Category: History

What If Nicole Brown Had A “No Interracial Dating” Policy?

“Interracial couples represented as many as 17.9% of substantiated events, and these couples were 1.5 times more likely to mutually assault each other than ethnic minority couples, and twice as likely as White couples to experience a mutual assault.” (Martin BA, Cui M, Ueno K, Fincham FD. Intimate Partner Violence in Interracial and Monoracial Couples. Fam Relat. 2013 Feb 1;61(1):202-211. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00747.x. Epub 2013 Jan 22. PMID: 23554541; PMCID: PMC3611980.,  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3611980/ )

The new Netflix documentary about the Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman murders is worth a watch. It went through the investigation and trial in a way that made sense, and even made sense of the jury verdict, even if you don’t agree with it. (Which I don’t.)

I want to look at a particularly telling scene in the video. It was an interview by someone in Nicole Brown’s family. The interviewee talked about when Nicole first started dating the person that she would eventually marry, divorce, and later be murdered by. The interviewee said that Nicole told her mother over the phone that she was dating a black man, apparently checking to see if that was going to be a problem with her family. Her mother is reported to have said something to the effect of: “That’s okay.”

Her mom would clearly get the “I’m not racist” seal of approval from the majority of people living in our society since the 1960’s. (Whatever “racist” means, which I’m not sure at this point.)

A few days later, I was driving in my car, thinking about the documentary when a thought occurred to me that was completely novel. I am a product of the mainstream public education system in the United States, and I’ve lived in “respectable” middle class culture here my whole life, so I tend to have a lot of biases and unchecked premises based in that culture, even though I am well into middle age. In other words, I’m just as capable of having “blind spots” in my thinking, thanks to left-wing and egalitarian brainwashing, mostly from the public schools. Anyway, my new thought was this:

“What if Nicole’s mother had responded differently when Nicole told her she was dating a black man? What if Nicole’s mom had responded more like someone from 1940’s Alabama than someone from 1980’s Los Angeles?”

What if Nicole’s mom had said: “If you date a black man, you’re cut off and disowned. We’ll never speak to you again.”

Her mom and dad would have been called “racist” if it got out. There’s also no guarantee Nicole would have listened to them, although it clearly mattered to her, since she “tested the waters” with her parents by letting them know in advance over the phone.

If Nicole had listened to them in this hypothetical case, she probably wouldn’t have died. (Most likely some other white woman would have died, since there are plenty today that would marry a rich, famous football player. I’ll never understand the stupid obsession with football and sports.)

I can hear it now: “There are plenty of white women that get murdered by their white husbands. You’re being ‘racist’. Blah, blah, blah.”

Those people might have a point, except there are studies showing that intimate partner violence is higher amongst interracial couples. We can opine about the causes of this. I’m sure a leftist will say it’s all a legacy of slavery, and really white people’s fault that Nicole’s ex-husband nearly cut her head off. From a personal standpoint, of who you should date, it doesn’t really matter what the reason is or whose “fault” it is that the statistics show what they show. What matters in the dating world today is that one should at least be cognizant of the statistics when thinking about dating interracially. One should at least consider the dangers.

I’m sure someone will also say: “Logical fallacy! Fallacy of division! I’m going to date them, and get to know them, and then, if it turns out that they are dangerous, I’ll just stop dating them, you racist.”

Except, at that point you’re in a relationship with that person, and when you go to break it off with them, they might view you as “theirs”, just like Nicole’s ex-husband viewed her as “his”, and he then killed her in an obsessive rage of jealousy. (Such was the motive theorized by the Netflix documentary.)

Also, keep in mind, it doesn’t matter to me what you do in the end. Virtue-signaling people who do things on the basis of being “progressive” and “open minded” deserve their leftist ideology, I think.

Privatize Public Property To Help Stop Fires in Los Angeles

The fires of January 2025 in Los Angeles have been historic. The scope of destruction is like nothing I have ever seen from fire in my lifetime. Eighty to one hundred mile per hour winds turned the area into something that looked like an apocalyptic hellscape. A combination of man-made and natural phenomena were the cause of the fires.

A recent Wall Street Journal article identifies one factor that made the fires worse than they otherwise would have been. State and Federal land near people’s houses often remained unmanaged and uncleared of brush and other vegetation that created more fuel for the massive fires:

“Barry Josephson enjoyed a peaceful life in his hilltop home in the Pacific Palisades, save for one constant worry: the highly flammable brush that clogged the surrounding government-owned land.” (“How L.A. Bureaucracy Made It Harder to Clear Flammable Brush: A mishmash of government agencies failed to keep public lands safe from deadly wildfires, residents say”, The Wall Street Journal, by Jim Carlton, Mark Maremont and Dan Frosch Jan. 18, 2025 5:30 am ET; https://www.wsj.com/us-news/climate-environment/how-l-a-bureaucracy-made-it-harder-to-clear-flammable-brush-683f953e?st=MGTcv2&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink)

Much of the native vegetation in Southern California is prone to fire because it has evolved to use fire as a means of reproducing itself. The build-up of such vegetation is therefore a build-up of fuel for fire. The more there is of it, the worse the resulting fire. A landowner who did not clear his property of vegetation would be no different than a landowner who stored up kerosene or some other flammable substance on his property over time.

The Wall Street Journal documents how the lack of private property rights exacerbated the fires in Los Angeles, which probably led to the unnecessary loss of life and property.

Why did State and Federal land managers fail to clear out the excess vegetation on public land? In essence, the Wall Street Journal article says that different bureaucracies all had input into how public land was managed:

“In the Palisades, the city and county of Los Angeles, the state parks department, the California Coastal Commission, and the National Park Service all have a say in what happens on land surrounding residential areas.” (Id.)

The result was that basic responsibilities of landownership were often not taken because everyone, and no one, owned the public land:

“The delays were caused by a slow-moving tangle of government agencies that own or regulate Los Angeles’s undeveloped land and are tasked with mitigating wildfire risks, according to a review of public records and interviews by The Wall Street Journal.” (Id.)

Nearby private landowners often had to beg government agencies to do something about the excessive growth of public land. When nothing was done, private landowners would sometimes undertake to clear public land, despite the risk of being fined or arrested for doing so:

“Impatient with government bureaucracy, including a $150 fee for permission to remove brush from state parkland, some of Josephson’s neighbors cleared it on their own.” (Id.)

In other words, not only was the government failing to clear public lands of fuel for wildfires, but it often prohibited neighboring private landowners from doing so. (Such is the insanity of “Progressive”, Democratic California government.)

By breaking the law, and clearing out this land of excess vegetation, they may have saved portions of Pacific Palisades in the process:

“They might have saved some of their homes. Of 81 houses in the vicinity, Josephson said 54 are still standing amid the wreckage of this month’s Palisades fire, including his. It is particularly remarkable because investigators believe the blaze could have started a few hundred feet away, around a popular hiking destination known as Skull Rock.” (Id.)

The argument is often made that government is needed to solve “negative externalities” like air or water pollution. But, this demonstrates that the only entity creating “negative externalities” in Pacific Palisades was the State of California and the Federal Government. Their failure to engage in basic vegetation management exacerbated this natural disaster.

But why would government managers of public lands fail to manage public property like this? The answer lies in the nature of property rights.

In her 1965 article, “The Cashing In: The Student ‘Rebellion’”, originally found in “The Objectivist Newsletter”, Ayn Rand spoke about the use of public university buildings and facilities by “student rebels” to undercut freedom of speech. Students at Berkley in the 1960’s began shouting obscenities indoors, and “occupying” university buildings, claiming that they had the right to “freedom of movement” and “freedom of speech” on the University.

Ayn Rand noted that the waters were muddied by the fact that the universities were taxpayer-funded. In a sense, everyone, and no one, owns the public universities. Therefore, there are conflicting claims between those who want to learn in their classrooms, and those who claim the right to, for instance, obstruct the entrance to the classroom with their bodies as part of a protest. When there is a taxpayer-funded “public space”, such as a university, road, or sidewalk, such clashes and conflicting claims will be inevitable. It is only on the basis of private property rights that human beings can live together without such conflict:

“It is only on the basis of property rights that the sphere and application of individual rights can be defined in any given social situation. Without property rights, there is no way to solve or to avoid a hopeless chaos of clashing views, interests, demands, desires, and whims.” (“The Cashing-In: The Student ‘Rebellion,’”; Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand, Kindle Edition, Pg. 293 of 366; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/property_rights.html )

This conflict on public university campuses exists to this very day. In the Spring of 2024, we saw supporters of terrorists in the Middle East “occupy” campuses at universities such as UCLA, and begin to ethnically cleanse the campus of “Zionists”, i.e., Jewish students:

“…protesters created a ‘Jew Exclusion Zone’ where in order to pass ‘a person had to make a statement pledging their allegiance to the activists’ view.’ Those who complied with the protesters’ view were issued wristbands to allow them to pass through, the complaint says, which effectively barred Jewish students who supported Israel and denied them access to the heart of campus.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-rules-jewish-students-says-ucla-cant-allow-barred-accessing-camp-rcna166529)

Regardless of what one thinks of the goals, motives, and desires of the “pro-Palestine protestors” on the UCLA campus in 2024, a satisfactory resolution of the issue was impossible due to the nature of so-called “public property”. Everyone is forced to pay for UCLA through their taxes, including the Jewish students and the pro-Palestine students. UCLA will either have to curtail the freedom of the pro-Palestine protestors to associate with who they want, or it will have to curtail the freedom of Jewish students to move about the campus freely without making “loyalty oaths” to Hamas.  (My support of people’s freedom to verbally voice support for Hamas and dissociate from Jewish people should not be construed as my agreement with that viewpoint. I only support their right to freedom of association.)

As Ayn Rand noted in 1965, it is only on the basis of property rights that individual rights can be defined in any given social situation. The elimination of property rights eliminates the ability of people to take the actions necessary to maintain their lives. Just as the creation of a “public university” that is “public property” creates intractable social conflicts between students with differing religious and cultural viewpoints, so too does the creation of “public parks” and “public land” create incurable conflicts.

State and Federal parkland near homes and buildings was often not cleared because everyone, and no one, owned that property. Homeowners were often not permitted to clear brush, and no one at the governmental entities controlling these parks had any incentive or authority to do so.

If this parkland had been owned by private individuals, then they would have cleared the brush themselves. The owner would not want his own land to burn, and even if he didn’t care, he would have to fear lawsuits from those with adjoining land that could be damaged by keeping his property in a dangerous condition. Even if the adjoining landowner had abandoned the property, nearby homeowners could have obtained injunctive relief to abate the fire nuisance, or just done it themselves. (Since they would not be damaging the property, they would not have to fear a damages award in trespass, and if the property is abandoned by its owner, then it is subject to adverse possession law in which the neighboring landowner acquires ownership by improving it.)

Moving forward, what should be part of the solution to the problem of improperly managed public lands in California? They should be sold to the highest bidder, with the new owner(s) having full rights of ownership over the property. The new landowners would have the right to develop or do with the land as they will, only subject to the same general laws as other landowners, such as the law of nuisance.

