In a previous post discussing mixed-racial identity, commenter Uh wrote:

— — — — — — — —

Even very marginal cases [of mixed-race persons] choose [to identify as] black. Remember Wentworth Miller from Prison Break?

...Wentworth Miller is of multiracial origin: his father is of African-American, English, German, Jewish and Cherokee descent, and his mother is of Russian, French, Dutch, Syrian and Lebanese ancestry. He says about his ethnic identity, “My father is black and my mother is white. Therefore, I could answer to either, which kind of makes me a racial Lone Ranger, caught between two communities.” (wiki)

…I saw a quote from this guy once to the effect that he has “never thought about trying to ‘pass’ ” as pure white — that vain melodrama which compels even quadroons like this to obsess over their black component.

— — — — — — — —
Some digging has yielded the original source of that quote: “[Wentworth Miller:] ‘To be perfectly clear, passing’ —- that is, trying to pass oneself off as white…‘is something that has never crossed my mind’…” (New Yorker magazine, Nov 10th, 2003).

But more on that in a minute.

As a youth, it is interesting to note, Wentworth Miller (hereafter WM) had a significantly different “look” than he does today, as these two yearbook photos plainly demonstrate:

What does WM look like in those photos? He looks like an Arab, after his mother’s partial heritage, reinforced by his small Black ancestry (Arabs tend to have minor Black ancestry anyway).

The Black component of WM’s ethnic-ancestry is clearly small. His father is seen below:

From left to right:
Wentworth Miller, a man identified as WM's uncle Chris, WM's father.

From left to right: Mila Jasey (WM's aunt), Rhena Jasey (WM's cousin), Leigh Miller (WM's sister), Wentworth Miller and Jason Cox (WM's cousin). Pictured at a gathering of descendants of Dr. Green Forte Pinkston of Memphis, 2007. (From 'Memphis Commercial Appeal' newspaper).

.
Wentworth Miller’s Racial Loyalties
This post is entitled “Wentworth Miller and Racial Identity”, but it should be called “WM and Racial Identity in the Postmodern USA”.

Consider:

(1) The dominant sociocultural apparatus in the USA (and to a large extent in its cultural satellites in the West) promotes the concept of a nefariously-ubiquitous White Privilege. Anti-racist activists have tirelessly worked to raise ‘awareness’ about the need to combat White Privilege. Anti-racist theory has always postulated, at least implicitly, that everyone wants to be white, because of White Privilege. Anti-racist theory has it that white identity strangles the life out of other identities (casting them as ‘inferior’, and ‘institutionally’ keeping them down), that Institutional Racism would impel anyone to try their best to pass for white. Wentworth Miller is an ideal candidate, within the framework of anti-racist theory, for passing into the Promised Land of Whiteness. Here we have someone, in Wentworth Miller, who is mostly-Northwestern-European by ancestry (with moderate Arab and minor Black admixture) anyway, who went to Princeton, who earns millions in the entertainment industry, and who could basically pass for a (slightly exotic) typical white-American as an adult… Yet he strongly identifies as multiracial.

(2) Our everyday experience tell us that WM’s attitudes towards Race are, in fact, the norm. That is, the opposite of what anti-racist theory posits is actually true, certainly in the past generation, and to a great extent in the past two generations. Generally in 1990s- and 2000s-USA, no one wanted to be white. So far in the 2010s, few want to be white. Generally, one looks for an ‘out’, even if it be politically if they are unable latch onto some ‘other’ identity. (See also).

But let’s cut to the root of it, and return back to commenter Uh:

[Mixed-race persons] are encouraged to “not pass” and identify as whatever [partial] non-white they are, to do their part in the erasing of “whiteness”.

Why?

Intelligence and Fertility Patterns, USA Whites. (Click to expand).

Quantifying Dysgenics
The previous post, “Dysgenic Fertility Trends in Generation-X” reported on the negative correlation between white fertility and educational-attainment (a proxy for intelligence) among women ending their reproductive lives in the early 2010s (i.e., those born in the late 1960s).

I ended the post with the words “Admittedly, this is all somewhat difficult to quantify”. The above, which I compiled from a 2004 paper from Dr. Richard Lynn, represents the best effort at quantifying dysgenics I have yet found.

As it turns out, fertility among White-Americans in the mid-20th century was slightly dysgenic. [See table above]. Among white women born in the first half of the 20th century, the less-intelligent half had most of the babies. From this, we expect to see a (genotypic) IQ decline of ~0.3 points per decade (0.75 points per generation) among US-whites, according to Dr. Lynn.

This data comes from a social survey conducted over the past several decades, which has given participants 10-word vocabulary tests as a proxy for general-intelligence. These 10-word vocabulary tests have since been found to correlate very well with full IQ tests. Lots of other information was also collected, including total number of lifetime babies.

New Factors
The new factor in the equation, emerging the past generation, is the impact of outbreeding. (This is discussed at greater length (here).

The USA has seen a rise in the share of births of mixed-race babies, such that ~10% of the babies borne to white-American women in the 2000s were fathered by non-white men. Considering that (1) mixed-race children are lost to the white genepool for cultural reasons, and (2) white mothers of mixed-race children are shown to be of lower-intelligence, overall (See table here), it may be that the native-dysgenics delineated in the table above are now offset.

On the other hand, among late Baby-Boomers, Generation-Xers, and Milennials, it could be that the white native-dysgenics are increasing. The impact of dysgenic fertility in more recent times is still something of an open question.

This post builds upon the previous one (“Childlessness Among Generation-X Women”).

To summarize that post:

• ~20% of American white women now entering their mid-40s (born in the late 1960s, i.e. early Generation-Xers) have never had a child. They are ending their reproductive lives childless.
• ~9% of American white women have had child(ren) to a nonwhite father.
• Thus, 29% of white women fail to pass on their genetic material to the next generation’s white-genepool. (In U.S. culture, mixed children are almost exclusively socialized towards cultural loyalty to their nonwhite side).
• There is evidence to suggest that increased childlessness is dysgenic, as the smarter the woman, the less likelihood to reproduce:
  

  Fertility and Education, U.S. women

.
How Dysgenic are White Generation-Xers’ Fertility Patterns?
— — —
There are two groups of women removing their genes from the white-American genepool: The Childless (a), and the Outbreeders (b).

(a) The Childless.
In the recent past, under normal conditions, ~10-15% of European women would remain childless for life. Take the UK:

% of British Women Childless at Age 45,
By Woman’s Year of Birth [source]
1923: 16%
1943: 11%
1953: 16%
1973: 23% [expected]

(Note that the 1923-cohort is more-childless than could be expected, because Britain’s 300,000 WWII battle deaths would have impacted that cohort of men [born early 1920s] hardest of all. Simply put: There were not enough men.)

Lifelong childlessness looks to be the fate of 20% of white-American women born in the late 1960s. Thus, as much as double the number of women will remain barren as ‘normally’ would (i.e., an extra 10% of the whole population). As seen above, this “extra” 10% is drawn mostly from the more-educated/smarter half of the population. Verdict: Dysgenic.

(b) Outbreeders.

About 9% of the white-female American population is now having children with a nonwhite mate. This is based on 2005 data, and will probably be less for late-1960s-born white women, most of whom had already had children by 2005.

What is the character of white women who outbreed? I draw on the research of the excellent racehist blog, to produce the following:

Education of New White Mothers by Race of Baby's Father

The highest educational achievement of the typical white woman with a mixed-race baby is a high-school diploma, and an astonishing one-in-five don’t even have that.

The typical white woman with a white baby is a college graduate.

So: Outbreeding, in this case, tends to be eugenic, if we assume educational attainment to be a proxy for IQ, work ethic, and so on. (In a word, ‘quality’). Lower elements of the white-female population are removing their genes from the white genepool. (Remember that mixed-race children will, almost unanimously, feel cultural loyalty to their nonwhite side, and that some even go so far as to find solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against their white side).

