News

Mark Steyn and Thomas Sowell on “the knockout game”

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First, Mark Steyn writing in National Review. (H/T Jay Richards)

Excerpt:

In his book The Abolition of Man, he writes of “men without chests” — the chest being “the indispensable liaison” between the head and the gut, between “cerebral man” and “visceral man.” In the chest beat what Lewis calls “the trained emotions.” Without them there is no honor or virtue, but only “intellect” and/or “appetite.”

Speaking of appetite, have you played the “Knockout” game yet? Groups of black youths roam the streets looking for a solitary pedestrian, preferably white (hence the alternate name “polar-bearing”) but Asian or Hispanic will do. The trick is to knock him to the ground with a single punch. There’s a virtually limitless supply of targets: In New York, a 78-year-old woman was selected, and went down nice and easy, as near-octogenarian biddies tend to when sucker-punched. But, when you’re really rockin’, you can not only floor the unsuspecting sucker but kill him: That’s what happened to 46-year-old Ralph Santiago of Hoboken, N.J., whose head was slammed into an iron fence, whereupon he slumped to the sidewalk with his neck broken. And anyway the one-punch rule is flexible: In upstate New York, a 13-year-old boy socked 51-year-old Michael Daniels but with insufficient juice to down him. So his buddy threw a bonus punch, and the guy died from cerebral bleeding. Widely available video exists of almost all Knockout incidents, since the really cool thing is to have your buddies film it and upload it to YouTube. And it’s so simple to do in an age when every moronic savage has his own “smart phone.”

There’s no economic motive. The 78-year-old in New York was laden with bags from department stores, but none were touched. You slug an elderly widow not for the 50 bucks in her purse but for the satisfaction of seeing her hit the pavement. In response, some commentators are calling for these attacks to be recategorized: As things stand, if white youths target a black guy it’s a hate crime, but vice versa is merely common assault. I doubt this would make very much difference. “No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous,” wrote Lewis — and, likewise, no law can prevent a thug punching an old lady to the ground if the thug is minded to. “A society’s first line of defense is not the law but customs, traditions, and moral values,” wrote Professor Walter Williams a few years ago. “They include important thou-shalt-nots such as shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not lie and cheat, but they also include all those courtesies one might call ladylike and gentlemanly conduct. Policemen and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct.”

Restraint is an unfashionable concept these day, but it is the indispensable feature of civilized society. To paraphrase my compatriot George Jonas, punching a spinster’s lights out isn’t wrong because it’s illegal, it’s illegal because it’s wrong. But, in a world without restraints, what’s to stop you? If a certain percentage of your population feels no moral revulsion at randomly pulverizing fellow citizens for sport, a million laws will avail you naught: The societal safety lock is off.

Let’s hear from black economist Thomas Sowell about why this is not widely reported. (H/T Mysterious WGB)

Excerpt:

The main reason for many people’s surprise is that the mainstream media have usually suppressed news about the “knockout game” or about other and larger forms of similar orchestrated racial violence in dozens of cities in every region of the country. Sometimes the attacks are reported, but only as isolated attacks by unspecified “teens” or “young people” against unspecified victims, without any reference to the racial makeup of the attackers or the victims — and with no mention of racial epithets by the young hoodlums exulting in their own “achievement.”

Despite such pious phrases as “troubled youths,” the attackers are often in a merry, festive mood. In a sustained mass attack in Milwaukee, going far beyond the dimensions of a passing “knockout game,” the attackers were laughing and eating chips, as if it were a picnic.

One of them observed casually, “white girl bleed a lot.”

[…]Some in the media, as well as in politics, may think that they are trying to avoid provoking a race war by ignoring or playing down these attacks. But the way to prevent a race war is by stopping these attacks, not trying to sanitize them.

If these attacks continue, and continue to grow, more and more people are going to know about them, regardless of the media or the politicians. Responsible people of all races need to support a crackdown on these attacks, which can provoke a white backlash that can escalate into a race war. But political expediency leads in the opposite direction.

What is politically expedient is to do what Attorney General Eric Holder is doing — launch campaigns against schools that discipline a “disproportionate” number of black male students. New York City’s newly elected liberal mayor is expected to put a stop to police “stop and frisk” policies that have reduced the murder rate to one-fourth of what it was under liberal mayors of the past.

I think that the biggest cause of crime in this society is fatherlessness, which we not only refuse to judge on moral grounds, but which we actually subsidize with our taxpayer dollars.