Private owners of this formerly public land would have the right to develop it, or maintain it as parkland. They would also have the correspondent obligations to maintain it in a manner that does not facilitate wildfires. If a fire starts on this land as a result of the negligent failure to manage vegetation, then the owners would be liable in a lawsuit. (Preemptively, the owners of the nearby structures could seek injunctive relief against landowners who create hazardous fire conditions on their land through the common law of nuisance.)

There are other political and cultural problems that California would have to address to mitigate or reduce such fires in the future. This is just one piece of the puzzle. Privatization of land would at least eliminate the lack of accountability that comes from “public property”.

The 2024 Cuban Blackouts

On November 15, 1973, Fidel Castro made a speech to the Cuban Worker’s Congress. Reading over the transcript is very revealing of the fundamental philosophy and motivations of his regime in Cuba, which still exists to this day.

In the speech, he said that Cuba was not yet ready for the “communist principle” as Karl Marx had defined it.  What did Castro mean by this phrase?

“This is an essential matter in the construction of socialism and our revolutionary and socialist workers understood that. In discussing that principle we have been discussing an essential and key principle of revolutionary ideology. That every one contribute according to his ability, that each one receive according to his work is a principle, an inexorable law in the construction of socialism. When we learn to understand this principle thoroughly we are penetrating the depths of political thought, we are penetrating the depths of revolutionary thought and we learn to distinguished it from another principle of the communist society established by Karl Marx: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” (Speech by Fidel Castro, at the closing ceremony of the 13th Congress of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers on 15 November, 1973 (“Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech”), emphasis added, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1973/19731116.html)

In essence, Castro distinguished “socialism” from “communism” by distinguishing it from Karl Marx’s statement that communism means: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”:

“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” (Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm)

Castro said that the “principle of socialism”, as contrasted from this “principle of communism” is that “…every one contribute according to his ability, that each one receive according to his work…”(“Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech”), emphasis added.)

Why did Castro believe they couldn’t operate under the “principle of communism” in 1973 Cuba? Because the Cuban people were not “ready” for communism:

“Many events demonstrate to us that we are not yet prepared to live in communism. Aside from the fact that in order to live in communism it is not only necessary to have a communist consciousness but to have abundant wealth spring from man’s work…” (Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech)

Castro says that the people are “ready” to live under “communism” in some areas, such as, supposedly, education and health care. But in other areas, they are not “ready”. An example of an area where the Cuban people were supposedly not “ready” was electrical production:

“We can continue and ask how much fuel are we wasting? How much in the way of raw materials are we wasting? How much electricity are we excessively consuming? It is clear that with (?light patrols) and simple appeals to people’s consciences, we are not going to save on electricity. I raise this issue because the electricity problem is an unpleasant one which we will have to face. It is an unpopular problem, but we have to face it. [applause] We substantially reduced the rate of an electric company–I do not exactly recall which. The electrical octopus was using a rate which encouraged the use of electricity. The rate on the first kilowatts was higher and it dropped as you used more.

With our revolutionary inexperience we were improvident. We reduced the company’s rates by half and we were left with the same condition which encouraged more consumption. I say we were improvident because we should have thought of the day when the electric system would not be the property of an electrical octopus but the property of the people. Now the electrical octupus belongs to the people and the people have to pay for the consequences of any electrical waste.” (Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech)

In essence Castro said here that Cuba is consuming more electrical power than is produced because the rates charged to people are very low, or even zero. Basic economics teaches that when a price ceiling is set on a good or service, there will be shortages because demand outruns supply. (https://fee.org/resources/price-controls-and-shortages/) This is why you would see breadlines in the old Soviet Union, and grocery stores with empty shelves. The profit motive to produce more is eliminated, and no one is incentivized to produce more. In the case of electrical production, the result of charging insufficient rates for electricity, or giving it away for free, is that people will not economize, and there is no incentive to produce more, so there will be constant blackouts in the power grid.

Castro blamed the Cuban people for not being “ready” for communism:

“…a study of an endless number of facts clearly demonstrates that our society, our people do not have the culture necessary for communist life–aside from the fact that an economy sufficiently developed for communist life is lacking.” (Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech, emphasis added.)

In other words, communism, and the goals of communism are noble, but the Cuban people are just not quite “good enough” for it. Someday, the people of Cuba would be “ready” for Communism, so operating under the “socialist principle” was just going to be temporary:

“It is a matter of making rectifications because we are socialists [applause] and because we want to be communists [applause–crowd chants Fidel, Fidel and rhythmically applauds for 30 seconds] and because we will never renounce the communist objective or our revolution and the development of our revolutionary consciousness…”(Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech, emphasis added.)

What is the “communist objective” it is, as Marx said: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” (Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme”)

Why, according to Castro, is the “communist objective” desirable? Because Castro and his minions “…will continue, above all, to uphold altruism, selflessness and man’s solidary spirit.” (Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech, emphasis added.)

Castro went on in his 1973 speech to say, almost paraphrasing Geroge Orwell, that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” at least while it’s necessary to operate under the “socialist phase”, where everyone is not equal, rather than the “communist phase”, in some future paradise, when everyone will be equal.  In particular, Castro said it would be necessary for certain “administrators” to receive more for their, supposedly, “important work” than others:

“This is another example of why we should develop a savings policy in all aspects, and especially with regard to fuel. It is here that the workers movement can give us extraordinary help. Wherever fuel is being wasted be it a farm, or a factory, or any place these are realities which our workers have to face. But a study of an endless number of facts clearly demonstrates that our society, our people do not have the culture necessary for communist life–aside from the fact that an economy sufficiently developed for communist life is lacking. Realistically, very realistically, we must implement the formulas which apply to this phase of our revolution, and implement in every aspect–not only in distribution, not only in wages, but also in administration— all the formulas which are applicable to the socialist phase of the revolution. [applause]” (Nov. 15, 1973 Castro Speech, emphasis added.)

In other words, the people involved in “administration”, that is Castro, and his gang of communist thugs in Cuba, would need to receive more money, bigger houses, nicer cars, and more political power, because what is more important than bringing about eventual communism? If everyone must “…contribute according to his ability…” and everyone must temporarily  “…receive according to his work…”, who, according to Castro and his cronies, was doing more valuable work than them? Aren’t they the ones (supposedly) trying to bring about eventual communism, which is everyone’s goal?

Castro’s 1973 speech is more than 50 years old. Surely progress has been made in moving the country towards “true” communism, hasn’t it? Has Cuba come closer to being “ready” to operate under the “communist principle” of from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs?

In October of 2024, Cuba experienced a days-long blackout throughout the country. I became aware of this by watching YouTubers in Cuba who were documenting their experiences during the blackout. (This seems to be not without risk. I assume these amateur videographers could be arrested and jailed for bringing the regime there into disrepute. I consider these YouTubers to be quite courageous.) What the blackout shows is that the Cuban people, in general, have probably gotten poorer, not wealthier.  The recent Cuban energy crisis suggests the answer to whether Cuba is more “ready” for communism than it was in 1973 is: No.

Of course, the Cuban regime, and its left-wing apologists have a retort to why Cuba is suffering from blackouts. They’ve had the same scapegoat for the past 50+ years: The United States and its supposed “blockade” on Cuba.

First of all, it’s not a “blockade”. The United States has imposed an embargo on Cuba. A “blockade” is when a country uses its navy to prevent entry or exit from a country, thereby preventing trade and the movement of people by military force. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blockade) An “embargo” is where a country simply prohibits its citizens from trading with a particular country. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/embargo)  It does not use military force to prevent other countries from trading with the embargoed country.

The “US is imposing a blockade on Cuba” myth is so prevalent on social media that it was fact checked by a left-leaning organization, and found not to be true:

“Cuba can trade with other countries of its choosing — if those countries are willing as well. Some of Cuba’s trading partners include China, Spain, the Netherlands, Canada, Mexico and Brazil, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity. Venezuela was one of Cuba’s key trade partners until its ability diminished amid its own economic turmoil. Cuba’s main exports include rolled tobacco, raw sugar, nickel, liquor and zinc. Top imports include poultry meat, wheat, soybean meal, corn and concentrated milk.” (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/19/facebook-posts/cuba-can-trade-other-countries-heres-some-context/)

The United States has simply chosen not to trade with Cuba. (Whether the United States, from the perspective of its own national interest, should impose embargoes is a debate for another time.) An important question to ask these leftist apologists for Cuba is: Why is Cuba’s survival so dependent on trading with the arch-Capitalist enemy, the United States? Shouldn’t socialism make it economically much stronger than the US? Cuba can trade with much of Europe, Latin America, Canada, and China. Can’t it get whatever it needs in trade from China, Iran, and Russia? If not, why not? What is it about these countries that makes them less productive than the United States?

But, the most important question of all is this:  If Cuba can have the material prosperity the United States enjoys, and end the embargo, just by adapting capitalism, why not just do that? Why’d they make the people of Cuba suffer under shortages and blackouts for the past 50+ years?

The regime in Cuba must believe either, or both, of these two things:

(1) Cuba will eventually have even more prosperity in the future by not giving in and adopting some sort of semi-free-market economy here and now, and/or;

(2) Adapting more free markets and individual freedom runs so contrary to their worldview, philosophy, and morality that it is simply unthinkable, even if it means many must suffer and die. In other words, the Cuban regime believes that the only proper system is “…from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs…”, and they will kill every last person in Cuba to achieve it.

The first explanation for why Cuba does not adopt free markets and a free society has pretty much been shown to be false with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviets waited 75 years, suffered terrible hardship, human rights abuses, and deaths, but the prosperity promised by Karl Marx never came. People living under communist regimes could wait 200 years, and prosperity would never arrive because it is a system that is contrary to human nature. It is contrary to what the individual needs to survive and function. Since ‘society’ is nothing but a number of individual human beings, any system that crushes the individual, ultimately disintegrates when it runs out of productive victims.

But, prosperity is not what really matters to the Communist. What matters is that everyone receive equal results for unequal effort. The second motive of the Cuban dictators, “…from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs…”, doesn’t require prosperity. It only requires forced redistribution of the production by the able to the unable. At the end of the day, Cuba is poor not because of any (imaginary) “blockade” or embargo, but because they follow a morality that destroys productiveness. At root, the Cuban regime is committed to a morality that crushes the individual spirit, and prohibits people from furthering their own lives and pursuing personal happiness.

The leadership of the Cuban regime are not looking for prosperity for the people of Cuba. They are only looking to achieve “pure communism”, a system that destroys the individual in favor of “selflessness”, and that will someday, somehow, “work”. Since socialism and communism will never “work”, in practice, it means the leadership of the Cuban regime will continue to cling to power -and use whatever repression of the people is necessary to maintain that power, forever. (Unless the Cuban people someday decide they have had enough, and put an end to it.)

How can Cuba achieve prosperity? Only by rejecting the idea of “…from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs…” In turn, this requires them to reject altruism, that is, they must reject the sacrifice of the individual’s life for some ‘greater good.’ They must recognize that ‘society’ is nothing but a number of individuals, and that each person has an inalienable right to pursue his own happiness. I’m not even saying they have to institute pure capitalism as described by Ayn Rand. (Not even the United States is that good, yet.) It just means they need to depose the current leaders of the Cuban regime, probably by force, and institute a freer government. A government that recognizes basic individual rights, with free and fair elections, rule of law, and, in economics, a generally free market, like the United States.

