Civil Society

Religions of the Chaos Lords

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Pamela L. Bunker and Dr. Robert J. Bunker at SWJ Blog

The Spiritual Significance of ¿Plata O Plomo?

Conventional wisdom holds that narco gang and drug cartel violence in Mexico is primarily secular in nature. This viewpoint has been recently challenged by the activities of the La Familia cartel and some Los Zetas, Gulfo, and other cartel adherents of the cult of Santa Muerte (Saint Death) by means of religious tenets of ‘divine justice’ and instances of tortured victims and ritual human sacrifice offered up to a dark deity, respectively. Severed heads thrown onto a disco floor in Michoacan in 2005 and burnt skull imprints in a clearing in a ranch in the Yucatán Peninsula in 2008 only serve to highlight the number of such incidents which have now taken place. Whereas the infamous ‘black cauldron’ incident in Matamoros in 1989, where American college student Mark Kilroy’s brain was found in a ritual nganga belonging to a local narco gang, was the rare exception, such spiritual-like activities have now become far more frequent.

These activities only serve to further elaborate concerns amongst scholars, including Sullivan, Elkus, Brands, Manwaring, and the authors, over societal warfare breaking out across the Americas. This warfare- manifesting itself in ‘criminal insurgencies’ derived from groups of gang, cartel, and mercenary networks- promotes new forms of state organization drawn from criminally based social and political norms and behaviors. These include a value system derived from illicit narcotics use, killing for sport and pleasure, human trafficking and slavery, dysfunctional perspectives on women and family life, and a habitual orientation to violence and total disregard for modern civil society and democratic freedoms. This harkens back to Peter’s thoughts concerning the emergence of a ‘new warrior class’ and, before that, van Creveld’s ‘non-trinitarian warfare’ projections.

Cultural evolution in action, accelerated by extreme violence. More on the cult of Santa Muerte here ( hat tip to HistoryGuy99)

Cross-posted at Zenpundit.com

Worthwhile Reading

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David Brooks argues that the crime wave of the 1970s has had a long-term effect on the American psyche, and especially on parenting. (via FFOF)

Victor Davis Hanson reflects on small-town America.

Paul Levy describes redesign of the pharmacy in the hospital he runs, making use of Lean principles, including mock-ups and heavy participation from those who will be using the new space. (via Lean Blog)

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Obama as Dean

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Obama thinks of himself as a college administrator, and America as a kind of giant campus. So says Victor Davis Hanson:

…we, the American people, are seen by Obama as a sort of Ivy League campus, with him as an untouchable dean. So we get the multicultural bromides, the constant groupthink, and the reinvention of the self that we see so often among a professional class of administrator in universities (we used to get their memos daily and they read like an Obama teleprompted speech)…On an elite university campus what you have constructed yourself into always matters more than what you have done. An accent mark here, a hyphenated name there is always worth a book or two. There is no bipartisanship or indeed any political opposition on campuses; if the Academic Senate weighs in on national issues to “voice concern,” the ensuing margin of vote is usually along the lines of Saddam’s old lopsided referenda.

In other words, Obama assumed as dean he would talk one way, do another, and was confident he could “contextualize” and “construct” a differing narrative—to anyone foolish enough who questioned the inconsistency.

Actually, I think Obama views the vast majority of Americans not as either students or as professors, but as “staff”…people whose function is to serve the institution but are not really a part of it and who are destined to remain permanantly low on the status ladder.

A Few Thoughts on Data Aggregation

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Big Brother on the Make….or perhaps, the take….

Outside of specific and targeted investigational contexts for law enforcement and intelligence, the Federal government really does not need to know what products we buy at the grocery store, what books we buy or check out at the library, the magazines to which we subscribe, our car payments, what kind of food we eat, the websites we visit, how we use our credit cards and where. It’s not actually the government’s business, and presumably, the 4th Amendment indicates they need a compelling interest before they are allowed to snoop.

Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) is working hard….to make sure the Feds are watching your every move. Unless you are an illegal alien of course.

What passes for Liberalism these days is a strange ideology – American citizens are to be treated as criminals to be kept under continuous government surveillance but if you are a foreigner who enters the country illegally, you should get special dispensations from police questioning. Or unless you are a foreign terrorist overseas or in communication with one. WTF?

Cross-posted at Zenpundit

Intellectual Nondiversity

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David Bernstein observes that if Elena Kagan is confirmed then every single Supreme Court Justice will have attended Harvard or Yale law schools. He also observes that:

The president went to Harvard, and barely defeated a primary opponent who went to Yale. His predecessor went to Yale and Harvard, and defeated opponents who went to Yale and Harvard, and Harvard, respectively. The previous two presidents also went to Yale, with Bush I defeating another Harvard grad for the presidency.

..and asks, “Isn’t this a bit much?”

His post reminded me of something that Peter Drucker wrote, way back in 1968:

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