We see here the problem with any goal-oriented social movement. They don't know when to stop. Women's rights have been achieved. It is finished. Difference that remain are largely the result of choices and we need not - should not - interpret ever difference as something to be addressed by programs or law. But we don't. In any field where women or minorities do better than white males, the establishment hails the progress, while deriding anywhere it is not equal. This really is a stupid position. Think of it from the strictly numbers point of view. If women, men, blacks, whites etc. are "overrepresented" in one place they must be "underrepresented" in another. You can always find "proof" of bias as long as there is disparate representation anywhere.

Women are more likely to go to college; they live longer, are less often hurt on the job, suffer fewer injuries at work, are less likely to be victims of crime, less likely to be in jail or in mental institutions, less likely to be homeless, and women own or control more than half of the nation's wealth. Women have "made it" as a group. Let's acknowledge their success and move on to worrying about individual achievement, where we should usually concentrate anyway.

A gender gap will probably be with us always in some fields. Women may continue to outnumber me in places like university. Live with it.

Americans have usually been abundance people. That is something that others notice as a national characteristic. We are always thinking about how things can work better and looking for ways to profit. This is not bad because we know that our profit in a free exchange requires the other side to get something they want.

We have a "get off your ass" mentality. When confronted by someone who claims he and his ancestors have been oppressed for years, we are likely to tell him that it is about time he did something about it. Don't complain, do something. If nobody likes you, it is probably because you are an asshole or useless. We don't like useless people, but someone with a useful skill will usually be welcome.

The scarcity people tell us we will hit the wall. They have been saying this for centuries. Someday they will be right, but not today and not tomorrow and not soon. Meanwhile those depressed little shits cannot enjoy all that life gives them and when the end does come they will be no better off. In fact, us abundance people will figure out a way to profit from the end.

So if you are always a victim, ask yourself why and cut it out. And unless you have some terrible disability or you live in a place like Cuba, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, or - God forbid - North Korea, life is good. Start living.

My father's last words were, "I can't complain." He fell to the floor and when asked if he was okay that is what he said. He had the right idea.

The power to tax is the power to destroy and the power to harass is very dangerous in a political sense. Richard Nixon had his enemies list and the IRS went after many of them. We thought we left those days behind in the 1970s. Well, the 1970s have returned in many ways. Job growth is slow. People are feeling that the slows is the new normal. Maybe the political use of the tax man is another return to those bad old days.

And yes, some of them hate us that much. Julian Bond, former head of the NAACP thinks it legitimate to target conservatives. Sure, he is a bit of a nut, but he is respected on the left. He just says what many others are thinking. I listened to Howard Dean on the radio today. He is very hateful. There is the free speech for me but not for thee stink about this.

My taxes are simple, BTW, and I really think I have been honest.

This replacement, however, is evidently not as common as we might think. When I learned anthropology, we were still influenced by the experience of European colonization. Even if "modern" scholars of the 1960s rejected the theories of the 19th Century, they - we - were still living in their patterns. We knew that populations could be replaced because we had seen it done and we postulated that back into the past.

Our literature seemed to support this paradigm. There were heroic stories of ancient foundations and ancient people often claimed heritage from pioneers. Aeneas brought his Trojans to Italy and they formed the core of the Roman people, according to legend. Clearly languages spread geographically. Latin spread over most of Western Europe and it makes some intuitive sense to think that people came with it. The same goes for Arabic in later times. But the spread of English in modern times shows the flaw in that argument. Of the many modern speakers of English, only a minority have predominant or even significant ancestry in the English population of 1492, for example. The English migrated, that is true; their language migrated farther.

An interesting counter example is Finland. Finnish is a language of northern Asia and the "original" Finns were Asians. Over the centuries, a steady immigration from Scandinavia changed the genetic nature of the Finnish population while keeping the language intact

DNA is providing a more nuanced picture of migrations and assimilation. I read an article today that shows that the Minoans, the mysterious ancient people of Crete, whose language we still cannot read, were similar genetically to modern Europeans and modern Cretans. This tends to disprove 19th Century postulations, some of which I learned in school, that they were largest the product of some migration, maybe from Egypt or Africa. This supports a general observation that the core population of a place remains remarkably stable, despite significant changes in language, religion, customs and government. I recall an earlier study that indicated that most of the modern population of Lebanon was descended from the ancient Phoenicians. They are Arab in language and culture, but related more closely to the ancient people of Canaan than to the invaders who swept in form the Arab peninsula. In other words, the same families were at one time or another Phoenicians, Hebrews, Greeks, Syrians, Romans or Arabs.