Only then will Cuba’s periodic blackouts end.

“The Thin Blue Line” on Netflix

“The Thin Blue Line” on Netflix is an old documentary about an even older murder case in Dallas County, Texas. In the late 1970’s Randall Dale Adams was convicted of murdering Dallas police officer Robert Wood. It was asserted by the prosecution that Adams had shot Officer Wood after being pulled over by the later.

In reality, there was compelling evidence that another person, David Ray Harris had shot Officer Wood. This included the fact that Harris had been bragging to other people that he had shot Officer Wood. Harris later claimed at trial that he hadn’t shot Officer Wood, and had only been bragging to his friends to seem like a bigshot cop-killer. Additionally, although the state does not have to show motive for murder, Harris had the only logical motive to kill Officer Wood. Harris was driving in a stolen car when it was pulled over by Officer Wood. Randal Dale Adams would have had no reason to kill the police officer, and likely wouldn’t have even known that the car was stolen. Randal Dale Adams claimed that he was not even in the car at the time of the shooting, because he had been dropped off by David Ray Harris earlier that night.

So why was the State so intent on prosecuting Randal Dale Adams, rather than the more obvious suspect, David Ray Harris? Randal Dale Adams was in his mid-twenties at the time of the murder, while David Ray Harris was only 16, and not eligible for the death penalty. It’s likely that the Dallas Police Department, the Dallas County District Attorney, and the State of Texas wanted to put someone to death for the murder of a cop, even if it was the wrong person.

Randal Dale Adams was convicted and sentenced to death. His appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was unsuccessful in overturning his conviction or getting him a new trial.  His execution was scheduled for May 8, 1979. Three days before that, the US Supreme Court reversed the conviction on a procedural matter unrelated to the factual finding of guilt. This would require a new trial on guilt/innocence before Mr. Adams could be executed. In order to avoid a new trial, which would likely have brought to light new evidence of innocence, the Dallas County District Attorney was able to secure the commutation of his death sentence to life in prison. This obviated the need for a new trial on the procedural irregularity, since the US Supreme Court opinion only applied to death penalty cases. As a result, Randal Dale Adams then spent more than a decade in prison until “The Thin Blue Line” came out.

While conducting interviews of David Ray Harris, who was on death row himself at that point, for the murder of another person, the producers of the documentary recorded David Ray Harris giving what almost amounted to a confession, stating that Randal Dale Adams did not kill Officer Wood.

Additionally, the producers of the documentary conducted interviews of the witnesses who had claimed to see Randal Dale Adams behind the wheel of the car before Officer Wood was shot. They had been driving by on the road when Officer Wood had first pulled over the car the night of the murder. It turned out that the witnesses were not very credible, had reasons to lie, or just flat-out stated to the documentary producers they didn’t actually see Randal Dale Adams. One female witness, Emily Miller, seemed like total scum. She was either lying because she wanted to collect reward money, or she simply convinced herself that Adams was the man she had seen, even though she had not been able to pick him out of a lineup earlier. (I would think this would have been brought up by the Defendant’s attorney on cross examination?) It also turned out that Emily Miller had her own legal problems. Her daughter was being investigated for a robbery, so she might have been trying to curry favor with the DA and Police for the sake of her daughter. (She had also recently been fired from her job for stealing from the cash register.) Additionally, on a motion for a new trial, after the first trial, the Dallas County District Attorney engaged in prosecutorial misconduct and withheld evidence that could have exonerated Randal Dale Adams, ensuring that he went to death row.

As a result of the newly unearthed evidence and the negative publicity on the DA and Dallas Police, Randal Dale Adams got a new trial in 1989. The Dallas County DA then dismissed the case, and Mr. Adams was a free man after 12 years  of incarceration and nearly being executed by the State of Texas. Try to imagine what it would be like to be an innocent person, convicted of a crime you didn’t commit, waiting on death row to be killed by the State. The police didn’t believe you, the DA didn’t believe, you, the judge didn’t believe you, and the jury didn’t believe you. For all intents and purposes, the human race is against you, and wants to see you dead. In reality, you didn’t do anything to deserve any of it, and you will die soon. The situation is too horrible to contemplate.

All around, it was a total miscarriage of justice. Why would the Dallas County District Attorney and the Dallas Police Department want to convict the wrong man? Most likely because they couldn’t give David Ray Harris the death penalty because he was only 16. (Although I wondered if someone in a position of power was protecting him for some reason?) In their minds, the public needed to see someone being executed for the murder of a police officer, either because it would satisfy the public’s sense of justice, or because it would deter others from shooting a cop. Whether the Defendant actually did it was a secondary consideration for them. As a result, Randal Dale Adams was three days from his death sentence being carried out, and only avoided that because of a procedural irregularity the US Supreme Court found.

The Police, the jury, the DA, the judge, the Court of Criminal Appeals, and the public all seemed to be okay with executing Randal Dale Adams, who, in my mind was likely innocent. Unlike 99% of all other exonerations I’ve read about, I think Randal Dale Adams probably didn’t do it. Usually, I think when people who spent time in prison are let go because of newly discovered evidence, it’s not because they’re actually innocent. It’s simply a case of new evidence coming to light that creates some reasonable doubt as to their guilt, and it’s better to let them go than take a chance keeping them in prison for a crime they possibly did not commit.  I agree that it is better to let probably guilty, but possibly innocent, people go since I don’t want to see innocent people in jail or executed. Guilt always needs to be beyond a reasonable doubt, and if anything creates reasonable doubt, you’ve got to let them go.

But, the fact that everyone failed, or willfully chose to hide the truth, in the case of Randal Dale Adams has been the last straw for me. If there were a hell, the prosecutor in his case belongs there. I’ve changed my mind about the death penalty. When I was younger, I was willing to take a chance with the possibility of executing an innocent person. Life has taught me that about 50% of the police, judges, and prosecutors are either incompetent or maliciously negligent in their duties. Additionally, juries in many counties in Texas have the attitude of: “Don’t bother with presenting the evidence, just tell me where to write ‘guilty’ on the jury charge.” As an advocate of capitalism and the free market, I recognize that government is highly inefficient and often corrupt. I think death can be a just punishment, as it stops criminals from committing more crimes permanently, but many government officials are not sufficiently competent or virtuous to ensure that the innocent are not executed. There are people who definitely deserve death, but not at the cost of innocent lives.

Ōoku: The Inner Chambers (Review)

In this alternate history series on Netflix, a plague strikes Edo Period Japan that only kills men. As a result, all but a small percentage of men in Japan die. (Around 25% of the male population is left.) The plague continues to kill young men subsequently born, keeping the male population level low. (I assume the mothers of young men with immune fathers are perhaps passing on genes that do not confer immunity, causing continual death for several generations.)
The animated series explores the radical social and political changes that occur in early-modern Japan as a result. Women must become the primary producers economically, and also take control of the reigns of government, with a series of female Shoguns from the Tokugawa family in charge of Japan’s political system. (The underlying political system is essentially the same -with a Shogun in charge, and a figurehead Emperor with no real power. Women simply run it.)
The first episode is set about 80 years after the plague, with a well-established, primarily female society. Men are still rare, and can sell their sexual services, similar to how some women do in real life. Lower class women cannot afford a full-time husband so they will pay a man for sex in the hopes of getting pregnant. The more powerful and wealthy women can afford a full-time husband. The most powerful woman of all, the female Shogun, has a harem of young men at her palace. The first episode centers around one such young man and his eventual rise to become the primary concubine of the new female Shogun.
The following episodes all seem to be a flashback, and explain how this female-centric Japanese society came to be soon after the plague started.
The premise of a plague that kills most of the men is not new. I saw an episode of ‘Sliders’ from the 1990’s that had the same premise. (https://sliders.fandom.com/wiki/Love_Gods ) But, combining this premise with the setting of Edo Period Japan really captures the imagination of anyone who has studied Japanese history, like myself.

Japan has been experiencing a declining population and this series seems like commentary on this national conundrum of depopulation and negative birthrates.

I highly recommend this series.

Sex and Romance in “We The Living”

The sexual relationships in We The Living primarily revolve around those between Kira and Leo and Kira and Andrei. (Although there are subplots concerning sexual relationships with other characters, such as that between Irina and Sasha and Pavel Syerov and Comrade Sonia.) Here I will go over those two major relationships in the novel.

Kira meets Leo randomly after she left her cousin Victor on a park bench. Victor had made his own sexual advance on Kira in the park, which she had rebuffed. I’m assuming first cousin marriage was not considered incest or taboo in this time and place. Being from the Southern United States, this is also not unheard of in my own culture, although the science seems to indicate this is not a good idea. http://gap.med.miami.edu/learn-about-genetics/have-questions-about-genetics/if-cousins-get-married-are-they-at-risk-of-having-children-with-genetic-con

For no good reason that I can discern, Kira had gone on a carriage ride with Victor, even though she clearly dislikes him. I found this a little perplexing, since I don’t know what would motivate Kira to do this. She clearly doesn’t care about pleasing her family. All I can guess is that she went out of sheer boredom at spending another evening with her family. Kira and Victor eventually end up at a park.

Kira is making her way home after Victor’s failed romantic overture at the park when she accidentally wanders through the section of town where women in the local sex industry are on the street looking for customers. Leo has gone there looking to hire a sex worker, and mistakes Kira for one. Kira experiences “love at first sight” when she sees Leo. She goes with him, apparently intending to have sex with Leo:

“’Why are you looking at me like that?’ he asked. But she did not answer. He said: ‘I’m afraid I’m not a very cheerful companion tonight.’

‘Can I help you?’

‘Well, that’s what you’re here for.’ He stopped suddenly. ‘What’s the price?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t much.’

Kira looked at him and understood why he had approached her. She stood looking silently into his eyes. When she spoke, her voice had lost its tremulous reverence; it was calm and firm. She said: ‘It won’t be much.’

‘Where do we go?’

‘I passed a little garden around the corner. Let’s go there first -for a while.’” (Pg. 61)

Sex for money, or for other reasons besides sexual pleasure, comes up several times in the novel. Later in the story, Kira offers herself to a random wealthy man for money to get Leo medical care. When she tells him how much she needs, he tells her other sex workers don’t make that much in an entire career. (Pg. 226) In the end, Leo becomes a gigolo. A major subplot is the relationship of Kira’s cousin Victor to Marisha, Kira’s communist neighbor. Marisha is in love with Victor because she was a lower-class person before the civil war, but remembers how her mother used to clean the house of an aristocrat with a good looking son that she fell in love with. Victor reminds her of that good looking aristocratic son. Victor pretends to be in love with Marisha so that he can marry her for status in the communist party. This is a sort of parallel to Kira pretending to love Andrei. In the case of Kira, her actions would generally be regarded as noble, or at least, excusable under the circumstances. In the case of Victor, his actions would generally be seen as ignoble.

