Best Free Fonts

For a lighter change of pace, check out the best Free Fonts available on the Web. I've tried them with good results. The prior post was written in Vollkorn, from Friedrich Althausen and it is simply beautiful. Containing pretty much everything you'd need in terms of glphys, kerning pairs, accented characters (naturally for a German) and special characters, it reads delightfully on my screen in Ubuntu 10.4 Linux and Abiword. This post is written in Antykwa Poltawskiego, which is a revival of a Polish font used in the Twenties and Thirties done originally by the designer of that last name, and revived by the gifted Januz Marian Nowacki. It too looks beautiful, link here.


The first link, here, will get you to URW free versions of Palatino (done by the incomparable Hermann Zapf, yes the guy behind Zapf Chancery), as well as Goudy versions, Bembo (called Cardo), and of course (at the URW link) Garamond. One of the more hopeful things is the enthusiasm by type designers for reviving and preserving the old type faces, particularly those of the Renaissance and early printing, as well as "National Fonts" that preserve the unique smallness and locality of the nations they represent.

Vollkorn is beautiful, but retains enough of the German "Blackletter" aka Gothic/Schwabacher character to be interesting, while still highly readable. Poltawskiego looks like it came off a book from 1928, and is quite beautiful in a Beaux Arts Way.

Pride in the greatness of European heritage is not yet entirely dead. Against the Occupy people literally pooping at St. Paul's Cathedral is the enthusiasm of middle aged, middle class men for reviving the great type faces of the past. Heck one man even wrote a book about it, even if he does spend far too much time lauding Barack Obama in a way unbecoming for an ostensibly straight man.

Often it is the little things that tell you much about a person, or a society. This is one thing that is quite hopeful.

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The Sadness, American and British Versions

For all of the Twilight movie frenzy, with Twilight Moms and tweens camped out, and "You Go Girl" positivism from Oprah, every White woman's Black Best Friend(tm), women in today's society are beset with sadness. For they have very little to be happy about. The Huffington Post has an article about women divorcing in their twenties. The Daily Mail has an article about women drinking themselves into oblivion. Both reflect a cruel irony.



In no place or time, have women had more choices, more wealth, more power, and more opportunities to be whatever they want to be. To decide for themselves what their lives will be. And in no time, place, or society have women been left to themselves entirely, without guidance, help, or advice on what real life boundaries will limit their choices. You might even argue that women have only one fleeting chance, often, at happiness, and can see it go by without even realizing it. This is why vampires are so popular, real life men disappoint them, and like the male geeks retreating into dreams of hot Vulcan or other Alien babes, women retreat into a fantasy of hunky dominant, violent guys fighting over them and for them. But the reality is sad. Above all else.

The Daily Mail piece has such things as:

Midnight on St Mary Street in Cardiff and everything is exactly as expected. Half a dozen young women slump in a gutter, men urinate outside a health-food shop and, as hordes stagger between nightclubs, someone lifts up a blow-up doll with a sex toy protruding out of it.

The street smells of urine and lager, police struggle  to break up a fight outside the Walkabout bar and a paramedic bundles a comatose girl on to a wheelchair. But it's a quiet night for 20-year-old Naomi Jenkins. She has 'only' drunk three shots of peach schnapps, cider and three shots of Jagermeister (during a drinking game called I Have Never) and still feels 'a bit sober'. Her friend Hannah Freeman, 19, was punched in a fight and stumbles about swearing and searching for a bathroom.

'We only do embarrassing things when we're really drunk,' Naomi says. 'I kiss random men in the street and Hannah has had sex behind a chicken coop.' She screams with laughter as Hannah lurches unsteadily in the stairwell of Charleston Bar and Grill on Caroline Street (known locally as Chip Alley) and unashamedly urinates in front of us. 

Amazingly, none of the 80-strong throng of passers-by seems to notice –or perhaps care. Hannah rearranges her minuscule dress, steps over her own urine, shouts 'f*** off' and the pair stumble back to Walkabout. It's only midnight, after all.

Obviously, kissing random men in the street, and having sex behind a chicken coop, are not the antics of happy women. Nor is the massive amounts of alcohol needed to lower inhibitions to engage in these acts in the first place. What's wrong, is that modern media gives women access to all sorts of hot, hunky, dominant Alpha men, and even an only middling attractive girl can often gain sex from an Alpha. But not commitment. [See Monica Lewinsky.] Even the most beautiful women cannot get faithfulness, see Elin Nordgren and Tiger Woods, or Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant.


In days prior to the mass media attaining its critical mass (and just as crucially, its orientation almost exclusively to female consumers), women might occasionally brush past a hot, hunky Alpha male. But they would have little interaction with him. Now, particularly in female-dominated professions such as public relations, infotainment aka journalism, corporate finance, human resources, and such, women have much closer access to Alpha males. Think Monica Lewinsky again or the late Chandra Levy. Even more of course can see them every night on TV, or at the movies, or in the latest book. There's even a new category at Barnes and Noble (not making this up, nope) "Teen Paranormal Romance."


None of this of course makes women any happier. Indeed the fatness epidemic amongst British women is likely the substitution of food for love.

But as I found out on the streets of Cardiff after midnight, many of these women are –by day at least –well qualified pillars of the community. Among them I met teachers, nurses, occupational therapists, personnel professionals and full-time mothers, all determined to shake off responsibility and have fun in the only way they know how. By getting 'smashed'.

Every week, the ritual is the same: Groups of between four and six girls congregate to dress up and competitively drink bottles of cheap wine or sickly shots. Competition ramps up over who can wear the tiniest mini-dress, the highest heels or the reddest lipstick. Drinking carries on during the bus ride to Cardiff (many young women travel from the surrounding Valleys) and continues in bars between 9pm and 11pm, or until they feel bold enough to dance.

Condom in purse and telephone number for a pre-booked 3am taxi in handbag, they stagger between nightclubs. The ritual continues long into the morning when, dulled by hangovers, they congregate for McDonald's or fried breakfasts to giggle about the drunken 'fun'.
…
One rather more honest 18-year-old from Caerphilly admits that she decides what to wear depending on whether she is on the prowl for a partner. Tonight –in a transparent Primark blouse and black bra –she undoubtedly is. 'I wouldn't wear this if I had a boyfriend. He'd be like, “You ain't wearing that,” ' she says.

The desperate search for sex, with only the most guido-esque able to apply, is characteristic of a society that does not lay out, starkly and honestly, the choices and consequences for women, directly, starting in the teen years. Now for many, the way is clear: Snooki. Gym-Tan-Laundry, is the mantra, with the unspoken need to get out there, as drunk as possible, to have a hook-up and some sort of human connection. That is not happiness. Just look at the pictures.

Meanwhile, US women are not happy either.

A previous relationship left them heartbroken. They say you never really get over your first love. Tara, a 26 year-old freelance writer from North Carolina admitted during our interview, "I didn't think I would ever fall in love again so I figured it didn't matter who I married."

I can relate. Breaking up with my college boyfriend left me devastated. He wasn't just my first serious relationship; he produced the beats to my heart for years. I never thought anyone could ever make me feel that way again, so I settled for the memories and pledged my honor to someone with whom -- wait for it -- I was in a convenient relationship.

