Archive for July, 2009

The Science of Culture

July 30, 2009

The Science of Culture

Harris, Marvin (1979). Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

This book is a complicated and academic read with profound implications for the understanding of what drives the constant changes in cultures: The changes that we call evolution. Harris has written numerous books that are essential to our understanding of what has happened, what is now happening, and what may be happening to America in the near future.

I will discuss Harris’ pertinent concepts and observations as they become relevant to my own writings in my Boiling the American Frog material.

V.T.M., 7/30/09

America’s Self-Destructive Immigration Policies

July 30, 2009

Malkin, Mischelle (2001).  Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing

Michelle is well known for her detailed research and authoritative publications and commentary. She provides a wealth of information and data that powerfully documents America’s neurotic and self-destructive national policies on immigration. Amazingly, there has been little change in America’s immigration controls since this publication in 2001.

V.T. M., 7/30/09

“The Doors to America are Still Wide Open”

July 30, 2009

The following quotes represent the first two paragraphs of Michelle Maulkin’s book, Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores (p, 3).

“Crave death….Make sure that nobody is following you….Bring knives, your will, ID’s, your passport….Pray:  ‘Oh God, you who open all doors, please open all doors for me, open all venues for me, open all avenues for me.'”

Michelle writes:

“These were some of the handwritten instructions found in September 11 in ringleader Mohamed Atta’s abandoned luggage. If he could send a message from hell–where he surely went after he piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center–Atta would have good news for his band of homicidal brothers around the world: The doors to America are still wide open.”

Value of a Reseach Strategy

July 30, 2009

The following quote is taken from Marvin Harris’, Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (p. 77).

“The value of a research strategy does not reside in the profundity of its epistemological viewpoint or the luminosity of its abstract theoretical principles; it lies in the cogency of its substantive theories. Only the capacity of a research strategy’s theories to penetrate beneath the surface of phenomena, to reveal new and unsuspected relationships, to tell us why and how things are what they are, can justify its existence. Furthermore, what we want from a strategy is not just a list of disjointed, isolated, and mutually irrelevant or contradictory theories, but and organized set of consistent and concise theories; not the definitive answer to every conceivable question, but tentative answers to important questions over broad and continuously expanding frontiers of knowledge.”

A Piercing Observation

July 30, 2009

Piercing Observation 2.

After an abnormal psychology lecture on various personality disorders, I found myself in the elevator with a young female student from my class.

She was a walking pin cushion of exhibitionism. She sat in the front row with low-cut tattered jeans and a high-cut tight tee shirt which displayed her bare midriff. Her pierced navel sparkled before me for the whole semester. This was only mildly distracting to me. But it was very difficult not to be troubled when she dug and pinched the inside and rim of her pierced navel, extracting what appeared to be small amounts of effluent associated with healing or, perhaps, infection. Though I would never do so (wink), others may have wondered if she had also inflicted other, less observable, piercings upon herself.

The enclosed space of the small elevator enlarged the young ladies features. Her face was festooned with several pierced gold rings through one of her eyebrows, her ears were rimmed with many decorative piercings, there was a pierced gold ring at the flair of one of her nostrils, and as she spoke to me silver flashed from the center of her pierced tongue.

She was dead serious as she explained the she understood the lecture, but there was just one thing that was not clear: She wanted to know what was mean by the term “masochism”.

I struggled mightily to maintain my composure. I had a job to do, after all, and I did not wish to embarrass the young lady. I did not want to be unkind.

My poker-faced answer was: “Masochism is a word used to label a condition in which an individual finds pleasure in recieving pain. In some cases, the receipt of pain can even be sexually arousing”.

The young laddie’s eyes widened, the door opened, and she exited muttering an elongated and fading, “ooooh, I seeee.

I don’t know if she really saw. But I do know this:

Its hard to learn in a lecture class while contemplating your belly button.

VTM, 12/30/01

Self-Defeating Civilizations

July 28, 2009

Self-Defeating Civilizations

Civilizations, like individuals, who do not accept reality and make the necessary adaptations—–

Invariably undermine and defeat themselves.

V.T. Mawhinney,  6/30/82

 

Uncontrolled Immigration Will Destroy A U.S. Wellfare State

July 14, 2009

7/7/09

The following data are quoted from Mark R. Levin’s Book, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto (pps. 154, 155, 156). The data he presents were based upon figures taken from the U.S. Census Bureau the Center for Immigration Studies in March 2007.

  • The nations’s immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached a record of 37.9 million in 2007.
  • Immigrants account for 1 in 8 U.S. residents, the highest level in eighty years. In 1970 it was 1 in 21; in 1980 it was 1 in 16; and in 1990 it was 1 in 13.
  • Overall, nearly one in three immigrants is an illegal alien. Half of Mexican and Central American immigrants and one-third of South American immigrants are illegal.
  • Of adult immigrants, 31 percent have not completed high school, compared to 8 percent of natives. Since 2000, immigration increased the number of workers without a high school diploma by 14 percent, and all other workers by 3 percent.
  • The Proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 33 percent, compared to 19 percent for native households.
  • The poverty rate for immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) is 17 percent, nearly 50 percent higher than the rate for natives and their children.
  • 34 percent of immigrants lack health insurance, compared to 13 percent of natives. Immigrants and their U.S.-born children account for 71 percent of the increase in the uninsured since 1989.
  • Immigration accounts for virtually all of the national increase in public school enrollment over the last two decades. In 2007, there were 10.8 million school-aged children from immigrant families in the United States.
  • The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 9 percent of the population of Mexico was living in the United States in 2004. Fifty-seven percent of all illegal immigrants are from Mexico. Another 24 percent are from other Latin American countries. Fifty-five percent of all Mexican in the United States are here illegally. By 2050, Hispanics will be between 29 percent and 32 percent of the nation’s population.

End of Mark Levin quote.


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