Leo eventually realizes Kira is not a sex worker, but he is as fascinated by her as she is by him. They agree to meet again at the same location in a month. The month passes and they meet for the second time. Leo kisses the palm of her hand, and they agree to another meeting in a month. Leo then unexpectedly shows up at Kira’s school a few days or weeks later, and they have a more intimate encounter under a bridge, by a river. They agree to meet in a week, and when that rendezvous occurs, Leo tells Kira he is leaving the country by boat. Kira agrees to go with him, and they have sex for the first time on the boat. The boat is stopped by a military patrol led by Stepan Timoshenko, one of the good communists in the novel. Timoshenko lets Kira go, and also manages to get Leo released a few days later. Soon after that, Kira’s family finds out she’s been sleeping with a man out of wedlock and kicks her out of the house. (Although Kira intended to live with Leo, regardless.)

Around that time in the novel, background is given on Leo’s childhood and adolescence. We learn that his first sexual encounter was at sixteen with an older, married woman. Leo had numerous other sexual relations with women in his late teenage years. The end of the flashback to Leo’s backstory ends with what I thought was a rather curious description of him:

“The revolution found Admiral Kovalensky [Leo’s father] with black glasses over his unseeing eyes and St. George’s ribbon in his lapel; it found Leo Kovalensky with a slow, contemptuous smile, and a swift gait, and in his hand a lost whip he had been born to carry.”(Pg. 139)

In my previous blog entry on We The Living, I noted this “rulers and ruled” idea running through the novel, and this is another example of it. Rand does not seem to present this attitude of Leo in a negative light. She seems to present it as desirable or virtuous, which, again, seems incongruous  in comparison to her later works. Also note that this aspect of Leo’s personality plays into Kira’s earlier interest in a fictional young overseer in a play who is whipping the serfs. (Pg. 47-48) Kira likes men who use a certain level of physical force on others, and Leo is the type who likes to use that physical force.

At this point I will note my own evaluation of Leo, which is that I do not care for him. He sounds like he was a womanizer before he met Kira. He never asks Kira to marry him, while Andrei asks her to marry him the first time they have sex. In the end, he becomes a gigolo and gives up Kira for a life of being a male sex worker. The whole point of “We The Living” is that life is unbearable under Communism, but I don’t consider Leo’s way out of a corrupt system to be particularly noble. Andrei had the right idea when he put a bullet in his own brain.

If I knew a woman in real life who was in love with a guy like Leo, I’d have to ask the question: “Why?” What did he have going for him, other than his looks? He’s a womanizer, an alcoholic, and believes he has a right to order his social inferiors around. I have to think Leo would end up cheating on Kira under capitalism, as much as communism. Kira seemed to think she could “save” Leo, like he was her “project boyfriend”. Near the end, when it is clear that Leo is dead in spirit, if not in his actual physical body, Kira has the following thoughts:

“He had left home often and she had never asked him where he went. He had been drinking too often and too much, and she had not said whether she noticed it. When they had been alone together, they had sat silently, and the silence had spoken to her, louder than any words, of something which was an end. He had been spending the last of their money and she had not questioned him about the future. She had not questioned him about anything, for she had been afraid of the answer she knew: that her fight was lost.” (Pg 439)

Soon after that, during their breakup scene, Kira says the following:

“She turned and looked at him calmly, and answered: ‘Only this, Leo: it was I against a hundred and fifty million people. I lost.” (Pg. 443)

These scenes present strong evidence that Kira believed that her love could save Leo. The desire to fix men is a common attitude of women, especially young women. I also think it’s a mistake.  With that said, a reader needs to keep in mind that both of these people are about eighteen years old, so there is possibly a “maturity factor” at play here, for both of them. Although, even at eighteen, I was not a hard-drinking, womanizer with a desire to dominate others, so is it just a matter of immaturity?

The other major sexual relationship in the novel is between Kira and Andrei. With one exception, I like everything about Andrei, on a personal level. He lives in spartan living quarters. (I’m a fan of minimalism and living on as little money as possible.) He’s studying to be an engineer. He tries to eliminate “sentiment” and just be his work. (That can be taken too far, but it’s better than the hordes of teenagers who sit around playing X-Box and smoking pot all day.) To me, this character is a sort of “proto-Hank Reardon”.   Even though he has a somewhat “monkish” exterior, when Andrei falls for Kira, he falls hard. Unlike Leo, Andrei knows how much he loves Kira, and isn’t afraid to say it:

“‘Because, no matter what happens, I still have you. Because, no matter what human wreckage I see around me, I still have you. And -in you- I still know what a human being can be.’

‘Andrei,’ she whispered, ‘are you sure you know me?’

He whispered, his lips in her hand so that she heard the words as if she were gathering them, one by one, in the hollow of her palm: ‘Kira, the highest thing in a man is not his god. It’s that in him which knows the reverence due a god. And you, Kira, are my highest reverence…’” (Pg. 335)

This scene happens in the last third of the novel, when Andrei is beginning to doubt what he has believed. The doubt comes from what he sees as the corruption of the other communists around him, like Pavel Syerov, but it also comes from his affair with Kira. For the first time in his life, he is in love with a woman, and it is someone that he knows opposes communism. He is honest enough to express a level of vulnerability and doubt that most people would lack the self-confidence to do. Like I said, there is a lot to like here, but he’s also a communist and a member of the secret police. (That’s a pretty big “but”.)

Ayn Rand did everything she could to make this character sympathetic, and she succeeded for me. At one point, Rand describes the following scene, soon after Andrei and Kira have sex for the first time:

“The street light beyond the window made a white square and a black cross on the wall above the bed. Against the white square, she could see his [Andrei’s] face on the pillow; he did not move. Her arm, stretched limply against his naked body, felt no movement but the beating of his heart.” (Pg 233)

For Rand, nothing is an accident. The symbol of a cross on the wall above the bed seems like a reference to the crucifixion story in the Bible. Andrei is almost “Christ-like”. When I say that, I mean in the sense of total devotion to someone or something, even at great cost, which is what I think the story in the Bible means to the modern mind. Near the end, after Andrei learns why Kira was really with him, and he has saved Leo from being shot as an illegal speculator, Leo says he isn’t happy that Andrei saved him. Andrei asks “Why?”, and Leo says the following to Andrei:

“Do you suppose Lazarus was grateful when Christ brought him back from the grave -if He did? No more than I am to you, I think.” (Pg. 421)

Again, an explicit reference to Andrei as Christ in the Bible.

Andrei gives every penny he earns to Kira after they start their affair. (He believes she’s using it to support her family, but she’s actually using it for medical treatments for Leo. This is why Kira is pretending to be in love with Andrei.) Later in the novel, after Andrei learns the truth, he risks everything to save Leo out of love for Kira. This is reminiscent of Sydney Carton from “A Tale of Two Cities”, who goes to the guillotine during the French Revolution to save the husband of the woman he loves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Carton

Kira’s relationship with Andrei is interesting. She initially encounters him at her engineering school, where Andrei is a student, and also an officer of the branch of the GPU at the  university.  She is at a meeting of students to elect student council members. During the course of that, the “Internationale” is sung:

“For the first time in Petrograd, Kira heard the ‘Internationale.’ She tried not to listen to its words. The words spoke of the damned, the hungry, the slaves, of those who had been nothing and shall be all; in the magnificent goblet of the music, the words were not intoxicating as wine; they were not terrifying as blood; they were gray as dish water.

But the music was like the marching of thousands of feet measured and steady, like drums beaten by unvarying, unhurried hands. The music was like the feet of soldiers marching into the dawn that is to see their battle and their victory; as if the song rose from under the soldiers’ feet, with the dust of the road, as if the soldiers’ feet played it upon the earth.

The tune sang of a promise, calmly, with the calm of an immeasurable strength, and then, tense with a restrained, but uncontrollable ecstasy, the notes rose, trembling, repeating themselves, too rapt to be held still, like arms raised and waiving in the sweep of banners.

It was a hymn with the force of a march, a march with the majesty of a hymn. It was the song of soldiers bearing sacred banners and of priests carrying swords. It was an anthem to the sanctity of strength.

Everyone had to rise when the ‘Internationale’ was played.

Kira stood smiling at the music. ‘This is the first beautiful thing I’ve noticed about the revolution.’ she said to her neighbor.

‘Be careful,’ the freckled girl whispered, glancing around nervously, ‘someone will hear you.’

‘When this is all over,’ said Kira. ‘when the traces of their republic are disinfected from history -what a glorious funeral march this will make!’

‘You little fool! What are you talking about?’

A young man’s hand grasped Kira’s wrist and wheeled her around.

She stared up into two gray eyes that looked like the eyes of a tamed tiger; but she was not quite sure whether it was tamed or not. There were four straight lines on his face: two eyebrows, a mouth, and a scar on his right temple.

For one short second, they looked at each other, silent, hostile, startled by each other’s eyes.

‘How much,’ asked Kira, ‘are you paid for snooping around?’

She tried to disengage her wrist. He held it: ‘Do you know the place for little girls like you?’

‘Yes -where men like you wouldn’t be let in through the back door.’

‘You must be new here. I’d advise you to be careful.’

‘Our stairs are slippery and there are four floors to climb, so be careful when you come to arrest me.’

He dropped her wrist. She looked at his silent mouth; it spoke of many past battles louder than the scar on his forehead; it also spoke of many more to come.

The ‘Internationale’ rang like soldiers’ feet beating the earth.

‘Are you exceedingly brave?’ he asked. ‘Or just stupid?’

‘I’ll let you find that out.’

He shrugged, turned and walked away. He was tall and young. He wore a cap and a leather jacket. He walked like a soldier, his steps deliberate and very confident.

Students sang the ‘Internationale,’ its ecstatic notes rising, trembling, repeating themselves.

‘Comrade,’ the freckled girl whispered, ‘what have you done?’” (Pg. 73-75)

Through the course of the novel, their friendship grows, then Andrei suddenly starts avoiding Kira, and she cannot figure out why. As she grows more desperate to obtain medical care for Leo, she eventually seeks out Andrei, with the intention of asking him for money for Leo. (Andrei is unaware of Kira’s involvement with Leo.) When she goes to his apartment, Andrei confesses his love for her, and tells her he had to stop seeing her because he knew he had the power to force her to have sex against her will. As a member of the secret police, Andrei knew he could go to Kira’s house with his men, take her away, and rape her with impunity.

This actually happened in the Soviet Union. Lavrentiy Beria, head of Stalin’s Secret Police, would pick up women against their will, drive them to his house, and rape them. Women who refused were arrested and imprisoned. Women would also agree to sex to free family members. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria

Andrei also knew that Kira would despise him after that, which he couldn’t stand the thought of. To avoid the temptation, he decided to stop seeing her, and avoid her altogether. Andrei tells Kira he’d give her everything he has if he thought it would make Kira love him, but he knows she doesn’t because she hates everything he stands for. Kira realizes that if she pretends to be in love with Andrei she can get the money she needs to save Leo, so she lies and tells Andrei she is, in fact, in love with him, and they sleep together:

“’I can! I love you.’

She wondered how strange it was to feel a man’s lips that were not Leo’s.