Madison also attributes a past heartbreak as a reason why she became Mrs. to Mr. Wrong. After being told over the phone by her first fiancé, "I have cancer and can never see you again," Madison had an understandably hard time trusting love. She married her ex-husband because "We were both financially stable and could have a good life. I loved him, but I'm not sure about actually being in love with him. I felt that I would never be hurt by him as long as I didn't give my whole heart."

"Celebrating" Divorce in your twenties is a coping mechanism. At best. Many simply never got over the hot, dominant Alpha male they could not keep.Because no one told them they were not hot enough, and young enough (compared to the guy) to keep him. That say, Annette Benning can keep her hot, dominant Alpha male because she's about thirty years younger than he is. That at best, even a beautiful woman the same age as a dominant, Alpha male producing the beats to her hearts, can only keep him for a moment.

Those unable to find a partner, tend to use food for love. Just look at any old picture of women in the 1940's or 1950's, particularly after wartime rationing ended. You won't see lots of fat girls or guys. Part of that is the "diversity tax" in which people retreat to the suburbs via private auto, or the internet, to avoid the inevitable crime that "diversity" brings. But a great deal of it relates to the atomization of society that does not any longer reliably match young men with young women. Everyone is on their own. With only the guidance of TV, movies, books, and popular celebrities to help advise on their love-lives. Which is to say, nothing at all helpful and positively harmful influences.

Most modern women in the US and the UK are profoundly unhappy. You don't see scenes like the above, or books "celebrating" what is a miserable failure — divorce in one's twenties, when it pretty much guarantees (for women) a much poorer position in the mating/marriage market.

I do not believe it is reasonable or even possible to restrict women's absolute and complete freedom to choose their life and their sex partners. Women however desperately need an honest, up-front, and direct guidance from other women (men will simply be ignored of course) about how choices early limit options later. Chase Alphas, and you'll be disappointed if you are not ready to be cheated upon. That is true for even the most beautiful of women, and the ordinary women won't even be more than a disposable object. In an endless choice, a menu of constant freedom, it becomes even more critical to select a guy for character and reliability, rather than pure sexiness. Choosing sexy guys carries with it, a fairly large cost for women. Cheating, unfaithfulness, risk of disease. But choosing a guy they have no feelings for sexually either is a one way trip to unhappy-ville, sneaking out to drink and hook-up with strangers in a desperate attempt to feel sexy in turn.

Society today is fundamentally dishonest with women, and cheats them out of a honest choice. It lies and says that freedom comes with no strings (it does). Society does not tell women that nearly unlimited freedom also means a very thin tightrope to find romantic happiness. That all that sexual liberation is a two edged sword, to be worthy of a guy they find attractive, they'll have to be significantly younger, with relatively few partners, be pretty, fit, thin, and with a pleasing personality. All things they cannot do much about except on the margins (eat healthy, exercise, refrain from casual hook-ups).

Society also lies in that very few women are aware of the risks of falling deeply for an Alpha — few other guys will compare. This is particularly true for the first guy, who remains perhaps the only guy in her heart. Not fun if he's with someone else.

It is not that women are choosing badly, though mostly they are. Rather, it is that women are being lied to, by a media-infotainment complex that feeds the worst delusions instead of the noblest instincts of women. Imagine a world where every guy watches endless Star Trek episodes featuring hot Borg Babes and Vulcan women fighting over some useless geek. That flipped on the gender, is the toxic environment women have to endure, and fight against every day, intellectually and emotionally.

The inevitable disappointment that most women endure, leads to over-eating to find love in food, partly, or binge drinking and useless hook-ups. Is Snooki happy? I think not. Nor do the women in the photos look happy. The road to happiness (and incidentally, women feeling positive not negative towards the West, and its civilization,and its people) requires honesty. About what a world of near total sexual and individual freedom requires. Which in turn is nothing less than constant vigilance and care, lest a woman's one chance at happiness slip away, without her even knowing it.

For the flip-side is, few men desired at all by any attractive women at all, needs to compromise. For many, a life of casual sex, and slacking will do just fine.

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Pinker's Violence Fantasy: the Truth About War and Violence in the Post Cold War Age

The WSJ's article by Steven Pinker Why Violence is Vanishing illustrates the desperate nature of Liberals and the Modern Western Society (which is profoundly Liberal in the modern, PC sense). Wanting desperately to believe that there is no more reason to fight, sacrifice, and empower nasty and dangerous men to protect us, and build nasty and dangerous weapons, the hope is that by clapping real hard for fairies, ala Peter Pan, we can believe and make it so.


Pinker notes, accurately enough, that the growth of agricultural states and enforcement technology (swords, spears, arrows, etc.) allowed centralizing monarchs to cut down hunter-gatherer personal violence which was horrendous and daily. Enlightenment Monarchs in Europe further cut down violence that was constant and grinding by eradicating banditry, enforcing laws, and promoting safety. This is why native European martial arts and weaponry, including staff fighting, knife fighting, bludgeon fighting, and unarmed combat disappeared save Savate in Marseilles, an ultra-violent port that kept that art alive until the Twentieth Century turned it into a sport. All of this is true.

But what Pinker does not contemplate, is how violence particularly in Europe and China was compressed. True Renaissance peoples did not slaughter each other personally as Dark Ages people did, let along hunter gatherers … most of the time. But a third of German speakers were killed in the Thirty Years War 1618-1648 and the terms Magdeburg Quarter entered the terminology of Europe. In China, the Taiping Rebellion wiped out 20 million people between 1850 and 1864.

Technology and new social orders tended to suppress day to day violence. Neighbor did not stick a spear into neighbor, because he had run off with a daughter or wife. Disputes were adjudicated by the state, even in Aztec Mexico. Bernal Diaz Del Castillo in his "Conquest of Mexico" first-hand account notes how Montezuma spent hours every day listening to people who came before him to judge disputes, this from a people who practiced ritual human sacrifice and cannibalism (as did, notes Diaz del Castillo, all their neighbors and the allies of the Spanish).

BUT … when the state loses control, or warfare becomes "total" with new weaponry that makes old orders obsolete, as in the 1600's, or again in the 1940's, horror emerges. Ordinary Japanese men, often under strict orders from high commanders NOT to engage in rape, pillage and murder, and facing an advancing enemy, spent all their time doing so. The destruction of Manila as American forces advanced in contravention of the commanding officer's orders is one example. Done by men who would not have dreamed of ever doing that in Japan. The violence exacerbated by a civilian population accustomed to obeying orders and unable to offer any real resistance anyway.

Violence, by being so rare, becomes almost viral when it does break out, infecting people with horrific results. There is a scene in the otherwise tedious and boring movie "the Debt," where the villainous Nazi doctor says he knew they would succeed when Jews handed over their children. Von Wallenstein and Tilly were hardly nice men. But they would have found it inconceivable to boast of such a thing, because for them, violence was a path to glory. The idea, of killing children as a means to become a famous and accomplished man would have seemed like … madness. One only became famous by fighting a powerful foe that could certainly destroy you. There was nothing to be found of glory in killing children, old men, women, and defenseless men. Though certainly they did that, on attacks on towns, their views of violence was that their glory came in open battle against a foe well able to defeat them.

