Immigrants’ Complaints

09/12/201609/12/2016 Jacques Delacroix Culture, Current Events, Politics happiness, immigration, media studies, United States

I can’t watch or listen to the liberal media without hearing reports of immigrants complaining about how badly they are treated by the wider American society. (Yes, I listen to National Public Radio nearly every afternoon. It’s my intellectual duty and also my secret vice.) Something does not add up in the oppressed immigrant narrative though. First, before I explain, forgive me in advance because I am about to transgress on good manners in two different ways.

First transgression first. I spent much of five years of my youth in graduate school learning not much more than the following: My own experience, basically a collection of anecdotes, proves nothing. Point well taken. But the anecdotes within my reach can sometimes pile up to the point that they make some questions unavoidable. Below is one such question.

I know many immigrants, and different kinds of immigrants. First, like everyone else who lives in California, I know many Mexican immigrants. I understand Spanish perfectly. (I mean, as well as English; you be the judge.) I speak it well because, like French, my native language, it’s just a dialect of Latin. I hang around the abundant Spanish language media often. If Mexican immigrants complained, it would have come to my attention. I only remember one such case, a young woman who had come to this country as a child. She confided that she thought my colleagues, her professors, favored “Caucasians” in grading. She was actually failing because her English was poor. I made her do an assignment in Spanish and I understood why she was frustrated. My colleagues were not unfair to her. Her English language self’s IQ was stuck at room temperature (in F degrees) while her Spanish self must have been jumping around the 120 mark. No one had bothered to tell her the obvious: “You need to learn English better.” Not American society’s fault, except for having tolerated her without adequate language training, and for the university that had admitted her, ditto. (Incidentally that school’s affirmative action program was a success overall, I thought.)

The foreign-born Hispanics I know and meet are all in a wonderful mood in public. Of course earning in one hour what would take you a day in Mexico and two days in El Salvador would put anyone in a good mood. There are three or four bastards of them, Hispanics, who force me to wake at 6 every morning because they walk under my window guffawing and laughing loudly. As I have written elsewhere, on this blog, the evidence for Hispanics’ satisfaction is easy to find.

I also know Asian and European immigrants, who are mostly middle-class, and a handful of Middle Easterners. The latter, mostly Muslims, feel under siege, of course; it would be a miracle if they did not. It’s not really American society’s fault that nearly all the mass murderers of civilians in recent years insisted on shouting “Allahu Akbar.” Yet, even those immigrants sure as hell are not packing their bags, or, if they do, it’s in minute numbers. I would bet there is no exodus out of the country.

The Asian and Europeans I know tend to exult in their American residence; they often act smugly about it although all of them miss something from their country of origin, at least their relatives. (For me, it’s not so much relatives as blanquette de veau; look it up.) Nevertheless, many of those middle-class immigrants find a political home on the left of the American spectrum because they have never been exposed to the ideal of small government. Even the smart ones usually don’t realize that government is a predator. More anecdotic transgression: If I ask myself who seems to be happier, on the average of those I meet more or less daily, immigrants or native born Americans, the answer comes loud and clear: the immigrants.

So, I am seriously beginning to consider if the reporting of widespread complaints by immigrants is not fabricated, with the help of a handful of fairly sophisticated minority members of the media. I mean, for example, the blond, lying CNN Mexican-born anchor who can’t open his mouth without proffering a vicious untruth.

Here is my second violation of convention. I am only doing it because being an immigrant gives me special privileges (and being old also does). If there are really, really many immigrants with serious grievances I don’t worry much because they are all citizens, citizens of some other country, that is. It seems to me, most of them could pack up and leave and go home to where they are citizens. That’s except for the refugees from war. The latter don’t have much of a leg to stand on however. Whatever shortcomings American society has, at least, here, we don’t kill you on purpose unless we know you personally.

That’s a real advantage.

I wish we had a national program to pay for one-way tickets for disgruntled immigrants. It might not even require taxpayer money. There must be tens of thousands like me. I give money voluntarily to save tigers in the wild. Sending back bad immigrants into the wilderness is a good cause too. So, it could be done by free public subscription. Or this country could institute a small tax on in-coming immigrants to constitute a fund that finances one-way tickets on demand. It would be fair, like an assigned risk insurance pool is fair. My guess is that it would be one of the few government programs that does not overspend its budget. It would have, at least ,the merit of putting an end to the BS* in the liberal media.

Ah, but the Democratic Party won’t allow it! It would never permit such practical innovativeness because malcontents are its bread and butter.

Incidentally, the ambitious guy inside me wonders if we couldn’t have a second one-way ticket program, one for native-born Americans who hate America. Of course, I am thinking only about a voluntary program. It would have the merit of ranking all the dissatisfied who don’t avail themselves of the offer of a one-way ticket as at least moderately satisfied. It would stop some of the implicit blackmail of America. It’s not a cruel proposal, I think the Canadians would take them.

* Note for my overseas readers: B.S. are the discreet initials for “bullshit” a colloquial term for an argument without merit. It’s unfair to bulls that mostly mind their business and don’t argue much.

At a Muslim Wedding

08/20/201608/23/2016 Jacques Delacroix Culture, Liberty Algeria, equality, ethnography, gender, Islam, Islamic culture

I was on that free diving and fishing trip through Algeria I have written about before. The French, who had seemingly deeply colonized the country, had been gone for a few years. They had left behind their language and many buildings in the big cities and in some other, fertile parts of Algeria. In remote areas though, it was almost as if they had never been there. I was in one of those areas with my then-future-ex-wife (“TFEW”) in our VW camping bus.

It was in the east, in Kabylia, in a small town squeezed between the mountains and the sea. There was a tiny harbor protected by a tiny breakwater that sheltered four or five boats. There was also a café a hundred yards away. A big rock with steep sides emerged within swimming distance of the harbor. The town was a spear fisherman’s dream as well as a vacationer’s dream. It was the kind of place that travel agencies use to arouse you on TV in the winter and never, never deliver.

When we arrived, in the middle of a hot afternoon, there was no human being in sight; even the café was empty. I was an instinctive believer in the adage that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission even before I heard it spoken. So, we parked at the harbor and had our cheese, bread, and figs lunch. I prepared instant coffee on the stove. I thought I was giving whatever authorities might exist in the town ample time to chase us off if they wished. Nobody came.

Toward evening, I walked to the café where four or five men were sitting and talking quietly. I said Hello in French and they replied in the same language. I could read the curiosity in their eyes but they were too polite to inquire. So, I ordered some tea and explained briefly what I was doing in Algeria. This interested them. Being a fisherman works everywhere as an introduction. Everyone knows what fishing is (unlike “touring,” for example). Every man either is a fisherman or wishes he were. Or has a brother-in-law who is a fisherman. One of the men volunteered that the café served wine. I ordered a glass for myself and offered to treat the men. Only one accepted.

My companion and I has a small dinner under the light of an oil lamp and went to sleep in the back of the bus. In the morning, I quickly located a bakery by smell. There was hot fresh bread. (Good bread is an undeniable gift of French colonialism.) After breakfast; I cinched on a light weight belt and grabbed my speargun; I put on my mask and snorkel and my flippers. I entered the clear water of the harbor and swam to the offshore rock. The sea was bountiful. There were groupers there that did not even know I was a predator and various edible fish that seemed to only have Arabic names. (If you don’t believe me, I have a picture.)

The location was so idyllic that we lingered on. In truth, we didn’t even have anyplace to go in a hurry anyway. We ate fresh fish at every meal, with fresh bread and tomatoes, plus some fruits. There were no authorities. Only the village kids came to visit. They were sweet and full of good questions. We gave them fish. I had become almost an old-timer at the café. One of the guys there told me his name was Pierre. He was the same guy who had accepted a glass of wine the first day; I should have known. I never got the story of why he had stayed behind after all the other French left. Maybe, there was a woman involved. Or, he had no relatives in France. Asking would have been pushy

One morning, early, two older children with solemn expressions came by with a message. There was going to be a wedding the next day and we were invited. We were both flattered and intrigued. The TFEW immediately went into a flurry of activity looking for a suitable present for the bride. It was no easy task because we were camping, with minimalist baggage. Eventually, she found a small silk kerchief that she thought might do because, frankly, the locals seemed so poor. She (and I too) was thinking in terms of what we knew about: American and French weddings, pretty much variations on the same basic model: The bride is the queen and she gets presents, the bride’s mother is the dictator, the groom is a little drunk, so are many of the guests, including children. There is dancing. Most unmarried women are a little or much turned on; single guys try their luck.

On the wedding day, we cleaned up as well as we could, birdbath manner. My companion even washed her hair in cold water. Fortunately, she was wearing it in a very short afro, almost a buzz cut. She put on a light cotton mumu that looked almost ironed. It was a decent, loose garment but with discreet curves in the right areas. I thought she looked more than presentable. I don’t know about myself. I had on clean jeans and my only shirt with a collar. The kids had been vague about time. Around noon, we walked up the steep street with the same children guiding us.

