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I think it’s doubtful that there is a large genetic component to bisexuality (in contrast to homosexuality). Men seem to be gay/straight, or lie about their sexuality, but I suspect that changing cultural norms are opening straight men to bisexuality. Homosexuals seem to have really strong opinions about "bisexuals" but I'm not sure how useful or grounded in reality those opinions are. But feel free to elaborate on your “clean slate” theory, I'm always interested in theories on the subject. Homosexuality has always been an extreme choice attracting only 3-5% of the population, but based on the passivity and indifference to sexual differences among millenials I expect that at least some transient experimentation will become more common. I'm not sure of any quality statistics that track this over time. You have seen the seeds for this in the steady de-emphasization of sex differences over the past few generations; the contemporary marriage is a rather sexless-looking partnership in which both spouses pursue careers, postpone children (which really brings out the differences between the sexes), and thus stay in a kind of culturally androgynous path far longer than previously, when sexual differentiation became pronounced in adolescence and the types of careers that men and women prepared for. No doubt this is behind the support for gay marriage even among ostensibly heterosexual young adults, the interest in defending transsexuals (which are an even tinier minority), and the anti-bullying push (which is a defense of passivity--note that fighting back against bullies is never brought up in this context, that would require aggressiveness which is a mysterious quality to them). The main drivers then are the passivity produced by social anxiety and the rise of a basically androgynous self-image. I expect more cases of confused orientation to result.

I wanted to pick up on this if it's ok. The highlighted section is astonishing to me. Many people really have been completely robbed of their past and identity, even over the span of their lives. If in 1975 or even 1985, you suggested to any liberal you could find that the gays wouldn't stop until they had gay marriage, they'd have laughed at you. I can distinctly remember back when homosexuality was disdained and shunned even by the Left. And yet, not only here we are, every leftist you could care to speak to about the topic will be indignant at any suggestion that this was not a natural, rational thing and always has been. Despite this, most normal people are still ambivalent about homosexuality. Gay rights have barely made headway even in a wealthy country like Japan where all sorts of deviant sexual fetishes are honored and pornography is displayed in public newspapers. I don't think the case has been made very convincingly that our modern reversal of these traditions has produced a better world; I rather think that our liberalism is itself a symptom of a mentally weak people whose culture has become exhausted by overpopulation and complexity and is now very, very disordered. Society has never had an honest discussion about homosexuality. We've gone from a situation where homosexuality was extremely taboo and regarded as sinful, destructive and perverse to one where criticism of homosexuality is extremely taboo and regarded as sinful (i.e. a crime against p.c.), destructive (to our appreciation of diversity!) and perverse (in that it suggests unrecognized, gay tendencies, pathological backwardness, etc...).

Can you tell us more about this? I'm genuinely curious about this topic. My brother had to stop playing football in HS after getting concussed.

I suspect that the GOP are probably doing this to provide cover for an amnesty plan. Although I don't believe that the current GOP are intelligent enough to be that devious.

Are you kidding? Mussolini would have had our political and corporate elites executed as state-parasites. Contrary to popular belief, Mussolini's solution was not to simply consolidate the reigning powers of the political/economic body into an enormous Orwellian machine that preys upon 'the little guy'. He wanted to draw the constituent members and institutions of society away from their selfish focus into one functioning body (hence corporatism) that operates on behalf of the national good. Mussolini hated how democracies balanced power by promoting a free-for-all, where what could be good for a person could be bad for his business, what could be good for his business could be bad for the country, and what could be good for the country could be bad for its leaders. The existence of these multiple competing factions, Mussolini says, undermines the ability of the nation to settle and manage its affairs in its own interests. To resolve the dilemma, the theory goes, unite them in a totality and set a leader as its head charged with channeling the nation's will into a plan of action. We can argue endlessly about whether this succeeded in practice, but you can probably already see that this is vastly different from the situation America is in now.

Mussolini's corporatism has nothing to do with corporations in the business sense. It's a vision of economic cooperation that integrates businesses, workers, and government into a single political organism -- instead of pitting each against the other like a tragedy of the commons writ large, which is pretty much what we have now.