She was saying: ‘Yes…for a long time…but I didn’t know that you, too…’ and she felt his hands and his mouth, and she wondered whether this was joy or torture to him and how strong his arms were. She hoped it would be quick.”(Pg. 233)

The exact nature of the relationship between Kira and Andrei eludes me in certain respects. She did feel affection and friendship for Andrei before she pretended to be in love with him. For instance, she worries about his welfare when he tells her he just got back from putting down a peasant rebellion in the countryside. Andrei says three Communists were killed by peasants, and Kira says:

“‘Andrei! I hope you got them!’

He could not restrain a smile: ‘Why, Kira! Are you saying that about men who fight Communism?’

‘But… but they could have done it to you.’” (Pg. 165)

It makes me wonder about how much she enjoyed sex with Andrei? Did she have orgasms with Andrei? There are scenes that seem to indicate she does not:

“His [Andrei’s] hands closed slowly, softly over her shoulders, so softly that she could not feel his hands, only their strength, their will holding her, bending her backward; but his lips on hers were brutal, uncontrollable. His eyes were closed; hers were open, looking indifferently up at the ceiling.” (Pg. 244)

But, later, when Kira is going to see Andrei, there is the implication that she likes the sex with him:

“…Her body felt pure and hallowed: her feet were slowing down to retard her progress toward that which seemed a sacrilege because she did desire it and did not wish to desire it tonight.” (Pg. 381)

What I got from this passage was that Kira did have orgasms from sex with Andrei, and even looked forward to it on occasion, but she felt guilty about it.

Also mixed in with Kira’s feelings towards Andrei appears to be a desire to punish him, or make him a sort of “stand-in” for the whole communist system that Kira, and those she loves, have suffered under. For instance, the first time Kira takes money from Andrei she seems to feel a bit of guilt:

“She wondered dimly how simple and easy it was to lie.

To Andrei, she had mentioned her starving family. She did not have to ask: he gave her his whole monthly salary and told her to leave him only what she could spare. She had expected it, but it was not an easy moment when she saw the bills in her hand…” (Pg. 235)

But, that moment of guilt quickly passes, as this passage goes on to say:

“…;then, she remembered the comrade commissar and why one aristocrat could die in the face of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics -and she kept most of the money, with a hard, bright smile.” (Pg. 235)

(The comrade commissar was an official in an earlier scene who refused to give Leo medical treatment, and mentioned something about how so many had died, so what was one aristocrat to the Soviet Union.)

In this scene, its like Kira felt momentary remorse at taking Andrei’s money under false pretenses, then she remembers that he has helped to bring about that system under which Leo and others would die, and she takes almost all of his money, as a sort of passive-aggressive punishment against him, as representative of the whole system.

It seems that Kira enjoys making Andrei suffer a little, as punishment, but it is a sort of cruelty, with occasional bursts of compassion. In one scene, Andrei is complaining about not being able to see Kira much. She has also told him never to come to her parent’s house, where he thinks that she lives, ostensibly because her family is uncomfortable with communists, but really so that he will not discover Leo:

“But he was smiling again: ‘Why don’t you want me to think of you? Remember last time you were here, you told me about that book you read with a hero called Andrei and you said you thought of me? I’ve been repeating it to myself ever since, and I bought the book. I know it isn’t much, Kira, but…well…you don’t say them often, things like that.’

She leaned back, her hands crossed behind her head, mocking and irresistible: ‘Oh, I think of you so seldom I’ve forgotten your last name. Hope I read it in a book. Why, I’ve even forgotten that scar, right there, over your eye.’ Her finger was following the line of the scar, sliding down his forehead, erasing his frown; she was laughing, ignoring the plea she had understood.”

Later in the same scene, Kira explains that she has come to see Andrei early because she cannot see him that night, as initially promised. Andrei is unhappy about it, thinking he will not get to have sex with her:

“ He was whispering, his lips on her breast: ‘Oh, Kira, Kira, I wanted you -here- tonight…’

She leaned back, her face dark, challenging, pitiless, her voice low: ‘I’m here -now.’

‘But…’

‘Why not?’

‘If you don’t…’

‘I do. That’s why I came.’

And as he tried to rise, her arms pulled him down imperiously. She whispered: ‘Don’t bother to undress. I haven’t the time.’” (Pg. 249)

A woman punishing a man with this sort of “passive aggressive behavior”, and/or cruel words that she knows will hurt him is fairly common in life. Women don’t typically use violence to get vengeance. They use manipulation combined with male sexual desire to give a man his comeuppance (real or perceived). For most men, there’s nothing more painful than a woman you’re in love with not responding to your love, or spurning your signs of affection with cruel words or actions. This behavior also shows up in a later novel of Ayn Rand’s very prominently. In “The Fountainhead”, the character of Dominique Francon pretty much makes a career out of using her beauty and the power of her sexuality to make men miserable, namely Peter Keeting and Gail Wynand, although they’ve both done things that merit disapproval. https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fountainhead/character/dominique-francon/

Andrei and Kira’s sexual relationship is one of the few times I can think of that Rand shows sex from a male perspective. There are only two times that I can think of where she “gets in inside the head” of a male character, concerning sex. One time is Reardon in “Atlas Shrugged”. Reardon thinks about how he wanted to have sex with Dagny Taggart the first time he saw her on the train tracks. I think there were also some other times he thinks about sex with Dagny, but I cannot find the relevant passages now. (Something about how he felt when he would leave her body after an orgasm.) Andrei’s perspective on sex with Kira is also presented:

“He could forgive her the words, for he had forgotten them, when he saw her exhausted, breathing jerkily, her eyes closed, her head limp in the curve of his arm. He was grateful to her for the pleasure he had given her.” (Pg. 249)

In response to a papal declaration, “Humanae Vitae”, Rand delivered a speech called “Of Living Death”. The Pope’s encyclical concerned sex and procreation, and how good Catholics should view sex. During the course of the written version of her speech, Rand responded to a portion of the Pope’s encyclical that if a man viewed a woman as a mere instrument of his selfish enjoyment, instead of as a means for reproduction, then he would no longer love and respect her. In response to this, Rand said:

“I cannot conceive of a rational woman who does not want to be precisely an instrument of her husband’s selfish enjoyment. I cannot conceive of what would have to be the mental state of a woman who could desire or accept the position of having a husband who does not derive any selfish enjoyment from sleeping with her. I cannot conceive of anyone, male or female, capable of believing that sexual enjoyment would destroy a husband’s love and respect for his wife -but regarding her as a brood mare and himself as a stud, would cause him to love and respect her.” (“Of Living Death”, Ayn Rand, The Voice of Reason: Essays In Objectivist Thought)

I was curious about how Ayn Rand viewed the male perspective on this.  As a woman, it was going to be easier for Rand to present a female perspective, which is why I assume she usually did present sex from the female character’s viewpoint. Did she think that a rational man would want to be an instrument of his wife’s selfish enjoyment? Based on what is presented here about Andrei’s perspective on sex with Kira, specifically, his feeling grateful that he had given Kira pleasure, I think this must be what she thought was the rational male perspective. (This would make sense given her views on the “trader principle” of justice.)

The relationship between Kira and Leo and Kira and Andrei proved to be both entertaining, and enlightening. I recommend that you read the novel yourself, if you haven’t already.

Whoopi Goldberg On Systematic Nazi Mass-Murder

I was rather surprised to see this controversy, since I think Whoopi Goldberg is correct:

“‘Let’s be truthful, the Holocaust isn’t about race, it’s not. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man, that’s what it’s about. These are two groups of white people,’ she said on The View on Monday.” https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/feb/02/whoopi-goldberg-suspended-from-the-view-after-saying-holocaust-isnt-about-race

Jews living in Germany at the time of World War II can’t really be called another race, in my opinion.

Mein Kampf asserts that they are another race. If you read it, you’ll see that Hitler saw the perceived racial difference as the reason for regarding Jews as a danger to the German people. But, I don’t see any evidence that would justify treating Jews as a different race.

I think the concept of “race” is most likely a real concept, that is based in reality. I’m not an expert, but it is my understanding that forensic anthropologists can determine a skeleton’s likely ancestry with high probability by examining their skull. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26270337/  (Although there is debate, about the accuracy of this type of determination. So my certainty on this issue is not 100%. https://www.science.org/content/article/forensic-anthropologists-can-try-identify-person-s-race-skull-should-they )

I think the outrage here derives from the modern notion that race is “socially constructed” or that it isn’t a real thing. In this view, the white majority is simply imposing something on black people that doesn’t exist for purposes of exploiting them.

I think a lot of that debate turns around how “race” is defined. I’d say I define it as something like: “Where most of your ancestors originate from in the last 10,000 years.” Biological populations can have a lot of variations, but biologists seem to have no problem identifying a plethora of sub-species within other animal groups besides human beings. For instance, there are 9 sub-species of Tiger, and they all look the same to me, as a non-biologist. https://www.livescience.com/29822-tiger-subspecies-images.html So, why is it controversial to recognize that people whose ancestors are mostly from Africa, Asia, or Europe are different sub-species? (Especially when its fairly easy for me to tell the difference just by looking at them, but I see no difference with Tiger sub-species.)

I will also acknowledge that I am not 100% certain on this issue. Much of what we consider “race” may, in fact, have no basis in biological reality. It’s largely a scientific issue to be decided by scientists, but I suspect the issue is not being honestly addressed due to the fear by scientists that they will loose funding or jobs if they come up with answers the political left doesn’t like.

The danger of Mein Kampf doesn’t lie primarily in Jew hatred, but in the fact that it advocates collectivism:

“It took centuries and a brain-stopping chain of falsehoods to bring a whole people to the state of Hitler-worship. Modern German culture, including its Nazi climax, is the result of a complex development in the history of philosophy…

If we view the West’s philosophic development in terms of essentials, three fateful turning points stand out, three major philosophers who, above all others, are responsible for generating the disease of collectivism and transmitting it to the dictators of our century.

The three are: Plato—Kant—Hegel. (The antidote to them is: Aristotle.)” ( The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America, Peikoff, Leonard)

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/fascism-nazism.html

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=the%20ominous%20parallels%20by%20leonard%20peikoff&sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-TopNavISS-_-Results&ds=20

So, at worst, Whoopi Goldberg is guilty of saying something that is likely true (Jews are a not a separate race), which is based in a premise (race is something biologically real), that deserves more study. It certainly doesn’t justify suspension from her TV show. (But, these are the times we live in.)

The Ethical Status of Kyle Rittenhouse

“She looked out at the country. She had been aware for some time of the human figures that flashed with an odd  regularity at the side of the track. But they went by so fast that she could not grasp their meaning until, like the squares of a movie film, brief flashes blended into a whole and she understood it.  She had had the track guarded since its completion, but she had not hired the human chain she saw strung out  along the right-of-way. A solitary figure stood at every mile post. Some were young schoolboys, others were so  old that the silhouettes of their bodies looked bent against the sky. All of them were armed, with anything they had found, from costly rifles to ancient muskets. All of them wore railroad caps. They were the sons of Taggart  employees, and old railroad men who had retired after a full lifetime of Taggart service. They had come, unsummoned, to guard this train. As the engine went past him, every man in his turn stood erect, at attention, and raised his gun in a military salute.” (Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged: (Centennial Edition) (p. 242). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition, emphasis added. )

I was rather surprised with the negative reaction some people closely associated with the Ayn Rand Institute had for Kyle Rittenhouse, back when the story of his self-defense shooting first came out last year. I watched a great deal of the videos of the shooting and events leading up to it, and was fairly confident he had acted in self-defense. Most of the criticism coming out of Objectivist  circles seemed to center around the fact that Rittenhouse went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, and, in some sense, “put himself” into danger, such that he had to shoot three people.

