MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL

My mirror site for this blog seems to be working out well. It is definitely not as pretty but seems to load more quickly and more reliably than this blogspot site. I have therefore adopted the practice of posting my stuff on the mirror site first (up to an hour before I post here) so I would recommend in general that people make my mirror-site their first port of call rather than this site. Now that I have said that, I suppose the mirror site too will develop bugs .... I hope not. I have kept it simple to limit the scope for bugs as much as possible.

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ELSEWHERE

Michael Darby looks at who supports the USA in its Iraq policy and looks at a probable aftermath of the war.

The Wicked one has a good peacenik joke.

Chris Brand looks at the possibility and the morality of psycho-social engineering.

A paper here (Post of 22nd) from my archives of academic writing looks at an unusual finding to the effect that a program of training designed to ward off heart disease also reduces racism. A simple explanation for the finding is suggested.

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ANTI-WAR ATTITUDES: MENTALLY ILL?

Jim Ryan at Philosoblog (post of March 22nd) has become so despairing of the anti-war attitudes in Canada that he thinks that the antiwar people must be suffering from a mass mental illness. Loss of reality contact is of course the prime symptom of psychosis and the thought that ANYONE could oppose the removal of one of the bloodiest butchers in history does make you wonder whether the antiwar people just cannot get in touch with that reality. The alternative is to believe that they SUPPORT Saddam’s evils. So we are left with mass psychosis or mass sadism to explain the mass antiwar sentiments around us. Not a happy choice.

The third reason why widespread “peace” protests continue, however, is clearly the most influential: Mass hatred of America. Given the world’s long history of hatred towards other nations, that must be recognized as a powerful influence too. Even being the kindest, most ethical and and most generous nation in history (which America is) cannot deflect ancient hatreds like that. It is just lucky for Americans that they are big enough and strong enough to stand up to all that hatred directed against them.

Anyone who has read Helmut Schoeck’s book on envy will understand very well why America is hated. Paradoxically, their kindness probably gets them hated even more than they otherwise would be: Because it too shows them up as being so much better than most other people. Quite simply, those with weak egos need to pull down America and American power in order to make themselves feel better. And similar protestors in America itself need to feel that they are wiser and better than those who lead America.

And let us not forget that some of the protesters are simply naive emptyheads who just want to do something to make themselves feel good. The story told by one of the returning “human shields” here spells that out loud and clear.

Reference:
Schoeck, H. (1969) Envy: A theory of social behaviour London: Martin Secker & Warburg.

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AN EMAIL FROM DUBAI

Shishir Yerramilli writes:

HAR HAR MAHADEV!
That’s the battle cry of Vedic Hindu soldiers before they enter battle and it worked for them so far. Mahadev is none other than Shiva, the Hindu god of war and death. I invoke this battle cry on behalf of the U.S soldiers whenever I see them storming across Iraq. BRAVO, BRAVO!

I am ashamed of the Indian government. They are bunch of f*****g eunuchs. Don’t be fooled though! The average Hindu very much supports the American chutzpah. Remember that the Indian elites are Western (i.e. Leftist) educated and are uncomfortable with conflicts of any sort -- hence the sorry situation in Kashmir.

I would recommend that American soldiers take Richard III's advice and hang Saddam and his clones' genitals from a tree! LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR!

I got into a minor altercation here in Dubai with a fellow student when he noticed my screensaver was that of George Patton saluting with the U.S flag in the backdrop. Well, actually it was George C. Scott as Patton, but it was still provocative. I would soon like to put a picture of George W. Bush in a heroic, stoic posture (such as is hard to come by in the Leftist media). That would be something!

