The Maya: Notes on a Curious People

Inasmuch as America has a large population of Latin Americans, it seems to me that some might want to know about them, and what they are, and where they came from. Most Latinos of the south are either a mixture of Spanish and Indian, or sometimes pure Indian. We have some idea of the Spaniards. …

Twilight of the European Peoples

Living in Latin America, and having spent much of my working life in Asia, as well as many uears in the Potomac Rome, I now watch with considerable care the portentous and rapid currents of change in the world. I suppose the news business is an addiction. Perhaps there should be a twelve-step program. Yet …

“Because We Say So” The Case for Cultural Authority

 Parents of bright children learn the futility of argument over ill-advised desires of their offspring. A daughter of fourteen who wants to go to what predictably will be a drunken fraternity party will argue that they are really nice boys and daddy, you are prejudging, It isn’t fair,  you don’t even know them and she will …

Thoughts, Not Obsessively organized, on Diversity, an Atrocious Idea

Living as I do near Guadalajara I do not, thank God, see much television from the Great Squirrel Cage north of Mexico. When I do, I get the impression that America is four-fifths black and that all white women have black husbands. Whites apparently do not marry each other. My information is unreliable, but it appears that …

Cometh the Chinese, Saith Blinken. Run.

I was pleasantly surprised a couple of months ago to get a call from Wang Fang Pi of the Chinese Political Affairs branch in New York, an old friend. Fang Pi headed the speech-writing office.  I had met him in a press bar in Bangkok while on a junket for the Washington Times and we had stayed in …

Of Army Ants and Pit Bulls: The Biological Roots of War

The biological–that is, genetic—roots of human behavior have been a disputed matter at least since The Bell Curve, most heatedly regarding race.  The measure of racial intelligence has been the sharpest focus with psychometrists universally, as far as I can determine, ranking races by IQ as Ashkenazi Jews, East Asians, whites, Latinos, and blacks. While …

To Hell with Ukraine

Great. Just ever-lovin’pea-pickin’ great. In LA some sixty thousand people–who really knows?–sleep on the sidewalks, in tents, cardboard boxes, sleeping bags, or not much of anything. Others live in their cars. The same in San Fran, Seattle, St. Louis. There being no bathrooms, they defecate as the urge hits, and where. What choice do they …

Let’s Invade Mexico!

In Washington some damned fool Republican, actually Lindsey Graham, R-SC, suggests sending the US Army to Mexico, “to fight the drug trade,” this to be done “with Mexico’s permission,” which is Washington talk for “after buying Mexico’s President.”Whether this is luminous stupidity or malign intent isn’t clear. It is militarily absurd. Why? First, the population …