— — —

Considering that both the “extra childless” (a) and the outbreeders (b) are nearly the same share of the population, I think it’s a fair conjecture that the dysgenic effects of (a) are essentially “cancelled-out” by the eugenic effects of (b). (With the caveat that this is all admittedly somewhat difficult to quantify) we can thus say that the generation of white children being born to Generation-X white women is not substantially lower in quality than are white Gen-Xers themselves.

Of course, this is a very large age-bracket, and many of the women in their 30s may yet have children. Age 33 is quite young, yet, here in the 2010s. I am interested in final fertility, i.e. how many children women have had by age 45, the end of their reproductive lives.

— — —

Some investigation into the Census data tells me this:

3-in-10 Generation-X white women
will never have a white child

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that as of June 2010, 20.6% of white non-Hispanic women born between June 1965 and May 1970 — the early Generation-Xers — have never had a child. They are childless, and almost all will remain so, considering their ages (40-44 at time of Census). (See tables 1 and 7 in the dataset “Fertility of American Women: 2010 – Detailed Tables”). [Sidenote: Of those 40-44-year-old white women who have had children, 22% have one child, 44% have two children, 24% have three children, 7% have four children, 3% have more than four children.]

Now, as only ~89% of the babies born in the past decade to white mothers were fathered by white men [see racehist for documentation on this], this means that only ~71% of white women born in the late 1960s have had white children. {100-[(79.4 who have had children*.89 to white fathers)]=70.7}.

So, nearly three in ten have removed their genes from the white-American genepool.

Dysgenics
Foseti, in his original post, uses the word “dysgenic”, thereby invoking a sense that the lower elements of the population are outbreeding the higher and more talented elements. Eeach new generation, then, being of poorer-quality, on average, than its parent generation. This is a perennial fear. See here:

Dysgenics in 20th-century Greece, from Richard Lynn

Is the same thing happening in the USA? I have compiled a little table to summarize the relevant Census data.

Fertility and Education, Census 2010

So, yes, smarter women are certainly being outbred by less-intelligent women, but nothing like the palpable and disturbingly-dysgenic figures from 1950s-Greece cited above.

Flyer for "Diversity Job Fair", 2011.

A foreigner, who has learned only “textbook-English”, would be utterly confused about what this concept of “diversity” could have to do with the concept of a “job fair”.

Those of us with first-hand experience with the the Multicultacracy, though, understand (usually only instinctually). In simple terms: the Multicultural Leviathan uses code-words to enforce its agenda. “Diversity” is one of its favorites: “Diversity” is, in general usage American-English in the 2010s, a code-word for “non-white” (or, “fewer whites”, as the case might be).

This is a job fair to which only Nonwhites are being invited. You’re not “Diverse” enough? Then you’re not welcome. Various other small clues in the text of the flyer reinforce this (again, to the acclimated ear).

Understanding the code-words used to enforce our Multicultacracy can be liberating for those stuck within it. See also: “Beware of the White Crime Wave” for a visual analysis of a related phenomenon.

What can explain this “intervention enthusiasm”, and our post-Cold-War acquiescence to interventionism generally? An anonymous commenter at Steve Sailer proposes an answer:

The Appeal of Interventionism Among (Post)Modern Westerners
By Anonymous Commenter at Steve Sailer

Part of the appeal of attacking a weaker country is the catharsis of releasing all the pent-up anger and frustration, especially in democratic nations, from being impotent to take strong measures at home. [...]

[Western] PC elites are too busy being anti-‘racist’ and spreading sensitivity training. So, the people in those nations, especially white conservatives, are pent-up with anger. They see their societies being taken over by non-whites, by hostile elites; they see wimpy leaders on their side, making apologies and compromises all the time. “Compassionate Conservatism”.

Since white people must respect and honor all minorities, no matter how hostile or problematic, in their own countries, their silent rage keeps building up. The only outlet is to take out their rage on weaker countries, especially Muslim ones (not least because Zionist-controlled Media and Government wants to crush them for the interests of Israel). It’s like an employee who has to bow down before the boss at work goes home to kick his dog. Or a kid who’s insulted by a nasty teacher day in and day out takes out his anger on a weaker kid.

This could be the appeal of supporting Israel among many white conservatives. They can’t kick ass at home, and so they take vicarious pleasure in watching ‘westernized’ Jews kick dark ‘Muzzie’ ass. [...] We can’t do anything about illegal immigrants, but we can blow up entire areas of Libya.

This is the real danger of our foreign intervention. It offers us false catharsis. It solves no problem at home as we go on a wild sheep chase abroad.

Election Results, Baden-Wuerttemberg

Everyone lost votes, except Greens, who “cleaned up” (i.e., did well).

– The free-marketeer FDP party — seen as a respectable middle-class party, principally Protestant — lost half its voters to the Greens! [Update: See exit-poll info on party-shifts.]
– The parties that claim the centrist label (SPD and CDU) lost ~1-in-10 of their voters to the Greens. It is interesting that 1-in-10 CDU voters would vote for the far-left Greens on any circumstances.
– “Voelkisch” parties: A catch-all term I use here for right-wing dissident parties with some degree of implied racialist sympathies, the “far-right”, including fundamentalist-Christian parties. Collectively, these lost 1-in-3 of their voters to the Greens. (Note: The stridently-racialist NPD represented represented 17% of this paragrouping in 2006, but 40% in 2011.)
– A note on “Other“, one of the parties here is another “Green” party, more radical, known by the acronym “oedp”. It saw its vote double to nearly 1% of votes cast, but it will receive 0 seats, because:

Only parties getting over 5% of votes get seats, so the Greens actually have 26.1% of seats. SPD took 25.4% of seats. As they are a new slim majority of the Landtag, Greens+SPD will now form a state government. But with Greens as the senior partner! Unprecedented. I believe this will be the first time the Greens will lead a government in Germany. All because of a natural disaster thousands of miles away.

Another western German state — what we in English like to call Rhineland-Palatinate — also held elections, and the Greens entered the state assembly, taking 18% of seats. FDP lost half its voters here, too, knocking it out of the state assembly.

[Sources: BW results; and Spiegel's results analysis]

But of more interest is that the Census counts 33 people living in the White House in 2010. Why so many? They only counted 19 for Clinton in 2000. 33 people, minus the B.H.Obama family, leaves 29 others. All domestic servants? Unless someone can provide a better explanation, I am led to conclude that the Obama family is slavishly dependent upon servants.

President Clinton: 17 servants
B.H.Obama & co.: 29 servants!

Who needs that many servants?

– — —
Also of note, the racial distribution of B.H.Obama’s servants , according to the Census:

Of Obama’s 29 Servants
–21 are Blacks
– 7 are Whites
– 1 is ‘Other’

This “Highly Diverse” group should make us all swell with pride in Diversity!

– — —
Svigor comments:

Funny, I watched Diary of the Dead recently and there was a WASPy-douche-who-can’t-handle-harsh-reality stereotype front and center. He had a manor and referred to “the staff.” Who has that kind of “the staff” any more?

B.H.Obama does.

The racial milieu in which the Race-Heretic was caught:

[Full Version, with Explanatory Notes]

— — –

Race-Heresy
The perpetrator: an Alexandra Wallace. Race-Heretic Wallace had the gall to critizice East-Asians’ vibrant behaviors. Quote: “In America, we do not talk on our cell phones in the library!”. Her video remarks contained unacceptable levels of gentle-mockery of this East-Asian cultural trait. Racist, hate-crazed white-Americans claim this habit irks them.

Standing Up to Hate
Fortunately, heroic and Diverse members of the local population, and other heroes of Diversity in the U.S. national media, swiftly crucified the Race-Heretic. She was harassed, demonized, insulted, and threatened with expulsion by supporters of Diversity in positions of power at UCLA. Finally, Race-Heretic Wallace was forced to drop out of school.

