zenpundit.com

A VOICE OF REASON ON IMMIGRATION

One of my older blogospheric associates, TM Lutas had some sage observations on immigration:

“Assimilation is the process of “clearing the job queue”. The immigrants of today are tomorrows’ citizens most capable and most inclined to help out with assimilation because they’ve gone through the process. It’s not something you can really demand because this sort of thing is true charity work. Few people are actually paid to help others learn english, find a job, navigate the political, economic, and social system that is the USA. Most of the people who do it do so part time, often unconsciously.

Instead, what I find are posturing and falsity up and down the entire range of mainstream debate. Restrictionists don’t want to look to closely at our ability to absorb new immigrants because they’re afraid that the numbers are going to be higher than they’d like to satisfy their interests. The free borders crowd doesn’t want to look at assimilation either. The multiculturalists don’t believe in assimilation at all while others in that camp are too afraid that the numbers will come out as being too low to further their interests.”

Check out the questions that should be asked.

Dan of tdaxp emphatically agrees.

BELATED RESPONSE: “8 RANDOM FACTS MEME” GAME

Nonpartisan at ProgressiveHistorians deigned to tag me with this viral post while I was away. Here are the rules:

“Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.

Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged“

Now for the random facts regarding me:

8. I’ll drive many extra miles for a good Italian beef sandwich with hot peppers.

7. I’m a crack shot with a rifle; pretty fair with a pistol. Poor with a shotgun.

6. My first car as a teenager – a 1979 Chrysler Cordoba with ” real Corinthian leather” – had an engine that sporadically caught fire. Red tape served as a brake light cover.

5. I now have two dogs after long vowing to never have any. One of them is a furry jerk, but my Firstborn loves the dog, so we’ve kept it.

4. I once had a conversation with William Rehnquist about the French Revolution.

3. Came close to meeting Mikhail Gorbachev once but too many people were milling about. He’s shorter than you expect.

2. You know that line that runs across the width of your palm ? The one that fortune tellers read? I ripped that open back in college while deadlifting 500 lbs for the first time.

1. I sing like a cross between a tomcat and a dying whale.

I officially tag the following bloggers:

CKR
Younghusband
Dave
eerie
Lexington Green
Subadei
Kobayashi Maru
Dr. Dan

Good luck!

RECOMMENDED READING

Curzon has a neat two-parter up, “Failed States, Part 1:Best And Worst “and” Part 2:How Instability Spreads“.

Steve DeAngelis expands on the innovation/creativity thread ( I’m falling behind!!!) with “The Medici Effect and New Design“

At TCS, James H. Joyner, Jr interviews John Robb about Brave New War .

Complexity and Social Networks Blog offers two good ones, “Social-network sites give businesses ideas for new collaboration” and “Bits, Bullets, and the Modern State“.

Dr. Frans Osinga at DNI – “On Boyd, Bin Laden, and Fourth Generation Warfare as String Theory” (PDF). The good Colonel Osinga is a serious contender for the ultimate mil theory championship with that title.

Scientific American on the neuroscience of irrational economic decision-making and “The Roots Of Punishment“.

Kent’s Imperative on “Politicization and the leak culture“.

That’s it!

BREZHNEVIAN IRAN

The Soviet Khameini ?

Dr. Barnett has often used the analogy of the Soviet Union under the long rule of Leonid Brezhnev to describe the current Iranian regime:

“This article aptly captures what I saw similarly in the USSR in the summer of 1985: most people simply opt out. They’ve figured out how to make their private lives decent through a thriving black market and off-line alternative lifestyle and in their public lives they pretend to obey so the mullahs can pretend to rule.

Then watch the real change begin.”

I’m not up to date on the details of the Iranian economy, which is ( at a minimum) riven by underemployment, a youth demographic bulge, systemic corruption and underinvestment in critical sectors. Chances are, the Iranian economy, despite it’s problems and governmental mismanagement, have not reached the craptacular proportions of decreptitude that prevailed prior to the Soviet implosion. Nevertheless, some of the Soviet-Iranian parallels are striking:

Highly factionalized, undemocratic, leadership
Trend toward gerontocratic ruling class
Opaque decision-making process for strategic problems
Power is both centralized in government hands yet diffused at top levels, creating paralysis
Increasing reliance upon (and expansion of) paramilitary security forces to secure rule
Tightening of political censorship and “public morals” campaigns to appease ideological hardliners
Public alienation from and cynicism toward official state ideology
Rising nationalism separate from state ideology that both supports and undermines the regime
Rampant corruption at all levels of society
Diplomatic isolation
Dual centers of power in foreign affairs
Ideological hardliners in key positions to control security services rather than pragmatists
Critical economic questions are repeatedly ignored in favor of factional interests or ideological concerns
Increasing reliance on raw material commodity exports for government revenue

I’d be interested to know how Iranian towns and cities in the interior compare to Teheran in terms of services, material goods, poverty and like indicators.

TWITTER….TWITTER

At the behest of Critt, I’m now on twitter as a complement to the blog. Sean and Dan are with me so at least I’m not out there shouting into the wind.

I’ll give twitter a fair trial. The geek world, of which I claim no membership in due to technical incompetence and sheer lack of time to fully investigate, seems to be very excited about this app ( though not everybody). Rick Klau (previous link) called it “micro blogging” which I think is probably a sustainable, cognitive format for holding attention, moreso than “hey…I’m going to take a shower now” type messages, which would become a tyranny of the mundane once the novelty of using twitter wears off.

We get a mental “charge” or arousal from connectivity with another personwith the social networking aspect but without some kind of interesting content to sustain the connection, our attention is apt to wander.