A whole other street, a flat one, had been blocked off and long tables, benches and chairs lined up on the sidewalks. It appeared that our being invited had not been such an extraordinary honor after all. We guessed the whole village was invited and it would have been unseemly to leave the tourists out. (But wait….) However, we saw only male human beings on the street, from boys in short pants to bent old geezers. A band played somewhere close-by but we couldn’t see it and there were no dancers in sight. The action took place behind bed sheets hung from a rope that stretched across the street. We were instructed with smiles to sit down. After a few minutes, young men came bearing enamel basins of food. They placed a piece of mutton next to us on the table oilcloth and a bowl of semolina (grits, more or less) with two spoons. Another boy set a recently rinsed glass full of limonade in front of each of us. We noticed that other guests were waiting for our seats.

We were going to hurry off the table but a tall, handsome man in a dark suit – the only suit in sight – came by. He was the groom and he had taken it to heart to greet us personally, which he did graciously, in perfect French. We were told later that he was a fighter pilot back from training in the Soviet Union who had returned to his native town just to get married. The man was elegant and he had a great deal of presence. He would not have been out of place in an upscale bar in Palo Alto, California where we lived most of the time. I told him that my wife had a small gift she would like to give to the bride in person. He said not to move, that he would send us someone quickly.

After a short time, an older man came to tell my companion to follow him. He took her a few feet away behind a low wall where I could still see her. There, he handed her over to two old crones. One of them had red dyed hair that would not have fooled a blind man ten feet away. The three women walked away through an unlit area but in the direction of a brightly lighted structure where I lost sight of them.

About ten minutes later, the TFEW came back by herself steaming. (I was a grown man; I felt the vibes; I knew the signs.) So, I asked, did you meet the bride and did you give her the present? She said she had and she had and the bride, sitting all made up and coiffed in a gilded armchair, surrounded by her handmaidens, seemed touched. But, she said, you won’t believe what happened before that. Just as we reached the bridal pavilion, one of the two old women held me by the shoulders while the other lunged for my crotch and tried for a grab.

What do you think? Would I make this up? Do I have the talent, the imagination?

Several things. First, yes, of course, this is intended to be a pop-sociological story. It’s a commentary on something. Your guess.

Second, it should be obvious that I liked everyone I met during that stay and in that episode, every single person. That’s more than I can say for the people with whom I cross paths daily in California, for example. And, don’t get me started on the French! (Many of whom are holes in the ice as my decorous granddaughter would say.) Now, I know why I liked them but it’s hard to tell why they were so likable. Everyone in the small town was courteous and generous if he had a chance to be, even if only by offering a glass of hot tea after my long stay underwater. Again, I can’t tell why they were so gracious. Perhaps small towns are like that. Perhaps people used to be generally like that when they live in places small enough to be real communities. I can’t really believe this though because I have read too many stories (beginning with Maupassant’s), seen too many movies, where small town people behave in a completely beastly manner.

In the absence of perfect sampling, I tend to put some faith in cultural redundancy: If blondes keep treating me shabbily, I begin suspecting that there is something wrong with blondes (or about blondes and me). So, I have been treated courteously by Muslims and by people who appeared to be Muslims whenever I spend time in Muslim surroundings, even thousands of miles apart. So, until proven otherwise, I think it’s their culture that makes them friendly. Yet, naturally, I find the crotch grabbing incident and what I take to be its many implications repulsive. I don’t think it would have happened anywhere in the formerly Christian West.

The gesture and its sexual implications have a historical association with Islam, I believe. (See how carefully I chose my words.) Yet, there is almost certainly nowhere in the Islamic Scripture that mandates, commands, or even condones such behavior. Contrary to many Muslim apologists I hear on TV and on radio, that’s not the end of the story, as far as I am concerned, however. You are responsible for the baggage your religion carries. So, there is absolutely nothing in the Christian Scriptures ordering that theological deviants be burned alive. And yet, it happened in Christian lands, over and over again. Historically, it’s a sort of Christian specialty although Christ would not have applauded the practice, I am pretty sure. If you are a Christian, it’s disingenuous to say that burning people alive has nothing to do with you. It’s as much part of your heritage as are the glorious Gothic cathedrals.

And, yes, you are right; I loaded the dice by entitling this story “A Muslim Wedding.” I could have called it equally well: “An Algerian Wedding,” or “A Kabyle Wedding” (for the area), or “An Amazigh Wedding” (after the local people’s ethnicity), even “A Village Wedding.” Was I wrong? You decide.

Maternal Pride

08/16/2016 Jacques Delacroix Culture

An old friend of mine from way back then came to visit me recently. She came with her husband and her three handsome sons. The sons are all in their early twenties. A propos of I don’t know what, one said he had to leave in order to take a shower. I advised him in my best avuncular manner not to wash all the pheromones off of himself.

My friend immediately asserted that no matter how long a hot shower her sons took, no matter how much they soaped and scrubbed, how much they shampooed, they still exuded abundant pheromones.

Nothing like the heart of a mother.

Voting For Potty-Mouth Trump

08/08/2016 Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Liberty, Politics American culture, American elections, American politics, Donald Trump, voting

I think Donald Trump has the attention span of a two year-old and the potty mouth of a six year-old reared by an indulgent grandmother who is also hard of hearing. I also think he is deeply ignorant on a very important issue (international trade) and I disagree forcefully with him on another (illegal immigration from the south). Finally, I believe there is little chance that a President Trump’s foreign policy would reverse the Obama precipitous decline of the US on the world stage, which I think is dangerous for Americans.

Not a pretty picture overall. So, it takes serious concerns for a dedicated, generally well-informed rationalist like me to vote for him. Here are the reasons why I will.

First, Trump has already told us whom he would appoint for the Supreme Court which sets the life conditions of American society for a generation or more. All his potential appointees are fine by me. It’s not difficult to guess that no Clinton appointee would be acceptable, not one, zero. Any of them would facilitate the creeping abrogation of the US Constitution we witnessed under Obama.

Second, I am certain – because it’s difficult to imagine otherwise – that a President Trump would try to stop and reverse most the climate change cult nonsense and relegate it to the level of a private religion where it belongs. His administration would allow an energy revolution sufficient in itself to rekindle economic growth. I see no prospect of normal economic growth under a Hillary Clinton presidency. (I mean 3% per year and over.) She has said herself that she would continue Pres. Obama’s paralytic policies.

Third, through the example of his sheer verbal brutality, Trump would lift some the yoke of political correctness. This is not a superficial or a light reform. I believe that political correctness actually paralyzes Americans’ criticality on nearly all issues. (Examples on request.)

My last reason is Democratic candidate Clinton of course, even if I leave aside every single one of the leftist policies she is likely to try to implement. Mrs Bill Clinton is still bought and paid for. The fact that I don’t know exactly by whom or by what only makes it worse. (Someone who would not braggingly share her $250,000 a shot speeches with the public is unthinkable to me.) On that account alone, if I had to choose between H. Clinton and Al Capone for president, it would be a toss-up. We know what interests Al was serving, after all.

There is worse: Her lies about her lies, her lies that have zero chance of being believed have become a proof that she is delusional, at least part of the time. By contrast, Trump ‘s untruths are like those of a little boy who can’t help himself from opening his mouth before he talks.

Presidential elections are not only about the presidency, of course. They give the winner’s party a confirmation of the validity of the principles it proclaims and of the policies it embodies. This is obviously true for well defined policies such as Obamacare. It’s true, more subtly, about cultural policies both explicit and implicit. Seven and half years of Obama administration have established firmly – with Big Media complicity – the language of envy and the spirit of beggardliness in American political discourse. Public speech is now built around platitudes, clichés, half-truths, and big lies repeated so frequently that they have become truth, Goebbels-style. The new liberal language is disgusting but completely predictable and thus boring. It’s also a form of child abuse. (Individuals who were 10 during Pres. Obama’s first campaign are now 19. They have never known public sanity.) As for Demo principles, there aren’t any. I count my blessings!

Donald Trump on his part, is his own buffoon. He is only an epiphenomenon. His objectionable traits are not part of a cultural movement. He is not contagious. There is zero chance the Republican Party, or the conservative movement are going to adopt his crudeness. Neither could if they tried.

I am angry about this cultural deterioration because I believe that in the long run what people do, what they accomplish collectively, is strongly constrained by culture. The contemporary American left-liberal culture shackles the imagination, and by doing so destroys many possible futures. Again, the Obama/Clinton conceptual swamp is vastly more of a lasting threat to America than the childish vulgarity and the ignorance Trump displays so frequently.