The perpetrator recanted, but the damage was done. She had flagrantly violated a central tenet of Diversity, a direct attack on our Multicultacracy itself! To wit: No White person shall criticize persons of other races. [Though, if one is Nonwhite, one is allowed and actively encouraged to criticize and hold the cancer of human history in righteous-contempt. (Whites, too, can partially-atone for their crime of being white by working to push this cancer into remission.)]

Stunned
I must say, I thought I’d seen everything. I was stunned by the (capital-o) Outrage this mild video got. The only way to rationalize the reaction such an innocuous video received, is to posit it must be a “straw that broke the camel’s back” event, implying that White harassment, belittlement, and “xenophobia” against East-Asians is common at UCLA.

This is verifiably false:

Juxtapose, if you will, the above with another chart, also to be found within the pages of the surreal “Diversity Strategic Plan“:

Who Is Least Respected at UCLA?

– Who are the real “victims of a hostile environment” at UCLA?

.

Where were you when they crucified Alexandra Wallace?

See if you can see what is wrong with it:

California "became much more ethnically diverse" —A Washington Post writer well-versed in PC-Newspeak

Did you catch that?

If not, read the title and caption at the top. Now look at the data in the bar-chart at right.

Still don’t get it?

A Letter to the Editor, published on Saturday March 12th 2011, will fill you in:

Less diverse, not more
The interesting chart depicting the growth of the “non-white” population under 18 in California ["Calif. Latino population burgeons", March 9] made the claim that in the past 10 years the under-18 population has become “much more ethnically diverse”.

Actually, it has become less diverse. In 2000, the under-18 population distribution was 35 percent white, 44 Hispanic, and 21 black, Asian and other. No single ethnic group constituted a majority. In 2010, the distribution was more skewed and therefore less diverse: 27 percent white, 51 percent Hispanic and 22 other.

In certain parts of the country, such as California, the growth of non-white populations shouldn’t necessarily be painted with the broad brush of “diversity”.

Tom S——r, Washington

Comment: The letter writer uses very restrained language, so the editors allowed this mildly-heretical letter to go through.

Allow me to go further:
The reflexive and casual use of Diverse here, when what was meant is Nonwhite, is instructive. This is Newspeak in action. A better example I cannot recall in my recent reading. The “game is up” in this case, they are exposed on logical grounds, because…see the letter above. (I’d further point out that the title of the graphic is “Minority Report”, yet there is no minority among California youth today, Hispanics are the majority. “Minority” is another Newspeak term).

In terms of hyper-PC Newspeak, this clumsy labelling by the Post ranks up there with that vacuous female TV anchor who, a few years ago in a live report, repeatedly referred to blacks living in a specific African country as “African-Americans”! [Update: See the video]

Now, one of Bob Whitaker’s aphorisms is “Anti-racist is code for anti-white”. In that spirit, it is sure fair to say that “Diversity” is code for “Fewer Whites” in today’s PC lexicon. The term “Diversity” is PC-Newspeak, and is worth attacking and mocking as the craven form of social-manipulation that it is.

______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________

A final point:
The article itself has a certain snide, supercilious, and celebratory tone. (It shines through, even amid the carefully bland, restrained tone of the Respectable Newspaper style). There is a Dog-Bites-Man nature to even pointing this out, I concede. It is expected from the Left and probably even a good share of the Fox-News Right at this point.

Consider:
A: Diversity is good. (We are told this over and over).
B: “Diverse” is code for “Less white”. (See above).
A+B = Less-white is good. (The logical conclusion.)

Question
— If the Washington Post supports (what it called) this “increase in diversity” (= decline in whites), would it also go all-in and support 100%-”Diversity”, i.e. the total disappearance of whites from California? And at the logical extreme, would it support 100%-”Diversity” for every white nation

Politically-Correct Flyer
Distributed by Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) 2010-2011.

The flyer you see above is being distributed in the subway system (the “Metro”) of the Washington DC region. Popular outrage at the rise in thefts in the Metro system inspired its creation.

I draw your attention to the photos at the top of the flyer. In a Metro traincar, a white man is stealing an i-pod from a black woman and dashing out the door.

This flyer is a stark example of aggressive Political Correctness in action, a microcosm of the ascendant Zeitgeist in today’s USA (i.e., the Multicultacracy). I will offer some analysis below to show how this is, as I see it.

.
First, the obvious.
— Thief: White. (Without a trace of “ethnic” on his face. A “WASP”, apparently.)
— Victim: Black.

— White Thief: Shabbily dressed.
— Black Victim: Dressed in business attire, hair and makeup carefully set. Clearly a professional.

Beware of White Thieves
— “Thefts of this nature are primarily committed by white men” is the apparent message. Or, at very least, the message is that one must beware of whites just as much as of others.

— Most people with any actual experience living in the multiracial USA will know that this is laughable. They also know, however, never to point such a thing out. (No one ever points out that the Emperor has no clothes, do they…except perhaps if the Emperor is enfeebled and sick already, when it’s safer.) Still, I marvel at the strength the “spirit” of this argument has over the minds of so many denizens of our Multicultacracy. To reconcile the two things, many or most Nonwhites allow themselves to fear rural-Whites. Rural white areas are the safest places in the USA in terms of crime, yet nonwhite metropolitan-area-dwellers never see rural whites, so it is safe to fear them.

— Assuming that around 50% of riders on the Metro system are white, I will give 20-1 odds that under 5% of the i-pod thefts are committed by whites like this man, though it’s most likely closer to 0.5%. We all know it. A white committing theft of this type is rare.

— So, this is a reversal of the racial roles in the real world, so common in media portrayals. This phenomenon has been remarked upon quite a lot by commentators with racialist sympathies.

The Perennial Evil-Oppressor vs. the Perennial Heroic-Oppressed
— The woman is sitting in a handicapped seat, which is closest to the door. The creators of this flyer must have done this to simplify staging the action portrayed. Yet, there are clear subtexts here, which may be too subtle for most to recognize consciously. On a subliminal level, an allegorical level perhaps, the staging here tells the hapless viewer that Nonwhites are “handicapped” by “institutional-racism”, which is personified by the black woman sitting in the handicapped seat and the white ogre terrorizing her. Thus blacks are — and remain — heroic saintly victims.

— That blacks are “heroic saintly victims” is reinforced if you look at the poster above the woman. The contents of the poster are unclear, but we do clearly see a gently-smiling, proud, young black male. Juxtaposed with the pathetic visage of the petty thief of a white male, the proud black male face in this scene seems, in a sense, heroic. There is also something to be said for the difference in quality of clothing and overall appearance: This victimized black woman is working hard is some professional capacity, which can be seen as heroic.

— That blacks are “heroic saintly victims” is reinforced by the woman’s attitude towards this theft. She has suffered the loss of a device that will set her back several weeks’ disposable income, and God-knows-how-many hours of fiddling with it to get content on it. All gone. Yet, looking at the black woman’s face in the second photo, she looks very “Zen”, in her business suit. Her carefully-groomed head shows thought he may be upset she is not angry. One can detect in her face hints even of pity for the pathetic criminal, loving her sinning neighbor though he oppresses her. This is the attitude Christians attribute to saints on occasions of their persecutions.

— Stripped away of all pretension, stripped away of all window-dressing, the subliminal content of this flyer is clear. It is the same message we see in so many Hollywood movies, so many TV shows. The same message we hear from left-wing Howard-Zinn/Michael-Moore historiography: Whites are evil, Nonwhites are heroic saintly victims, we have to be on our guard against the Evil White Menace, the cancer of human history.

