He's serious.

But let me run down his points again in quick synopsis of his "21 points"** address and my quick take:

Most of us will die in poverty
True. But our version of poverty will likely be the highest QOL ever in the United States. For the rest of the world it is not (and will likely never be) a pretty picture.

Quality health care for all is not possible
True. Unless wave healing technologies are funded and developed within 200 years.

Pop culture is filth
Very true. But that's true for every generation looking at the new generation. Greece and Rome had just as many homosexuals, prostitutes and decadence. Include England, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, Africa and every other nation and civilization that has at one point been the cradle of human achievement, and you will see the same tools developed and used to exploit the masses - namely, sex, drugs and some form of escapism.

Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait
True. But the old provide most nations with the conservative backbone to keep things from completely falling apart.

The environment is collapsing
And the sun is getting hotter. China will clean up its act when the five trillion happy meal toys kids play with for twenty seconds cease to be popular with American fast food patrons.
Seriously, the pollution in China and India will be cleaned up when the masses there overthrow an ineffective government. Industrial revolution levels of pollution will only be tolerated for so long by increasingly more wealthy Chinese. The poor, quite naturally, will have no clout to implement pollution controls. If their trade deficit continues to grow - they may make pollution controls an issue to barter with the US in the years to come.

Science has stopped
Sometimes it seems like it has. However, as I discussed in another thread it is the large scientific and technological enterprises which have been made impossible due to the short-circuiting of free-enterprise with the minimum wage.

Not all groups are equally good at all things
True. But this will smack of racism to most people and he will have hell to pay in his email box because of it.

Affirmative action is absolutely essential to social order
He says, "Think about it." I have. I think he should've said affirmative action is absolutely essential to preserving the pecking order in certain social groups. That would nmake his point much clearer.

Socialism is popular
Well it certainly is where Raoul hails from!;-) Promising the moon will always appeal to the young, the extreme elderly and the lazy. Heck, if a paper was offered, here in the US, which we could all sign so as to work 4 hour days and have the government take care of us cradle to cremation in a socialist society (with fixed income and wages, medical, etc.), I would venture to say at least upwards of 180 million of our estimated 260 million population would sign it eagerly. Selling one's soul to the "socialist devil" is done daily by billions who sacrifice a little bit (or a lot) of their freedom for convenience and imagined security.

Conservatism is dead
His point about the indoctrination is well taken. I thought I was rereading a recent post. ;-) Most do not know the definition of conservative. Mao, Stalin and any mass murderer the leftists forgot to include - well they are clearly conservatives too! Indoctrination works. Propaganda works just as surely as sex sells.

Nothing will be done about immigration
Yes. Of all the fears he mentions - this is the one which will pull at our nations underpinnings the hardest.

Only Anglo-Saxon countries can do democracy
Derbyshire put this line immediately following for a reason. Hinting at what will happen when the above point remains unaddressed. No need to hint - the US will become a socialist third world hellhole with a less educated population and aging infrastucture. (Just fast-forward to the year 2050 in this present timestream and you will find this prediction has come completely true.) Let Hillary become President in 2008 or Bustamante Governor of California - and you will see a clamoring for national healthcare among the newly legal "undocumented" (aka illegal) migrants and their offspring. Mexico's level of national poverty here we come!

China will get stronger and richer, without moving one inch closer to constitutional government

True for awhile anyway. Give it fifty years for an actual middle class to develop in the nation and see what happens.

Taiwan will be re-united with the Motherland....by some combination of economic carrot and military stick

Of course. The only exception to this history thread is if the US actually does what the Kim il Jong keeps saying it will - conquer North Korea and forcibly reunite it with South Korea. A few well placed nuclear warheads could facilitate that scenario quickly without Russian intervention - or even Chinese. As an earlier thread suggested - just call them "accidental detonations" and make sure you erase the reactor they are using for uranium refinement so no isotope signatures can be read and compared from the releases. In this instance Taiwan will remain safely untouched for another hundred and fifty years - especially as its technological significance and wealth means less to an ever more prosperous and developed Chinese mainland.

Something inconceivably horrible will happen in the Middle East

I disagree here. The middle east is already something horrible. A nuclear strike on Israel could occur - but the retaliation would also occur. NOw more than ever the fundamentalists know and understand their actions have consequences. They all don't want to be riding four headed camels on glass deserts.

The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are saddled up and ready to ride
They've always been riding - non stop. There is no time in history when man is not learning through the most violent, tragic and horrible experiences. Yes, life and death and struggle are the manifestations of the ever repeating cycles and learning and intelligence are the goals. Once one learns enough - one knows how to get off the merry-go-round and move on to other fun pursuits more suited for maturing souls ;-)

The next version of MicroSoft Windows will be even buggier and more counterintuitive than the last
No...I have hope! Really! Bill Gates is cracking down on his programmers! I can feel it!

Poverty and hardship build character; prosperity and security destroy it
That's BS. I know plenty of folks who have plenty of character and have never known hardship. They usually come from very loving families. Sure, lots of newly rich folks quickly go on a drug and spending binge, discarding their morals with their old clothes and cars. I know equal numbers of "poor" folks with character, as I do rich ones with it. Character defined as morality, work ethic or family values can be found in every nation, income level and race on earth. They usually go largely unnoticed - and like it that way.

The U.S. constitution is incompatible with a war on terrorism
True. But that is why we have set up a command center in the heart of the "bad neighborhood" known as the middle east.

Justice is dead
Infinite Justice is never dead. It is just like death, birth and taxes - unavoidable.

We are living in a golden age
True. But most cultures and times feel the exact same thing. No one likes to look at life and say it was better before I was here or will be better after I'm gone. As someone who takes a somewhat unique view of such things, I can clearly state that there is nothing that special about right now that can't be said about a million years ago - or a million years from now. Each and every moment in time has a built in "Golden Age" - it merely awaits the individual to grasp it, nurture it within his/her mind and cherish it.

All in all, I'd say a dog probably pooped on his walkway and someone in a Hyundai parked in his reserved parking spot.

SDAI-Tech1

.

.

*I was about to use his name but realized that he might not like that in this day and age. Using a nom de plume myself - I am sensitive to those things. ;-)

**Derived from Wilsons "14 points" address to Congress in 1918.