Being on the side of Trump often puts me in embarrassing company, I admit. But being on Clinton’s side would place me knowingly in vicious company. It would also range me squarely on the side of an intellectual class that has spent decades consolidating its collective blindness and its collective deafness about the reality of the world. It’s a class I know well because much of it lives in universities. There is no doubt that Trump as president is a big gamble. But Clinton is no gamble at all; her evilness is predictable.

Sometimes, to be a man of conscience, you have to gamble. That’s what I plan to do, on my behalf and on your behalf.*

* Public persons often contribute unwittingly to me finding my bearings: If Harry Reid, the corrupt real estate and proud deliberate liar loudly condemns Trump, there has to be something right about supporting Trump.

A Muslim Woman and the Sea

08/04/201608/04/2016 Jacques Delacroix Religion Algeria, cultural baggage, ethnography, France, gender, Islam

Here is another short story. (I don’t have the talent to compose characters so, most of my stories are autobiographical by default.)

I am on the same free-diving and spear fishing expedition I mentioned in another story. We are driving and living in a VW bus I equipped myself for the purpose. This time, my then future ex-wife (“TFEW”) and I are stopped in a small town in coastal western Algeria. We just arrived and it’s a sunny quiet morning. We are enjoying a rare cup of real coffee at the also rare terrace of a small café. I will never forget that insignificant non-event, because, suddenly, out of nowhere, a baby camel came ambling down the street. The charming animal walked straight up to me and began browsing my hair. (Go ahead, don’t believe me; I have a picture!)

So, we are just lingering when a handsome teenage boy stops by to make conversation (in French, of course): Where are you from? What are you doing here? What kind of fishing, again? How do you like Algeria?

We invite him to sit down and have coffee with us but he insists he is in a hurry. He wishes us a good vacation and walks away. Then, suddenly, he wheels around to tell us he would like to invite us to his house for couscous. He is too young to be married and to have his own house. I ask him how his mother would respond to sudden unannounced guests. He replies that she would love it, that she misses her old French bosses; that she likes to speak French with real French people. I am beginning to feel peckish. Against my better judgment, we follow him around the corner.

We drive through a metal gate he closes behind us. The young man stops at the door to the house and calls out with several sentences in Arabic. A woman’s voice responds and the door opens immediately. A woman in her early forties stands smiling at us. Her dark shiny hair is partially covered. She has beautiful apricot skin and dancing black eyes. Under other circumstances, in spite of a fifteen-year age difference, I might have fallen in love with her on the spot. I must have been fairly obvious because the TFEW secretly yanked hard on the back of my shirt.

We sit down on cushions in the living room. There is an opening into the kitchen so we can communicate with the mother while she works. Actually, I am pretty much the only one doing the communicating because the TFEW is not a native French speaker and she is a little hesitant on that account. The thought crosses my mind that the mother is flirting with me verbally a little from the kitchen where I cannot see her face. The charming son soon serves us tea and two quiet teenage girls dart in and out on what I think is a mission to keep us company although they do not say anything. I am not sure whether they were shy or if they did not know French. There is no man in sight and no mention of any adult male.

After quite a long time bantering back and forth without the help of an adult beverage precisely, the steaming couscous garni appears on the rug in front of our knees. (Tech note: “couscous” is the grits-like grain; it’s “garni” when it is accompanied by a vegetable stew including chickpeas, and meat, usually boiled mutton, sometimes chicken.) Everyone is starving by that time and the family sits around and next to us each holding a bowl into which the mother dishes out couscous topped with veggies and mutton. One of the girls has thoughtfully placed a spoon in front of us, the visitors, which we make a point of honor to ignore, of course because we want to appear cool.

The mother tells us gaily how she had worked for fifteen years for a French family, as a servant with broad responsibilities, including the care of small children and the kitchen. She says she loved the lady of the house and the lady of the house loved her “like a niece.” I guess that’s how she has learned her grammatically perfect and lively French. After the French left, suddenly, feeling threatened (and probably with good reason) there was no work for a woman with her skills. Nothing is said, again in this story, about a husband. There is no explanation about how the family sustains itself.

It’s often difficult to say how poor people are following a revolution. Those don’t look poor. They are all well though simply dressed. The house in which they live is consequential and Western-style. (I mean that I would have moved into it in a minute.) As far as I know, it is her beloved lady boss’s house they are all occupying. Perhaps, the lady boss has slipped her the title before fleeing. I am told there was a lot of that that went on. I am also told the new Algerian government, its hands full of pressing matters, was happy to let sleeping dogs lie on this issue. I can’t judge what the family’s everyday food is like but none of them look skinny and the couscous was well garnished and ample. (But then again, the latter is not a good indicator of anything in North Africa where a feast is a feast however meagre the fare on ordinary days.)

If you eat enough food and it’s tasty enough, at the end of the meal, you will feel a little like drunk. Those who talk after dinner, including the Mom, talk louder. The pleasant son tells me of his wish to go work in France and of his modest ambitions in general. Even the young girls smile more broadly. Perhaps seeing their mother happy makes them feel happy. I am asked to explain for the tenth time in Algeria what I am doing there. I explain my quest for big fish and spiny lobster (and also for slipper lobster, a grotesque looking but delicious creature). I describe how I go under water holding my breath to shoot them in the face with a rubber spear gun. The family seems a little incredulous but they are visibly charmed by the concept. They have already made themselves believe that the TFEW and I really sleep in the VW bus as we travel from place to place. (The bus was parked out of view in their courtyard while we ate.)

Then, out of nowhere, the mother says something astounding: I envy you – she says to spend so much time looking at the sea. I love the sea and I haven’t seen it for so long. Say this again, I request. Isn’t this house, your house, about four or five blocks from the sea cliff? It is, she said but I can’t go there (“Je ne peux pas y aller.”) French does not not distinguish between physical impossibility and moral interdiction. So, I am a little confused but not for long. I guess quickly what’s on her mind.

I have an idea, I say. I tell you what: Tomorrow morning at five when the sun is up but everyone is still asleep, you will put on your hijab and wear a shawl around your shoulders that you can raise to hide your face if necessary. Your son will open the gate to let my bus out and then, he will sit next to me in front where everyone can see him. You will be in the back next to my wife with the curtains drawn. Your son will direct me to a suitable point on the cliff where I will park. There, you will raise the curtain as much as you want to and look at the sea as long as you wish. She agrees and her face is filled with anticipation.

Early the next morning, the son wake us up with cups of hot coffee. There is a defeated look on his face. He tells us that his mother has changed her mind and that she will not take up my proposal after all; that she says thank you and good-bye. He adds she is too embarrassed to get up and wish us a good trip face-to-face. We shake hands and leave with much sadness in our hearts.

Is this a story about religion? All Algerians were Muslims, if nothing else, by default; so was our pleasant hostess, no doubt Yet Muslim intellectuals will point out that there is no part of the Islamic sacred scriptures that enjoins women to hide at home. There is certainly nothing in the same scriptures that says they can’t enjoy contemplating the sea, one of God’s first creations, in Islamic as well as in Jewish and Christian tradition.

Personally, I disagree. I think this is a story about religion although indirectly. If the woman had been a Lutheran, a Catholic, a Buddhist, a Zoroastrian, or a Mormon, she would have had her fill of the sea before I met her. I can even imagine a Hindu woman being somewhat self-cloistered but not one fluent in a foreign language, not one with a long history of happy interaction with Westerners.

Two main points. First, every follower of a religion is not a scriptural expert. What people think is their religion often differs a great deal from what theologians say is true religion. I addressed this issue in an article in Liberty Unbound. (“Religious Bric-a-Brac and Tolerance of Violent Jihad.”) Second, religions are vehicles for all kinds of cultural practices that are not religious or only in a distorted manner. Thus, Catholicism, besides its rich history of burning people alive for their opinions, is largely responsible for the consumption of fish among inland Catholics. It probably even had a lot to do with the establishment of the long lasting Newfoundland cod fishery. (Ask me.) It’s fair to judge religions for the cultural baggage they carry and that they could put down if they really wanted to. Passive assent is a form of complicity.

Gun Control Works Just Fine in France

07/27/201607/27/2016 Jacques Delacroix Current Events French culture, gun rights, Islamic culture, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, terrorism

In semi rural Normandy, in France, a mass is interrupted by two young men who speak Arabic among themselves. They force the aged priest to kneel. They demand that some of the faithful present video the next scene. Then they cut off the priest’s head with a long knife. They don’t shoot him!

After this, they take several people hostage, injuring one seriously and they attempt to escape. The police are waiting for them outside and shoot the decapitators dead.

In this true story, only the police had guns just like liberals and President Obama want it to be the case in the US. The murderers almost did not commit their crime because they only had one gun that was not even functional, almost didn’t.