I am now through with my analysis of this pair of highly-PC photos that appear on this officially-sanctioned flyer. But I will offer this up for a final thought:

Life in the Bizarro World
— (Although this is almost cliche by now) Try to imagine, for a moment, that the races in this flyer were to be flipped. It is inconceivable. No flyer issued by any government or quasi-government agency in the USA, in the 2000s, would ever use a thuggish-looking black criminal victimizing a pleasant-looking white woman. It is totally impossible to imagine. [An aside: Imagining such a thing is as difficult as imagining the crude Nazi tabloid Der Stuermer publishing cartoons of heroic and admirable Jews saving the day from some crime committed by malfeascent Nordic-Germans. (Note that the reverse occurred in essentially every issue of that crude, low-brow newspaper, which even top Nazis rejected as too flamboyantly anti-Semitic).]

— But there’s more. It is actually near impossible for me to imagine, here into the 2010s, any government-sanctioned flyer of this nature ever using anything but a white for the part of the thief. Maybe if more than one criminal portrayed they may toss in a token Nonwhite, but if it is a solo criminal, I actually cannot imagine it being anything but a white man at this point.

Standards of popular morality are constantly shifting.

A man with four sons has an estate. He dies. To whom goes the land?

Today, it would be split between the four sons evenly, by law. In the past, there was a practice known as “primogeniture” [Erstgeburtsrecht in German, lit. First-Born-Right, which is probably what we'd call it in English if not for old 1066]. Primogeniture mandated that the oldest son received all the land when the father died. Moral and other questions aside, — What impact does primogeniture, vs. shared-inheritance, have on fertility?

Commenter Rollory got me thinking about this, with remarks he made regarding the steady decline in French fertility after 1789, which quickly fell to the the lowest in Europe and stayed there. My idea was that “cultural pessimism” overtook the French after their chaotic revolution, ensuring low fertility. Rollory pointed out something more quantifiable (perhaps): Napoleon abolished France’s practice of primogeniture. Rollory speculates that the two events — France’s TFR slide and the end to primogeniture — were related.

The reasoning, briefly, is this:
– European parents are highly interested in their children’s success. In a society with an equal-inheritance policy, having multiple heirs would split the estate into meaninglessness. Every new child means the estate will split even more, perhaps thrusting descendants into the poor-house, even if the original father had an ample estate. Family would be started later for economic reasons, and so fertility would fall.

– On the other hand, wouldn’t extra children be even more of a dis-incentive in a Primogeniture system, as non-first-borns would inherit nothing at all!

– There is the matter of focusing on the parents’ decisions vs. on the children’s decisions, which can devolve into intractable Chicken-and-Egg-ism. E.g.: Although equal-inheritance may decrease parents’ desire to have more children, it would boost non-first-borns’ potential fertility, by giving them some starting capital. (Stever Sailer’s “affordable family foundation”). From there, in theory, the ablest would acquire more wealth, forming an ever-shifting aristocracy of merit, “Meritocracy”.

– There is the fact that all European states abolished this practice, but not all saw such a sharp fertility decline as did France. And industrialization changed the game, for sure. Rural land ownership had less and less to do with potential wealth earnings as the 1800s drove on. But France’s fertility slide came mostly in the 1790-1820 period, still mostly pre-Industrial.

– Finally: In the Malthusian past, high fertility was not necessarily a good thing. Primogeniture may have kept fertility lower than it could be, but maybe that was good! (This is a tangent; the question of whether it raises or depresses fertility is separate from whether high or low fertility is better!).

I don’t know which position is right. There are viable arguments both ways.

———
It seems that scholars have been just as puzzled and equivocal. Two such investigations into this question appear to have found opposite results:

1.) “Primogeniture and fertility: fertility models with unequal bequest” (1984 [link])

The general pattern of results suggests that primogeniture will reduce desired fertility, but possibly the major contribution of this presentation is that no simple relationship exists between primogeniture and fertility.

.
2.) “The coevolution of human fertility and wealth inheritance strategies.” (1998, [link])

The model is used to show that, in the unpredictable environment of a traditional pastoralist society, high fertility and a biasing of wealth inheritance to a small number of children are frequently optimal. [Optimal = having highest number of surviving grandchildren].

These two results appear to conflict with each other.

The latter study may not be relevant, as it deals with “African pastoralists”, not Europeans. Everyone knows Africans and Europeans have opposite breeding strategies.

———
One thing is for sure, I suppose: In primogeniture, the eldest son’s potential fertility will clearly be higher than otherwise, while his inheritance-less brothers will have lower fertility. The pro-Primogeniture position would be something like that old slogan “Capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth, Communism is the equal distribution of poverty.”

Finally, a paper called “Primogeniture, Monogamy and Reproductive Success in a Stratified Society“, 1994 [link]

The author looks at this very question, as applied a to a European-esque aristocratic society.

In an environment where there are strong increasing returns to wealth–particularly in a society where the accumulation and retention of wealth depends on military strength or on influence in the political and legal system–there can be a genetic advantage to endowing a single son with a very large inheritance rather than dividing inheritance in an equalitarian way among one’s offspring. Because of his great wealth and influence, a single heir is able to sire an extremely large number of children by many women. In contrast, even a wealthy female is biologically constrained to bear only a relatively small number of children. The way in which a female can achieve the greatest genetic representation in future generations is to be mother of a line of future male heirs. Parents of female offspring who wished to maximize their reproductive value would therefore be willing to pay a large amount to have their daughter married to an heir of a great estate. This willingness to pay should be translated into large dowries. These facts seem to be consistent with what is known about ancient civilizations and about early modern Britain.
…
[However,] the hypothesis of reproductive value maximization does not receive unambiguous support from the tests made here.

I suppose the take-away message from that is: Primogeniture raises fertility for the single-heir in certain social orders. Such as feudalism.

But a social model that reaps these benefits would have to be dejure or defacto polygamous! Dejure polygamy has typically not been a European tradition. (See here).

Primogeniture would tend to reinforce aristocracy, and as such has the potential breathe life into even the stalest of feudalisms.

———
———
Can an advocate of Primogeniture offer a better defense of the institution than I have? (I admit I lean against it, but I am open to being all rational arguments).

I had never heard this particular argument before, until I began reading an interesting, semi-autobiographical book by R. Duane Willing, titled “The American Caliphate”. (A word on the book title: The meaning of this title becomes more clear if you juxtapose it with the title of his previous, more philosophical work: “Money: The 12th and Final Religion”.)

I will let Willing — a federal employee during the Nixon era — make the case:

———

The hidden secret since the beginning of modern capitalism is that money is created and managed by bank control over checking accounts in the loan-making process. This is the secret of how money is created from thin air.

President Nixon was preparing the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to change the traditional role of American savings and loan associations. They were to change from community-centered, mutually-owned deposit and savings associations to regular commercial banks that have money creation powers. The S&L system was designed to collect local savings in order to build local housing. Ownership of the S&L was indicated by the existence of the savings account. With the Nixon Plan, they would be able to issue equity shares and be listed on the stock exchanges just like regular commercial downtown banks. They would, for the first time, have accounts for both checking and savings. The converted savings and loan associations would have full banking powers to make loans and investments, providing a first full-service nationwide bank for Americans.

The Nixon White House had quietly drafted and sponsored before Congress the Federal Charter Bill. The passage of this bill would have changed U.S. financial history. The financial coven of Wall Street and Federal Reserve central banking was about to be challenged like never before.

———

It was obvious, from the view at my humble post at the FHLBB, that President “Tricky Dick” Nixon had really alarmed the powerful.

———

The “Watergate” saga was obviously just Senatorial theater. It was a ritual ceremony to conceal from public awareness the death march aimed at the president as punishment for his tampering with the S&L system that financed housing in America. The Wall Street Great Merchants as owners of the Senate were personified by the Senate appointment of Nelson Rockefeller as vice president. They were making certain that the money dreams of “Tricky Dick” and his vision for the Republic protected with a network of converted Savings and Loan associations was doomed.

———

[There had been] power skirmishes between the Fed and the Treasury…but the Fed prevailed. Then, out of the blue, in 1969…President Nixon was detected by Wall Street as surreptitiously planning a secret great challenge to the Federal Reserve system and Wall Street powers. In short order, Nixon became the target of bizarre allegations and calls for impeachment.

———

The careful construction of public outrage against President Nixon, led by The Washington Post and made national by television, was a masterpiece of propaganda. If done by a foreign country, the propaganda would be recognized as “active measures”. The term “active measures” is used by secret agents to describe such things as bribery and other high-level subversion techniques to include the hiring of agents of influence to control public opinion in the media.

———
All excerpts are from chapters One and Two of “The American Caliphate of BIZWOG: The Final World Order”. (Author’s website).

France.
–1816 : 29.9 million
–1860 : 36.5 million [+22.1%]
–1910 : 39.5 million [+8.2%]

Germany (within 1871 borders).
–1816 : 22.4 million
–1860 : 37.6 million [+67.9%]
–1910 : 64.9 million [+72.6%]

To put the data another way:
– In 1816, there were 133 French for every 100 Germans.
– In 1910, there were 61 French for every 100 Germans!

.
Demography is Destiny:

Back in 1810 no one would have thought France would “soon” be a second-rate power, and that Prussia [or its successor state, i.e. Germany] would be the strongest power in Europe. Yet, for whatever reason, French fertility declined in the post-Napoleonic era, while the Germans’ soared. By the time a young Nietzsche started pondering philosophy, there were more German-speakers than French-speakers in Europe, the first time that could ever be said. By the early 1900s, there were far more German-speakers.
This [led to the] “Great War” breaking out in 1914…

A commenter, Rollory, proposed one idea about why France’s fertility fell:

[France's fertility collapse] was Napoleon’s doing. Under the Ancien Regime, the standard was for the oldest son to inherit everything. He made the new default be that estates be split equally among all the heirs. The result is that having many kids means each one gets less. If you want your children to be prosperous, you have few – whereas under the old system, you don’t worry about it; the oldest gets it all and the others go off to seek their fortune.

The wisdom of Salic Law runs deep.

Rollory’s argument makes sense, but it can only apply to the landowning classes, as far as I can see. Fertility decline affected all of France, and dramatically so. What could explain France’s fertility collapse in the 1800s — among all its classes?

.
.
By the way, in case anyone is under any misapprehensions, and thinks France’s apparent low population-growth might be because by French outmigration, famines, plagues, or any other fantasy:

“Before 1800, marital fertility in France was similar to that of other European countries, but after 1800 the French rate declined rapidly. By 1840 it was 2/3 of the 1800 level, and by 1900 it was 1/2 of the 1800 level. In other European countries marital fertility did not begin to decline until the 1870s. “The fall of marital fertility in nineteenth-century France“, European Journal of Population (Jan. 1985)”

Edit: Commenter RS has posted a great deal of further TFR information in the comments below, which confirms that France’s TFR was the lowest in Europe by 1820. Unexplained is why.

TFR Chart provided by commenter RS.

I was surprised to recently learn the origin of this particular building-style. I present two short discussions of the subject below from two experts on architectural history:

.
================================================
From “Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic” by Fiske Kimball, 1922. Pages seven and eight.

A derivation of the log house from the Indians has been tempting to those who have wished to emphasize the mastering of the colonists’ inherited traditions by the wilderness: “It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois, and runs an Indian palisade around him.” Unfortunately for this belief, none of the tribes with whom the early settlers came in contact lived in log houses.

The Indian huts described in contemporary narratives, including the long-house of the Iroquois, are all of radically different construction. Even in the case of the Creek, who sometimes did employ the log house in the later eighteenth century, all evidence agrees that it was unknown to them until after the founding of Georgia. It was the one thing among many others adopted by this exceptionally gifted tribe from the colonists.

A more reasonable supposition is that the log house was brought to America by the people in whose native land at that time it was the customary form of dwelling–the Swedes and Finns who settled on the Delaware in 1638 and the years following. Peter Kalm, writing in 1749 and quoting a settler ninety-one years old, describes the first houses as of round logs chinked with clay, and contemporary accounts describe the fort built at New Gothenburg in 1643 as “made of hemlock beams, laid one upon the other.” From the very beginnings of New Sweden, there was trade with both Virginia and New England, and the interchange of ideas which resulted, with time, in the building of an “English house” at Fort Elfsborg, seems ultimately to have taught the English colonists a method of construction so obviously suited to pioneer conditions in the new, heavily forested continent.

[note: New Gothenburg was near present-day Philadelphia]
================================================

.
Source #2:
================================================
From “American Shelter: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the American Home” by Lester Walker (1995)

The log cabin was introduced in America by the Swedes who settled along the Delaware River in 1638. New Sweden, a fur trading colony that covered parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, did not endure buts its housing form, the log cabin has survived and is still built today.

[By] the beginning of the eighteenth century… non Swedes built log cabins; the Scotch-Irish and the German settlers were the first. … By the Revolution, the log cabin had become the standard frontier dwelling, inhabited by all nationalities, as well as by the American Indian.

…The log cabin had many features desirable to the early settlers and, later, the pioneers. It was quickly built from indigenous materials — trees and rocks cleared from land to be used for farming. With natural insulation of thick wooden walls, a well-built log cabin was cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The log cabin was easy to build because it did not require an extra framework to hold up the walls. …
================================================

I have added suitable section subtitles for clarity of reading. (The title and anything between the —— symbols is mine; everything else is commenter Albert’s original.)

__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
// The View From a Cog in the USA’s
Aggressive-Multicultacracy Machine //

As a man who is both living in Europe and who works for the State Department, I feel it is my duty to comment on this post and those prior speaking to Department initiatives with regard to minority populations in Europe and elsewhere. Obviously, I am not using my real name and the views I express here are my own personal views and are in no way sanctioned by the USG, which would be appalled that I was reading such sites, let along commenting on them.

I apologize in advance if this goes long, but I believe that given the New Right’s interest in Wikileaks and the stories that have arisen out of it that my observations from the inside are relevant and would be of interest to my fellow heathens.

To be immersed in the Department for any length of time is to know with absolute certainty that the battle of ideas, for the highest seat of power, for the basic outlook of the United States of America is over and it has been won by globalist, multi-culturalist, liberal capitalism. That is to say, the USG is currently fanatically devoted to a world-view that can best be described in shorthand as a mix between the Wall St Journal pro-global business and open borders stance and the ideology one would find in the Office for Multi-Cultural Affairs at a major liberal arts university.

Mencius Moldbug (whose father was in the Foreign Service, and as he once pointed out to Larry Auster, when a person IN the Foreign Service and a person who grew up in the Foreign Service are telling you, who are NOT in USG that USG is fully and completely committed to the modern liberal revolution and is not capable of being reformed, one should LISTEN) is completely correct in noting that this view has hardened into an ideology and has intertwined itself so thoroughly in the popular mind with what it means to be “American” that nothing short of an intense crisis or a complete breakdown will bring about any change. Certainly, electing this or that Republican makes no difference to the Permanent Government.

—— The DemoRepublicratican Ruling Party ——
You may have noticed that President Obama’s policies are not significantly different than President Bush’s, which are both similar to President Clinton’s and, rhetoric aside, not very different from President Reagan’s. The reasons for this would take a book, but put simply Mencius is correct that liberal capitalist democracy is both universalist and a form of religion, arising out of deep Protestant and Quaker roots, and that what we are witnessing is merely the playing out of that tendency to its logical conclusion.

