Demise of the megabores?

As well as being gloomy days for political realists and traditionalists, the 1990s were depressing years for popular music, with CD changers filled with the unimaginative drone of groups like Travis and Coldplay.

Thankfully it appears that generation Y are beginning to rebel against the tastes of their predecessors, with interesting, dynamic music now starting to become popular again.

Danish pop/rock outfit Mew are now turning out some tight, melodic pop songs with a standard of musicianship that would impress a lot of early 70s progressive rock bands.

UK band Pure Reason Revolution pretty much are a 70s progressive rock band, but modernised for the new millennium, and with the added bonus of actually sounding accessible and catchy. They sound like a blend of Yes and Muse, with a dash of the Beachboys in the vocal harmonies. And what could be more refreshingly pretentious that having a band name which sounds like some sort of libertarian think tank!

Others worthy of mention include New York group The Secret Machines, and (provided you don't mind lyrics in Swedish) Dungen.

Up yours Lester Bangs!

Islamic Immigration in Europe

Reading through Christchurch’s Press last Saturday it was pleasing to come across a relatively right-wing review of Bruce Bawer’s book, While Europe Slept: How radical Islam is destroying the West from within.

The reviewer, an Anglican vicar from Christchurch called Ron Hay, points out that Bawer says he left America partly in reaction to the Christian right. However, setting in Europe with his gay partner, he discovered that Islamic fundamentalism made its US counterpart look benign:

"Falwell was an unsavoury creep, but he didn’t issue fatwas. James Dobson’s parenting advice was appalling, but he wasn’t telling people to murder their daughters. Pat Robertson just wanted to deny me marriage; the imans wanted to drop a wall on me."

Bawer acknowledges both the rapid growth of aggressive Islam in Europe and Europe’s present policy could well end in disaster. Like many US critics though, he criticizes the Europeans for failing to integrate Muslim immigrants, without recognising that Europe is not the United States, or that the US has no experience of dealing with large numbers of Muslim immigrants.

In contrast to Europe, life is much cheaper in the United States, where recent immigrants can afford to buy cars to get around in, and the economy revolves around flexible labour laws and economies of scale production. Since the cost of living is cheap, people have more disposal income and there is a greater demand for domestic services. Subsequently the US is a great place for someone with limited skills to find work (or a least it was until it became swamped by central American immigrants).

By contrast, life in Europe is crowded, bureaucratic and expensive. Fewer people can afford cars and even if you have a car, the roads are crowded and difficult to navigate. Since life is more expensive, there is also much less need for hired hands like nannies and gardeners. Manufacturing firms have to be smart and innovative to compete with larger US and Japanese competitors, so they need skilled workers who can work with minimum supervision.

Furthermore, since every country has its own language and customs it is difficult to move around and seek out opportunities in other parts of the EU. Europeans countries also tend to have generous and intricate welfare systems, which are largely paid for in advance, and many people feel they should not be extended to recent arrivals.

All this means Europe does not have the ability to accommodate large numbers of immigrants, particularly if they are unskilled and do not understand local laws and customs.

Perhaps the biggest concern though is reproduction differences. In some European countries Muslim immigrants are having three times are many children as indigenous Europeans. As the problems in Palestine show, major differences in reproduction rates between ethnic groups will eventually lead to serious conflict, and the only solution is to keep the different groups apart.

The Europeans do have a right to demand that immigrants adhere to local values, but while you can make it compulsory to learn the local language in schools, its not really possible to force people to integrate if they don’t want to. Just because non-English speaking European immigrants responded to aggressive assimilation policies in the United States during the first half of the 20th Century, does not mean non-European Muslim immigrants will respond in the same way.

Since many Muslim immigrants appear unwilling or unable to integrate, the only options are to curtail further Muslim immigration, introduce voluntary repatriation schemes, and increase incentives for indigenous Europeans to have more children.

A major reason why European birth rates have fallen so low, is the high cost of housing in western Europe, and the dire shortage of housing in Eastern Europe (a legacy of Soviet-era mismanagement). Economic libertarians may loathe to admit it, but subsidised housing was a major factor in the demographic growth that occurred in Europe and Australasia after the end of WWII. (It’s an interesting irony that many baby-boomer libertarians might not have existed if it wasn’t for state subsidised housing!).

If the EU started an ambitious programme to provide more subsidised housing in Eastern Europe, it would help to ease the overcrowding in parts of Western Europe, while providing housing and work opportunities for young Eastern Europeans who are presently flooding west and competing for the limited number of low-skilled jobs with low-income Europeans and recent Muslim immigrants.

Cultural marxism

With economic Marxists it is relatively clear what they want to achieve - economic equality through the downfall of capitalism.

This may be a misguided and dangerous goal, but at least it is a goal. In contrast for cultural Marxists there is no goal. Behind a few vague, positive sounding slogans such as "diversity" and "inclusion," the only goal is to criticize and undermine western civilization.

I didn’t quite realize this fundamental point until I read a pithy article, The Origins of Political Correctness by Bill Lind.

The essense of the cultural Marxist approach is well summarized in the following passage:

"The stuff we’ve been hearing about this morning - the radical feminism, the women’s studies departments, the gay studies departments, the black studies departments - all these things are branches of Critical Theory. What the Frankfurt School essentially does is draw on both Marx and Freud in the 1930s to create this theory called Critical Theory. The term is ingenious because you’re tempted to ask, "What is the theory?" The theory is to criticize. The theory is that the way to bring down Western culture and the capitalist order is not to lay down an alternative. They explicitly refuse to do that. They say it can’t be done, that we can’t imagine what a free society would look like (their definition of a free society). As long as we’re living under repression - the repression of a capitalistic economic order which creates (in their theory) the Freudian condition, the conditions that Freud describes in individuals of repression - we can’t even imagine it. What Critical Theory is about is simply criticizing. It calls for the most destructive criticism possible, in every possible way, designed to bring the current order down. And, of course, when we hear from the feminists that the whole of society is just out to get women and so on, that kind of criticism is a derivative of Critical Theory. It is all coming from the 1930s, not the 1960s."

Economic Marxism has had a disasterous impact on an epic scale, but in some ways cultural Marxism is even worse.

Most European communist regimes in the 20th Century, focused on suppressing capitalism and bourgeois traits which were associated with capitalism. Other elements of western culture were only dismantled if they were deemed to be a serious obstacle to this objective. Subsequently, many aspects of traditional European culture, from nationalism and the nuclear family, to empirical science and classical music, were not overtly tampered with. In cultural Marxism all aspects of western civilization are called into question.

As a result, cultural Marxism takes a myriad of forms, which in many cases don’t even have a logically coherent basis. However, they all share one common trait, they are all focused around undermining the very culture which supports them.

Since, cultural Marxists have such a destruction and radical objective, they rarely call themselves Marxists and consider it best to disassociate themselves from anti-western Marxist regimes like Cuba and North Korea. Subsequently, they have been able to avoid the high level criticism, and in some cases persecution, which has been directed at economic Marxists.

For example, when universities in English-speaking countries consider funding cut-backs in the arts it’s usually in departments like foreign languages, history and English literature, while cultural Marxist enclaves like American studies, women’s studies, and sociology survive unscathed.

University administrators, schooled in the principles of market populism, claim this is because such courses are popular, and universities are under pressure to attract the student dollar. However, economic Marxism was very popular in the 1950s, yet back then there were no publicly funded university departments specifically devoted to promoting Marxist theory.

Similarly, since economic Marxists were more honest in their political affiliations, they made easier targets for right-wing liberals and conservatives, who could criticize them for being unpatriotic or divisive.

However, the strength of cultural Marxism today lies in the fact that its would be critics have little knowledge of the history of their own culture and so lack the confidence to attack challenge cultural Marxist propaganda.

Lets hope the latest trend towards ""Quality over quantity" in education turns our to have some substance and goes some way towards addressing this ignorance.

Ideology and education

As someone who believes that too many people go to university these days, I was mildly pleased to hear that the University of Auckland is planning to restrict entry to all undergraduate courses for 2009 ("University Senate back plan on numbers," New Zealand Herald Dec 4, 2007).

