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First, the abstract from Chris Dawes' and Jim Fowler's new article, "Partisanship, Voting, and the Dopamine D2 Recepter Gene" (available as PDF):

Previous studies have found that both political orientations (Alford, Funk & Hibbing 2005 [PDF]) and voting behavior (Fowler, Baker & Dawes 2007, Fowler & Dawes 2007) are significantly heritable. In this article we study genetic variation in another important political behavior: partisan attachment. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we show that individuals with the A1 allele of the D2 dopamine receptor gene are significantly less likely to identify as a partisan than those with the A2 allele. Further, we find that this gene's association with partisanship also mediates an indirect association between the A1 allele and voter abstention. These results are the first to identify a specific gene that may be responsible for the tendency to join political groups, and they may help to explain correlation in parent and child partisanship and the persistence of partisan behavior over time.

To emphasize: political orientaiton, voting behavior, and partisanship all are partially determined by genetic heritage.

From a Systems Administration perspective, to the extent that the weight for or against perctain political orientations, voting behaviors, or partisan attachment are different between states, the "baseline" performance of those states will vary

Hughes, J. (2007). South Africa's rising wave of crime. Christian Science Monitor. August 24, 2007. Available online: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0824/p09s01-coop.html.

The Christian Science monitor is optimistic, to say the least:

It is now 13 years since South Africa turned its back on the oppressive era of apartheid and, in a remarkably peaceful transition, embraced democracy. Much has been accomplished as blacks and whites sculpt a new, multiracial nation. But the warning in the Sowetan's boardroom is a reminder that democracy must be nurtured to flourish.

Besides "democracy," the fall of the Nationalist government brought hope on one front: the Nationalists ran their economies along welfareist-socialist lines, and a shock therapy program by the new rulers (of the African National Congress) might jump-start the economy.

Instead, solid economic growth is accompanied with an increasingly violent society and ethnic cleansing against the most educated demographics within the country. And of coures,



As can be seen in the chart above, South Africa's human development index under the Nationalist government was essentially that of a Latin American or Caribbean state. Since the African National Congress has taken over, South Africa's human development has fallen below Latin America's, below East Asia's, below the Arab states', nearing South Asia's, and is steadily regressing to the mean for sub-Saharan Africa.

Generally, two factors are behind Gappishness -- having your country be one of the worst in the world. One is economic system. The other is the average intelligence of the population that runs the state. The easiest states to bring up are those with bad economic systems but high general intelligence, such as those of East Asia. The hardest countries to bring up are those that suffer from both bad institutions and low general intelligence.

The worst parts of the Gap will not shrink themselves. Pretending they will confines a billion people to misery, terror, and death. Shrinking the Gap requires a long term, institutional commitment by the Core.

The Core's last attempt has failed everhwere or is failing everywhere in Africa. The European states were too weak and too self-destructive to complete their mission. Hopefully, the next wave of Systems Administration will be luckier.

"System Administrator Appreciation Day," by Zonk, Slashdot, 29 July 2005, http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/29/142221&tid=230&tid=218.

Barnett must be pleased...

Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day: 'a special day, once a year, to acknowledge the worthiness and appreciation of the person occupying the role, especially as it is often this person who really keeps the wheels of your company turning.' Congratulations to all who keep the electrons of our global networks flowing properly!"

Have your developing country thanked your SysAdmin?

al Qaeda, Christianity, and Conservatism have!

"Roberts as Establishment Conservative," by Ken Blanchard, South Dakota Politics, 23 July 2005, http://southdakotapolitics.blogs.com/south_dakota_politics/2005/week29/index.html#a0005693556.

Dr. Thomas PM Barnett has noted that victory requires two "teams" -- a Leviathan to "win the war" and a System Administrator to "win the peace." The Leviathan penetrates, isolates, and subdues the opposition, while the SysAdmin reorients and reharmonizes the society to bring stability and peace.

If you place the two forces on a chart, with the vertical axis "up and down part" being force, and the horizontal axis "across part" being time, the Leviathan / SysAdmin split would look like




If a movement doesn't have both a Leviathan and SysAdmin, it can't win the war. The US Military is the greatest Leviathan in the world, but because of its weak SysAdmin ability Iraq is a struggle.

The Leviathan / SysAdmin split is useful for things other than war. I have blogged before how Jesus and Paul gave Christianity a Leviathan and a System Administrator strong enough to convert the Roman Empire. Now comes clear evidence that contemporary American Conservatives ("neoconservatives and theoconservatives") are are building a SysAdmin like they built a Leviathan decades ago

 

From the conservative side a defense of the Robert's nomination has emerged that is somewhat novel, and surely worth thinking about. This from David Brooks in the New York Times (hat tip to RealClear Politics):

 

Roberts nomination, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. . . . I love thee because John G. Roberts is the face of today's governing conservatism. Conservatives who came of age in the 1960's did so in an intensely ideological time when it was arduous to be on the right. People from that generation are more likely to have a dissident mentality, to want to storm the ramparts of the liberal establishment, to wade in to vanquish their foes in the war of ideas.

But John Roberts didn't enter Harvard until the fall of 1973. He missed all that sturm und drang, so he lacks, his former colleagues say, the outsider/dissident mentality. By the time he came of age, it was easier for a conservative to be comfortable in mainstream institutions, without feeling embattled or spoiling for a fight.

 

The argument here is that it takes one kind of conservative to take power (consider Newt Gingrich) and another to effectively govern. Roberts, Brooks thinks, is of the latter sort. And such men are necessary if the conservative position in politics is to be sustaine

 

Need more convincing?

 

And then there is William Kristol's piece from the Weekly Standard:

 

IT TAKES AN INSURRECTION TO change a country. It takes an establishment to govern one. Conservatives want both to change and to govern America. Thus we need our dissatisfied, troublemaking, occasionally splenetic, sometimes raffish anti-establishmentarians. After all, without brave resistance and bold insurrection on the part of conservatives, liberal orthodoxy and institutions would still dominate American life.

But insurrection isn't enough. At some point, the radicals need assistance, support, and reinforcement from establishment conservatives--individuals ill-suited to insurrection but well-suited to rising through the institutions and moving them gradually but meaningfully in a conservative direction. Thus, we need our sober, calm, and respectable establishmentarians. Conservatives also need to be able to put together majorities--in public opinion, in Congress, and on the courts. The conservative tent therefore has to be a big one. As a Supreme Court justice, John Roberts will be an important (and, we trust, happy) camper in that tent.

 

 

"A Morsel of Goat Meat," by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, 23 March 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/opinion/23kristof.html.

At the beginning of the century, the British Empire was engaged in the largest nations-building campaign in human history.

Two deadly European civil wars nearly bankrupted the Empire and so weakened London that it lost the will to remain. Everywhere it lost to native thugs, settler racist, or (in the case of Zimbabwe) both.

This is the price of that failure.

The hungry children and the families dying of AIDS here are gut-wrenching, but somehow what I find even more depressing is this: Many, many ordinary black Zimbabweans wish that they could get back the white racist government that oppressed them in the 1970's.

"If we had the chance to go back to white rule, we'd do it," said Solomon Dube, a peasant whose child was crying with hunger when I arrived in his village. "Life was easier then, and at least you could get food and a job."

Mr. Dube acknowledged that the white regime of Ian Smith was awful. But now he worries that his 3-year-old son will die of starvation, and he would rather put up with any indignity than witness that.

An elderly peasant in another village, Makupila Muzamba, said that hunger today is worse than ever before in his seven decades or so, and said: "I want the white man's government to come back. ... Even if whites were oppressing us, we could get jobs and things were cheap compared to today."

His wife, Mugombo Mudenda, remembered that as a younger woman she used to eat meat, drink tea, use sugar and buy soap. But now she cannot even afford corn gruel. "I miss the days of white rule," she said.

These are not normal beliefs. These are not what you would hear in a function post-colonial state, like India, or an integrating post-colonial state, like Vietnam.

A combination of local thugs of all races, misguided western leftists, isolationist western rightists, and insane European policies lead to the abandonment of Africa.

Not that it is America's turn for world leadership, we cannot fail like the British before us. Shrink the Gap.