Lisnpuppy, The problem isn’t with the people, it’s with the system. Normal people don’t care about politics. They don’t have the time or interest to follow political issues closely. If a democratic system requires voters to be educated or informed on political issues for it to function effectively, then the problem is clearly with the system itself. A system of governance must match the characteristics of its people, as well as the scale and complexity of society. Demanding higher standards from the electorate is pretty much an admission that the system is broken. It essentially amounts to saying that the electorate need to be replaced. Simply put, the increase in complexity of modern 20th society and governance made meaningful voter engagement practically impossible. Democracy works in low-medium scale, traditional communities. Once you reach a moderate size you need democracy as a control on the elite themselves, because they are in a position to plunder the country's wealth. But when you reach the type of scale and complexity of modern day society, then democracy becomes ineffective because it requires a level of voter engagement that is impractical for ordinary people. The complexity and sheer size of modern government (caused by the emergence of mass society) makes meaningful voter engagement unworkable.

Sukeban, My post was too long, and I think you misinterpreted my point on scientific government. My point was that the 19th century saw a shift from government policy, where it was shaped by mass democracy, towards a 20th century vision of government where there emerged the belief that public policy could become a science. That is, public policy could be objectively measured by political science. I suggested that this belief - that public policy could be considered detached and impartial – eventually gave rise to the myth that there could be an objective center in politics, with easily definable boundaries. And that seeing public policy/politics as an objective science-like discipline is wrong (economics has the same problem). Politics is not a science, it is not objective. The only question it can answer is ‘who has power?’ So if we look at politics as only concerning the current issue of who has power, we can then appreciate the elusive nature of the political ‘center’. The center will change according to the interests of those in power. This is what I was trying to get at when I said that views considered within the mainstream in 1913, would in 2013 be considered fringe. If you were to re-write the last 200 years of American history and replace the word right-wing or conservative with “heretic” then the conventional ideological narrative would still make sense. I see nothing positive in developments that led to the re-emergence of autocracy in fascism, which essentially was an attempt to reconcile the (superficially conservative) Right with the problems of capitalism in a large scale complex society. I believe that a safer, more sustainable path is via regionalism that effectively breaks up the USA into multiple, independent regions. Fascism and communism failed as attempts to solve the crisis of mass atomized society, and I have not seen a convincing case that either would succeed if tried again. Instead, up till now, only managerial democracy has been able to address, temporarily, the various contradictions and disputes inherent in a large scale complex society. At present we have a terribly gridlocked government, by virtue of trying to govern too many people at too high a level. That's an issue regionalism could address.

