Stevie Wonder Goes Home

23 Tuesday Feb 2021

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

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A heartwarming story, really: the great artist has had enough of third-world Amerika and prepares his imminent departure.

Although the news may come as a shock, the decision has reportedly been a long one in the making. According to Hot New Hip Hop, Wonder told the International Association of African American Music in 1994 that he planned to one day move to Ghana because “there’s more of a sense of community.” The outlet reported that over the years, Wonder has also visited Ghana on numerous occasions.

Elsewhere in his discussion, Wonder opened up about what he called a “dangerous” era in the United States, telling Winfrey that “it feels more dangerous than ever before.” He said the U.S. has “allowed love to go out and negativity to come in.” He said all Americans need “five years of atonement,” and challenged Americans to “take the time out, look at the wrongs and the things that have happened, and say, ‘We’re going to fix this.'”

Far, far too dangerous. 500 years of atonement might help, but repatriation is always a viable answer. Hey, Stevie! Thanks for the musical magic, farewell, and could you take Coke with you?

National Average IQ is Real

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by perrinlovett in Other Columns

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IQ, nationalism, nations

And it really matters. Survey says:

Abstract and Figures

Patient people fare better in life than impatient people. Based on this and on economic models, many economists have claimed that more patient countries should fare better than less patient countries. We utilize cross-national data in non-cognitive traits measured in the Global Preference Survey (GPS). This survey measured six non-cognitive traits — risk and time preferences, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust — across 76 countries in about 80,000 persons. As such, it provides the best current database of economics-focused non-cognitive traits. We combine this database with existing estimates of national intelligence (national IQs) and model country outcomes as a function of these predictors. For outcomes, we used the 51 national well-being indicators from the Social Progress Index (SPI) as well as the composite extracted from this, the general socioeconomic factor. We find that non-cognitive variables, time preference included, are only weakly predictive of national well-being outcomes when national IQs are also in the model. The median β across the indicators was 0.11 for time preference but 0.39 for national IQ. We replicated these results using six economic indicators, again with similar results: median βs of 0.15 and 0.52 for time preference and national IQ, respectively. Across all our results, we found that national IQ has 2-4 times the predictive validity of time preference. These results are fairly robust to inclusion of a spatial autocorrelation control, alternative measures of national IQ and time preference, or no controls. Our results suggest that the importance of national non-cognitive traits, including time preference, is overestimated or that these traits are mismeasured.

As a nation like the US continues to lose national average intelligence, through internal and external actions, it will necessarily decline. The US is maybe 5 to 10 years away from breaking below the barrier whereat any assurance of societal stability vanishes. That’s why one hears so many Demopublicans talking about the issue. (Eye strain from roll…)

The Good Guest

19 Saturday Sep 2020

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, good guest, magic dirt, migration, nationalism, nations, Russia, United States, USSR

As demonstrated in a newly released text from the 1980s, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn saw right through the alleged promise of magic dirt:

And really, what sort of a country is America? Naïve (although supposedly so enlightened and democratic): through a clutch of its professional politicians, it blithely betrays itself on a daily basis, yet will fly into a sudden brief fury—but an utterly blind one—and destroy whatever is in its path. The Soviets bring down a Korean Air Lines plane—then, in New Haven, the windows of a Russian Orthodox church are smashed in revenge and filth sprayed on the frescoes. A US army barracks in Beirut is blown up—and a quarrelsome resident of the small town of Pittsfield, Vermont, a people’s avenger, arms himself with a revolver, goes off in the morning to a local shop rung by an Iranian and his Russian wife, Tanya Zelenskaya (the daughter of First Wave émigrés), and shoots her dead, thereby expressing America’s revenge on the Iranians and “the Russians standing behind them.”

Shaky. Russian soil may not be accessible to me for a long time to come, perhaps until death, but I cannot sense American soil as my own.

With no solid ground beneath my feet. With no visible allies. Between two World Forces, to be finely ground up.

Dreary.

May his final years be a good reminder of the rewards of nationalism, the truth, and faith.