ISIS quickly claimed the crime as committed by some of its “soldiers” (brave soldiers, murdering an eighty-year old priest). One of the dead assassins was immediately identified as a local young man. He was on electronic bracelet parole after being arrested in Turkey and sentenced for trying to join Islamic State. The French authorities don’t joke when it comes to terrorism!

The main French imam condemned the crime immediately and in the most vigorous terms. He did not comment on the mode of the assassination, beheading. He did not speculate whether this could have some cultural resonance for some Muslims, given that the Prophet Mohamed himself demonstrated a certain preference for beheading as a way to dispatch his enemies. (References on request.)

The French are brain frozen. No one in France has wondered publicly about what would have happened if one of the faithful at mass had carried a hidden handgun.

The Nice Massacre

07/15/2016 Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Liberty civil liberty, France, Islamism, terrorism

Following the massacre in Nice yesterday, I am hearing comments on radio that, together, would have one believe that it could not happen here, that it’s somehow the fault of the French themselves. I think that’s a dangerous dream.

Americans have to get past the Irma la Douce fantasy about France that many still shelter in their hearts. The French do not wile away their days at sidewalk cafes terraces brimming with insouciance. (That means a “devil-may care” attitude.) France is an industrial society pretty much like the US though without most of the inventiveness. Its economic policies for the past twenty years have been stinky. The causes of the French stagnation would sound familiar to any Bernie Sanders supporter. The current government of the Socialist Party differs from the Obama administration in matters of degree only. The same la-la-la Land dream occupies the minds of most of the French Left as of most American liberals. If anything, the French tend to be more realistic because they have had more experience of its failures.

It’s not the case that France has had an open borders policy as I have heard say on conservative radio today. Nevertheless, for historical reasons, France probably has many more Muslims proportionately than the US has. “Probably” because no one knows who is really a Muslim; no one really knows who is really a Catholic. The only thing that’s more or less known is the number of Muslims names. There are many. Most are French citizens by birth.

The current French Minister of Labor has a Muslim name. People with Muslim names are present throughout all levels of French society. They are in banking, in entertainment. The most popular French citizens probably have Muslims names; they are in sports. By and large, such people are well integrated within a mostly religiously indifferent French society. That is, as well as can be done within an economically stagnant society with a permanent unemployment rate of 10%, 20% for the young. How much discrimination there is against people with Muslim names is anyone’s guess. The fact is that immigrants with Muslim names keep trying hard to move to France. Not many try to move to Egypt or even to Saudi Arabia, for example, where the fate of immigrants may be even worse.

This large population with Muslim names is seen from the US as providing a bottomless pool of jihadist recruits. That’s true but it should also be an asset in combating violent jihadism. Thousands of French police personnel have Muslim names. (The police officer murdered outside Charlie Hebdo was one such.) Hundreds if not thousands of police and other security personnel are fluent in diverse dialects of Arabic. This is more, of course, than can be said of their American counterparts.

The French intelligence services have earned the respect of their allies. The country was not caught sleeping after the Bataclan slaughter. It had been under a state of emergency lightly suspending some personal rights. The state of emergency was slated to be removed in the coming days. Perhaps, someone did not want it to stop although it’s hard to believe given how light it was.

As I write on July 15th, there has been no claim by any Islamist organization. The only thing known is that the driver of the truck, the murder weapon, was a person of Tunisian origin who was probably a French citizen. That’s not enough to prove a link to Islamist terrorist organizations. The man was known to the police as a petty criminal (a familiar story). Note that a petty criminal is one who is not very successful, one at the bottom of the criminal pecking order. He was also undergoing a difficult divorce. I speculate that jihadist organizations provide people of Muslim origin undergoing personal difficulties a high-sounding excuse for venting their anger on the innocent many.

If there was indeed an involvement of ISIS or Al Qaida, no reason for the attack on civilians need to be found. They hate Westerners, irrespective of what Westerners actually do. The fact that France has been publicly involved in fighting Islamist terrorism in two theaters – in Iraq next to the US and in Mali may have made it a priority target for jihadists.

With this group assassination the lack of scruples of violent jihadists is confirmed again. Given the number of victims, the circumstance and the location of the crime, there is a 100% certainty that some of the victims have Muslim names. (By the way, the best video of the event was supplied by an Egyptian tourist.) I wonder if this is going to prompt Muslim organizations everywhere, including in the US, to do more than passively deplore the crime. I wonder if this is going to lead to request for energetic surveillance measures involving the breeding marshes of violent jhadists, which are not Lutheran seminaries or Buddhist monasteries. I ask because, under Obama, in this country, we are paralyzed by political correctness as if avoiding bruising the feelings of some was well worth a few hundred blown up civilians here and there.

Brexit, free trade, and the EU

06/25/2016 Jacques Delacroix Current Events Brexit, European Union, free trade, immigration, media studies, protectionism, United Kingdom

I posted this on Facebook twenty hours before the results were known:

The United Kingdom will not leave the EU. If it does, there will be concrete talks of a trade agreement between the UK and the Union within a week. Free trade is the best part of the EU anyway. It may be the only worthwhile part. At least, it undeniably works. The EU has a free trade agreement with Norway and with Switzerland already. I don’t see it denying the UK, not even out of collective pique.

My guess (guess) is that the UK will have done the EU a favor by pointing out that much of the European Union’s bureaucratic, abstract, nebulous project is simply overambitious. The UK taught the world democracy and soccer (football). It can teach its European neighbors pragmatism.

Obviously, I called the referendum wrong. The mistake I made was to guess that people who were going to vote for staying were more likely to lie to pollsters than partisans of Leave. That would have given an underestimate for the “stays.” I should not have called it. I am not inside British culture enough to make this kind of guess. I shouldn’t have. I won’t again.

I am perplexed by some of the comments I heard all day in the US media. Perhaps as a result of a bit of psychological projection, American commentators state that anti-immigration sentiment played the main part in the victory of the “leave.” This may be the case; I don’t know enough to pronounce but I need to make a technical point that the pundits don’t seem to be completely aware of. Leaving the European Union can only lessen the flow of European immigrants into the UK: Polish (plumbers), Romanian carpenters, and tens of thousands of French citizens, at least. Since about one million Brits leave abroad and almost all in the EU, I see an exchange agreement in the making. Don’t you?

Leaving the EU will do nothing or nearly nothing to reduce the intake of immigrants of color and of Muslims. Those landed in the UK and continue to land there as a consequence of past colonial relationships. I say this because I suspect (I suspect; I don’t know) that Brits are more exercised about large numbers of dark-skinned Muslims than they are about fewer dishwater-white Catholic Poles. Call me a cynic!

Second technical point. Many of the American commentators I heard today, including those predicting Armageddon as a result of the British referendum, seem to have vague ideas about what the European Union actually is. It’s actually fairly complicated but I don’t excuse them. If they want to comment, they should do their homework. Anyway, the EU is first and foremost a free trade area and and free investment area. In this capacity, it works very well. I mean by this that any step backward would impoverish all Europeans to some extent.

I don’t see how British industry and British commerce can really face the possibility of meeting with tariff walls and other discriminatory treatments in a market of 27 countries until now wide open to them.

The Brits have two years to finalize their exit. I think (but I have been wrong before; see above) that they will say to the EU: We are leaving except that… we want to be included in your free trade and free investment area, like Iceland and like Norway. As I mentioned above, I also think they will want some mutual arrangement about citizens of the EU living in the UK and citizens of the UK living in the EU. I think there are going to be many rounds of negotiations around the theme: “We are leaving but…” It’s also possible that the most fervent Leave-ers will ultimately be satisfied with having made a rude gesture toward Brussels, the capital of the European Union. I am repeating (in fear this time) my prediction that the British referendum will cause the EU to reform itself. In fact, think it already has.

See also “Protectionism; Free Trade….” It was written for the intelligent uninformed.

Dear Bernie Supporter: Keep an eye on foreign news

06/02/2016 Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics Bernie Sanders, France, President Hollande, socialism

Widespread strikes in France, many turning violent. There are big-time shortages of gasoline so that many people can’t go to work if they want to. The strikes are not directed against “the corporations.” They are directed squarely at the government. What government? The government of the French Socialist Party. That’s an instance of “democratic socialism” if there was ever one.

What did the Hollande government do to attract such working class anger? It has tried to modify slightly the labor laws, to make it easier for example, for employers to offer more than 35 hours a week to their employees if the latter want them (IF they want them).

France is a country with around 10% unemployment for about twenty years. For the young it’s been around 25% . Also, there has not been real economic growth for about ten years (+1% GDP annual is a cause for celebration). Meanwhile, Germany and Switzerland next door are thriving. A great deal of French public opinion is simply in bad faith and refuses to see the obvious: If it’s too difficult to fire people, employers don’t hire and even suppress growth to avoid hiring.

The Minister of Labor in charge of making the French kiss and even swallow that frog is a woman with an Arab name, a Muslim name. Do I think the French Socialist Party is twisted? I am not sure.