Dr. Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute explains one of the causes of fatherlessness in his testimony to Congress:

Welfare contributes to crime in several ways. First, children from single-parent families are more likely to become involved in criminal activity. According to one study, children raised in single-parent families are one-third more likely to exhibit anti-social behavior.(3) Moreover, O’Neill found that, holding other variables constant, black children from single- parent households are twice as likely to commit crimes as black children from a family where the father is present. Nearly 70 percent of juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes, as do 43 percent of prison inmates.(4) Research indicates a direct correlation between crime rates and the number of single-parent families in a neighborhood.(5)

As Barbara Dafoe Whitehead noted in her seminal article for The Atlantic Monthly:

The relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation’s mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime.(6)

At the same time, the evidence of a link between the availability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births is overwhelming. There have been 13 major studies of the relationship between the availability of welfare benefits and out-of-wedlock birth. Of these, 11 found a statistically significant correlation. Among the best of these studies is the work done by June O’Neill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Holding constant a wide range of variables, including income, education, and urban vs. suburban setting, the study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.(7) Likewise, research by Shelley Lundberg and Robert Plotnick of the University of Washington showed that an increase in welfare benefits of $200 per month per family increased the rate of out-of-wedlock births among teenagers by 150 percent.(8)

The same results can be seen from welfare systems in other countries. For example, a recent study of the impact of Canada’s social-welfare system on family structure concluded that “providing additional benefits to single parents encourages births of children to unwed women.”(9)

So what can we do? We can bring back moral judgments. I think that we have to get to the point in society where we realize that all of this permissiveness about “forgiving” people who fail to be responsible with sexuality and marriage actually does harm to society. When you refuse to pass judgment on premarital sex and divorce, and even make it financially lucrative for the people who engage in it (single mother welfare, alimony, child support) then you get more fatherless children, not less.

Although it is tempting to want to be liked for being “compassionate”, we have to look beyond our feelings and our vanity and start to think about the big picture. We need to shame people who are unchaste. We need to shame single mothers. We need to shame people who divorce and blame them for marrying badly. We need to cut off all the subsidies for people who make decisions that deprive children of their fathers. We need to stop the normalization of premarital sex that occurs in our schools. We need to shame women who choose men for sex when those men are not capable of being husbands and fathers.

News

UK headmistress warns parents that child’s refusal to attend Muslim field trip is “racism”

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Dina send me this troubling article from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

Parents were ordered to send their children to a workshop on Islam or have them labelled  as racist for the rest of their  school career.

They were sent a letter warning that the primary school pupils would have a ‘racial discrimination note’ put on their records if they did not go.

Families were told to pay £5 per child for the Explore Islam trip next Wednesday to Staffordshire University, which would involve Year 4 and Year 6 children being shown Islamic artefacts.

Mothers and fathers were warned: ‘Refusal to allow your child to attend will result in a Racial Discrimination note being attached to your child’s education record, which will remain on this file throughout their school career.

‘All absences on this day will be investigated for their credibility and will only be sanctioned with a GP sick note.’

[…]According to the letter sent last Wednesday, the visit is part of  the National Curriculum for religious education and also reflects ‘the multi-cultural community in which we live’.

You might remember that the UK is not doing too well lately with their Islamic population, judging by recent terrorist attacks and general anti-Western radicalism. But that doesn’t stop them from continuing these policies.

News

Study: abortion more than doubles the risk of child abuse

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Here’s a report from Life News about a new study out of Bowling Green State University.

Excerpt:

For decades, evidence has existed showing abortion contributes to a rise in child abuse. Now a new study by a post-abortion research institute and Bowling Green State University professors finds that women who have abortions are more likely to abuse their children.

Published in the medical journal Acta Paediatrica, the study found that women who have had abortions are 2.4 times more likely to physically abuse their children. Pro-life advocates say it proves the need for providing women with post-abortion counseling to help deal with the emotional trauma of the abortion.

Led by Priscilla Coleman, a professor at Bowling Green, researchers looked at data taken from a survey of 518 low-income women in Baltimore who were receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children and who had at least one child aged 12 years or younger.

The data compared rates of child abuse and neglect among women who had experienced either an involuntary (miscarriage or stillbirth) or voluntary (induced abortion) pregnancy loss.

Women who had a miscarriage or stillbirth were more likely to physically abuse their children as well, but the increase was much less significant than for women who had abortions.

The authors suggested that “emotional difficulties and unresolved grief responses” from pregnancy loss, whether voluntary or involuntary, could have a negative impact on women’s mental health and lead to unhealthy parenting responses.

According to the Illinois-based Elliot Institute, which released information about the study’s findings, prior surveys “have linked pregnancy loss to an increase in grief reactions, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, all of which can have a negative impact on parent/child relationships.”

The post-abortion research group also points to a 2002 study published in the Journal of Child Psychiatry and Psychology that found abortion has been linked to an increase in substance abuse and thoughts of suicide, which could also contribute to child abuse.

The new study also found that women who had more than one miscarriage or stillbirth were more likely to engage in child abuse than women who had just one. However, women who had abortions were more likely to abuse their children whether they had one or more than one abortion.

“Regardless of the specific mechanisms at play, maternal history of one induced abortion does appear to be a marker for increased risk of physical abuse,” the authors concluded.

In legalizing abortion, we have changed the way that adults view sex and the way adults view children. Instead of thinking that sex is something that is reserved for marriage, we now think that it is OK for women to have sex for fun with men who have no intention and no capability to take on the traditional male roles of protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. And when those irresponsible choices produce other human beings, we have taught ourselves that murder is a morally permissible option. What does it mean? It means that children have no rights. It means that we can kill things we create if they annoy us. And that attitude spills over from unborn children to born children. It is going to result in more child abuse, when more people accept these views about what sex is supposed to be for, and what our obligations are to children.

But this is not the only study that shows the harm that abortion does.

Life News reports on the latest studies confirming the link between abortion and breast cancer.

Excerpt:

A newly-published study shows the highest-ever abortion-breast cancer risk for women of any previously-published study on the link between the two.

A Bangladesh study published in the Journal of Dhaka Medical College on risk factors for breast cancer, led by Dr. Suraiya Jabeen, found a statistically significant 20.62-fold increased risk among women with abortion histories. The new study on the abortion-breast cancer link is by far the highest risk elevation reported among 73 published abortion-breast cancer studies.

Physical inactivity, being menopause, positive family history of breast cancer and history of induced abortion were found important risk factors,” the authors wrote.

Professor Joel Brind, a professor at Baruch College, City University of New York who is an expert on the abortion-breast cancer link, said the reason why the risk elevation is so high is because it’s “a measure of relative risk.”

Observing that women in Bangladesh have very traditional childbearing patterns that reduce breast cancer risk, he explained: “Almost all the women are married (97% currently married; the rest widowed) and with child by the time they are 20, and all of the kids are breastfed. Ninety percent had their first child at age 21 or younger (99% of controls did). They typically neither take contraceptive steroids nor have any abortions. Nulliparity (childlessness) or abortion before first full term pregnancy (both of which mean no breastfeeding) in a population in which breast cancer is almost unheard of, makes the relative risk very high.”

Brind continued: “Although the authors did not include a measure of their abortion link’s statistical significance, their raw data was complete enough to calculate a 95% confidence interval of 12.85-32.51, making abortion by far the strongest and most significant risk factor observed in these Bengali women. In plain English, women in this population who had any induced abortions were more than 20 times as likely to get breast cancer, compared to women with no abortions.”

According to the study, additional minor reproductive factors influencing breast cancer risk included: use of oral contraceptives (1.47-fold increased risk); early first birth at or before age 21 (0.35-fold reduced risk); having two or more children (0.29-fold reduced risk); and increased number of months spent breastfeeding (0.30-fold reduced risk).

But that’s not all.

Life News reports.

Excerpt:

A study in the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention shows abortion increases the risk of breast cancer for women.

C. Yanhua of the First Peoples’ Hospital of Kunming in Yunnan province and his colleagues found the abortion-breast cancer association after comparing data from 263 cases of breast cancer and 457 controls without the disease. Their analysis covers the years 2009-2011.

The authors examined information on disease diagnosis, demographics, medical history, and reproductive characteristics of the patients involved and also looked at short menstrual cycle, old age at first live birth, never breastfeeding, history of oral contraceptive use, postmenopausal status and nulliparity to determine in abortion-breast cancer link exists.

They write that “multivariate model analysis revealed the significant independent positive associations with breast cancer of shorter menstrual cycle, older age at first live birth, never breastfeeding, history of oral contraception experience, increased number of abortion, menopause status, and nulliparities.”

“Number of abortion showed an increasing higher risk of breast cancer,” they added, while saying that women who had one live birth lowered their risk. “As far as women who had once a live birth, it showed decreased the risk of breast cancer compared to nulliparous.”

“This study showed an increased risk of breast cancer with times of abortion. The association between abortion and risk of breast cancer in a study in China showed that the risk factors of female breast cancer included abortion times more than two (Li et al., 2006),” they continued. “Another study found that risk was raised among women reporting at least one abortion, but no trend was seen with number of abortions (Heuch et al., 2008). In a meta-analysis study, pooled odds ratio for number of abortions greater than and equal three was statistically significant (95%CI:1.68-5.36) (Tao et al.,2011).”

“In conclusion, in this study the estrogen related risk factors of breast cancer included woman who had longer menstrual cycle, older age of first live birth, never breastfeeding, nulliparity, and number of abortions more than one. Therefore, it is recommended to women with these risk factors perform breast cancer screening tests earlier and regularly,” they said.

Previously, another study was published in Oxford University’s European Journal of Public Health, and the abstract is posted on PubMed.

Here are the results:

With statistical controls for number of pregnancies, birth year and age at last pregnancy, the combination of induced abortion(s) and natural loss(es) was associated with more than three times higher mortality rate than only birth(s). Moderate risks were identified with only induced abortion, only natural loss and having experienced all outcomes compared with only birth(s). Risk of death was more than six times greater among women who had never been pregnant compared with those who only had birth(s). Increased risks of death were 45%, 114% and 191% for 1, 2 and 3 abortions, respectively, compared with no abortions after controlling for other reproductive outcomes and last pregnancy age. Increased risks of death were equal to 44%, 86% and 150% for 1, 2 and 3 natural losses, respectively, compared with none after including statistical controls. Finally, decreased mortality risks were observed for women who had experienced two and three or more births compared with no births.

Life Site News adds more:

A single induced abortion increases the risk of maternal death by 45 percent compared to women with no history of abortion, according to a new study of all women of reproductive age in Denmark over a 25 year period.

The study found that each additional abortion is associated with an even higher death rate. Women who had two abortions were 114 percent more likely to die during the period examined, and women had three or more abortions had a 192 percent increased risk of death.

Elevated rates of death were also observed among women who experienced miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies or other natural losses. Among women with a history of multiple pregnancies, women with a history of both abortions and natural losses, but no live births, had the highest mortality rate.

Women who had never been pregnant had the highest mortality rate overall.

However, women with a history of successful deliveries were the least likely to die during the 25 years examined.

The study is the second record linkage analysis of Danish mortality data to be published this month.

The earlier study was limited to comparing mortality rates following only the first pregnancy outcome. It found that abortion of a first pregnancy was associated with a higher rate of death compared to death rates among women who delivered a first pregnancy. The higher death rate among women who had abortions persisted for each of the first ten years following the first pregnancy outcome.

[…]Dr. Reardon is the director of the Elliot Institute, which funds research related to abortion. He believes further research is needed to explore how the outcomes observed in this latest study may be influenced by abortion’s impact on natural pregnancy losses. A new population study from Finland, for example, has found that abortion is associated with higher rates of preterm delivery, low birth weight delivery, and perinatal deaths in subsequent pregnancies.

And another from Life News.

Excerpt:

A new study published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention in February reported a very statistically significant increased risk of breast cancer for women with previous abortions as opposed to women who have never had one.

The study, consisting of 1,351 women and led by researcher Ai-Ren Jiang, reported a statistically significant 1.52-fold elevation in risk for women with induced abortions and a “significant dose-response relationship between (the risk) for breast cancer and number of induced abortions,” meaning the risk climbed with a higher number of previous abortions.

For premenopausal women who have had abortions, the numbers were relatively small, and the observed 16% risk elevation was not statistically significant. However, for those with three or more abortions, the risk climbed to a statistically significant 1.55-fold elevation.

“The results have revealed that induced abortion was related to increased risk of breast caner. Premenopausal women who had ≥3 times of induced abortion were at increased crude odds ratio (OR) (2.41, 95%CI: 1.09-5.42) and adjusted-OR (1.55, 95%CI: 1.15-5.68),” they wrote. “Postmenopausal women with a previous induced abortion were at increased crude OR (2.04, 95%CI: 1.48-2.81) and adjusted-OR (1.82, 95%CI: 1.30-2.54), and there was a significant increase trend in OR with number of induced abortions (p for trend: 0.0001).”

[…][A] Chinese study in 1995 by L. Bu and colleagues, including Janet Daling of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, reported a statistically significant 4.5-fold elevated risk among women with previous induced abortions who developed breast cancer at or before age 35, compared to older women (who experienced a statistically significant 2.5-fold elevated risk)

Here’s another study from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), showing that excessive consumption of alcohol is a rish factor for breast cancer.

Excerpt:

Consumption of 3 to 6 alcoholic drinks per week is associated with a small increase in the risk of breast cancer, and consumption in both earlier and later adult life is also associated with an increased risk, according to a study in the November 2 issue of JAMA.

“In many studies, higher consumption of alcohol has been associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. However, the effect of low levels of drinking as is common in the United States has not been well quantified,” according to background information in the article. “In addition, the role of drinking patterns (i.e., frequency of drinking and ‘binge’ drinking) and consumption at different times of adult life are not well understood.”

