the West have an incentive to adopt a rentier lifestyle, and import a new working class to service their needs.

This makes the protestant of values of hard work and delayed gratification largley redundant.

Since the late 1960s, the 200-year alliance between enlightenment liberalism and scientific empiricism has also come unhinged as liberalism has exploited the material abundance created by science to promote utopian social goals and justify an increasingly self-serving state bureaucracy.

At the same time, secular humanists have ignored scientific findings that don’t support the egalitarian tenants of modern liberal politics.

The uneasy relationship between scientific empiricism and modern liberalism can be seen in the 150-year-old clash between Darwin and Marx, which has re-ignited in the last 12 years.

Advances in genetic science, evolutionary psychology and psychometrics are undermining many of the assumptions of 20th Century liberalism at the same time that liberals are criticising Christian conservatives for denying Darwinian evolution (on the later point see Steve Sailer's article here)

The liberal establishment has thus done a good job of using empirical science to attack its opponents while deflecting scientific attacks on its own world-view.

However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the liberal establishment to deflect scientific criticism as new scientific findings are being confirmed from a number of different sources.

The Internet is also providing an a means by which controversial findings can be publicised without the risk of censorship

The increasing failure of late-liberal policies in education, welfare, immigration and law and order is also undermining the general public’s willingness to provide funding for the liberal state.

Despite increasing problems at the social level , and serious long-term economic worries, modern liberal societies still have a lot of accumulated wealth that has been built up over the preceding 200 years of industrialisation.

This largesse insures that the majority of the population still enjoys a high level of material affluence.

Hence in today's economic climate, conservative critics of modern liberalism come across like the boy who cried wolf in Aesop's fables.

Western states are unlikely to make a decision break with liberal excess until they are directly threatened with serious social and economic disruption.

Christianity and Liberalism

On the “white nationalist” website Majority Rights there appears to be a lot of opposition to Christianity with the religious right in the US, for example, being blamed for the expansive immigration policies of the Bush administration.

In white nationalist circles the logic seems to be that Christianity spawned enlightenment liberalism, which in turn led to the excesses of modern liberalism, therefore the end of Christianity will lead to the end of contemporary liberalism

The French nouvelle droite intellectual Alain de Benoist blames Christianity for the rise of the modern liberal right in the United States and believes that a new post-modern conservatism can be developed from paganism.

The connection between Christianity and liberalism though, is far from clear cut.

In the United States there does appear to be a strong connection between right-liberalism and Calvinism, although the country’s staunchest economic libertarians are generally atheists.

However, in socially liberal European countries such as Sweden belief in Christianity is much weaker.

Catholic countries such as Italy and Chile further complicate the picture, since they tend to be more socially conservative than north European states and have a lukewarm view of economic liberalism.

Hence it appears that Christianity acts on a break on social liberalism, while sometimes promoting economic liberalism.

This perhaps explains why a socially conservative country like the US can also be the world’s leading exporter of pornography.

Given the strength of social liberalism in post-Christian North Europe though I find it hard to see why adopting paganism will lead to a revival of euro-centric nationalism.

While Christianity has often been allied with aspects of liberalism there has also been a strong counter-liberal Christian tradition. Edwardian Christian's like Chesterton and Henry George promoted intellectual common sense to counter rational utopianism.

In Australia and New Zealand for example, the popularity of the land tax movement gave governments the mandate to break up land monopolies and promote a landowning middle-class hostile to urban socialism.

Today Christian “common sense” opposition to liberalism has a growing presence on the blogosphere.

It has also influenced “post-liberal” thinkers like the British academic John Gray.

If Christianity isn’t the primary factor behind the excesses of modern liberalism then what is?

Three other possible factors are: global overpopulation, material affluence and the growing division between liberal ideology and western scientific empiricism.

Critics of modern liberalism probably need to focus more on how these and other important factors interact to create the excesses of modern liberalism.

White nationalists who blame liberal excess on Christianity are putting too much emphasis on the power of ideas. Religion is more a method of coping with conditions rather than a primary determinant of conditions. Considering white nationalists believe that biology is one of the main factors in determining human affairs, it is ironic that they are so concerned about the influence of Christianity.