Please, thing of sharing, especially with Sanderites.

Memorial Day in the Days of Trump

05/30/2016 Jacques Delacroix Culture, Current Events American culture, Donald Trump, fascism, immigration, populism, Sociology

It disturbs me that in my area of the Central Coast of California, Memorial Day is almost entirely a beach day, a sailing day, a fishing day, and a barbecue day. There is little here to mark the day as one of remembrance for those who died to protect our precious republic (and by the way, to save many innocent civilians, including me). Most of the local people are too sophisticated and too lazy to do anything out of the ordinary on that weekend except pretend it’s summer. And then, some of the population is gone because the university lets out on Memorial Weekend and many students go somewhere else. They are replaced to a large extent by visitors from Silicon Valley forty minutes away on a hard mountain road, and from as afar as the agricultural Central Valley, hours away. The ones and the others want to sit on the beach or go on rides on our famous old fashioned Boardwalk, a sort of permanent carnival. The ocean water is still too cold for almost all adults but the kids will wade in a little. (Frankly, I think few adults around – except surfers – here know how to swim in the ocean but that’s neither here nor there.)

I know that the locals don’t care much about the meaning of Memorial Day because there are only three American flags on my long street, and two belong to my household.

In the vicinity of Santa Cruz, there is one Saturday morning Memorial Day parade. It’s held in Felton, a small, funky town not ten minutes from Santa Cruz proper. It’s in the mountains (as opposed to near the sea). The real estate there is a little cheaper than in Santa Cruz. It’s home to a certain horsey set, not the kind that rides knees to the chest, English style, but those who ride on a Western saddle, with their legs comfortably extended. Its downtown stretches over half of a street with a couple of grocery stores, other small businesses, and one Chinese restaurant (not that good, to tell the truth). But, this is Santa Cruz county so, there is also a mediocre Mexican restaurant that doubles as a fantastic music venue.

In spite of physical proximity, the culture in Felton is strikingly different from the culture of university-anchored, progressive, mock-sophisticated, vegetarian/organic, and often transgender Santa Cruz. For one thing, its population is visibly different. The people at the parade in Felton are mostly light-skinned or Portuguese-washed out olive (but see below), and many of their children have blond hair. Everyone is badly dressed, not poorly dressed just dressed carelessly, even the young women.

The thin crowd does not include many brown skins. I can guess the reasons. The large Hispanic population around here is almost entirely from Mexico. It lives in another part of the county and in Santa Cruz proper. It’s not that Felton discriminate, it’s that immigrants tend to agglutinate around where the first immigrants from their countries take root. It’s almost a random process, in historical terms. Many immigrants and their children appear to be dimly aware of this country’s military history. Mexico had no military history for more than eighty years, after all. This does not promote attention to such fine points. Incidentally, Mexican immigrants and their children don’t, by and large, understand Cinco de Mayo either although it’s an official California holiday made up just for them. Hispanics are welcome in Felton, I believe, but they don’t come and their absence makes a difference. The local culture is different where they are numerous.

The parade in Felton inspires something close to pity but also a little melancholy. It starts at 10 am sharp, as announced. It includes no marching band and few flags. The cub-scouts do carry flags. They look bedraggled although they are on parade. The Mom who is a cub-scout leader is wearing jeans, some example! There is a bagpipe band – something I always enjoy – but it includes only three bagpipes. Mostly, the parade consists of people in automobile vehicles. There are several fire trucks of course. This feels good because, in these parts, fire brigades are mostly composed of volunteers, an American institution if there ever was one. The other cars are there for no particular reason I am able to grasp except one car. There is a guy driving his period muscle car in average condition with the words “For sale” painted in several places. That’s American commercial ingenuity, I think.

From all cars but that one, and from the firetrucks as well, jets of candy aimed at the little children brought by parents to see the parade are issued. There is so much candy that boys on either side of the street start a candy fight during a lull in the parade. Two middle aged women quietly fill a backpack with candy. One is white, the other black. If this is not proof of harmonious race relations, I don’t know what is, really!

The people in the parade and the people at the parade strike me as absent from the current American cultural narrative. You don’t find them in books, you don’t find them in movies, you don’t even find them in TV series anymore. They barely exist in popular music, even in country music. There are pockets of them all over the country, mostly larger pockets than in Felton. No wonder they feel forgotten and are pissed off in often inarticulate ways. No wonder election analysts and the political class is disconcerted by the rise of a Donald Trump. They were mostly invisible until now.

I am sorry conservative rationalists like me missed the boat.

Un ultra-libéral et Donald Trump

05/22/201605/22/2016 Jacques Delacroix Politics Donald Trump

Je suis en contact intermittent avec un copain de lycée (presque 60 ans plus tard!) Dernièrement, il m’ a écrit ceci:

“…c’est vrai que je n’ai pas récemment formulé d’avis sur tes dernières livraisons [sur Facebook et sur mon blog-J.D.] dont beaucoup se rapportent à des sujets typiquement américains sur lesquels je n’ai pas d’opinion très argumentée. Je m’intéresse cependant beaucoup aux élections avec la crainte que Donald (un président avec un nom de canard!) finisse par l’emporter. Simplement çà serait tellement du n’importe quoi à tous les étages que çà serait passionnant à observer. Si cet événement terrible se réalisait il répondrait probablement hélas à une question que je me pose régulièrement:qu’est ce qui initiera le déclin de l’Amérique.”

Je comprends que les Francais, y compris mon copain qui connait bien l’Anglais – soit éberlués. Je vais essayer d’expliquer un peu ce qui se passe y compris mes propres actions à venir. Mais avant tout, je dois répondre à sa question sur le déclin de l’Amérique: Indubitablement, c’est la présidence de Barak Obama, un homme médiocre, vaguement gauchiste, élu seulement parce qu’il est noir (et encore, pas tellement -une remarque que j’expliquerai volontiers si on me le demande).

La popularité de Donald Trump auprès d’une grosse partie de l’électorat, autant que son impopularité pour une encore plus grosse partie, ressortent du même phénomène psycho-social. Curieusement, il y a un recouvrement considérable entre la popularité de Trump et celle du Démocrate de gauche Bernie Sanders, des révolte populistes.

Apres 8 ans de marasme économique – pas très grave selon les critères français mais inhabituels ici – après huit ans de déclin géopolitique américain, assaisonné du spectacle pitoyable de marins à genoux, les mains croisées sur la tête dans le Golfe Persique, apres un “accord” nucléaire catastrophique autant qu’extra-constitutionnel avec la meurtrière République Islamique d’Iran, après de nombreux autres débordements extra-constitutionnels de l’administration Obama (dont “l’accord” en question n’est qu’un exemple), beaucoup de conservateurs habituellement modérés sont furieux. Ils se demandent pourquoi le Congrès a servi a M. Obama sur un plat d’argent tout ce qu’il voulait après deux victoires consécutives du Parti Républicain aux élections partielles. A quoi sert d’avoir une majorité aux deux chambres si le président continue à faire ce qu’il veut sans se soucier des voeux de plus de la moitié des électeurs, ses concitoyens, on se demande?

Le phénomène Trump est donc surtout et avant tout un rejet massif d’une classe politique Républicaine jugée trop passive. Le parallèle avec les progrès du Front National en France est limité mais foncièrement valide. Trump exprime un ras-le-bol politique dont Sanders est le pendant à gauche, (pour des raisons seulement partiellement différentes).

Etant donné le caractère emotionel de ce phénomène, les débordements de Trump, ses déclarations loufoques, même sa fréquente grossièreté, ne le desservent moins qu’il ne renforcent sa popularité auprès de la grosse minoritédes conservateurs qui ressentent le plus ce ras-le-bol. On respecte son espèce de franc-parler, en quelques sorte, même si on trouve qu’il va un peu loin.

Que faire quand on est un conservateur, un “ultra-libéral” rationaliste et peu sujet aux engouements – comme moi, par exemple? L’analyse pertinente n’est pas si compliquée qu’on peut le penser.

Aux élections présidentielles de Novembre, bien que d’autres partis soient representés, seulement deux candidats auront la moindre chance de gagner, Trump et Clinton*. Mon copain de lycée a raison: un Président Trump risque de faire un peu n’importe quoi. En plus, de mon point de vue “d’ulta-libéral” ce n’est même pas un vrai conservateur. Ses positions hostiles vis-à-vis des accords de commerce international, par example, en eux mêmes me sont complètement inacceptables. Bien qu’il s’en défende, c’est un protectioniste de la vieille école. En plus, son ignorance macro-économique est choquante, même pour un ancien prof comme moi, endurci par l’expérience et que les étalages d’ignorance choque rarement.