I say this as a way of putting my comments into context. While I remain because there is still a possibility for change (rationalization or not, I keep thinking that there must have been some members of the Soviet diplomatic service who realized that their nation’s devotion to an outdated ideology that didn’t work would someday come to an end and it was his duty to the Russian people to remain at post to help when that day came, but I’m probably kidding myself), the points raised in the comments about Conservatives not getting the fundamental nature of USG is not only true, its extremely true. As the post both here and at Alt Right demonstrated, not even clear-thinking members of the New Right have fully taken in that the USG is now the enemy.

Because, let’s fact it, bravado aside, that’s a difficult thing for an American to accept. It’s much easier for Europeans to accept this; they have a history of governments who need overthrowing. But in the long history of the American Republic, never, I think, has there been a time where the Government of the United States was ideologically committed to the wholesale destruction and replacement of the American people, their history, their identity, their ideals and their very being. The Civil War is a partial exception to that and, I’m starting to believe, a lesson that we Americans for too long smugly ignored.

—— What Do They Mean by “Democracy”? ——
In any case, on to the matters at hand with that background in mind. With regard to the post American Diversity Outreach, it is my sad duty to report to you that the USG is actively promoting this not only in France but throughout the European Union and elsewhere. The US Government views the future and the meaning of the very word “democracy” to mean a democracy on the modern liberal capitalist globalist United States model, i.e. mass democracy with an extremely multi-ethnic population. To that end, historical nations are merely administrative bodies with particular historical backgrounds. A Turkish German is German. A Muslim Frenchman is French. Anyone who says otherwise is evil and will not be tolerated. Moves by any European government to treat their citizens differently based on ethnicity are viewed by USG as the same a denying Blacks in the U.S. civil rights and sends them into a shrieking frenzy. Any political party that opposes this is “monitored” by the U.S. and U.S. political and diplomatic capital is spent to discredit them.

In addition, the U.S. is fully committed to the proposition that the U.S. and Europe are Muslim as well as Christian and Jewish and Whatever entities. To that end, the U.S. has supported Albania and has created the new Muslim state of Kosovo. Kosovo and Albania are both led by criminals and murderers but in our ideological zeal this is not seen for what it is. It is seen, typically, as a need for MORE U.S. involvement, more “good governance” programs, more lectures to other Europeans that they’re not doing their part to integrate these countries into the European family. A quick example suffices to make my point.

—— Good for the Egyptian Goose, Bad for the European Gander ——
As is now well-known, USG has come down squarely on the side of the protesters in Egypt, calling for Mubarak to step down. In doing so, we have trumpeted the right of the Egyptian people to freedom of speech and assembly and their right to petition to government as to their grievances.

However, in Kosovo, when in the north a group of ethnic Serbs gathered peacefully to demonstrate against the Kosovo government by picketing outside a local government office, which resulted in someone—presumably a Muslim—rolling a grenade into the demonstration, killing some demonstrators, our USG man on the spot reported that while the situation was lamentable, true responsibility for the deaths fell to the Serbs, who should have known that such an open demonstration would provoke Muslim violence.

So much for freedom of speech and assembly! So much for the right to petition a government of one’s grievances!

I see this sort of thing many times a day. The only thing one can conclude from this is that the USG has become fanatically ideological and will cram any facts into contortions to fit its ideological world-view. That this crazed body carries such immense power and weight bodes extremely ill for both the American people and the world.

—— Multikultacracy Weaker in Europe Than USA ——
With regard to this report on Muslims in Europe, it makes a point that I have long ago seen clearly here in Europe: American conservative crowing over the death of Europe and the coming of Eurabia are wildly overblown and assume that Europe and its people won’t tell USG to piss off at some point. (Exception: The United Kingdom, which has terminal cancer, is dying and should serve as a warning to all Anglo nations, but hasn’t to date. It’s almost impossible to overstate the abject ugliness and dysfunction of this nation that once ruled the world, a nation whose capital you can fly to today and literally see the barbarians walking the streets of Empire, streets they themselves lack the capacity to build).

Note that the figures, even taken as they are, show no significant minorities anywhere, with the possible exception of France. Even there, the numbers are ridiculously small compared to the Black and Latino populations in the United States, especially in my native California. Europe has nowhere near the minority problem that the U.S. does and could rid itself of it, even at this late stage, with ease. While the State Department reflects its ideology and is chock full of Asians, Latinos, Arabs, Indians, Mexicans, Blacks and just about every other minority you could think of (all of whom are totally 100% American, in the modern, globalist multi-cultural sense), you’d be hard pressed to find any such diversity in the government service of any European country.

Keep in mind also that this study includes the Balkans, with its large Muslim population left over from Ottoman times.

In this respect, Fjordman is quite correct: USG is an enemy not only of its people but of the European people. While it is true that the European elite is as compromised on the USG-led ideology as the U.S. elite is, the fact on the ground here is that the common European people have NOT bought into this view. Among the common folk here, even on the Left, there is much less tolerance for “diversity” than among average Americans. Thus, the reaction begins quicker.

France is a special case in this regard since its official ideology—like that of a triumphant liberal America—is universalist. However, on the ground, the French still know who is French and who just carries a French passsport—and the French are not known for going quietly when the chips are really down.

So, given this, what is to be done?

Three things, I think.

—— What Are Dissidents To Do? ——
First, domestically, the New Right has to convince Americans that the USG no longer represents them or their interests, in an out-of-control behemoth and needs not reform but a wholesale political movement to perform deep and quick change. It’s time to stop beating around the bush and to talk straight to the American people about where we are and where we are headed. The U.K. is doing the Anglosphere a final service by demonstrating in real time where we are all headed. It needs to be pointed to and its warning heeding. Only a popular movement which approaches this issue with intelligence, wit and insight, bold and fearless about speaking the truth out loud and proud, stands any chance. Not a good chance, mind you, but a fool’s chance. Still, duty is duty and I don’t see how we can avoid taking this chance.

Second, with regard to Europe, the New Right has to convince the traditional, nationalist parties and people of Europe that if they tell USG to fuck off and to remove troops, stay out of our affairs and to accept that Europe is a continent of ethnic nation-states that they will enjoy the support of the American people, if not the American Government. This also can be used as a wedge between the American people and USG.

Third, we need at the same time as we proceed along the lines above, realize that we are dealing with an immense monster of incredible power and influence, one that has had the world by the throat now for decades and which as educated many generations of Americans to believe sincerely that everything USG stands for is hope and light and anyone who opposes is merely the first step to Auschwitz.

Given that fact, it is very likely we shall fail. We should therefore be also planning amongst ourselves what we should do if it becomes clear that we have failed. Some sort of withdrawal or alternative community is necessary if we are to preserve our culture and our heritage and not enough serious thinking has been put into Plan B at the moment.

While our elites are flying high at the moment, their ideology is unworkable. While they appear more vigorous, they in reality are not much differently placed than the frozen leaders of the CPSU waving from atop Lenin’s Tomb.

While we are few, so were those few in Prague who decades before the Iron Curtain fell put on plays in secret demonstrating the foolishness of the ruling ideology.

This is the task before us: to accept that we are dissidents and opponents. To accept that it is our duty to resist. To use art to express that resistance, the win intellectuals and people of ability to our side. To forge contacts with supporters in the outside world. To slowly expand our influence and never, ever stop laughing at the State.

And when it comes crashing, and I believe it will, we will be there, smiling and laughing.

[End of piece by anonymous author Albert, who identifies as a State Dept. employee in Europe].

An interesting read:

_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________

By Revilo P. Oliver, PhD — Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois
Originally published in 1963

We are so often assured that we live in a “changing world,” and we are so pleased by the progress of our technology, that we sometimes imagine that change, or at least the rapidity of it, is a peculiarity of our time — an originality of which we are as proud as an adolescent who has discovered that he is in love.

