How Clinton-Hating Dumbed Down the Right
Reflecting on the sorry state of conservative causes in America is a temptation to self-pity, resentment, and salty thoughts of conspiracy. Likewise, the burbling descent of various rightist media down the intellectual bidet can be surely be attributed in part to certain organized interests, crassly selfish lobbies, and coteries of self-promoting mediocrities who blurb each others’ books. But isn’t that how cultural politics has always worked? The rise of the Renaissance humanists at the expense of the Scholastics happened through such seedy means—as Christopher Hollis’ bilious biography of Erasmus documents.
No, it won’t do simply to blame the neocons.
It’s tempting to jump from cabal-istic conjectures to unified field theories of politics, to leave the dreary particulars for shining, smoothly beveled abstractions (German engineering!), which argue that there could be no “real conservatism” in a place like America since it was founded on liberal, Enlightenment principles.
Or that the whole national enterprise went dreadfully wrong at a certain date, when our forefathers blundered down the wrong historical path. (My date of choice for When America Went Wrong would have to be 1763, but never mind.) Such theories make for more erudite essays, of course. I’ll agree with Charles Coulombe over a liter of Trappist ale that it’s a damned shame that (in chronological order):
a) The Spanish Armada didn’t land.
b) Bonnie Prince Charlie couldn’t take London.
c) George III wouldn’t conciliate the colonists.
d) New England didn’t secede in 1812.
And so on, through decades of tragic historical turning points, up through the Joseph McCarthy’s hiring of Roy Cohen, the removal of John O’Sullivan as editor of National Review, and Anne Coulter’s failure to marry Bob Guccione, Jr.
But none of this gets us very far.
Instead, in the Lenten spirit, we might as members of a movement in disgrace engage in some self-accusation. With all due respect to those who have more theoretical objections to the modern conservative project (pace Justin Raimondo, Paul Gottfried, and Brent Bozell), I still see some value to a political tendency that could once, and not so long ago, marshal minds like Russell Kirk, Erik von Kuenhelt-Leddihn, Frank Meyer, Irving Kristol and Thomas Molnar—frequently in the pages of the same magazine. Something there was once, that could elect Ronald Reagan, nominate Robert Bork, fund Lech Walesa, and wield Phyllis Schlafly like a motherly Joan of Arc. And that something was lost, for a complex of historical reasons that would require a book as erudite as Raimondo’s or Gottfried’s—albeit from a different point of view.
In the space of a single blog, I’d like to point to just one turning point, where conservatism’s descent into the rat’s maze it now inhabits took a particularly seedy turn around a very dark corner. And to do so, I’ll have to do something incredibly distasteful: I’m forced to cite Stanley Fish.
This architect of the demolition of liberal arts education at a major American university, now an avuncular columnist at the NY Times, makes worthy points in a recent column, where he cites the sheer intensity of hatred for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Of course he exaggerates, and of course he finds a way to compare it all to (drumroll please)… anti-Semitism.
And there’s a great deal about the Clintons which any conservative must detest. But the sheer intensity of feeling provoked among conservatives by the spectacle of a Hillary Clinton presidency (to the point where some are considering supporting Barak Obama or even John McCain) is a phenomenon worth noting. My girlfriend knows “pro-choice,” pot-smoking Greenpeace activists from Austin who turn pale with terror at the sight of Hillary—although they can’t explain exactly why.
I think I can, and in doing so point to one of the reasons for the decay of the whole conservative movement: With the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 (and with memories of the Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork fights still bloodying their craw), conservative writers, radio hosts and other opinion leaders really did embrace a politics of personal hatred aimed at the newly elected president. I know because I was one of them. While Rush Limbaugh was still considered a fringe phenomenon, waved off as Ron Paul is today, I lobbied SUCCESS, the business magazine where I worked, to assign me a story on the man. The glowing profile, entitled “Why I Win,” was the first magazine cover story on Limbaugh in the United States. It got cribbed by Barbara Walters, and sat framed behind Rush’s head on the set of his TV show. (What I best recall from the interview in Rush’s inner sanctum was his complete, bound leather set of Playboy magazine—going all the way back to 1953.)
I remember gathering in an Irish pub near Grand Central Station with a troop of right-wing Catholics—mostly battle-scarred veterans of Operation Rescue—to watch the 1992 election results. Despite Bush I’s anemic campaign—the party seemed to have spent all its energy demonizing Pat Buchanan, leaving nothing for the general election—we still could not believe what we were seeing. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Democrats didn’t know how to win. They were dull, pedantic Mondales who didn’t understand America. They were chirping, clueless Dukakises who could be taken down with a few imaginary burning flags. (Has there been another a political campaign as successfully stupid as Bush’s run against Dukakis? Or was I the only conservative who was just plain embarrassed by that win in 1988?) As one state after another flipped for Clinton, we stared at the screen in silence. Some stalwarts claimed voter fraud. The rest of us walked off in a daze, a few of us actually weeping like the Frenchmen who watched the Germans march into Paris. Indeed, the next day, I blush to admit that I actually felt like my country had been occupied. When I switched on the Rush Limbaugh program, I said to a friend, “For the next four years this is Radio Free France.” (Rush was more moderate, and called every succeeding day of the Clinton presidency “America Held Hostage.”) All this in reaction to the election of a moderate Democratic governor of a southern state.
