Few MR readers will argue with the proposition that there is a seemingly irreparable fissure running through the politics of the right.  As I see it, it is demarcated by the lack of sympathy which those who answer to their intellects feel towards those who answer to their sense of kin.  Of course, I am leaving out all those whose attitudes and opinions are merely received.  Unless or until they free themselves they are just the prisoners of liberal thinking.  But the others –  those capable of independent thought and those who have “woken up” -  are all people of interest to me.  I want to understand them better than I do.

In particular, I want to understand the thinkers and why it is they can obviously see issues of race, demography, difference, culture war etc ... yet they hold firmly to the conviction that primacy rests with the individual over the group and with ideas over the ties of blood.  Why?  Is it intellectual pride that causes them to spurn the principle of kinship?  But then I firmly believe that mainstream Conservative thinkers in past times did not spurn kinship but, on the contrary, respected it and even strove to serve – or conserve - it.

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The English climate, being what it is, commends the written word to all but the hardiest or most square-eyed holidaymaker.  Being neither I hope, and having spent a few days footloose with my family in the folds of the North Devon countryside, I, too, have been reading a good deal of late.

Of course, we had travelled west well equipped for the conditions.  Three weighty tomes, in my case - two historical, one political.  But in the event I was charmed instead by the double row of titles supplied for his rained-in clientele by the owner of the farmhouse we had rented.

For anyone remotely interested in ideas another person’s choice of reading has the potential for some fascination.  I am not a voracious reader myself but I respect those that are … at least, the ones who read something of substance.  Without fail, when I go into a home where books are important I will find a chance to survey the titles.  A picture speaks a thousand words, they say, and a bathroom cabinet probably ten thousand.  But a bookshelf is much, much more illuminating.

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We don’t get to hear much about New Zealand, so I was interested to read a newspaper report today on the general situation there (not online).

The news, as you might expect, isn’t good. The European population under the age of 40 is actually falling in number, due partly to low fertility but also because of migration to other countries, particularly Australia. If trends continue, the remnant European population will join Maoris, Pacific Islanders and Asians as a minority group.

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Ten years ago Moreland City College in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg had an enrolment of over 1000 students. Last year numbers had fallen to 270 and the school was closed.

Why? It seems that multiculturalism didn’t work in this Coburg school. A group of highly disruptive students gave the school a bad reputation from which it never recovered. And there is now evidence that these disruptive students were Lebanese Muslims who hated Australia and wanted to replace it with an Islamic state.

A former teacher, Chris Doig, tried to raise the alarm when some of his students danced with joy after the September 11 attacks. His concerns were ignored by authorities. Mr Doig said of these Lebanese students that “Some of the disruptive ones would say that Australia was degenerate and our legal system would be replaced by Shariah law in the not too distant future.”

He also said of the disgruntled students that “Some of these were so disruptive and even violent that staff and other students abandoned the school when they could.”

Nor is Mr Doig a lone voice. Two other teachers have supported his claims. One of these says that the disruptive students used to boast that Australia would become a majority Islamic country in 50 years. “They would do this by converting the infidel and by out-breeding the rest of the community.”

John Ray recently complained that America isn’t allowing in enough skilled migrants. He believes that the US should follow Australia’s lead and bring in more Indian and Chinese computer programmers and engineers.

What John didn’t mention was how controversial the skilled migration program actually is in Australia.

The problem is that it’s very difficult to recruit migrants with exactly those skills needed by the Australian economy at a particular time.

The result is that skilled migration often ends up creating a labour surplus in particular fields which is bad for everyone. It makes it harder for local graduates to get jobs, and it means that many highly skilled migrants end up driving taxis in Australia rather than doing good work in their home countries.

As far back as 1996, there were researchers warning of this problem. This, for instance, is a quote from the Business Review Weekly of November 18th 1996,

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The robust – I might say characteristically robust – response from a number of MR people to John’s “jolly Indian” post set me thinking about the problem of Individualism.  And it is a problem for us.  Not so much, perhaps, in cases such as Razib’s, who today answered a query about “the substantive difference between you (Razib) and the Majority Rights crowd” as:-

“Majority [group] Rights vs. Individual Rights”

Now, I agree with Razib here.  MR is primarily a vehicle to discuss the present and future life of Western Man, while GNXP argues for “Eastern Man’s” interests in the West and ONLY in the West by commending to us the lot of an atomised individual.  (And if you are offended by that recommendation, you bloody well should be.  It is offensive.)

Offensive he may be, but Razib is no evil genius.  He is an uncomplicated young guy pursuing his “individual rights” in an entirely predictable way, and I don’t disdain him for that.  I do disdain him, along with all GNXPers, for acting like the worst leftist and blackening our names for doing what we can to defend our group interests.  But if he and we can agree that he does it in the name of a competing interest – he doesn’t want to be excluded just because we prefer our own kind – then at least we all know where we are coming from.  Namely, the Salterism which GNXP’s David B so utterly failed to disprove or discredit because it can’t be disproved or discredited.  It is manifestly true.

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In 2003, with little publicity, an Australian Senate committee made a momentous decision.

With support from all parties, the committee recommended the formation of a Pacific Economic and Political Community – the PEPC.

The committee summarised its final report as follows:

“In essence, it proposes a Pacific community which will eventually have one currency, one labour market, common strong budgetary and fiscal discipline, democratic and ethical governance, shared defence and security arrangements, common laws and resolve in fighting crime, and, health, welfare, education and environmental goals.”

Note that there would be a single currency and a single labour market. Sound familiar? It’s very much like the European Union, I think, except that the differences between the participating countries would be much greater.

Australia would effectively federate into a super-state, not only with New Zealand, but with Papua New Guinea and thirteen other Pacific Island nations.

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“For personal reasons I would like to believe that men and women are equal, and broadly that’s true.  But over a period of time the evidence in favour of biological factors has become stronger and stronger.  I have been dragged in a direction that I don’t particularly like, but it would be sensible if the debate was based on what we pretty much know to be the case.”  -  Dr Paul Irwing, in The Times, giving liberals the shocking news in a cuddly, empathic way.

Dr Irwing and Professor Lynn (whose earlier, liberal-offending exploits are touched upon at the end of the article) are only saying what anybody capable of surfing internet politics can easily discover:-

Men are more intelligent than women by about five IQ points on average, making them better suited for “tasks of high complexity”, according to the authors of a paper due to be published in the British Journal of Psychology.

Genetic differences in intelligence between the sexes helped to explain why many more men than women won Nobel Prizes or became chess grandmasters, the study by Paul Irwing and Professor Richard Lynn concluded.

They showed that men outnumbered women in increasing numbers as intelligence levels rise. There were twice as many with IQ scores of 125, a level typical for people with first-class degrees.

When scores rose to 155, a level associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman.

Alright, not new information for us.  But it is interesting that the MSM is now prepared to touch the IQ story at last - one thinks of the Guardian’s recent admission that, yes, genes have a role in general intelligence.  It doesn’t matter whether these are coincidental swallows.  Enough of them will usher in summer, and all scientists for whom the left has proved a censorious foe should think on that.

Human difference, lest one forgets, simply does not lend itself as a foundation for marxian politics.  We are a very long way yet from seeing the hopeless expectations of Affirmative Action recipients or the egalitarian obsessions of the establishment or the selfish interests of state employees challenged.  But that is the goal.  The public acknowledgement - however gradual and haphazard - of a truth that has been (at times, viciously) suppressed for three decades is a necessary start.  We need much, much more of it.