Great Points. Sukeban, I wanted to reply to a few of your comments regarding: democracy, the right-wing fringe, the political center, government policy as a science, public opinion and the power elites, and the threat of fascism. The 20th century pretty much firmly rejected the 19th-century idea that government policies should be formulated by democratically elected representatives (whom would usually be called "partisan politicians"). The USA and USSR, replaced representative government with the far more harmful model of scientific government, while keeping the figment of popular sovereignty. You talk about the advantage of a government led by specialists over representative mass democracy, but you seem unaware that this change already occurred in the 19/20th centuries. The 20th century saw this shift in politics and government policy to a scientific approach, where public policy was considered a science. The concept arose that there could be an objective public policy, and a science of government. But this is BS, it is impractical to conduct a controlled experiment in governance. Political science has had as much predictive success as representative democracy. But now scientific government has created the myth of an objective center in politics. What was centrist in 1913 will be extreme in 2013. So what changed? If governance is regarded as a science, how can the center shift? When popular opinion and the power elite agree, then that collective judgment is considered sound. When the peasant mind (tea-party types) stubbornly resist, then more education is necessary. The result is that elite institutions guide popular sovereignty to talking points that the elite considers non-threatening. A lot of people read the New York Times. They trust it not because of its reporting, or its blackletter logo, or moto, but as a respectable institution of the Elite - akin to a papal decree. Attempting to understand the world through the reports and analysis produced by Elite institutions like the NYT, Economist or WaPo is like looking at a funhouse mirror to see if your clothes fit.The average person simply does not have the ability to begin to doubt these institutions. They have no conceptual framework to contrast them with. And so they are no more interested in prying these questions than a 14thCentury Catholic would be in doubting the universality of the Church. Instead they will focus on the enemies of the progressive elite. Progressive ideology is often presented as this simpering weak resistance that is struggling against a vast right wing oppressive system. In reality the left is hugely powerful: it controls enormous wealth and industry, all respectable media outlets tow its line, and its thinking influences all levels of society. So in a sleight of hand progressive ideology presents itself as the resistance in a world dominated by its enemies. The Republican Party has during the past twenty years, held office longer than the Democratic Party, and has had a majority in the Supreme Court, but it has not done anything to halt the march of Whig history. Why do the conservatives in the Republican Party not use their formal control over the mechanisms of Washington to establish real control? I would argue that they never really had power. They may hold office, but they don’t hold power. The most successful GOP politicians are those that adopt or ally with progressive ideas. Just compare the career of Michelle Bachmann to John McCain, who pushes this capitulation strategy to its limit. Without the GOP, the American system is instantly recognizable for what it is: a one party state. Here’s a long illustration. There exists this narrative in a lot of these debates that fascism is slowly rearing its ugly head again. You often hear the media saying that the “far right is on the rise..”. I’ve heard this repeated so many times that I’ve begun to think of it as a broadcasting catchphrase. It’s become a kind of Pavlovian trigger phrase used by the ruling class alliance of media and university elites to tell us which views it considers to be permissible in a modern democratic state. And so the 2-minute media hate is directed at those far-right groups who the elites consider its enemies, without any democratic engagement. Put simply, words like extremist or far-right/left are used to categorize views as unacceptable to the power elite. A conservative who might just be two steps behind progressive thought can be quickly discredited by the mainstream by being labelled an extremist or far right, notwithstanding that his viewpoints were considered mainstream a generation ago. A similar thing occurs when a FOX news pundit calls a politician a socialist. But the difference between the two is that the right-wing has nowhere near the same institutional power to marginalize people as the left-wing has. Look at what happened to Joseph McCarthy when he tried to take on the power elite. His goal was to purge the State Department of Communists. He didn't even come close. McCarthy thought he was attacking a cabal of Communist spies, whereas in reality he was attacking the American Establishment.

This argument keeps coming up in these types of debates so let me spill out for you: If you have a population that is literate, taught the basics of science, math, and history, and has access to all the information it could want about current events, then it is educated. It's meaningless to insist they really aren't, that until they join you in a vigorous discussion of Cicero that they're just half-witted slobs. People who think this way must not know very many ordinary people, must be status-insecure, or must still be young and dumb enough to believe that they're smarter than everyone else. The current American level of education is sufficient to prevent an autocracy from coming about. It's hair-splitting to say that westerners are apathetic or aren’t educated, compare them to the rest of the world, anything but democracy is a no-go.

For some insights into why the crisis of capitalism lead to managerialism (i.e. large scale democracies managed by a pseudo-democratic managerial elite) instead of fascist or socialist societies, see James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution.

I don’t believe in democracy, but I’m not an anti-democrat. I’m definitely not capable of discrediting democracy in its entirety, especially in a forum post. All I can add is that there are several overlooked anomalies with democracy that emerge many times over history and within our political process. Together these anomalies point to some non-random fundamental dysfunction with democracy itself. I’d imagine most people here support democracy. They were probably raised in democratic countries. They were never reasoned into supporting democracy. Imagine telling a Catholic in the 15th Century that Christianity should free itself of Rome. It would probably seem insane. To be a Catholic, you have to have faith. To support democracy, you have to have trust, to trust that your worldview accurately reflects the real world. The problem with discussing democracy in the West is the emotions and features people associate with democracy as an abstract form. People have an ideal of democracy what represents, and assume that to be what it is in reality. Most individuals probably associate democracy with peace, freedom, progress and prosperity. Whereas I would associate democracy with war, tyranny, destruction and poverty. The conventional view of democracy is a misperception. And this misperception has outcompeted the reality of what democracy truly is. Democracy means that popular opinion influences the government. The elites in our society (the intellectuals and the mainstream media) guide popular opinion. So who controls the state? We can see in our society that public opinion is a reflection of the attitudes of the elite, and not of the average individual. The consensus at Harvard now, will become mainstream public opinion in 50 years. So democracy is indistinguishable from oligarchy. Describing democracy as rule by elites is a better description of reality. But the average person is prevented from seeing this because of the emotions and features they have been taught to associate with democracy as an ideal, and not the reality. A lot of people say that way to remedy these problems with an unaccountable elite is with democracy. In other words, democracy would create a permanent source of friction within a country with the elites and majority, and between majority groups as well. Most people hate politics, they have an aversion to this type of poltical friction. But I would suggest that every time someone attacks “partisanship” in politics, or pleads for “bi-partisanship” they are expressing a fear and hatred of democracy. Politics is democracy. No one thinks that the failures of democracy can be attributed to Democracy. Instead you read convoluted differentiation between successful democracies. You hear this bullcrap when people try and argue why democracy hasn’t worked out in Iraq. Multiple reasons are given why democracy cannot work in one country, e.g. they have a tribal culture, low iq, poverty, war, brutalized by colonialism, etc etc. But you never hear democracy itself questioned.

There is a simplistic worldview that exists in the Western world, that there are two kinds of governments: democratic ones and undemocratic ones. The first kind are good and the second kind are bad. And that history is the progress from bad, undemocratic government to good, democratic government. With this worldview the failings of democracy are overlooked, or sometimes convoluted sophistic explanations are created to explain its inadequacies. Most people who believe in democracy see it as a mechanism, or a remedy for misgovernment, ie the process of holding elections which are basically free and fair in a multiparty state with a free press and all the rest, is a remedy for misgovernment. Perhaps it's not that elections create good governments, but that good governments are more likely to hold elections. If we can define good government, why can’t we then take a top down approach to designing a system that ensures it? Instead the modern Westerner starts with the conventional proposition that democracy is a mechanism which produces good government. By compiling the facts of history and expecting some objective algorithm to magically arrange them in the most plausible narrative, Westerners think they are being methodical and rational. Instead they promote a system that is dysfunctional in even the most basic tasks of governance. Kuwait has a democracy, and Dubai doesn't, but the Kuwaitis realize that Dubai seems to be rather better off for it. Not that Kuwait has much democracy. It's a constitutional monarchy. But Dubai is an absolute monarchy, and the difference is, remarkable. Especially since Kuwait has way more oil than Dubai. Democracy has not exactly worked out perfectly in Iraq or various other post-colonial states. Countless sophistic, squared reasoning explanations are given for this: You can’t impose democracy; they were brutalized by colonialism; Iraq is a heterogeneous region and the Iraqis must overcome their tribal conflicts before they can embrace Western democracy; human rights violations; Iraqis hates us; Iraq will never develop as long as it’s people remain Muslim/stupid. And on and on. All these reasons presuppose that democracy should produce good government. Democracy is seen as being the mechanism that improves governance. But that certain factors make it difficult to establish in that particular region e.g. sectarianism, instability, economic weakness etc etc. This reminds me of Condeleeza Rice’s stupid description of the violence in Iraq as ‘birth pangs’ comparable to the US revolution. What no one ever says is that democracy is dysfunctional through and through, that it can’t produce a functional system of governance for even the most basic tasks. So why then if we can outline what good governance looks like, why can’t we impose that upon society without democracy?

What’s unclear is whether Obama understands that his foreign policy legacy will be to have ruined the American position in the Middle East, and our patrimony of the last seven decades. If the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran signaled weakness, the Russian deal screams surrender. The real surprise is that it’s not Iran kicking the United States out of the region under Obama’s watch, but Putin.

I don't have Tinnitus but I have some pretty bad cauliflower ear which developed in HS and college because I was too stubborn to use headgear in wrestling practice. So now most earphones don't fit inside my ear or are really uncomfortable, and it's painful to lay sideways on a pillow. I once lost my hearing for about 4 days after I went to a NASCAR race because it was just too damn painful to wear ear mufflers for 3 hours+, so I tried to tough out a 140 decibel race. Now I work in Europe and East Asia where no one wrestles so people are freaked out by my f'ed up ears.

The way the United States government is acting out at the G20 summit is an embarassment, they are being diplomatically outflanked by Putin et al. Military action would embolden the Russians, and the Iranians will be sure to reinforce the SAA. This will be America's Suez moment. Long live Assad.

This is submental political faddism, the kind of eye-rolling, dull trendiness that afflicts beltway analysts whose sole claim to pundit status is the ability to stay au courant with whatever is making the rounds among the chief blogs/papers. In its vulgarity and cynicism it is really beneath reply. It makes one wonder aloud if the GOP's "tough choice" might perhaps involve actually determining which policy is best for America as a nation, and worrying less about how to manipulate its base using ad techniques better suited to advertizing consumer goods. When you look at it that way, it's fairly obvious that whatever the Mexican/white liberal/big corporate axis represents, it isn't conservative and it is destroying the nation. Let me repeat what I previously posted: The Republican Party hopes to curry favor with these groups anyway, because it is apparently fine with the idea of ruling a rapidly declining wasteland. Hey, it still counts as ruling!

Free speech has consequences, da comrade?? Gay activists who are used to positive publicity and free promotion in the media are enraged because their own group solidarity makes them angrier about other groups. That's the beauty of group dynamics and how they influence awareness of and hatred for the Other. That's why there has never been a society in which decreasing homogeneity resulted in less conflict. That's why gays (and everyone else) will keep getting angrier--because even if you win, They exist, and They must be eradicated. It's as old as human civilization. This won’t end. Look at how in less than one generation homosexuality has gone from being considered a pathological personality disorder, to now where gays not only demand acceptance of their dysgenic lifestyles but also for the right to marry.

As much as some of the things you have posted make some sense, I would have to totally disagree with you on the immigration thing. Unless you can prove democrats control the federal government because of illegal immigration this statement is complete fantasy. The exit polls have been reviewed after the last election and a majority of the nation (legal citizens) have re-elected Obama in both a majority of the electoral votes and popular votes. No amount of Illegal immigrants could possible end up electing a president without someone noticing something was fishy and only about 3.7 percent of the U.S.s current population is made up undocumented immigrants. I can understand if you might think all political trends are moving steadily conservative but this doesn't seem to be the case when democrats are slowly gaining control on all levels of federal government. If America of 2012 had the demographic ratios of the 1980s then Romney would have won with a significant majority. This is the end game of illegal immigration. What was done to California will now be done to Texas, and any shred of hope of a Republican ever being president again is going to vanish, probably before the next election. Its not clear what the GOP believes. The Republican elite mentality seems to be: 1) embarrassed by the base's social conservatism and nationalism 2) if they mimic the Democrats, they deserve an increased share of its voters, who are apparently obliged to vote Republican out of fairness Third rate political pundits keep on whining that the Republican Party needs to change to appeal to demographic changes. They state this with glee, as if it contains an implicit threat: Watch out there will be more of us! They ignore that election trends showed that a lot of traditional GOP supporters simply didnt bother voting. Obama's real opposition was not corporate moneyists like Romney, with whom Obama had few real differences, but enraged anti-federalists who attacked federal authority and bloated central government. Running someone like Rick Perry would have presented a clearer choice, even though Perry likely suffers from some mild retardation. Romney was a poor choice because he could not out-appeal Obama's white liberal base but he also couldn't rev up the Tea Party whites who could easily see that he is against their interests. The Boomers that comprise the Republican think tanks are tired, obsequious, and overwhelmed by the new social media dynamics, and keep looking back to Reagan, a man with more charisma than the lot of them and who only thrived as a sequel to Carter, for their strategies. Mincing, self conscious dummies like Paul Ryan are unconvincing as proxies for the traditional, no-nonsense bringers of conservatism that thrived in the wake of the Cold War. Of course Republicans will be rejected by the white liberal/man-child/minority axis they are pursuing, everyone can see it but them. The Republican Party hopes to curry favor with them anyway, because it is apparently fine with the idea of ruling a wasteland. Hey, it still counts as ruling!

It's not because of the merit of their arguments that the left is winning on a national level. The main reason that the Democratic Party is enjoying success is because of mass (mostly illegal) immigration. All political trends are moving steadily conservative, and so the liberals must bring into the country and enfranchise new voters who will reliably cast Democratic ballots. Legal immigration alone will bury the GOP in a few more election cycles. Also, people are getting married later, which benefits the left because married people are more conservative. And they are keeping kids in college for longer. That keeps them from realizing how dysfunctional leftism is by experiencing the real world, and puts them deeper in debt (which prolongs the period in which they're too poor to marry/have kids.) Now add in that the GOP is unwilling to fight on almost any issue which would change this situation. They're ready to surrender on immigration and gay marriage without even taking the field. The only two issues that the GOP firmly defends is that the rich pay too much in taxes, and that the defense of Israel is a cornerstone of US national security. The GOP doesn't deserve to survive. Romney’s candidacy was proof of the GOP apparatchiks worthlessness, and contempt for the rest of us. The GOP is nothing but a pseudo-conservative moneyist party, two steps behind the Dems. Even if the GOP lurches even further left to where the Democrats are now, minorities have absolutely no-incentive to vote for them because the Dems will just promise more government goodies than whatever the GOP is peddling. Half the problem is that conservatives constantly play the game according to the lefts rules. This "moderate conservative" nonsense is what needs to stop. They need to realize that being moderately right when the opposition is clearly no longer moderately left is like pissing into the wind, the time for amicable politics is over.

You know you’re living in the Twilight Zone when Russia is no longer the biggest lunatic at the table. America/UK is a parody of a parody. It's a living sitcom and tragedy combined. People underestimate the effect that the fortunes of history can have on a people. Russia is far from perfect, but the way they are rejecting modern degenerate nihilistic movements for traditional and conservative values, while Anglo nations flush their cultures and heritage down the toilet, is worthy of praise. The fact that Russians are able to see the impending descent of the West into mediocrity, and are resorting to the kind of thinking and action our ancestors 200 years ago would have resorted to, speaks volumes to our decline as much as it does their own advancement.

This isn't a movie that sounds interesting to me at all, and Orson Scott Card seems to basically be another junk culture comic book and sci fi writer, but the gay activist rhetoric is at a desperate pitch. Not to mention that the organization "Geeks Out" combines two obnoxious groups that I dislike. Ender's Game became a huge nerd touchstone because it is about a super-genius kid who is endlessly tormented and bullied for no reason but he still saves the galaxy in the end. Inside their heads, each homosexual and nerd is a persecuted genius being kept down by hateful bigots and jocks. So Card turning out to be a conservative Christian was felt by nerds/gays as a huge betrayal. This boycott is just another great example of the gay coalition trying to strong arm the rest of us into their agenda. Given that this is a popular book and a major film starring Harrison Ford that will have strong merchandising tie-ins, I doubt this latest gay hissy fit will amount to anything. It will probably fall flat just like their Chick-Fil-A "Kiss In" which really just served to annoy and gross out normal people. The more militant and outrageous these gay advocates become with their boycott demands, the less effective they will become over time - resulting in more and more people either ignoring them or purposely turning against them out of spite.

If only criticism of whites could find purchase in society. Alas, the media will have none of it.

I'm gonna watch this film when I get back to the states. Might sneak in some Chick-fil-A as well.

I missed your point. Apologies. A thousand variations of your argument have appeared over the years. This country will remain divided until! Special interest groups did not cause this problem. Group division/racism once the progressive filter is removed, can be seen as a constant in human group interaction. But the progressive filter emboldens favored groups, to feel little or no responsibility for their own conditions, because all bad outcomes can be attributed to racism. It also disallows direct criticism of the favored group, which leads to a victim mentality by the minority. Special interest groups are merely a product of group conflict, a mere attempt by one group to organize against another until they can reach a more sophisticated form of organization and power where they can systematically oppress the former dominant oppressor group. Sure, they contribute to the ‘problem’ but they are not the cause of conflict, which can instead be placed in innate group conflict that has always been a constant in human existence. As it is used today, a hate crime is essentially a political accusation. It places special moral disapproval on group conflicts that happen to match a specific filter, sometimes with the prerequisite that racism requires some kind of power structure--interaction between dominant and subordinate groups or cultures e.g. black/white. But this definition falls apart upon noticing conflicts between subordinate groups, such as blacks and Mexicans, that involve explicitly racist interaction, even down to territorial ethnic cleansing. The dominant/subordinate distinction is merely a rhetorical gambit used to justify the liberal filter.