Now we come to the heart of Pinker's argument. Like the "War Nerd" Gary Brecher, Pinker believes that somehow humans have stopped becoming violent, and that war will no longer break out because, well dammit human nature changed. He hand-waves the wars and civil wars that have broken out since the end of the Cold War and nuclear duopoly, including the Iran-Iraq War in the twilight of the Cold War, the Central African Wars of 1998-Present (about ten million dead or so), the Sri Lankan Civil War, the constant wars in Sudan, Somalia, and Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Afghan War, 9/11 and the prospect for non-state violence not seen since the Treaty of Westphalia (growth of non-state militias). Pinker points to globalization and trade, ignoring that some societies are permanent losers in that unless they …

USE WAR TO CONQUER OTHER PEOPLES.

Look at Egypt. It cannot as Spengler/David P. Goldman notes, feed its people, manufacture anything worth buying, or produce literate people let alone engineers and other college graduates who are employable. All it has is War. The hope of conquering Israel, taking the Mediterranean gas fields, and then going on to conquer perhaps weak Italy, rich in resources, slaves, food, land, and without any meaningful defenses or even the will to defend itself.

Egypt, in order to survive without war, would have to deep six all of Islam, spend its time studying math and science not heaving their butts into the air five times a day, use the scientific method not something written in the Koran to figure out the world, teach their women to read and write, outlaw polygamy, give women equal rights, allow religious freedom and intellectual freedom, and promote a national concept of hard work and studying. Egypt would have to copy … China. And they cannot even be China, much less South Korea, Japan, or Finland. All that would destroy nearly everything that makes Egyptian society. The same goes for nearly all of the Muslim world, which would have to cease being Muslim if it is to eat, unless it makes war.

What Pinker does not realize, is that the AK-47, easy GPS, nuclear weapons from Pakistan, Iran, China, and so on, allow a vast equalization. Pakistan can cow the US, attacking our embassy in Kabul according to Admiral Mike Mullen in sworn Congressional Testimony, because they have nukes and we are afraid of them. The same is true for all those North African regimes. Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya cannot feed their people. But they can cross the Med in boats, come ashore in Italy, France, and Spain, and simply take over. Killing any who object. That's violence, and violent enslavement. Which awaits Europeans who have a toy/pretend military and no will to use even that.

An example of Pinker's blinkered, utopian views are below:

Another pacifying force has been commerce, a game in which everybody can win. As technological progress allows the exchange of goods and ideas over longer distances and among larger groups of trading partners, other people become more valuable alive than dead. They switch from being targets of demonization and dehumanization to potential partners in reciprocal altruism.
For example, though the relationship today between America and China is far from warm, we are unlikely to declare war on them or vice versa. Morality aside, they make too much of our stuff, and we owe them too much money.
A third peacemaker has been cosmopolitanism—the expansion of people's parochial little worlds through literacy, mobility, education, science, history, journalism and mass media. These forms of virtual reality can prompt people to take the perspective of people unlike themselves and to expand their circle of sympathy to embrace them.

The War Nerd has said the same thing, and much the same was said in … 1913. Britain and Germany simply traded too much with each other to go to War. This was also said in 1938, and of the US and Japan in 1940, which had considerable trade.

What neither the War Nerd nor Pinker really understand is how much of a loser globalization makes a lot of societies and people. Now Egypt, as Spengler notes, has to compete with China for food. As does, note, the US. The US can compete, because it is a richer society. Egypt cannot. So it is starve or war. Egypt will choose … war. Because the cost of War has gone down.

Most "loser societies" do not believe that they will pay any real price for War, and discount their enemies ability to match their "fighting spirit" and willingness to win. Advantages in jet planes or nukes are discounted, and perhaps not too unrealistically. Israel in 1973 had nukes, and Egypt still attacked it. Israel at one point faced annihilation by Egypt, and did not face nukes. If Israel did not use them, in its then greatest hour of need, would it ever? [Likely, not.]

Western societies are often, for the most part, unable to offer violence in any meaningful way. Save fantasy violence in movies, and the idea expressed in recent TV shows and movies that the public wants violence done on its behalf to be safe, no more 9/11's, but does not want to know how it was done or who did it. The violence is kept secret. No bodies in Afghanistan show, nor in Iraq now, though there are plenty. Still even less coverage of people killed by drone attacks in Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, tribal Pakistan, and rumored, Kenya, Tanzania, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.

Meanwhile "loser societies" remain immersed in violence. Violence in unimaginable and unreported ways permeate every inch of daily life, particularly in Muslim society and Latin American society. Santa Muerte or a thinly Catholicized Aztec Death-God, demanding human sacrifice, is rising, with people being tortured and killed over Twitter comments. Often the mass violence has no purpose save the satiating of the killers desires for murder and death. Given the widespread prevalence of human sacrifice and cannibalism that the Conquistadors found in Mexico (not just the Aztecs, EVERY TRIBE DID IT), you might argue that Mexico is reverting to pre-Columbian violent type.

Muslims have daily violence in their society on a deeply personal level, widespread, as well. Women are genitally mutilated, often honor killed, rape is done by judicial punishment, hanging and stoning to death for adultery is on the rise, child brides are increasing, and so is violence between Shia and Sunni, and against all non-Muslims unlucky enough to live in lands filled with Muslims in any number. This is the advantage, so Muslim thinkers and Mexican Drug cartel members alike, view versus the weak and soft West which is unable and unwilling to deal out violence except when it can massively pretend it is not.

Pinker and Brecher alike share in my view, a fundamental flaw by accepting the past as an absolute prediction of the future. They overestimate trade and cosmopolitanization. As Mark Steyn notes, the arrow of civilization does not go one way, women in Cairo in the graduating class of the University looked modern in 1959, and still fairly modern in dress in 1979. Today they are muffled in Burquas. Kabul in the 1950's had women in modern dress in record shops.

Most of the world's population lives in a place where people worship Santa Muerte, or the governments urge them to please on no account kill and eat Pygmies or Albinos for magic powers, or where women are honor killed because they talked to the wrong boy. These are places where commerce means only poverty, because now they must pay more for food and everything else, and they have nothing to sell. These are places where violence is a way of life, constant and casual, and where it is viewed as the best way to get ahead in life.

Globalization has hotwired these places right into Western civilization, and they are not being removed any time soon. Violence, and disturbing violence, are only going to increase. Why? Because the State is a joke, unable to stop violence any more (quick how many Flash Mobs have been crushed) and only able to send middle class people to jail for improperly filling their recycle trash bins. While all the while lacking any external measures to deal with violence except things done in secret and willingly ignored.

Pinker, and Brecher, are state of the art circa say, 1975. Today, they don't grasp that failing states all over the globe (particularly in the West where violence to suppress greater violence is not allowed against non-Whites, see the London riots) running hand in hand with moral pretensions, are easy pickings for failed societies that live in violence. For now, the great majority of Santa Muerte's violence stays South of the Border. That is unlikely to remain so, any more than Muslim violence will remain mostly outside of the West either.
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Addendum to Whiskey's Law

In Why The West Collapsed: Case Study Sweden, I proposed "Whiskey's Law" which states that the degree of Multiculturalism and PC in a society is directly related to the amount of equality between men and women, and particularly between men and women of the elites. That the greater the equality between the sexes, all other things being equal, the more loathing of the civilization, culture, heritage, race, religion, and so on will occur in the society. And the greater emphasis on Multiculturalism, PC, and in particular an attempt to import non-Western peoples. A society that has social superiority between (particularly younger) women and their male peers will therefore all other things being equal, will be plagued by PC and Multiculturalism. Naturally, as with all social science theories, this remains merely a theory, and subject to constant revision. In my view, however, any attempt to explain the collapse of the West into PC garbage, must fit the facts, and explain the variance, why some societies are more PC than others.


