Recent well liked threads

We all know 93.6% of statistical claims made on the internet are garbage. But sometimes you see a number that is cited frequently but looks so suspect that you decide to check it out for yourself. I’ve had a look at data that “show” how many people regret “gender transition”.

Activists always claim that regret rates for people who undergo “gender transition” are very low, & one of the studies they frequently cite says that rate is as low as 0.47%! This study claims that only 16 out of 3398 people expressed regret. So I wanted to look at this "study”.

The only information I can find on this “study” is a one-page report in a document summarising papers presented to a conference in 2019. There may be a more detailed report somewhere but I couldn’t find it. That one page is on page 118 of this document:

epath.eu/wp-content/upl…

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse provided detailed information on abuse in Catholic institutions & the failures of Church leaders in responding to that abuse. The information it provided for government schools, however, was more limited.

Catholic Church authorities provided to the RC data showing that 4,444 people had made allegations of CSA between 1980 & 2015. It also said there were 1,880 known alleged perpetrators and 540 alleged unknown perpetrators within the Church.

childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/sites/default/…

The RC had less detailed info on CSA allegations for govt schools. On page 80 of its report into schools, the RC said they are “unable to estimate the prevalence” of CSA in schools & noted that they aren’t aware of any Australian research that does that

childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/sites/default/…

It's possible that Anzac Day will increasingly be less meaningful in a society where around half of the population have no personal connection with the history of that day. If so, how should those of use who do have that connection react when the culture moves away from us?

This is always a more poignant & potential painful issue for conservatives. We tend to feel an affection for our culture and our heritage, whereas progressives tend to see the past as just a catalogue of bigotry & ignorance. They are HAPPY to move on from what we once had.

Australian broadly fit into three categories based on how long we've been "around". You could set the nomenclature as follows:

Indigenous - ancestors here before 1788
Settlers - ancestors arrived between 1788-1945
Newcomers - ancestors arrived post-1945.

Do you have brown eyes?

Did you know many murderers have brown eyes?

You need to step up have conversations with other brown-eyed people to end violence committed by brown-eyed people.

Right?

Silly, yes. Eye-colour is not a useful characteristic for identifying potentially violent people.

But it’s also not particularly useful to use sex as the defining characteristic when trying to identify potentially violent people.

Yes, men ARE more likely to be violent than women, whereas brown-eyed people are not more likely to be violent than hazel-eyed people (I think).

But the point is that there are other characteristics associated with violence that provide MUCH more useful information than sex.

Is two a trend?

Recently I've seen two quite prominent right-leaning Australian commentators level accusations of "cowardice" against people who, like me, use this platform pseudonymously. So be it.

But not only do people's circumstances differ. So too do their temperaments.

Many people certainly face circumstances in their lives which constrain their ability to speak freely on controversial issues. That's particularly true of people with "right-wing" views.

But it's also true that many people simply have a temperament that values privacy.

In my own case, I have professional & community commitments that I believe oblige me to refrain from making controversial statements in my regular interactions with colleagues. I think many people are in a similar position that requires them to act in a non-partisan manner.

Many Democrat policies are very unpopular: open borders, gender ideology, net zero, DEI, high taxes, late-term abortion etc.

Why do so many American voters in the middle support this? Because they want to retain access to early-term abortion.

That is the reality of US politics.

The Democrats have bundled all of their polices into a package deal. Their message to voters is: "if you want to ensure access to early-term abortion, you have to vote for us. No matter what else we do".

This allows the Democrats to go hard on all sorts of progressive extremism.

Most voters in the middle no doubt loathe the various extreme progressive policies pushed by the Democrats. But a very large number of these voters REALLY want to keep access to early-term abortion & they think voting GOP will threaten that. So they hold their nose & vote Dem.

We're often told that the US "proves" that capital punishment does not deter murderers.

Really?

There were 21,594 homicide victims in America in 2022. And there were 18 people executed in America in 2022.

Maybe deterrence doesn't "work" because murderers quite like those odds.

This article from 2017 has a chart showing US executions going all the way back to the year 1700 with an estimate of 15,787 over that period. I'm sure records are incomplete for much of that period, but it's still far fewer than I would have guessed.

time.com/82375/every-ex…

The Supreme Court suspended capital punishment in 1972 but reinstated it in 1976. The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) says there have been 1,591 executions since 1976.

Again, far fewer than I would have guessed.

dpic-cdn.org/production/doc…

Some of JD Vance's comments about the need for policies that help middle-class families made me think about Elizabeth Warren's ideas in her book "The Two-Income Trap". It had skipped my attention that Vance & Warren had worked together on banking reform.

politico.com/news/2023/07/0…

"The Two-Income Trap" has a lot of interesting ideas about how it got tougher for middle-class families to survive on one income after two-income families become standard. Warren is an avowed feminist but she is aware of the broad impact of higher female workforce participation.