Wendy Y. Chen, M.D., M.P.H., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, and colleagues examined the association of breast cancer with alcohol consumption during adult life, including quantity, frequency, and age at consumption. The study included 105,986 women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study who were followed up from 1980 until 2008 with an early adult alcohol assessment and 8 updated alcohol assessments. The primary outcome the researchers measured was the risk of developing invasive breast cancer.

During the follow-up period, there were 7,690 cases of invasive breast cancer diagnosed among the study participants. Analyses of data indicated that a low level of alcohol consumption (5.0 to 9.9 grams per day, equivalent to 3-6 glasses of wine per week) was modestly but statistically significantly associated with a 15 percent increased risk of breast cancer. In addition, women who consumed at least 30 grams of alcohol daily on average (at least 2 drinks per day) had a 51 percent increased risk of breast cancer compared with women who never consumed alcohol.

The researchers also found that when examined separately, alcohol consumption levels at ages 18 to 40 years and after age 40 years were both strongly associated with breast cancer risk. The association with drinking in early adult life still persisted even after controlling for alcohol intake after age 40 years.

Binge drinking, but not frequency of drinking, was also associated with breast cancer risk after controlling for cumulative alcohol intake.

Now let’s take a look at some other factors that raise the risk of breast cancer.

Abortion and breast cancer

Many studies show a link between abortion and breast cancer.

Study 1: (September 2010)

Based on the expression of estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and HER2/neu (HER2), breast cancer is classified into several subtypes: luminal A (ER+ and/or PR+, HER2-), luminal B (ER+ and/or PR+, HER2+), HER2-overexpressing (ER-, PR-, and HER2+) and triple-negative (ER-, PR-, and HER2-). The aim of this case-control study is to determine reproductive factors associated with breast cancer subtypes in Chinese women. A total of 1,417 patients diagnosed with breast cancer in the First Affiliated Hospital, China Medical University, Shenyang, China between 2001 and 2009 and 1,587 matched controls without a prior breast cancer were enrolled.

[…]Postmenopause and spontaneous abortion were inversely associated with the risk of luminal tumors. By contrast, multiparity, family history of breast cancer and induced abortion increased the risk of breast cancer.

Study 2: (March 2010)

OBJECTIVE: To explore the risk factors of breast cancer for better control and prevention of the malignancy.

METHODS: The clinical data of 232 patients with pathologically established breast cancer were investigated in this 1:1 case-control study to identify the risk factors of breast cancer.

RESULTS: The history of benign breast diseases, family history of carcinoma andmultiple abortions were the statistically significant risk factors of breast cancer, while breast feeding was the protective factor.

CONCLUSION: A history of benign breast diseases, family history of carcinoma and multiple abortions are all risk factors of breast cancer.

But wait, there’s more.

Birth control pills

Many studies showed that taking birth control pills caused an increased risk of breast cancer.

Study 1: (March 2003)

RESULTS: Among the youngest age group (<35 years, n = 545), significant predictors of risk included African-American race (RR = 2.66: 95% CI 1.4-4.9) and recent use of oral contraceptives (RR = 2.26; 95% CI 1.4-3.6). Although these relationships were strongest for estrogen receptor-negative (ER-) tumors (RRs of 3.30 for race and 3.56 for recent oral contraceptive use), these associations were also apparent for young women with ER+ tumors. Delayed childbearing was a risk factor for ER+ tumors among the older premenopausal women (Ptrend < 0.01), but not for women <35 years in whom early childbearing was associated with an increased risk, reflecting a short-term increase in risk immediately following a birth.

Study 2: (October 2008)

Oral contraceptive use ≥1 year was associated with a 2.5-fold increased risk for triple-negative breast cancer (95% confidence interval, 1.4-4.3) and no significantly increased risk for non-triple-negative breast cancer (Pheterogeneity = 0.008). Furthermore, the risk among oral contraceptive users conferred by longer oral contraceptive duration and by more recent use was significantly greater for triple-negative breast cancer than non-triple-negative breast cancer (Pheterogeneity = 0.02 and 0.01, respectively).

All of this research shows that abortion is bad for women, but I also should mention that abortion is always bad for the unborn child, especially sex-selection abortions, which target women more than men.

Conclusion

The total cost for breast cancer treatment, which raises medical insurance premiums (private health care) or taxes (single-payer health care), has been estimated to be between $1.8 billion and $3.8 billion dollars. In addition, the government spends billions of dollars each year on breast cancer research. All of this spending is costing taxpayers a lot of money, as people demand more and more government funding of breast cancer research and breast cancer treatment (with either private or single-payer health care).