Now before my former colleagues at Frontpage magazine conclude that I have done a kind of David Brock, and learned to love the Clintons, let me be clear. I was and remain appalled at most Clinton proposals and policies—from gays in the military to socialized health care to the abridgment of civil liberties, futile military interventions against countries that never attacked us, and of course the leftward lurch of the Supreme Court. But none of this was particular to the Clintons; it was boilerplate liberal policy. What rankled us so much was that, for the first time in over a decade, the Democrats had found someone who was good at peddling this stuff. Who gave Americans a sense of well-being and goofy optimism, even as he threw these daft proposals at the wall to see which ones would stick. We experienced Clinton as the Antichrist, but he was really much more like Louisiana’s Edwin Edwards. His affability and (admittedly sociopathic) charm made him unbeatable. And that drove us into fury.
This rage is what made it so satisfying to hear Rush dub callers “Feminazis,” to conduct (complete with vacuum sound effects) “caller abortions.” The potent alienation from our own government, the sense that it was somehow illegitimate—just because we’d lost an election—fueled the “patriot movement,” whose achievements I have never been able to discover. When Janet Reno conducted the botched, criminally negligent siege of the Branch Dravidian compound, we were primed to consider it the first step in a Bolshevik coup. When Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City, I knew important columnists who whispered that it was America’s “Reichstag Fire.” In other words, it was an inside job, conducted by a victim of CIA mind control to justify the crackdown on domestic liberties and the Right. (In fact, as Peter Brimelow has written, that domestic atrocity, conducted by a white racialist, helped destroy the otherwise decent chance of reforming immigration. It’s odd to remember that in 1995 there was a bipartisan consensus to pare back even legal immigration, as proposed by a black liberal Democrat appointed by President Clinton. Instead, we now congratulate ourselves for defeating an amnesty proposed by President Bush, and championed by our likely 2008 presidential nominee. How far we have come....)
Later, when the Feds seized Elian Gonzalez, conservative magazines and Web sites treated this bad decision as another instance of totalitarianism on the march. When Clinton intervened in Kosovo, attacking a nation which hadn’t provoked us in order to establish (ahem) a “democracy” in the Islamic world, conservative commentators and congressmen rallied to the old standard of non-interventionism, and rightly howled that Clinton was playing “global policeman.”
Did we ever really believe any of this?
During the Clinton years, conservatism wasn’t just dumbed down. It was lobotomized. A movement which once had fed itself on the essays of Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ernest van den Haag, Friedrich Wilhelmsen, Wilhelm Röpke and John Simon began to gorge on the juiciest dripping hunks of gore served up by The American Spectator, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh—to cite only the most erudite of the Clinton-haters we enabled. When the Whitewater investigation degenerated into a frenzy of crotch-sniffing, enabled by a middle-aged harpy who bugged the conversations of a confused 20-something intern who thought her a friend, we didn’t turn away in disgust. We never worried that the material we were introducing into the public record might corrupt our children. We ignored the sexual sins of previous presidents, and rigged an impeachment trial over (excuse me) a blow-job. At least we tried to remove a president over lying about something serious… as opposed to some trifling lapse of judgment like… a war.
I remember the glee with which we greeted each groaningly private revelation about a middle-aged man in a troubled marriage and his inconclusive dalliances with a sad, overweight girl. The emails we forwarded larded with “facts” about the “dozens” of people MURDERED by the Clintons. The sadistic pleasure we took in each humiliating press conference.... We didn’t just want to defeat Bill Clinton. We wanted to destroy him.
It was during this time that our movement threw its standards to the winds, and created public figures like Jonah Goldberg—whom history must record only became known to anyone because… let’s go through this analytically:
...his mother…
...convinced…
...Linda Tripp…
..to stop Monica Lewinsky…
..from dry-cleaning…
...semen…
...from a dress.
As I recall, the color was blue.
This wasn’t exactly how James Burnham or Russell Kirk made his bones. (To be fair, Mr. Goldberg seems to be growing in office, and taking seriously men like Ron Paul and Paul Gottfried. If he continues down this road, I look for good things from him in future.)
The inquisitors we created during this squalid ransacking of private sewers are still with us today. The writers who warned that Waco signalled the start of a tyranny now support torture and the Patriot Act. The figures who rightly denounced the Kosovo war label opponents of the Iraq war as “unpatriotic appeasers.” Those who prosecuted Clinton for concealing oral sex helped keep Scooter Libby out of prison. John Kerry was named a coward for exaggerating his service in Vietnam… and George Bush a hero for keeping Viet Cong bombers from strafing Texas. Ron Paul shares the “worldview of Michael Moore” because he opposes a particular foreign intervention. And so on. We turned over our movement to bullies like Sean Hannity, partisan hacks like Anne Coulter, and slanderers like David Frum… and we did it because it felt so good to hate. It was our moment of Dionysian pleasure, our Stonewall riot, our Woodstock.
And now we’re all in rehab. The first step is admitting it.
Comments
Very nice article with a thoughtful message. I do disagree, however, with your derision of suggestions that there was a lot more to the OKC bombing than the media suggested. In fact, there is strong evidence that the OKC bombing was (like 911) a false flag operation. For example, explosives experts have commented that the damage to the Murrah building was far more extensive than could be produced with a fertiliser bomb of the type supposedly constructed by McVeigh.
For details, see here: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/OK/ok.html
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“The first step is admitting it”
never gonna happen
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I wonder if Billary won not just because he/they was/were “good at selling this stuff”, but because George Bush I wasn’t good and holding together Tories, Whigs, and Dissenters (High Church, Broad Church, Low Church—our politics are still that of England 1678), because Ross Perot was good at dividing the vote, and because we don’t have a 2nd round between the top two, as France has. No Perot = Bush I victory.