De l’autre côté, nous avons l’ex-Première Dame, protectrice des ignominies adultères de son mari et de son parejure public, sous-serment, et dont le bref passage au Senat est passé (heureusement) inaperçu, l’ex-Secrétaire d’Etat (Ministre des affaires étrangères) au mandat à la fois incompétent et mensonger. Nous avons aussi en elle une escroque garantie et déjà vendue par avance àplusieurs pays étrangers par le biais de la fondation- machine-à-soux qu’elle a créee avec son mari Bill, un véritable repaire de voleurs.

Dans mon esprit, voter pour Trump c’est voter pour l’inconnu plus un peu de connu que je n’aime pas du tout. Voter pour Clinton, c’est voter pour l’incurie garantie et pour la malhonnêtetée systémique. (Je constate bien sur que m’abstenir est une sorte de vote pour Clinton.) Pas un choix facile. Heureusement, Trump a fait dernièrement ce qu’il fallait pour trancher le noeud gordien.

Les commentateurs avertis nous disent que le prochain président se verra dans l’obligation de nommer, deux, trois et même peut-être quatre juges de la Court suprême fédérale. Or, la Court suprême legifère de plus en plus, un fait contraireà la Constituion et que je regrette vivement, ce qui ne m’empêche pas d’ être conscient de ses profondes implications socio-politiques. (Ces juges sont nommes a vie.)

On sait d’avance qui Clinton nommerait, essaierait de nommer à la Cour Suprême: des gens choisis pour leur apartenance à une catégorie sociale donnée(fille-mère noire et lesbienne d’origine asiatique, par example; je plaisante mais pas beaucoup). Surtout des juristes qui continueraient la dérapade anti-constitutionnelle et le glissement vers une société américaine ressemblant aux sociétes bloqués et inertes de l’Europe. (Oui, comme la France, par example).

Trump lui, a produit il y a quelques jours une liste de onze candidats potentiels àla Court Suprême. Après examen par des périodiques conservateurs sérieux, dont le Wall Street Journal et le Weekly Standard, tous me seraient acceptables. Pour moi, c’est la fin du dilemme. Je voterai pour Trump, que je n’aime toujours pas du tout. Vote du moindre mal s’il en fut!

Un écart possible: Si les sondages indiquent juste avant les élections un ras-de-marée probable en faveur de Clinton, je donnerai mon vote au petit parti Libertarian qui n’a aucune chance de gagner mais dont le programme constitue un recherche intellectuelle et morale sur la réduction de la surface de l’Etat vis-à-vis de la société civile. Ce serait donc un vote de principe sans portée politique directe.

*Bernie Sanders: La seule chance que M. Sanders devienne le candidat Democrate serait que l’enquête actuelle du FBI aboutisse enfin et que M. Obama autorise sa copine la Ministre fédérale de la justice (“Attorney General”) àinculper Mme Clinton pour ses divers délits. Ça m’étonnerait, ça étonnerait tout le monde, surtout Mme Clinton d’ailleurs. Si l’impossible arrivait, j’aurais une longue conversation avec moi-même sur la possibilité de voter pour un crypto-communiste. J’aime bien le Senateur Sanders. Il a mon âge. C’est indéniablement un homme intègre. Et puis, il croit virtuellement tout ce que je croyais à l’âge de 25 ans! Il n’a pas changé d’une virgule. Si par extraordinaire, il devenait président, ce serait chouette, le retour de 1968!

Socialism(s) – Part Two

05/08/201605/08/2016 Jacques Delacroix Liberty Bernie Sanders, bureaucracy, civil service, income inequality, inequality, socialism, Sweden, wealth inequality, welfare state

Sweden’s Imaginary Socialism as a Non-Model

Part One of this essay was posted a couple of days ago. In it, I reviewed some of the avatars and zombies of the vague words “socialist” and “socialism.” I arrived at the inescapable conclusion that Sen. Sanders “democratic socialism” means only Scandinavian and, specifically, Swedish “socialism.” I look at that social and fiscal arrangement below.

First, let me say that Sweden is a good place to live; it’s a very civilized country. I just don’t know in what sense it’s “socialist.” Center-left parties took part in governing the country for most of the 20th century, true. Yet, little of Swedish commerce or industry is nationalized, or in any way public property. The Swedish government tends not to be invasive with regulations or direct intervention. Sweden even ranks a little higher than the US in “business freedom” on the 2016 (international) Index of Economic Freedom. Swedish companies are thriving, at home and abroad. Swedish capitalism is obviously alive and well.

I suspect that what confused Sen. Sanders and those of his supporters who have even thought about it is that the Swedish government offers extensive and high quality services to its citizens, many of which services that would belong to the private sector in other advanced societies. Let me say it again because this is an important point: The Swedish government is a quality service provider. But Swedes pay for these services with very high taxes. Swedish workers, on the average receive less than 50 of the income they earn. Careful: micro aggression coming. This is to me an unbearable negation of personal freedom, no matter how high the quality of services Swedish citizens receive “in return.”

Thus, even in moderate, impeccably democratic Sweden, “socialism” proves to be liberticide, it blocks on a massive scale and routinely the realization of individual wishes, the pursuit of happiness, in other words. To take an example: Those Swedes who would rather earn less money and spend more time reading philosophy, for example, practically are prevented by high taxes from even trying lest they starve. Incidentally, the share of GDP taken by Swedish taxes has been declining since the 90s. It would make sense for socialist Sen. Sanders to ask why. Hint: This decline was accompanied by a strong rise in GDP growth.

Sweden is a well managed capitalist welfare state. It would have been more ingenuous for Sen. Sanders to say this clearly rather than drag out the soiled word “socialism.” This assumes that he knows the difference, of course. His followers evidently do not.

I want to make a detour here about Swedish income inequality because inequality is a topic dear to Sen. Sanders’ supporters. As you would expect, and as is intended, Sweden has one of the lowest income inequality on Earth (Gini Index: 0.25 vs the US about 0.44). However, its wealth inequality is very high (Gini Index: 0.85). This curious divergence is compatible with several scenarios including this alluring possibility: Socialist-inspired schemes designed to procure income equality had the effect – probably unintended – of freezing wealth disparities to where they were before “socialism.” It’s almost impossible to get ahead from near the bottom of the economic ladder when your income is seized before you even see it. For one thing, high taxes make it difficult or impossible to accumulate capital to create a new small business and therefore, new jobs. In other words, in many years of Swedish socialism, the restaurant waiter remained a restaurant waiter, the local Rockefeller remained Rockefeller, while the former was earning $12/hour and the latter only $24 (figures made up). As I said, other scenarios can account for divergence between income inequality and wealth inequality. Play at imagining them. Good luck.

Whether or not one considers the objectives of Swedish-style “democratic socialism” desirable, there are considerable obstacles in the path of realizing it in America. Sen. Sanders and his followers semi-consciously assume that given the right legislation – not to forget far-reaching executive orders since the path has been open by President Obama – the United States could be turned into a kind of Sweden. There are three-plus things about American society that make this dream unrealistic.

First, until right now, Sweden was a thoroughly middle-class society. I mean by this that nearly everyone, except for a few skinheads, shared an understanding of the good life, and the same ethical system. We, in the USA, by contrast have a whole Third World inside our boundaries. I refer, of course, to all of Louisiana, to Chicago and its suburbs, to some parts of Texas and New Mexico, and to nearly all black inner-city ghettos. (Read carefully: I did not say “predominantly black areas.”) Third World conditions breed predatory behavior. That makes the job of civil servants difficult. It also sucks up public resources for policing.

Second, and at the risk of breaching the etiquette of political correctness, Swedish society if fairly restrained as compared to most others, certainly as compared to American society. It’s a collective trait. It does not mean that most Swedes are restrained but that many Swedes are. I mean by this, for example, that on the average Swedish drunks are more polite, less noisy and less dangerous than American drunks. Collective restraint makes all government functions easier to perform obviously.

Third, Sen. Sanders assumes implicitly that given a victory, his administration would easily generate the first-class federal civil service that makes the Swedish welfare state function effectively and smoothly. That is an unrealistic assumption. Think the IRS, of course, and TSA (that’s never caught a terrorist ever, or ever stopped a terrorist action). Think of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that generously donated hundred of firearms to Mexican drug cartels. Think of the Environmental Protection Agency that declared CO2 – the main plant food – a noxious gas subject to its regulation. I could go on.

Good civil services are rooted in a broad social tradition whereas smart, well-educated people chose careers in government in preference to a business career. There is no such American tradition. It would take many years of bad private employment before preferences of such individuals would shift away from business. Here is the question: can so-called “socialist” policies be implemented so quickly in America that private employment will worsen soon enough to serve the requirements of a quality civil service necessary to the implementation of the same-self “socialism”?