In my experience, the people associated with the Ayn Rand Institute have an aversion to guns, in general. My perception is they will “grudgingly” acknowledge some right to keep and bear arms, but many of them clearly  have a distaste for guns. This may have to do with their cultural backgrounds. Most ARI people appear to be from the north-eastern United States, California, or foreign countries. They aren’t used to armed civilians. I don’t particularly hold this against them, but I think it plays into their perception of self-defensive shootings, like the case of Kyle Rittenhouse.

Is it wrong to go someplace where there is lawlessness and defend property? Certainly Ayn Rand must have thought there is some such right in certain circumstances, or she wouldn’t have had the teenage sons of Taggart Transcontinental  Railroad employees guarding the tracks of the John Galt Line. (This situation is, admittedly, a little different from that of Kyle Rittenhouse, since he appears to have had little association with the property he was defending. More on that, later.)

Is Kyle Rittenhouse a vigilante? Perhaps. Is that wrong?

What is a “vigilante”? An online source says it is:

“A member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate.” (https://www.bing.com/search?form=MOZLBR&pc=MOZI&q=define+vigilante)

Is Vigilantism always unacceptable? I am not convinced of that. When the legal system breaks down in an emergency, extraordinary actions can be taken to defend life and property. In essence, a riot is an emergency return to a state in which there is no government. A state of anarchy is a form of tyranny:

“Tyranny is any political system (whether absolute monarchy or fascism or communism) that does not recognize individual rights (which necessarily include property rights). The overthrow of a political system by force is justified only when it is directed against tyranny: it is an act of self-defense against those who rule by force. For example, the American Revolution. The resort to force, not in defense, but in violation, of individual rights, can have no moral justification; it is not a revolution, but gang warfare.” (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/revolution_vs_putsch.html )

During a riot, what a rational person faces is the abrogation of law, which means the abrogation of the state’s protection of individual rights. In such circumstances, one faces not tyranny by the state, but tyranny by a gang of criminals. In such an emergency, one can take extraordinary measures to defend one’s life and property. That said, I think that once order is restored, one must also be prepared to face trial for any excessive force used under the circumstances. (But, what is “excessive” under those circumstances is probably also different.)

I do not think Kyle Rittenhouse could be described as a “vigilante”, because Kenosha was in a state of anarchic tyranny. But, if one insists on calling him a “vigilante”, then, during an emergency, vigilantism, within certain limits, is probably justified.

Was there no police support for what Kyle Rittenhouse was doing?

There does appear to have been actual police support for Kyle Rittenhouse and the others in his group, at least amongst the “rank and file” cops. Those cops made no effort to remove Rittenhouse or the group he was with, and gave them water and verbal support:

“‘About 90 minutes into the livestream at 11:30 p.m. — 15 minutes before the fatal shooting — the following exchange with police occurs as Rittenhouse and another armed man walk outside a business.

Police officer (over a loudspeaker): ‘You need water? Seriously. (unintelligible) You need water?’

Rittenhouse, raising his arm and walking toward the police vehicle: ‘We need water.’

Police officer: ‘We’ll throw you one.’

Rittenhouse then walks out into the street amid several police vehicles, holding his hand in the air for a water bottle. An officer surfaces from a hatch at the top of the police vehicle and tosses a water bottle to a person located just out of the camera’s view, where Rittenhouse would likely be standing based on the preceding footage.

Police officer: ‘We got a couple. We’ve got to save a couple, but we’ll give you a couple. We appreciate you guys, we really do.‘”
(https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/29/fact-check-video-police-thanked-kyle-rittenhouse-gave-him-water/5661804002/)

How would I describe Kyle Rittenhouse?

“‘Don’t be shocked, Miss Taggart,’ said Danneskjöld. ‘And don’t object. I’m used to objections. I’m a sort of freak here, anyway. None of them approve of my particular method of fighting our battle. John doesn’t, Dr. Akston doesn’t. They think that my life is too valuable for it. But, you see, my father was a bishop— and of all his teachings there was only one sentence that I accepted: ‘All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.’….Even John grants me that in our age I had the moral right to choose the course I’ve chosen. I am doing just what he is doing— only in my own way.…'” (Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged: (Centennial Edition) (p. 757). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.)

I wouldn’t recommend that anyone do what Kyle Rittenhouse did. Furthermore, I discourage it. I would not go into the middle of a riot to defend the property of strangers, and I wouldn’t recommend that anyone else do it. That said, John Galt didn’t think Ragnar Danneskjold should attack the relief ships for the “people’s states” of Europe, but he didn’t condemn Ragnar for it. He said Ragnar had a right to do what he was doing, but he didn’t think it was, in some sense, “prudent”. That is my position on Kyle Rittenhouse going to a riot to defend the property of others. He had the right, but it was, in a word, “quixotic“:

“Exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical.”
https://www.bing.com/search?form=MOZLBR&pc=MOZI&q=quixotic

My perspective as a forty-seven-year-old is different from that of a seventeen-year-old, however. Young men can be so committed to doing good that they may act rashly or imprudently. I cannot say for certain I wouldn’t have done the same when I was a teenager. As such, I will never speak ill of Kyle Rittenhouse.

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What Is Culture? Are Some Cultures Better Than Others?

The Dictionary Definition of “Culture”

An online dictionary defines culture as:

“…the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group

also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time…” (Definition of “Culture”, Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture )

A “belief” is an idea or set of ideas.

“Social forms” are presumably things like legal and political institutions, customs, and morals of a people.

“Material traits” would likely be things like the architecture, art, forms of entertainment, and methods of producing the material values necessary for survival.

“Way of life” I would assume to be something like: How people live, and what they consider to be important.

For instance, the “way of life” of medieval European people was church-centered, with a small hereditary elite, the nobility, in control of governmental institutions. This elite gave little provision for the dignity and importance of the individual lives of the rest of the population. The majority of the population lived at subsistence levels as farmers, tied to the land. (The serfs.)

This contrasts with modern, western nations, in which religious institutions are generally separated from the organs of state power. Governmental institutions are believed to derive their power from the bulk of the adult population, in theory, even if not always in practice. The majority of the population performs some sort of technology or industrial-based labor, rather than farming. Individuality is more valued. Individual freedom is considered important, even if most modern persons also believe it must occasionally be overridden to advance some alleged “collective” or “group interest”.

“Beliefs” and “ways of life” both imply a set of concepts and value-systems. At root, a particular group’s “culture” lies in the ideas and patterns of thinking they hold. These in turn affect their actions and behavior.

For instance, most medieval Europeans believed forgiveness of their sins could only be achieved through the church. Their actions would have reflected these beliefs with regular church-attendance, and confession to their local priest. When Pope Urban II urged faithful Christians to undertake an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the First Crusade, the people listened. The set of ideas and patterns of thinking they held, influenced their actions. It’s doubtful today that the Pope could bring about a call to arms, even of the most devout Catholics. A declaration of war by a modern Pope would make people doubt his sanity, not fall out for military service. Politics are not considered the Church’s province in the minds of a modern Catholic, at least not to this degree.

Ayn Rand On Culture:

“A nation’s culture is the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men, which their fellow-citizens have accepted in whole or in part, and which have influenced the nation’s way of life. Since a culture is a complex battleground of different ideas and influences, to speak of a “culture” is to speak only of the dominant ideas, always allowing for the existence of dissenters and exceptions.” (Philosophy: Who Needs It, “Don’t Let It Go”, Ayn Rand, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/culture.html )

Marxism on Culture:

Not everyone sees ideas or beliefs as an important causal element in what forms the basis of a “culture”. In fact, some thinkers have reversed cause and effect, making ideas and beliefs more of a product of particular social organizations.

Marx believes that ideas are nothing but a rationalization for the dominant class and one’s “material existence” (whether he is Proletarian or Bourgeois):

“Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto)

“But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto.)

Marx views the causation as reversed. Your “economical conditions of existence of your class” and your “method of production” determines your ideas, and therefore, your “culture”.

For Marx, it’s not just that someone is born to particular parents, then adopts the ideas of their parents and elders around them, by “mental default”. If that is all he means, then he could simply say: “A person’s culture tends to be the same as the ideas and attitudes of their parents and elders.” One’s “method of production” would have nothing to do with it. Plus, this would be an incomplete explanation, since cultures clearly do change over time. On this explanation, how have human beings gone from hunter-gatherers, to agriculturalists, to a modern industrial and technological civilization?

Furthermore, the phenomena of the change and evolution of the culture of particular groups of people has been noted by scholars. In his book, “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”, Thomas Sowell observes how the white portions of the American South were originally populated by Scots and Irish who brought with them ideas, attitudes and beliefs that lasted after those same cultural patterns had largely died out in Great Britain:

“…a common subculture that goes back for centuries, which has encompassed everything from ways of talking to attitudes toward education, violence, and sex -and which originated not in the South, but in those parts of the British Isles from which white Southerners came. That culture long ago died out where it originated in Britain, while surviving in the American South.” (Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Location 79 of 7391, Kindel Ed., Thomas Sowell)

Why do cultures sometimes change for the better?

Since a culture is nothing but human knowledge, the question becomes: “Why do human beings use their minds to gain knowledge, and prefer correct ideas to incorrect ideas?”

In the realm of material production, the answer is clear. Human beings learn new manufacturing techniques because it makes the production of the material values necessary for their survival easier, or it allows them to produce more values with the same level of effort.

Human beings learned how to make fire because it warmed them on cold nights, and allowed them to cook their food. They learned how to make the bow and arrow because they could take down bigger animals, and defend themselves from others, more effectively. Human beings learned how to make penicillin because it protected them from infections that would have otherwise killed them.

In the field of law, why did human beings go from the absolute rule of monarchs in medieval Europe to rule of law and republican forms of government? Because they found that their lives were less secure when a single man or a group of men had absolute power over their property, freedom, and lives. For those who wanted to live, a constitutional Republic, or constitutional Monarchy, better secured their lives.

Why do some cultures change for the worse?

This is a more difficult question to answer. Not all human beings want to live. For those who don’t want to live, no particular type of action is necessary. Fundamentally, those who value something other than living will have no need to conform their actions to the dictates of the laws of nature and reality. If you want to live, you need to grow or hunt for food, and perform a wide range of other actions. For those who don’t want to live, conforming to reality matters very little. Therefore, the truth or falsity of their ideas matter very little. A culture whose people care so little for life will regard building the Great Pyramid of Giza, and the enormous waste of resources and lives it resulted in, as fundamentally better than the buildings of modern-day New York City, which shelter more than 1.5 million people from the elements. Some societies are fundamentally opposed to life. Their architecture, art, and graveyards reflect it. Every culture is, fundamentally, a battle between those who want to live, and those who do not.

The “takeaways” from what has been said about culture so far are this:

(1) A culture is ultimately a product of human ideas, which can be right or wrong.

(2) What makes cultures right or wrong are the dictates of the laws of nature and reality, combined with the desire of most people to live their individual lives.

(3) When we speak of culture as the dominant ideas of a group of people, it must be kept in mind that within a particular culture, there will exist dissenters and exceptions. (This is one way how cultures can change and evolve over time.)

(4) Within a particular geographic area, different groups of people can have different cultures, even though they are under the same political system. This often has to do with their geographic origins in other parts of the world. (For instance, white Southerners in the United States, versus Northern whites, as identified by Thomas Sowell and others.)

Culture Around the World

One other aspect of culture, that hasn’t been expressly identified so far, should be obvious: Since different racial groups originate in different areas of the world with different cultures, when those racial groups come to another land, they will tend to have different cultures. (Even if one considers “race” to be an invalid concept, you can eliminate that term, and this fundamental truth still remains: “Different groups of people, originating from different areas of the world, with different cultures, will have different cultures when they come to another land.”)

When the dominant ideas of a group of people are less in accordance with reality, and make them less successful at living, what should be done? They should be persuaded to adopt better notions, and to change or modify their ideas and behaviors. This persuasion should occur both internally and externally from the culture. People outsides those cultures should do what they can to encourage change, and people from within that culture, who dissent from it, should do what they can to modify it.

Although individuals have rights to life, liberty, and property, cultures, which are merely ideas, have no right to be free from criticism, because of their mere existence. Furthermore, cultural groups that routinely violate individual rights to life liberty, or property can be stopped with an appropriate and proportional use of force from those outside the culture. For instance,  a group of people that practices cannibalism and ritual human sacrifice can rightly be dissuaded from continuing such practices, with force if necessary. The only limit to the use of retaliatory force in such circumstances is the rational self-interest of the people outside the culture. (There is no “white man’s burden”, which makes it a duty or obligation to stop the savage practices of less culturally developed people.)

Under no circumstances should people from a more advanced culture attempt to accommodate or give sanction to the ideas of a culture that are inferior to the ideas of the more advanced culture. Doing so would be tantamount to a declaration that ideas don’t have truth or falsity. Since the truth matters for those who want to live, it would be a capitulation by those who want to live to those who do not. The sanction of inferior ideas would destroy the more advanced culture, and lead to nothing but death and misery.

Sometimes a less advanced culture may have some ideas that are superior to those of the generally more advanced culture, in a certain context. For instance, the Norsemen colonizing Greenland in the 10th Century are theorized to have died out, in part, because they were unwilling to adapt to local geographic and biological conditions. They might have been better off adapting some of the hunting practices of the local aboriginal people. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3309771/ ) But, this simply shows that no culture is immune from the dictates of reality, if living is their goal. If one moves to a different geographic location, he would have to take that new context into account. He will have to either come up with new technologies, or adapt some of the technologies of others.

Just like one cannot speak of “culture” without recognizing that there may be dissenters within that group of people, so too can one only speak of a culture as more or less “advanced” than another “on the whole”. Medieval Europeans, and certainly post-Renaissance Europeans, had a better conception of science and logic, giving them a greater capacity to adapt better ideas when they encountered them. Such an adaptability is, itself, a cultural trait. It is the concept of “objectivity”, applied to living. It is the willingness to recognize when one’s own particular ideas and patterns of thinking need change and modification to better achieve the goal of living. The European recognition of this fact is found in the high value placed on free speech amongst Europeans and European-descended people. They recognize that the free flow of ideas will allow for the adaption of those notions best suited for living.

Are there cultures in modern-day United States that need to be changed or modified?

Since different people in the United States have different ancestral origins and backgrounds, it is no surprise you can find different cultures within different groups of people here.

The ancestors of most black Americans today came primarily from Africa. (Leaving aside some amount of European DNA through interbreeding.) Since most people uncritically adapt the ideas of their parents and elders over time, the ideas of black Americans reflect this history in Africa and/or the history of their ancestors in the South as slaves.

The cultural differences between the average American with predominate European ancestry, and the average person of mostly African ancestry can be quantified to some extent.  What follows is the data I could find from Internet searches on cultural differences between blacks and whites in three areas: (1) Level of superstitious belief; (2) black belief in “conspiracy theories”, especially with respect to medical distrust, and (3) black parenting differences in the realm of corporal punishment of children.

American blacks tend to be more superstitious than white Americans:

73% of black US adults believe evil spirits can harm, versus 54% of all US adults. (Pg. 65)

78% of black US adults believe prayer can heal illness versus 65% of all US adults. (Pg. 65)

“The findings show that majorities of Black Americans believe in a God with a presence in earthly affairs.” (Pg. 54)

48% of Black Americans think God talks to them directly, versus 30% of all US adults. (Pg. 62)

(“Faith Among Black Americans”, Pew Research Center, https://www.pewforum.org/2021/02/16/faith-among-black-americans/pf_02-16-21_black-religion-00-8/)

Superstition reflects a less scientific worldview. It means a person does not have a firm grasp of concepts like the law of non-contradiction, and of the fact that reality operates in accordance with specific and predictable laws of nature. Superstitious people tend to assume that there is some unknown, and fundamentally unknowable, realm that affects their lives in ways that are essentially unpredictable. So, for instance, they will believe they can petition some supernatural entity in that supernatural place, and obtain benefits that would contradict the facts of reality. This is why someone would believe that prayer can causelessly heal an illness, or that evil spirits can harm them.

Superstitious people will believe that others have special access to a supernatural realm, and can use that access to cause them harm or good. They will tend to believe in things like witches and the “evil eye”. Belief in the “evil eye” is 29% amongst blacks and 36% within Hispanics. Only 11% of whites believe in it. (“Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths” , https://www.pewforum.org/2009/12/09/many-americans-mix-multiple-faiths/)

Black Belief in Conspiracy Theories:

Improper methods of thinking will also tend to affect how one views success or failure in society. If a person does not see their particular set of ideas as having consequences for their lives, then when they see others who are more successful, they will not view their success as the product of better ideas. They will have a tendency to view it as some sort of “cheating” or manipulation of the system. They will see a more successful group as engaging in “theft” of what is “rightfully theirs”, often by some secret, behind-the-scenes, conspiratorial means. A penchant for what is commonly called “conspiracy theory thinking” will be the result:

“Several studies have reported a widespread belief in conspiracy theories among African Americans. Such theories have been shown to have possible deleterious effects, especially when they deal with HIV/AIDS.” ( Simmons, William & Parsons, Sharon. (2005). Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories Among African Americans: A Comparison of Elites and Masses. Social Science Quarterly. 86. 582-598. 10.1111/j.0038-4941.2005.00319.x. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4747599_Beliefs_in_Conspiracy_Theories_Among_African_Americans_A_Comparison_of_Elites_and_Masses)

A belief that white doctors are conspiring to harm blacks causes differences in the health and life-spans of whites versus blacks:

“Despite advances regarding access to care and overall treatment, medical mistrust remains an important factor regarding clinical research participation as well as prevention/treatment-seeking behaviors among African American women.” ( Medical Mistrust, HIV-Related Conspiracy Beliefs, and The Need for Cognitive Closure among Urban-Residing African American for Cognitive Closure among Urban-Residing African American Women: An Exploratory Study Women: An Exploratory Study , Jennifer Rae Myers PhD , Howard University, Kelsey Ball PhD , Howard University , Sharlene L. Jeffers MA , Howard University; Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice, Valume 11, Issue 4, Article 8, https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1832&context=jhdrp )

Some will point to incidents like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study as an explanation for black mistrust of medicine. Using this one incident as the basis for throwing out all of medical science would represent an error in logic. It is the fallacy of hasty generalization. ( https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/logic_in_argumentative_writing/fallacies.html ) If black people are not seeking the assistance of doctors because of this belief, then it is another cultural failing. They need to understand that the bad actions of some doctors, especially when they are government bureaucrats,  cannot be generalized to all of medical science. This hasty generalization is another example of how black methods of thinking need to be improved.

Furthermore, even if there had been dozens of such past incidents like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, of particular doctors violating their Hippocratic oaths to perform unethical experiments on black people, this would not justify medical mistrust. Medical science, as such, does not discriminate against black people. It is a recognition of the laws of nature, applied to human health and well-being. There is nothing fundamental to medical science as such that makes it “anti-black” or “pro-white”, anymore than the laws of physics, mathematics, or biology favor a particular group of people. All such incidents indicate is a need for better laws when it comes to issues like consent to medical experimentation, and, more fundamentally, for the government to get out of science, and leave it to the private sector.

If black people believe a past incident like Tuskegee is reason not to seek medical treatment, then they are mistaken, and need to be convinced to abandon this bad cultural trait.

Black Parenting Differences:

In the realm of parenting, there are differences between American blacks and whites that also tend to result in bad outcomes for black children. Black parents are more likely to use corporal punishment on their children. 59% of blacks spank 0-9 year olds, versus 46% of whites. (“Corporal Punishment: Current Rates from a National Survey”, David Finkelhor, Heather Turner, Brittany Kaye Wormuth, Jennifer Vanderminden, Sherry Hamby,  Journal of Child and Family Studies,  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01426-4 http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/CV358%20-%20Published%202019.pdf)

Corporal punishment is generally believed to be associated with psychological and developmental problems in children. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17874924/ )

What Is “To Blame” for The State of Black Culture? (It Doesn’t Change What Needs to Occur)

These three instances of cultural differences between blacks and whites leading to negative outcomes for blacks are just a small sampling. They indicate fundamental differences in methods of thinking between blacks and whites, and help to explain why American blacks are behind whites in terms of wealth and well-being. They point to areas of black culture that need to be changed or modified, if blacks are to have any chance of achieving the success of the average white American.

Leftists will tend to say white Americans are at fault for the cultural state of black Americans. They will cite slavery and “Jim Crow” laws. I disagree, but this debate is irrelevant to this discussion. The point is, regardless of who, or what, is to “blame”, black culture is inferior, and needs to be changed. A debate about why black Americans tend to be more superstitious, and to believe in conspiracy theories, is more about the causation and origin of these ideas. The left tends to say that these beliefs originate in the plantation system of the antebellum South. (I think they mostly originate in the black American’s African roots.) But, that historical debate has little to do with the fact that black Americans, to a larger extent, do hold these bad patterns of thinking and beliefs, and it makes them poorer as a result. It doesn’t change the fact that many American blacks need to check their premises, and adopt better ideas for living in the here and now.

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Evidence of Pre-Columbian Violence In The Americas

In college, I got into a debate at the dining hall with another student. I don’t remember what started the debate, and I’m sure it was quite “free-wheeling”, covering many topics.  I was already stridently pro-Capitalist and I had been reading Ayn Rand for several years by that point. During the debate, I mentioned the fact that the Aztecs has practiced human sacrifice. My “liberal” debating opponent said he didn’t believe this happened. I was so shocked by his denial of this historical fact that I think I discontinued the debate soon after. This occurred around 1995.

I have recently discovered that there were many in the academic community that did deny that the Aztecs ever engaged in ritual murder. They said such evidence came from accounts by Spanish conquerors. They claimed that the Spaniards had reason to lie, because it justified their settling of Mexico, Central America, and South America.

Leftists and academics operated under the assumption that primitive cultures were largely peaceful and non-violent. This attitude probably has its origins in Rousseau and Karl Marx. (Marx and Engels believed in a prehistoric “golden age” of primitive communism. Warfare for Marx/Engels was a byproduct of “capitalistic exploitation”.)

Unfortunately for them, the archeological facts are increasingly painting a different, violent, picture of pre-Columbian America. Violence seems to have been common throughout North and South America, long before the white man arrived.

Aztec and Mayan  Ritual Murder-Cannibalism

“When the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men arrived in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in 1521, they described witnessing a grisly ceremony. Aztec priests, using razor-sharp obsidian blades, sliced open the chests of sacrificial victims and offered their still-beating hearts to the gods. They then tossed the victims’ lifeless bodies down the steps of the towering Templo Mayor…

… Reading these accounts hundreds of years later, many historians dismissed the 16th-century reports as wildly exaggerated propaganda meant to justify the murder of Aztec emperor Moctezuma, the ruthless destruction of Tenochtitlán and the enslavement of its people. But in 2015 and 2018, archeologists working at the Templo Mayor excavation site in Mexico City discovered proof of widespread human sacrifice among the Aztecs—none other than the very skull towers and skull racks that conquistadors had described in their accounts.” https://www.history.com/news/aztec-human-sacrifice-religion

“Children were said to be frequent victims, in part because they were considered pure and unspoiled…. ‘It was considered a good omen if they cried a lot at the time of sacrifice,’ which was probably done by slitting their throats, Roman Berrelleza said.”  https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jan-23-adfg-sacrifice23-story.html

“The Maya, whose culture peaked farther east about 400 years before the Aztecs founded Mexico City in 1325, had a similar taste for sacrifice, Harvard University anthropologist David Stuart wrote in a 2003 article.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jan-23-adfg-sacrifice23-story.html

“The dig turned up other clues to support descriptions of sacrifices in the Magliabecchi codex, a pictorial account painted between 1600 and 1650 that includes human body parts stuffed into cooking dishes, and people sitting around eating, as the god of death looks on.

‘We have found cooking dishes just like that,’ said archeologist Luis Manuel Gamboa.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jan-23-adfg-sacrifice23-story.html

Mass-torture And Murder At Sacred Ridge Colorado Around 800 A.D.

“The bones that Osterholtz saw showed evidence of broken ankles, used to hobble the victims, beatings of the soles of the feet that were so severe the bone peeled away, and crushing and scraping to the top of the feet.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archeologists-find-evidence-torture-1200-year-old-massacre-180951922/

“More than a massacre, the scene at Sacred Ridge betrayed evidence of at least 33 people, men and women alike, having been not only butchered and burned, but, according to new research — also tortured.” http://westerndigs.org/evidence-of-hobbling-torture-discovered-at-ancient-massacre-site-in-colorado/

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Anasazi Mass Murder, Scalping, and Cannibalism In The 13th Century

“By 1993, Kuckelman’s crew had concluded that they were excavating the site of a major massacre. Though they dug only 5 percent of the pueblo, they identified the remains of at least 41 individuals, all of whom probably died violently. ‘Evidently,’ Kuckelman told me, ‘the massacre ended the occupation of Castle Rock.’

More recently, the excavators at Castle Rock recognized that some of the dead had been cannibalized. They also found evidence of scalping, decapitation and ‘face removing’—a practice that may have turned the victim’s head into a deboned portable trophy.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/

Evidence of wide-spread cannibalism

“Suspicions of Anasazi cannibalism were first raised in the late 19th century, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that a handful of physical anthropologists, including Christy Turner of Arizona State University, really pushed the argument. Turner’s 1999 book, Man Corn, documents evidence of 76 different cases of prehistoric cannibalism in the Southwest that he uncovered during more than 30 years of research. Turner developed six criteria for detecting cannibalism from bones: the breaking of long bones to get at marrow, cut marks on bones made by stone knives, the burning of bones, ‘anvil abrasions’ resulting from placing a bone on a rock and pounding it with another rock, the pulverizing of vertebrae, and ‘pot polishing’—a sheen left on bones when they are boiled for a long time in a clay vessel. To strengthen his argument, Turner refuses to attribute the damage on a given set of bones to cannibalism unless all six criteria are met.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/

Evidence of Human Remains In Human Feces Increases Probability of Anasazi Cannibalism

“Predictably, Turner’s claims aroused controversy. Many of today’s Pueblo Indians were deeply offended by the allegations, as were a number of Anglo archaeologists and anthropologists who saw the assertions as exaggerated and part of a pattern of condescension toward Native Americans…. Kurt Dongoske, an Anglo archaeologist who works for the Hopi, told me in 1994, ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can’t prove cannibalism until you actually find human remains in human coprolite [fossilized excrement].’” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/

“A few years later, University of Colorado biochemist Richard Marlar and his team did just that. At an Anasazi site in southwestern Colorado called CowboyWash, excavators found three pit houses—semi-subterranean dwellings—whose floors were littered with the disarticulated skeletons of seven victims. The bones seemed to bear most of Christy Turner’s hallmarks of cannibalism. The team also found coprolite in one of the pit houses. In a study published in Nature in 2000, Marlar and his colleagues reported the presence in the coprolite of a human protein called myoglobin, which occurs only in human muscle tissue. Its presence could have resulted only from the consumption of human flesh.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/

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Massacre of Men, Women, and Children In Southeast Utah 2,000 Years Ago

“Nearly a hundred skeletons buried in a cave in southeast Utah offer grisly evidence that ancient Americans waged war on each other as much as 2,000 years ago, according to new research.

Dozens of bodies, dating from the first century CE, bear clear signs of hand-to-hand combat: skulls crushed as if by cudgels; limbs broken at the time of death; and, most damning, weapons still lodged in the back, breast and pelvic bones of some victims — including stone points, bone awls, and knives made of obsidian glass.

Signs of violence were evident in 58 of the approximately 90 bodies found in the cave. Most of the victims were men, but at least 16 women were also found among the dead, as well as nearly 20 children, some as young as three months old.” http://westerndigs.org/skeletons-in-utah-cave-are-victims-of-prehistoric-war-study-says/

Did The Violence Occur Over a Long Period of Time?- Maybe, But Evidence Seems to Say No

“The carnage found in Cave 7 could only be explained, Wetherill concluded, by the ‘sudden and violent destruction of a community by battle or massacre.’

And this interpretation held for more than a century, until 2012, when radiocarbon dating of some of the bones from the cave showed that the burials actually spanned many centuries — from the first century CE to the early 300s — suggesting that the dead represented several, smaller conflicts over time.

Now, a new analysis of the Cave 7 remains finds that, while the dates do cover a range, the victims of violence in particular appear to date from the same period, intimating that they’re evidence of a ‘single-event mass killing.’”

http://westerndigs.org/skeletons-in-utah-cave-are-victims-of-prehistoric-war-study-says/

 

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Mass-Murder In South-Central South Dakota around 1325 A.D.

“At Crow Creek, a large Initial Coalescent village in South Dakota with a terminal occupation around  A.D. 1325,2such extrapolation is unnecessary (Willey,1990; Willey and Emerson, 1993; Zimmerman and Bradley, 1993; Zimmerman et al., 1981). Here, a mass deposit containing the remains of a minimum of 486men, women, and children was discovered in 1978 in a fortification ditch that par-tially surrounded the entrenched village. Most of these bodies had been mutilated, and many showed signs of exposure before interment. At least 89% of 415 identified frontal bones had cut marks indicative of scalping, and 41% of 101 identified skulls had round or ellipsoid depression fractures from round and axe like club-bing implements. Decapitation and possible tongue removal by humans also was evident by anatomical placement of cut marks on occipital bones, cervical verte-brae, and mandibles. Hands and feet may also have been purposefully removed, although carnivore damage also suggests scavenger activity. Isolated bones and body parts in various other contexts (Willey, 1990; Willey and Emerson, 1993),as well as burning of all identified structures (Bamforth, 1994), support the anni-hilative intent of the attack. However, a pronounced bias against 15–24 year old females, as well as the act of burial itself, suggests that some people may have survived through capture or escape (Willey, 1990; Willey and Emerson, 1993).In scale, the Crow Creek massacre is unparalleled anywhere in prehistoric North America, except possibly that at the broadly contemporaneous center at Casas Grandes described above.” (“The Archaeology of War: A North American Perspective” by Patricia M. Lambert, Pg. 225; Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 10, No. 3, September 2002 )

https://courses.washington.edu/war101/readings/Lambert–archy%20of%20N%20Am%20warfare.pdf

Another Apparent Academic Dissertation About this Event, Which Notes that 60% of This Tribe Was killed:

“The major findings can be summarized as follows: At least 486 Arikara were buried, that number probably constituting roughly 60 percent of the village inhabitants.” https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268790968.pdf

This would probably be considered “genocide” today.

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Evidence of Warfare in California/Western Great Basin

“Injuries from projectile weapons also have a long history of occurrence in this  region,  first  appearing  in  the  fifth  millennium B.C.  Identified  based  on  the presence of stone or bone spear, dart, and arrow points embedded in bone, bone scars  attributed  to  these  projectiles,  or  projectiles  found  lodged  in  body  cavities,  projectile  injuries  are  more  common  in  males  than  females  overall  (3:1) and tend to affect those between the ages of 18 and 40 years. Victims are relatively uncommon in samples antedating A.D. 600, ranging in frequency from about0 to 5% (Lambert, 1994). Projectile injuries are much more frequent in samples dating between A.D. 580 and 1380 (Lambert, 1994, 1997; Lambert and Walker,1991; Walker and Lambert, 1989), affecting 10% (39/402) of the sample from this time period in frequencies ranging from 0 to 22% for individual sites (Lambert,1994). Although clustering within and among graves is present (Lambert, 1994,pp. 141–147), mass graves are rare, suggesting constant but small-scale forms of engagement that nonetheless resulted in a high death toll over time (Lambert, 1994;see also discussions in Milner, 1999; Milneret al., 1991).” (“The Archaeology of War: A North American Perspective” by Patricia M. Lambert, Pg. 217-218; Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 10, No. 3, September 2002 )

https://courses.washington.edu/war101/readings/Lambert–archy%20of%20N%20Am%20warfare.pdf

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Why do I bring this up? Two reasons:

(1) It puts to rest the Marxist “Multiculturalist” notion that somehow the aboriginal people of the Americas learned violence from Europeans. (Note that, in the case of the massacre in 1300’s South Dakota, scalping did occur prior to arrival of the white man.)

(2) Cultures can and should be changed. These cultures were objectively inferior to Western culture at the time, to say nothing of Western or “Modern” culture today. Individuals have rights to life and liberty. Cultures that ignore those rights can and should be changed or done away with.

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