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CRIMINALS ARE BORN THAT WAY

Those Leftists who think that all violent adult behaviour is just the result of an unfortunate upbringing and not the result of heredity should read this article. It waffles a lot but in the end cannot get past the fact that a violent adulthood can be predicted from behaviour in infancy:

Research released last month from the Australian Temperament Project claims that it is possible to pick up early warning signs that children may be heading for delinquency, drug-taking and criminal behaviour. Some experts claim children who go on to develop delinquent behaviour are different from their peers from as early as two years of age. The Australian Temperament Project has followed 2443 Victorian children and their parents from infancy in 1982 to adulthood.

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ELSEWHERE

Best laugh of the war so far: Some nitwit Kiwi said that damage to the sand-dunes by tanks was a good reason to oppose the war.

This paper from my archives of academic writing shows that personal authoritarianism (aggressive dominance) is NOT associated with racism -- except in one country -- Germany. But Germany has such a strong anti-racist ideoilogy these days (understandable in view of the disaster that racism brought them in their recent history) that it is perhaps only the most assertive Germans today who feel able to admit to racial dislikes.

Michael Darby thinks that the Northern Iraq oilwells are pretty safe and that the French and Russians will lose out big on contracts they had signed to take oil from there.

The Wicked one says that bright people are better off WITHOUT spellcheckers and grammar checkers.

Chris Brand tells of how he first encountered the data on inherited racial differences in IQ

The latest postings on PC Watch include reference to the weird editorial processes at the New York Times and the de-emphasis on books in British libraries.

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MESSAGE TO THE “ASHAMED” LIBERALS

One of my U.S. readers (a Southern belle) writes:

Are you ASHAMED to be an American today?

Well let me tell you why you should be PROUD to be an American today. Today we have made history - and changed the future.

We are one of the world's youngest countries. We have become the greatest power.
France, Germany and Russia have been sent a message, it's two words... and it ends with You.

We must protect ourselves and our world from people who would do either one harm. I've heard people say, " Does the US think it can police the world?" Well someones got to, and after 9/11 and the chemical and biological scares, I think that is apparent.

This is A-Day, "Awe" day, not meant to awe with military power, but meant to awe by its MESSAGE. We will set right wrong in the world when we see it, and we don't need permission. We can not wait for another 9/11, it was a wake up call - and we are AWAKE.

If we have shown at least 4 new, advanced, extremely effective weapons - then you can rest assured we have several more that we will NOT show the world. Rest assured we can protect the American public - and will. We will also help to assure peace in the world, because as a race we are getting so advanced, that the wrong weapon - in the wrong hands, could literally obliterate us all. We will not let that happen.

The US and the UK are together. There can be no doubt that of TWO making the largest whole, and 46 countries so far saying they would rather be with us than against us.

Be proud to be an American today because the message is that this young country is going to show the rest of the world how to let freedom ring.

France says the UK and the US can't administer Iraq after this war?! Are they going to and stop us? The answer is that the US, UK, and 46 others make up a Coalition -- and France can join it, shut up, or be Awed. Either way, it will benefit them - they found Ricin in their subway - and that is the type of thing the US seeks to stop.

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THE EVIL THAT A PAIR OF MAN-HATING “FEMINISTS” CAN DO

A reader writes:

Your recent post about the London paedophile case reminds me of another case in the UK discussed here. The accused workers were put through 9 years of hell and ultimately obtained justice in the form of damage awards of two hundred thousand pounds each.

The witch hunt against them was led by Judith Jones (formerly Judith Dawson) and her partner Beatrix Campbell. Campbell was a key figure in the Cleveland child abuse scandal:

"....in their 1999 co-written book Stolen Voices which sought to portray, through misinformation and misrepresentation, the British False Memory Society and other critics, as part of a 'paedophile's lobby'. Unsurprisingly, the totally unfounded slurs in the book resulted in a queue of people intending to take legal action. Responding to the first of many potential claims, the publishers withdrew the book the day before publication...."

More here

Under the heading “No Man is safe” here are some other examples of Campbell's campaigns.

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ELSEWHERE

Today’s funniest headline: France Rejects U.S.-British Control of Postwar Iraq. Who do they think will be listening?

And a pleasing report for Australians: "Coalition forces, led by Australia, captured an Iraqi tug boat that apparently was preparing to lay sea mines in the Persian Gulf.".

Nice people, the French: All the EU leaders except Chirac offered their condolences to Blair on the deaths of eight British servicemen in a helicopter crash in Kuwait..

Hello Bloggy has some thoughts on why Baghdad will NOT be like Mogadishu and wonders at how TV commentators can be so asinine.

The Wicked one has some good jokes plus scathing comments about black congressmen and the Africanization of London.

Michael Darby condemns Australia’s Leftist opposition party for lack of any principles.

Chris Brand has posts on flirtation and IQ tests for pregnant women.

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IF YOU ARE FOLLOWING THE WAR IN IRAQ

Warblogcorner is probably the best place to follow the war. Heaps of bloggers are logging in and posting news. It seems that whole Iraqui armies have already surrendered -- as expected. And it seems pretty likely that the “Saddam” we saw on TV after the first strike was in fact a double.

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THE WAR FOR A FREE SOCIETY

There is a long and very scholarly article here that argues that European Post-modernism is the real enemy of the Anglosphere countries:

George Bush and Tony Blair's appeal to common ideals in their attempt to recruit Europe to the task of reshaping the Middle East is fundamentally mistaken: such common ideals do not exist. Indeed, I will argue that the Cold War is not over, that the U.S. has not won the "war" and that the battles that lie ahead will be far more difficult to pin down than even the asymmetric warfare of the Islamic terrorists. These battles will not be fought with guns and missiles but will take place in the sphere of ideology. The core issue around which these battles will be joined is the very definition of what it means to be a free society. Among the European masses and across the spectrum of academic intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic, the position of classical liberalism - the founding ideology of the United States - has already lost.

The Post-Modern project enjoys both the energy of moral outrage and a philosophical cover for its errors to prevent anyone from undercutting the outrage. In this, it is enormously attractive to any party having a gripe against the modern world. Every failed state, every ethnic hustler, every ideological movement, every intellectual poseur, and every tyrannical thug has a stake in feeding and propagating this modern variant of Rousseau's Hydra. Its energetic rise in modern Europe will prove to be one of the great ideological challenges of the 21st century.

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THE FAT WARS

A reader writes:

In your recent posting featuring Paddy McGuinness's column on the "symbolic" legal cases being raised against fast food chains, McGuinness mentions that the scientific debate in this field is still pretty nebulous.

These two recent stories in "Reason" here and here give an airing to both sides of the "fat wars" in science . My guess is that we are still a long way from deciding these issues and my guess is that the methodological and modelling issues in nutrition science would make climatology look simple.

Food of course has been a major cultural and ideological divide for humans since the year dot, yet somehow McDonalds has become the prime symbolic target of choice for anti-globalisation protestors. A good example is French farmer and anti-GM food campaigner Jose Bove arrested for trashing a McDonalds.

The global spread of curry and thai food outlets, which vastly outnumber McDonald's franchise outlets are never mentioned or criticised by the anti-globos, who thanks to double think, often simultaneously imagine themselves as enjoying a "cosmopolitan" lifestyle whilst opposing globalisation. Did they protest the replacement of the humble Aussie pie by pizza? Or the ongoing demise of the traditional Aussie cake shop to the cambodian bread stall? For those who have already made up their minds on this issue, they can always quietly celebrate the 150th birthday of the potato chip.

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HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

Some interesting history of the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division, known as the "Rock of the Marne," which "is likely to smash head-on into Iraqi defenses":

The 3rd Infantry Division's history dates back to World War I, when it earned its nickname, said Walter Meeks, the director of the division's museum at Fort Stewart, Ga. In northeast France, near the Marne River, American troops rebuffed a German offensive while two French divisions fled. The victory was credited with helping turn the tide in the war.

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ELSEWHERE

Here is a good description of the U.N.: The headquarters of global tyrant-appeasement evidently serves as a clubhouse in which butchers are celebrated, while Jews, Americans and women who are both, are not wanted.

Not so strange: As Americans braced in recent days for the war against Iraq, many Californians were feeling strangely out of it.

I like it: "A man protesting the looming U.S. war on Iraq fell to his death from San Francisco's famed Golden Gate Bridge on Wednesday as he was hanging a banner"

Chris Brand continues the story of his intellectual development with some thoughts about aggression.

Michael Darby has news of developments in Romania and Spain.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I used to teach survey research methodology at university and I try here to educate some of my colleagues out of doing the silly things in surveys that they usually do.

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CONGRATULATIONS TO PRESIDENT BUSH AND PRIME MINISTER BLAIR

Against enormous opposition worldwide, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have pushed through this tremendous effort to bring down yet another enemy of the liberty and civility that the English-speaking people have always valued so highly. All best wishes for the American, British and Australian fighting men in Iraq who are fighting for civilization today. Once again, only the the English-speaking world has the guts to be the bastion and defender of liberty.

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FRENCH IMPERIALISM

The McDonalds’ restaurants worldwide often come under attack from Leftists as embodying American “cultural imperialism”. Yet there are probably even more French restaurants around. Why are they not a sign of French “cultural imperialism”? One would seem to be as logical as the other.

But as Don Quixote said: “Facts are the enemy of truth”. The Don was obviously a Leftist. Many of the targets that Leftists aim at are at least as silly as the Don’s windmills.

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ANTI-GLOBOS AS RACISTS AND NATIONALISTS

An Australian reader says that “Leftist” anti-globalizers and Australia’s most prominent anti-immigration politician (the “rightist” Pauline Hanson) both really want the same thing. They both want to retain a “national” identity and individuality:

I have been thinking about this doublethink amongst the anti-globos of late. I have a pain in the neck friend who is always on the latest lefty bandwagon. He hates Pauline Hanson and is afraid Australians are all becoming "xenophobic" but then is against "globalisation".

My argument is that if there is a problem with economic globalisation at all, (I am not convinced it is bad) it must apply to cosmopolitanism as well, something he and his ilk are always praising as a great social advance on the old Australian "anglo-celtic" culture. Thanks to cosmo, Sydney and Melbourne are now just like Vancouver, San Francisco and London. If it weren't for the climate differences you'd hardly know which one you were in. They all have the same big fast food chains, and Thai and Indian curry houses on every other corner. All these cities are "cosmopolitan" and the same at the same time. "Cultural Diversity" at the local level is paradoxically leading to homogenity at the international level. Sameness.

Luckily for us, Star Bucks has been slow to spread here... mainly because the Italians taught the Australians what constitutes good coffee, a lesson the North Americanos never really learned. Yet when my pro-cosmo anti-globo friend travels he prefers to visit places that are "out of the ordinary", culturally different, have their own culture and traditions.. the non-cosmo cultures. But isn't that the very thing he is preventing Australia from keeping and developing by opposing "Hansonism"? I enjoy the diversity of restaurants etc as much as the next guy but if we lose what makes Australia different and become just another cosmopolitan ant pile, with all the social cohesion of an international airport transit lounge.. we can't blame it all on McDonalds and The Simpsons.

Note that the famous French Leftist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1983) also justified ethnocentrism as a means of preserving cultural diversity.

Reference:
Levi-Strauss, C. (1983) Le Regard Eloigne Paris: Plon.

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BLOGGER.COM REALLY ARE THE PITS

Sorry to talk of mundane things in these dramatic times but it is rather forced upon me.

I am really happy with Blogger.com software when it works as it should. But hardly a day goes by when it does NOT work as it should. They seem to have got WORSE since Google took them over. For instance, today and yesterday I could not post to any blog for a couple of hours. When I got through at all, I kept getting absurd error messages (error 203) instead. I eventually emailed Jason Shellen about it and he got it fixed after about an hour. But it was exactly the same bug that I had encountered two days ago and it soon came back.

Anyway, I have decided to follow Instapundit and set up a parallel site that is completely independent of blogger.com and blogspot. You can see it here. It is a bit basic but it does the job. If you are a regular reader of this blog please bookmark the alternative site for occasions when Blogger.com will not let me put anything up.

In case I sound paranoid, note that there is one site here that I lost contact with months ago. I can no longer access it to add or change anything either through blogger.com or through an FTP program. I cannot even delete it! It would be most vexing if the same happened to this present site.

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ELSEWHERE

Wylie says: I have a feeling the names Bush and Blair will stand in history alongside those of Roosevelt and Churchill and Reagan and Thatcher in opposition to tyranny. And that's pretty heady company indeed.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of good reading.

Chris Brand comments on the latest bouts of paedohysteria and has some stories about the man that Leftists worldwide campaigned so hard for.

Michael Darby gives his predictions about the likely course of the Iraq war.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I take my academic colleagues to task for some of the absurd things they do when they purport to measure people’s attitudes and personality.

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N.Y.T. “QUOTE OF THE DAY”

The New York Times email edition made the following expression of good sense and caution their quote of the day. How it must have hurt them to do so!

"In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth. Terrorists and terrorist states do not reveal these threats with fair notice in formal declarations. And responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self defense. It is suicide. The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now."
- PRESIDENT BUSH

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ANOTHER FALSE PAEDOPHILIA CONVICTION OVERTURNED

Jubilation in court as care workers freed. ON FRIDAY 14 MARCH, in the solemn surroundings of the High Court in London, the friends and supporters of two Merseyside care workers rose to their feet to cheer and applaud as Mr Justice Kennedy announced that the men's convictions were unsafe

Thank your lucky stars if you do not live in England. They specialize in jailing the innocent and ignoring the guilty there. More here.

For more on the madhouse of British Injustice see the post headed Gunman shoots security guard, Guard gets arrested for murder on PC Watch (post of 18th)

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SPAM

Most people seem to be groaning under the load of spam they get these days. I guess I delete about 50 of them from my inbox every day. If governments cannot do anything about it, they should declare all commercial spammers to be outlaws so that we can put a bullet through them anytime we find one. The amount of time people must waste deleting all the stuff must add up to a huge workload overall. A reader writes:

In terms of junk mail I have discovered that if you use those "remove me from this mailing list" things on the bottom of spam it mainly makes things worse. they then know that the e-mail address is active and send your more spam and/or sell your address to other spammers. Spam is the one form of free enterprise I hate. I really like this Cringely guy when talking about net stuff. He has a couple of articles on spam here and here and he refers to this WIRED story here which makes me feel that using remove pages is (was) a bad idea.

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NICE TOXINS

Quote from the science journal "Nature":

Dioxins, which are industrial by-products that at certain doses can cause cancer, can actually reduce tumour growth in some species. Similarly, small amounts of the toxic trace metal cadmium can promote plant growth

The great Greenie scare about all the "toxins" produced by industry is gradually becoming unravelled. The concept of "hormesis" (the therapeutic effect of things that can be poisonous in high doses) has been around for nearly a century and is in fact the basis of one form of "alternative" medicine (Homoeopathy). Once again we find that nature is unkind to simplistic formulations. It depends on the dose whether something is a "toxin" or not. Common salt can be a poison if you take too much of it.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

The British Firemen have agreed to drop their outrageous pay claims. This is a victory for Tony Blair almost on a par with Margaret Thatcher’s defeat of the coalminers.

Alternatives to Blogger.com are emerging: Welcome news. The constant malfunctions of Blogger.com really are a trial.

I note that wine-drinkers who are boycotting French wines refer to themselves as The coalition of the swilling!

Timothy Noah says that France is America's NATO ally. With allies like those ....