I must add a fourth obstacle to the success of Swedish style welfare state in the US, one that I don’t necessarily believe in myself. Swedes and also Danes keep telling me the following: Their form of welfare “socialism” involves a high degree of forced sharing. The acceptance of such taking from Peter to give to Paul is well served by the fact that Paul is a lot like Peter and even looks a lot like him. According to this view, the high population homogeneity of Sweden until now is a necessary condition to the confiscatory taxes imposed on ordinary wage earners that is at the heart of its “socialism.” Needless to say, the US population is low on homogeneity (a fact I celebrate myself).

So, a gifted, honest, competent civil service is central to the welfare capitalist supposedly “socialist” Swedish model (which the Swedes themselves explicitly do not propose as a model). My unavoidably subjective judgment is that a United States Sanderista civil service would, with some effort, with much reform, place somewhere between the French and the Brazilian. To think otherwise is the height of ignorant wishful thinking bordering on hubris.

I am not hugely alarmed at the prospect of a new American capitalist welfarism though, for the simple reason that we are already half-way there. Sen. Sanders’ more-of-the-same would not be Armageddon. It only promises an accelerated decline of this vibrant, inventive, culturally brilliant society accompanied by more short-term equality, less equity, and more poverty- and therefore less freedom – for all.

PS Incidentally, I am not much opposed to Sen. Sanders’ proposal to make state universities and college tuition-free. I think the proposal has the same justification as publicly supported elementary and secondary schooling. I would be willing to bet such a measure would have the same overall beneficial economic results as the GI Bill did right after WWII. Finally, there is just a chance that government management would put a brake on the unconscionable rise in the cost of tertiary schooling, of what universities charge without restraints. It’s not as if the current system that largely separates the decision makers from the payers, from the beneficiaries, has worked really well!

Socialism(s) – Part One

05/06/2016 Jacques Delacroix Current Events, History, Politics Bernie Sanders, economic growth, France, Latin America, socialism

Sanders and Me and not so Democratic Socialism

Sen. Sanders got a huge pass this primary season. Captivated by the deep dishonesty of one probable nominee and the crude ignorance of the other (not to mention his plain crudeness), the media, and informal commentators like myself, have not given the Democratic candidate and his program the attention they deserve. Also, in the current primary contest, it’s difficult not to like the guy. I have said several times that he inspires in me a kind of twisted affection. Plus, he has real pluck. But, let’s face it: He is probably done, or done for.

Sen. Sanders has gone very far into the primary while maintaining perfect dignity in his demeanor. He has seldom stooped to personal insults even when he was being severely tried by a Ms Clinton who seems to consider the man’s very candidacy a grave offense, an offense against the natural order of things, a crime of lèse-majesté, even a form of woman abuse. In the meantime Mr Sanders will have single-handedly rehabilitated the word “socialism.” This matters for the future of this nation. Time to look at it critically.

I, personally, especially like Sanders the man. I have reasons to. We are the same age; we went to college at about the same time, both in good universities. He took a fairly active part in the desegregation movement. I did not because it was too early in my American sojourn. (I wish I had taken part.) Nevertheless at age 25, Sanders and I were both leftists. The main difference between us is this: Fifty years later, he has remained impeccably faithful to the ideals of our youth while I walked away, faster and faster, really. I learned to understand the invisible hand of the market. I did some good readings. I was lucky enough to observe my leftists academic colleagues in action at close range early on. Cannily, I observed that the victorious Vietnamese Communist Party did not establish a workers’ paradise in its part of the world. I loathed authoritarianism in any guise. The Senator, meanwhile, spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union.

When that latter country fell apart and its archives were open, the Senator had nothing to say about the eighty years of mass atrocities they revealed. I am guessing he did not think he had to because he believed in the democratic brand of socialism. It’s hard to tell how much history he knows. (I think that liberals in general are ignorant, including academic liberals. I could tell you stories about them that would raise the hair on the back of your neck.) It does not take much knowledge though to guess that Lenin and the 1916 Bolsheviks did not originally set out deliberately to create a tyranny. Too bad they had to come to power by overthrowing by force of arms a democratically elected government. (See “Kerensky.”) Still, they named the new country “The Union of Socialist Soviet Republics,” and the word “soviet” means “council,” and “republic” means what it means. But, building socialism wasn’t working out; too many people with bad attitudes. So Lenin had to nudge History a little bit with bayonets, with barbed wire, with organized famines and soon, with a bullet to the back of the head of those who stood in the way. The Bolsheviks were forced to choose between socialism and democracy. They chose the former and they got neither. There is no record of Sen. Sanders making any relevant comment. (As always, I am eager to correct my errors.)

It’s less clear whether the Communist Party of China ever had a democratic plan. The unauthorized biography of Mao by his personal doctor reads like a tissue of horrors right from the start. (Dr. Li Zhisui. The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 1994) The Communist Parties of Eastern Europe simply came to power in the wagon train of the Red Army occupying their countries. None of them ever got close to getting there through free elections. The most interesting is the case of East Germany, ruled by a fusion of a native communist party and of preexisting democratic socialist parties. Together, they achieved a fair degree of material success for the East German people yet, they never managed to make do without a police state. Today, Sanders’ backers may not remember or they may not know that the German Democratic Republic, as it was called with a straight face, disappeared overnight. Someone had left a back door open to this paragon of socialist success and the people immediately started voting with their feet by the tens of thousands.

This is all irrelevant, Senator Sanders’ supporters would claim. You are describing a grave perversion of socialism; again, we only want democratic socialism.

During much of my adult life, the ill-defined words “socialism” and “socialist” were used with all kinds of modifiers: “African socialism,” “Arab socialism.” In all cases, the regimes so named led their countries straight to poverty, usually accompanied by official kleptocracy. In India, a really democratic country, the mild Ghandian-Nehruan form of socialism produced deep poverty for two generations including in the large, educated Indian middle class . (Just compare and contrast with un-socialist South Korea which started in 1953, after a devastating war, much poorer than India had been in 1949 when it became independent.) Socialism – whatever that is – is normally the road sign that points toward generalized poverty. Perhaps, this is only the result of a fateful case of reverse magic naming: Call something good, reasonable “socialist” and it begins degrading and sinking! Go figure!

OK, this is all about ancient times, they say. So, let’s look at current examples.

In Venezuela, socialism started under unusually favorable conditions because the country had considerable oil income that minimized the need for high taxation, a major reason for discontent in most socialist experiments. Yet, the socialists in power there made such a mess of it that today, only a few years later, the country suffers about 400% inflation (in 2016). If you had a dollar’s worth of local money there 12 months ago, it now only buys about a quarter’s worth of milk or bread. The skilled middle-class is leaving or trying to. They may return later; or, they may not. If they don’t, it will take a couple of generations at best to rebuild the country’s human capital after the socialist experiment ends.

Note that the sharp drop in world oil prices has affected many countries. It’s only in “Bolivarian” socialist Venezuela that you will see mass exodus and severe shortages of necessities.

In Brazil, The Workers’ Party is in power. The sitting president is a woman whose bona fide, whose socialist credentials are not in question. When she was young, she was imprisoned and even tortured for her belief in socialism, or because she was a guerrilla. (That’s the name for a left-wing terrorist.) She would now be impeached for making up optimistic economic figures for her country, except for the fact that the man constitutionally designated to replace her is also under indictment for corruption. It was bound to happen. The federal government in Brazil eats up 40% of GDP. The huge national oil company, Petrobras is nationalized; it belongs to the government, a favorite socialist arrangement. So oil revenues belong to everyone which means they belong to no one. Why not help myself a little, generations of Brazilian politicians have figured? There are no shareholders to keep tabs and to complain, after all. Socialism and kleptocracy are like father and son.

But, but, you say, those are Third World countries that have not yet recovered from the corrupting influence of colonialism (200 years later). Point well taken. Here is another case I know well, of a socialist country that has not been colonized since about 50 (BC.) France has been under the guiding hand of the French Socialist Party for nearly five years this time around. By the way, France is a democratic country with fair elections and a free press. The Socialists won fair and square. They were in power for 23 of the 35 years since 1981. They largely implemented their program and there were few rollbacks – except by themselves, a few times when they understood the disastrous effects of the reforms they had implemented. I am thinking of a broad de-nationalization of banks in 1981-82. (This is directly relevant to Sen. Sanders’ thinking.)

The French Socialist Party in power never tried to restrict freedom of the press and it did not fill the prisons with its opponents. (Instead, it emptied them hastily of violent criminals, according to its security critics.) By and large, its rule has been quite civilized. There is just that pesky problem of chronic unemployment which never dips much below 10% (25% for the young; sky is the limit if you are young and your name is “Mohamed”). There is also the fact that economic stagnation is now seen as normal by the young. Has been for a couple of generations, now. And then, there is the unbelievable cultural sterility of French society (another story, obviously that I partially tell elsewhere on this blog. Ask me.)