Personally, I think it was inevitable & beneficial for - say - the 20% most talented women to enter the workforce in a post-industrial economy. But that doesn't mean that the other 80% of women benefitted from having to get a job. The broader impact on society has been profound.

This heatmap picture gets a bit of airplay so I tracked its source, a paper that examines conservative parochialism vs liberal universalism.

Liberals really don't seem to care much about their neighbours & their nation. We need them to start doing that.

nature.com/articles/s4146…

The paper's analysis supports the idea that liberals (like Mrs Jellyby in Dicken's "Bleak House") engage in "telescopic philanthropy", with a stronger moral focus on people in more distant social circles, while conservatives are more focussed on people in nearby social circles.

Most people have at least some regard for everyone else on the planet. Liberals don't completely disregard people close to them. And conservatives don't completely disregard people distant to them. But the analysis underlying the heatmap does provide evidence for this divergence.

Leftists & liberals can't understand that opposing mass immigration doesn't mean you hate other nations & cultures.

It just means you love your own culture & don't want it transformed.

I quite like Brazil & its culture. I still don't want millions of Brazilians moving here.

I suspect many people find Brazil's culture appealing.

I visited once & had a great time. It's very vibrant & vivid. Brazilians are awesome at soccer & music. A lot of them are very good-looking! And I like a good churrascaria.

I have ZERO animus towards Brazil. Why would I?

But suppose millions of Brazilians moved to Australia & they became, say, 30% of the population. That would probably result in some good changes. Also perhaps some bad changes. But it certainly would make Australia's culture VERY different.

It's legitimate not to want that.

There is a demographic which makes up over 20% of the population in the United States, Britain & Australia but which is completely disenfranchised & unrepresented.

Children.

They should have a vote, exercised by their parents.

This would transform our politics for the better.

The idea that parents should exercise a vote on behalf of their children is called Demeny voting.



One way to do this would be to give an extra half a vote to each parent for each dependent child: so if a couple have 3 kids, each parent get 2.5 votes.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeny_vo…

I first heard about this idea from this Ross Douthat article back in 2018. Have been a big fan of it ever since then.

nytimes.com/2018/03/03/opi…

I've been banging on about it ever since I joined this platform.

x.com/VeryInsig/stat…

These 2 pie charts give examples of what I'd call a diverse nation & a multipolar nation.

Diverse nations can work well if there is a strong majority culture.

Multipolar nations, however, don't have a great track-record.

Western nations don't have to become multipolar nations.

A diverse nation can remain cohesive & functional if there is a strong, clear majority culture that other cultural groups accept & integrate with. That allows people from other cultures to retain their own identity but also to have common ground with everyone else in society.

That common ground is lost in a multipolar nation. With no clear majority culture for other groups to integrate with, there is a good chance that each group will remain seperate & in tension with each other. This lack of social cohesion can often result in sectarian conflict.

Interesting to compare Australia's population growth over the last 20 years with the preceding 20 years.

The level is much higher & the composition has switched, with net migration now a bigger driver.

Net migration has driven 60% of new demand for Australian housing.

The data can be found here:



The ABS data are quarterly so I just summed them to get annual numbers.

The reported increase in population is not exactly the sum of natural increase and net migration for various reasons, but it's close enough.abs.gov.au/statistics/peo…

Net migration drove a big step-up in annual population growth over the last 20 years. The last 4 years of net migration data have been impacted by the pandemic, but the average over those 4 years is pretty close to the 20 year average, so it doesn't really change the story.

Multiculturalism is the idea that diversity in the elements that make up culture doesn’t matter provided we all accept a set of liberal ground rules.

2 problems. Not everyone accepts those rules. And there’s a limit to how much diversity in those elements most people can take.

Multiculturalism is not just a bit of variety in cuisine & a few colourful festivals. It means putting in the same territory groups of people who differ from each other in profound & often completely incompatible ways.

Liberals believe culture is skin-deep. Liberals are wrong.

Because Western culture is relatively individualistic & non-clannish, most Western people can deal with significant cultural diversity.

And those of us who are particularly cosmopolitan or who are alienated from or indifferent to their own culture are particularly good at this.

@AuronMacintyre is basically being criticised by @KeithWoodsYT because he doesn't believe that Americans are solely defined by their ancestry.

But if Americans are just defined by ancestry, the fact is they have been breeding with successive waves of immigrants for a long time.

https://twitter.com/KeithWoodsYT/status/1957907910597411268

There seems to be an idea that if you reject the civic nationalist idea that an American is defined by "values", you must accept the "blood & soil" idea that an American is defined by ancestry.

But the "blood & soil" definition does not make the category particularly exclusive.

Woods seems to be arguing that a process of ethnogenesis created a new American ethnicity, but that this process only included people with European ancestry & stopped at some point.

So his argument is that the category "American" only includes people with European ancestry.

The Voice. Victoria's "Treaty". "Muslim Votes Matters". Ethnic voting blocs.

It's very clear that the left in Australia wants ethnic-based politics.

Malaysia is one example of what that looks like. Maybe we will soon see a party like the UNMO represent Anglo-Celtic Australians.

70% of Malaysia's population are classified as "Bumiputera": sons of the soil. That includes the 58% who are ethnically Malay & the 12% who are indigenous in Borneo & elsewhere.



22% are Chinese & 7% are Indian. tableau.dosm.gov.my/t/BPPD-Bahagia…

The United Malays National Organisation is a major political party in Malaysia & explicitly represents the interests of the "Bumiputera". In practice, this means that it tends to focus on ethnic Malays, but it at least purports to represent indigenous people too.

Australia, like most multicultural Western nations, is on track for the majority culture to become a minority.

Can anyone name a successful multicultural society where the biggest cultural group is less than 50% of the population?

I can't.

Canada is interesting. It's a bit complicated because of the way authorities account for "visible minorities" & the Anglophone/Francophone split in official data, but the picture looks something like this:

Anglophone whites are on the cusp of losing absolute majority status for Canada as a whole, though they are 58.5% when you exclude Quebec.

So it looks like Canada will be one of the first Western nations to have no majority culture, but is not quite there just yet.

In August 1988, opposition leader John Howard suggested the pace of Asian immigration should be reduced to support social cohesion.

The reaction of elites was predictable. But polls suggest Howard also had little public support. In May 1989 he was replaced by Andrew Peacock.

Howard’s comments:

“I do believe that if in the eyes of some in the community it is too great, it would be in our immediate term interest and supportive of social cohesion if it were slowed down a little, so that the capacity of the community to absorb was greater.”

Very tame stuff. But of course the media were outraged, the Hawke government went on the attack, & Liberal Party “moderates” were aghast.

By 1988, there had already been long-standing support by both major parties for high immigration & multiculturalism.

Elites all agreed.

In 2019 Jewish filmmaker Tuvia Tenenbom came to Ireland to film a documentary about Brexit. He said: ‘I don’t think I ever have met people who have so much hatred for the Jews as I met in Northern Ireland and Ireland, and that includes Derry.’

Some of this hatred was caught on camera, here is a video of Northern Irish men going on an antisemitic rant.

Many of you might struggle with the accent so here are a few choice words:

Tuvia asks: ‘you have a lot of Palestinian flags here? Why do you support them?’ An Irish man responds: ‘because we hate the f***ing Jews.’

Another Irish man (in the orange hi-vis jacket) says: ‘the only thing Hitler did wrong was he didn't kill enough f***ing Jews.’ As you can see, this was met with laughter from the rest of the group. He continues: ‘Hitler didn’t kill enough Jews. They're the scourge of the world. The Jews are the scourge of the Earth.’

Again, this was in 2019. Long before the Israel/Hamas war that started on October 7th, 2023.

But always remember, folks, there is no antisemitism problem in Ireland.

Please see below an uncensored snippet and follow the link below to watch the full, uncensored video (wherein Tuvia comes across a Palestine flag painted on a wall wherein the PFLP symbol has been drawn inside the red triangle part of the flag).

republik.ch/2019/04/12/ein… x.com/rachelmoiselle…

NEW: Former Brexit MEP/Reform politician Nathan Gill is sentenced to ten and a half years at the Old Bailey on 8 counts of bribery by a Russian agent.
The "ultimate source" of the funds came from "a close friend of Vladimir Putin," said Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb.

Details revealed in court raise questions about Nigel Farage’s claim that Gill was "one bad apple". WhatsApp messages show Gill sought to recruit other Brexit/Reform MEPs to make pro-Kremlin statements & that his handler took direct orders from Putin ally Viktor Medvedchuk

WhatsApp messages between Nathan Gill and his handler, pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Oleh Voloshyn name Ukip/Brexit party MEPs David Coburn and Jonathan Arnott as potential recruits to repeat Russian propaganda lines. There is no suggestion Coburn or Arnott took bribes

Mass migration poses an existential threat to Western civilization and undermines the stability of key American allies.

Today the State Department instructed U.S. embassies to report on the human rights implications and public safety impacts of mass migration.

Mass migration is a human rights concern. Western nations have endured crime waves, terror attacks, sexual assaults, and the displacement of communities.

U.S. officials will urge governments to take bold action and defend citizens against the threats posed by mass migration.

Officials will also report policies that punish citizens who object to continued mass migration and document crimes and human rights abuses committed by people of a migration background.

These issues have plagued citizens of Western nations for years: