Mencken on the Popular Will

Mencken on the Popular Will

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes the popular will, pages 85-97. Below is an overview of his discussion of the popular will; my comments are in brackets.
    No distinction can be made between representative democracy and pure democracy in practice with the “constant conflicts between what is assumed to be the popular will and the self-interest of small but articulate and efficient groups, and that theoretical variety which would liberate and energize the popular will completely. The latter must remain purely theoretical for all time.” Moreover, an energized and liberated popular will is unlikely to change the “main outlines of the democratic process.”
    “What is genuinely important is not that the will of mankind in the mass should be formulated and made effective at all times and in every case, but simply that means should be provided for ascertaining and executing it in capital cases — that there shall be no immovable impediment to its execution when, by some prodigy of nature, it takes a coherent and apposite form. If, over and beyond that, a sufficient sense of its immanent and imminent potency remains to make politicians walk a bit warily, if the threat always hangs in the air that under x circumstances and on y day it may be heard from suddenly and devastatingly, then democracy is actually in being.” Mencken believes this is the case in the United States and Northwest Europe.
    Mencken notes that the people and the Pope checked the monarch’s power. If he oppressed his people too much, they could rise against him. Although a king, he was still “biologically only a man, with but one gullet to slit; and if the people were feeble or too craven to be dangerous, then there was always His Holiness of Rome to fear or other agents of the King of Kings; and if these ghostly mentors, too, were silent, then he had to reckon with his ministers, his courtiers, his soldiers, his doctors, and his women.” Thus, the power of the most despotic autocrat is limited. [Stalin probably died at the hands of his doctors while he was planning another purge. Hitler’s generals almost assassinated him.] Mencken remarks that the “Merovingian kings were certainly absolute, if absolutism has ever existed outside the dreams of historians; nevertheless, . . . their sovereignty was gradually undermined by the mayors of the palace, and finally taken from them altogether.” Likewise, the emperor of Japan “succumbed to the shoguns, who succumbed in their turn to a combination of territorial nobles and city capitalists.”
    Mencken comments “that the common people, under such a democracy as that which now prevails in the United States, are more completely sovereign in fact as well as in law, than any of these ancient despots. They may be seduced and enchained by a great variety of prehensile soothsayers, just as Henry VIII was seduced and enchained by his wives, but, like Henry again, they are quite free to throw off their chains whenever they please, and to chop off the heads of their seducers.” They can throw off their chains merely by “intimidating Congress, which never fails to leap when their growl is palpably in earnest. And if Congress stood out against them, they could do it anyhow, under protection of the jury system. The executioners, once acquitted, could not be molested more, save by illegal processes.” [Nearly all the common people underestimate the power that they have as a juror. A juror is accountable to no one — not the judge, the Supreme Court of the State or the United States, and certainly not the governor or president. If a juror finds that a law is repugnant or that it is being used unlawfully, he merely finds the accused not guilty — and if he has the courage, no power on earth can legally or lawfully force him to change his mind.]
    Next, Mencken comments on a paradox of democracy. Democrats often argue that democracy is incomplete if certain classes of people are not allowed to vote. Mencken remarks, “To argue thus is to argue against democracy itself, for if the majority has not the right to decide what qualifications shall be necessary to participate in its sovereignty, then it has no sovereignty at all.” Usually, the disfranchised class “is not actively eager, as a whole, for the ballot, and that its lack of interest in the matter is at least presumptive evidence of its general political incompetence.” Democracy came into existence by being “forced upon its beneficiaries by a small group of visionaries, all of them standing outside the class benefited.”
    As an example, Mencken uses giving women the vote. “The great masses of women in all countries were indifferent to the boon, and there was a considerable body that was cynically hostile. Perhaps a majority of the more ardent suffragists belonged biologically to neither sex.” He continues, “Giving women the ballot . . . has brought in none of the great reforms promised by the suffragists. It has substituted adultery for drunkenness as the principal divertissement at political conventions, but it has accomplished little else.” Moreover, “[t]he majority of women, when they vote at all, seem to vote unwillingly and without clear purpose; they are, perhaps, relatively too intelligent to have any faith in purely political remedies for the sorrows of the world. The minorities that show partisan keenness are chiefly made up of fat women with inattentive husbands; they are victimized easily by the male politicians, especially those who dress well, and are thus swallowed up by the great parties and lose all separate effectiveness. . . . The extension of the franchise has not changed the general nature of the political clown-show in the slightest. Campaigns are still made upon the same old issues, and offices go to the same old mountebanks, with a few Jezebels added to the corps to give it refinement.” [Little has changed since Mencken wrote this. What change that has occurred has been mostly for the worse. Often fear and security sells slightly better to women than to men, but probably not enough to make any real difference.]
    Mencken adds, “There is little reason for believing that the extension of the franchise to the classes that still remain in the dark would make government more delicately responsive to the general will. Such classes, as a matter of fact, are now so few and so small in numbers in all of the Western nations that they may be very conveniently disregarded.”
    Next, Mencken discusses the Black voter. Blacks who are actually disfranchised “may remove their disability by the simple device of moving away, as, in fact, hundreds of thousands have done. Their disfranchisement is thus not intrinsic and complete, but merely a function of their residence.” [For most Blacks that meant moving North since most Blacks lived in the South. However, the Yankee did not want them to move North; they wanted them to stay in their place.] Moreover, “the theory of the fundamental law is that the coloured folk may and do vote. This theory they could convert into a fact at any time by determined mass action.” [This was done in the 1960s through the fronts of the Communist party as part of the Second Reconstruction, when the United States again reminded the Southern States that they were merely conquered provinces of the United States.] If Blacks were not willing to fight for the vote, they did not deserve it. Not fighting for the vote, “convicts them of unfitness for citizenship in a democratic state, for the loftiest of all the rights of the citizen, by the democratic dogma, is that of the franchise, and whoever is not willing to fight for it, even at the cost of his last drop of gore, is surely not likely to exercise it with a proper sense of consecration after getting it.”
    No one argues that democracy in the United States is destroyed when millions of White citizens who are eligible to vote fail to do so. “The difference between these negligent whites and the disfranchised Negroes is only superficial.” For example, he writes, “In New York City thousands of freeborn Caucasians surrender it in order to avoid jury duty; in the South thousands of Negroes surrender it in order to avoid having their homes burned and their heads broken. The two motives are fundamentally identical; in each case the potential voter values his peace and security more than he values the boon for which the Fathers bled. He certainly has a right to choose.” [If one wants to avoid jury duty, he can accomplish that without giving up his vote. He merely lets the judge or prosecutor know that he believes in jury nullification. That belief will get him removed from the jury pool. However, this tactic may not work for civil suits as the violation of a law is usually not involved.]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Poor on Jevons

Poor on Jevons

Thomas Allen

    In 1877, Henry Varnum Poor (1812-1905) wrote Money and Its Laws: Embracing a History of Monetary Theories, and a History of the Currency of the United States. He was a financial analyst and founder of a company that evolved into Standard & Poor’s. Poor was a proponent of the real bills doctrine and the classical gold-coin standard and, thus, the quality theory of money. He gave little credence to the quantity theory of money — especially if credit money, such as bank notes, were convertible on demand in species. Also, he contends that the value of money depends on and is derived from the value of the material of which it is made and with paper money, its representation of such value.
    In the latter part of his book, he discusses leading monetary theorists from Aristotle (350 B.C.) to David A. Wells (1875). Most of the economists whom he discussed were proponents of the quantity theory of money.
    William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882) was a British economist and mathematician. He developed the theory of marginal utility, i.e., utility determines value. Among his works are The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (1875), which Poor uses for much of his critique, and Principles of Economics (1905). We will look at his discussion on Jevons. My comments are in brackets. Referenced page numbers enclosed in parentheses are to Poor’s book.
    Jevons states that countries use gold and silver coins because they greatly facilitate trade. In time, people discover that token base-metal coins and paper money of nominal value pass as signs of the ownership of gold and silver coins. Over time, people become so accustomed to paper currency that it ceases to represent gold and silver coins and becomes money in its own right. Thus, paper currency can continue to circulate even after the metal that it represents is removed. [This phenomenon is witnessed today throughout the world as paper currency ceased representing gold and silver in the years following World War I.] Jevons points to Scotland and Norway as examples where paper currency circulated and gold coin did not. Paper promising to pay in gold was preferred to gold coin (pp. 384-385).
    Jevons does acknowledge that unlike gold coins, paper currency “will not circulate beyond the boundaries of the district or country where it is legally current and habitually employed” (p. 386). [This is not exactly true in today’s world where every country has paper fiat money. Paper money, such as the U.S. dollar, that is considered relatively strong, i.e., loses purchasing power more slowly compared with a local currency, will circulate in a country with a weak currency, i.e., loses purchasing power more quickly.]
    Jevons notes that under the gold standard when paper money of one country is exchanged in another country for that country’s money, this paper money becomes an obligation of the issuing country that has to be paid in gold (p. 384).  When a country’s paper money is inconvertible domestically, it must still be redeemed in gold to foreigners to maintain the value of the paper money. If it is not, the county will have too much money in circulation, and its paper money will depreciate against gold (p. 386). [This is the quantity theory of money at work.]
    Poor responds that “all convertible currencies . . . are regularly retired within periods of, say ninety days from their issue” (p. 386). [This is the real bills doctrine at work.] He continues, “It does happen that large amounts of paper money get into circulation, having no more value than worthless bits of leather or paper; but they get into circulation for the reason that it is always believed that a metallic basis of value underlies them. If they have no such basis, those who take them are deceived” (p. 386). [This true only with the silver or gold standard, which existed at the time Jevons and Poor wrote. It is not true today as none of today’s paper money has an underlying gold or silver basis of value. However, arguably, people are still being deceived as the value of today’s money depends almost entirely on confidence, which is highly fickle.]
    To Jevons’ example of the notes of Scottish banks, Poor replies “that they rested on a basis of metals, or upon that which would produce metals” (p. 368).
    Poor also condemns Jevons assumption “that worthless bits of paper — the basis of metal being wholly removed — circulated by the same law as that which controls the circulation of coin, or that which was convertible on demand into coin” (pp. 386-387) and “has exactly the same capacity for driving out standard money that light or depreciated coins possess” (p. 387). Poor asserts, “Convertible paper money exerts no such tendency; on the contrary, its tendency is to bring metallic money into the country to form the basis of its issue. The two are equal in value, and move harmoniously side by side” (p. 387).
    As for debased coins, they drive “out standard coin, only for the reason that it has the same competency in the payment of debts; and, of two equally competent instruments, the less costly will be preferred” (p. 387). When a debased coin is demonetized, it passes at its real value and not its denominational value. That is, it passes based on the weight of gold or silver that it contains and not by the value stamped on the coin.
    Jevons writes, “The State may either take the issue of representative money into its own hands, as it takes the coining of money; or it may allow private individuals, or semi-public companies and corporations, to undertake the work under more or less strict legislative control” (p. 387). Poor asks, “What would the money of a State represent? A beggared treasury and a parcel of ignorant and listless officials. No State money issued as currency ever represented any thing else” (pp. 387-388). [Like most of the founding fathers, Poor was not fond of governmentally issued paper money. He wrote Resumption and the Silver Question condemning the U.S. notes. However, he erred in his prediction about the U.S. note. If gold only backed half the U.S. notes in circulation, he thought that the value of a $10 U.S. note would only be worth $5 in gold. He was proved wrong as U.S. notes exchanged at par when they became convertible in gold, although gold backed only about one-third of the U.S. notes.]
    Jevons writes:

Assuming an inconvertible paper currency to be issued, and to be entirely in the hands of government, many of the evils of such a system might be avoided, if the issue were limited or reduced the moment that the price of gold in paper rose above par. As long as the notes, and the gold coin which they pretend to represent, circulate on a footing of equality, they are as good as if convertible (p. 388).

    Poor concedes that this is true. Then he asks what happens if the holder of a gold coin refuses to exchange it for an equal amount of inconvertible paper money (p. 388). [When the U.S. government issued U.S. notes, an inconvertible legal-tender paper currency, gold coins were allowed to circulate alongside U.S. notes. U.S. notes quickly fell in value relative to gold and did not exchange at par with gold coin until they became convertible in gold on demand.]
    Jevons believed that inconvertible paper money can maintain its full value if its quantity is carefully limited (p. 389). Poor doubts that any inconvertible paper money can retain its full value for long.
    Jevons considered the issue of notes more analogous to the government “function of coinage than to the ordinary commercial operating of drawing bills” (p. 390). Thus, the government or “its agents acting under the strictest legislative control” (pp. 390-391) should be the sole issuers of paper money. [Poor does not mention Jevons position on checkable deposits. Now most economists consider checkable deposits to be functionally equivalent to bank notes, which Jevons believes should be either a government monopoly or a governmentally granted monopolistic privilege of the central bank. As checkable deposits are equivalent to bank notes, then under Jevons’ scheme, the government should hold all checking accounts or its strictly controlled agent should. {For more on Jevons’ view of checkable deposit, see below.}]
    In summary, Jevons is a proponent of the quantity theory of money. The quantity of money determines its purchasing power. Even inconvertible paper money can maintain par with gold if its quantity is properly controlled. Moreover, he advocates the government monopolizing the issue of paper money.
    [In Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, Jevons has a chapter titled “The Quantity of Money Needed by a Nation.” He concludes “that the only method of regulating the amount of the currency is to leave it at perfect freedom to regulate itself.”[1] Such a conclusion fits well with the gold standard accompanied by the real bills doctrine where no bank has a monopoly on issuing notes and bank notes are not legal tender and are converted to gold coin on demand. However, it seems to conflict with Jevons’ advocacy of monopolizing the issue of notes and of the government strictly controlling the quantity of notes issued. He remarks that the quantity of money, gold coins and paper notes representing gold coins, cannot and should not be regulated, but it should be allowed to fluctuate to meet the changes of commerce. However, the government should strictly regulate the quantity of paper notes. Under his strict regulation, paper notes are fully backed by gold with no restriction placed on the quantity of gold exchanged for paper notes.
    Jevons either disregards or rejects the regulation of bank notes pursuant to the real bills doctrine as Poor advocates. Under the real bills doctrine, bank notes are not fully backed by gold. However, they are fully backed by gold or bills of exchange, commercial money, which mature in gold coin in the near future. The real bills doctrine automatically expands and contracts the quantity of money to match the needs of commerce.
    Unlike the real bills doctrine where real bills of exchange function as money in discharging debt, Jevons’ system seems to prohibit such use of bills of exchange. However, he acknowledges that bills of exchange do serve as money to a limited degree. His system limits the quantity of money to the quantity of gold available for use as money. It only offers the market the choice of using gold coin or paper notes representing gold coin for exchanges. Under the real bills doctrine, the quantity of paper notes is limited more by commercial activity than by the quantity of gold. Gold serves as the regulator of the quantity of notes issued.
    Jevons views checks as a credit clearing system that balances debts against each other, such that money is never touched. Apparently, unlike most economists today and many then, he does not consider checks to be functionally the same as paper notes. Nevertheless, they are. Both are credit money representing gold coin. Both can discharge debt, but neither can extinguish debt. Furthermore, both are orders to transfer gold from one person to another. The major difference between the two is that a note may pass through many hands before it is returned for redemption or cancellation of debt while a check usually passes through one or two hands before it is returned for redemption or cancellation of debt.
    Under Jevons’ system, the total quantity of money cannot expand or contract rapidly enough to accommodate commerce satisfactorily. If enough monetary gold is available to serve the needs of commerce under his system during periods of high demand for money, then gold is diverted from financing capital to serving as circulating media and too much money, i.e., monetary gold, exists for periods of low demand for money. Thus, the result is a rise in price during times of high demand for money and a fall in prices during the times of low demand for money. However, this situation does not exist under the real bills doctrine. Under the real bills doctrine, the money supply can expand rapidly to match rising demands for money. Moreover, it can contract rapidly when the demand for money slackens. Thus, the quantity of money increases and decreases quickly and automatically to satisfy the needs of commerce. The real bills doctrine, which Poor promotes, is superior to the system promoted by Jevons.]

Endnote
1. W. Stanley Jevons, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (New York, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1896), p. 340.

Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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People of Africa

People of Africa

Thomas Allen

    Many people mistakenly believe that all Africans are Negroes except the late arriving Aryans of southern Africa. A result of this misconception has resulted in the claim that Negroes created the ancient civilization of Egypt. The people who created the ancient Egyptian civilization were the Mizraim, an Aryan nation, who arrived in Egypt around 3200 B.C.
    Five of the six races, species, of humans inhabit Africa. They are the Khoisan (Homo khoisanii), Negro (Homo niger), Melanochroi (Homo brunus), Aryan (Homo albus), and Turanian (Homo luridus). The Khoisans are the original inhabitants of Africa; they originated in Africa probably around 75,000 years ago. Next came the Negroes, who appear in Africa between 55,000 and 40,000 years ago. Following them were the Melanochroi, who arrived around 35,000 years ago. Next came the Aryans, who probably began arriving around 7500 B.C. with more substantial numbers arriving shortly after 1500 B.C. These later Aryans are the ancestor of most Aryans of North Africa. Finally came the Turanians, who landed in Madagascar starting in the first century A.D. with substantial settlements by 1100 A.D. Most Madagascan Turanians are from these settlers.
    The following map, which is based on Carleton Coon’s map,[1] shows the approximate areas inhabited by Khoisans, Negroes, Melanochroi, Aryans, and Turanians around 1500 A.D. During the last 500 years, the major changes that have occurred has been the area inhabited by the Khoisans has greatly contracted as Negroes encroached from the north and Aryans from the south. Also, large numbers of Melanochroi from British India were imported into the British colonies of East and South Africa. Along with a significant number of these later Aryans, a significant number of these Melanochroi still inhabit South Africa.

    The Negro is the primary human species inhabiting Africa. The racial types of Negroes found in Africa are Sudanese (True Negroes, Nigritians), Palaenegroes (Forest Negroes), Pygmies (Negrillos, Twides), Nilotes (Nilotic Negroes), Nilo-Hamites (Negro-Hamites), Bantus (Kaffirs), and Negro Malagasy.
    Sudanese are found predominately along the Guinea coast of West Africa from Senegal to Cameroons. They are a principal type in the countries along the Guinea coast from Gambia to Cameroons, and in southern Mali and Burkina Faso (Upper Volta). Included among the Sudanese are the Ashanti, Felup, Hausa, Ibo, Krus, Mandingo (Malinke, Bambara, Dyula, Kassonke, Soninke, (Jallonke), Mossi, Sara, Serer, Songhai, Toucouleur (Tacuror), and Wolof.
    Palaenegroes live in the interior forests of west and central Africa. Included among the Palaenegroes are the Balunda and Batoka.
    Pygmies are found predominately in the equatorial forests of Africa. They live in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, and Zambia, but are only a minor part of the populations of these countries. Included among the Pygmies are the Bambutis, Batwa, and Babinga.
    Bantus are found predominately in central and southern Africa. They are a principal type in Zaire, Zambia, Angola, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and other countries of southern Africa. They are also found in Uganda, Kenya, Cameroon, and Gabon. Included among the Bantus are the Eastern Bantu (Buganda, Bunyoro, Chaga, Karagwe, Kikuju, Luyia, and Rwanda Rundi), the Western Bantu (Bassa, Bemba, Duala, Fang [Pangwe], Kuba, Luba, Lunda, Mbala, Soko, Songo-Meno, Teke, and Tetela), and the Southern Bantu (Herero, Ndebele [Tebele], Shona, Shoto, Tsonga, Tswana, and Zulu).
    Nilotes are found predominately in the upper Nile valley and adjacent lands from Khartoum to Lake Kioga and the northeast shores of Lake Victoria. They are a principal type in eastern Sudan and much of Uganda. Included among the Nilotes are the Abaka, Abukaya, Anuak, Beir, Belanda, Dinka, Jaluo, Kamasia (El Tuken), Latuka, Lendu, Luba, Madi, Mittu, Moru, Nuer, Shilluk, and Wira.
    Nilo-Hamites are found predominately in east and east central Africa. They are a principal part of the population of Kenya, Uganda, and northen Tanzania. Included among the Nilo-Hamites are the Lotuko, Lumbwa, Kipsigis, Masai, Nandi, Suk, Teso, Toposa, and Turkana.
    Negro Malagasy are found predominately in Madagascar and account for a majority of the island’s population. They include the Antankarana, Antandroy, Bara, Betsileo, Betsimisaraka, Sihanaka, and Mahafaly).
    Tables 1 and 2 describe six racial types of Negroes: Sudanese, Negro Malagasy, Bantu,Nilote, Nilo-Hamite, and Palaenegro. Excluded is a description of the pygmy[2].

    

    Next to the Negro in importance is the Melanochroi.  Three racial types of Melanochroi are found in Africa; they are the Saharan-Hamites (Moors, Saharan-Berbers), Eastern-Hamites (Ethiopians), and Egyptians.
    The Saharan-Hamites are predominately found in and around the Sahara Desert. They are a principal type in central and southern Morocco, central and southern Algeria, Mauritania, northern Mali, Niger, northern Chad, and southern and central Libya. Included among the Saharan-Hamites are the Bale, Fulas, Mangbattus of Chad, Niam-Niam (Zandeh) of Chad, Shluh of Morocco, Tibbus (Tedas) in the Fezzan, Tibesti, and Tuaregs of the Sahara.
    Eastern-Hamites are predominantly found in the countries between Egypt and Kenya and east of the Nile River. They are a principal type in eastern Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Included among the Eastern-Hamites are the Agau, Amhara, Barabra (Nubians), Bejas, Beni-Amer, Berberine, Bilins, Bisharin, Bogos, Danakil (Afar), Ethiopians, Falasha (black Jews), Gallas, Hadendoas, Kafacitos, Saho, Sidamo, Somali, and Wata.
    Egyptians are found predominately in Egypt where they are a principal type. They include the Fellahins.
    Table 3 describes three racial types of Melanochroi found in Africa. They are the Saharan-Hamite, Eastern-Hamite, and Egyptian.

    In the Maghreb is the Aryan racial type Southern Mediterranean. Southern Mediterraneans are predominately found in Morocco and Algeria from the southern slopes of the Atlas Mountains northward to the Mediterranean. They include the Berbers of Tunisia and Cyrenaica, sedentary tribes of Jebel Nefuse of Libya, the Kabyle, Mzab, and Shawia of Algeria, and the Riffian of Morocco. Except for recent arrivals in South Africa, they are the only type of Aryan  commonly found in Africa. Recent arrivals from to South Africa are primarily from the Netherlands and Great Britain.
    In Madagascar is the Turanian racial type Malayan Malagasy. Malayan Malagasy are found mainly in Madagascar on the central Imerina Plateau. They make up less than a third of the island's population.
    The Khoisan is the least populous human species inhabiting Africa. They include the San (Bushmen), Khoi (Hottentots), Sandawe, and Hatsa (Kindiga). The Sans and Khoi are found primarily in Namibia,  Botswana, and southern Angola. The Sandawe and Hatsa live in Tanzania. Khoisans are also found in South Africa in the form of the hybrid coloureds. Except for the coloureds of South Africa, Khoisans are a minor to insignificant part of the populations in the countries where they are found.
    Table 4 describes the Southern Mediterranean, Malagasy, and Khoisan.

References
Allen, Thomas Coley. Species of Men: A Polygenetic Hypothesis. Franklinton, North Carolina: TC Allen Company, 1999.

Comas, Juan. Manual of Physical Anthropology. English edition. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas Publisher, 1960.

Coon, Carleton S. and Edward E. Hunt, Jr. The Living Races of Man. New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.

Coon, Carleton S., Stanley M. Garn, and Joseph B. Birdsell. Races . . . A Study of the Problems of Race Formation in Man. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas Publisher, 1950.

Deniker, J. The Races of Man: An Outline of Anthropology and Ethnography. London, England: Walter Scott, Limited, 1900.

Haddon, A. C. The Races of Man and Their Distribution. New York, New York: The Macmillian Company, 1925.

Keane, A. H. Ethnology. Cambridge, England: The University Press, 1896.

Kroeber, A. L. Anthropology Today: An Encyclopedic Inventory. Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1953.

Peschel, Oscar. The Races of Man, and Their Geographical Distribution. New York, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1885.

Seligman, C.G. Races of Africa. 3rd edition. London, England: Oxford University Press, 1957.

Taylor, Griffith. Environment, Race, and Migration. Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1937.

Endnotes
1.  Carleton S. Coon and Edward E. Hunt, Jr., The Living Races of Man (New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), p. 26.

2.  A description of the Pygmy is found in Species of Men: A Polygenetic Hypothesis by Thomas Allen, pp. 101-103.

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Some Thoughts on Gun Control

Some Thoughts on Gun Control

Thomas Allen

    The following appeared as a letter-to-the-editor:
    A friend of mine told me that when he was in school, the boys carried their rifles and shotguns to school so that they could hunt after school. Also, he said that a girl in his class brought her pistol to school for him to repair and gave it to him in the classroom. Several days later, he returned it to her in the classroom. There were no shootings in the school. Thus, the problem is not guns; it is people.
    Could prescribed psychiatric drugs be behind most of these mass shootings? Nearly all, if not all, the mass shooters were or had recently been taking these drugs. These drugs are known to cause violent behavior. However, since big pharma controls the old media (look at how the old media pimps vaccines), the old media ignores the drug issue. Besides, drugs do not fix the antigun agenda of the old media.
    Because of previous gun control laws, most schools are now gun-free zones. Gun controllers promised that no one would carry a gun into a gun-free zone. However, gun-free zones are safe places for killers to hunt because no one can shoot back.
    Many antigun progressives believe that President Trump is Hitler incarnated. Still, they want him to disarm them. Disarmed Jews did not fare well under Hitler. Why do disarmed progressives believe that they will do any better under Trump? If every Jew were heavily armed, Hitler would not and could not have sent them to concentration camps. To protect themselves from Trump, progressives should be demanding that gun laws be relaxed so that they can more easily arm themselves to defend themselves from Trump.
    There was a time when mass shootings were unheard of. What has changed between then and now? We need to find out and eliminate the change. The difference is not the availability of guns. Guns were much easier to obtain then than they are now.

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

    The following is a summary of “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?” (Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol. 30, No. 2, pages 649-694) by Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser. They show that the antigun, gun-controller dogma of “fewer guns, fewer homicides, suicides, and violent crimes” is false — a propaganda lie. Fewer guns are associated with more homicides and violent crimes.
    According to Kates and Mauser, the murder rate in the 1960s and 1970s of the gunless Soviet Union equal or exceeded that of the gun-ridden United States. While the murder rate in the United States declined, the murder rate in the Soviet Union rose. By 1998-2004, the murder rate in Russia was nearly four times higher than it was in the United States. Furthermore, the suicide rate in Russia was about four times higher than in the United States.
    In Europe, countries with relatively high gun ownership have relatively low murder rates. Generally, where guns are more concentrated, violent crime rates are lower.
    Studies done by the U.S. National Academy of Science and the U.S. Center for Disease Control show that gun control laws did not reduce violent crimes, suicides, or gun accidents. If anything, the strict gun control laws may have contributed to the rising crime rate.
    Before gun control laws were enacted in Great Britain, little violent crime occurred there. Now with extremely strict gun control laws, violent crime have grown. Even violence using firearms has increased. Although handguns are banned, criminals have no problem in obtaining them and are more willing to use them. With handguns and many types of long guns banned, violent crime in England and Wales is the highest in Europe and even exceeds that of the United States.
    Since 1990, in the United States, as gun ownership has risen, violent crimes have declined. In Great Britain, gun ownership declined drastically and violent crimes soared. Thus, overall, more guns equal less crime. (Other contributors to the decline in the United States are the large number of Black babies aborted, more executions, and a drastically growing prison population.)
    Criminologist Hans Toch, who once favored the prohibition of handguns, but later recanted, notes that “it is hard to explain that where firearms are most dense, violent crime rates are lowest and where guns are least dense, violent crime rates are highest” (p. 675).
    As for demographics, Kates and Mauser write:

Contrary to what should be the case if more guns equal more death, there are no “consistent indications of a link between gun ownership and criminal or violent behavior by owners;” in fact, gun ownership is “higher among whites than among blacks, higher among middle-aged people than among young people, higher among married than among unmarried people, higher among richer people than poor” — all “patterns that are the reverse of the way in which criminal behavior is distributed” (p. 676).

    Historically, in England, as firearms became more efficient and more widely owned, the murder rate seemed to have fallen sharply until gun control laws began restricting ownership. Then gun violence began to rise.
    In colonial America, nearly every household was required to own guns. During this time, murders were few. The homicide rate only began to rise when the universal ownership of guns disappeared. In the decades following the War for Southern Independence, guns glutted the market, and homicides fell sharply.
    Areas in the United States, Canada, England, and Switzerland where gun ownership is the highest have the lowest rate of violence. Thus, fewer guns in private hands equal more violent crime and more violent deaths.

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    The following are some random thoughts, in no particular order, about gun controllers and anti gunners.
    – Alcohol is responsible for more deaths than guns, even among school children. If saving lives is the real objective, then outlawing alcohol will save more lives — assuming that prohibition works this time.
    – One should beware of the mental health issue in the gun control debate. President Obama wanted to declare all veterans de facto mentally ill and by that deny them of their inalienable, God-given right to own the means of defending themselves. Nevertheless, he did succeed in declaring everyone on social security mentally ill if he had someone else manage his money and, therefore, ineligible to own a gun. Fortunately, for liberty, President Trump revoked this order. For this action, liberals, progressives, and other gun controllers and anti gunners accused him of allowing all mentally ill people to own guns.
    – One should always remember cui bono. Who ultimately benefits from a disarmed America? The beneficiaries are the statists: The Puritans who want to micromanage everyone’s life. The losers are those who love and cherish liberty.
    – Chicago proves the idiocy of gun-free zones. In Chicago, only people with the political influence can legally possess a firearm. Yet, Chicago has the highest murder rate in the country.
    – If eighteen-year-olds are old enough to vote for their enslavement and to go to war and kill people, they are old enough to buy and own handguns, rifles, and  other firearms, including real assault weapons.
    – Gun control is nothing more than people control, which is why liberals and progressives adore it. Liberals and progressives are Puritans who have an uncontrollable, nay, a necessity, to micromanage the lives of others. Naturally, they believe that such control is for the benefit of the enslaved victim.
    – Why do celebrities who preach disarming the American people surround themselves with armed bodyguards? Obviously, they are hypocrites who know that firearms save lives. When in the hands of civilians, firearms save more lives by orders of magnitude than they take.
    – Gun control is really people control. Inanimate objects that cannot move unless someone moves them cannot be controlled. However, people can be controlled and denied their God-given inalienable right of possessing the means of defending themselves.
    – Before people start their irrational ranting to ban assault rifles, which are extremely difficult to acquire legally, they should know what an assault rifle is. The Free Dictionary by Farles defines “assault rifle” as “a rifle that has a detachable magazine and is capable of both automatic and semiautomatic fire, designed for individual use in combat” (emphasis added).
    – Why do the old matrix media only present one side of the gun debate — the antigun side? If they do have anyone to speak for the other side, the speaker is usually a stereotypical, inarticulate red neck who speaks like he has marbles in his mouth with tobacco juice dripping down his chin and who has difficulty in speaking in sentences of more than three words. Moreover, why do the old matrix media hate liberty, including freedom of the press, so much that they lead the charge to destroy the only liberty that can guarantee freedom of the press and all other freedoms?
    – If people really want to reduce death by firearms in the broadest sense, they would disarm governments. Since 1900 governmentally owned or controlled firearms have killed around a half billion people — probably more. Stalin and Mao Zedong account for about a fourth of this number by themselves.
    – When a policeman shoots someone, the policeman is blamed — not the gun. However, when someone else shoots several people, the gun is blamed — not the shooter. Why the difference? Should not the blame be placed on the shooter in both incidents?
    – Why do liberals and progressives want to give young, strong males a decisive advantage over women, old men, children, and the handicap? Outlawing firearms, or even restricting their availability, gives the criminal a great advantage.
    – Liberals and progressives claim that they are for the little man. Yet, they do the bidding of billionaires like Soros and Bloomberg by pushing their disarmament agenda. Why do these billionaires want to disarm the American people? Is it because armed Americans thwart the agenda of these billionaires to establish a one world government that they plan to control and use to transfer ever more wealth and power to themselves?
    – These few notables have favored gun control and a disarmed citizenry: King George III, V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Gorbachev, and Castro. They are the philosophical brethren of the anti gunners and other who clamor for gun control. They all agree with the criminal who said, “Any gun in the hands of citizens is a menace as far as I am concerned.” All of them agree with this criminal because they themselves are criminals in their heart. They want to steal, and the gun owner and the presence of guns hinder their theft. Otherwise, they are dupes, stooges, ignoramuses, useful idiots, lackeys, and the likes.
    – According to Jesus, peace and safety exists in a household of a fully armed man (Luke 11:21-22). Jesus also notes that the first thing an enemy seeks to do is to disarm the household. Furthermore, Jesus commanded his followers to arm themselves with military weapons (Luke 22:36).
    – Whenever the communists take over a country, the first order of business is to disarm the people so that they cannot resist the tyranny, theft, and slaughter that follow.
    – Anti gunners imply that guns kill people and, therefore, people do not kill people. Thus, they imply that if people did not have guns, they would not kill others or themselves. The first murder recorded in the Bible was done without a gun. Moreover, of all the killings recorded in the Bible, a firearm was used in none of them. Until a few hundred years ago, no one ever used a gun to kill another. Therefore, people kill people.
    – Progressivism is a mental disorder and, therefore, progressives should be denied the ownership and use of firearms. Progressivism is merely a political version of Puritanism. Progressives have an uncontrollable desire to force other people under the penalty of death to live the way that progressives want them to live.
    – More guns are in the United States than are cars, yet cars kill more people than guns. Moreover, drivers are required to have a license, and cars are required to be registered.
    – If the objective is to save lives, then beaches, pools, streams, lakes, and bathtubs should be outlawed. Outside war zones, more people die of drowning than of gunshots. Moreover, if it will save one life, vaccines should be outlawed,using the gun controllers reasoning.
    – Gun controllers should disown and condemn the Clintons. Even with the elimination of Bill’s killing of thousands in Serbia and Hillary’s killings of thousands in Lybia and the Middle East, the number of people whom they have murdered may well exceed several dozen.
    – Why do not the anti gunners disarm themselves and then post a sign in their yards that their home is not defended by firearms?
    – Those who advocate banning guns need to reflect on how well prohibition worked and how well the war on drugs has worked. The prohibition of guns will fare no better.
    – Nearly all murders have a history of violent crime. Why do liberals and progressives believe that these people will obey gun laws when they are already disobeying laws against violent crimes?
    – If no one less than 21 is allowed to own or use a firearm, then on one less than 21 should be allowed in the armed forces. Moreover, no one less than 21 should be allowed to drive because one hundred times more teenagers die of automobiles than of gun. Further, no child should be allowed in a motor vehicle of any kind — if it will save one life. Such are the logic and reasoning of progressives, anti gunners, and gun controllers.
    – Nothing exceeds a firearm as an equalizer.
    – A government that cannot trust a heavily armed citizenry is a government that cannot be trusted.

Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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