The university says it is making the changes to cope with a shortfall of money driven by cut backs in central government funding. Hence the university is planning to limit entry for art, education, science, theology and first year law. Not sure about the science limits, but the other cut backs sound excellent.

Over the last twenty years, the value of a university degree has steadily declined, as more and more marginal students, who have neither the academic aptitude or the intellectual curiosity for university-level courses, have drifted through the system to satisfy the government’s crude targets for more "human capital" throughput.

Unfortunately, as I read on, I realised that my initial impression, that for once common sense might trump ideology, was too good to be true. Predictably, the University deputy vice-Chancellor, Professor Raewyn Dalziel, says the institution plans to establish a taskforce to increase enrolment of under-represented students:

"The special admission schemes which set aside places for Maori, Pacific, and other under-represented communities operating in facilities which already restrict entry will be expanded."

If, by "under represented communities," the University means students from low-income families, then this looks to be another kick in the face for hard-working students and parents from lower-middle class families who tend to suffer the most from affirmative action policies.

While low-income families receive generous government allowances, and upper middle class kids can usually rely on parental support, students from middle-income families are caught in the middle - too well-off to be eligible for allowances, yet not rich enough to be able to rely on significant help from their parents. Now their opportunities to cover the cost of their courses, through scholarships or other subsidies, are likely to be further limited.

As I’ve said before, only indigenous minorities have a reasonable case for preferential treatment, and even then, they too should have to accept cutbacks in quotas when others groups are having to make sacrifices.

Central government and social services

As New Zealand and Australia become more multicultural, it is becoming increasingly difficult for central government to devise and deliver social services for different ethnic groups.

One method may be for central government to establish minimum standards of service and allow private charities and state or local government more involvement in managing and delivering services.

In The Original Australians Josephine Flood points out some of the problems that have occurred in many aboriginal communities with the closing down of established mission stations:

"Outback communities may have achieved land ownership, but their has been a huge increase in substance abuse, domestic violence and crime and a sharp decline in health, education and jobs. Missions still functioning today are confined to the Torres Strait Islands and remote parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia, especially the Kimberley, where they provide a superb service in very difficult conditions. Now only 40 missions remain in remote regions."

In the small central Australian town of Pakatja, Flood says the transfer of the Ernabella Mission into Aboriginal management, in 1974, has had a very negative on the local Aboriginal community:

"Under its new name, Pukatja, Ernabella still exists and the craft centre continues, but now Pukatja suffers the problems of so many outback communities. Standards of nutrition, hygiene, health and education have declined horrendously, petrol and drunkenness are rife and dedicated missionaries have been replaced by short-term employees, who tend to burn out in a couple of years."

During the 1970s, central government spending on aboriginal advancement increased considerably, and by 2001, the federal budget for indigenous programs reached $2.3 billion.

However, while local missions provided services in exchange for work and certain standards of behaviour, few conditions are placed on eligibility for government welfare, and there is little policing of Aboriginal communities. Subsequently, there had has been little improvement in social outcomes for most outback Aborigines. These problems were exacerbated by the removal of state government controls on the sale of alcohol in the 60s and 70s.

In New Zealand, domestic violence in low-income Maori communities has become a major social issue, following a number of high profile child abuse cases.The response of central government has been to undertake national "family violence" awareness campaigns and heavy-handed legislation such as the "anti-smacking bill."

The obvious draw back with such an approach is that it generates resentment among those sections of the population in which domestic violence is not an acute problem.

Furthermore, many central government welfare services tend to promote a left-liberal agenda, which gets in the way of effective policy making. For example, Family and Community Services, a division of the Ministry of Social Development, argues that domestic violence is a significant problem among all ethnic and socio-economic groups, glossing over the fact that the problem is much worse among low income-Maori than other sections of the community. Subsequently, a problem that could be tackled cost effectively at the local level becomes a national problem, which requires costly social engineering policies.

While the lack of a federalised political structure makes it more difficult to tailor policies for particular communities, there has been no effort by central government to allow voluntary organisations a greater role in managing domestic violence, or to establish a suitable contestable fund for NGOs.

