How would you like your Death of America cocktail prepared, madam?

Slate, an online "magazine," asked its readers: how is America going to end?

Unfortunately, it was a closed-ended rather than open-ended query. Slate chose the possibilities and invited respondents to rank them. That might make statistical tabulation easier, but it channels what should be an invitation to thought into preconceived categories. No black swans are permitted on the grounds, and (more seriously, in my view) the methodology discourages considering underlying principles in favor of what might be called journalistic topics:

Your task was simple: Browse through a list of 144 potential apocalypses and choose up to five that seem most likely to wipe the United States off the map. As of Wednesday night, 60,020 readers had submitted their visions of the end of America. … We've tallied the ballots and analyzed the data. Out of the 144 scenarios in the apocalypse grid, here are the five you believe are the biggest threat to America's continued existence …

You can read the explanations and rationales here.

If the writers mean "most likely to wipe the United States off the map" literally, then "loose nukes" is a reasonable answer as the most likely. (Even there, it's hard to imagine that any number of nukes would leave nothing but a hole where the U.S. used to be.) But they obviously do not mean it literally, since they then amend that to "the end of America" and "the biggest threat to America's existence." Presumably, they are on about the collapse of our government, society, or way of life.

But none of those top-five collective bad hair days, catastrophic as they might be, would necessarily be the end of America, our political system, or values. They are mostly events, and events can ultimately be overcome. Here's what I mean about the false journalistic assumption that America, or the idea of America, will crack up because of the kind of occurrences that make headlines.

Although they are not on Slate's menu, my nominations for what is most likely to see off the country are these (not in any order of likelihood, and there is some crossover among them):

1. The loss of a common culture. Individual differences are a fine thing and often a source of national strength. But to function smoothly, a country has to have a reasonable degree of agreement or shared values among its constituent groups about history, language, manners, arts, ethics, and other aspects of life summed up by "culture." Our federal government is presently doing all it can to destroy whatever remains of a common culture (as opposed to a vaporous idea of "freedom") through mass third world immigration. International businesses are helping the process along by acting as though our country, or any country, is irrelevant; the world is simply a gigantic marketplace.

2. The replacement of tools of thought by technology. Thinking clearly and even imaginatively demands skill with language; knowledge of history, a catalogue of what has worked and what has led to untold misery; a philosophical sense. As recently as a century ago, all those were considered essentials of civilized life. Today they are largely thought irrelevant, to such a degree that no one even bothers anymore to proclaim them irrelevant. People believe that all problems will be solved by technology, or that progress means more and better you-name-it, as long as it's something that works through manipulation of the material world.

3. Death by systematization, rules, and laws. The other day, passengers were stranded for five and a half hours aboard an airplane going nowhere, only the latest of many such incidents. It will no doubt renew calls for a legal "passenger's bill of rights." Were such a law to be passed, it might help, but it would not end an essential causal factor, which is the same as for many other problems that seem to defy solution. We are being undone by overorganization that stifles individual responsibility.

I'm sure the pilots felt bad about holding their passengers hostage, but they knew that if they asked to return to the gate, they would get grief from ground control, and later from their airline. Almost surely there were airline and airport managers who would have liked to find a sensible and humane solution, but they too were hog-tied by innumberable rules and lines of authority.

As people, we can scarcely draw breath without consulting voluminous tracts of law, regulations, company procedures, speech codes, codes of conduct, best practices, organizational flow charts, expert opinion, and helpful hints. As a society, we have decided to leave nothing to chance or personal, ad hoc problem solving. Most passengers would like to get out of their aluminum coffin after a couple of hours even if they're further delayed, and some airline representatives on the scene know that, even know that they are creating hatred for the carrier. But there are too many rules to adhere to, too many sign-offs needed.

Philip K. Howard is a lawyer who has written several books on this theme. I'm reading the most recent, Life Without Lawyers, and have read his earlier ones (they all make similar points). Howard is mostly an off-the-shelf liberal, but he has broken free of the pack in one way.

He recognizes that in trying to make every action that affects anyone "fair," we have built a roadblock against sensible, creative responses to problems. A massive superstructure of laws and rules has almost killed individual responsibility. The only "correct" response anyone in a government agency or corporation (except for a few at the very top) can make is to find the applicable directive and follow it. Initiative is strangled at birth.

Of course there are a few areas that concern health and safety that necessitate following strict procedures. But as Howard says, and eloquently, far larger fields exist where we need to empower individuals to make on-the-spot decisions based on their own experience and judgment, not a priori rules that can't take into account particular situations.

Supposedly our forward-thinking corporations have gotten the message and are trying to spread responsibility around. I hope so. But judging from employees I come into contact with, mainly sales and customer service representatives, the New Jerusalem hasn't percolated down to those levels yet.

Hardening of the arteries, eventually leading to a lack of nourishment for the heart and brain, is as dangerous to America as it is to Americans.

Black dogs face pattern of discrimination

Doggedly struggling for equal rights.

Black dogs need an affirmative action program, says a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Christie Keith writes:

Black may be beautiful, but when it comes to dogs of a darker hue, potential adopters often overlook them -- especially if they're big. … When Petfinder.com, an online database of more than 300,000 adoptable pets, declared August 12 national "Adopt-A-Less-Adoptable-Pet Day," they discovered that finding homes for black dogs, particularly larger ones, was a real problem for their 12,681 member shelters and rescue groups.

Not only color discrimination, but breedism and sizeism!

I have nothing against dogs of any color or size, so long as they have a good disposition. Of course it isn't "fair" to black dogs if adopters prefer blondes. But hang on. The pool of adopters is pretty much fixed in size. For every dog that is taken in petship, another is rejected. So this campaign probably won't issue in more dogs finding homes, which would be worth supporting; it will (if successful) just mean more black dogs being taken in, and more dogs of other colors being left in the shelter.

Dogs don't believe in group rights. They don't understand quotas. They care only about their own situation, and this is a zero-sum game. There is no net benefit to the total corps of dogs awaiting adoption.

So what we have here is social engineering applied to the pet owning population. Score another point for the soft totalitarian state. People can live where they choose (and can afford), but the government can forcibly settle 25 families from Baluchistan, or thousands of "victim" group members, in their midst. If they want or need to rent out part of their house, they cannot choose who they rent to on the basis of … well, anything, really, except maybe the applicant's credit rating, but if the ones with poor credit rating are part of some "protected" group, that may not be a good enough reason.

As of now, there aren't any laws about what color of dog you select for an animal companion, but when there are, California will lead the way. Not because it's good for dogs in general, but because it's good for the power of the government. You need reminding constantly that in statist America, your life choices are not yours to make.

Hendrickson, who had adopted two black dogs before learning about "black dog syndrome," decided to add Cobie to her "black pack."

"They say in your life you will have one dog who is 'the one,'" she told me. "Cobie is my 'one.' He's four years old and a certified therapy dog, and we spend our days helping disadvantaged children learn to read at schools, shelters, youth detention centers. Goes to show what a great dog you can be missing out on by passing up a black dog."

A certified therapy dog?

I never knew there was such a thing. But if some dogs can teach children how to read, they have earned a professional certification. Perhaps we need more dogs and fewer humans leading classes in our public schools.

Next census will count illegals

The U.S. government, tired of taking orders from its citizens — many of whom have bad habits like opposition — continues to recruit a new country to rule. Time was, a nation had to go on a conquest binge outside its own borders to bulk up its power. That's so 19th century. Now in the era of soft tyrrany, the central government just throws out a dragnet for a new nation-within-a-nation of subservient clients.

Even the immigration pimps at the Wall Street Journal seem to find something a little unsettling (or illegally settling) about congressional representation being skewed by counting los illegals.

Next year’s census will determine the apportionment of House members and Electoral College votes for each state. To accomplish these vital constitutional purposes, the enumeration should count only citizens and persons who are legal, permanent residents. But it won’t.

Instead, the U.S. Census Bureau is set to count all persons physically present in the country—including large numbers who are here illegally. The result will unconstitutionally increase the number of representatives in some states and deprive some other states of their rightful political representation.

It's hard to credit such a position from the Journal, which trumpets in season and out the need for vast armies of dead-end-job peons and HB-1 visa brainiacs — the former to turn the minimum-wage mills, the latter to grind out computer code in lieu of Americans with their peculiar salary expectations. Maybe even the cheap labor gang leaders have a twinge of constitutional conscience once per blue moon.

According to the latest American Community Survey, California has 5,622,422 noncitizens in its population of 36,264,467. Based on our round-number projection of a decade-end population in that state of 37,000,000 (including 5,750,000 noncitizens), California would have 57 members in the newly reapportioned U.S. House of Representatives.

However, with noncitizens not included for purposes of reapportionment, California would have 48 House seats (based on an estimated 308 million total population in 2010 with 283 million citizens, or 650,000 citizens per House seat). Using a similar projection, Texas would have 38 House members with noncitizens included. With only citizens counted, it would be entitled to 34 members.

See how it works? The more illegals, the more representatives the state has, and very likely the more votes in Congress for federal support of the Third World colonists and their extended families. States and districts prefer someone else to pick up the check.

America, you are being suckered. But you knew that already. "The census has drifted far from its constitutional roots, and the 2010 enumeration will result in a malapportionment of Congress," the Journal says. I agree with everything in that sentence except "drifted." This is an act of control, not drift.

Signs of the times

During the past two or three months on my daily commuting route (which is on city streets, not a freeway), handmade or cheaply printed signs have been appearing like mushrooms after the rain. They are attached to light or telephone poles, or stuck in the ground with wires, similar to those that real estate agents put up to announce a house they hope to sell you.

Most of them are for personal services (Reflexology Massage $39 1 hour, U Call I Haul, Music Lessons), and I have some sympathy for the advertisers, many of whom have probably lost their jobs and are trying to keep body and soul together however they can. Other signs are for small businesses — driveway pavers, lawn care, that sort of thing — and it's understandable that print ads in newspapers are not cost-effective for them. I'm sympathetic to people running small businesses and trying to stay above water, too.

Other signs are from stores, though. Some of the el cheapo signs from stores are especially excessive, like those of a furniture outlet that put up about 50, separated from one another by 10 feet or so. I would pay something for this merchant to go out of business. And then there are the "sucker" come-ons that you always get in a depression: EARN WHILE YOU LEARN REAL ESTATE — UP TO $2000 A WEEK!

Almost all of these signs are on public property, such as medians, or on landscaping near the street that obviously doesn't belong to the advertisers. I expect there are local ordinances against this practice — billboards are prohibited in the area — but if so, obviously no one is enforcing them.

A batch of crummy little signs may seem like a minor annoyance in the larger scheme of things, and as I say, they may help some people whom the economy has roughed up. The trouble is, what might be acceptable in very limited numbers becomes a real eyesore when they multiply as they have lately. They add to the existing visual clutter of the environment, which already has plenty of commercial and traffic signs.

It's another example of the "tragedy of the commons," a phenomenon identified so brilliantly by Garrett Hardin some 40 years ago. To wit: each individual acts in a way that offers an attractive cost-benefit ratio for himself, but the collective result is negative for the community, eventually possibly even for the individuals. (If they arouse distaste in the majority of viewers, they could backfire on the advertisers. Shoot, even the cities might decide too much is too much and order them removed forthwith, or fine the signage perps.)

The failure of the cities involved to set limits on this sign posting also creates a kind of "broken windows" situation of the sort that has been identified as a precursor to more serious misbehavior. It symbolizes a rupture in the social contract. People are using property that belongs to everyone for their own selfish ends, in ways that degrade the shared environment, and getting away with it. Behind the messages printed on the signs, there is a larger message, that civic pride and aesthetic considerations have taken another blow, with the likelihood of more and worse in the future.

The new law for the New Order

These are policewomen.

Not in Pakistan, mind you. In England.

Saith the Daily Mail:

Three female police officers were ordered to dress up as Muslim women for the day just to see what it felt like.

They wore traditional burkhas as part of a scheme designed to help police interact better with the Islamic community. Two covered their faces with hijab headscarves and niqab veils, leaving only narrow slits to see through, and another wore Muslim dress and a headscarf showing her face.

Yes, they'd better see what it feels like. The day is not far off when they will have no choice about wearing Muslim clobber while writing traffic tickets or busting college kids for joking that a horse is gay.

Sergeant Deb Leonard - who wore one of the burkhas, said: "I have gained an appreciation and understanding of what Muslim females experience when they walk out in public in clothing appropriate to their beliefs.

'We are keen to gain a better understanding of issues which our communities face.'

Sergeant, your desire to understand your communities' "issues" does you proud. May I suggest that in your next cross-cultural venture you dress up as an indigenous Englishwoman. Walk through a council estate. Walk in the central city when the pubs close and blind drunk customers take over the street. Empathize with the feelings of the declining native British majority who are afraid to go out at night because the U.K. is the most violent country in Europe and probably in the Western world.

Or not. Soon enough you'll be enforcing sharia law and there won't be any pubs and there won't be any Englishwomen walking alone. You won't have to endure the bother of policing "Behead the Infidels" demonstrations, because those who are now demonstrating will be in charge and they'll have the law to back them up.

Meanwhile, and I hope you won't think this is just flattery, may I say your Muslim-for-a-Day uniforms really suit you.

Seed money

From the Contra Costa (California) Times, this:

To supplement his income at Your Black Muslim Bakery, founder Yusuf Bey hid his paternity of some of his 42 children so their mothers could collect welfare benefits, said three of his women during sworn depositions they gave in a civil lawsuit in 2005. At various times the benefits included medical care, federal housing vouchers, food stamps and cash assistance that the women had to immediately turn over to him, they said.

Bey hid his paternity by keeping his name off of some of his children's birth certificates, a survey of county birth records shows, even though he openly acknowledged them as his children in the daily life of the bakery. Bey also offered to raise other people's children, and in at least three cases he had one of his women made their guardians. Then he collected welfare benefits for those children, too. And when they became old enough to bear his children, the new generation was also added to the welfare rolls, the women testified.

You know why I don't have a great deal of sympathy for California's budget crisis?

Yes, you know.