Hillary isn’t the psychopath/sociopath that Bill is. She’s just Nurse Ratched at Salem MA.
It looks like the four destructive horsemen of the 60s are in for their last hurrah this year: race, sex, gender, and war.
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Mr. Zmirak is right on target in this essay. We have lost the knowledge and judgment to state facts plainly and know what words mean. How can the word ‘conservative’ encompass John McCain, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul? The same holds true with the ‘liberal’ candidates. By listening and reviewing the Coulters, Hannitys, Limbaughs, we have allowed public discourse to degenerate down the mud-slinging and name-calling that it is today. I marvel at how the truly interesting and informed commentary is all to be found on the internet and not in the newsstands and book stores of the United States. It comes down to the question whether or not people will educate themselves. Nobody is going to do it for them.
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McVeigh’s connections to the ‘white racialist’ movement seem to be tenuous at best. Why would he attack a federal building in Oklahoma, where the majority of victims were sure to be white? The only thing connecting him with ‘white racialism’ is a copy of the Turner Diaries, a slim reed indeed. Moreover, while the OKC bombing certainly hurt Brimelow’s book tour, the real effective opposition to immigration reform didn’t come from SPLC times, but from the Republican establishment, some of the same ‘haters’ that you excoriate now.
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Not bad, for a Yalie, but it’s a bit backward.
The Earth First! bombing, Ruby Ridge, Waco, the first WTC bombing, pointed to a government post-Cold War with numerous extra-Constitutional ‘national security’ apparatus competing for favor and budgets, that was searching for a raison d’etre, and as many empires do, it turned domestic.
The political rebellion was expressed in the insurgent candidacy of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot, and intensified with failure of Progressive’s supporting Jerry Brown to defeat the DLC’s Bill Clinton.
The reporting had already been done, from the Left, save GHW Bush who had hired George Caprozi Jr. to put a file/book together on Clinton in 1992 that was never used, but became the subject of just about every anti-Clinton bit we heard in the 90s--save Mena Airport which had come from the Left (Arkansas college classes, Sam Smith, Roger Morris/Sally Denton) but picked up by R Emmett Tyrell and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard who thought to claim it for themselves, as if the work hadn’t already been done.
The problem, as Mr.Tyrell discovered, was Mena involved Bush Era Republicans so it had to go away.
Randy Weaver was defended by a Man of the Left, Jerry Spence, and the survivors of Waco, by Ramsey Clark.
The end result, you ask, was George Bush’s election in 2000, a vote I deeply regret.
Lastly, Tim McVeigh’s co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, has a Filipino wife, so I am not sure how much of a white racialist he was, rather than a rogue whose brain had been warped beyond recognition in the Iraq War.
Just another case of blowback, to file in the memory hole.
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I second JR Bowman’s comments above and will also say that all we have now is a choice between two wings of the same party. This was a great essay Mr. Zmirak!
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When the conservative movement let people like Limbaugh
and Coulter become its standard bearers, it committed
suicide. Gone was the proud intellectual tradition of
centuries. Instead we got sensationalism, shrillness, and
simplification. Dumbing down to the lowest common
denomitantor, to the point that Howard Stern, who never
pretended to be more than he was would call Limbaugh a
plagiarist.
Tell me, what respectable intellectual movement choses
as a standard-bearer a Howard Stern clone? I despair of
seeing an intelligent voice from the Conservative side,
and end up watching Olbermann who is not afraid to appear
smart.
And then, isn’t it ridiculous to harp so much about Monica
Lewinsky and the blue dress and Clinton’s lies, only to
be rejoined that at least Clinton did not lie to get us
into an unnecessary war, unlike the Idiot-in-Chief, and
how come no one impeaches Bush for those lies?
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An excellent thesis which should be expanded upon in a book.
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Conservatism croaked (along with the nation) when the ‘65 immigration act was passed. It died when it accepted the concept of “creedal nation”, a patent absurdity which really only exists to give the corrupt Establishment conservative cowards plausible deniability in the face of their collaboration-for-profit in the destruction of their own nation and people. A conservatism that won’t conserve its own people simply has no reason to exist, and it is from this fact that the superficiality of the modern pseudo-con movement springs. Let James Burnham speak:
“But modern liberalism [modern conservatism] does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice, and death. There is no tragic dimension in its picture of the good life. Men become willing to endure, sacrifice, and die for God, family, king, honor, country, from a sense of absolute duty or an exalted vision of the meaning of history. It is such traditional ideals and the institutions slowly built around them that are in present fact the great bulwarks, spiritual as well as social, against the tidal advance of the world Communist enterprise. And it is precisely these ideals and institutions that liberalism has criticized, attacked, and in part overthrown as superstitious, archaic, reactionary, and irrational. In their place liberalism proposes a set of pale and bloodless abstractions--pale and bloodless for the very reason that they have no roots in the past, in deep feeling and in suffering. Except for mercenaries, saints, and neurotics, no one is willing to sacrifice and die for progressive education, Medicare, humanity in the abstract, the United Nations, and a 10 per cent rise in Social Security payments [Replace with tax cuts, foreign crusades, free trade, whatever establishment conservatives are pushing these days].”
(In fact, as Peter Brimelow has written, that domestic atrocity, conducted by a white racialist, helped destroy the otherwise decent chance of reforming immigration. Its odd to remember that in 1995 there was a bipartisan consensus to pare back even legal immigration, as proposed by a black liberal Democrat appointed by President Clinton. Instead, we now congratulate ourselves for defeating an amnesty proposed by President Bush, and championed by our likely 2008 presidential nominee. How far we have come....)
That’s not what Brimelow is saying at all. Whether McVeigh was a white racialist (that is a broad term) or not is irrelevant, he was motivated by anger over Waco, and his act had little or nothing to do with immigration or race, and had no effect on immigration policy. You’re simply delusional if you believe we were ever on the cusp of immigration reform during the Jordan commission or at any other time. The commission’s report was immediately sent to the circular file. Mass immigration is a concrete program of colonialism, originally designed to produce a political effect (the destruction of the “great bulwarks” Burnham writes of in order to clear the way for socialism) but now merely blind genocidal hatred of the West and whites. As Brimelow points out in the linked article not even 9/11 has caused the establishment (including the collaborator “conservative” wing of that establishment) to even mildly question immigration ("Its almost as if our leaders dont want to talk about immigration. Funny thing"). Didn’t then, don’t now.
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As a Catholic who sees faults in both parties and was appalled at the election of Slick Willie and foresaw the rise of Nurse Diesel and even felt elation that we would elect Bob Dole, I felt personally attacked by the hate machine that took over the Republican party. What Bush is was obvious in 2000 and to see him raised as the epitome of Republicanism and the subsequent orgy of war, corruption, incompetence, and un-Constitutional power madness of the party makes me revile them more if possible than the Democrats who are just criminally well meaning for the most part. A lot of people like me mistakingly think McCain is the answer.
If the Republicans don’t push to impeach Bush and Cheney they will have to cope with giving l’etat c’est moi power to Billary. At that point it will be too late to reign in an abusive dictator since it was ok when it was “our” guy doing it will scuttle any attempt at impeachment. They have 346 days to restore the Constitution but since it is just the other side of the same party I don’t expect to see anything happen since Nasty Pelosi can barely hold her water for the elections to enthrone Billary.
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Immigration, immigration, immigration.
Damn.
You’d think the Mexicans were Ol’ Nick hisself.
The valley in Western North Carolina my family has been in for about 200 years (before the Cherokees were carted off by van Buren and Company to make it safe for the White man [note to van Buren: we were already there!]) is now approximately 30% Hispanic/Mexican.
The Mexicans that live across the road from my aunt and uncle get up every morning, go to their jobs painting, hanging drywall, cooking, cleaning hotel rooms, or whatever it is they do. They come home, maybe drink a few beers, maybe the older womenfolk Pray their Beads. Perhaps they have a goat strung up out back, I’ve never bothered to try and peek into their backyard. But what if they do? My uncle just may have a deer strung up out back of his place…
Immigration isn’t the issue that has destroyed the little soul the USofA had; ABORTION has. WAR is destroying it more, and the final destruction just may be INFLATION.
ABORTION
WAR
INFLATION
Instead, you crazies focus on “immigration” as if magical brown-skinned Mexicans are going to suck the life-force of your brain from the eye sockets of your skull. It’s absurd, I tell you!
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Immivasion is all part of the elites plan. You fight the wars and pay the taxes, white man. You die and/or go broke while massa gummint passes job oppos off to women, foreigners, and if they are still minorities, minorities.
Abortion just eats into your majority as well until your country isnt your country any more. Inflation doesnt help.
Our unamerican elites have done all this crap before and they have been kicked out of every country on earth. Except one.
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Dolts in the Carolinas ought to move to california and arizona to understand the American future. Americans will awaken to slumerica if illegal immigration is not checked.
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Young people or the recently politicized blink when i tell them that Bill oreilly and ann coulter were actually kind of hip at one point. the PC excesses of the 90’s screamed out for their populist commen sense approach to non issues like gender equality and racist budweiser ads. The war changed that. they ALL sided with the adminstration and sank with it. and they have to much pride to admit they were wrong.
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California, eh?
Let’s see about that.
Bakersfield, California. A smaller city by California standards, a large city by North Carolina standards.
It’s crime statistics:
http://www.cityrating.com/citycrime.asp?city=Bakersfield&state=CA
Asheville, NC. A small town by California standards, a metropolis by Western North Carolina Standards.
It’s crime statistics:
http://www.cityrating.com/citycrime.asp?city=asheville&state=NC
Murder:
Asheville: 1.5 the national average.
Bakersfield: 1.19 the national average.
Advantage: Bakersfield
Forcible Rape:
Asheville: 1.02 the national average.
Bakersfield: 0.43 the national average.
Advantage: Bakersfield
Robbery:
Asheville: 1.44 times the national average.
Bakersfield: 0.76 the national average.
Advantage: Bakersfield
Aggravated Assault:
Asheville: 0.79 times the national average.
Bakersfield: 1.06 times the national average.
Advantage: Asheville (note: aggravated assault is defined differently from state to state; this comparison should not be take too seriously)
Burglary:
Asheville: 1.61 times the national average.
Bakersfield: 1.2 times the national average.
Advantage: Bakersfield
Larceny or Theft:
Asheville: 1.71 times the national average.
Bakersfield: 1.2 times the national average.
Advantage: Bakersfield
Car Theft:
Asheville: 1.20 times the national average.
Bakersfield: 1.26 times the national average.
Advantage: None
Arson:
Asheville: 2.31 times the national average.
Bakersfield: 2.21 times the national average.
Advantage: None
So, Bakersfield wins this little contest 5-1-2. Five advantages, one disadvantage (which is suspect) and two draws.
Now, tell me again about how North Carolinians would be so “afeered” of “big bad” California.
Oh, and Bakersfield is 32% Hispanic and 9% Negro. Asheville is 4% Hispanic and 18% Negro.
Time for another “angle” there Stan.
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Fine comments John Smith. I might add that blaming Limbaugh is farcical, and dumb. Leather bound Playboy? What, if true, is the point of mentioning this? As for the Murrah building, whatever became of he nationwide manhunt for the ‘other’ man that witnesses identified and which manhunt lasted a few days, until mysteriously called off. The authorities suddenly said there was no one else, despite the witnesses, and the aforementioned multi-day manhunt.
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Crime is part of the problem. California has a fourteen billion dollar deficit. Every American who is in favor of illegal immigration should be forced to pay a tax to support illegal alien parasites.
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<<California has a fourteen billion dollar deficit.>>
Your comments are proof that magical thinking is still well and alive this day and age.
This magical thinking is called “democracy”.
Your argument, correctly, is against Communism. Your solution (making illegal immigrants disappear) has nothing to do with your argument.
Magical thinking.
Don’t do it.
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50 million abortions made room for 50 million immigrants.This country has been gone since Roe vs Wade.John grow up politics has always been brutal. They use Jeffersons black girlfriend against him.They called Lincoln an monkey and Lincoln was a tyrant who destroyed half the country. FDR declared class war against the rich and the Republicans called him every name in the book.Truman was as dirty a fighter, as came along and, so was LBJ.The right has always been demonised by the left.Limbaugh did a great service in leading the fight for many years.The intellectual capasity of the right collasped when we let the neocons take over and bully out people like Sobran Mel Bradford and Paul Gottfreid.There is plenty of intellectual power on the right but you need fighters like Buchanan,Ron Paul,Murray Rothbard and a lot of people on this site.They flew Limbaugh to Israel in the mid nineties and he was never the same since. All these people went all Israel all the time in 2002 and thats when I turned them off.Clinton started the attack as well as Lee Atwater before him.The Bush and Clinton machines have dumbed down America.
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It’s always sobering to be reminded that paleo-rightists do not oppose tyranny; they just oppose anti-paleo-tyranny. Hence the author’s support of the Spanish Armada’s attempt to conquer England, or his liking for a kinder, gentler version of George III.
Is it any wonder that paleos cannot defeat the neocons, who at least pay lip service to individual freedom, the rule of law, democracy?
Remember this: Ratzinger is no more tolerant of freedom than some moronic mullah in Tehran; he is simply envious that these mullahs have more influence over his flock.
One last point: if I were in Rome, I wouldn’t be wasting my time dispensing romanticist polemics on takimag! Try to use your time constructively, or is that too much Protestant efficiency for your liking?
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A very perceptive and well-crafted essay, John. Although I would
not go quite as far as you in ascribing cosmic importance to the
mindless demonization of the Clintons routinely engaged in by
movement conservative windbags, admittedly this trend cheapened
the American Right even more than it had been before. And this
noise will really rise if Hillary is nominated as the
Democratic presidential candidate and the usual suspects have
to cover their posteriors by coming out for McCain (or even
better McCain-Lieberman) as the GOP’s choice. At that point
one should expect to hear how vital it is to vote for John or
for John-Joe to save us from the unprosecuted Whitewater
criminals.
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Herr Doktor Gottfried,
Gebt Microsoft Explorer auf!
http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-2.0.0.12&os=win&lang=en-US
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John,
No way, my friend. This is a much deeper divide than what you describe. The “conservative movement” is not moving because it is no longer conservative. It is a gaggle of kids making money for posing as writers and political insiders.
It takes three of four generations to create anything really worth conserving and only one generation to destroy it.
Imagine Buchanan, Gottfried,and Taki having dinner with Russell Kirk, Erik von Kuenhelt-Leddihn and Frank Meyer. Now imagine little Bill Kristol, Big Bill Bennett and Jonah Goldberg at the other table. It’s a difference between serving wine and Kool Aid. Dinner deserves wine and those who know wine are no longer invited to dinner. Let the new hosts eat cake and be done with it. Or as all the old timers and teachers will soon be hearing for the sake of their votes (but not their virtues ), “grow up conservatives.” Well, given the fact we no longer must respect our elders, does it necessarily follow that we must we be ruled by charlatans and kids ?
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1. Thanks, Andy Capp, for giving the facts about crime. Only a little addition: Asheville is full of my ethnos, the Border-Backcountry folk, the so-called “Scots-Irish” (we are neither). And we are a violent bunch. I got into real hot water on another website by making, in a lighthearted way, the factual observation that Harlan County Kentucky has, historically, very high crime (and no “Blacks"). That county is mostly Borderer-Backcountry.
Sowell (no Honkey he!) has advanced the thesis that “Blacks” (the pre-1808ers) learned their violence at the knee of a “Scots-Irish”. He may be right. Yet the racialists over at that other site didn’t want to hear a word of it. They howled to the Website editor, so he told me, and he asked me to stop. Taki, thank Goodness, funds THIS website himself.
2. I’ve spent the day reflecting on Mr. Z’s article. Sorry, but the folks at Waco were killed for one simple reason: They were Christians. Reason enough to utterly hate and fear the Clintons, Bill himself the worst scoundrel to get close to the White House since Burr, Hillary Woodrow the Worst in drag. Then there was the assault ban weapon law. Ol’ Benito, so I’m told, quickly confiscated all weapons, they bieng registered with the Italian police.
I pray Mr. Z isn’t prepping us for himself to follow Big Ann’s endorsement of Nurse Ratched. I suppose there are out there SamFrancisans (not Mr. Z) who hate the Neo’s so much they’ll get in bed with the Marxist devil. Their ilk has done this before: the Clerical Fascists, because of their hatred of Commies, got in bed with the Fascist and fascist devil. The Clerical Fascists, by the way, are still with us.
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Very good article. I still think scorn for the Clinton’s is fully justified. I also think the dumbing down of the conservative movement has more to do with philosophical than sociological factors. Tradition has turned out not to be much of a rallying point for politics, and free market ideology is half bunkum. That’s the basic problem for conservatives today. Nor can natural law help; it’s axioms are too abstract. This is not a counsel of despair because liberalism itself has internal contradictions that are at least as grave as conservatism’s. Maybe we should start thinking about embracing social democracy, by which I don’t mean socialism but something closer to the Christian Democratic parties in Europe, but with an Old Right flavor.
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Thank you, Andy Capp, for repeating those highly questionable states. One can go to other websites and find differing figures, radically differing stats.
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And happily most folks in North Carolina do NOT agree with you on the “benign” effects of (illegal) immigration, cultural, socially OR politically.
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Rush Limbaugh’s program is highly entertaining and informative and he is the most consistently effective communicator the conservative movement has had the past 20 years. He has ALWAYS made it clear it is his purpose to attract an audience and to hold it for as long as possible so as to charge confiscatory rates for advertisements.
Those principles we oppose - Israel First, Militaristic Interventionism abroad etc - ARE conservative principles.
Sadly.
Look, Bill Buckley BEGAN as a collectivist conservative so it is no surprise what conservatism has become.
We Christian Conservatives had been thoroughly defeated. Thwe left has wopn and its victory is permanent - destructively so.
Tyranny reigns but few acknowledge it. There is NO Rule of law. That is why Hillary is to be feared - she and all other presidents to come
BTW. the articles of Impeachment against Billy Jeff were not just about a blow job.
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Yes, but where is the recipe for that wondeful gnocchi sauce at Miraggio in Trastevere? It would make an excellent addition to some future version of “The Bad Catholic.” Surely Mr. Zmirak has better things to do in Rome than muse over politics?
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Articles of Impeachment Presented to the senate
http://american_almanac.tripod.com/impeach.htm
Lying under oath is a high crime and misdemeanor. The Senate Simps had no cojones.
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Mr Cundiff,
You are welcome.
Continuing on this crime-related theme, let us compare Pikeville (population 6,000+), Kentucky, the only town of any size in Eastern Kentucky with (chosen essentially at random) Derby, Connecticut, about twice the size of Pikeville (12,000+).
Derby, Connecticut had exactly 0 aggravated assaults in 2005.
Pikeville, Kentucky had 10.
Derby is 90% “White”, 3.7% Negro, and 7.7% Hispanic.
Pikeville is 95% “White”, 2.6% Negro, and 1.4% Hispanic.
We could continue to conduct these comparisons all across the USofA and even into England and Scotland. What we would continue to find is that the level of violence in Northern England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Southern USofA and some communities out west, settled by my relatives from Appalachia - all of those places would have higher rates of crime than southern England, Spain, France, Germany, etc.
The most violent city in Europe is now Glasgow, Scotland.
Before any of you knuckleheads jump up and scream “Glasgow has a lot of non-Whites!” let me give you these numbers:
Glasgow population:
94.4% “White”
3.76% “Asian” (Pakistani, Indian, etc.)
0.35% “Mixed”
0.31% Black
0.67% Chinese
0.35% Other
In 2002 there were 40 murders in Glasgow. The murder rate of about 8 per 100,000 may not seem so high, but take into account the murder rate of Seattle, Washington (for example) in 2003 was 5.9 per 100,000. El Paso, Texas was 3.6. Mesa, Arizona was 3.2. San Jose, California was 3.2.
Clearly, there is something more to crime than being a Mexican or Negro. Perhaps it’s cultural?
OH NO, you “racialists” don’t believe in culture. It’s all about race.
Well, face it, it’s NOT “all about race”.
What is IS all about is CULTURE.
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Dr Cathay, are you catching all of this?
Hey, it’s been fun, but I’ve gotta go walk across the street to help out with the fish fry!
I’ll continue to school you dummies with crime statistics later.
One last thing:
Seattle, Washington is 8.4% Negro, with a murder rate of 5.9. Virginia Beach is 19% Negro with a murder rate of 5.5. New York City is 27% Negro, as well as being 27% Hispanic, and has a murder rate of 7.4. Memphis, Tennessee is 61% Negro and has a murder rate of 19. Baltimore, Maryland is 64% Negro and has a murder rate of 42.
Clearly, there is MUCH MUCH more than race involved here.
I’ll be back tonight after Stations of The Cross.
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When it it time to bear the cost of supporting illegals it is magical thinking. Take some classes in economics, ignoramus.
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“It looks like the four destructive horsemen of the 60s are in for their last hurrah this year: race, sex, gender, and war.”
Must denounce racism, must denounce racism ... blink, twitch ... blink
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I’m here between the Lenten Fish Fry and Stations of The Cross.
It IS magical thinking to believe restricting immigration will somehow solve the problem of Communism.
How many immigrants are there to North Korea?
My point EXACTLY.
It is obvious that immigration has NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Communism.
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On the subject of Ann Coulter, does anyone recall
the flap that she aroused when she called
Edwards a faggot?
Two questions come to my mind: Did no one ever
taught her that name-calling is not argument
(Ob MontyPhython skit “contradiction is not
argument” “Yes it is” “No, it isn’t")
And had no one told her that the traditional
reason why a woman calls a man a faggot is
because he turned down her advances?
And she is supposed to be a conservative intellectual?
Gimme a break!
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John,
Since you are a Catholic, please dig up some of the old Catholic confessors’ manuals and read what they say about how the sin of hatred blinds people and turns into obsession when it grows strong. Reading those old books—knowing their content used to be required of Catholics--would save you the labor of rediscovering the wheel by trial and error.
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Andrew Capp
As ever, your arguments are absurd. The point is not what the overall ethnic composition of an area is, the point is the identity of who is committing the crime.
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While I agree with the thrust of the article, I think we’d do well to remember the context of a lot of what has happened. We should remember that the Democratic Party, and liberals in general, held power in this country for 50 years. During that time, conservatives were continually subjected to the most uncouth, vicious treatment their opponents could think up. Remember Whittaker Chambers? Joseph McCarthy? Yeah. This goes way back. To give one fairly recent (well, I guess it’s not so recent anymore) example, Clarence Thomas was raked over the coals for two weeks on national TV for quoting a line from The Exorcist about a pubic hair in a Coke. To hear Democrats tell it at the time, Thomas was the most despicable, slimy sexual predator the world had ever known. Is it any wonder then that when a Democrat President was caught with his pants down, Republicans demanded similar treatment of him?
I’m not saying that tit for tat is the wisest path to follow, but I grew up watching the injustices done to conservatives by pompous, sniggering liberals and my hatred of them on that account of that runs very deep indeed.
In fact, I think one of the things late-20th century American conservatism had going for it was this constant liberal enemy. Since liberals did wield power for so many years, there was a running storyline, or narrative, that conservatives could follow and engage in. Back then, people did remember Whittaker Chambers and all the crimes and slanders that had happened leading up to their day. Late-20th century popular conservatism was, while at root a principled movement, also very much a reactionary movement. In fact, I would submit that conservatism’s eventual mainstream success had more to do with reaction against liberal policies and hypocrisy than any other single factor. This is why today the Republican party is filled almost exclusively with liberal-haters, but not necessarily with people who understand amd champion pure, orthodox conservatism.
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To quote:
http://www.kltprc.net/foresight/Chpt_88.htm
<<In 2000, Hispanics comprised 1.5 percent of the general population in Kentucky, but only 0.6 percent of the prison population. By 2005, 1.1 percent of Kentucky’s prisoners and 2 percent of the state’s residents were Hispanic.(17) Even assuming, merely for the sake of argument, that all Hispanic prisoners had entered the country illegally, 0.6 percent of all prisoners does not constitute a major driver of corrections spending. Furthermore, Hispanics have consistently been underrepresented in the prison population, undercutting the fear that the increasing influx of Hispanic immigrants will boost the crime rate.>>
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It’s pledge time again on a local PBS station.
Visions of Italy! ah!
Andre Rieu! uggh!
My favourite, thought, is Alone in the Wilderness, which leads me to wonder .....what would Dick Proenneke think of politics?
He probably wouldn’t - lucky guy. Too much real work to do.
Took me many years to realize the wisdom in the old adage about idle hands.
bah!
sorry, just rambling.
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One of the best pieces I’ve read in a long time.
It touches on a few things about the States that I’ve been
thinking about a lot lately. Our emotional hysteria, our
anti-intellectualism (or worse, psuedo-intellectualism), our
culture of over-simplification, all fueled no doubt by the shoot
‘em first Frontier mentality that we’ve been romanticizing about
since probably Andrew Jackson’s Presidency. But what they all have
helped me see, and what the article illustrates, albeit indirectly, is
just how incredibly undemocratic all of this behaivor is.
I mean, does anyone who knows anything about Coulter, Limbaugh, the
Clintons, Kennedys, Obama think they are models of the sort of values they talk about?
(In the case of Obama for example, any - ANY - criticism of him and you’re
labled with the “R” word. Geez, and today he’s just running for
President. Can you imagine what things will be like if he should
win?)
But not just them. I would include myself, my family, my friends and
school teachers, especially my Shop teachers, both Metal and Wood.
The list could go on and on. Very few people I’ve known in my life
have really impressed me as modeling Democratic values of openness,
tolerance, self-criticism without anxiety; a desire to experience our basic powers
of hearing, seeing, saying what we really feel and not just what we’re told to;
which only works to the extent we allow and encourage others to have
the same experience; a passion for knowledge and yet a healthy dose of anti-
intellectualism as a tonic against too much theory; an aversion to pity and
persecution mania; a genuine empathy,
meaning; a knowledge that not only you, but other people too, actually
have interests and dreams that they want to make real, and so on.
I don’t think anyone really models the sort of Democratic behavior
we’re always chirping about. And I don’t think I began to REALLY,
seriously, honestly think about it until after September 11th.
I’m not alone in thinking that it takes 5 to 7 years to change a
pattern of behavior. And now that we’re in the 7th year since that day I can
honestly say that I feel something in the air, something that suggests that we are
beginning to come out of our collective trance. Of course I don’t
know for sure, but it’s certainly a nice thought to bed down
with after reading that great article.
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I very much appreciate Mr. Zmirak’s excellent essay. I have but one quibble, albeit an important one.