In the same way that Black society is worth studying, because Blacks collapsed much faster into illegitimacy than Hispanics, Whites, and Asians, so too are places like Sweden, or the United Kingdom. Any remedy that seeks to reverse say, illegitimacy will find far greater effectiveness if it can first understand why the Black nuclear family so rapidly ceased to exist, and why Asians have the lowest rate of illegitimacy among racial groups in the US. Whiskey's Law is only a theory, one I offer for testing and revision, to understand why PC and Multiculturalism is so strong in some places and not in others, and how to remedy the situation.

There are of course limits. Switzerland may have a greater social distance between men and women (women only got the vote over all Cantons in 1971), or it may be that direct democracy simply limits elites. It is however quite odd that elites in the West conspire in the "hi-lo" team-up as Steve Sailer noted, with the low part of the team-up being foreigners. A commenter from India noted that the elites in India have basically brushed off the middle class, noting they have hundreds of millions of votes from poor people, and thus don't have to listen to middle class concerns. But India did not see the need to import impoverished foreigners against their own people, nor has similar "hi-lo" team-ups in places like say, Thailand, or Portugal or Ireland or Hungary resulted in mass immigration, even when in some cases the amount of poor people is relatively low compared to the middle class. It seems odd that elites in the West would seek to import aliens in every way to their nations, given the overt threat to replacing them, which they themselves recognize. The famous quote in Sweden by a high ranking Socialist party member that when Muslims become the majority they will treat Swedes well. Who really believes that?

Other nations that have low amounts of PC and Multiculturalism may be reflecting direct democracy and limits on elites, rather than higher amounts of inequality socially between men and women. But it does seem quite odd that elites in places like Sweden loathe themselves and their nation, while in say, Japan the elites love Japan and all aspects of being Japanese. As do say, Italians and being Italian, even or especially among the elites. Italian elites as far as I know, don't go around disparaging Verdi or Da Vinci and saying they were nothing but trash for being "Dead White Men." Nevertheless the usefulness or not of "Whiskey's Law" remains in its power to describe and PREDICT what societies will be riven by self-hatred and thus PC and Multiculturalism, and which societies will be relatively free of it.

I must also point out that what (under Whiskey's Law) Western Women are seeking, and particularly Elite Western Women, is not a Hitlerian "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche" society, (children, kitchen, church) but one in which men are sexier. If most men are equal, socially, they need to be sexier in other areas. When men do things women say they want, like share household chores, change diapers, cook dinners, do the dishes, etc. they must be far sexier. If today's women's grandmothers were satisfied with men who were faithful, loyal, loving and dependable, and their mothers with men who were faithful, loyal, loving, dependable, and charming and intelligent, today's women demand men who are faithful, loyal, loving, dependable, charming, intelligent, and most of all SEXY!. George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo Di Caprio can afford to change diapers, or take care of kids, or be a "Kitchen Bitch" if they want to -- they're big time hot celebrity men who most of the female population wants to have sex with, they can afford it. Today's men, cannot, without an extra effort to become far sexier than they already are.

This accounts in my view, for the failure of the nuclear family in the West, seen first among Black people. Most men cannot be George Clooney, by definition. And being a sexy dominant A-hole who is also charming, in other words "Game" as defined by the various pickup artists, such as "Mystery," or Neil Strauss (aka "Style") or Roissy, is akin to becoming an accomplished martial artist. It takes massive dedication, constant practice, extended training, and astonishing amounts of discipline. Time that competes with all other demands.

Women when made equal to most men, don't want a return to social inequality at lower, previous levels. They do not want a return to being "barefoot and pregnant" in the kitchen. Indeed if you look at the movie "Bridesmaids" which plays on female fears of status and romance, the lead character is insecure because she's unemployed, suddenly, loses her boyfriend, and looks like nothing compared to a successful friend. Women want to keep their careers which mark them successful, competent, and important, outside romantic relationships. Women know, that they will not always be pretty (the error many women consistently make is overestimating their time that they will be pretty). They do not want, despite the popularity of Mad Men, and other projects mining that territory (correction, "Pan Am" is being shown on ABC, not NBC, "Playboy Club" is on NBC), to return to the days of female social inequality. Women in the West merely want sexier men. Sexy being defined as dominant, cocky, arrogant, amusing, always having the right words to say, and being desired by all other women around them.

The ability of men in the West to become what women want, that level of sexiness, is probably quite limited. A few pick up artists and their followers, if they practice diligently, can become that kind of man. Which women find quite satisfying. Probably more common will be the "Situation" type approach, the muscle-guido combination which is found in the site Hot Chicks With Douchebags. It probably does not matter which approach is taken, the recovery of the West hinges on women finding Western men sexy and therefore worthy of defense and admiration. If most men become like the Situation, well it does not matter in the short term, because then PC and Multiculturalism would die down. Most Western Women finding their men quite sexy, because now even if they were roughly equal in pay, status in the company, and so on, working alongside them in a cubicle next door, many women would want them. Therefore, they are by definition desirable. And thus, worthy of defense.

PC and Multiculturalism, therefore, as defined as part of "Whiskey's Law" is merely the overt disgust of most Western women particularly those in the elites with the non-sexy nature of the men who are mostly equal to them. If not outright inferior in social stature, a dweeby guy being inferior to a hot chick, even if the dweeby guy is a relatively high earning accountant and the hot chick works at a Starbucks. The way then to kill PC and Multiculturalism, if "Whiskey's Law" is at all an accurate model for explaining those phenomena, is to make most men far sexier. Thus erasing the reason for PC/Multiculturalism among (particularly) elite women.

Can the West be saved? I think yes, but it will not be saved by acts of bravery, it is sad that no one remembers or cares about 9/11 and the heroic sacrifices of the firemen and police that day, or the passengers who fought back on Flight 93. Women particularly in the elite do not lust after them. Instead of Special Ops fighters, firemen, cops, and ordinary men thrust into heroism, women lusted after sparkly gay vampires (Twilight) or more brutal kinds (Tru Blood). Justin Bieber and Robert Pattinson are objects of lust. Not firemen and cops.

Rather, the West will be saved by men like the Situation, or Roissy, or those who follow either path. To become sexy. Like it or not, the fundamentals of human nature still apply. Women will defend men they find desirable and sexy, no matter what they do. Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Bill Clinton, all behaved criminally or poorly, but women defend them because they are the big-shot big man dominant A-hole that most crave. [Not all women crave the A-hole, but enough do to make that behavior the dominant preference in women in the West.] No amount in justifiable pride in the considerable achievements of the West, which in total add up to far higher than any other civilization, will save the West. Women don't care about that any more than they find the ability of male nerds to create amazing technology sexy. Rather it is the social dominance by being attractive to the broadest range of women that has the only possibility of saving the West. One Pickup Artist or Douchebag at a time.
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Why Women Hate Nice Guys (and the Implications)

From Instapundit comes the link of 12 Reasons Women Can't Stand Nice Guys. Well, duh, nice guys are beta males. Which is another way of saying "un-sexy." American and Western society is completely and totally focused on providing the maximum of sexy men to most women. The only problem with this is that it provides no way to produce all the nice things women want, along with sexy men. A safe and secure environment? Nope. An expanding, growing economy? Nope. Ever advancing technology that makes food better and safer and cheaper, medical practices more life saving and life-enhancing, living better in every way? Nope.


Providing "sexy men" merely produces a fairly rapid fall into chaos, poverty, and violence. One need only look at how the Black community, which went from (per Juan Williams 2005 WSJ Father's Day op-ed) 24% illegitimacy in the early 1960's, to over 90% in the urban core and over 70% nationwide today. New Orleans in particular carries the shadow of former Black society. Building after building that housed Black Benevolent societies, Black associations of doctors, lawyers, accountants, and the like. New Orleans in Jelly Roll Morton's and Louis Armstrong's day (just listen to the former's Library of Congress Recordings, likely available at your public library and definitely on Amazon, they have been re-released, or the latter's painfully typed out, non-ghostwritten autobiography) had a Black society that worked. True, it was far more violent and chaotic than the matching White one, but it did function. Armstrong may have been placed in an orphanage when his drug and drink addicted mother could no longer care for him, and given a trumpet of a boy who died of tuberculosis (something Armstrong never forgot). But at least Armstrong was not on the streets, the orphanage and everything else run by Blacks for Blacks. White people provided nothing.

Today of course, all that is gone. And the White rates are estimated to be around 20% for the White middle class, and 40% for the White working class (below 4% for all Whites in the early 1960's). The Hispanic rate according to Heather McDonald at City Journal is over 50%.

Sexy men mean illegitimate children. They mean single motherhood, because the bad-boy things that make men sexy, make them totally uninterested and unable to provide for a single women (they are more interested in having the next sweet young thing, and can get them too!) Single motherhood of course, is a poverty factory. Maybe not if you're as good looking (and the son of a famous father) as Freddy Prinze Jr. Or the daughter of a College Professor, whose brothers are all lawyers and doctors (Eliza Dushku). But for those not on the upper one half of one percent of attractiveness or intelligence or both, or with the talent and physique of LeBron James, life as the child of a single mother is poor, violent, and hard. No matter how much welfare is thrown at the mothers and children.

Recently, Mike Huckabee criticized Natalee Portman's Oscar acceptance speech for glamorizing single motherhood. James Carville on CNN made the comment that in Huckabee's apology, he at least "realized" that government support is necessary for single mothers to avoid starvation and poverty. Carville of course did not get it, literally living in 1965.

A few single mothers can be amply and ably supported by a social welfare system that is not under financial pressure, from an ample middle class. A social welfare system under huge pressure from a Black underclass, an exodus of poor Mexicans (and significantly, their descendants), and a growing White working-underclass, is unsustainable.

Hispanic girls tend to start having kids at age 16, having nino after nino, until age 40 or so, with various bad boys. It might be very sexy. But it is not sustainable, because there just are not enough White middle class taxpayers able (much less willing) to pick up the tab. White (to some extent Asian, varying by community/culture/ethnic group) parents generally (mostly, not always) have kids they can afford. White women for the most part still (particularly in the middle class) have only the kids they can afford to have. Asking them, and even worse, their male counterparts to subsidize the family formation of Hispanic girls chasing bad boys at age 16 (and having kids they cannot afford) is simply impossible. There are too many single mothers needing subsidies, and too few taxpayers able to pay for them.

From the article on 12 Reasons Women Can't Stand Nice Guys, the consists of the following reasons:

1. Nice guys are too nice (translation: not sexy!


2. Nice guys don't take control and demand "respect" (translation: Are Not Socially Dominant A-holes with lots of other women


3. Nice guys are predictable (translation: not SEXY!


4. Nice guys don't need saving (translation: NOT SEXY!


5. Nice guys don't need to be fixed (translation: NOT NOT NOT! Sexy


6. Nice guys are genetically inferior and their sperm is unworthy (translation: Very, very, very, very, very un-sexy


7. Fear of intimacy (translation: NOT! Sexy!


8. Low self-esteem (translation: Not … sexy dammit!


9. Sex -- nice guys are not sexy! (no translation needed)


10. Charm, nice guys are not smooth talkers (translation: or, nice guys are not sexy!


11. Protection, bad boys are better protection because they are better fighters, doing it so much (translation: a guy beating the crap out of someone else, even a woman (see Rihanna) is sexy!

The article concludes:

Life is about balance. Most men fall into either the bad boy or the nice guy category. The ideal man is neither, but walks that fine line between the two. Until men learn how to do this, more often than not, women will choose the bad boy, until they realize that his bad qualities outweigh his good ones.

Or, perhaps we can turn that around:

Life is about balance. Most women fall into either the sexy stripper or the nice virginal girl category. The ideal woman is neither, but walks that fine line between the two. Until women learn how to do this, more often than not, men will choose (if they are sexy) to screw as many women as possible until they reach their late fifties at which point they'll marry their own Catherine Zeta-Jones, the rest will have occasional sex but find in the main, a used-up cougar to be inferior to a porn subscription. Regardless, women won't get quality men to marry them. And will be left with dregs whom if they do marry, they will resent as "kitchen bitches" and beta males.

There, all fixed!

The problem is that most women, even those of average attractiveness, can have sex with an Alpha male. Tiger Woods women, that of Jessie James, those of John Edwards, and so on, are not exactly Helen of Troy. Women over-estimate their beauty, and their beauty's duration, because they can be just another meaningless play-mate for an Alpha male with little discrimination.

Women find themselves getting old at 29:

Women consider themselves old at 29 – half the age of men who don’t feel over the hill until they are 58, according to a study.

A quarter of women say they felt old as soon as they spotted their first grey hairs.

In contrast men tend to think they are still young until they can no longer perform in the bedroom.

This is just another expression of desire for sexy men. Only the prettiest women can command the attention of the top sexiest men in any social setting. For most women, their looks start to fade fast in their twenties, and the fact of the hottest, bad boy men no longer noticing them can be a shock. Still, women tend to over-estimate how long they can play the field, and underestimate their chances of losing out by not making the best available choice sooner.

If the Duke F-List girl was at all representative, 13 partners in two years is not an extreme outlier. Needless to say, a girl with too many partners, all those bad boys, is a poor prospect for a wife, and any woman in her thirties is going to be fairly undesirable for any man with any options at all (this includes porn). [Women generally don't understand this, I explain below for them.]


Why is so many partners, and particularly bad boys, such a bad thing for a woman searching for a husband? Because the 90% of men who are not Alpha males (the sexy bad boys who can have almost any woman in their social circle) know fairly well that the most intense bonds, shared experiences, sexual pleasure, and memories will be with other men. At best, they are mere shadows of what was, and remains, in a woman's heart, at that age. Even the most beautiful woman in her thirties is less desirable therefore than a fairly inexperienced, un-baggage ridden average looking girl in her early twenties, or late teens. All the Botox, Pilates, Jillian Michaels workout videos, and Nautilus toned body won't change that fact. Only the most desperate, clueless, and lonely men will respond.

This is true even for widows and divorced women. The absent husband, no matter how badly he left, will always be the dominant man in the woman's heart and memories. Porn has the massive ability to substitute for what amounts to indifferent sex (even the most beautiful woman in her thirties loses her appeal, and lets face it Jane Average is not Jennifer Aniston at age 32) and emotionless coupling.

All the "man up" exhortations by writers like Kay Hymowitz can't force men to commit to women after they've chased their share of bad boys. Women can chase the bad boys all they want, but like everything, there is a cost.