It is tempting to take current situations and project them backward. One of things I really hate about some modern books or TV programs is when they take a contemporary map and project it back on past times. A modern map of Europe, for example, makes little sense when superimposed on the Europe of 1000 years ago. A few of the countries had similar names back then, most did not, but none of them were exactly where they are today nor was the culture the same.

The countries that became France, Germany, Spain or Italy just did not exist 1000 years ago, despite what current nationalists might assert, i.e. they were so different that it makes no sense to call them by those names. Most of eastern France had more in common with what became western Germany. They could easily have become the modern nation. Italy was divided up among people who could not understand each other's languages. Spain was mostly occupied by Muslims. Anybody who guessed at the future disposition of these places would certainly have been wrong. Modern nationalities simply do not project very far into the past. The people occupying the territory are fairly mutable.

Of course, migrations do happen and Vikings, Mongols and other disruptive forces spread their DNA far and wide, (something like 8% of the population of the former Mongol Empire is related to Genghis Khan, probably the result of thousands of short-term non-consensual relationships. And the Mongol habit of killing all the men around) Nevertheless, established populations evidently abide for long times. They were really a nasty bunch, but part of our common history too.

I study ancient history and even more ancient anthropology because I enjoy it and most of what I know has little practical value. But I think that this information is useful. It shows the adaptability of humans and how we are very similar to each other despite our purported ethnic heritage. When someone says that his ancestry is German or French or anything else, it really is not a meaningful concept in the longer run of things. We all can become something else and we are constantly in the process of becoming.

My general view of history is that after events pass from living memory, history belongs equally to all of the current generation of mankind. I don't have to be a Greek to appreciate Greek history and there is no reason to believe that a contemporary Greek will understand the ancient history of "his" country any better than I can. We all are descended from the good people and the bad people of the past and none of us has any particular reason to be proud or ashamed of anything that happened long before we were born. But ALL of us should learn from the experience of the past and know it. As a Western man, I am an inheritor of Greek & Roman culture. I kind of see them as "my" people, but why? My ancestors were not primarily Greek or Roman. My ancestors were mostly those barbarians that the classical world disparaged and tried to keep out of the civilized empire. My relatives would be found farting in the Roman Forum just before breaking up the local shops and setting fires. If I was transported back to ancient Rome, they would see me as a barbaric Gaul or German. I would not be welcome. Yet it is not the ancient people of Gaul or Germany that inform most of my thought today.

My genetic ancestors have not very much to teach me from ancient times. They really were barbarians. They didn't write; they constantly warred and they tended to do silly things like rub butter on their hair. The main thing they did that I do too is that, according to the Roman historian Tacitus, they drank beer. This is interesting in two ways. First it is interesting to find out what my ancient ancestors did, but more importantly, I have to learn about it from a Roman. It goes to show who ruled and who just slopped butter on their hair.

And it's only the start. ObamaCare is not going to be popular when they really try to implement it. The slow motion job growth is not inspiring and Obama's outsider act is getting old.

One of my favorite old movies is "Casablanca." In one iconic scene, the corrupt French police chief, Louis Renault closes down Rick' Cafe, giving the reason that he is shocked to find gambling. Look at the clip here. Right after he is done, a man comes out and gives him his gambling winnings.

Obama is shocked at the IRS, shocked - shocked - at the AP scandal, shocked about lots of things. Maybe he is not like Louis Renault. He does seem sincere. But so did Louis.

In many human cultures, baby killing was an accepted form of birth control. The ancient Spartans used to have a state board decide. If the baby appeared unhealthy, it died. Most per-modern cultures killed babies with handicaps and or babies that nobody wanted. Our Western society has evolved beyond that, for the most part. Clearly not always, as Dr. Kermit Gosnell demonstrates. But he was convicted of 1st degree murder. In future, guys like Gosnell will make sure the baby is killed before it is born.

It was about the 10th Century that things began to turn around. There is a good chapter on Muslim Spain. It was more "advanced" than most of Western Europe, but still backward and oppressive by subsequent Western standards.

It became fashionable to criticize Western civilization back in the 1960s, but I perceive a shift. I think it was easy to be anti-Western when we knew less about the others. The closer we look at other civilizations, the more we see that the West is not uniquely bad; in fact over the long run of its history it is better than most of the alternatives. I suppose you can say that it is generally true that in the the West man oppressed his fellow man, while in other civilizations it was the other way around.

We have progressed a great deal since those times. During most of the past, it was normal and even thought virtuous for victors to murder and enslave the vanquished. The massive crimes of Nazis and communists in the last century were horrible, but more or less in line with the last five millennia of human history and it was probably that way in prehistory too. Stone age people of more recent vintage were fantastically violent. (I recently read an very interesting book called Empire of the Summer Moon, about the Comanches.) I think the question is not so much why we are still so violent, but rather why we started to think this was unacceptable. For all its faults, Western civilization has brought us to a better and higher level. Most of our ancestors were certainty no saints, but compared with the others, not so bad.

In the old industrial model it made sense for everybody to come to work at the same time, work the same hours and leave at the same time. People had to work to the pace of the machines they operated. In fact, they were often more parts of the big machine than human workers.

This system began to change a generation ago and has accelerated. Work can now be more flexible. We can work more at our own pace, in ways that make sense to our own lives. Things like telecommuting and shared schedules make it easier to have a life and have a career at the same time.

Unfortunately, many of our labor laws were set up in the 1930s. Some are not only old-fashioned in the quaint and cute way, but are also pernicious in that they make it harder for workers to work and have good lives.

Making work-life more flexible just makes sense. Of course nothing that makes sense is without its opponents. Rules persist for reasons. Often it is because organized groups benefit from the complicated rules and this is what is happening here. Many lobbyists hate this rule for its simplicity and flexibility. They can't game a system as easily when it is simple. Let's ask our politicians to work for the people, not the organizations.

Let's ask our politicians to pass the Family Flexibility Act and tell Obama to keep his veto pen in his pocket. Let's give Americans the flexibility to life their lives more as they wish. This costs nothing to implement and it will really help.

Reference

This I still believe. It doesn't mean that we act only for ourselves. In fact, traditional American culture was extraordinarily characterized by volunteerism and individuals voluntarily working together for common goal. The difference was that it was a choice THEY made.

Traditional American culture was generous and welcoming. We took in more immigrants than any other country in the world and they became Americans. The most important thing we asked of ourselves and others was that we be useful. We judged people by what THEY did, not by who their fathers were or by the group they came from. This was good. This IS good. This is what made America an exception in the long run of benighted places, where you were judged by "your people" rather than by your accomplishments.

Liberalism actually started with this too. American liberalism grew from the American experience. The idea was to give people a chance. This is still something liberals and conservatives share. But liberals started to go farther. They analyzed groups and wanted to make things come out equal. Giving people a chance is American from the start. Being concerned that groups come out equal is not.

We need to move forward to a new freedom, which will not include much emphasis on group membership, except groups that people voluntarily join and can leave when they want. In other words, you are born into America, not a hyphenated group of Americans.

By liberal standards, if one group is voting more, it must mean the other is suppressed. If one group is "under served" in university, it must mean there is discrimination. So now that the balance had shifted, what do they do?

We should not be fooled by instigation to hysteria. A civilized nation needs laws and regulations to protect its people. But we need to apply a careful analysis. My father used to say that we should not spend a dollar to make a nickel decision. This is good advice. A bad regulation can make a bad situation worse. A regulation that costs $100 to save $10 should never be enacted. Not every problem has a regulatory solution. Some terrible problems have no solution at all and some problems have solutions that require techniques and technologies not yet developed. And the awful truth is that today's solution is often tomorrow's problem.

Whatever we do and whatever we fail to do will produce consequences, many of which we cannot foresee. The key to joy is not be find or even look for the perfect solution, but rather to have a flexible and robust process that can adapt to changing conditions and requirements.

Some people dislike the cost-benefit approach and instead embrace the "precautionary principle." This is silly. The basic idea is to impose a margin of safety and impose heavy burdens on those who would impose risks. In its stronger forms, it means that people cannot go forward with any activity or product until it be shown it is perfectly safe. The precautionary principle is paralyzing and self-defeating.

No choice is risk free. We need to make choices.

All these insights came from an interesting book I just finished reading about the future of government. I think both conservatives and liberals should read it.

I don't see solutions in the usual management. We can manage "normal" threats, but no reasonable management could have saved the chestnut trees. We are doing our best to slow the spread of the ash borer, but we will lose that fight too. The many dead live oaks made me want to cry last time I drove through the Texas hill country. I remember the thick hemlock forests near Old Rag mountain in the Shenandoah, but they live now only in memory.

But we have the tools to protect our forests and fields, tools we did not have decades ago. We can use genetic tools to make plants, animals and trees resistant to the new infections. It may soon be possible to do that with the great American chestnut. Others will follow if we allow it. I think we should demand it.

Most people fear what they don't understand and few people really understand the science behind genetic engineering. Their idea is that unless you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt (not a reasonable doubt) that something can cause no harm, it should not be allowed. That logic would have prevented electricity and antibiotics. Both these are great help to human happiness, but also have risks. Electricity kills people every year. It is certainly not 100% safe. But it is worth it.

GMO plants and animals are like electricity in this respect. But consider the alternative. We already have no chestnut trees beyond a few pathetic sprouts. Hemlocks and ash are disappearing before our eyes. We could make a long list of what we will lose if we continue business as usual. What do we risk? We risk that our efforts will not work to allow hemlocks, oaks, ash and chestnuts will once again thrive in our forests. In other words, in the worst case scenario, we end up no worse than we will be absent the solution. We need to be careful, but we need to do something. Let's do it.

While we are at it, what about "hate crimes?" We hear a lot about them but there are not very many and many are hoaxes. Read the link about why so many hate crimes are hoaxes.

The most interesting part is about a feminist activist who sent herself hateful Facebook posts. She was caught, but nothing much will happen. In fact the school where it took place (University of Wyoming) said " "The fact that the Facebook post apparently was a fabrication does not change the necessity for continued vigilance ..." So the girl lied but she spoke an "liberal essential truth." Sort of Orwellian.

Remember when those Duke Lacrosse players were falsely accused of rape. They suffered a long ordeal in the courts. In that case, Duke and the prosecutors were essentially committing an ongoing hate crime. When their innocence was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, the PC folks still somehow felt they had it coming.

Our liberal friends like their stories and don't want to let facts stand in the way.

Lots of things happen more or less on their own and lots of official efforts don't have any impact. There is a good general line that I think should be generally applied.

If something NEED not be done, it need NOT be done. Just because you can identify a problem, it does not follow that an activist solution will do any good.

This presents Americans with a dilemma that people from non-English speaking countries do not face. People from other languages know that English is essential if they want careers in science or international business. It makes perfect sense to require English in primary or secondary schools. English is the world language; the only one that is universally useful. Even if individuals never leave their own countries, English will often still be an advantage for them. No other language is like that.

What does an American do? We say you should study Chinese. Fine. This works if you plan to go to China. If you plan to do business with Chinese businesspeople you encounter in Europe they and you will have to speak English. What about Spanish? North of the Pyrenees, it is not much use in Europe and almost no use at all anywhere else except in Latin America. Half of the South American population is Portuguese speaking. Portuguese speakers tend to understand lots of Spanish, but it is a one-way street. As a Spanish speaker, most Portuguese will go over your head. Arabic? Okay in the Middle East, but locals may not understand your dialect and will probably default into English.

I believe that you should learn the language of a country if you plan to live or do business there. I have done that myself. I also understand that learning another language is great intellectual exercise. We Americans should not remain stubbornly monolingual just because our language is the one used throughout the world. But what should be our FIRST language. If we are talking about an American kid with no plans to go to any particular place in the world, what language should he/she learn?

Latin. Kids should learn Latin first. It is true that nobody outside the Vatican actually speaks Latin, but Latin is the basis of all Romance languages. It is much easier to learn French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and even Romansh and Romanian if you have a Latin base. Latin has had a big influence on our own English language and has infiltrated almost all the world's major languages. But there are other reasons to learn the language of Caesar, Cicero, Augustine, Bacon and Spinoza.

Latin literature is unusually rich and varied. Many of the classics of Western Civilization were written originally in Latin, starting with the Romans and continuing on for more than a thousand years after the fall of the great Empire. Isaac Newton wrote in Latin, hence his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

The study of Latin implies the study of Latin literature and that is something of lasting value. I studied Latin many years ago. I can no longer read Latin w/o great difficulty. I cannot say I have any facility left at all. As I wrote up top, maintaining a language is very difficult. But my English vocabulary is superb, partly due to my Latin experience, and I still recall much of the literature I imbibed only semi-willingly when studying the ancient language.

I think we make a big mistake when we demand that everything we teach or learn should be relevant to our immediate needs. This almost guarantees that we are surrendering the bigger picture, the long term. IMO, we give in too readily to the auto-erotic impulse of letting students study themselves. A lot of this started in the 1960s. Schools gave up the classics to concentrate on various self-esteem studies. How did that work out? Instead of reaching toward things of lasting common value, we explored differences that didn't make much difference then and today don't make any difference at all.

I don't expect a Latin Renaissance. Too bad.