In her book, The Third Terrorist, local TV journalist, Jayna Davis, following years of exhaustive research, reveals those responsible for this atrocity and provides ample evidence that Messrs. McVeigh and Nichols acted as “mules” and not the originators of the bombing plot.
Oh, and one more little quibble here:
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2008/01/30/the-breakdown-of-the-american-polity-part-II
Again, I do enjoy Mr. Zmirak’s insightful comments.
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If only it were so simple!
The fact of the matter is that Buckley, von Kuehnelt-Leddihn and others had their hayday in an America that still had poll taxes and literacy tests for (at least some of) its voters. Their fading away, and the rise of the likes of Coulter, Limbaugh and O’Reilly is nothing but the direct result of voting become a “right” and the loss of the notion that voting and citizenship are privileges to which voter should aspire.
The empowerment of yokels or “dumbing down of the right” resulted in the politics of Clinton-hating (and also in the likes of the Clintons in the WH instead of their remaining stuck in Arkansas, state well known for the sophistication of its culture and politics. Just look at Reverend Huckabee.)
Alleging that politics as the art of pleasing the mob resulted in a “dumbing down” of the American right (and left) is putting the cart before the horse, and obscures the cause and solution of the discussed pathology.
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Food for thought. A day later, I am still digesting this, wondering to what extent the development you describe was built into the foundations of the so-called conservative intellectual movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s. I may need to write about this myself some time. Some time soon.
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To Robert Cheeks
I had never heard of the book The Third Terrorist before. A review of the book at the Amazon web site contained the following statement: “Please note that serious individuals like David P. Schippers and former CIA director, James Woolsey strongly recommend the reading of “The Third Terrorist.” The latter gentleman even adds that this book has effectively shifted “the burden of proof to those would still contend McVeigh and Nichols executed the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing without the support of a group or groups from the Middle East."”
Rob, I would be EXTREMELY DUBIOUS about anything that Woolsey recommends to the public (apparently he also had a hand in vetting the book). Woolsey has always seemed to me to be pure evil. The book’s apparent main revelation that there were Arabs involved in the OKC bombing has emerged elsewhere, however, the book’s conclusion that Iraq, Iran, and Syria were behind the OKC bombing appears absurd (albeit an absurdity that would be very convenient for some).
I don’t pretend to know much about the research into the OKC bombing. But, from what I have read, many researchers think that the key lies with the German spy Andreas Strassmeir (widely assumed to be an agent provocateur) and goings on at Elohim City (which was apparently full of government agents).
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This god-awful-long drivel piece confirms once again that paleo- and neo-cons are alike in one crucial respect: They both hate conservatives, and they’ll proffer any argument no matter how ridiculous to smear them en masse. Why not post this on Daily Kos where it belongs? Paleoliberals love to reduce the conservative “movement” to the Coulters and Hannitys. It “felt so good to hate”? Who is this idiot talking about? We hated Clinton too much. John Kerry was a war hero. The Patriot Act is tyranny. Ron Paul is Jesus Arisen. We all need rehab. This phony’s conservatism is indeed in a “sorry state.”
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I have no regrets that the Spanish Armada didn’t land; they would have resumed the bloody Inquisition where Bloody Mary Tudor left off.
Bonny Prince Charles’ ego resulted in the deaths of many followers. He should have been content with holding on the the Scottish throne.
My regret is that Scotland couldn’t have stayed clear of both England and France.
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Very good essay, Mr. Zmirak. The irrational hatred fomented and directed solely at all things Clinton provided excellent cover and concealment for those seeking to expand and entrench their power over the masses via Leviathan. No less than Rush Limbaugh once gurgled on air; as though speaking to a select group of compatriots in a hushed, ‘I just boinked the mayor’s daughter’, tone of voice something along the lines of: “...see, we conservatives really don’t want to diminish the federal government’s power, we just want to do different things with it...”. This was uttered some years after his audiences with both David Rockefeller and Israel’s Likudniks and it stood, in this former listener’s ears anyway, in rank contrast to all he’d professed to champion earlier in his broadcast career.
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@Ravis
Mindless Bushite slaves who think kissing any President’s backside is American let alone Conservative or even close to the original intent of the Founding Fathes should stick to reading Fox News to get their marching orders.
I know a lot of people, sadly even in my parish who react in the same manner. I was elated to see a Ron Paul bumper sticker on a car this morning and will thank the owners when I see them.
Even registered Democrats and Republicans MUST continually question what these bozos are doing on a continual basis.
The ruling Republican party backed 100% by Rush and the other morons are the party of big government and pro-dictator and are crooks and scoundrels of the worse sort. Ron Paul says he backs the Republican platform. Almost none of the rest actual do. Shamless hypocites.
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So we have established that the folks out in them thar hills are even more prone to spending time in the pokey than Mexicans. Who woulda thunk it?
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“it’s a damned shame that…
a) The Spanish Armada didn’t land.”
Oh, brother! You’re trying WAAAY too hard, John Zmirak!
(You do understand that “owning” a Bible was a capital offense in Spain at the time? Something to do with a jealous priest cult lording it over a revanchist in-bred king line.)
Give me the social-climbing provincials of the off-shore island anytime. Speech was 98% free!
Trading English ale for Spanish beer is as far as I’ll go concerning any theoretical longed-for Spanish influence, thanks anyway.
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<<You do understand that “owning” a Bible was a capital offense in Spain at the time?>>
HA!
Sorry, that’s not funny, it’s pitiful.
I pity you.
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