During the last 150 years, voluntary organisations have played an important part in providing social services to indigenous communities in both Australia and New Zealand, especially in cooperation with state and local government. As the cost and effectiveness of national social services comes increasingly into question, it is high time central government thought about ways to devolve welfare services to locally based NGOs who are more in tune with what is happening in the communities in which they operate.

Revisionist rednecks

Among left-liberal Australians and New Zealanders, castigating white Australians for their treatment of Aborigines is a popular pastime.

However, the popular conception that the peace-loving Aborigines were massacred by rich white run holders who strode around on horseback knocking off fleeing Abo’s at will, may well be a delusion of revisionist historians.

In The Original Australians, archaeologist Josephine Flood challenges a number of misconceptions regarding conflict between Europeans and Aborigines in 19th Century Australia.

According to Flood, introduced diseases were by far the biggest killer of Aborigines in the 19th Century. Even in Central Australia, where there was intense pressure for water holes, and conflict between whites and Aborigines was very intense, Aboriginal deaths from diseases such as measles and smallpox still exceeded those from settler’s guns.

Flood’s own research into a region of South East Victoria in the mid 19th Century indicated no loss of Aboriginal life from guns, but a staggering 90 percent mortality through new diseases.

Contrary to popular belief, Flood points out that some of these new diseases may actually have arrived in Australia from Indonesia before Europeans arrived in Botany Bay:

"Historian Judy Campbell has made a compelling case that all Australia’s smallpox epidemics originated in Indonesia, where the disease was endemic and outbreaks occurred in the 1780s, 1820s, 1860s and 1870s. Fenner agrees that "origin from the Macassans is most likely," as does Campbell Macknight, an expert on the Macassans."

Flood’s investigations also reveal that it was extremely unlikely that early British colonists would have been able to deliberately pass on smallpox through infected material such as scabs kept in bottles, as some 1980s newspapers articles have argued.

The so-called extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines is generally regraded as the most infamous example of European aggression against indigenous Australians.

However, there was no premeditated campaign to exterminate the island's indigenous population. Most of the planned raids by local militia resulted in relatively few Aborigines being killed or captured, since the Aborigines were able to use their local knowledge of the rugged terrain to make their escape.

Those Tasmanian Aborigines who were deliberately shot by Europeans, were usually killed during grim, drawn out clashes with isolated homesteaders, who also suffered high casualties during Aboriginal reprisals.In terms of the death rate from armed conflict, whites in Tasmania suffered the highest death rate of any European population in 19th Century Australia, with two white settlers killed for every three Aborigines.

The highest number of Aboriginal deaths through armed conflict actually occurred in Queensland during the middle to late 19th CenturySince Queensland was settled later than other states, its settlers had access to modern, breech-loading guns, which gave them a decisive edge in firepower.

However, even in Queensland, many Aboriginal deaths occurred not at the hands of white settlers, but at the hands of the often-ruthless Native Mounted Police, who were notorious for taking few prisoners.

As Flood states:"Conflict in Australia was always small scale. There were no citizen’s militias and colonists only prevailed when supported by native police - armed and mounted Aboriginal trackers."

While there were certainly unjust reprisals in outback history, in which many Aborigines died at the hands of Europeans, revisionist historians have not been above exaggerating such reprisals or even inventing massacres that did not exist.

For example, historian Neville Green, wrote an entirely unsubstantiated account of a massacre at Forrest Hill in Western Australia in 1926, which has recently been exposed by western Australian journalist Rod Moran in his 1999 book Massacre Myth.

Before Left-liberal New Zealanders and urban Australians accuse provincial Australians of being intolerant rednecks for their past and present treatment of Aborigines, perhaps they should start addresses their own redneck ignorance of factual history.

Culturism

With Internet debate heating up between ethno-nationalists and traditionalists over how to protect western culture from threats such as Islamic terrorism, illegal immigration and the excesses of post-modern liberalism, US academic and blogger John Kennneth Press has produced a timely work, Culturism: A word, a value, a future, which advocates a culturist approach to protecting western culture.

"Multiculturists say diversity concerns food and fashion, but deep down think all cultures are interchangeable. Culturism takes cultures and their impact seriously, " says Mr Press

While there have been a number of Internet articles on the subject of culturism, such as the series of exchanges between Steve Sailer and Jared Taylor on the merits of "citizenism versus white nationalism," this is one of the first books I am aware of that specifically articulates a culturist stance.

Culturism is a pretty substantial and ambitious publication, which runs to nearly 300 pages and includes over 300 endnotes. Through the work, Press demonstrates how culturism can be found in fields as diverse as global history, anthropology, theology, philosophy, the natural sciences and evolutionary psychology, and provides some interesting insights into the cultural development of the United States.

He argues that the West has a relatively liberal and individualist culture, revolving around principles such as the separation of church and state, individualism, and free speech, which make it very different to those cultures, which have evolved in the Middle and Far East.

In contrast to individualistic western culture, Press sees Oriental culture as being defined by race and community, and Muslim culture as being defined by religion dogma and the union of church and state.

Taking his working definition of culturism as the "science and art of protection majority cultures," Press argues that cultures are locked in a competitive struggle with one another, and that people have a right and a duty to defend their culture.

"If we lose economic power to China are vocational opportunities will be undermined. If Islamic terrorists attack us we will lose even more basic freedoms."

While arguing that the West has a right to protect western values within its own borders, the culturist principle that others cultures have a right to protect their own cultures, within their own lands, counters the neo-conservative idea that the West has a right to promote western values by force. Subsequently, Press’s culturism ties in well with the principles of prudence and self-reliance, advocated by foreign policy realists, paleo-libertarians and traditional conservatives.

While asserting that the Unites States needs an overriding majority culture to function effectively, Press argues that the multi-racial make up of its population, make it dangerous and impractical to define the countries culture along racial lines. Contrary to left liberal thinking, Press argues that the US is actually one of the world’s least racist countries, and that culturism provides a means of promoting social stability and national solidarity, whilst avoiding ethnic conflict.

Culturism is a controversial and challenging book, which is likely to draw both praise and criticism from scientific conservatives and ethno-nationalists, to economic globalists and multiculturalists, whilst making an important contribution to the increasingly urgent task of defining and protecting western culture.

Externalities and anti-capitalism

Economists are currently telling us that New Zealand is living through the longest commodity boom for over 40 years, and that this is being reflected in rapidly rising income for dairy farmers.

At the same time though, domestic food prices are rising at 3-4 percent per year, with a particularly sharp increase in prices for dairy products. For example, butter prices have recently increased by 23 percent, with further increases likely in the near future.

Economists argue these price increases are due to an increase in global commodity prices, and New Zealand consumers should pay the going international rate. This may make economic sense, but does it make political sense?

Already dairy farming has something of a public relations problem due to the fact that it leads to higher nitrate levels in groundwater and waterways and consumes greater amounts of water than sheep farming or grain growing. In Eastern New Zealand, the water requirements of dairy farming are made worse by the fact that windbreaks would protect the ground from drying westerly winds are being removed to allow for extra wide sprinklers.

If dairy farmers were struggling, then the public might be a bit more sympathetic.However, the country is subsidising dairy farming, but dairy farming is not giving anything back in return. If I can no longer fish in my local river because the water has been fouled or extracted by a dairy agro-business, why shouldn’t I be compensated in some way?

This is not just a fairness issue. Arguably the biggest problem with un-patriotic, laissez-faire policies is that for every action there is a reaction. If New Zealand businesses are allowed to pass on their externalities to the general public, without giving back anything in return, then more people will switch support to support left wing parties that see businesses as unpatriotic and selfish players which should be heavily taxed and regulated.

Subsequently, if the business sector comes forward with a worthy proposal, that is in the national interest, such as tax write-offs for research and development, fewer voters are likely to be supportive. Rather than tying dairy farmers down in red tape, as Labour and the Greens appear to advocate, why not ensure that New Zealand consumers get access to cheap dairy products.

This would cost the dairy industry little in economic terms, and would help ensure that the country’s increasingly urban population continues to have good relations with the farming sector.