Yes, it is true, about 90% of all middle class White guys are beta males. They are not sexy and exciting. They are neither bad boys in the mold of Russell Brand, nor George Clooney. News flash: About 90% of all Middle Class White women are not Jennifer Aniston, at age 40. Let alone beauties like Mila Kunis, or Brittany Snow. Asking about 90% of men to be something they are not is akin to asking 90% of all middle class White women to as beautiful as say, either Ashley Greene or Brittany Snow (to pick at random two Maxim cover-girls). Women's desire for sexy men is an unreasonable as men's desire for most women to look like Maxim cover-girls.

But women can make it, because they unlike most men have the asymmetric ability to sleep with the male equivalent of Brittany Snow (that would be the Russell Brands of the world). They just can't get those bad boys to marry them and support them.

The dynamic is complicated by both gender and racial spoils politics. A good part of the female demand for sexy men is the Hispanic/Mexican girls desire and willingness to start having kids at age 16 with bad boys who cannot support them. Thus inducing a massive welfare burden. A full 83% of Santa Ana Unified School District students receive subsidized/free meals. Obviously about 83%, or so, of SAUSD parents cannot afford to pay for their kids meals. Requiring federal subsidies.

In this, both White women, and non-Whites, are generally aligned in interests. Their interests are in extracting the maximum amount of money from taxpayers, to fuel children (family as defined as single mom plus kids by various sexy bad boys) and family formation. The catch is that a very significant portion (most of them, in fact) of Middle Class White women are also taxpayers, and don't like the money going to people not like them. Welfare for Hispanic/Mexican single mothers, means ultimately no subsidies for NPR (and jobs there), or federally supported foundations, or paper-pushing "studies" busywork in education, the environment, and so on. All the money increasingly needs to be poured into either K-12 or welfare spent on Mexican/Hispanic single mothers.

So what are the implications of the widespread female demand that most men be sexy (clearly most Mexican men are "sexy" to their female peers, mostly by an uber-macho, combative set of behaviors, particularly including gang membership and criminal violence)?

The first is obviously, a decline in technological advancement. Clearly, outsourcing, in-sourcing, and the export of American manufacturing to China and elsewhere has destroyed American innovation. But in part, this has been abetted by the total demand for sexiness. While nearly all of Aaron Sorkin's "the Social Network" was outright fabrication, what rang true was the total lack of desire (then and now) for billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. Particularly for women with their own money, and earning power, a man must be sexy beyond mere wealth. Wealth alone will not cut it, hence the lack of desire expressed for beta males like Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, no matter how much power and influence they wield. Neither has the smidgen of sex appeal of say, Lamar Odom or Chris Brown. [Good Morning America wants Chris Brown back, despite his temper tantrum of ripping off his shirt and throwing a chair through a window, and trashing his dressing room there. Because their female audience finds him sexy, no matter the beat-down he gave then girlfriend Rihanna. He's a BAD BOY. That means, sexy. For women, in general, all is forgiven as long as a man is sexy. Sexy, sexy, sexy.]

Facebook is not anything new. Its merely a Friendster or MySpace that works. With a few more features. It is not game-changing technology. Steve Sailer wondered, recently, where all the innovation went? "Where are my flying cars?" Well, they went the way of nuclear families formed by pocket protector wearing geeks. Those with that bent had few or no children, as women demanded sexy bad boys who are great in the sack, but cannot produce game-changing technology (like say, a cure for cancer or artificial organs that work, or electric car batteries with the power and weight ratio and range of the internal combustion engine, with comparable refill times). Add to it, the lack of incentive to strive. Those with the current bent for technology not only face a bleak outsourcing, in-sourcing H1-B visa environment, they face a life of sexless monkdom. No wonder they are slackers.

Innovation and change is rarely produced by some great idea borne out by a single genius. Most of the time, it requires an idea, that was fascinating, that was dropped, and then developed a bit later, by someone else, and then someone else and other people put it and other bits together to form a new whole. Something impossible without all the other bits around, done by other people, often in concert.

Sexy men means stagnant or reversing technology. People unable to build or maintain things they were fifty years ago. In 1969, America reached the moon. America has now abandoned even low Earth orbit. Not the least of which is that we lack the technology to make even that happen any more.

Sexy men also means a race to the bottom for sexiness. Women's demand for sexy men does not happen in a vacuum. Men tend to respond. The easiest way to be sexy, as noted by author Lucia, is to thug it up. Be dangerous, fight a lot, smack people around (even your girlfriend, see Chris Brown, or Charlie Sheen). The more violent and dangerous a man is, the more women will want him. Even if he's ugly, or is accused of murdering some other woman. Joran Van Der Sloot cut a wide swath among women in Asia, drawn by his infamy in the Natalee Holloway case (Van Der Sloot has all but confessed to murdering Holloway). Of course, Van Der Sloot killed a young woman in Peru, who unwisely went to his hotel room, drawn by his fame no doubt.

One need only look at the Ghetto and Barrio to see this in action. "Senseless" killings are not, merely the dark side of female sexuality. Since women find bad boys to be sexy, Ghetto and Barrio men make themselves bad boys by ultra-violence. When some little kid, or grandmother, or infant is shot in a drive-by, be assured that somewhere, a gang banger is having sex (if he's not arrested). As Roissy points out, even adjusting for race, criminals have more kids than non-criminals. In other words, comparing White guys to White guys, and Black guys to Black guys, and so on, those locked up or who have been locked up have more kids than those who were never locked up. Despite being, well, locked up for some non insignificant amount of time.

As Roissy points out, Chicks Dig Jerks. And as more and more men become aware of this, they will do their level best to turn themselves into the biggest jerk they can. Bet on it. And once they know it, it is almost impossible to turn them back.

Look at Black Rappers. They make all that money. All that fame and fortune. Or say, Michael Vick, at the time possessing a $130 million contract. Why risk all that money for stupid violence, a shooting in a club, dog fighting rings, etc? Because acting like a violent thug all their life has gotten them the hottest, most desirable women. And more women than they can even remember. Sexual rewards will work on the White middle class, and its men, just as much as they did on Black men in the Ghetto. Or Mexican men in the Barrio.

No, it won't happen overnight. Significant social conditioning, rewards, and so on make middle class White guys more resistant to violence. But certainly, the kids of single mothers will know exactly what turned their moms on: violent, dangerous bad boys. They'll copy those guys, and even provide some "improvements."

The idea that White guys are inherently non-violent and shrink from confrontation (which would have shocked Black and Hispanic men of Louis Armstrong's age) particularly with non-Whites, is going to go out the window. In some respect this will be long overdue, but the cost is basically a nation comprised entirely of Scots-Irish "hillbilly" types. Which simply cannot run a modern economy and will look for fights the way Black and Hispanic men do, because it gets them sex!

So the social implications of sexy men demanded by White women along with Black and Hispanic women, is a very rapid movement, towards decline and violence. Making the wealth struggles to cut the welfare pie off an America with declining innovation and technological power, a declining White middle class, and so on, even more desperate. As the take shrinks, the usual response is to deal people out. Vote them off the Island, so to speak.

All prosperous societies, such as Japan, South Korea, Finland, Switzerland, and Coastal China, tend to suppress sexy men. They tend to limit, in various ways, the ability for Bad Boys to dominate all the desirable women. And on the other hand, limit women's choices. A woman must generally choose fairly early, if she wants a husband (Japan and South Korea's and China's low birth rates currently likely stem from their women rejecting the unsexy men they have on offer). Japan and South Korea, at least, are declining from massive and probably unsustainable population peaks with a well educated and prosperous workforce, with first-class infrastructure for the most part. [China is not so lucky on either front.]

But those societies throughout history and now, that allow sexy men, the dominant bad boys, and women to run things, are typically very violent, and primitive. Male cooperation goes entirely out the window. Why cooperate when you get better sex and reproductive opportunities by constant fighting? The female sexual utopia looks a lot like Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. And in some ways that is America's, and the West's, future.

Everything has its price, and the price for Sexy Men for Western women is basically the end as we know it, of Western civilization. With something approaching Dark Ages kingdoms or Mad Max as its replacement.

But at least the men will be sexy!


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Truer Words Never Written

Roissy has posted the following:

The converse should be apparent; women who have been denied the affection and commitment of an alpha lover, or who have been driven insane with spite by the dispiriting attentions of beta males they consider below them, nurse a steady stream of agitation toward, and resentment of, men in general. Exhibit A: a disproportionate number of avowed feminists are butt ugly. Exhibit B: SWPL city girls who yearn for loving, long term relationships with powerful men but get stuck with pump and dumps by players and cloying obsessions by undersexed betas. These women have yet to be broken in; their untamed limbic mania sets the tempo of their higher thinking. They drag their owners for a walk, instead of being walked. They are obstinate, crude, and, when their feminine humours do reassert for a temporary spell, sloppily scattershot in their compassion for indigents a world away while being brutishly curt and spiteful in their dealings with men in their social orbit. [Emphasis added] Feminism speaks to them because their femininity is suppressed.

Truer words never written. Read the whole thing.

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The Pittsburgh Shootings and the Question of Violence

The Pittsburgh area shootings at an LA Fitness center by gunman George Soldini has left 5 dead and 15 wounded. While getting a lot of attention, for a variety of reasons, including the killer's diary, his resentment towards women, loner behavior, and failed attempt to become a Pick-Up Artist (PUA), the killings and shootings by George Soldini are troubling for a number of reasons beyond the personal tragedy.

First, there were no warning signs that the individual was a danger to others. Unlike the Columbine killers, Klebold and Harris, who gave ample warning of impending danger, or the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, who was demonstrably a danger to himself and others, or the neo-Nazi James Van Brunn (the Holocaust museum shooter), George Soldini was a quiet, middle aged, middle class professional who never by all accounts, came to the attention of law enforcement or mental health authorities. Short of an unconstitutional psych screening dragnet for every male 15-65, there was no way to know of the danger posed by Soldini.

Second, while violence by various lone men or small groups of men is not uncommon in America, the recent trend towards targeting large groups of innocent people is very new, and disturbing.

Third, the actions of men during many of these shootings in the United States and in Canada, are troubling, and a big reversal of what was previously the case. Which in and of itself points to a troubling new reality.

Fourth, and finally, the danger posed by lone men or small groups of loner-type men like Soldini is far overshadowed by the larger danger: men simply abandoning any investment in society and failing to preserve and protect society.


Soldini left a detailed online diary which can be seen at Half Sigma in its entirety. His principal aim in the shootings seems to have been to kill an ex-girlfriend of many years (a goal oddly not mentioned in his diary) and humiliate and destroy his mother and brother, whom he hated. His brother, by all accounts, was a successful businessman and is married.

At no time was Soldini ever identified as a man who was likely to enter an LA Fitness aerobics class and shoot up the place, targeting mostly women in their thirties and forties. He was by all accounts a fit and trim man in his late forties. He survived rounds of layoffs at the law firm where he worked as an IT professional. His net worth was over $250,000. Neighbors did not know any odd behavior, and his lack of intimate friends allowed his growing mental illness (of which he was well aware of) to proceed to its deadly conclusion. By all accounts he was able to get dates (though they went nowhere) and was invited to at least one Christmas party. He was able to function socially and conceal his intentions enough that no one had any idea he was intending to kill people.

This is different than most of the other killers of his nature in modern America. When McVeigh was arrested for the Oklahoma City bombings, none who knew him were surprised, and Klebold, Harris, and Cho all left a trail of warnings and signs that clearly indicated they were dangerous. If there are other men like Soldini, planning the same type of thing, they will be impossible to stop, since no one will know their intentions until too late. It seems that Soldini's web diary, simply sat online, unread, until the shootings. His postings on YouTube of his video tour of his apartment was unremarkable.

Mental illness is not something new. Nor is the combination of mental illness and firearms. The Walker Colt dates back to the 1840's. The Henry Rifle from the late 1850's had a 16 round magazine. The Smith and Wesson Schofield revolver introduced in the 1870's had a top break action with metallic cartridge feed. Firearms had been put to use for killing, or trying to kill, political leaders in America, particularly the President, since 1835 when a deranged ex house painter named Richard Lawrence tried to shoot Andrew Jackson with two pistols (both single-shot pistols, which misfired). Legend has it that Jackson tried to kill his assailant with his cane, and aides had to restrain him, while Davy Crockett and others restrained Lawrence (who was later institutionalized). John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau, Leon Czolgosz, Giuseppe Zangara, would all appear to be at least partly motivated in their killings by mental illness. Nor indeed is mass violence using bombs new either, considering the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Yet all of these are understandable in a way. The Gunpowder plot was a far-fetched but not totally implausible desire to install King James daughter, Princess Elizabeth as a Spanish pawn to restore Catholic England. Booth hoped killing Lincoln would inspire continued Southern guerrilla warfare. The others were mentally ill men who hoped by killing a prominent man, their mental troubles would cease, not unlike Mark David Chapman or John Hinckley Jr. Even before reliable, repeating firearms, men like Henry IV fell to assassin's blades. Henry's assassin, Ravaillac, being quite similar to Czolgosz or Zangara or Lawrence. Mental illness and violence have been part of the human condition since the beginning, though the combination is usually rare, in a big enough population it will make itself known.

What is disturbing, and new, is mentally ill people targeting large groups of innocent victims whose death can in no way achieve much of anything for the killer, not even the satisfaction of killing an important man. Disturbing though it is, the actions of a Chapman or a Hinckley or a Ravaillac or a Lawrence make a kind of sense — the lunatics wanted to be famous. What is new is the desire not for fame, but for killing people the killer does not even know. Tim McVeigh targeting the Murrah building including the ground floor day-care center, or the Columbine shootings, or the Virginia Tech shootings, or the Pittsburgh LA Fitness shootings, makes no sense in terms of killing an important man and thus achieving fame (at least part of the famous man's fame would now belong to the killer). Even crazy people can have a sense of belonging.

The conspiracists of the Gunpowder plot, did not plan to blow up average Londoners. Booth and company did not plan to massacre the theater goers at Ford's Theater. None of the lone gunmen above targeted innocent people they did not know. What's changed is the lack of belonging. Of investment so wide and deep in a society, even the Ravaillacs, the Zangaras, or the Czolgoszs, unknowingly, take part in it.

The inflection point, at which society stopped having such a deep, and wide investment that even lunatics intent on killing someone would confine their attentions to individual famous people, seems to have been the 1966 University of Texas Bell Tower shootings by Charles Whitman. Whitman, who may have been insane as a result of a brain tumor, shot and killed 14 people, most of them random targets, in addition to killing his wife and mother, at the University of Texas at Austin Bell Tower (and around it). What was reassuring in that case was that professors and students spontaneously grabbed their hunting rifles and shot back at Whitman in the Bell Tower.

These were not, as Mark Steyn put it, "men who ran away." Steyn, in his article in MacLean's Magazine, excoriates the new film "Polytechnique" (about the 1989 Montreal Polytechnique Massacre by Algerian immigrant Gamil Gharbi, aka Mark Lepine who shot and killed 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal) with these words:

“The defining image of contemporary Canadian maleness is not M Lépine/Gharbi but the professors and the men in that classroom, who, ordered to leave by the lone gunman, meekly did so, and abandoned their female classmates to their fate—an act of abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history. The ‘men’ stood outside in the corridor and, even as they heard the first shots, they did nothing. And, when it was over and Gharbi walked out of the room and past them, they still did nothing. Whatever its other defects, Canadian manhood does not suffer from an excess of testosterone.”

Steyn notes that nearly all the male passengers on the Titanic died, nearly all the female passengers were saved. To put it in more graphic terms, while only 31% of the people on board the Titanic survived, a full 72% of women survived, and only 19% of men survived. Women did go first. The men did not run away.

What disturbed me the most, about the accounts of the Virginia Tech shootings, was the total passivity of the young men, in protecting their female classmates. The only men who did anything at all, active, were Professor Liviu Librescu, an elderly Holocaust survivor, and and Professor Kevin Granata, a mid forties Army Reservist. None of the young men attempted to fight Cho, the shooter, particularly as he was reloading, wrestle the gun away from him, or do anything active in confronting and stopping the shooter. It was a passive response of men profoundly disinterested and uninvested in their society. One deeply at odds with the response at the sinking of the Titanic or the UT Bell Tower shootings.

Which leads to the most disturbing thing about our society today. Even with the rash of shootings, America is so big (303 million people and counting) that the shootings have only a minor affect on society, outside the tragedy for the victims and survivors. But the shootings point to a larger issue: the loss of investment of men in society. An investment that keeps even crazy people from targeting society itself, particularly innocent people, and makes men respond to a threat by risking or giving up their lives to save it's foundation: women and children.

The real risk is not mentally ill men like Soldini (it's usually, but not always, men who do the shooting). It is the massive under-investment in society, particularly civil society, that is the real risk. I am on the board of a local, Southern California charity. I am the youngest man there, all others being considerably older, in their late sixties or older. The only female member is also of that age. The North Santa Ana Kiwanis, in Orange County, dating back to the 1950's, has disbanded due to lack of members (most existing members were in their late sixties or seventies). In the Black community, it's even worse — Little Leagues and general volunteer coaching, still alive in suburban White America, (with Latino America somewhere in-between) are almost non-existent in Black America. The plague of single motherhood, and lack of investment and involvement of older, family men who form generally the backbone of volunteer coaching for Little League, Pop Warner Football, and other organized team sports activities that teach boys how to cooperate with each other and be aggressive within the rules, has destroyed Black baseball. Look at any Major League Baseball and notice what you don't see: the large presence of US Black players, who were a force in Major League Baseball since Jackie Robinson. In their place, Caribbean players from places where volunteer coaching still exists.

A general rule of thumb is that the health of a society is indicated by the existence of middle-class volunteer organizations that offer both fellowship and a sense of belonging to society, in the process of maintaining society. This can be volunteer run sports-leagues, that teach boys the importance of teamwork and aggression within strict rules (or in other words, sportsmanship) or charitable organizations like Kiwanis or Shriners or Lions Club that provide civic involvement in cooperation with local governments, and also an important alternative and check to overweening power by abusive local officials.

The generally poor state of traditional volunteer organizations, with many long-time Kiwanis, Lions, and Shriners chapters closing as their members age and no replacements are found, indicate that many younger men, particularly the generation that should be succeeding these older men, which is men in their fifties, forties, and thirties, have no interest or investment in society and traditional volunteering. Most other volunteer organizations, such as the Sierra Club, or Humane Society, or Habitat for Humanity, have long since changed into big, professional fundraising and political activist groups. Leaving little for the would-be volunteer to both socialize and contribute to society.

While gang-related murders are down, in Los Angeles, compared to times past, not very many involve an arrest, much less conviction (about 42% in 2007, according to the LA Times). From the LA Times blog:

Community attitudes and behaviors and prosecutors’ thresholds for filing homicide charges may have more to do with whether murderers end up behind bars than any particular law-enforcement model.

It's vital to have a wide and deep investment in society by men. Men being invested in society are husbands and fathers, who maintain ownership in society, provide critical community attitudes, particularly guidance and control of young boys, and create social attitudes that control and channel violence.

The Black community is America's canary in the coalmine. Being more fragile, with far greater propensity for single motherhood, Black America's fall into (at least as far as the urban core is concerned) chaotic gang violence characterized by a total absence of any adult male investment in society, is both rapid and chilling. As Barack Obama relates in "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," older residents in a Chicago housing project fondly recalled the days of Segregation, for the relative security that was found: children could play in the streets and doors were generally unlocked. This was not a society without it's problems, illegitimacy may have run as high as 24%. But it worked, to produce even under Segregation, a generation of mostly law-abiding, useful and productive citizens who maintained a sense of ownership in their society. Even a discriminated against Black man could and did marry, have his own family, and thus be invested in at least his own community. Segregated New Orleans, the center then of Black America, was famous for its many, many benevolent societies that offered everything from life insurance to health plans for dental and medical care. Theodore Dalrymple, in his "Life at the Bottom" noted much the same, how deprived, ration-impoverished East London in the 1950's was a place where children played unsupervised and doors were often left unlocked. Neither thinkable now.

Tellingly, both Britain and Black America suffered the decline of the nuclear family and traditional marriage worst and first, with single motherhood and consequent non-investment by men producing a Dante-esque hell.

The problem of violence is not men like George Soldini, who though they may occur more and more frequently, targeting innocents in a sexual rage, unable to find intimacy and a sense of belonging to society (and thus the need to protect it), are still not fundamental threats to society's well being. America being a very big nation.

No, the problem of violence is more akin to that of gang-ridden inner cities, and their stormy petrels of what is to come to other communities, including the White community. Gang violence is never "senseless." It makes perfect sense — gang members wish to be known as killers because it gives them prestige and power, and thus, women, who in the changed environment of single motherhood norms, prefer such men and boys. Average Bro has his own take on things, and like many other Black bloggers believes that women like actress Lauren London, who opined that she liked thugs, is not unrepresentative of at least some Black women. Any time a gang member engages in a "senseless" killing, it is wise to remember that the killing, from the gang member's perspective, makes perfect sense, it's designed to gain him sex.

This then, is the real danger of male uninvestment in society. Not only do men do the bare minimum to get by, but lacking families and a reproductive interest in society, they don't volunteer and engage in community "ownership" which prevents a thug-gangsta mentality from taking over. The experience of "chav" Britain suggests that this model can be rapidly reproduced. Few in Britain in 1948 would have predicted a 50% illegitimacy rate, and rampant crime. Yet in sixty years, that was precisely what happened to Britain. Instead, men compete to be the biggest gangsta and chav they can be, with varying degrees of violence. Or remain, passive and uninvolved in the face of danger to the community.

Either is a disaster, and that is the true horror of George Soldini.
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