British Leftist academic Tony Kushner (PDF file) thinks that scientists who say that there really are differences between the races should be subjected to something like Hitler’s holocaust. And they try to deny that Leftism is a religion of hate! Hitler, of course, was a good socialist.

Chris Brand says that he first became an hereditarian when he worked as a prison psychologist and noted that criminals all blamed their criminality on their families -- even though other members of the family were generally not criminal.

Michael Darby has the story about how it was only the incredible persistence of one man that overcame the bureaucratic hurdles that nearly prevented the development of a great Australian industry.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I look at the claim that people who are wary of AIDS victims are “authoritarian”. I point out that what the researchers have really found is that it is old-fashioned to be wary of homosexuals.

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SUPPORT SOLID IN AUSTRALIA

Americans might be pleased to hear that Australia's pro-war Prime Minister is miles ahead of his Leftist rival in the polls:

John Howard is winning the war for public opinion as Australia braces to invade Iraq by the end of the week. Despite nationwide anti-war protests, and Labor scrapping 30 years of bipartisanship on sending troops overseas, the Coalition has maintained an election-winning lead. Although Mr Howard's support as preferred prime minister has dropped to its lowest level since July last year, he still holds more than a 2-to-1 advantage over Simon Crean.

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CANADA SHOWS GLOBAL COOLING

The latest news now from the Canadian Ice Service is that Lake Superior is now 100% frozen over. In addition, Lakes Huron and Erie are also frozen tight. This is a rare and brief occurrence, the last events being in 1982 and 1994. The northern one third of Lake Michigan is also ice covered. Further east, the Gulf of St. Lawrence has 25% more ice than normal, and the Atlantic coast down to Halifax is covered with sea ice, a direct result of the deep winter freeze that has gripped Eastern Canada. Toronto recorded its coldest March day since 1868. This in spite of the `urban heat island'. The city has now had 63 days in which temperatures failed to rise above 0oC, more than double the number last year.

The occurrence of such a record-breaking freeze in these greenhouse times must raise questions as to the validity of the greenhouse warming theory, particularly its assumed magnitude, since the theory suggests that the greenhouse effect has its greatest leverage in the coldest places and at the coldest times.

Post of 12th from John Daly's site.

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CHIRAC THE STATESMAN

The BBC has a discussion going under the heading:

Jacques Chirac's domestic opinion poll ratings are as high as they've ever been, in a period when the economy is in a decidedly patchy state. Is Iraq a much needed panacea for the French President's popularity problems, or should his views on war be interpreted as a purely moral stance by a truly independent world leader?

I would not have thought that there was much to discuss there!

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THE CAUSES OF RACISM

Today's academic paper from my past is here. In it I look at how modern academic psychologists explain racism. For many years they pretended that racism was a form of mental illness to be found only among conservatives. Eventually, however, the sheer weight of their own evidence on the subject forced them to acknoweledge that racism in some form was in fact universal and normal.

This still however left the puzzle that some people appear to be more racist than others. Why? There are many pet theories about that now and in my paper I surveyed most of them and pointed out their flaws (which makes it a very long paper). What I pointed to as the best supported theory is that racism emerges as the result of culture clash. Different ethnic groups really are different in their customs and values so those who encounter people from groups with values that they would normally decry in anyone also decry the groups holding those values.

An excerpt:

More generally, in some cultures industriousness and hard work are much admired. They are seen as badges of responsibility and respect-worthiness. In yet other cultures, however, hard work is seen as something that any sensible person avoids wherever possible. When people from the pro-work culture are mixed in with people from the anti-work culture people from the anti-work culture must be looked down upon by people from the pro-work culture. For people from the pro-work culture to do otherwise would simply be inconsistent and discriminatory. People from the pro-work culture would think ill of themselves for being "lazy" so why should they not think ill of others who are "lazy"? To ask them to approve of laziness would be to ask them to be untrue to their own values and their own culture.

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