The most drastic and rapid social change that mankind has ever experienced took place approximately five thousand years ago in Egypt. (I avoid the long discussion that would be necessary to set a more precise date or determine what was happening in Sumeria more or less contemporaneously.)

In terms of history, the change was sudden. A great Egyptologist, Professor John A. Wilson, had compared it to the speed with which a supersaturated solution crystallized in a flask. And it was drastic.

Within a century the Egyptians were hustled from barbarism to civilization. At the beginning of that period, they were roughly comparable to the Indians of our Southwest in their adobe villages before the coming of the white man: a timeless people, without a past to remember or a future to plan; a people for whom tribal mores took the place of formal government or social organization; a people that could live almost entirely by instinct, since the monotonous collection of food was varied only by an occasional raid on a neighboring village. At the end of that century, Egypt was a nation extending from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean, and subject to the absolute rule of a completely centralized and socialist government.

For the first time in man’s long existence on this planet, there was a nation: and that nation’s resources were consciously marshalled and used by government which necessarily planned for the future. Writing and written records appeared suddenly to make possible the bureaucracy that managed the nation. And the intelligent direction of human effort soon required or induced technical accomplishment. At the end of the Second Dynasty there was nowhere on the surface of the earth a permanent structure: Nothing had ever been built of stone. Within a hundred years Egypt had erected the most enduring structure that man has ever built — what was, until quite recently, both the tallest and the most massive building in the world. It was also one of the most accurately constructed: the two and a half million blocks of stone in the Great Pyramid were faced with blocks, many of them weighing sixteen tons, which were finished to a tolerance of plus or minus one one-hundredth of an inch.

When civilization had come to Egypt, it must have seemed eternal. It was, of course, designed, like the pyramids, for all time. For reasons made clear by Karl A. Wittfogel in his brilliant Oriental Despotism (New Haven, 1957), the earliest and most primitive form of civilized society is always socialism, with an omnipotent central government, a completely managed economy, and with inhabitants reduced to the kind of serfdom that our planners in Washington are now imposing, step by step, on the American people.

The Egyptians defined the good State as one in which “well directed are men, the cattle of God.” Men were simply the cattle of Pharaoh, who had all the power that Jack Kennedy craved, and who was, by definition, the son of God and therefore God himself. He owned every acre of ground, every house, every stick of wood in Egypt from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean, and he naturally owned all the livestock on that plantation, both quadrupeds and bipeds.

A total socialism, such as Egypt had from the beginning, necessarily excludes all thought of change. That fact, indeed, may explain its appeal to men. The many hundreds of Utopias imagined by idle dreamers from Iambulos to Sir Thomas More to Edward Bellamy differ greatly in all details, but have one thing in common: They imagine a state in which no governmental or social change is possible or even conceivable. And the sincere socialists of our own time, though vociferous in praise of “inevitable change” leading to socialism, promise us the joys of a social order that can never again change and will be immutable forever in saecula saeculorum — or, at least, “Till the sun grows cold and the stars are old.”

Necessarily, therefore, the basic assumption of Egyptian civilization was that it was a social order as eternal as the granite of its monuments. But four hundred years after Cheops built his pyramid, that order suddenly disintegrated into anarchy and utter chaos.

The one thing the we know with certainty about the causes of the collapse is that they were internal. Egypt was not invaded by a foreign people and was not involved in a major war or even any military action other than routine policing of the few points at which she was not isolated from the rest of the world by natural barriers. There appears to have been a steady trickle of immigration across the isthmus of Suez into Egypt, but there is no reason to suppose that the immigrants were sufficiently numerous and active either to affect the character of the Egyptian population or to attempt an insurrection.

When we look for internal causes, we note that the last king before the collapse, Pepe II, ruled for ninety years, which suggests that if he did not begin his reign as God in diapers, he ended it as God in senile imbecility, possibly inspiring one of his sons, grandsons, or great-grandsons with impatience to start enjoying the blessings of divinity himself. That is merely a guess that the spark which set off the explosion was struck by a civil war for possession of the throne. But whatever the source of the spark, it is clear that the explosive materials lay deep in the structure of the society they destroyed.

Since a small body of literature, especially the lamentations of Ipu-wer and Nefer-rohu, who witnessed the collapse, has survived, modern historians can learn a good deal about the causes. You will find them discussed at length in any good history of ancient Egypt.

What happened in Egypt was not a mere political upheaval to change the ruler or form of government; it was the ruin of a whole civilization through the collapse of its moral foundations. “If three men go along a road,” says Ipu-wer, “they become two men, for the greater number kills the lesser.” “I show thee,” says Nefer-rohu, “the brother as an enemy, and the man who kills his own father. Every mouth is full of ‘love me!,’ and everything good has disappeared.” Order had vanished in anarchy and universal banditry, and no man knew when he would be struck down from ambush or murdered in his own house.

Yes, “his own house,” for the lamentations incidentally show us that during the centuries preceding the collapse the perfect socialist state under its incarnate God had not been able to maintain its pure form; it had somehow progressed from socialism toward a higher form of social organization in which there was private property in practice and quite possibly even in theory. The writers take it for granted. Nefer-rohu complains that “Men take a man’s property away from him, and it is given to him who is from outside. I show thee the owner in need and the outsider satisfied.” And Ipu-wer: ‘The robber is now the possessor of riches … The children of great men are dashed against the walls … Great ladies now glean in the fields … The owners of fine robes are clad in rags, but he who never wove for himself is now the owner of fine linen.” It is clear that Egypt had risen, though perhaps precariously, to a level far above pure socialism. That must have made the collapse the more terrible.

A great nation, which was coterminous with a civilization, had simply caved in. And since it had not been overthrown by an external force, the structure must have been poorly designed or poorly maintained. Or, to vary the metaphor, the culture had contained in itself the seeds of its own destruction. Or, perhaps, the civilization, like a dog, simply grew old and feeble and finally died. But whatever metaphor we use, the Egyptian collapse poses for us the basic problem of history. What were the causes of the collapse? And, since causes imply the existence of natural laws by which they operate, what laws of history can be inferred from them?

The Egyptians either violated some natural law that applied to civilizations, and could therefore have averted the collapse had they been more prudent, or they underwent a change that was “historically necessary” because imposed by some natural law that human ingenuity cannot circumvent. That alternative simply states the central problem that a philosophy of history must solve. And since we are subject to the same natural laws, the problem is vital and urgent.

Of course, Egypt eventually recovered from the chaos that historians euphemistically call the First Intermediate Period; and she went on to complete with many vicissitudes her three thousand years as a great and independent nation — a record that only China can rival. But the men who witnessed the collapse could not foresee that. The apparent end of human civilization, overthrown by a barbarism made more savage and terrible because it had captured the weapons and resources that civilization had produced, must have been a traumatic shock unsurpassed (thus far) in the experience of mankind. Contemporaries felt utter despair. “The land is completely perished, so that no remainder exists,” concluded Nefer-rohu. And Ipu-wer could only regard mankind as a failure and wish that it would disappear: “Ah, would that it were the end of men! That there were no conception and no birth! Then would the earth cease from turmoil and be at rest.”

But it did not occur to either Nefer-rohu or Ipu-wer — nor, so far as we know, did it occur to any later Egyptian — to ask why the catastrophe had befallen them. That may be a very significant historical datum.

It is not at all astonishing that the two Egyptian writers, with no precedent or record of comparable human experience to guide then, did not see in the cataclysm an intellectual problem. Nefer-rohu was right when he said, “What had never happened had happened.” But it seems that a t no time in their long existence as a nation did the Egyptians think in terms of historical cause and effect. They compiled chronologies, but they never wrote history. They kept careful record of the sequence of events, but did not try to explain them. Some years brought national misfortune, just as the Nile in some years did not rise to its normal height and the fields consequently bore but a scanty harvest. Such things happened; if they had a cause, that cause lay in the mysterious and perhaps capricious will of the gods, far beyond human understanding.

[End of article by Dr. Revilo P. Oliver]

We dismiss it as absurd: How would such a random thing as birthdate affect anything? (There is some idea it has to with how stars line up, which strikes us as laughable).

I will not argue for astrology. But I will point out: One’s birthdate is not “random” in the sense of lottery numbers or “coin flips”, but is almost always ~9-months after conception.

Two things I recently read suggest that, in some animals, conditions of conception matter, a lot, for the character of the new creature.

1.) In alligators, temperature of the nest determines the sex of offspring. (A nest above 90-F will produce a male, any cooler will produce a female).
2.) In certain butterflies in the tropics, the nature of the ornate patterns they develop on their wings are determined by “larval rearing temperature”, not genetics as such. [link].

Consider: Is it possible that the temperature of the surroundings of the human womb at conception, and during pregnancy, could affect the child in ways similar to what astrology claims, as seen in these other creatures? Yes, we are warm-blooded. But is it really so impossible?

Another possibility: Perhaps a spring conception is ideal for the human condition, which gave rise to European notions that spring and love go hand in hand. Are people born in December, January, February [9-months after "Spring"] superior to the rest of us?)

Even if any of this is true, it would not line up with astrology’s hard line on significance of birthdates (implicitly) everywhere: After all, some places have no seasons, some places have “wet” vs. “dry” seasons, others have wild-temp-swings in the year, others milder swings, and southern-hemisphere-ites have opposite seasons as northerners.

Anyway, modern people are not exposed to the elements very much, anymore. So is astrology “over”?

USA's Total Fertility Rates, By Race of Mother, 1980s-2000s. (Click Graph to Expand).

Observations
(1) Starting in the mid-1990s and through to the late 2000s, no racial group in the USA naturally-replaced itself (which requires a 2.1 TFR in a modern society), except Hispanics.

(2) White fertility had been in a slump through the 1970s and 1980s, but recovered to ~1.85 by the early 1990s. It remained remarkably stable at ~1.85 through the 1990s and 2000s. Comparisons to Europe suggest that American-white women are significantly outbreeding some of their cousins on the old Continent. However, one must remember that by the late 2000s, one-in-ten babies born to American white women was fathered by a nonwhite man. An American ‘white-white’ TFR would be ~1.65 by the late 2000s.

Questions
I am interested in hearing some explanations for all the trends seen here, many of which confuse me.

(1) I have speculated that there was a swelling of “civilizational pride” from the late-1980s to early-1990s, because of seemingly-imminent American victory in the Cold War. My earlier conjecture was that such a thing would explain why both crime and abortion declined concurrently around that time. Both can be looked at as anti-social manifestations of nihilism, which would decline as “civilizational pride” rises. The fact that there was also a “mini baby boom” in the period straddling the “Fall of the Wall” seems to support this. Compare TFRs in 1986 with TFRs 1990. What was different in the world? Yes. It’s an intriguing theory, all right. What else could explain the “mini baby boom” in this period, seen among all racial groups for which there is data?

(2) I don’t understand why American-Indian fertility collapsed in the 1990s, at all. From ~2.2 in the 1980s, to 1.75 by the turn of the millennium.

(3) Why the Hispanic “mini baby boom” of the mid-2000s? (Peaking at 3.00 in 2007). [Edit: This has been answered in the comments].

(4) Why did Asian fertility swing from ~1.8 and falling in the late 1990s, to nearly replacement level (over 2.0) by the late 2000s?

(5) What turned around the Black fertility trend? Declining 1990-2002, but the Bush-Jr. years saw a recovery back to positive-natural-growth territory. Why?

Data Source
This is the latest data available from the CDC (the official agency in the USA recording this information), released a few weeks ago. Although I think the graph is easy enough to understand, have a look for yourself here [warning: a large pdf].

the perceived threat of HIV lowered the rate of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. [Inductivist adds:] The PC strategy of scaring the hell out of heterosexuals turned out to be a good thing.

According to the CDC, 26.0% of the babies American women conceived in the 1980s were aborted. Today it is ~20%. [Another estimate puts the 1980s abortion toll at ~30%].

I believe I can refute the “HIV-Scare reduced abortion” thesis in 10 seconds or less, using two graphs. Observe —

Trends in Abortion in the USA. (Click to Expand).

In case you are blind, I will point out that crime and abortion rose and declined more-or-less together. Both are today at two-thirds their peaks of a generation or so ago.

Did “HIV fears” scare criminals into shaping up?

Absurd. So what else could be going on here?

Back to that in a second. First, here is the authors’ argument, summarized in graph form, taken from their paper.

The graph seems to prove its thesis without need for comment. But the graph is wrong. Whoever put together that graph for the economists did extremely sloppy work. As best I can tell, they mixed data from the “ratios” column with data from the “rate” column and multiplied the latter by 10! I have put together a graph, above, accurately showing the CDC data (table of the data here). The authors cite this their source but reproduce the data completely-inaccurately from 1990.

– Abortion peaked sometime in the 1980s (CDC says it was 1984), and began its slow decline to where it is now. We might pin the beginning of the descent at 1987. AIDS became something people worried about around 1990. AIDS fears in ’87 were like Swine Flu fears in summer ’09. People knew about it, and realized it “could” be a serious problem, and heard distant stories about people being sick, but it was not personal and did not affect day-to-day life. Maybe prostitutes in ’87 and nurses in hospitals in ’09 were worried, but the general peoeple, no. AIDS in 1987 was nothing two young lovebirds would particularly fear.

– Furthermore, there was a steady increase in the share of births to unmarried mothers in the early 1990s. If people were too terrified to have unprotected sex, as the authors posit, we’d have more likely seen a decline in unmarried-motherhood, or at least stagnancy.

– As the AIDS scare is long since over (in the sense of being the Panic it was circa 1990), what explains the ongoing decline in abortions? As the graph above shows, there never was a sharp fall in abortions, as one would expect if the “AIDS Panic” thesis were valid (and as it seems in the authors’ inaccurate graph). There has been a steady decline, but which began before AIDS was an issue!

.
Striking the Root
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches…for every one striking at the root.” –Thoreau

What caused the concurrent declines in abortion and crime?

A “broad cultural shift” in the USA seems the most robust possible explanation for concurrent declining crime and abortion. It is typical of economists to be unable to understand this.

[EDIT: The Hispanic factor to the abortion decline is briefly examined here.]

I don’t know how exactly to pin it down. Maybe someone reading this can help there.

One part of it was surely a rebellion against the ’60s. People didn’t want a wild ride anymore. The angry sociopolitical demagoguery of previous 20th-century generations was rejected. Generation-X — in prime “crime” and prime “abortion” years when the declines began in earnest (early ’90s) — was known as apathetic and mellow.

In a related sense, there is probably a “civilizational pride” factor here: Americans saw (but did not realize yet) that Communism was defeated already by the mid-1980s, when the “corner was turned” and abortion stopped growing. When Communism collapsed a few years later, pride swelled. A turn towards the life-affirming rather than cynical, nihilistic, selfishness. Then came an easy victory in the Gulf War. Good economic times rolled. And that brings us to the present, more or less.

Good Fortune
So perhaps crime and abortion decreased to roughly two-thirds their 1990 levels because of the victory of Capitalist Liberal Democracy in the Cold War.

But “victory” also implicitly endorsed a lot of the not-so-good things, which late-20th-century Capitalist Liberal Democracy brought along on its coattails: Fake economic growth based on pushing around paper and calling it wealth; aggressively-universalist “Multi-Kulti”-ism; the rise of social atomization and “anomie”; increasing acceptance of what was previously seen as degenerate; the decline of the family; imperial adventurism; expensive social-welfare programs [esp. in Europe].

As the Oriental proverb tells us, beware of good fortune.