True story: a few months ago, members of the socialist government celebrated loudly. That was because the government office of economic analysis had revised upward its estimate of annual economic growth from GDP: + 0.4% to +0.6% ! (Yes, that’s 6 tenth of one per cent. It’s true that today, in the spring of 2016, it’s at a respectable annual 2% plus.)

“No, no,” cries Sen. Sanders ( and I can almost hear him from here) “I don’t mean ‘socialist’ as in ‘Union of Socialist Soviet Republics,’ and I don’t mean Red China, and I don’t mean North Korea, certainly, and I don’t mean Cuba (although…), and I don’t mean Venezuela today, or Brazil. And, I don’t even mean France although I could not explain why exactly. (Bad call here, Senator. The French single-payer health care system works well; it’s cheaper than US health care, and French men live two years longer than American men.) I mean socialism as in Denmark and Sweden. Now, here we are at last. In part Two, we will look at what passes for Swedish “socialism.” (Denmark is too small to be an example, perhaps.)

Syrian Refugees and Security

11/21/2015 Jacques Delacroix Current Events immigration, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Islamism, refugees, Syria, terrorism

The president made another one of his inane, easy-to-ignore speeches a couple of days after the massacre in Paris. This man never misses a chance. He demonstrated again his preference for dogma over reality. He also accused Republicans who oppose the resettlement of Syrian refugees of being afraid of “three year olds.” This helped me in coming out of my indecision in connection with this issue. I take it seriously.

The House passed a resolution today making it difficult to bring Syrians or Iraqis to the US. Mark my word, this is not the last we hear of this issue. Many Syrians, some Iraqis, actually need a humane place to live away from barrel bombs and chemical warfare. Also, I believe that we cannot allow terrorism to turn us, as a people, into someone else. We are a compassionate people which, by and large, have given haven to refugees from everywhere. (Notwithstanding a shameful loss of nerve in the 1930s with respect to Jewish refugees from Germany.) We can’t let a small bunch of flea-ridden savages in the Middle East change this. That’s on the one hand. On the other hand, I listen carefully when the highest security officials in the land tell us that they cannot (NOT) vet every refugee. Do I think that some ISIS terrorists might mingle with refugees with massacre on their minds. No, I don’t think they might; I am sure they will. Why wouldn’t they?

However, the president reminded us that all refugees do not present equal potential danger. It’s true that three-year olds are never terrorists on their own. So, I would take in three-year old refugees and their mothers, of course. And based on the same probabilistic principle, I would let in children up to seven or even eight years of age and their mothers. After that age, all bets are off, I think, because of numerous videos about child soldiers, some of whom are not even nine. But I would take in an unlimited numbers of small children and their mothers. They would constitute an economic burden but I believe we can live with it. I would also let in all Christians and all Yazidis (pagans) of both sexes and of all ages because their collective suffering at the hands of ISIS make them a zero % risk for terrorism in the US. It’s not religious discrimination, it’s risk preference. Everyone does it all the time. That’s what I do when I ride in my pickup truck but never on a motorcycle, fly on commercial airliners but not on light planes piloted by a doctor.

Yes, you read me right. I would admit zero, no men of military age. Two reasons, one not mentioned by any media, to my knowledge. The first, obvious reason, is that terrorists mingling with Syrian refugees would almost certainly be youngish men. Although old men are a possibility, it has not happened yet, I believe. (Correct me if I am wrong.) Women can easily be terrorists too, of course, but it has not happened much with that particular breed of terrorists before it happened in Paris recently. I suspect the Islamist terrorists contempt for women is such that they don’t want them to deserve Paradise by committing jihadist crimes. Of course, the fact that nearly all the Syrian refugee women I see on television wear the hijab (head veil) does not help erase my suspicions. I am trying like hell to be compassionate against my common sense. I am trying to remember that nearly all of those refugees are unfortunates. I am keeping in mind that nearly all of them would have liked to emigrate to the US even before any civil war in Syria. (I will probably talk about the meaning of the hijab in another installment.)

The second good reason to exclude from American territory male Syrian passport carriers of military age is that they are of military age, precisely. At a time when there is more and more talk of French and, even of American boots on the ground, I would like to hear the sound of more Syrian boots on the ground. They should be fighting to reconquer their country from both ISIS savages and the butcher Assad. Incoming Syrian males under fifty-five should be given the choice of enrolling in a Western-backed Syrian Freedom Legion, or to stay in whatever slummy refugee camps where they are indefinitely with no option of settling in America. I would gladly pay for the costs involved forever in preference to risking the lives of American children in America.

Maybe it’s just me but I would be very receptive to requests for military training, for military aid, and for arms coming from such a Legion. The past reluctance of the Obama administration in this respect would be criminal if it were not primarily stupid. I would easily volunteer $1,000 to this good cause. I estimate that it would all amount to 750 000 000 000 for the country at large (750 billion dollars). It should be enough to equip and army of 500,000, it seems to me. We have spent much more in the past with much less of a a justification.

My Muslim friends – a dwindling number these days because many can’t face the harsh truth – and my friends with Muslim names who may or may not be real Muslims urge me to remember that Europeans and Americans, or Christians (think Nigeria) are not the only ones to die at the hand of violent jihadists. I am glad to repeat what I say often: Violent jihadists everywhere have slaughtered many more Muslims that they have killed of any other category of people. And, as I have said on FB recently, there is nothing special about the massacres in Paris. (More Russian tourists died only a week or so before.) I am glad though that the atrocities taking place in much beloved Paris broke the complacency of many in the West (but not of President Obama). And, as I have pointed out before ISIS revealed itself superbly in this case by attacking specifically places where people were having fun and where many of those people were bound to have Muslim names (“apostates”).

Goose Pimples and Hypocrisy

11/13/2015 Jacques Delacroix Liberty collectivism, evolutionary anthropology, feminism, gender, Political Correctness, sex, sexual mores

This is a micro alert. Be careful, reading this might make you uncomfortable.

It’s a November afternoon, a rather nice November but November all the same. There is a wedding on the little lawn on the cliff right above Steamer Lane. (Note for my overseas friends in Germany, Turkey, and Illinois: Steamer Lane is a famous cold water surf championship spot in Santa Cruz, California. The whole area, on the Monterey Bay, is exceptionally beautiful.)

The bride is late; surprise! The groom’s buddies are milling around in their comfortable enough tuxedos.* The bridesmaids are sitting and flocking together in their bareback, bare-arms, low-cut long dresses. A cool sea breeze is blowing, of course. Anyone could have predicted it. The ladies are obviously cold, as they should be. Anyone would be. Exemplary social scientist that I am, I make it a point to pass close enough to verify that goose pimples prevail. This goes on for at least an hour. It’s true nippling weather. Maybe that’s the point and I am just missing it.

I don’t know why no one in charge of the women of the bridal party planned for this weather. I don’t know why the bridesmaids’ uniform could not have included a tasteful shawl. Frankly, I don’t know if any of them would have used a shawl in preference to shivering though. (One young woman in my entourage says, “No way!”) At any rate, it’s difficult to take seriously the claim that women are tired of being considered sex objects. Those women, and the women of every American bridal party I have ever seen are bravely and determinedly on display. It’s not an intellectual display; it’s not a talent show; it’s not an IQ contest. I would swear they are disturbed, possibly enraged at the thought of not being considered sex objects on this occasion, after so much effort. The chasm between public discourse and reality has rarely been so wide since the Victorian Age. In the long run, political correctness is sure to induce some sort of collective schizophrenia, it seems to me.

Just to be painfully clear: I am not criticizing the bridesmaids’ behavior – bless their hearts! I hear that young men are ever more reluctant to commit. And you don’t catch flies with vinegar. And there must be a reason why Mother Nature placed women’s breasts on their chests rather than on their backs. (It’s so they can watch men watching them and take it from there.) I am not deriding the women in the bridal party at all. Female exhibitionism has been an attractive part of my worldview ever since I can remember (maybe since three or four years of age). I am just not becoming used to the grossly hypocritical denial that forms today the social context of such displays. It even bothers me worse than ever.

Someone has to shout, “Bullshit!” I wish older women would do it. In their regretted absence, here I am! You can count on me.

* “How gauche,” my snobbish Parisian side is thinking. Tuxedos are evening attire; they should never see the sun.

Notes On Liberty

Spontaneous thoughts on a humble creed

Author: Jacques Delacroix

Immigrants’ Complaints

At a Muslim Wedding

Maternal Pride

Voting For Potty-Mouth Trump

A Muslim Woman and the Sea

Gun Control Works Just Fine in France

The Nice Massacre

Brexit, free trade, and the EU

Dear Bernie Supporter: Keep an eye on foreign news

Memorial Day in the Days of Trump

Un ultra-libéral et Donald Trump

Socialism(s) – Part Two

Socialism(s) – Part One

Syrian Refugees and Security

Goose Pimples and Hypocrisy

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: